Buried in a Book (28 page)

I wasn’t going to put it down just yet. “Tell me where you got the manuscript for
The Alexandria Society
.”

“The what?” His brow furrowed. “From Carson Knight,
of course. He sent me an intriguing query, and after reading the manuscript, I offered him representation. Why are you so focused on Carson’s book?” He attempted to stand. I raised the book a fraction higher, and he lowered himself back to the floor. “Geez, Lila. What is
wrong
with you?”

“Carson’s novel is the same as the one described in Marlette’s query letter. A query letter to which
you
had access. Did you take the one from the flowers the day Marlette was murdered and destroy it? Did you help Carson steal the book from Marlette?”

“What? No! The first I ever knew of
The Alexandria League
was from Carson’s query. It had nothing to do with Marlette.” Comprehension made his face go slack. “You think
I
murdered Marlette? Oh my god, Lila, I swear—”

“And Luella? Did you frame her for Marlette’s death and then bump her off?” I lowered the book, my conviction that Jude was a killer now wavering. At the moment, he seemed more like a hurt and confused little boy than a calculating murderer.

He covered his face with his hands and shook his head. Eventually, he looked up at me with pleading eyes. “I can’t believe you think I’m even capable of…that kind of violence. I’m a lover, not a fighter.” A quick smile revealed his dimples, and then he became serious again. “I
cared
about Luella. I’d never hurt her.” He spread his hands wide. “And Marlette was a harmless eccentric. I wouldn’t raise a hand against him.” He shrugged. “Lila, how can I prove my innocence to you?”

I stepped aside to clear his way to the file cabinet, and though I still wanted to appear in control, I nonetheless softened my voice. “Show me the query. Show me the manuscript. Maybe then I’ll believe you.”

“Okay.” He raised himself to his knees and groped in his pants pocket. He pulled out an Audi key chain and selected a small silver key, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. “Second drawer.”

Not wanting to turn my back on him, I said, “You open it.”

He started to stand again but hesitated. “You won’t whack me with the book again, will you?”

“Not unless you give me reason to.” This time I smiled at him. I felt awful about the contusion on his head, now turning an ugly shade of reddish blue, and I was rather ashamed for intimidating him in this way. Yet I didn’t want to give up my advantage until I felt confident that Jude was innocent.

He inserted the key into the file cabinet lock. My pulse quickened with excitement as Jude slid open the drawer and began riffling through the files.

“What the hell?” He looked up with a puzzled expression and then pushed himself to his feet and carefully examined every file in the drawer.

Bewildered by his reaction, I peered into the drawer, watching the label of each file flip by. After he’d examined the last one, Jude stared at me in shock.

“It’s gone, Lila. The original manuscript is gone!”

AFTER JUDE LOCKED UP THE OFFICE, I DROVE MY VESPA
home through the sticky evening. Wisps of damp hair clung to my cheeks and neck, and my shirt was plastered to my lower back. I decided to take a shower before supper. How I hoped to wash the day off me, to let the fear and confusion I’d felt in Jude’s office go down the drain in a spiral of soap and water.

Althea was closeted in the kitchen with a client, so I sat out on the back porch with wet hair and a notebook. I wanted to put my thoughts about the case on paper, hoping to sort out my suspicions and theories. First, I made a list of my coworkers and then drew lines through their names as I ruled them out as killers. When I reached Jude’s, I left a question mark beside it. He had seemed genuinely distraught over the missing manuscript, but I couldn’t be absolutely sure that he hadn’t been involved in a crime.

“Who stole the manuscript?” I murmured softly, but my words were swallowed by the creaks of the rocking chair.

Scenes from
The Great Train Robbery
,
The Maltese Falcon
, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” played themselves out like a movie montage in my mind. In heist novels, everyone’s after money, rare artifacts, or jewels, but in this real-life investigation, the stolen item was an idea.

Marlette had dreamed up an original, saleable idea and had turned it into a book. I could easily picture his angular scrawl filling page after page of watermarked paper as the scenes bloomed in his head like the wildflowers in his hidden meadow.

