Not A Girl Detective (16 page)

“Not for me.”

“Come here.” He pulled me onto his lap.

“The thing about domesticity . . .”

“Yes?” He kissed my neck.

“It’s an art form.”

“I know.”

“We’ve blown it before.”

“This time it’s different.”

“Why?”

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“We’re different. Things are different.” He gave me a little push. “Get up. I’ve got to take a shower.”

“Wait for me,” I said.

Afterward I lay on the bed while Gambino stood at

the sink, shaving. I could see his reflection in the mirror, but the frame of the doorway cut off the top of his head. He was very tall. Tall people take up a lot of

room. But I had a lot of room. That, come to think of it, was one of the things that was different.

“I’ll try to call you later, Cece, but I don’t know exactly where I’ll be.”

“I understand.”

“The double homicide. We’ve finally got something.”

“That’s great.”

“Yeah. We needed a break. Things have been really

slow otherwise. Did I tell you about this idiot who

called us yesterday from under his bed? Somebody was

in his house stealing his marijuana plants.”

“That’s good,” I said, laughing.

“What about you? What are you up to today?”

I sat up. “Absolutely nothing.”

He came out of the bathroom with shaving cream all

over his face.

“You said that too fast.”

“I talk too fast.”

“You think too fast.”

“Thanks, Santa.”

He rinsed off his face and came back out holding a

wet towel.

“Careful, you’re dripping.”

He looked at me sternly. “Is there anything I should

know, Cece? Anything at all you need to tell me?”

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Oh, god, where to begin?

“I need to finish what I start,” I blurted out.

“Finish what?”

No, I couldn’t get into it. He’d be furious. And what was there to tell, really? That I’d found Edgar’s body?

He knew that part already. That Andrew had taken me

to see Jake? That I was looking for an obscure painting of an obscure woman by an obscure artist? And trespassing on private property to do so?

“Finish what, Cece?”

I paused. “My book. I’m so close, but I can’t quite

finish. It’s a classic problem.”

He looked skeptical, but he was in a hurry. If you

have to lie, lie to people who are rushing. They will not pursue it. They may not even be listening to you. Except if they’re detectives. Then they’re always listening.

He pulled on his pants and buckled his belt.

“Anyway,” I said, throwing my legs over the side of

the bed, “I have all day today, and the only thing I’m going to do is sit at my computer and work.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

That it did. But even the best-laid plans—well, we all know the rest.

The first problem was the fact that my office was lo-

cated in the garage behind my house. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. But its location had proven a serious hindrance to productivity. Your work should be in your face at all times. This is what compels you to do it.

Out of sight, out of mind. The problem was exacerbated in the winter months, when I was actually compelled to put on footwear to make the ten-yard journey across the grass.

The next issue was my desk. Once, in despair over

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something, I had swept the thousands of apparently

useless pieces of paper covering its surface directly into the trash, a gesture I was to deeply regret. One of them was my property-tax bill. Another was Annie’s birth

certificate, which had the effect of delaying her wedding by a week. But merely to clear a space large

enough to accommodate a yellow pad and a cup of cof-

fee was an hour-long ordeal. And I wanted to make

Gambino a risotto.

He loved risotto. Porcini mushroom and asparagus. I

had everything I needed. I flung open the refrigerator door. Except for the mushrooms and the asparagus. I

walked over to the cupboard and peered inside. And the rice and the chicken stock. I did have white wine and an onion. Maybe I could just slice the onion and drown my sorrows in the Pinot Grigio. Or maybe I could stop pro-crastinating. Maybe if I were actually working on my

book I’d be ordering out more. And less tempted to

solve the problems of the world. The problem of Car-

olyn Keene was more than enough.

The problem of Carolyn Keene.

I needed a conclusion.

Half an hour later I was seated at my desk. An hour

after that and I’d cleared a spot. Then I had to call Lael and fill her in on the latest developments in my exciting life, which should have taken under a minute, but all of a sudden it was lunchtime.
All My Children
and an avo-cado and fontina sandwich later, I was back at my desk, determined to wrap this thing up for real. My editor, Sally, was not known for her patience.

