The Paperback Show Murders (6 page)

“
TEUFELSHAUS
”

Saturday, March 26

“‘Take that!' Sabatini said, lunging at his opponent, the nefarious Count Alger de Mandeville.

“Mandeville parried with the rare
neuvième
, and then lunged with the equally unusual
seizième
thrust, aimed at his enemy's privateers.

“Il Signore del Castello Raffaele countered with the terrible
Teufelshaus
maneuver, which not only blocked Le Comte's odd attack, but skewered him like a Viennese sausage on the end of his hard steel blade.

“‘I've always wanted to try that!' Sabatini said to his quivering Quixote, now coughing out his life on the black-and-white marble tiles of Castle Dreadlock.

“‘I've…never…heard…of...such...a…thing,' the dying count gasped.

“‘I read it in a book somewhere,' Il Signore said, ‘
Scélérate-Mouche
!'

“‘
The…Villainous…Fly
?' Mandeville died with a frown of perpetual puzzlement framing his florid face.

“‘Well, perhaps the accent…?' The swordsman laughed out loud with a ‘ha, ha, ha' of triumph—and then again—and again! For alas, it was very true that Sabatini was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad.”

—The Lord of the Castle
,

by Don Pedro Pistón (1960)

It's amazing how you can see things one way, and think you understand everything about a situation; and because you've misinterpreted or misread one small event, you get things completely wrong from the start. And then you continue down the wrong road until some strong shock jolts you wide awake again.

I thought myself another Sam Spade or Ellery Queen or even,
mon ami
, that
bon homme
detective, Hercule Poirot. I should have realized I was just another bookseller who'd read too many '50s paperbacks down the years.

I wanted to talk to Freddie the Cur, but when I pounded on his door, also located on the dark side of the motel, there was no answer.

Kitty Gaylord and Cole Spayze popped out of their room, two doors down from Freddie's, and ambled toward me. “You looking for Freddie?” Cole said.

“You know where he is?” I asked.

“He usually hangs out this time of night in the Drinkery” (the Royal Crest's bar, next door to the Eatery).

Sure enough, I found him there plopped in the back of an oversized booth, slouched over a bloody Mary, like he was protecting it from being stolen.

“Whadya want?” he growled up at me.

“I saw your little run-in with Brody earlier this evening,” I said.

“So?”

“You seemed awfully, uh, anxious about something.”

“That drunken idiot,” Freddie said. “First he tells me he's got something valuable that he wants to sell, and then when I meet him at the Tiger, he says he hasn't got it now. So yeah, I was angry. Wasted my time, didn't he?”

“What was that about a threat?”

He laughed, long and loud, a giant wheeze of a breeze that sounded like a dying vacuum cleaner.

“He accused me of unethical business practices,” Freddie said. “Yeah, right, like he was so above-board about everything he's ever done. I mean, who
really
wrote
The O-Man
? Brody may have had a hand in it, but it doesn't read like anything else he ever produced.”

“You saying he had a ghost writer?” I asked.

“I
know
he had one,” the bookdealer said. “And when I mentioned that little fact to him, he got real holier-than-thou, and started telling me that he'd file a formal complaint about the way I'd handled some of his manuscripts. Well, they
were
pure crap, and yeah, they didn't bring much, but Dameen's not exactly a well-known name any longer, is he? He wouldn't let me handle the real hot potato, the original typescript of his one bestseller—because that would reveal him to be a fraud.”

“Then who
did
write
The O-Man
?”

“That's
my
secret,” Freddie said. “And then he turns around and says he
has
the book after all. I don't even think he knew what he was saying by then.”

“
Which
book?” I asked.

“You know which book: I don't have to tell
you
anything—you know it all. Now, let me finish my drink in peace.”

* * * * * * *

When I got back to my room, I was surprised to find Margie waiting for me. “You're free!” I said, not being able to think of anything witty or even appropriate. I invited her in, and I sat on the bed while she took the only chair.

“Luvitti got me arraigned in Night Court, I pleaded ‘Not Guilty,' and the judge set a bond I was able to meet. Thank the stars! I wouldn't have wanted to spend the rest of the night in that god-awful place.

“Oh, what were you able to find out—anything?”