With his masterpiece complete, he began to query Novel Idea. Desperate to have his novel read, he appeared in person day after day until finally, someone took a few minutes to scan the lines of his letter. If Jude had been telling the truth, then that “someone” was Bentley, Luella, or the previous intern, Addison.

Making a quick note to speak to Addison during tomorrow’s lunch break, I returned my focus to the next conundrum, which was puzzling out how someone had gotten their hands on Marlette’s copy of the manuscript without his knowledge. After all, he’d hardly continue to appear at the literary agency bearing flowers and a fresh query letter if his novel had gone missing. There was only one explanation: Marlette didn’t know that his book had been stolen. Again and again, he blindly climbed the stairs to the reception area clutching a bouquet and a dream.

In one of Agatha Christie’s novels, Hercule Poirot claims that “every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend.” For once, I disagreed with the intrepid Belgian detective. I
believed that Marlette’s killer had been his enemy from the first. Bentley? Carson? Luella? She had never been his old friend. Even in the past, when she was just a young woman named Sue Ann Grey, Luella had tried to manipulate Marlette. Failing to do so, she immediately set out to tarnish his reputation. She was an enemy.

Years later, she could have read his query letter and hurriedly discovered the location of the manuscript. How she met Carson and the extent of his involvement in the scheme to claim Marlette’s book as his own were vague, but I was certain my revealing Luella as Sue Ann Grey to the authorities had put someone’s well-laid plans at risk.

I stared at the names on my list. “Did you kill Luella, Carson? What was she to you? Lover? Business partner? Both?”

Then my eyes fell on Bentley’s name. “And where do you fit into this terrible plot? I really hope I’m not working for a criminal.” I sighed. “Maybe I should have become a freelance reporter. Far less dangerous.”

WHEN I GOT
to the office the next morning, I was surprised to find Sean seated on the leather sofa in the reception area. His presence unsettled me for a moment because the sofa always reminded me of Marlette’s death. However, Sean didn’t seem to be bothered by the couch’s tainted past. With one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, he was engrossed in a pictorial on the best hiking spots in America. Upon seeing me, he jumped to his feet.

“Good morning,” he said with a smile and handed me a takeout cup from Espresso Yourself. “Might I interest you in a caramel latte?”

“You may, thank you.” I returned the smile, absurdly delighted to see him. In Sean’s presence I had the sensation that everything would be okay, that he and a dozen colleagues were working tirelessly on elements of the case I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. I considered all the facts and interviews he had to sort through, the evidence that he and his team had had to gather and process, and how careful he needed to be before accusing someone of murder.

“Any luck with the fingerprints?” I asked him quietly.

Ignoring the question, he pointed down the hall. “Can we go to your office?”

Once inside, he closed the door and we both sat down.

“We found prints from every literary agent in Ms. Ardor’s house, which is no surprise considering she hosted a garden party a few weeks ago that all your coworkers attended. However, there was another set of prints we’ve been unable to match with anyone registered in the national database.”

“I have an idea who those prints belong to.” I told Sean about the missing manuscript and my theory that Luella and Carson had worked together to steal Marlette’s novel and make a fortune from its publication. I realized that I probably should have shared this information with Sean last night, but it had been my hope that I’d be able to present him with some solid facts and all I had was more conjecture. I could tell from his expression that he wasn’t exactly dazzled by my investigative work.

“There’s only one problem with your hypothesis,” Sean said. “Mr. Knight has a solid alibi for the afternoon on which Ms. Ardor was killed.”

I put my coffee cup down on my desk, no longer trusting myself to hold it steady. “That leaves only Bentley.”

“Ms. Burlington-Duke was here with Ms. Ardor’s client.
A Miss, uh, Calliope Sinclair gave us a very precise statement. Apparently, she was rather put out because she had to wait here so long.”

The implication of Calliope’s corroboration swept over me. I couldn’t help but release a heavy breath of relief. “My boss didn’t kill Luella.”