Who was Carolyn Keene?

That was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

Edward Stratemeyer had come up with the name.

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He’d had a gift for pseudonyms. One of his first was

Arthur M. Winfield, under which he wrote and pub-

lished the Rover Boys and Putnam Hall series. Strate-

meyer explained it by saying that Arthur sounded like author;
M
was for the million books he’d sell; and Winfield referred to the success he would achieve in his profession. Other examples of his genius at work

included Laura Lee Hope, Margaret Penrose, Victor

Appleton, and Roy Rockwood. Roy Rockwood I par-

ticularly loved. If I were trapped in a burning building, I’d want Roy Rockwood to save me.

Carolyn Keene was another killer combination: Car-

olyn sounded vaguely patrician; Keene conjured some-

one razor-sharp yet ingenuous. The name proved

Stratemeyer’s most enduring. Carolyn Keene may not

have existed, but that didn’t stop her from writing hundreds of books about a girl detective from River

Heights. Seventy years later she’s still writing them.

And still does not exist.

Walter Karig, Margaret Scherf, Harriet Stratemeyer

Adams, Wilhelmina Rankin, Mildred Wirt Benson—

they all existed. And each of these ghosts was, at one time or another, the author who didn’t exist—Carolyn

Keene. But that was hardly the end of it. Take Mildred Wirt Benson. She was also, at one time or another, the following authors who likewise didn’t exist—Frank

Bell, Joan Clark, Julia K. Duncan, Alice B. Emerson,

Don Palmer, Dottie West. Ditto Harriet Stratemeyer

Adams, who, when she wasn’t busy being Carolyn

Keene, was the author of the Kay Tracy mysteries,

Frances K. Judd.

That was another good one. Frances K. Judd made

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you think of Francis Scott Key, the flag, civic pride.

And Kmart.

The names kept multiplying. The supply was inex-

haustible. An endless family tree of ghostwriters and their progeny: the Bobbsey Twins, the Dana Girls, the Outdoor Chums, the Motor Boys, the Four Little Blossoms, the Six Little Bunkers. I was being stalked by Edward Stratemeyer’s apple-cheeked army of the undead.

Maybe that was why I couldn’t think straight. My biography of Carolyn Keene was supposed to be a ghost

story, but it had turned into a full-fledged horror show.

I logged on to the Chums’ Listserv for comic relief.

But all I got was a tale of someone’s father’s botched knee replacement and the good wishes of half a dozen

sympathetic souls. There was a semitragic exchange

between Lana S., who’d posted pictures of her daugh-

ter, wanting to know if she could play Nancy Drew in a movie, and Bill 45, who responded that her hair seemed more red-brown than red-blond, but not to fret because it could always be dyed before shooting. Clarissa had posted an announcement about her book, which I

skipped out of pique. And then there was a lengthy digression on how to keep from being cheated on eBay

posted by a woman who’d bought an autographed first

edition of
The Clue of the Tapping Heels
only to learn that Mildred Wirt Benson never signed autographs as

“Millie.”

I wandered back inside to pour myself a fresh cup of

coffee. But there was none left from breakfast so I decided to brew another pot. I’d drink all twelve cups if it would help me arrive at anything resembling a coherent thought, which you’d think I’d have by this point, one 142

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month before my delivery date. Oh, please, let Sally not hate me. While I waited for the coffee I turned on the TV. I flipped past a talk show featuring dysfunctional teens, the local news, an animal psychic in touch with a dead Pekinese, and Boris Karloff hamming it up as

Frankenstein.

I spent the rest of the afternoon at my desk, brooding over Frankenstein. It seemed relevant to my book—the

mad scientist, the larger-than-life creation. The only problem was I couldn’t decide which larger-than-life

creation was the more troublesome: Carolyn Keene or

Nancy Drew.

