The Agatha Christie Book Club

by Larmer, C. A.

  Luckily, her sister wasn’t as curious as her and simply said, “Fair enough. Oh, one other thing, I was thinking of getting started on the next book for Book Club.” She produced a beaten up paperback copy of Cat Among the Pigeons, Missy’s choice this time. “Found this on our book shelf. Forgot we even had a copy. You want first dibs or can I get cracking on it?”

  Alicia ran a hand through her shaggy blond hair and yawned. “You go right ahead, Lynette. I might give mysteries a miss tonight. I think my ‘exhausted grey cells’ could do with a rest.”

  “Well, sweet dreams!” Lynette said, padding off towards her bedroom.

  “But let me know as soon as you’re done,” Alicia called out to her. “Tomorrow’s another day after all!”

  They both laughed as they bid each other good night.

  ###

  About the Author

  Christina Larmer is a journalist, magazine editor and author of seven books including Killer Twist, A Plot To Die For, Last Writes and Dying Words (all part of the Ghostwriter Mystery series), An Island Lost and the non-fiction book A Measure of Papua New Guinea (Focus; 2008). She grew up in Papua New Guinea and spent several years working in London, Los Angeles and New York, but now lives with her musician husband and two sons in the Byron Bay hinterland of Northern NSW, Australia. Christina is passionate about crime fiction and when she’s not scribbling away, can be found immersed in a classic Agatha Christie.

  Connect with Me Online:

  http://christina-larmerspits.blogspot.com/

  christina.larmer@gmail.com

  Want to read more by C.A. Larmer?

  • Here’s an introduction to the first in the popular Ghostwriter Mystery series:

  Killer Twist

  No one bats an eyelid when a bag lady washes up on the shores of Sydney, minus five fingers and decked out in designer couture; nor is anyone too perturbed when socialite Beatrice Musgrave plunges to her death soon after. No one, that is, except ghostwriter and Merlot-lover Roxy Parker. She’s been writing Beattie’s 'autobiography' and has just stumbled on a secret that’s worth killing for.

  With slick black hair, tortoise-shell glasses and a penchant for cheap plonk, Roxy Parker is a sassy new female detective … except she’s not strictly a detective. Rather, she’s a writer with a taste for the morbid and mysterious—and this time her little sideline may get her in way over her head …

  Killer Twist

  Copyright 2011 Larmer Media

  Cover design by Stuart Eadie

  Preface

  Her eyes were wide with frenzy and despair, her lips icy blue as she stretched them into a scream that was lost into the night. All around her, ragged gray strands of hair clung like seaweed to the surface, now broken with one more push, one final grab at life as she thrust her mangled hand out before sinking from sight.

  Chapter 1: A Close Shave

  A cool breeze slithered in through the open window and Roxy Parker stifled a smile as she slipped a deep blue, velvet jacket over her T-shirt and jeans and pushed her legs into long, black boots. She pinned a small diamante broach onto the jacket and slipped some dangly earrings on. She adored autumn and winter: the clothes, the crispness, the chance to stay snugly indoors with little more than a good book and a decent bottle of red to keep her company. No need to hover over the answering machine, listening with guilt; in cold weather you were allowed to stay home. Not that she was doing so today. Her agent had called her in and she was running late.

  The silver clock on the mantelpiece read 9.25am and Roxy scowled at it as she scooped up her keys and smartphone, dropping them into her oversized leather handbag, and pushed her glasses into position on the diving board to her nose. A long, thin scarf had been left drooping over a chair and she retrieved it, wrapping it around her neck and losing her shiny black bob in the process. As she glanced around, ready to depart, she spotted the newspaper, discarded on the coffee table.

  ‘Oh, that’s right,’ she said, grabbing it and studying the small headline that had caught her eye earlier. ‘One-handed corpse washes up in Rushcutters Bay.’

  Practically her own neighborhood, she thought, before ripping out the page and darting into her office to wedge it into a well-thumbed manila folder. Back in the lounge room, she quickly checked her reflection in the hall mirror (straightening the glasses, retrieving the hair) and then slammed the front door solidly behind her.

