Last Writes (A Ghostwriter Mystery)

by C. A. Larmer

  “Jesus, Roxy, you’re right. They have to be connected! Davo was really onto something ... There must be a nutcase out there killing writers. Which is great news ... I mean, not for the writers, obviously, but, well, I’ve got alibis for those other murders. Remember, I was with you, at Davo’s premiere when Seymour was killed?”

  Roxy smiled assuredly at him but her heart was sinking further. She didn’t want to mention the small matter of him disappearing for about an hour during the screening of the movie. She’d seen him leave, herself, as did others no doubt. Roxy hoped to God Oliver had a good alibi for that time, or he really was in trouble.

  “Where were you last Wednesday night, then?”

  “What?”

  “That was the night William Glad was killed. Where were you then?”

  He seemed confused, gave his head a shake. “Um ... let me think. Wednesday night ... um ...” He glanced at his coffee cup and then stood up. “I need a proper drink.”

  Oliver marched into his kitchen, flung open the fridge and produced a beer. He held it out it to Roxy but she shook her head, no. Her stomach convulsed at the mere sight of alcohol. He flipped the top off the beer, took a lengthy swallow, and then returned to the living room.

  “Wednesday night, Wednesday night ... That’s right, I was at work quite late, catching up on some stuff, and then back here, of course. Just ate at home and went to bed.”

  She frowned. It was the night before the funeral. She distinctly remembered trying to call him about Max’s party, both at work and at home and getting no reply. Perhaps he was too busy or tired to pick up.

  “Was Sharon with you at work late? Was anyone here when you got back?”

  “No, course not, I live alone, you know that.”

  She felt her stomach turn. None of his alibis looked good, no wonder the police were questioning him. He was also present at Seymour Silva’s funeral around the time the police believed that the gardening shears had been planted in Norman Hick’s car. She wondered, suddenly, how Norm’s alibi was looking for Saturday night.

  “You’ve gotta help me, Roxy,” Oliver was saying, his eyes imploring. “I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t do this. You know that.”

  “I know that,” she told him, reaching over and pulling him back down on to the sofa. “You need to calm down. The police are just doing their job and looking into all angles. Don’t let them freak you out. Can I get you anything? Something to eat? A kebab from down the road?”

  He shook his head no and polished off the rest of the beer.

  “Then try and chill out, and get some sleep tonight, okay?” He looked at her like she’d just asked him to fly to the moon. “I’ve got some sleeping tablets at home, want me to go get them?”

  “Nah, I’ll be right. You get back. You don’t look too hot yourself.”

  “Yeah I’ve got the hangover from hell. But that’s a whole other story for a whole other time.” She pulled herself up. “You want me to stay?”

  He stared at his empty beer bottle blankly, not appearing to hear her.

  “Olie?”

  “No, no,” he said. “You go, we’ll talk tomorrow. Can we talk tomorrow?”

  He had that pleading look again and it scared her. It was so out of character for the usually nonchalant Oliver Horowitz. He’d been acting out of character a lot lately and she didn’t like it. She wanted the old, blasé Oliver back.

  “Of course. I’ll drop in to the office, maybe in the afternoon some time.”

  “Sooner, if you want, I won’t be in late.”

  “I’ll get there as soon as I can, Olie. I’ve just got someone I need to see first.”

  He looked at her puzzled but she didn’t say any more, just reached for her bag and made her way to the door.

  As she opened it, he called out: “Be careful, Rox! I don’t want to lose any more of my writers. Not tonight.”

  Oliver’s words shadowed her all the way home.

  Chapter 17

  It was Monday morning and Gilda Maltin did not look happy. She motioned for Roxy to enter her office, nodding at the uniformed officer who had shown her through, but her usual smile was nowhere to be seen.

  “I know why you’re here,” she said, cutting Roxy off the moment she opened her mouth. “And there’s nothing I can do, I’m sorry Roxy. But it’s not looking good for your mate.”

  “Oliver Horowitz didn’t do it, Gilda, you know that.”

  “I know nothing,” she said. “I just follow the evidence trail and I’ve already had a bit of a squiz at it. It does not look good, but you didn’t hear any of this from me. I shouldn’t even be talking about this with you. It was bloody stupid of me to blabber on the other night. It didn’t occur to me that Oliver would become a person of interest.”

  “A person of interest?!”

  “Shit, there I go again. You didn’t hear that from me.”

  “So you are on the case now?”

  “God no, I’m too close to Oliver to be put on this case, even though the truth is I don’t really know the man that well.”

  “Well I know him very well and he didn’t do this, Gilda. He didn’t.”

  Gilda sighed. “Look, Oliver seems like a decent bloke in the short time I’ve known him. I suggest he shuts his mouth and gets himself a top-notch solicitor.”

  “They’re charging him?!”

  “I never said that, Roxy, but it won’t hurt him to get good counsel.”

  “Can you at least tell me what time Tina died? And if Norman Hicks has an alibi for then?”

  “You’re hoping we can pin this back on him.”

  She shrugged. “You said it yourself. He is kinda creepy.”