I gave her a brief rundown on my activities after she was arrested. “The problem is,” I said, “I haven't gotten anywhere, not really, except that every question I ask seems to make the situation worse. I have no doubt that Freddie would kill for the right property, if he thought he could get away with it, I distrust Gully Foyle, and I don't know what to think about Brody Dameen. He's drunk half the time, but how much of that is fake?”

“You think they were talking about
Castle Dred
?” she asked.

“I don't know, not for sure. Probably, but every so often, I wonder.”

“Do you think the cops have actually found anything to incriminate me—or anyone else?”

“Don't know that, either. Pfisch is sure as hell not going to confide in someone like me. And while he may have arrested you, I wonder how much he's actually got on you other than circumstantial evidence. I mean, did they find anything in your room?”

“Not that they told me about. They grilled me for an hour, that's all, and said they had my fingerprints in Lissa's room, on her furniture, on the door, and a few other places—but I'd already admitted being there. My attorney seems to think they've got nothing, really; I'm just convenient. He doubts that the case will actually go to trial unless they turn up something really awful.”

“Like the book.”

“Like the book,” she said. “But nobody actually seems to
have
the book, despite what everybody is saying. If they have it, why haven't ‘they' produced it?—and by
they
, I mean the cops, and Brody, and Gully, and Freddie—the lot of them. Where is it? Lissa apparently had the signed copy that first day, when she read out loud from the inscription: it sounded a lot like what I remembered my friend writing. But where did it go?”

“You know, I remember what she said, and the first words didn't make much sense to me. ‘Look sharp!'?”

“Actually, that's what convinced me it was the real thing,” Margie said. “See, it was all a joke. We'd made up these outlandish pen names for ourselves. I was Lucretia Sharpe, and she was Twilla Curtayne. And then wrote these two gothics, like what Ace was starting to produce, or like
Rebecca
, Daphne du Maurier's novel, which we both loved passionately—and sent them off as individual submissions. Hers was called
Castle Dred
—the editor later added the fore-title. Mine was
Teufelshaus
or something like that.”

“
Devil's Manor
,” I said.

“We thought we were very clever, very witty girls playing at being writers.”

“So, what happened to your book?”

“I, uh, I don't remember,” she said.

I looked right at her, and I thought to myself,
Aha!—you've just out-and-out lied to me, Margie, and I would really like to know why.

“THE AUTHORITY FILE”

Saturday, March 26

“If you really want to know anythin' about me, probably the first thing would be where I was born and all that s***, and how I f***ed up my worthless parents' lives by being born, and where I was edicated and what I lerned, etc., etc.; but if you really, really want to find that crap, you can look it up jus' like any other rube, if you jus' want to know the truth, in the
Who's Who
or
The Authority File
. Jus' don't come askin' me, 'cause I don't know nothin'—and I don't care neither.”

—The Catcher in the Outfield
,

by Anonymous (1950)

Margie soon pleaded fatigue, and went next door to her room, while I decided to do some digging. I powered up my laptop computer, and did some on-line searches I should have tried earlier.

The first name I typed in was “Twilla Curtayne”—and there, of course, was
The Secret of Castle Dred
, which was mentioned on several websites, including one that tracked all the covers and stock numbers of the Ace paperback line. I found nothing else—and no other publications—listed under that name on the Net.

I also checked the
Catalog of Copyright Entries
, which was published by the U.S. Copyright Office. The Office itself only maintained an online database beginning in 1978, when the copyright law changed; but the old printed
Catalog
, which was in the public domain, had been scanned by Google, and was listed in alphabetical order in half-year segments.

Sure enough, I quickly found Ms. Curtayne, listed as a pseudonym of Wilhelmina Lamberth, with
Castle Dred
being copyrighted by Ace. I searched and searched and searched, but there was nothing else listed under the Curtayne name. Then I had an idea: I tried “Lamberth” instead.

In 1965 I found one entry for a W. Mina Lamberth, author of a gothic called
Devilton
published by Lancer Books under the pen name Lucrezia [sic] Sharpe. How very strange! Had Lamberth borrowed her friend's pseudonym to use on books issued by another publisher? There was nothing else in the
Catalog
under Lamberth that seemed to fit this author.

