Naked Once More (21 page)

When Jacqueline headed homeward, she was accompanied by an honor guard of admirers. They took leave of her at the gate, but as she walked along the path, several other flashlights joined hers in illumining the darkness. Not the slightest threatening rustle troubled the shrubbery, or Jacqueline’s nerves. The men who stood at the gate waiting for her announcement that she had arrived safely at her door were the biggest specimens of manhood the town could produce. A potential mugger would be insane to hand around after seeing them. After unlocking the door of the cottage and glancing casually within, she turned to shout thanks and farewell.

Settling down on the sofa with her feet up and a cup of tea on the table, she considered the events of the evening with satisfaction. The town, at least the most muscular parts of it, was solidly on her side. Not that she had had any such self-serving motive in mind when she visited the Elite; not at all. (The look of smug piety on her face would have moved O’Brien to caustic comment.) As she had expected, they all knew she was staying in the guest cottage; her escort hadn’t even broken stride when they passed the entrance to the inn. Now that they comprehended the variety of annoyance to which she might be subjected by those foreigners from the city, they would be less inclined to pass on the information and more inclined to restrain physically anyone who attempted to disturb her.

Of course they would probably close ranks against her if she attacked one of their own. She had no intention of committing that error; but the question of who fell into that aristocratic category was still somewhat confused. It didn’t include St. John. The gang at the Elite regarded him as an effete wimp; he had been the butt of several rude jokes.Jan was an outsider, not really one of them. Tom and Mollie… Hard to say. Tom didn’t mingle with the “rough” element, but he must have known many of them when he was growing up in Pine Grove. As for Paul Spencer, he had not been at the Elite on either of the two occasions when Jacqueline had favored it with her presence, but she suspected its precincts were not entirely unfamiliar to him.

She gave scarcely a second thought to Jack Carter. His definition of an appropriate victim was uncontaminated by the slightest touch of chivalry; he had slapped waitresses, punched and stabbed his wives, and insulted half the female population of Manhattan. Forewarned was forearmed, though, and Jacqueline knew she was a lot faster on her feet than Carter, especially when he was drunk, which he usually was.

However, his unexpected appearance and profane fury told her that Brunnhilde wasn’t the only one of the disappointed candidates who might harbor a grudge. It was hard to take either of them seriously. And yet Brunnhilde had been “in the area” seven years ago, when Kathleen had suffered those accidents. Had Jack Carter known her? There were no letters from him in her file, but that wasn’t surprising. He probably couldn’t write. His books had all been dictated to a series of suffering secretaries. Could his anger at losing the sequel be based on something more solid than his normal paranoia?

Probably not. Jacqueline could conceive of no reason why either writer would have had designs on Kathleen’s life. Killing her in the hope of being chosen to write the sequel to her book… As a motive it wasn’t just far-out, it was farfetched and out of the question.

Still, it might behoove her to give some attention to the other two writers who had lost. She knew them only by reputation. Marian X. Martinez lived in the wilds of Washington State and was a writer in the professional sense; over the past thirty years she had produced fifty-odd books in four or five different genres, including a couple of historical romances. She was reputed to be an amiable lady of a certain age, who lived in a big rambling house with her husband of forty years, half a dozen children and a bevy of grandchildren. When interviewed by the press after the announcement of Jacqueline’s selection, she had smiled and wished the winner the best of luck.

If writers can be said to fall roughly into two categories, extroverts and introverts, the last of the contenders, Augusta Ellrington, was an extreme example of the latter. She never did publicity tours and seldom consented to interviews. She was reputed to be painfully shy and suffering from a mild from of agoraphobia. Certainly the interviewer from
Publishers Weekly
had had a hard time getting any quotes from her; the interview had more to say about her cat Morning Star than about Augusta herself.

Neither of them was likely to turn up in Pine Grove. Jacqueline doubted that Carter would have the gall to return, after his humiliating defeat. The only question was when, and in what bizarre array, Brunnhilde would appear next. She had been in Pine Grove the day the ipecac-flavored chocolates arrived; if it hadn’t been Brunnhilde behind the wheel of that tan Toyota, it was a woman of the same size and shape. It would be interesting to find out whether she had paid a return visit recently—with a saw in her suitcase.

