by Josh Lanyon
Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. But the remnants of the nightmare still clung to me, and I didn’t want to sit in that drafty cabin with my head killing me, afraid to fall asleep.
Anyway, I didn’t believe that I was a real target, despite J.X.’s dire warnings about keeping my mouth shut and my eyes open. It’s not like I knew anything that I hadn’t immediately spilled to everyone who would listen. What would be the motive for getting rid of me? The fact that J.X. assumed I would automatically be marked for murder probably had more to do with J.X.’s feelings than the killer’s.
But I didn’t want to think about J.X.
Screw him.
Oh. Right.
I occupied myself by trying to walk in a straight line. Yep, I was definitely still feeling the effects of alcohol. It didn’t help that the wind was blowing against me the whole way.
Despite my earnest effort, my wilderness trek took more than five minutes.
I assumed the back door to the lodge would be locked, although it hadn’t been locked when I had slipped out a few hours earlier. I decided to go for the front entrance. I was convinced that someone was sure to still be in the bar. That was the way it worked at every other conference I’d ever attended.
The cowbell chimes were jangling as I marched up the front porch stairs.
I tried the front door. It was locked. I remembered George shoving the bolt home when we had arrived that evening, so that was no surprise. I pounded with my poker.
Waited.
Be patient, I told myself. Someone is bound to hear you.
I banged again. The poker dug some chunks out of the wood, and I eased off.
Stepping back, I studied the long line of the building and tried to determine where the bar was in relation to the front of the building.
It occurred to me that there were no lights on. Anywhere. Not in the entire building.
They were all in bed before daybreak. And they called themselves writers?
Amateurs.
Now what? I tried to think. Admittedly, my powers of reason seemed slightly dimmed. My head felt like it was being used for an anvil. Boom, boom, boom. Was that a hangover or high blood pressure reaching critical mass?
I stumbled down the porch steps and walked around to the back of the lodge. It seemed a very long way.
A dark and wet and silent long way.
Not that darkness or wetness or silence ever did anyone any harm—which is what I kept telling myself as I walked, feet pounding the pathway. The night seemed to swallow the sound of my footsteps, which is why when I heard something—a furtive noise from the patio around the corner ahead of me—I froze.
What…was…that?
Metal on cement. The scrape of a chair? Who the hell would be sitting out on the patio in this weather at this time of night?
I opened my mouth to call out—but something stopped me.
I listened.
No voices. Nothing but the lonely sound of the wind through the aspens. And yet…
Something changed. The stillness took on a listening quality. I felt with uneasy certainty that my approach had been heard, that someone was standing around the corner waiting for me—even as I stood waiting, heart banging away against my ribs, sweat chilling on my skin.
I took a soft and careful step backward.
A funny shiver ran down my spine. My bad feeling suddenly gave way to a wave of sick fear.
Instinct? Alcohol? Or sheer cowardice?
I turned and sprinted back down the path the way I had come.
Pausing at the point where the walkway branched off, I braced my hands on my thighs and gulped in air. I really needed to get back into shape—if it killed me.
I listened.
Anything?
Nothing.
I was being a total goof. And yet…the night seemed too quiet. There was something unnatural about the silence. Something alert. Attentive.
And standing out here on this walk, I was completely exposed, completely without protection. I looked around myself and spotted the old vine-covered arbor a yard or so down the other walk. Since it was the only real concealment in sight, it wasn’t much of a decision.
I ran down the other walkway and slipped into the pitch darkness of the arbor. I waited. The wind filtered through the vines and latticework, cold breath on the back of my neck.
Footsteps were coming down the path. Brisk steps but…quiet. Not stealthy, but not the normal beat of approaching feet.
I flattened myself against the vines, my fingers sweaty on the warm metal of the poker. Even assuming I could manage to clobber someone with this—was I ready to bash someone’s head in?
What if someone wrested it out of my hand and used it to bash me?
The footsteps paused. A silhouette loomed at the mouth of the tunnel. Huge, black, menacing. It seemed to block the entranceway. My heart stopped—which was all right because time stopped with it.
I didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t blink.
My hand gripped the poker so hard my fingers ached.
I waited for what seemed a lifetime, and then at last the silhouette withdrew. The footsteps moved softly away.
I expelled a long shaky breath.
What the hell had that been about? Why hadn’t I spoken up? Why had I acted like a…a criminal? Like I was guilty? Like I had something to hide? Talk about paranoid. Talk about too much imagination.
But I wasn’t talking. I was still standing there very quietly, barely breathing, waiting.
And waiting. I waited until I was damn sure he was gone. Then I gave it another five minutes.
It began to rain again. The drops slipped through the vines and lattice and fell in wet plops on my head.
And still I waited, shivering with nerves and cold.
Finally, when I was too miserable to hold out any longer, I crept out of the arbor and took a look around.
No sign of anyone. I scanned the empty pasture.
There was nowhere to hide on that empty flat stretch of land—that was the good news. The bad news was that in seconds I would be crossing that empty flat stretch with nowhere to hide.
I started running, pounding across the sodden weeds, trying not to sprain an ankle or fall in the mud—because how damsel in distress would that be? I zigzagged across the field, hopping puddles, managing not to trip in any ground-squirrel holes.