So I tried searching “Sharpe,” and in 1966 found a reference from that name to Mina Maltese, author of the Lancer gothic,
Terror at Scarborough House
. I kept searching through the
Catalog
for at least another decade, until I was sure I'd located everything. She'd used the Sharpe name for the half-dozen gothics she wrote for Lancer, and also had penned a few other books in the same genre for Paperback Library as “Bettina Bosley.” Altogether, she'd published at least a dozen of these novels.

I continued my research by plugging the name Maltese into the database, but starting in 1969, the
Catalog
was filled with entries for a bunch of porn novels under that name—and I didn't think from the subject matter that this could be the same writer.

In 1975 I found a strange entry for a gothic issued by Popular Library, Ned Pines's old imprint—a writer named Lucina Sharp, pseudonym of M. M. Tolley, had penned a novel called
The Widow of Templeton Moor
. A second novel under the same pen name for the same imprint was called
Dreadstone Manor
. Could this be a coincidence?

I found a brief description of
Dreadstone
on an internet site devoted to the modern gothic, and the plot sounded roughly similar to that of
Castle Dred
. But then, many of the elements in these publications
were
very much alike, deliberately so, since that's what the fans wanted. Curiously, the story line of
Castle Dred
was actually quite different from the later norm, when considered in that light.

I'd never actually seen any of Margie's early books—at least, anything that she acknowledged as having written during her career as a paperback editor and writer. She usually dismissed her efforts during those years as not worthy of mention. I
was
aware of one later work she penned under her real name—a cookbook devoted to berries (huckleberries, blueberries, boysenberries, dingleberries, and such)—it was a moderate success.

Just for the hell of it, I looked up that book on the Copyright Office's on-line database version of the
Catalog
, and found it registered there under “Margie Brittleback,” the name I'd known her by for at least two decades. I also checked the Library of Congress on-line catalog, and
The Merry Berry Book
was recorded under her real name.

I noticed a cross-reference to an “Authority File,” whatever that was, and clicked on the entry. The link took me to another catalog, which showed the author's full name as Margaret M. Brittleback, born 1945.

The berry cookbook had been published just over a decade ago as a spiral-bound trade paperback. I tried searching the other pseudonym and real names used by Margie's friend in the LC databases, but although several were listed as part of the library's paperback collection, none of these books had received full cataloging, and the names on the title pages were not cross-referenced to any other moniker.

All of this was very strange. I wondered then if Margie's tale of separation from her former girlfriend had actually been true. Maybe she was still part of her life in some way, and maybe that woman was present here at the paperback show.

But if she was, how would I find her?

“I WAS JUST TAKING A WALK”

Sunday, March 27

“When Mr. Fredo Burgess of Bug Hollow announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventh birthday, there was much talk about his mental state in Bugganvillia.

“And when he disappeared following the piebald wizard's gaudy appearance on February the 19
th
, folks wondered about his stability as well.

“A hundred years later, after many and numerous quasi-adventures that we shall not detail here, since they mostly didn't amount to anything, Mr. Fredo walked into his old bungalow, now occupied by his cousin, Borgo, and announced, ‘Well, I'm back.'

“‘Where have you been?' Borgo's wife Buddleia asked.

“‘I was just taking a walk,' Mr. Burgess said, and that was the end of it—at least for him—because they got an eviction order, and sent him packing—and good riddance too!”

—There and Back Again
,

by Reginald Tolstoy (1955)

An hour or two later, I woke from a deep sleep to the sound of sirens blaring and the flash-flash-flash of red-and-white lights, and rushed to my window. The parking lot was filled with police cars, fire engines, and ambulances. I threw on some clothes, and headed outside.

When I leaned over the railing of the balcony, I could see a group of uniformed cops and attendants gathered around a prone figure near the foot of the metal-and-concrete bottom steps.

“What is it?” Margie said behind me.

I turned and looked at her. She was breathing hard, as if she'd been running. I noticed that she was still fully dressed.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“I was, uh, just taking a walk.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was talking to a friend, all right?” she said, “on the other side of the motel.”

Down below, one of the medical personnel covered the body with a sheet, and then walked away from the corpse. The police formed a perimeter around the scene, pushing all the spectators back. I didn't have my watch on, but I think it was around one in the morning.

Margie unlocked the door on her room, and vanished inside. She was back again five minutes later.

