I could have told him about Sunny. I should have told him about Sunny. The publishing world is nothing if not an enormous circle of gossip. But I wanted to hear about my book, the one I’d been slaving over, the one that could get me out of my current rut and get me—dare I say it?—money. “Hell yes, I’m ready for news,” I answered. “What’s up? Did the producer call with an offer?”
“Better.”
Better? What’s better than a movie producer wanting to buy my book? “The producer called twice?” I suggested.
The smirk was audible. “Better,” he repeated.
“Okay, you’ve passed cute and are headed directly toward obnoxious,” I told Adam. “What the hell is going on?”
“I got a call from another production company. They want to read Little Boy Lost with an eye toward making a Duffy Madison TV series.”
All right, so maybe that was better than a producer calling. “Really?”
“No, I’m making it up. The one thing they teach you in agent school is always call up your clients with fake good news because they love that.”
He said that someone at Beverly Hills Productions (which apparently was based in Santa Monica), a guy named Glenn Waterman, called his office unsolicited, saying that he’d “heard good things” about something called the Duffy Madison mysteries, which he’d never heard of. (Thanks for the ego boost, Adam—you could have left that last part out!)
He said there had been no market in Hollywood for mysteries lately, then someone had made a TV movie for a “women’s channel” and gotten ratings through the roof. Waterman wanted to jump on what he’d decided would be a bandwagon and had remembered he’d heard something about Little Boy Lost, so he ordered his assistant to read it and write “coverage,” which is the Hollywood version of a book report. She (the assistants are always women) read Little Boy Lost and made a recommendation.
Waterman bought it himself as an e-book, then immediately didn’t read it and called Adam. Then he had signed disclaimers saying he wouldn’t steal my work—which seemed damned nice of him—and gotten to the point that he and Adam were talking about an “option,” which Adam explained is when a producer “rents” your book in the hope of selling it to a studio or network. Waterman had not read the book; he wanted to meet the author first because “that’s where the power is.” Hollywood people are crazy.
“That’s amazing,” I said when he was done with his tale. “Do you think there’s really a chance?” Having a movie made of your book greatly improves sales on your current and previous books and can make you, if not a household name, the author of a household name. But a TV series was the gravy train. They have to pay you every time they make a new episode and every time they show it. The money, for sure, was not bad. I might be able to afford an office like the one Sunny had.
Oh yeah. Sunny.
“There’s always a chance, baby,” Adam said. “And since Waterman called on his own, without me breathing down his neck about it, I’d say the chance is pretty good.”
I thanked him profusely, even though the renewed thoughts of Sunny were making me less ecstatic than I would have been under other circumstances.
I stood up and didn’t feel light-headed; that was an improvement. “How long before I should start annoying you about this?” I asked Adam.
“I’d give it a couple of weeks, easy. People in Hollywood don’t like reading. It requires too much imagination.”
We hung up, and I walked over toward the inevitable ambulance. Someone would have to cart Sunny’s body away after the detectives and everyone else was finished with the crime scene. I wondered if they had contacted Sunny’s sister yet, the one who had first called with some concerns.
I never write the scene where the victim’s family is notified. I don’t do sorrow well. I’m much better at anger and repressed tension. Maybe I just don’t want to face the open, over-the-top emotion that goes with irreplaceable loss. I never make Duffy inform the family, either. For one thing, he’s not an official employee of the law enforcement agency, and for another, I hate to burden him with that kind of pain. It would really damage him to be the bearer of horrific news.
So why was I walking toward the ambulance? Shouldn’t I be headed in the opposite direction?
All but one EMT were inside, taking the necessary readings and recording all the data they found for the investigation and, perhaps, a trial if the killer was found and brought to a courtroom. None of which seemed terribly likely at the moment. I was starting to conclude that this man was somehow superhuman, able to outwit any investigator (Duffy never doesn’t find the victim in time!), incapable of being tracked or discovered. He would do whatever he wanted to do and get away with it.
Believe me, I was not forgetting that the next thing he would want would be to do to me what he did to Sunny, only in another creative “author” way.
A woman hit with a manual typewriter, one electrocuted with her word processor, one suffocated with rejection letters, and now Sunny, stabbed in the neck with a fountain pen. What was he planning to do to me? Bury me under dozens of volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica? Could you even find those anymore?
I reached for my phone again. Distraction. That’s what I needed. I’d call Brian.
“Ms. Goldman?” Shit. Someone was going to make me deal with reality. I turned to see a woman in a conservative gray suit carrying a voice recorder. “Are you Rachel Goldman?”
I admitted to being myself because I wasn’t really thinking sharply enough to come up with an alternate identity. She reached for my hand, and I gave it to her. “I’m Special Agent Rafferty, FBI.”
Ben and Duffy had mentioned the FBI agent monitoring their case, and they’d rolled their eyes at the thought of her. But the imposing figure in front of me didn’t really seem like the “meddling little lady” cops might disdain. “Wow,” I said. “You must be really impressive.” I wasn’t really firing on all cylinders.
Special Agent Rafferty shook my hand and looked closely at me, as if trying to see the roots of my mental illness in my eyes. “How so?” she asked.
