Holmes & Moriarty 02 - All She Wrote (MM) (2 page)

“We took the series to Millbrook House’s Crime Time line.”

“Oh, they’ll do a lovely job. Such adorable covers. What kind of advertising budget are you getting?”

I shrugged. “It’s not extravagant, but it’s better than we were getting at Wheaton & Woodhouse.”

A sudden silence fell between us. I could feel something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on what or why. Anna was still smiling through the veil of cigarette smoke, still watching me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Wrong?” She gestured with her cigarette for me to pull one of the white velvet side chairs over to the bed.

I slid the chair across the glossy floor and sat down. “Not that I’m not flattered by your faith in me, but I don’t have any teaching experience, and you know plenty of mystery writers a lot more successful and well-known than me. Why did you call me?”

Anna smiled. “Perhaps I thought it would be good for you.”

“That’s flattering, but I can’t imagine you’ve given me more than the occasional passing thought in the last decade.”

“You don’t make it easy, Christopher. You’ve cut yourself off from everyone. You don’t do signings, you don’t do conferences, you don’t do book tours. You were the best and brightest of my students, and you’ve lived up to that promise to some degree—”

I snorted.

Anna shrugged, then winced in pain at the unwise move. “Do you deny it? Do you deny cutting yourself off from the old crowd?”

“No. I’ve been focused on building my career.”

“Haven’t we all.” Anna’s voice was bitter. “Listen, Christopher, I know what I’m talking about. My own ambition cost me my first two marriages.”

“Third time’s the charm?”

“There is someone again, yes.”

“Congratulations,” I said, surprised, although I guess there was no real reason for surprise.

It’s not like Anna was in her dotage. Sixty is the new fifty, right? And fifty is the new forty, and forty is the new thirty. By the way, how come I didn’t
feel
thirty?

“Thank you.” She seemed preoccupied.

“I’m still not sure what I’m doing here.”

Anna sighed. “All right. The truth is, I read an article in
People
magazine about what happened to you at that writing conference in Northern California. How you solved that murder.”

“Wait a minute. You’re not saying—”

She gave a funny laugh. “I think I am, actually. That is, I’m not absolutely positive, but I think someone might be trying to kill me.”

“You think—”

“Yes. Don’t laugh.”

“As side-splitting as the idea of violent death is…” I stared at her doubtfully. “Are you serious? You are, aren’t you?”

Anna had an expression I’d never seen before—not that I really remembered all her expressions. In fact,
exasperated
and
much tried
were the only two that really rang a bell.

“I’m not sure. After all these years of writing about murders I’m afraid I’m letting my imagination run away with me. There have been one or two incidents…odd occurrences.”

“Like what?”

“To start with, my fall down the garden stairs. I can’t swear to it, but I’ve been up and down those stairs a million times in winter, spring, summer and fall.”

“No pun intended? Listen,” I said, “because you never slipped before doesn’t mean you couldn’t slip this time.”

“There was ice on the step. Solid ice. Not snow, not frost, not the usual thin glaze of ice.

Thick ice as though someone had poured water on the stones and let them freeze over.”

“That’s it? That’s pretty thin, Anna. It’s not impossible that there could be some…some ice anomaly.” Mr. Wizard I am not.

“There have been other things. Nothing conclusive. Nothing in itself conclusive, but when you put it all together…”

She put it all together. The case of violent food poisoning that affected her but no one else in the house, the stone urn that fell off a balcony and narrowly missed crushing her, the brakes failing in her car. I heard her out in silence. Well, for me it was silence. Close to silence. I hardly interrupted at all. For me.

“Christopher, would you kindly shut up?” Anna requested at last. “This is my story. I’m trying to tell it my own way. I do know about maintaining proper levels of brake fluid. I have an excellent mechanic.”

“The thing I don’t understand is what you imagine I could do about it if someone
is
trying to harm you? If this is true, you need to go to the police.”

“That is what I absolutely can
not
do.”

“Why?”

“What if I’m wrong?”

“That would be a relief, right? Personally, I wouldn’t mind looking a little paranoid in order to be wrong about people trying to kill me.”

“I’d be ruined. There would be no way to keep something like that quiet. This is a small town and I’m a big name.”