I clicked the Save key nonetheless.

It wasn’t the theory of relativity, but it was something to chew on.

Later that evening I was reminded that dogs prefer

more tangible snacks. Within seconds of walking into

Bridget’s shop, Helmut had gone straight for my snakeskin granny boots.

“I told you he knows vintage,” Bridget said.

“Will you get him off?” The dog was sucking away

at my feet like a tiny demented lover.

After separating us with some difficulty, Bridget

grabbed some Kleenex off her desk and was about to

wipe Helmut’s mouth when I snatched the box out of

her hands.

“I guess I’ll just clean this slobber off now,” I said.

“Sorry.”

“So do you like the boots at least?” I asked. “Annie

found them for me at that shop in Topanga Canyon.”

“Let’s just say I could leave out a pair of Charles

Jourdan sandals with amber Lucite heels from the sev-

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enties and Helmut wouldn’t go near them. He has re-

spect for the good stuff.”

“Do you edit your thoughts at all, Bridget? I was just wondering.”

“Well, you can do better. On the vintage food chain,

the only thing lower than snakeskin granny boots is zippered housedresses.”

I had at least two of those.

Bridget went into the back and came out with a white

box trimmed in blue.

“Change into these.”

“Excuse me, I am not an employee.”

“Very funny.”

“Have you ever read
Frankenstein
?”

“I’ve seen the movie.”

“Never mind, then.” I opened the box. Inside was a

pair of burgundy suede peep-toed platforms.

“They’re gorgeous, but aren’t we just about to go

shoe shopping?”

She sighed. “You can’t go shoe shopping in bad

shoes. It’s not done.”

The platforms did go better with my outfit.

While I tested out their pain quotient by jogging in

place, Bridget walked to the back of the shop to activate the alarm system.

“Cece,” she called, “while you’re up there, can you

turn off the lights? And grab my wallet from Andrew’s desk? Watch the drawer. It sticks.”

“Sure,” I said, bending over to rub my hand across

the back of my ankle. No incipient blisters. That was good news. I hit the switch and watched the lights in the display window go down, plunging a tiny teal ruched

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mini by Giorgio di Sant’Angelo into darkness. The dis-cotheque was now closed.

“Where’s Andrew, by the way?”

“Poor thing is out sick. Some flu that’s going around.”

Nice excuse. I guess the flu sounded better than

babysitting a fugitive.

I sat down at Andrew’s desk. What a fastidious fel-

low. There were piles of small papers and piles of large papers and piles of medium-size papers with no overlap whatsoever. Paper clips in a magnetized paper-clip

holder. Pencils as sharp as daggers. But it was when I opened the drawer that I was really surprised, and not because it was a mess. I already knew that appearances could be deceiving.

I was surprised because there, in Andrew’s desk,

right under Bridget’s wallet, was a shiny gold key—the same shiny gold key I thought I’d lost, the one that

opened the door to Edgar Edwards’s Palm Springs

death house.

16

What took you guys so long?” asked Lael, study-

ing her feet. She had a chocolate brown T-strap on the left one and an apple green T-strap on the right. “After two drinks,” she said, waving a martini at me, “these shoes seem downright cheap. I do believe I need both

colors.”

“That’s the spirit!” exclaimed Bridget, raising her

pink lady aloft. She pushed me into the red leather

booth with her spare hand and slid in after me. “I’d

given up on you, Lael, but this place gets ’em every

time.”

Star Shoes on Hollywood and Ivar was one of those

hybrid spots that shoot up in this town as fast as weeds by the side of the freeway: Laundromat/Internet cafés, wig shop/travel agencies, UPS drop spot/piñata outlets.

I suppose it makes good sense, parking being at such a premium in Los Angeles. And with its inventory of

100,000 pairs of inverted wedgies, buckled boots, and faux crocodile pumps, designed by the late, legendary Joseph LaRose of Florida, who’d numbered Joan