  ‘Urgh, fug orf!’ Growled a foul smelling mass of brown rags on the pavement downstairs and the young woman diverted her eyes and breathed in through her mouth as she stepped around him and away. Checking that her bag was securely zipped, she dug her hands deep into her pockets and strode swiftly through Elizabeth Bay. If she picked up her pace she might just make it in time. Roxy took a hard right at the old police station, cutting past the fountain, through to Macleay Street and towards Kings Cross station. The city-bound train was late as usual and by the time Roxy reached Martin Place she was racing, up the grimy escalators, past the sullen stream of commuters and out onto Macquarie Street. Then across to Elizabeth Street, a quick glance around, a light change and a moment of calm before everything turned to pot.

  In retrospect, Roxy would remember a definite hand print on the small of her back just moments before the bus tore past, but for now she was simply flying, her chin propelled forward, her arms flailing about as she tried to regain control. Somewhere along the way her glasses—her beautiful tortoiseshell glasses—also took off, rendering her blind. Somehow, miraculously, Roxy managed to break her fall, and landed in a huddle in the gutter, her face pressed hard against the cold cement, one arm twisted up beneath her. She moved the arm carefully, checking it wasn’t broken, and then struggled to her feet just as a large, grayish blob swooped down towards her.

  ‘You okay, love?’ the blob asked, helping her up. ‘That was bloody close, you nearly caught the bus to Bondi!’

  Roxy nodded unconvincingly in his direction and made her way through the crowd to what she hoped was a wall. Ah yes, a low brick one. She leant against it, her cheek throbbing a little, and scrounged through her handbag for her emergency spectacles while the world whirled on around her. The glasses were an old set, gold and garish, but they would do. Pushing them onto her nose, she straightened her fringe down, dusted off her jeans and looked around again. Her tortoiseshell glasses were nowhere to be seen and the gray-suited man was walking slowly away, glancing back occasionally, wondering if his job was done. She waved him away and turned back in the direction from which she’d come, eager to find the stranger she’d glanced at a split second before she went flying. There was something suspicious about his eyes, the way they darted sideways the moment she looked at him. She suspected premeditation. Within minutes Roxy acknowledged defeat and turned back.

  ‘Damn it!’ she hissed beneath her breath, and made her way down a few more blocks to the next corner, then looked around before dashing along an alleyway and up to an unmarked door. She quickly stabbed in a code and watched as the door swung open, then entered, making sure it shut firmly behind her before ascending the stairwell two steps at a time until she reached an office marked Horowitz Media Management. Panting heavily, she let herself in.

  ‘Jesus, Roxy, you look like shit,’ Oliver Horowitz announced as she strode past reception and straight into his office.

  ‘Hello to you, too, Olie. Can I use your mirror?’

  ‘Yeah, go for it.’ He pointed one pudgy thumb towards the small bathroom in the corner of his office. She went in and surveyed the damage relieved to see just a small graze where her skin had made contact with the pavement. She splashed her unsettled expression away with some cold water and returned to the outer office where Oliver tossed her a towel. It had the word Nike printed across it.

  ‘So,’ she said, wiping her face before tossing it back and then dropping down into a scratchy sofa in front of his desk, ‘what’s up?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Earth to Olie. You left a text message for me to get in here
at 10. Pronto.’

  ‘I did?’ Roxy narrowed her eyes and waited for him to click. ‘I didn’t leave any message, Roxy. What is it with those glasses? Bit retro for you, eh?’

  ‘The chic ones died a death this morning. What do you mean you didn’t leave me a message?’

  Oliver surrendered some papers to his desk and sat upright in his overstuffed, leather chair. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

  ‘Not sure yet.’ She dug about in her handbag for some lipstick. ‘Well, I’m here now, got anything for me?’

  ‘No I don’t. You in trouble, Roxy? Again?’

  ‘I’m never in trouble, you know that.’ Roxy brushed the lipstick across her bottom lip, painting it a matt red hue, and then flung it back into her bag as she rolled her lips together, spreading the color evenly. ‘Come on, Olie, darling,’ she continued, sea green eyes sparkling through provocatively wide eyelashes, ‘you have to have something for me. I can’t wear these dowdy specs for much longer.’

  ‘Oh, I dunno, they’re kinda growin’ on you.’