“Kimmy at the desk says it's Brody Dameen!” she said.

“I thought it was Karen at the desk,” I said.

“No, that was last night. Kimmy has the night shift on Saturday.”

Kimmy, Karen, Denise—it was all the same to me. I mentioned something about the graveyard shift turning into a real horror story, and she just looked at me crooked, like I'd crawled out from under a rock somewhere. Women! They had no sense of humor at all.

“I wonder if he fell—or was pushed,” I said.

“You always think the worst of people.”

“Still….”

Then I saw Lieutenant Pfisch emerge from a newly-arrived black sedan, and I knew we were in for a long night. After watching him for a few minutes, I returned to my room, and crawled back into bed.

* * * * * * *

I was up early the next morning, waking with the sun. After a quick shower, I dressed and went outside again. Dameen's body was finally gone—I could see the markings where it had fallen. There were a couple of investigators closely examining the first-floor balcony and the stairwell leading up to it. I was so intent on the man and woman conducting the search that I didn't hear the Lieutenant coming up behind me.

“Good morning,” he said. “Couldn't sleep, eh?”

I straightened up abruptly. “Not after last night,” I said.

“Where were you when Brody fell?”

“Asleep in my bed.”

“Anyone who can corroborate that?” the cop asked.

“The bedbugs? Look, Pfisch, I usually sleep alone. I laid down sometime after eleven—didn't catch the clock, sorry—and the next I knew was when you folks showed up.”

“What about your girlfriend?”

“You mean Margie? She's
not
my girlfriend. She's a business partner and friend, but that's all.” I was getting a bit irritated at all the questions.

“Oh, because she's gay?” he said. When he saw the look on my face, he added: “Yeah, I know. In fact, I think it's pretty common knowledge around here. Where
was
she?”

“I have no idea. You'd have to ask her that.”

“Well, I did,” Pfisch said, “and she was pretty vague in her response. What did
you
see?”

“She was out there with me watching the scene early this morning. I don't know where she was before or after that.”

“What do you know about Gully Foyle, Dameen's significant other?” he asked.

I was about to say something, and then realized that I didn't really know much at all. She'd shown up with Brody just for this con, and had been introduced to me as his “friend,” but she'd said nothing at all about her background. I told Pfisch that, and he just grunted.

“Didn't say much to me either,” he finally said, “but we're looking into her past.”

“You think…?”

“I don't think anything,” he said. “We're just doing what we always do: question people, check their stories and alibis, and see what else we can find out about them. The same is true of you.”

“
Me
? What do you mean?”

“You've read enough of those paperback novels of yours to know the drill: everyone's a suspect, at least at first. If Brody was killed—and we're not sure yet—then almost anyone here could have done it.”

“You think maybe he just tripped?” I asked.

“Well, he, uh, did over-imbibe.” That was a word I hadn't heard in ordinary conversation in a very long time.

“Yes,” I said, “but he almost never went anywhere without Gully, even when he was drinking.”

“Well, she claims she was asleep, and didn't know he was absent from their room.”

“Then what was he doing out there in the middle of the night?”

“Well, that's the pertinent question, isn't it?” Pfisch said. “By the way, I finished reading that book you sold me. I wondered about something.”

“Yes?”

“In the first part of the book, Jezebel comes upon her father slumped in his great-chair. She asks him what's wrong, and he admits that the imminent defeat of the South in the Civil War will destroy them financially, since the bonds he purchased are now nearly worthless. She climbs onto his lap—this supposed twenty-two-year-old woman—puts her arms around his neck, kisses him, and says that everything will be all right, that she's been approached several times by Colonel Montragora to work for him as a governess. She says she'll do anything to save him—anything!

“Even without a detailed description of what was actually happening, the scene made me very uncomfortable, because it felt to me very much like some of the cases of child abuse that I used to investigate when I served with the Family Services Unit.
I
think that the author based this particular passage on something that happened to her in real life—it has that immediacy—and I just wondered if you knew anything about it.”

To tell the truth, I didn't remember that particular section, so many years after the fact, and I told him so—but I said I'd examine the passage again.

“I'd appreciate it,” Pfisch said. “Oh, yeah, and I'd prefer you keeping this to yourself.”