Modesty was never Anna’s weak point.

“Surely five minutes of embarrassment is worth—”

“It would either look like a publicity stunt or it would look like I’m losing it. Either would be intolerable.”

Not as intolerable as being dead, in my opinion, but I’m very fond of me. I would miss me a lot.

Anna said, “Keep in mind that the pool of suspects is small. I would be accusing a friend or a student or one of my long-time trusted employees of wishing to do me ill.”

“Seriously ill. Which is still better than terminally ill. I mean, you do suspect one of them of wanting you dead, right? Who is it you suspect? Everyone? Or no one? Or all of the above?”

She looked pained. “I’ve told you I’m not sure about any of this.”

“Yeah, yeah. I get that. It’s not nice to blame the friends and family of wanting to do away with you, but you must have some inkling. Some gut feeling about who it might be—
assuming it’s anyone.”

“But that’s it. I don’t. And that’s why I want your help. You’re very observant, Christopher.”

“I never noticed.”

“For being almost totally self-absorbed, yes. You’re also surprisingly perceptive about people so long as they’re not connected to you. As glib as the Miss Butterworth novels are, you’re very good at ascribing believable motives to your characters. Especially the killers.”

“That’s fiction.”

“The best fiction captures the truth of real life.”

Was there an echo in here? I remembered that mantra from way back when. Way back when I used to cut the majority of my non-writing classes or spend them scribbling stories in the back row with the stoners and sleepers.

“So you’re thinking that I can snoop around and figure out if one of your merry band is planning to knock you off? I knew you didn’t drag me out here for my teaching skills because I don’t have any.”

“You don’t mind, do you?” She gave me the closest thing I’d ever seen to a beseeching look. I didn’t trust it for a minute. One thing Anna was not was the beseeching brand of damsel.

“Do you want me to be honest or polite?”

“I want you to help me.”

“You must truly be desperate.”

“I am.”

“Well,” I said slowly, “it’s your life. I’ll do what I can.”

She looked relieved. That made one of us.

My room might have been the same room I’d had the last time I visited, a decade or so ago. My memories were vague. These days I was no longer impressed by genuine antiques or opulent furnishings or prints that didn’t come from Art.com—which is to say that I didn’t take my shoes off before walking on the handwoven blue and green Persian rugs, and I avoided sitting on the gold-threaded emerald brocade bedcover merely because I wasn’t that tired,
not
because I was intimidated by a few bed linens.

The bed itself looked like it had been modified from a sacrificial altar on some obscure Grecian isle. There were four dark wood Corinthian columns, leather panel inserts with brass studs on the head and footboards, and a canopy frame of wrought-iron ivy and grapes. Green velvet draperies dusted the glass-slick floor.

There was companion furniture, of course, but it seemed to exist merely to keep the bed from brooding over its change of fortune. Stephen King could have written a book about that bed.

If I hadn’t been crazy before, I surely would be after a couple of nights beneath those curling grapevines. It was moot, since I obviously
was
crazy. How else to explain agreeing to go along with this loony plan of Anna’s?

I shivered thinking about it and started looking for a warm change of clothing. I’d forgotten how cold it got in states that had actual winters. Invisible hands had unpacked my suitcase and stowed my things where I’d be least likely to find them. I finally located a change of clothes in the Louis XV black lacquered commode. I pulled out a clean pair of Levis—relaxed fit because even if forty
is
the new thirty, this time around I’d rather be comfortable—and a tan Ralph Lauren lambswool pullover with a shawl collar. The sweater was not the kind of thing I would have ordinarily bought for myself, but part of my career rebirth was a new look. That apparently meant fancy haircuts, grooming products you needed a science degree to figure out how to use, and a lot of overpriced clothes someone else had picked for me.

It still gave me a start of surprise every time I caught sight of myself in a mirror or a window. Apparently clothes did maketh the man, and my clothes makethed me look less like a curmudgeonly recluse and more like a hip writer guy. The kind of guy I’d have loved to be when I was twenty—or even thirty. The kind of guy J.X. belonged with. The only problem being that I wasn’t that guy. Inside I was still a forty-year-old schlub writing cozy mysteries starring a spinster sleuth nobody wanted to read about, dumped by both my publisher and lover in the same year.