  ‘Olie.’

  ‘How’s the Musgrave biography going? Is everything okay?’

  ‘Fine, fine.’ Her eyes glazed over. ‘It’s not exactly riveting stuff.’

  ‘No? You don’t find church fundraisers intriguing?’

  Roxy smirked back at him. Sydney socialite Beatrice Musgrave wanted her life story told and had approached the Horowitz Agency for a ghostwriter, someone with a gift for words who could help her construct her story into a half-decent ‘autobiography’. The deal with all of these jobs was simple: while Roxy never got any credit for the book (ghostwriters remain just that—a ghostly presence behind the scenes), she did get compensated sufficiently to squirrel some away and pay off the much-abused Visa card. And that’s the only kind of credit she cared about, at least while she had a mortgage to contend with.

  Oliver had wasted no time calling his favorite ghostwriter, Roxy Parker, who’d been on his books now for many years. While the money was substantial—double what Roxy had ever been paid for ghostwriting before—the job, so far, was extraordinarily dull. She would have exchanged the cash for a little conspiracy in a heartbeat.

  ‘Not every story has to be about mystery and intrigue,’ he reminded her, doodling on some paper with a biro. ‘Anyway, I was thinking maybe I should just pass it on to Klaus.’

  ‘Ha! Don’t make me laugh!’

  ‘Don’t knock Klaus, he’s a good writer.’

  ‘Yeah, if you like your stories like his hair: thin on top.’

  ‘Well at least he doesn’t bring headaches into it.’

  ‘What headaches?’

  Oliver stood up, his beer belly peeking through where several buttons on his ’50s-style bowling shirt were undone, and shuffled over to the office door.

  ‘Shazza! Where the hell are you?’

  ‘Awww, I’m here, boss, fixin’ the photocopier!’ came a hoarse smoker’s voice from the next room.

  ‘Good, get us a coupla coffees will ya!’

  ‘Milk and two sugars for me, thanks!’ Roxy called out and watched her agent as he wedged himself back into his chair. She wondered if he had once been a good looking man before a steady diet of doner kebabs and cold beer ruined him. Her agent was in his late 40s, single, a hard worker with a lopsided grin and a kind of roguish charm that forgave his sloppy looks and smart-ass ways. Roxy liked him. He called a spade a spade and that was a prerequisite in this business.

  ‘What headaches?’ she repeated, smiling innocently.

  ‘Oh, let me think, Roxy, sweetheart, what headaches? Oh maybe the time I sent you out to interview a band grieving their departed drummer and you came back with some cock ‘n’ bull story about the ex-girlfriend and how she might’ve done him in.’

  ‘It was a possibility.’

  ‘It was a self-administered drug overdose. He was a friggin’ junky. Full stop.’

  ‘Well, in any case, it made good reading for the Tele and you got your 15 percent. Anyway, that was ages ago. I’ve been good lately.’

  ‘That’s what I’m worried about.’ He eyed her for a moment and then asked, ‘Still keeping The Book of Death?’

  Roxy shifted uneasily in her seat. ‘It’s not a book of death!’ She scoffed. ‘It’s a crime catalogue.’

  ‘Same difference.’

  ‘Hardly. Besides, it has a purpose.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘What’s the big deal, Oliver? All good writers file clippings away. You never know when you might need them.’

  ‘Do all writers focus only on crime articles? I swear, Roxy, it’s like you’re planning the perfect murder.’

  She shrugged wishing the subject away and was saved by Oliver’s secretary who appeared at her side, two Horowitz Management mugs in her hands and a half-finished cigarette dangling from her mouth. Sharon was a middle-aged woman with short, spiky red hair and a penchant for extremely tight, brightly colored spandex that only worked to accentuate her scrawny, stick-thin form. But perhaps that was the idea.

  ‘Oh Sharon sweetheart,’ Oliver gushed as she thumped the mugs down. ‘What ever would I do without you?’

  ‘Hmph!’ she snorted back, offering Roxy a cheeky wink before moping out again, the fag still firmly in place.

  ‘Thanks, Sharon,’ Roxy sang after her. They eyed their coffees for a while and then Oliver stood up again and shuffled over to the door to close it. Roxy rolled her eyes in response.

