Buried in a Book (5 page)

I rushed down the hall and banged on Bentley’s door.

“This had better be good!” Bentley sounded most displeased. “Lila? Is that you?”

I went in, too upset to acknowledge that she’d finally said my name correctly.

“I need help! Does anyone here know CPR? Mr. Marlette…” I swallowed hard and then forced myself to calm down. “I think he’s dead.” I gestured behind me. “He’s out there on the sofa. I couldn’t find a pulse.”

Bentley scowled. “That man is infuriating. Is there anything he won’t do for attention?”

Jude, who had leapt to his feet during my startling an-nouncement, shouted, “Call 911!” and then ran off toward the reception area.

“How awful,” said the man seated in a leather chair across from Bentley’s desk. I nodded gratefully at the voice of compassion, locking eyes with Carson Knight, the thriller writer who was in the office to review the lucrative deal from Doubleday. He must have arrived while I was downstairs getting acquainted with Makayla. A good-looking man in his late forties, Carson had a lean body, sand brown hair, and intelligent gray eyes that were gazing at me with concern from behind a pair of silver-framed glasses.

Bentley waved me away. “Go on. Phone the authorities.”

I pulled out my cell phone and hurried toward the foyer. As I passed Flora’s office, her door opened and she peered out.

“What’s all the commotion?”

I pointed down the hall. “Marlette. I think he’s dead, but someone has to try to revive him.” Rushing off, I almost knocked over Franklin, who had just stepped out of his office.

“I know CPR. One of my clients wrote a book on reacting to emergency situations,” he said. “Where is he?”

“Follow me!” I said and ran to the lobby with Franklin right on my heels.

Jude was at the couch, leaning toward Marlette, who was no longer hunched over but lying flat on his back. “We’ve got to get him breathing,” Jude said, spinning around to face us.

Franklin dashed over and began to rhythmically press down on Marlette’s chest. “One and two and three and,” he huffed.

Suddenly realizing I hadn’t yet called 911, I punched in the number on my cell phone. Making the report to the emergency operator, I watched Franklin give mouth-to-mouth to Marlette, ashamed at the relief I felt that Franklin was touching those chapped lips while I spoke to a calm woman who promised to dispatch a team of paramedics immediately. “There’s an emergency crew en route,” I announced as I hung up. “They should be here soon.”

Jude leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Are the police coming, too?”

“Probably.” I edged away from him after noticing that Flora was positioned behind us anxiously wringing her hands. “Why?”

Jude glanced at Marlette, then back at me. “I think this may be a homicide.”

“You mean…” Flora dropped her hands and looked aghast. “
Murder?
”

“That’s ridiculous,” declared Zach, who had materialized in the lobby. “Why would anyone kill a homeless guy?”

I was wondering the same thing when Bentley came out of her office with Carson. The attractive forty-something author had donned his suit jacket while Bentley was wearing enormous Chanel sunglasses and carried a Louis Vuitton duffel in her hand. Striding down the hall they looked as though they were embarking on a trip.

Bentley halted at our little group. “Jude, let’s go.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Jude looked stunned. “You need to deal with this situation. I think Marlette’s been murdered.”

“Murdered?” Carson’s surprised gaze moved from Jude to Marlette. “Looks more like an allergic reaction. His face is terribly swollen.”

We all turned toward the couch. I thought about Marlette’s puffy fingers and how doughy his neck had felt. “But from what?” I wondered aloud. Certainly not the water I’d given him.

Carson shook his head in dismay. “I don’t know. Maybe there was a bee in those flowers he was carrying.”

Jude shook his head. “No way. I noticed—”

“We’re wasting time,” Bentley interrupted impatiently. “My plane is already sitting on the runway. Lila can handle this.”

“M-me?” I stammered, flabbergasted that she would even consider jetting off to New York with a dead man in her agency. “Don’t you need to be here when the police arrive?”

Apparently, she found nothing amiss in her behavior. “My dear, Mr. Knight, Jude, and I have a late lunch meeting with a senior editor in New York. We have a few minor details to work out, and after that, Mr. Knight will officially become the highest-paid author of the Novel Idea Literary Agency.” Her eyes glimmered with dollar signs. “As for this unfortunate incident”—she gestured at Marlette without looking at him—“I’m confident that I can entrust you to manage the police as well as your daily allotment of queries. A woman with your experience and maturity can certainly give a succinct account to the authorities. Come, Jude.”