There was a bright side. Assuming I lived through this weekend, I was probably going to see some serious weight loss. I hadn’t had this much physical activity in years.
As I reached the cabins, I veered to the left, making a detour toward J.X.’s. Number six he’d said. It sat still and silent in the pattering rain.
I banged on the door.
No response.
I whaled away with the poker a couple of times.
Nothing.
Not again. What was the matter with these people? Were they all wearing earplugs or what?
J.X. couldn’t be that deeply asleep. No one could.
I had a sudden unwelcome memory of his face half-buried in a pillow next to me…
I mean, for crying out loud. I was having more flashbacks than a Vietnam vet in a seventies’ action flick. The minute I knew J.X. was totally unavailable I couldn’t stop obsessing about him. What the hell was my problem?
“Moriarity,” I yelled.
Nothing.
He wasn’t inside. He couldn’t be. No one could sleep through the ruckus I was making.
Was J.X. the person who had followed me into the arbor?
So much for my survival instinct. If J.X. was wandering out here somewhere in the night, it was because he was doing a spot of off-duty investigating. I had never been in any danger. Not for an instant.
Right?
The rain was coming down hard now, plastering my hair and soaking my coat.
I turned away and walked slowly back to my own cabin.
Chapter Twelve
Morning always comes too soon when you’ve spent t
he night acting the part of a character in a Thorne Smith novel. Sometime after dawn, I cracked the window shades of my eyes, promptly pulled them closed again, rolled out of bed, and crawled into the bath where I suffered the tortures of the damned—the damned silly—for the next forty-five minutes.
When I finally tottered back into the bedroom, clean and relatively sober, it was about eight o’clock, and while the thought of breakfast made me feel faint, the idea of central heating and hot coffee was enough to get me into my clothes.
Or whosever clothes these were. I peered blearily at a pair of Armani jeans that had been artfully bleached and beaten (why?) and a waffle crew sweater in a suitably muted gray. I felt too weak to comb my hair, and I didn’t trust myself with a razor; clean clothes seemed enough of a concession to civilization and polite company. Not that a mob of writers bent on furthering their careers could be mistaken for polite company.
I managed to dress without incident and opened the door onto a bleak autumn morning. The rain had stopped, but that appeared to be more like the storm pausing to draw a deep breath than any actual break in the dialogue of bad weather. Large brown ponds dotted the meadow, clumps of scrub and weeds glistened in the feeble silvery light.
I glanced over at cabin number six. No sign of life. But just in case J.X. happened to be staring out his window, I strode off across the pampa, Burberry flapping about me, trying to exude brisk confidence and cheerful sobriety.
It was probably a reasonably convincing performance from behind, but I was panting and sweating by the time I reeled onto the front porch and tried the heavy wooden door. To my teary-eyed relief, it swung open, and I slipped inside the lodge.
The smell of coffee and cooking breakfast hit me from down the hallway—along with the din of glad voices—and after an uncertain moment while my guts struggled to make sense of all that had befallen them, I headed for the dining room.
It was packed. Wall-to-wall chicks. Most of them in pink. For an instant I suspected a bout of delirium tremens.
“Family seating,” Rita informed me, as I stood there weaving with indecision.
Family seating? Then why wasn’t everyone decently buried behind newspapers and coffee cups?
I considered foraging in the vending machines, but Rita planted her hand in the middle of my back and urged me forward with an unexpectedly strong push. “There’s an empty seat over at the table by the window.”
I thanked her and made my way to a crowded table. The inhabitants looked up with the sharp-eyed interest unattended men always garner at these things. They introduced themselves, I promptly forgot all their names, and I introduced myself.
“Christopher Holmes?” a lanky gray-haired woman asked. “Don’t you write that pet-sitter series?”
I controlled my irritation. “I write the Miss Butterwith series,” I said. “She’s a—”
“Oh my gosh,” said the youngest of the group. “Miss Butterwidth!”
“ButterWITH,” I corrected.
“I used to read those when I was a kid. I loved them.”
“Thank you,” I said weakly. Since she was about J.X.’s age, I assumed she didn’t mean literally a kid. Or maybe she had me confused with Agatha Christie. Or maybe she was simply being polite. I picked up my menu and hid behind it while they resumed their conversation—the main topic of which seemed to be J.X. How charming he was, how handsome, how modest—
What did that girl mean she used to read my books? Did that mean she felt she had outgrown them? I stared unseeingly at nauseating descriptions of pancakes and omelets and corned beef hash.
The topic of J.X. continued unabated around me. How funny he was, how helpful, what a good writer, how successful—had they mentioned how handsome he was?
On and on and on.
“Too bad he’s married,” my former fan chirped.
I stayed still behind my menu.
“The rich, handsome, polite ones always are,” someone said.
“Or gay,” someone else chimed in, and they all tittered.
I put my menu down, and they stopped chuckling. I said, “Do you think the bar is open? I’d kill for a Bloody Mary.”
