A Literary Scandal

by Libby Howard

  “Are you okay?” I asked, wondering for a moment where Eva was. I hadn’t seen the agent in the room at all during the knife incident.

  Luanne lifted her head and took a deep breath. “Yeah. You think I’d be used to it after all the hate mail I got when I killed off Barton Wells.”

  “Having someone point a knife at you is a bit different than hate mail.” I walked into the room and pulled a bottle of water from the box by the door, handing it to her.

  “Thanks.” She unscrewed the lid and downed half the contents of the bottle. “I got a heart, too.”

  For a second, I thought she meant that she had a heart, that under the detestable diva she was a good person. Then I realized she was still talking about the hate mail. “That was last year though, right? You haven’t gotten any hearts in the mail recently, have you?”

  She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Angry fans, crazy knife-wielding fans, that pain-in-the-butt Star with her plagiarism accusations, and now that idiot Sebastian.” She set the bottle on the dressing table and stood up, taking a few tottering steps forward on her ridiculously high heels. “Well, the show must go on and all that. One more hour for me to tap dance while Rome burns around me.”

  I watched her leave then went over and sniffed the contents of the water bottle, not sure whether Luanne was drunk or still reeling from the encounter with the crazy knife-woman. It smelled like water.

  “One hour,” I repeated to the empty room. I wasn’t tap dancing, and as far as I knew, neither Rome nor anywhere else was burning, but I’d still be glad when this evening was over and I was one step closer to putting Luanne Trainor on a plane and getting back to my normal life once more.

  Chapter 10

  “Where the heck is she?” Nancy hissed. “I need her to do a photo shoot with people as they leave. Can you go track her down and put a cattle prod to her butt? Ooh, I hate dealing with these divas. Darn near gonna give me an ulcer with her ketonic no-croissant-eating diet and her run-this-here-and-that-there demands. An ulcer, Kay. An ulcer.”

  Luanne had emerged from the dressing room and continued her tap dance with the fans, but the event was almost over and it seemed the author had vanished again.

  I patted Nancy on the shoulder. “I’ll find her. She’s probably just taking some time to get a drink of water. She deserves a break to compose herself after that run-in with crazy fangirl. She might be a diva, but she did bounce back from that pretty well. Most people would have called it a night and gone back to the inn after that happened.”

  “Gah, can anything else go wrong today?” Nancy made like she was pulling her hair out at the roots. “First Paula in tears over the food, then Luanne biting people’s heads off over that Bert character, then the plagiarism woman, then nutsy fangirl with a knife. Please, Lord, just let me get through tonight.”

  “I’ve got it. Go have a glass of wine and some of that ham salad that most definitely is not keto friendly or gluten free and I’ll track down our author.”

  I left Nancy and made my way through a crowd that seemed cheerful and happy in spite of the disappearance of our guest speaker. On my way to the backstage area, I popped into one of the bathrooms just to make sure Luanne wasn’t holed up in one of them, having a reaction to accidently ingested donuts or something.

  Luanne wasn’t there, but I nearly plowed into Eva. The woman had her purse half in the sink and was reapplying her lipstick, a few damp paper towels by her purse. She looked exhausted.

  “Almost over,” I told her. “Hang in there.”

  “Almost over for you.” She stared into the mirror. “Only the beginning of my problems for me.”

  “I hate to add to them, but do you know where Luanne is? We need her for the photo op as people leave.”

  She shrugged. “Haven’t seen her, but I’ve been backstage dealing with issues and handling work e-mails for the last hour. Maybe she went back to the bed and breakfast? That crazy fan woman really shook her up, and on top of the run-in with Star earlier and the thing with Sebastian, she was pretty raw.”

  “I don’t think she would have walked far in those heels.” I pivoted to leave, then hesitated, curiosity getting the best of me as always. “What was up with the producer guy? Something wrong with the film deal?”

  She turned to me, her smile wan. “The usual legal crap. We’ll get it all sorted. That’s why we have lawyers, right?”