Jude shook his head. “I’m staying, Bentley. This needs to be taken care of. You can handle the details in New York.”

“Suit yourself. See you Monday.” And with that, she was gone. Carson gave me an apologetic bow, shook Jude’s hand, and followed the clip-clop of Bentley’s heels down the stairs.

“Oh dear.” Flora began wringing her hands again. “Oh dear, oh dear.”

I looked over at Franklin, who continued, without any sign of success, administering CPR. I marveled that he refused to give up despite his obvious weariness. “Has anyone ever read Marlette’s query letters?”

Flora shrugged. “My goodness, I have no idea! The interns were all warned about his regular visits and his…quirks. To tell the truth, they were a bit scared of him. He’s been coming here for almost a year now, and he brings flowers every day. Such a nuisance.”

“And his letters were always attached to the flowers?” I asked, wanting to confirm what Marlette had told me earlier.

“Yes.” Flora sank into one of the club chairs and began
to dab at her flushed face with a tissue. She then continued the motion across her neck and down the deep V of her cleavage. “But I have no idea what they said.”

I felt anger on Marlette’s behalf. No one had bothered to spend five lousy minutes reading his letter? And yet, he had remained undeterred. Day after day, he reappeared at the agency, clutching his bouquet and his query, only to have his hopes dashed afresh each morning. “Everyone just assumed he was crazy,” I murmured sadly.

Flora stood. “Yes, dear, that’s about it.” She patted my arm. “Don’t judge those young interns too harshly. That awful man didn’t always make sense. He often babbled or talked to himself and could be a tad frightening. I can’t begin to imagine the germs he carried into the office. I encouraged Bentley to get a restraining order against him, but the rest of the agency thought he was harmless, so we never bothered. I guess…we all got used to him. He was a fixture, if a rather odoriferous and unsavory one at that.”

“But no one saw him as a person, just a nuisance. A brief blight on one’s day,” I grumbled. “When in truth, he was more of an odd, flower-bearing writer wannabe.”

Flora’s eyes darkened. “It is terrible that we can become
so
immersed in our regular tasks that we ignore a person right under our noses.” She blinked, and the hostility in her eyes evaporated. “Perhaps I’ve been unfair to him. I don’t even know his last name. Or if he had a home or a family. I feel terrible.” She hurried back to her office.

Franklin straightened up. “It’s not working. He’s definitely dead.” He brushed his hand over his brow and shrugged. “I did what I could.”

“You were amazing,” I told him. “Don’t blame yourself. I think it was hopeless from the start.”

As Franklin shook his head and disappeared down the hall, Jude touched my arm. “I’ll be in my office if you need anything. Let me know when the police arrive. I want to talk to them. I’m sure Marlette’s death is a result of foul play.”

“Why do you believe that?” I asked.

“Okay.” He looked from left to right, then directly at me. “When I was straightening him on the couch, I noticed a puncture mark on his neck.”

“Like a bee sting?”

Jude shook his head. “Maybe that’s what we were intended to think, but I know what a needle puncture looks like, and that’s definitely what it was.”

I couldn’t keep the shock off my face. Not just at Jude’s insistence that Marlette was murdered, but over his statement about needle marks. “But why…and who?”

“I don’t know, but I have to tell the cops.”

Watching him walk away, I picked up my latte from the coffee table. Just as I took a sip of the unappealingly cooled brew, I heard the heavy tread of several men on the stairs.

A pair of officers from the Dunston Police Department met me at the top. The one in the lead, a stocky, thick-necked man in his late twenties, walked directly over to Marlette. A couple of paramedics carrying a stretcher pushed past me and followed him. The second policeman, an all-American-looking blond with blue eyes in his early fifties, held out his hand. “Officer Griffiths. Are you all right, ma’am?”

I was charmed by the fact that he asked how I was faring before peppering me with questions. I told him I’d had a heck of a first day on the job and explained how I’d found Marlette dead on the sofa.

Officer Griffiths wrote down every word I said, and his bright blue eyes and professional, courteous manner were a balm.

