"A Shirley Temple? I used to get those when we went out for dinner—when I was a kid. You want me to make you a Shirley Temple? Shirley you don't."
"Funny. No, sweetie, I want a Johnnie Walker on the rocks, but I'll settle for Shirley. Just so it looks good. It's nobody's business that I don't drink anymore."
"It's not Bruce McCrae's business, you mean. Everybody else knows—and we're damn proud of you, Bernie."
"Oh, please. Next you'll be patting me on the head and saying good dog, good dog—like I didn't piddle on the rug, or something." She reached down and picked up the briefcases. "Where do you want these?"
"I don't know." Maggie pointed to the coffee table between the couches. "Over there? Wow, those are all fan letters?"
Bernie hoisted the briefcases, then plopped them down heavily on the coffee table. "Nope. Just the bad ones. We forward the nice ones to the authors, toss the slams, and keep the hate mail."
"Hate mail? We get actual hate mail? Not just unhappy mail—but honest-to-God hate mail?"
"Hate mail, wacko mail, die-you-bitch mail, you name it. Most of it isn't all that bad—amateur critics, I'm-better-than-anything-this-gal-writes-I'll-bet-she-slept-her-way-to-the-top idiots, way too many anal retentives who love to point out typos, and just plain unhappy people who need to get a life, I guess. We just don't let you authors see it, knowing how fragile your egos are."
"Well, hey, thanks, I guess, although I think whoever screens this stuff missed a couple of slams over the years and they made it to me. And I quote, 'You, Ms. Dooley, in your effete way, have only managed to contrive silly, flimsy, inconsequential murder mysteries that are little more than cheap paper stages on which to strut your creation's manifest superiority,' unquote. Manifest superiority —you gotta love that, if not the cheap paper stage. The guy must have used a thesaurus, and manifest means to make real, so hey, I was doing my job, right, since Saint Just is the focus of my books—so what the hell was he complaining about? And he went on, and on, and on like that."
"Not that you're the sort of writer who takes letters like this seriously," Bernie said, shaking her head.
"Yeah, right. I threw it away, if that counts."
"Barely. Not when I know you probably obsessed over the damn thing for a week first. Don't ever listen to people like that, Maggie, listen to me. I'm the professional, remember? And, for God's sake, never write back to them. You didn't write back to this guy, did you?"
"No, of course not," Maggie said as if the question was barely worthy of an answer, not mentioning that she'd actually wasted a full day writing three separate letters—one nice, one not so nice, one that should have been printed on asbestos paper—and only then threw all four letters into the garbage. Then again, there were still the nice ones that sometimes showed up and made her day. Like the e-mail she'd received via her Web site from Kay Ghram, a Kansas librarian, just about a week ago. God bless the woman, she'd written, "All your characters are so fleshed out and real, it's a wonder they aren't in your living room." Oh, Kay, sweetie, if you only knew ...
"I only write back to the nice ones, I promise," Maggie told Bernie, snapping out of her reverie. "But what if someone is actually dangerous? You can't just file those letters or ignore them."
"We send the worst ones to our lawyers, and they decide whether or not we need to contact the police. Oh, relax, Maggie, we haven't sent more than four or five to the cops since I've been at Toland Books. And three of them were from the same guy—he threatened all sorts of mayhem—and he was mad at Toland Books for turning down his opus, not one particular author. We have to take that kind of stuff seriously, you know."
"What happened to the guy?"
Bernie smiled, pushing back her riot of red curls. "That's the funny thing. He went to some nice place with padded walls for about five years, and then wrote about the experience. I understand it was on the short list for an Oprah book last year."
"You're making that up."
"Am I? Oh, hello, Steve."
"Bernie," Steve said, looking at the briefcases. "What's all this?"
"Not love letters," Maggie grumbled, and then opened the first briefcase. "Oh, jeez, this is going to take all night. How are they separated? They are separated, aren't they? By author would be great."
"And much too easy," Bernie said, gracefully collapsing on one of the couches. "They're divided by year, unfortunately. We keep seven years' worth, on the advice of counsel. I've got a folder in there for each year. After that, you're on your own."