Monday morning. Seven glorious empty days ahead, waiting to be filled with happy, productive labor and harmless amusements. Monday, lovely Monday.

Jacqueline closed her eyes and lowered her head so that the steam rising from the coffee in front of her reached her nostrils. She inhaled. It didn’t help. What she really wanted was a cigarette. It had been four months now—four long, agonizing months. If she succumbed, it would prove she had no more willpower than a pig and all that anguish would go for naught.

With a martyred sigh she opened her eyes and looked at her computer. The screen was no darker than her brain. She still had no idea how Ara was going to escape from the vile clutches of Rogue, Byronic villain and priest of Semjoza, the Dark God.

She couldn’t concentrate on the damned outline. Instead of asking what Ara and Rogue were going to do next, she kept wondering what Kathleen Darcy had done seven years ago—and why. She wasn’t sleeping as well as she deserved to, considering what a healthy, upright life she led. The night before she had been troubled by fantastic dreams. The only one she could remember was the last; Brunnhilde had been chasing her, and Ara, and Kathleen up and down a glacier, swinging at them with a stone ax. All of them had been wearing bearskins.

Jacqueline’s wandering eye lit upon the telephone. Maybe she should call a few people. Booton had asked her to return his call, and she owed it to her friends to report her safe arrival. No doubt they were all terribly worried about her. There was also the delightful possibility of catching some of them still asleep, blissfully unaware of the fact that it was Monday morning. This last motive was not one Jacqueline consciously admitted, however.

Her first call produced only a pained grunt from the other end of the line. Having heard the sound often enough under similar circumstances, Jacqueline identified it without difficulty. “Patrick, darling! Did I wake you? What are you doing in bed at this hour?”

O’Brien had long since learned the futility of complaining, or hanging up on Jacqueline. “I worked last night,” he said painfully. “A couple of junkies decided to carve each other and their respective families into bloody rags. Two of the victims were—”

“Don’t tell me,” Jacqueline said quickly. Only the death of children could bring that note into O’Brien’s voice. He’d make a wonderful father. It was high time he settled down and started raising a family, if he was ever going to do it. What he needed was some nice girl.…

“What did you say?” she asked.

“Nothing. I was waiting for you to explain why you called.” In the background she could hear muffled sounds. Good. The poor dear man was pouring a cup of coffee. The timed coffeemaker had been Jacqueline’s idea and her gift. And a very kind notion, too, she thought complacently. Dear Patrick, he deserved the best. Sarah Saunders might be just the ticket. He had seemed quite taken with her.…

“I was just reporting in,” she said brightly.

“Oh. You got there.”

“Obviously.”

“With you, one never knows,” O’Brien muttered. “What’s your new phone number?”

“You can’t have it.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Patrick, I’m working and I don’t want to be disturbed. You can reach me in care of the Mountain Laurel Inn. The number…” She repeated it.

“Okay. Thanks. Good-bye.”

“Wait a minute!”

“If I’m lucky,” said O’Brien carefully, “I can get a couple more hours’ sleep before I have to go back to the massacres. Say something significant, or hang up.”

Jacqueline glowered at the telephone. “There was an attempt on my life yesterday. Is that significant enough for you?”

A heavy silence ensued. “You tripped over a crack in the sidewalk?” O’Brien said finally.

“I tripped off the top of a steep staircase!” She proceeded to describe the incident in terms made even more dramatic by her indignation, ending with, “I’m sure there were saw marks on that step, Patrick.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Jacqueline. What kind of mark? Chain saw, radial saw—”

“Saw,” Jacqueline said between her teeth. “One of those long jagged things you push back and forth.”

“Did you keep the evidence?” O’Brien didn’t wait for an answer. “If no one has lived there since Darcy died, the place is probably falling apart. There are usually—one might even say always—saw marks on the ends of boards used in construction.”

“Thanks a lot,” Jacqueline said bitterly. “The next time somebody tries to kill me, he may succeed. Maybe you’ll believe it then.”