  Gilda opened a desk drawer and located a half-eaten block of dark chocolate, offering it towards Roxy who shook her head no. Gilda broke a sizeable chunk off and popped it in her mouth then, chewing, glanced at her computer screen and clicked the return button a few times.

  “Okay,” she mumbled, “the coroner believes Miss Passion ...” She paused and stared at Roxy. “What kind of a name is that, anyway?”

  “A nom de plume, I gather,” Roxy said. “All the better for selling erotic novels.”

  Gilda blinked at this and turned back to the screen. “Right, so, Miss De Plume was murdered some time between 11:00 p.m. Saturday night and about 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning. That’s now in the public domain so I can tell you that much.” She wiped her mouth and dropped the chocolate bar back into her drawer. “As for Mr Hicks, all I’ll say is his alibi is looking stronger than Oliver’s at this stage. Not perfect, but solid enough.”

  Roxy scowled. “And what time did William Glad die? Got that on your screen, too?”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Glad? About the same time, I gather, why? I thought you were here about Tina Passion.”

  “I am. But ... well ...” Roxy blushed. Had she just put her foot in it?

  “Don’t stress, Rox, the investigators have obviously already connected those dots. In fact, I hate to say this but it looks like Mr Lone might be right. They’re getting a task force together now to look into all three deaths. Reopening the Seymour Silva case. There are just too many similarities to ignore, too many common threads.”

  “By common thread you mean Oliver Horowitz.”

  She said nothing but for a woman who was refusing to speak, she had been surprisingly forthcoming.

  Eventually Gilda sighed loudly. “Listen, Roxy, it’s not looking good for Oliver. At least not in regards to the deaths of Mr Glad and Miss Passion. As far as I can tell he has no substantial alibi for either one, and he was at Silva’s funeral when the gardening shears were planted. He had access to Mr Hick’s car. He could have planted them to throw suspicion in a different direction.”

  “I was at the funeral, too!” Roxy said. “So were about sixty other people. Why aren’t you looking at any of us?”

  “The detectives will be, don’t you worry about that. Tell me this, though, can you account for Oliver’s time during the entire
funeral?”

  “Yes,” she said triumphantly. “I got a lift from him and he didn’t leave my sight the entire time, not even for a ciggie!” Thank God.

  “And afterwards? At the wake?”

  Roxy’s shoulders drooped. He had attended the wake alone. Gilda gave her a knowing look.

  “Okay, but what’s his motive? Why on earth would he want to kill William, let alone Tina or Seymour? It’s so insane!”

  “They’re still piecing it all together, Roxy, and I’ve told you I can’t say anything.”

  “Please, Gilda. He is an innocent man.”

  For once, Gilda’s lips remained firmly shut so Roxy tried a different tack.

  “Surely you have other suspects? At least for the other deaths? Did you know for instance that Erin might have a motive to kill her dad?”

  “And what motive might that be?”

  “Well, Oliver said she was anxious to republish her father’s old gardening guides, but her father had been dead against it. Maybe she killed him so she could cash in.”

  Gilda gave her a sideways stare. “She could do that anyway, once he died. She only had to wait another week or so, the cancer was doing its job. That’s also a motive for Oliver, you know.”

  Roxy groaned. Damn it, she’d put her foot in it again!

  Gilda stood up. “Come on, you need to let this one go, Roxy, you’re too damn close. Just tell Oliver to get a decent lawyer and you stay out of it. Now, I really have to get on with it and you really have to get out of here.”

  Roxy sighed. “Fine, fine.” She opened the office door.

  “Before you go, though,” Gilda said and Roxy raised her eyebrows. “About Saturday night ...”

  Roxy knew she wasn’t referring to Tina Passion’s murder, and felt a white-hot heat race through her. She had deliberately tried not to think about that night and she did not want to get into it now, not with more important matters to worry about.

  “Doesn’t matter now,” she said, and walked out.

  Unfortunately for Roxy, that night was not going anywhere. When she returned to her apartment block, Max was standing out the front, his hands pushed into his jeans pockets, a sheepish look across his face. Her anger returned and she tried desperately to swallow it back down. She had no right to be angry with either of them, she knew that, they were both free agents and she had already knocked Max back, so why shouldn’t he hook up with Gilda? Yet that kind of logic didn’t seem to help. She just wanted to punch them both out.

  “You okay, Parker?” he asked as she approached and she shrugged, reaching into her handbag for the front door keys.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  He stared hard at her. “Gonna play it like that then?”

  “Play what?”

  He shook his head, his own anger clearly rising. “I thought you’d taken off with that David Lone wanker,” he said and she rounded on him.

  “He’s not a wanker! He’s more of a gentleman than you’ll ever be, and what does that have to do with anything?”

  He stepped back, surprised by her hostility. “I thought ... I just thought you two were, you know ...?”

  “No, Max, I don’t know.”

  “So you didn’t go back to his place on Saturday night then?”

  She blushed and it was all the answer he needed. His mouth dropped, his eyes seemed to shrink back and he thrust his hands deeper into his pockets. He looked like he’d just been kicked in the guts.