The buzzer went again, and Maggie decided to just open the door, then returned to the coffee table. "This was Alex's idea, Steve, because of something Bernie said the other day, some mention she made of fan mail. These are all letters to authors at Toland Books—the nasty letters. We're figuring someone could have sent one to Francis." She eyed the open briefcases. "If we can find it in that mess."
"Great idea, I guess, but I don't think the budget is going to stretch to putting a whole team on the single murder theory, chasing down all these letters. We're already stretching it with more cops up at CUNY, and the damn UN meets for a special session next week, and then the president is going to show up at the end of the week for some fund-raiser, and we all know what that does to the budget," Steve said, sitting down on the facing couch and placing the can of beer on the tabletop.
"That's okay. We volunteered, remember? All of us." Maggie opened the drawer of the table and pulled out a stack of coasters. She knew she'd forgotten something.
"Sorry, Maggie, I always forget," he said, grabbing one and sliding it under the sweating beer can.
Alex doesn't, Maggie thought. For a guy used to servants, he's very neat. And what in hell am I doing—comparing men, measuring them by the way they treat my coffee table? That's just pitiful.
"Knock-knock," J.P. said cheerfully from the doorway, Bruce McCrae standing close behind her. What, they were joined at the hip now? And J.P. was wearing actual clothes—a pale yellow angora sweater and well-cut dark brown tweed slacks, not one of her endless psychedelic running suits. Then again, Bruce was still in the same clothes he'd had on earlier. Did that mean anything? Oh, yeah, that meant something. J.P.'s triumphant grin meant even more. She didn't need to be a romance-cum-mystery writer to know there had been some definite boink-boinking going on.
Maggie blinked, trying to get rid of the mental image of J.P. and Bruce ... okay, it was gone now, thank goodness. "Um ... Steve? This is Bruce McCrae, the guy I was telling you about. The mystery writer, remember? Bruce, Lieutenant Steve Wendell."
The two men shook hands. "Wendell, huh? I think I've seen your name in the papers lately," McCrae said. "Weren't you the cop who—"
"Probably. You want a beer?"
"You know how modest Steve is," Maggie told J.P. nervously when the two men had disappeared into the kitchen. Then she turned around to glare at J.P. "And you, lady? You're nuts. You jumped into bed with him, didn't you? You left here, took him to your place, and ... and—"
"Had my wicked way with him. Twice," J.P. supplied helpfully, holding up two fingers. "Hi, reds," she said as she sat down on the couch Steve had just vacated. "Little Mary Sunshine here is all bent out of shape, but you understand, don't you? Chances like that hunk in there don't come along every day at our age."
"Even every year," Bernie agreed. "You have to excuse Maggie, she's gone celibate on us."
"I have not!" Maggie protested a nanosecond before she realized she should have kept her mouth shut, because now both women were eyeing her curiously.
"Steve?" Bernie asked, and then shook her head. "No, can't be Steve." She turned more fully toward Maggie, all ten red-tipped fingers clutching the back of the couch, "You did it! You finally did it. Well, hot damn!"
"Finally did what?" J.P. asked. "Or is that finally did who?"
"I think you're both twisted. You're sick and twisted," Maggie said, feeling her cheeks grow hot. "And if you say anything, Bernie, if you so much as hint, I'll—Alex. I didn't h
ear you come in."
"Have I just missed something? Sterling won't be joining us, by the way," he said smoothly, handing her a bottle of wine. "He's still rather overset from his adventures earlier today. Ladies," he ended, bowing to J.P. and Bernie, and then inclined his head to Steve and McCrae. "As we're all here, shall we begin?"
"Yeah, Blakely, let's do that," Steve said, gesturing at Alex with his beer can. "Start with Maggie's rat, why don't you."
"You're off duty, left –tenant?" Alex inquired, indicating the beer can with yet another slight inclination of his head. "Very well then, concerned friend to concerned friend. Yes, I was alerted to the fact that Maggie had received a package while we were still in England, the full gravity of which I did not comprehend, more's the pity, until we learned of Mr. Oakes's sad demise. Unfortunately, it would seem that others who received similar packages also did not preserve them intact. I did, however, manage to retrieve the enclosed note, which I most happily entrust to you now."
Steve took the clear plastic bag and held it up to the light. "You touch it?"