“I don’t know any female officers or FBI agents, and I’ve done a decent amount of research on criminal justice,” I explained. “I’m glad to meet you.” Maybe I could patch up the faux pas with a little sisterhood.
She took a moment. “Research,” she said. Then she stared at me. “You’re that Rachel Goldman? The author?”
Now, you have to understand, that never happens. For one thing, mine is hardly the most distinctive or unusual name an author could have (and I never even used a pseudonym). And among people who have met me outside BooksBooksBooks and other such venues, I am not exactly a household name. Someone who recognized my work was a rare treat.
“Yes, I am,” I said. “You’ve heard of my books?”
“Heard of them? I love them!” Special Agent Rafferty looked like she’d just met the president of the United States, or Justin Bieber, depending on your personal preference. “I never miss anything you write!”
I almost asked for her voice recorder to immortalize this moment and have it to play back in my dotage. “I’m so glad you enjoy the novels,” I said modestly.
Rafferty blinked. “Novels?” she said. “I didn’t know you wrote novels.”
What did she think I wrote—papal decrees? “Sure. I write the Duffy Madison mystery series.” Remember? How you loved them ten seconds ago?
Now she looked really confused. “But I just spoke to Duffy inside. He’s real. Did you name a character after him?” She scratched at something imaginary on the right side of her head.
“No. I’ve been writing mystery novels for four years. What did you think I had written?” It’s one thing to be dissed; it’s another thing to be dissed when the person doesn’t even know they’re doing the dissing.
“You’re Rachel Goldman. You write books on the philosophy of the criminal justice system. I’ve read every one.”
“I don’t. I write mystery novels. I swear.�
�� Then it hit me. “You mean Roberta Goldman.” I’d heard that name before, of course.
“Oh, that’s right!” No apology, nothing. She didn’t even have the decency to look mortified. Between this and finding the dead body of a professional acquaintance, it had hardly been worth getting up this morning.
“How can I help you, Agent?” If she wasn’t going to shower me with praise, we might as well get on with this.
“Special agent,” she corrected, probably out of habit. “Well, you can tell me about what you found inside.” Voice recorder out, red light lit.
“You saw it,” I noted.
“Yes, I did. But I want you to tell me about it.” For a gushing fan of . . . somebody . . . Special Agent Rafferty was not terribly pleasant, I thought.
“Duffy and I went inside so I could have a look around the house,” I said.
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes. Why were you brought in to look over the scene? You’re not a criminal justice employee or a forensics expert. Why you?” This woman was about as not Lieutenant Isabel Antonio as she could be without changing species.
“Duffy felt it would be helpful to get another writer into the house to see if there was anything unusual that someone outside the field might not notice,” I told her.
Rafferty scowled. Really. A full-on scowl. I’ve used the word to describe disgruntled expressions before, but I’d been doing the term a disservice. This was a real scowl. Rafferty looked like she wanted to spit. Possibly at me.
“So that’s what Duffy thought, huh?” Her inflection was all I needed to infer a few things, mostly that Rafferty didn’t like Duffy Madison.
“I was just trying to help,” I said. I sounded even more like a five-year-old than you’re already thinking.
“And what did you see?” Rafferty continued. “Was there any useful observation in there from you? Did your writer’s sensibility help the investigation?”
“I found the body,” I said, a little more starch in my voice. “That didn’t help Sunny Maugham much, but it was more than anyone else had managed to do.” You go, girl! Get a little of your own back!
“Yes, let’s talk about that,” Rafferty said. I didn’t like the almost happy tone. “What made you get up and open the closet door?”
“I was looking for paper.” That seemed simple enough.
“Why? You were just observing. What did you need paper for?” There was something ominous in this interview, but it was sneaking up on me. I knew it was there, but I wasn’t sure I could get out of its way.
“I wanted to print something out, to get a sense of what it felt like to work in Sunny’s office.” That was, in fact, why I was looking for the paper. It’s important to tell the truth to someone who could arrest you. My mother taught me that after her first pot bust. (She got off with a fine.)
“Why? What would printing out a file do to help?”
“It was to get a feel for the office,” I said again. “It was supposed to give me a better idea of what Sunny’s system was, so that I could tell if anything was amiss.”
“And something was.” No expression on her face. We could have been discussing fabric softener sheets.
“I didn’t find that out until I opened the closet door.” Okay, so maybe there was a little attitude in my voice at that point. We were discussing the death of a woman I’d known, who might even have thought of me as . . . no, we weren’t really friends. But it was upsetting.
“How did you know it was a closet?” Rafferty asked.
What did that mean? “I don’t understand.” That’s what I say when I don’t know what something means. Snappy, huh?
“I mean, how did you know that was a closet?”
I still wasn’t getting it. “Well, the fact that there were all these supplies in it sort of gave the purpose away.” Mom never said anything about being snarky to the officer, but I was still betting it wasn’t the best strategy. She’d baited me, giving me the same straight line twice.
“The door. The closet door.” I must have been staring blankly. “You’d never been in the room before, correct?”