At the table next to us a woman was saying loudly, “Don’t forget the three E’s of modern publishing: ebooks, erotica, and elves…”
“You could ask,” one of the women said. I glanced around for a waitress, but they seemed to be in short supply.
“The buffet is over there,” the chirpy young one put in, pointing across the room at a long table laden with chafing dishes. “The eggs Benedict are pretty good.”
I swallowed hard. “Thank you.”
They launched back into further discussion of J.X. I couldn’t decide which I found more nauseating on top of a hangover, J.X. or eggs Benedict. I broke in, “So did any of you know this Peaches Sadler?”
There was an awkward pause.
“We knew of her,” the gray-haired woman said.
The young’un said, “She didn’t hang with people like us. She stuck to her own circle.”
I was thinking pentagram. Probably inverted. I asked, “Her own circle?”
“Oh, you know. The superstars. J.X. and Steven Krass.”
One more mention of J.X. and I was going to run amuck. The gray-haired woman interjected, “Buzz Salyer. Mindy Newburgh, I mean.”
But another woman shot this down. “Not these days. She’s not part of that group.”
I felt an unworthy stab of relief. Once I would have been part of that group, and no one wants to wander off into exile by his lonesome.
“Speaking of which,” the gray-haired woman said, checking her watch, “we’re going to miss our workshop.”
They began pushing away their plates, tossing napkins on the table, shoving chairs back.
At my inquiring look, the young one informed me, “Steven Krass is holding a workshop on the Top Ten Things Editors Hate.”
“Ah,” I said. “Colored fonts, my-mother-loves-my-book—”
“They don’t like colored fonts? Have you taken his workshop before?” She seemed genuinely shocked.
The others shepherded her off. Briefly, there was peace. The waitress showed up, filled my coffee cup, and instructed me on how to partake of the joys of the buffet. I sipped my coffee and stared out the rain-fogged windows at the gloomy day—what I could see of it through the steam and mist.
The table rattled as someone took a chair on the other side of that linen no man’s land. Espie Real deposited an enormous plate of food on the table and grinned at me.
“You look like death warmed over.”
“Hey, it’s what’s for breakfast.” I nodded at her plate.
She laughed. “Rough night?”
“I’ve had rougher.”
“I bet.” She heavily salted the piles of eggs, bacon, French toast, hash browns, and creamed chipped beef.
I shuddered inwardly—and outwardly. “You’re not attending Steven Krass’s workshop?” I inquired.
She had taken a forkful of eggs and potato and God knows what else, but she withdrew it intact in order to answer me. “Ha ha.”
I stared, fascinated, at the mini mound of food wobbling on her suspended fork. “That’s right,” I said. “You’re not a fan.”
“No. I’m not a fan.” She gave a sly look. “Maybe we should start an un-fan club; what do you think?”
“I think I’m a charter member.” She seemed pretty frank. I asked, “So what was the beef with you and Peaches?”
She snorted, shoveled in the forkful of food, and chewed. I didn’t think she was going to answer, but she swallowed finally and said, “You know her big breakout book?”
I must have looked blank, but the fact was I’d never heard of Peaches Sadler until—cue the theme from Psycho—she came slashing after me with her poison pen.
“Poké Stack.”
I was still lost.
Espie brushed my ignorance aside. “Anyway, it’s really a chicks book. Sort of a noir foodie romance.”
“With that sexy chick-lit sensibility,” I suggested.
“Yeah. Anyway, that was my book.”
“Poké Stack was your book? You mean she ripped you off?”
“It’s called plagiarized,” she said flatly. “Yeah. We were both clients of Rachel’s—well, hell. We were friends. The three of us. That’s why I never saw it coming.”
“What happened?”
“She and Rachel were kinda…” She raised her eyebrows suggestively and shoveled in more food. She ate like people in prison movies eat—sort of hunched over her plate and scooping bites up quickly between words.
“Rachel?”
She guffawed at my expression. “You don’t get out much, do you?”
I felt that was rather beside the point. “So Rachel let her see your manuscript?”
She shrugged. “She saw it. Let’s leave it there. Rachel never meant for it to happen, I know that. It’s Krass’s fault.”
“It is?”
“This was back when he was Senior Editor at Gardener and Britain.”
“Right,” I said. Gardener and Britain was a small, well-respected press known mostly for literary mysteries.
“Well, he’d already bought my book, Hot Sauce. But then he’s porking Peaches, yeah?”
“Uh…yeah.” And Peaches had been porking Rachel and Krass? Yeesh.
“And along she comes with her version of my book, and he buys that and never notices—or just doesn’t give a shit—it’s the same book.”
“You’re joking.”
“No, sweet stuff, I’m not joking. It’s the same fucking book, names changed to protect the guilty. And Krass buys it and spends a shitload of money to promote it, and when I point out to him that it’s my book, he basically tells me to keep my mouth shut about it or it will be the last book I write for Gardener and Britain—and maybe anyone else.”
“And what was the justification for that?” I asked.
“Oh, you think there’s a justification for that?” she asked hotly, glaring at me.
“No, of course not. I mean, what justification did Krass give you?”
“That the publisher had spent a lot of money and it was embarrassing to everyone involved, and the best thing would be that I let it be.”
“And did you?”