"Left –tenant, I vow, you wound me to the quick," Alex drawled, and Maggie had to bite back a laugh.
"Right, the junior G-man," Steve grumbled. "How could I forget that. Okay, I'll turn this over to the techs, but we already struck out on the fingerprints we found on the note in Oakes's apartment—nothing on file—and the paper is the kind you can buy anywhere in the city."
"True," Alex said, neatly opening the bottle he'd brought. "However, printers are rather individual, so if you were to locate a suspect, a comparison would go a long way in proving our case."
Maggie winced, knowing Alex was showing off, and that Steve was going to blow. Which he did.
"Look, Blakely, I've tried to be nice, but don't push, okay? One, I already know about printers. And two, this damn well isn't our case. It's my case, and I'm only here because I care about Maggie."
"A true friend," Alex agreed, "as we both are well aware, and honest to a fault. I must say, we all appreciate your candor."
Steve sort of ... deflated right in front of Maggie, and she shot a quick questioning look at Alex, whose expression was one of wry amusement. What was going on here? Something was going on here. Man, she hated being left out of the joke—except she was pretty sure this joke wasn't funny. Why did she get the feeling—much as she hated the term, it sure was succinct—that there was some sort of private pissing contest going on here between the two men?
"Okay, that's settled then, isn't it?" she said to fill the awkward silence. "There's food in the kitchen—just go on and help yourselves, please—and Bernie's brought over all the hate mail from the past seven years, so we can each take a stack when we're ready and start looking for wack jobs."
"Wack jobs, yes," Alex said—seemed to purr, actually. "Wendell, do you agree to the plan? You are in charge of our little band of merry men and women."
"Just grab a pile and start reading," Steve told him gruffly as Maggie and Bernie exchanged looks, Bernie indicating with a few quick head shakes that she wanted to see Maggie in the kitchen.
They were halfway down the hall when Bernie pushed her into the spare bedroom, the one Alex and Sterling had inhabited until they moved across the hall and Alex had returned, to sleep in quite another bedroom, and Maggie wished her mind would just shut up, damn it, because if she didn't know better she'd think Steve knew that or had at least guessed and—"Oh, hell's bells."
"He knows," Bernie whispered in the dark. "Steve, that is. He knows. Who told him?"
"You're wrong. He doesn't know," Maggie said, trying to convince herself. "Does he?"
"You saw J.P., right? You saw her, and you knew."
"That's ridiculous, Bernie. With J.P., there were clues. Great big flag-waving clues."
"Exactly," Bernie said, her smile wicked. "If I hadn't already guessed, I would have known it the moment Alex got here. The way you look at him? The way he looks at you? For a minute there, I thought I heard violin music. Steve had to have noticed. He's a trained investigator, for crying out loud."
Maggie shook her head. "No, you're wrong. It's something else with Steve. He was acting funny even before Alex got here. Preoccupied. Maybe even guilty. Wow, do you think—do you think he's been cheating on me?"
Bernie gave Maggie a look best interpreted as her "duh" look. "You did hear yourself ask that last question, right?"
"Right, good point." Maggie dragged her fingers through her hair. "It was easier when I—"
"Wasn't getting any?" Bernie offered helpfully, grinning as widely as her latest BOTOX injection would allow. "Look, Mags, you just need to play it cool. We'll grab something to eat, you'll make me my Shirley Temple, and then we'll go back in there and read letters. Just let things take care of themselves for now. It's not all that bad, I promise. They're men, that's all. Only men."
Maggie folded her arms, rubbed at her bare upper arms. "Oh, Bernie, if you only knew ..." she said, longing to give in to the temptation to tell Bernie everything about Alex. The only problem—besides the fact that Bernie could keep a secret about as long as Britney Spears could stay married—was that, while she'd been drinking, Bernie would have believed her, swallowed the whole crazy thing. Sober, she'd probably have her locked up somewhere, weaving baskets. Even the possibility of the terrific sales generated by a melodramatic Oprah book couldn't make her do that.
Five minutes later they were back in the living room, to see everyone else with a stack of letters in their laps, reading.