“No,” Sean replied with finality. “She was at the other end of the agency engaged in a conference call when Marlette was given the injection of bee venom.”

“So that’s been confirmed?” I asked. “Marlette died because of that injection?”

“Yes. After finding the syringe bearing Ms. Ardor’s prints as well as a receipt for the venom in Ms. Ardor’s house, we escalated the priority on Marlette’s autopsy and requested a complete toxicology report from the medical examiner’s office.” He showed me a color printout of the flowers Marlette had carried into the agency on the day of his death. “This is white milkweed. I’d never heard of this plant, but apparently bees love it. Does it look familiar?”

I reached for the paper. “Marlette was holding onto those clusters of white petals on my first day of work. I remember thinking how beautiful they were, despite the fact that they were being carried by a man who looked like he hadn’t had a bath in a very long time.” With a shake of my head, I thought of my initial impression of Marlette. “I’m still ashamed of how uncomfortable I was in his presence. He was harmless. Maybe if I’d given him a few minutes of my time, I could have made it impossible for Luella to act. To think that a woman who doused herself in perfume and made men go weak in the knees was walking around with a syringe in her pocket, preparing to commit murder…It makes me feel sick.”

Sean reached out and touched the back of my hand. His warm fingertips gave me an instant feeling of calm. “Ms. Ardor knew that Marlette always brought wildflowers to Novel Idea. She also knew it was plausible for a bee to be concealed in one of his bouquets,” Sean continued. “By injecting her victim and causing him to go into anaphylactic shock and then dropping the dead bee on the floor, Ms. Ardor wanted us to assume that Marlette had a serious allergic reaction to the bee sting. She was smart, but not smart enough to realize that she ran the risk of becoming a victim herself.”

“And everyone has an alibi for Luella’s murder.” I sighed. “What happens now?”

“If these two murders occurred because of plagiarism, then I need to find at least a portion of Marlette’s original manuscript. I’ve got to have something to compare to Mr. Knight’s book.”

“Carson will just say that he only had the one handwritten copy and he gave it to Jude. And now it’s gone. Stolen.” My lips formed a tight line of anger. “How convenient for Carson.”

Standing up, Sean said, “You said that Carson hired someone to transcribe the manuscript. Perhaps this person remembers what the original handwriting looked like. I could conduct a handwriting comparison.”

Excited, I jumped out of my seat. “Yes! There’s no way Carson could imitate Marlette’s scrawl! Let’s see if Jude is in his office.”

Sean grabbed me by the elbow before I could open the door. He moved his body close to mine and whispered, “You’ve been an incredible help, Lila, and I admire your determination, but this is my case. I’ll be asking the questions.
” He softened the stern words with a playful wink, and I smiled. If anyone else had spoken to me like that, I would have bristled like a porcupine, but I trusted Sean. I trusted him to pursue every lead until each secret and every lie had been laid bare.

But I wasn’t going to back off, either. Not now, when the agency was in such a fragile state and its agents were confused and scared. I might have begun my employment as an intern, but this place and its people were becoming a part of my life. One I wanted to make permanent. Sean knocked on Jude’s door, but it was Bentley who called out, “Enter!”

“Ah, Officer Griffiths.” Without rising, she gave him an imperial nod and then looked at me. “Good morning, Lila. Jude and I were just discussing how the agency should handle Luella’s client list until we’re able to begin a search for a new agent. He made an interesting suggestion—one that I’d like to talk over with you when the good officer is done.”

I dipped my head in acknowledgment, momentarily taken aback by Bentley’s haggard appearance. Her usual sense of style was evident in her white slacks and zebra-pattered silk blouse, accessorized by black ankle boots and a choker made of jet beads, but her hair was dull and limp, and her claret-colored fingernail polish was chipped as though she’d picked most of it off. She wore little makeup, and the thin skin below her eyes was puffy and tinged with the gray and blue of someone who hadn’t slept well in days.