O’Brien groaned. “What do you want me to do, Jake? What can I do? Do you want me to take a leave of absence and come down there and play bodyguard?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what—”

“There is something you could do, as a matter of fact.” Jacqueline thought rapidly. Her main reason for calling had been to stir O’Brien up and prepare him for future developments. But she could hardly tell him that. “Do me a favor, and give Sarah Saunders a call.”

The silence that followed this request was even more heavily fraught. “What for?” O’Brien asked.

“Don’t tell her about my accident, I don’t want to worry her. What I want to know is whether Booton Stokes has had any little problems of that sort. If there is somebody out there in the great wild world who resents me because I was chosen to write Kathleen’s book, he might also resent the man who chose me to write it.”

“Booton Stokes wasn’t the only one who chose you,” O’Brien pointed out. “What about Kathleen’s brother?”

He sounded much more alert. Jacqueline smiled to herself. He was too good a cop to resist reacting to a plausible, if unusual, motive for assault. “I’ll check that out,” she said. “If you’ll call Sarah.”

“You could call her yourself.”

“Well, of course, if you really hate the idea—”

“All right, all right. It doesn’t make sense, but I’ll do it.”

“Thank you, darling, you’re so noble. Now go back to bed and shut your eyes and go sleepy-bye.”

She hung up before O’Brien could think of a sufficiently rude reply. Most satisfactory, she told herself. Killing two birds with one stone always pleased her sense of economy.

Next she dialed Directory Information in Manhattan and asked for Brunnhilde’s number. It was unlisted, and none of Jacqueline’s arguments could convince the operator to unlist the unlisting. She hung up, scowling. Who else… Of course. Booton would be in the office by now.

The receptionist had learned to pass Jacqueline’s calls on without discussion or delay. “Well, finally,” Booton exclaimed, “I’ve been trying to reach you. Damn that woman at the inn, I knew she hadn’t given you my message; she sounds feeble-minded.”

“She is not feeble-minded,” Jacqueline said. “And she did tell me you had called. And I told you that I didn’t want to be disturbed unless it was an emergency. You didn’t say it was.”

“Well, it isn’t. I just wanted to make sure you had arrived and settled in. How is it going?”

“It would go better if people would leave me alone,” Jacqueline said rudely. “Everything is under control. If you don’t hear from me, you can assume that that situation prevails.”

“Er—yes. You have everything you need?”

“Except money.”

Booton chuckled. “What a sense of humor! We should be getting the payment from
Good Housekeeping
soon. I’m looking through the mail right now, maybe there—”

The sound reminded Jacqueline of a rusty hinge in a Gothic novel. It was followed by a thump. She deduced that her agent had dropped the telephone, and waited patiently until she heard the sound of heavy breathing. “Something jumped at you out of an envelope,” she suggested merrily. “One of those coiled-up plastic snakes.”

“Snakes? What the hell are you talking about? I—uh—I stuck myself with the letter opener. What was I saying?”

“That you were going to get me some money.”

“The check isn’t here,” Booton said shortly. “I’ll give them a call. Have you looked at your mail? Maybe Chris has sent you a check. That seems to be your major concern these days.”

Jacqueline raised her eyebrows. Booton’s appreciation of her delightful sense of humor seemed to have failed him. He must have stabbed himself good, she thought, finding the idea not at all displeasing.

“I have not collected my mail and I don’t intend to for a few days. I’m busy.”

“I can’t understand why you won’t give me that telephone number, Jacqueline.”

“You have a number you can use in case of an emergency,” Jacqueline said. “I can’t conceive of anything that important arising, actually. Unless Brunnhilde breaks into your office and stabs you to the heart before rushing out brandishing the knife and swearing to do the same to me. In that case I would expect you to crawl to the phone and warn me with your last breath. You can gasp out a message to Mollie.”

“That’s not so funny, Jacqueline. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of Brunnhilde for three days. One of her friends claims she’s heading for Pine Grove.”

“Brunnhilde has friends? Well, her arrival should liven things up around here.”

Booton gurgled in protest, and Jacqueline took pity on him. “Don’t worry, Boots. Brunnhilde is too fat—pardon me, Junoesque—to climb over the fence that surrounds this place, and I got drunk with an ex-cop last night, who promised me all the police protection I need.”