  Yeah, I guessed so. “Well, if you see Luanne, tell her to go up front and find Nancy.”

  I headed out and checked two more bathrooms. Not finding the author there, I descended the stairs to the left of the stage area and scooted through the door. There were a few dressing rooms for when the theater was putting on plays or live performances. One had been set up for Luanne’s use. She’d retreated there after the incident with the knife-woman, so I figured she might have once again gone there for a private moment.

  I knocked and waited, then pressed my ear against the door. Barging in on Luanne Trainor while she was buck naked changing clothing wasn’t something I wanted to experience.

  “Ms. Trainor?” I knocked again. When there was no response, I turned the handle and slowly eased the door open, half expecting an indignant shriek. The room was empty. The bowl of fruit appeared to be untouched, the half-empty bottle of water still on the dressing table. Maybe she’d decided to call it a night and gone back to the B&B as Eva had suggested. Although I couldn’t imagine her hoofing it five blocks on those heels of hers. She’d probably complained the entire way about how Milford didn’t have a decent taxi service, and that someone should have called her an Uber.

  I was about to leave when I noticed Luanne’s briefcase on the floor next to the dressing table, and her purse beside the chair. Surely she wouldn’t have gone back to the B&B without her purse at the very least?

  “Ms. Trainor? Luanne?” I checked behind the dressing screen and did another quick sweep of the small room, worried that maybe she was passed out or something, but the author wasn’t there.

  She had to be somewhere in the theater. Unless she’d been kidnapped. I immediately imagined a car full of masked women pulling up to the back entrance and storming through the fire door to slap a pillowcase over Luanne’s head and drag her away. It was a fantastical—and very unlikely—scenario, but I figured I should probably check the fire door anyway. It was propped open with the brick again. I scooted through the opening and up the four grimy cement steps to the long, narrow passageway that separated the theater from the six-story office building beside it. The office building had a fire door of their own about six feet down, and I was willing to bet that one was locked from the inside and alarmed, not that I expected our speaker to be wandering around a vacant building that was home to two insurance companies, an accounting firm, and six law offices. At one end, the passageway spilled into the sidewalk and street in front of the theater. At the other end, it bypassed the city parking deck and opened up to a narrow roadway. Along its length were a few other fire doors, and an opening with a series of steps that led into the parking garage. I headed that way, although I was pretty sure my chances of finding Luanne were slim to none. She didn’t strike me as the sort of person who stepped out into a narrow alley for a smoke, and why should she sneak out this way to head back to her B&B when going out the front door would put her a block closer?

  And why hadn’t she taken her purse or briefcase?

  I eyed the theater through the slit of the propped-open fire door, hoping I didn’t return to find it shut and locked, forcing me to walk all the way around the building to the front door. Then I headed down the a long path toward the road that ran along the back of the theater, pausing at the steps to the parking garage.

  Something prickled in the back of my neck. I spun around and saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye. Holt. Or rather, Holt’s ghost.

  “You’re not supposed to be here.” I shook my finger at the shadow. “Only when I’m working, remember? That was our deal. I’m not working, so go aw
ay and come back Monday morning.”

  I wished the guy would get lost, because this was getting to be annoying. Could I take a restraining order out on a ghost? I doubted that I knew anyone who did exorcisms, or whatever it took to get rid of pesky spirits. Maybe I could have Daisy recommend someone to craft that amulet, because I was starting to change my mind on that whole thing.

  Holt brushed past me with a prickle of arctic chill, then floated up the stairs. I followed him, more because I was planning on giving the garage a quick glance than any hope that Holt’s ghost would lead me to Luanne.

  A ghost bloodhound. Now that would be useful.

  “Ms. Trainor?” I called as I topped the steps. The parking garage was rather full for a Saturday evening, no doubt a combination of late-reservation diners in downtown Milford and those who were attending the speaker series.