Make that two lovers. Because J.X. was past tense now too, and encouraging that was about the first thoughtful thing I’d done for anyone in a long time. Maybe his feelings were a little hurt, but J.X. deserved more than I could give him. He deserved better. Which he’d have been bound to figure out on his own before long.

I nodded in approval to the brown-eyed man with the expensive blond highlights in the oval mirror over the dresser. He nodded back. Hey, come to think of it, he’d lost some weight over the past months. Terror, no doubt, that he was going to have to get naked with a gorgeous young stud one weekend.

Heading downstairs, I ran into the snow princess. Sara was carrying one of those white DHL parcels publishers usually send galleys in. She bore it before her like she was delivering a glass slipper on a silken pillow to Cinderella.

Good to know Anna was writing again. It had been a while since her last book as I recalled.

“Hi,” I said. “I wanted to walk down to the garden and take a look around the guest cottage before tomorrow’s session.”

Sara gave me a wintry smile. “There’s really nothing to see. I’ll handle all the details for you. All you have to do is conduct tomorrow’s seminar.” She didn’t add
and for God’s sake don’t
break anything
, but I could read the subtext loud and clear.

“That’s nice of you, but I’ll be more comfortable if I can size up the room first.” That sounded appropriately neurotic. Sara preserved an exquisitely blank expression.

“If you insist. The guest cottage isn’t locked. You can look around to your heart’s content.

But if you’re walking down to the garden, there are snow boots in the downstairs closet beneath the stairs. I’d suggest you borrow a pair. I’d be
very
careful on those steps going down to the garden.”

It wasn’t gracious, but it was what I needed to know. I thanked her, continued downstairs where I grabbed the snow boots as directed, pulled them on and stepped outside.

We don’t get a lot of snow in Southern California. Not where I live. We have swimming pools and palm trees and skateboarders. I walked out of Anna’s mansion into a winter wonderland.

It took my breath away—and not merely because it was so cold the oxygen seemed to freeze in my lungs.

Everything, every flat surface, was covered in lovely, sparkling snow. Those surfaces too slanted or irregular were glazed in ice, glittering in the petrified sunlight like a jeweled crust, tiny flashing prisms of red and blue catching light like frozen fire. Ice garlands seemed to twine through the trees and I guessed that there were strands of lights beneath the frost. The tree limbs were spindly and attenuated where the ice had started to melt and then refrozen. It added to the otherworldly appearance.

I crossed the snowy courtyard, crunched over the lawns and went down the crooked flagstone steps to the bottom garden. It was like traveling through a snow globe. Dryer, I suppose. And easier to breathe, although it did occur to me I really did need to start working out more regularly.

The cottage looked like a scaled-down version of the house. Same quaint gothic door and multi-paned windows, same exact everything, only in miniature.

As Sara promised, the cottage was unlocked. I opened the door and went inside. The heat was not on though the electricity worked. Again, it was a diminutive version of the main house.

No marble staircase, but gleaming parquet floors, chestnut wood paneling and a limestone fireplace. French doors opened onto a snow-blanketed patio. A carved stairway led upstairs.

Everything was spic-and-span. There was nothing out of the ordinary, but I wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary. My reason for coming down here was mostly to have an excuse for going up and down the garden stairs. And my reason for that was I had to start my investigation, to use the term loosely, somewhere. The scene of the crime seemed the obvious choice.

A large, rustic-looking round table sat in the alcove with its diamond-paned windows. I had a sudden rush of memory of the first time I’d taken part in the Asquith Circle.

It seemed like a lifetime ago.

Not so long ago that I couldn’t remember the feeling of having been handed the keys to the kingdom—and the conviction that it had to be a mistake. I’d expected everyone else to be much more learned, confident and advanced in their career. The reality had been different. Yes, everyone taking part in the seminar that year had been further along in their career, but they had seemed nearly as confused about our industry as me—and certainly no more confident. The first and foremost lesson I had taken away from that year’s seminar was that writing was an insecure business. That underlying sense of precariousness had driven me ever since—at some cost to my personal life.