  ‘Come on, I know something’s up.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like, you get a strange message from me that I never left, then you get beat up—’

  ‘Hang on a minute—’

  ‘I can see the scratch, Roxy.’ She reached one hand up to her cheek instinctively, running her forefinger across the web-like mark.

  ‘Oh the cat did that.’

  ‘You don’t have a cat.’

  ‘And now you can see why.’

  They sat back and sipped their drinks, Oliver shaking his head reprovingly, Roxy ignoring him as she glanced around the room. She wondered, as she always did, how he could get it so dusty. They were three floors up. Tatty posters of sci-fi films had been sticky-taped to the walls, and every possible bench was cluttered with assorted memorabilia from past events and publicity gimmicks. There was a teddy bear draped in an oversized T-shirt that read, ‘Mardi-grass 2001, Nimbin’, a mug shaped like the Opera House and a pair of 3D glasses with one lens missing. She connected eyes with a giant cardboard cut-out of a buxom blonde in a stretchy red dress with the words ‘Tina Passion–Writing passion into your life!’ scrawled across the bottom, and wondered as she often did, how she could possibly share an agent with one of the country’s corniest romance writers. Romance was always the last thing on her mind.

  ‘Okay, then,’ he relented. ‘I’ll see what else I can find for you. If I do find something, will you swap the Musgrave biography for it?’

  ‘Um, no, you don’t seem to get it. I want more work not less. Can’t stand it when I’m not busy, you know that. Besides, I’m a third of the way through the bio, why on earth would I stop now?’

  ‘Just a thought. Look, Roxy, be careful, alright? Enjoy the down time. Take a trip somewhere. Relax. Here,’ he fetched his iPhone and held it out to her. ‘Look it up on my dictionary app, it’s a useful word.’

  She dismissed him with a wave, got to her feet and was halfway out the door when he called her back.

  ‘Why don’t you call one of your old contacts, that sexy Greek chick from Glossy for instance?’

  ‘Oh, you mean the one who never comes through? Pah!’

  As it turns out, Maria Constantinople, the editor of one of the country’s top-selling women’s lifestyle magazines, had come through the day before, offering Roxy ‘a big one, baby, a big one!’ She was on her way to the Glossy offices now, she just didn’t believe it would amount to much. Roxy wrote a lot for Maria, mostly mundane articles about women’s health, relationships, money, anything Mari
a wanted, really. They were always fairly safe subjects, the kind of stories she’d written a hundred times before and would write a hundred times again. The only challenge was changing the heading, introduction and content sufficiently enough to confuse the readers into believing they hadn’t read the exact same thing just 12 months before. Pure trickery, of course, and not something she was particularly proud of, but, hey, it paid the bills. Well, it almost did. The worst part of the whole deal was that these articles were never very long, 1200 words at best. At 70c a word, it didn’t amount to much. She wasn’t about to go renovating the kitchen, let’s put it that way. Roxy longed to sink her teeth into something wordy, something original, something she wanted to read.

  Yeah right, she thought, like that’s ever gonna happen. This was a briefing session with Glossy magazine, after all, not The New Yorker.

  This time, however, Roxy couldn’t have been more wrong.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, gorgeous,’ Maria boomed when, after 30 minutes chewing her lips in the lobby, Roxy was ushered through to the editor’s spacious corner office by her new assistant, Trevor.

  ‘Bit of a hunk, eh?’ the editor whispered, eyeing the young man up and down as he closed the glass doors behind them.

  ‘Yeah, I guess, if you’re a bloke.’

  Maria’s thickly penciled eyebrows shot skyward. ‘Oh shit, you don’t reckon he’s gay do you?’

  ‘We’re in Sydney. He’s got the body of Adonis. I rest my case. So what have you got for me?’

  Roxy was not a big fan of Maria Constantinople, and not just because of her lack of originality and depth. The woman was loud and brash, and prone to stomping her five-foot frame around like a rugby player, tossing expletives about as though they were superlatives and playing God over her quivering staff. But even that Roxy could have forgiven—Olie was hardly the Prime Minister of office politics, let’s face it—yet there was something else, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Perhaps it was the feeling that this editor would sell her out for a headline in a heartbeat.