  There was an echoing silence that greeted my shout. I turned around to leave and nearly jumped out of my skin as the automated parking validation machine loudly announced that I should pay for my parking voucher before returning to my car as the exits were only able to accept credit card payments. I clasped a hand to my chest and took a few breaths. Luanne had probably already returned to the meet-and-greet and here I was traipsing down narrow alleyways and parking garages when I could have been eating organic kale chips and sipping cheap champagne.

  As I turned to head down the stairs I saw Holt’s ghost hovering at the end of a row of SUVs, next to the stairwell that led up to the remaining five floors of the parking garage and the small set of stairs that led to the back exit. Normally I would have been happy to leave him in the parking garage, hoping that he’d decided to make it his new home, but there was something about the shadow—something that again sent the hairs on the back of my neck to prickling attention.

  Hesitating for a few seconds, I slowly made my way toward the ghost, catching my breath when I saw a pair of high-heeled shoes sticking out at the edge of the back tire of one of the SUVs. The heels were connected to feet and legs, and to the sprawled form of Luanne Trainor.

  Chapter 11

  I ran to her, fumbling in my pocket for my cell phone, not sure whether dialing 911 took precedence over administering CPR. As I reached the woman, it was clear where my priorities should lie.

  I dialed 911. Then I turned my back on Luanne as I spoke to the dispatch lady. Holt’s shadow had retreated to hover near an old Miata a few cars down, but another shadow was forming just at the edge of my vision, by the…by the body.

  The dispatch lady told me to remain at the scene until the police arrived. I’d planned on doing that anyway, mainly because I was afraid someone else would stumble upon this horrible sight. The meet-and-greet was wrapping up. Some people might decide to forgo the photo op and head home, and some of those people might have parked in the garage. Besides…

  I slowly turned around, steeling myself for a repeat glimpse of the woman I’d just been talking to not an hour before. Her one shoe was half off her foot, the other twisted at the ankle. There was blood, but from the weird angle of her head… The shadow had moved closer, hovering over Luanne’s legs and feet like a dark fog. Her ghost. Her spirit.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. There was nothing I could do—nothing but wait here for the first responders and hope no one came out of the theater and saw…. Once again, my gaze drifted to her head twisted in an unnatural angle.

  I shifted my eyes back down to her shoes—a safer place to look. Had she fallen? Hit her head on the step and broken her neck? We were at the lower floor of the parking garage and she was just at the bottom of the steps that headed up to the street—all of three steps. Surely someone couldn’t die from falling down three steps? Could they?

  It was a parking garage, full of concrete everything. And Luanne was wearing those stupid high-heeled platform shoes. Which begged another question—what the heck was she doing here? Not just here in the parking garage, but down at this end? Had she stepped in here for a quiet place to smoke? But why walk to the far end of the garage in impractical footwear? This exit wasn’t leading to the street she’d take if she decided to walk back to the B&B. There wasn’t anything outside this exit except the back end of a Mexican restaurant and a few dumpsters. The narrow street at this exit was practically an alleyway. It ran along the service entrances of some downtown businesses, ending on Main Street at one side and Mullaney on the other. Did Luanne have a sudden desire to grab some tacos and figured she’d take a shortcut? I envisioned Luanne climbing the cement steps with her insane shoes, missing a step or catching a narrow heel in something and….

  Falling backward. But she wasn’t positioned like she should have been if she’d fallen while climbing the stairs. She was facedown. Or would have been facedown if…

  Nope. Not going to think about that.

  Maybe her foot had slipped on something—a greasy smear of food someone had dropped and not bothered to clean up. If her foot had shot backward out from under her, then she would have pitched forward.

  And be laying on top of the stairs. Even if she’d slid down a few, she shouldn’t be all the way down at the bottom of the steps. I risked a quick glance and noticed that the blood wasn’t on any of the stairs except the bottom one, so that theory wasn’t plausible either. Maybe the greasy taco smear was on the floor? Judging by her position, it did look like she’d fallen forward onto the bottom step from the landing. I looked at the area around her feet. Although the concrete was stained and pitted, I didn’t see anything that would explain a slip.

