Dying to Get Published

by Judy Fitzwater

  Chapter 24

  The jail cell was cold. Cold and gray and ugly. And all Jennifer wanted was to go home.

  Things were alive in that cell. Fortunately, they weren't human, but she'd spotted a large, unidentified insect earlier, and heaven knows what was lurking on the microbiotic level. She shuddered and sat up a little straighter, clutching her sweater closer about her shoulders.

  She'd gotten herself into it this time. And now, not only God, but the Law was going to get her for it.

  Bargaining with Him didn't seem particularly promising at this point. Too many necessary admissions. After all, she had planned the whole murder even if she hadn't intended to carry it out. And just her luck, Someone Up There, no doubt, had been taking notes.

  She sighed. Crime was so much easier to cope with as words on a computer, words that could be moved, deleted, and retyped, but this real life cement floor, iron bars, and (she couldn't force herself to look at it) that awful stainless steel toilet lurking in the corner, were more reality than she had ever hoped to deal with. She'd like to delete that thing with a keystroke.

  She rubbed at the black ink on her fingertips. It marked her as the common criminal she was. It'd take a week for the stain to fade, not that it mattered. No telling how long she'd be locked up in the slammer. She'd been charged with communicating threats. Thank goodness she'd had enough sense to use a courier service so they couldn't charge her with a felony. Of course, if they could establish a link between her and the other poison pen letters—the ones she didn't write—they'd throw away the key to her cell, with or without the murder charge. They were mailed.

  The judge had been reasonable in setting bail, if $10,000 could be considered reasonable. But then she hadn't looked the least bit threatening when she stood before him, scared witless.

  Jennifer sank back against the wall. Where the heck was Dee Dee? She'd called her more than three hours ago. How long did it take to scare up a thousand dollars on a Saturday and get herself to Atlanta, anyway?

  She sighed and let her eyes drift shut. Sam. If only she'd stayed with him at her apartment instead of forging ahead with her crazy plan. If only she'd recognized her feelings for him sooner. She would have, too, if it hadn't been for her outrageous ambition. Well, maybe she would have. She'd like to think she would have. If only she could be content with a normal life like everybody else. If only…

  "Where'd you go?" a voice asked, the words drifting slowly into her consciousness.

  "Sam," she murmured softly, turning her head to find a more comfortable position against the cinder-block wall. Sam had a wonderful, soothing voice, a voice that could lull her into thinking everything would be all right. A voice she could listen to….

  "Where'd you go?" the voice asked again, this time suspiciously like a real, earthly, male voice.

  Jennifer opened her eyes. It was Sam all right, and he was staring so intently at her she felt like she'd been doused with a bucket of ice water. She sat up, glad to have the bars between them.

  "Sam?" she asked tentatively. "How did—"

  "Dee Dee called me and asked me to get over here. You've got her scared half out of her mind. Her husband is out, and she didn't want to bring her little girl up here."

  If Dee Dee couldn't come, why hadn't she just said so or called somebody—anybody—else? How could she deliver Jennifer into the hands of… of the very irritated man she'd drugged and left sleeping in her bed, a man who, at the moment, looked far too angry to be confused with a knight in shining armor.

  "Are you ready to get out of here?"

  Jennifer nodded numbly.

  Sweeney and a police officer walked up behind Sam. The officer unlocked the cell and pulled open the door.

  "You can go for now, but don't go far. I'll be in touch," Sweeney promised.

  "What the hell were you thinking?" Sam asked as he eased his Honda onto I-75 south.

  "Obviously I wasn't thinking, okay?" Jennifer slumped farther into the leather of the bucket seat, wishing she were anywhere else. Well, not anywhere. Sam's car was a step up from the jail cell. Too bad he went with it.

  "Did you kill that woman?"

  She stared at him with an open mouth. "I can't believe you felt you had to ask me that question. How could you?"

  "How could I? How could I?"

  At the moment, she wasn't up to a pronoun war. She turned and burrowed down in the seat's upholstery. She was exhausted, and she was scared. She closed her eyes and prayed that everything would go away—beginning with Sam.

  She felt the car slow and opened her eyes to see that he had pulled onto the off ramp at a rest area.

  He cut the motor and turned to her. "Talk to me, Jennifer," he said gently.

  So he was changing tactics. He'd dropped the rough, tell-me-or-else attitude and was now trying the you-can-trust-me routine. As if she hadn't majored in psychology, not to mention being an expert on the good-cop, bad-cop routine. Hah! But she was trapped, too far out of Atlanta to walk back, and miles from Macon. There wasn't any getting away now. She took a deep breath and turned to face him.

  "What do you think?" she asked, her chin stuck out.

  "I think you're almost crazy enough to kill someone, but not quite. But you were up to something last night and I want to know what. And I want to know what you put in that wine you gave me. I woke up feeling queasy and barely made it to the bathroom before I got sick. By the way, that mutt of yours kept jumping into and out of the bathtub, making it ring like some death knell. Didn't help my head, either."

  "Muffy has a habit of doing that when she's upset. Usually she stays out of the powder room unless I lock her in there or I'm sick or she's sick or—"

  Sam let out a heavy sigh. "This Penelope Richmond—she was that woman at Steve Moore's party, the one who had you seeing red, the woman in teal."

  Jennifer nodded.

  "A literary agent?"

  Again she nodded.

  "You didn't kill her because of something she said to you that night, did you?"

  Jennifer shook her head.

  "Just checking. The police can place you at her apartment building close to the time of the murder. They searched your place and found some kind of outfit that the doorman identified."

  "You must have good friends at the police department."

  "I do. I have to in my business. But they can't place you inside, at least not yet."

  "That's because I wasn't there. I never got in. I never even tried." Her voice cracked and a small tear traced a path down her cheek.

  "What's this all about?" Sam asked quietly. He reached over and took her hand in his.

  "It's all Oprah's fault," she blurted, the tears flowing freely now for the first time. "She had this woman on her show who had written this book…" and she told Sam the whole story from beginning to end, leaving out only a few irrelevant, personal details about him.

  "And you planned that whole scene last night with me at your apartment because…"

  "I wanted to see if a man would believe he had spent the night making love to a woman even if he woke up in the morning and couldn't remember anything. I needed to know if he would think the woman had been there with him all night. That's what the evening was supposed to be, but that's not how it turned out."

  "Because I woke up and left."

  "No, you idiot, because of what happened between us." Jennifer groaned and wiped her face with the back of her hand. "I know how stupid this all sounds. I'm totally neurotic and hopelessly out of touch with my feelings. Haven't you figured that out yet?"

  "The neurotic part had not eluded me."

  She turned away and looked out the car window. "I actually had thought about killing Penney Richmond, and now I'm being punished for it. You have every right to throw me out of your car right now. I don't blame you for believing I killed her," she said softly.

  She felt herself being pulled backward, turned and then folded into Sam's arms, cradled firmly against his chest, the emergency brake sticking
painfully into her abdomen.

  And then she heard him start to chuckle and then to laugh. How could he? She tried to pull away, but he held her tight against him.

  "Ah, Jennifer. You couldn't have killed that woman if she'd cocked the gun for you, pinned a bull's-eye over her heart, and begged you to shoot her."

  He stroked her hair, and she relaxed as best she could, considering the brake.

  "Part of your crazy scheme worked perfectly," he said. "The part to make you the prime suspect. We've got our work cut out for us. Unless we find out who the murderer is, there's a real possibility you're going to be spending the next twenty years of your life in jail."