“That’s
some
first day,” he commented when I was finished. “Would you like to sit down?”

I shook my head, feeling more unnerved than I let on. My mother’s gloomy premonition kept repeating in my mind. Every now and then, her foresight was accurate, but the circumstances were usually positive. She’d stop a young couple in the grocery store and predict that they would soon be married or tell an expectant mother the gender of her baby. Sometimes, she knew the location of a lost pet or a missing object, but she’d never known about a death before it happened. I rubbed my arms, feeling chilled as I recalled her certainty that someone would die in this office.

The medical examiner arrived and quickly moved toward his patient. After inspecting Marlette’s lifeless body, he conferred with the paramedics and the stocky police officer. I tried to listen in on their conversation but only caught snippets, words and phrases that put my senses on high alert and caused my brain to start whirring. “Fresh needle puncture,” I heard the ME say. “Doubt it was self-administered because there was no…”

I wished I could have heard the whole conversation, but I did catch part of the cop’s response: “Possible homicide.”

Jude’s suspicions were right! Someone had murdered Marlette. Even the police thought so. At that moment, I decided I would do everything I could to discover who had harmed a man who just wanted to have his query letter read.

“Do they know what happened to him?” I asked Griffiths as the two paramedics began to unfold the legs of the gurney.

Griffiths made a noncommittal shrug. “Nothing definitive
until an autopsy is done. Results could take anywhere from six to twelve weeks.”

“And that’s it? He just goes…in some refrigerated drawer until the autopsy?” I felt as though someone should be concerned on Marlette’s behalf.

“We’ll search for next of kin.” Griffiths looked over his notes. “So he came here every day carrying flowers? I should probably talk to someone who’s been here a bit longer than you about his past behavior.” He said this with a smile. “Would you take me to your boss?”

I shifted on my feet. “She left to catch a flight to New York.”

Griffiths raised his brows. “Before or after this man died in her office?”

I glanced around the officer’s shoulder in order to watch the men strap Marlette into the gurney. One of them grimaced, no doubt over the pungent smell emanating from the corpse. The second paramedic was all business and quietly directed his partner to prepare to hoist the gurney. I felt sorry for the two men. It couldn’t be easy to bear Marlette’s weight down a flight of stairs. Suddenly, I wondered how a person with a physical disability would make it up to our office and whether the Novel Idea Literary Agency represented any handicapped clients.

“Ms. Wilkins?”

Returning my attention to the policeman’s patient face, I answered, “Ms. Burlington-Duke left afterward, and I’m sorry to say that I doubt she, or anyone else in the back offices, could tell you much more about Marlette. I believe he was assigned to the interns. No one else interacted with him.”

“Do you think you could get me contact information for
the most recent intern?” he inquired, his grin transforming from friendliness into something intangibly flirtatious as he handed me a business card.

I told Griffiths I’d be glad to help. Why not? He seemed like a sweet guy, and I wanted to talk to that intern myself. Not only would I like to find out more about Marlette, but I’d also love to know why my predecessor hadn’t been able to hack it at the agency for more than a mere three months.

I took the card and returned the lawman’s inviting smile. “I’ll get back to you soon.”

As the professionals concentrated on their tasks, the literary agents drifted out of their offices. Jude pulled the stocky policeman aside and talked to him. I wanted to listen in on the other cop’s reaction to Jude’s murder theory, but Officer Griffiths kept demanding my attention.

“Ms. Wilkins, we need to conduct a search of the premises. If you and your coworkers would please make room, we’ll get started.”

I was about to reply when Franklin stepped forward. “I think you need a warrant for that. Especially since Ms. Burlington-Duke is not present.”

“Sir, this is a possible crime scene, and we can search the open areas of this lobby without a warrant,” Officer Griffiths replied. A trifle embarrassed, Franklin acquiesced and went to stand beside Flora.

Zach and Jude moved forward to assist the men from the coroner’s office with their burden, but their offer was courteously declined. Flora began to weep again and was comforted by Franklin, who made soothing noises while handing her tissue after tissue. As I stood aside with the agents, Griffiths asked them several questions about Marlette, but it was obvious they knew almost nothing about
him. The other officer started to search the area around the sofa, peering behind the throw pillows and running his hands between the cushions.