"You know, what gets to me is how the rat guy knew my address," McCrae said to no one in particular. "This stuff is all in care of Toland Books, right? I've got an unlisted number, so my address isn't public knowledge. So how'd he get it?"
J.P. swept the pile of letters off her lap and got to her feet. "Maggie, can I use your computer a minute?"
"Sure, go ahead. It's a Mac, so it might seem a little different to you," Maggie told her, watching as J.P. woke the computer. "Search through Safari, J.P. That compass icon over there, on the right. You are doing a people search, right?"
"Exactly," J.P. said, launching the search engine. "Come here, sugar."
McCrae came to heel like a puppy—pitiful, really—as J.P. typed into the search engine. "Hey, I have this same Mac. Love it, don't you, Maggie? I told you, J.P., I'm unlisted. I've looked on those people search sites, and I'm not there."
"Sugar, nobody's unlisted, not anymore, you've just been looking in the wrong places. I can get your address. I can even pay to get your cell phone records on-line, find out who you've been calling, who's been calling you. All I need is your cell phone number, and I've got that. Everybody's up for sale on the Internet, and will be until the government stops talking a citizen's right to privacy and starts believing in it. But let's stick to addresses. Maggie, I'll do yours first. Maggie Kelly. New York. Hit search and—bing-o!"
"I don't believe it," Maggie said, picking up her computer glasses and sticking them on her nose as she leaned closer to the screen. "There I am. Name, address—my unlisted phone number? I knew about the addresses part—and a lot of phone books are on-line now. But unlisted phone numbers? Why did I pay extra for an unlisted phone number? Who lets this happen? Type in Bruce's name."
J.P. did, and up popped Bruce's home address.
"Try mine," Bernie said, coming to stand behind Maggie. When J.P. had done so, Bernie swore quietly. "Well, don't we all feel safe now? I'd been thinking about upgrading my security system. I guess this settles it. Or are they selling private security codes on-line now, too?"
"It's not that terrible. If someone wants to find you bad enough, Bernie, he'll find you," Steve said, shrugging.
"Really? But now somebody's giving out fucking directions."
"I can do that, too. Driving directions, zoom-in satellite photos, you name it, you can get it," J.P. said helpfully, and then seemingly changed her mind when Bernie glared down at her. "Hey, I'm sorry. But that's probably how it was done, sugar. Try typi
ng in Hillary Clinton—and up pops Chappaqua. George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, both the Bushies, you name it. Unless and until something's done about these sites at the federal level, we're all open books to the world—and any crackpot out there. I'm just glad I'm not with the police anymore. I couldn't stomach it, frankly. And you wonder why the big boys want to get rid of trial attorneys?"
"Okay, off the soapbox and back to work," Maggie said, clapping her hands together a single time. "Alex, give me a bunch of those letters."
They all worked quietly for a while, until McCrae asked another question. "Let me see if I've got this right. Get our rats in a row, as it were. Maggie, Steve said that you got a rat, too?"
"Yes, I did. I just didn't know that the first time you asked. You seem relieved to hear that."
"Not precisely relieved, no, but at least we can add to the pattern. And Francis? He got one."
"But that's not for public knowledge," Steve reminded him, unfolding yet another letter.
Bernie waved her sandwich in the air to get Wendell's attention. "Hey, down here, Steve. Why not release the information? Maybe if this all was public knowledge, we could get somewhere."
"Yeah, we'd get a bunch of crackpots crawling out of the woodwork, that's what we'd get," Steve said. "I'm already bending the rules here—again—just by sitting here with you guys. The rat mailings could be coincidence and have nothing to do with the murder. The rest of you are still alive and kicking, right? Plus, we've first got to rule out a killer working the CUNY campus area. That's priority, straight from the mayor's office. His favorite nephew goes to CUNY and lives in the same block where Oakes was killed, in case you're wondering. Again, since all of you are still alive, frankly, we have to consider that the rats were a one-off thing and just happened to happen now."
"Because barking dogs seldom bite, isn't that right, left –tenant? Unless, of course, they do. Granted, Mr. Oakes is our only fatality thus far, rat related or CUNY related. Or has there been another murder close by his place of residence we're not aware of as yet and that's why the mayor is so worried? You would share that with us, wouldn't you?"
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