  Broken shoe heel? Her ghost certainly seemed interested in her shoes, so I bent over Luanne’s feet, eyeing the narrow red heels of her creamy patent-leather pumps. They looked expensive, well-made, and the heels seemed to be firmly affixed to the rest of the shoe. Although I couldn’t imagine anyone being able to walk in those things. I’d break my neck taking two steps in them. Although that wasn’t a visual I really wanted in my head at this time.

  I’d straightened from my perusal of Luanne’s shoes and started at the sound of a footstep, turning to keep whoever it was away from the crime scene, but the person behind me wasn’t one of the ladies from the meet-and-greet. It was a boy.

  Well, a man actually, although sometime in the last decade I’d taken to considering any male under the age of thirty to be a ‘boy’.” He looked to be in his early twenties. He was average height and slight of build with a long, thin face. He had dark brown hair that flopped over his eyes in the current fashion among young people. He was wearing a long black cape.

  There’s something decidedly chilling about a man in a cape. A woman wearing one looks charmingly vintage, as if she’s stepped out of a Victorian novel or some PBS miniseries. A man in a cape conjures up imagines of Phantom of the Opera, Jack the Ripper, or someone practicing the dark arts. Although it would be very peculiar for someone to be conjuring devils on a Saturday night in downtown Milford, let alone searching the parking deck for their car afterward. If they could conjure underworld spirits, I’d like to think they would have some supernatural means of finding their cars, like a magic GPS amulet or something, not wandering around with a key fob in their hands.

  And clearly the day’s events cumulating with the dead body at my feet and driven me insane to be considering such things with a wide-eyed man before me, cape or no cape.

  “Um, the police are on their way,” I told him, partially to reassure him and partially to warn him, because he still might be Jack the Ripper for all I knew.

  “She wasn’t supposed to stab her,” Caped Man said, his voice rising about three octaves in pitch. “I told her this was a bad idea. I told her…” The man suddenly looked up at me, a whole host of emotions in his face. Then with a panicked noise, he whirled about and raced away, his cape flying behind him.

  “Wait!” I called out, not because I particularly wanted to hang out with maybe-Jack-the-Ripper, but because I was sure the police would want to question him. Although I was about to go running after him. The pol
ice dispatch lady had told me to stay with the body. Besides, there was no way I could run fast enough to catch that man, even wearing my sensible shoes.

  What he’d said, though… Who wasn’t supposed to stab Luanne? Had she been stabbed? I glanced quickly at the body beside me. There was a lot of blood. If she’d been stabbed in the chest, I wouldn’t be able to see it from this angle. Maybe that young man’s lady friend had stabbed Luanne, and she’d hit her head on the step as she’d fallen?

  Although that didn’t make sense, because I had a good idea who that man’s lady friend might be. Jack the Ripper and the Phantom of the Opera weren’t the only men who wore capes. Vampires did. Specifically, the vampire Roman from the Fanged Darkness novels.

  Not that I thought the slim, floppy-haired boy in the parking garage was really a vampire. The crazy fan with a knife had said Roman was patrolling the area for ghouls. I’d thought that was just her wild imaginings in her I’m-the-heroine-Trelanie fantasy, but maybe not. Maybe this weird reenactment had included an actual living, breathing male who was supposed to roam around the theater and the block surrounding it, dressed in a cape, guarding against ghouls.

  If that young man was the crazy fan’s Roman, then his fears were unfounded. His partner-in-imagination hadn’t stabbed Luanne, because she’d been hauled into police custody while Luanne was still living and breathing, her knife confiscated. Even if she’d been released—which I doubted, given how slowly things moved at the station—they wouldn’t have given her back the knife, and she wouldn’t have had time to return here and stab Luanne in a parking deck. Would she?

  The sound of engines echoed off the concrete walls and I saw two police cars and an ambulance make their way around the turns to where I stood. I waited until they had parked and exited their cars before approaching.