Yes, madam district attorney. “That’s right.”
“So if you’d never been in the room before, how did you know that door led to a utility closet?”
It was a good question. How had I known? “It seemed logical. She wasn’t storing paper or anything she’d need nearby in the desk. There was a door just to the left of the desk; I figured it was a closet.” Because that was exactly where I’d put the supplies if I could afford to have an office like that, and everything else in the room was exactly the way I would want it, so it followed. I felt it was probably best not to mention my office envy to the detective.
“There are six filing cabinets in the room. You didn’t go to any of those. You walked directly to the closet.” A mouse walked up to me and asked if I knew what it felt like to be lured into a trap, but I ignored it.
“I figured the filing cabinets had files in them. The door looked like a closet.” Whoa. My eyes narrowed involuntarily. “Why are you asking?”
“I’m just trying to understand.”
Wait. There was something else. “Besides, Duffy told me it was a closet.” Okay, so I was already on the way to the door when Duffy mentioned it was the supply area, and I had assumed that, but it should have bought me at least a little credibility.
Instead, there was the sneer again. “Duffy,” she said.
“What is it with you and Duffy?” I asked.
She, naturally, ignored the question. “How well did you know Ms. Bledsoe?”
This was not progressing along the path I’d anticipated when it seemed Rafferty was a big fan of my books. “Not all that well. We spoke for a while at a mystery book conference once.”
“What did you talk about?” She had put the voice recorder in a breast pocket, where it could still record, and pulled a reporter’s notebook out of her back pocket. She started writing in the notebook.
I folded my arms. “Do I need to call an attorney, Special Agent?” I asked. Because it sure was starting to sound like I might.
Not a blink. “Why would you need an attorney?” Blandest tone you ever heard. The last time someone asked you to pass the salt, they had more passion in their voice.
“I’m wondering that myself, but you’re making it sound very much like I’m on the verge of being arrested. If I am, I’d like to stop answering questions and call my attorney.” I stopped short of the cliché, “I know my rights.”
“I wasn’t planning on arresting you,” Rafferty said. “Unless you’d like to make a confession.”
“Depends,” I said. “If you’re arresting people for watching trashy reality shows, I’m ready to be handcuffed.”
Rafferty’s face was as impassive as a Halloween mask of a police detective, only less expressive. “Far as I know, that’s still legal,” she said.
“Then I think I might exercise my right to remain silent. Other than to say that your interpersonal skills might use some polish.”
Her eyelids stood at half-staff. “I’ll take it under advisement.” I turned to walk away, but she added, “I thought you wanted to help find the person who killed your friend.”
I’ll admit it, I stopped walking. “You know, impersonating my Aunt Harriet really isn’t going to help you much.”
Rafferty just stood and stared. She looked like she was thinking about the last time she was really bored.
“What is it you want to know?” I whined.
“What did you and Ms. Bledsoe talk about when you met at the book convention?” she said. Lord knows, I wouldn’t have remembered what had gotten this little chat fest going, but she did.
“We talked about book promotion,” I said. “Sunny was very helpful in giving me some pointers on how to get my book noticed.”
“Then how come I thought you were Roberta Goldman?” Rafferty asked. Perhaps on her planet, that would have constituted a joke.
&n
bsp; “You don’t venture out of the how-to-further-my-career section at the bookstore,” I said. “If you wandered into the fiction aisles, maybe you’d come across my work. Is there anything else?”
“Yeah. Did you kill Julia Bledsoe?”
“No. Damn, that was easy. I assume I can go now.” Once again, I started to walk away.
“Just one thing.” Arrgh. I turned again and considered her. She didn’t wait for me to ask what the one thing might be. Her eyes didn’t soften, and her voice didn’t show any signs of compassion. “Do you think you need protection?”
That came out of nowhere. “Why?”
“Because I hear you’ve been getting e-mails from the guy who did this,” Rafferty said. “Personally, I doubt it, but if you’re scared, we can assign you some extra protection.”
I hadn’t been thinking about that at that moment, so thank goodness Rafferty had brought it back to my frontal lobes for consideration. But I was still smarting from the grilling she’d just given me and wasn’t going to admit to the amazon that I was afraid. “If you know I’m getting threatening e-mails, and you know it’s from whoever did this to Sunny, what made you think I was the killer?” I asked.
“I didn’t. But you have to eliminate as many possibilities as you can. Now the question is whether you want us to assign some extra police drive-bys to your house and maybe put a monitor inside to watch out for you. Do you want that?”
“No,” I said without a long thought. “I have Duffy and Ben Preston watching out for me. I think I’ll be all right.”
Rafferty gave me a long look, like she was deciding if she wanted to say something. I almost turned away a third time, then figured I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. Sure enough, she spoke again.
“You’ll be safe with Ben Preston,” she said. “Be careful about Duffy Madison.”
You know when something goes screwy in movies and they play that sound where the phonograph needle skips across the record? I heard that in my head. “Why?” I asked. “What is it about Duffy?”
“He’s . . . run into problems with two other missing persons cases,” she answered. “I’m just saying you should be careful.”
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