  “Even if I did,” she stammered, still struggling to locate her keys in her oversized handbag, “even if I did, and it’s none of your business what I do with my nights, but even if I did, what’s that got to do with anything? What, you think I’m sleeping with David Lone so you have to jump into bed with the first woman with a pulse? Not just any woman, I might add, but one of my best friends.”

  “You mean Gilda?” His eyes refocused.

  “No, I mean Cinderella! Of course Gilda, I saw you—”

  “Saw me what?”

  She cut him off, she’d had enough and she’d found the keys at last. “A-ha!” she said, pulling them out and holding them aloft, like a trophy. “You have no right to question me and my love life when you’re the one who sleeps around. You’re a bloody slut, Max, you always have been and you wonder why I don’t want to be with you.”

  She turned back to her door, her hands shaking so much she couldn’t get the key into the lock. She stabbed at it and stabbed at it, but it wouldn’t connect. Max gently took the keys off her and opened it up.

  “I’m sorry, Roxy, but you’ve got—”

  She didn’t hear the rest of it because she had already slammed the door in his face.

  Chapter 18

  Up in the privacy of her tiny apartment, Roxy let out a loud, blood-curdling cry. Then she flung a hand to her mouth and tried to calm down. She couldn’t deal with Max now, she couldn’t deal with any more of this. She needed to get her head together and she needed to help Oliver. He was in deep shit and this little sideshow was insignificant by comparison.

  Pushing Max’s wounded face out of her mind, she marched into the kitchen to pop the kettle on. Then, realizing it wasn’t going to cut it, she raced into her room, changed into a tracksuit and joggers, pulled a cap over her hair and headed out again.

  For the next hour Roxy just walked. She walked and walked and walked, not thinking about anything, not letting anyone’s face appear too long in her head. She just pushed them out again and kept power walking as fast as she could muster, down past Peepers and the newsagency (waving to Costa as she went), across several roads and through Rushcutters Bay Park. Exercise had always been Roxy’s saviour and it did not let her down today.

  By the time she got back to her apartment she was shaking with exhaustion, sweating profusely, and feeling a whole lot better. She had purchased a bouquet of hot pink tulips on her travels, hoping they would work their usual magic and cheer her up, and so she dropped them into a vase with some water, placed them on her coffee table and hit the shower. Afterwards, she slipped into light shorts and a flowing peasant top, poured herself a glass of chilled water and sat down in front of her laptop. She needed to catch up on the latest news, yet she couldn’t bring herself to switch it on, and she couldn’t prevent the nagging anxiety that was creeping up on her again.

  There was something about the Silva/Glad/Passion story that was worrying her; something she hadn’t yet put a finger on and she couldn’t work out what. She was certain of one thing, though, she didn’t want it to be a story. At all. For the first time in a very long time, Roxy hadn’t bought the morning papers. She didn’t want to find a gruesome article that she could neatly snip and glue down in her scrapbook. Nor had she watched the morning news shows or switched the radio on. She wanted there to be no story, for the whole thing to die down and go away. She knew Oliver was innocent, the wrong man at the wrong place, but she couldn’t help feeling seriously worried for him. If the police had connected the dots, the press would soon follow.

  The press.

  Her mind went straight to David Lone. He’d spent yesterday afternoon at work. She knew that for a fact. What had he found out? What did he know? Was he connecting it all as she had done, as the police had done? Had David noticed, for instance, that Oliver disappeared halfway through his film preview the night of the first killing? Did he know Oliver had no alibi for the second killing, and did he recall, as she did, that Oliver was taking Tina out that tragic Saturday night? More importantly, would his journalistic ethics force him to mention it?

  Would hers?

  That’s when it struck her. That’s what was niggling at the back of her mind, what she didn’t want to face. If the police asked, would she feel compelled to tell them the truth—that Oliver Horowitz had no alibi, not just for William’s and Tina’s deaths, which they already knew, but for Seymour’s, too? Surely she must tell them about his little jaunt out of the cinema. But where did friendship and loyalty stand in all of this?

  Roxy pu
shed her chair back, stood up and stretched her arms out, noticing for the first time all morning the stunning view of the small bay in front of her. Sailboards ploughed through the water, a small dinghy circled nearby, and the sun glittered off the rippling waves. It didn’t hold her attention for long, though, she was already thinking about Oliver again. It was time to face it all head on, she decided, to fight fire with fire. She took a deep breath, picked up her phone and rang David Lone.

  By Monday afternoon, David and Roxy were walking into Oliver’s office, both writers now in a very different mood from the last time they had been together. They met briefly outside, and David leaned in and gave her a light kiss on the lips. Roxy felt awkward, a little embarrassed even, but concern for Oliver quickly swallowed that up.

  “Feeling better today?” he asked gently.

  “Better than Oliver, let’s put it that way.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Nope, nope, we’ve got bigger fish to fry. I need to speak to you quickly before we see Oliver. About what you know. What you’re going to print. I can’t have you accusing Oliver of this. I couldn’t handle that.”

  He frowned. “Hey, I think I’ve been more than fair. Have you seen today’s article?”

  She shook her head sheepishly. “Couldn’t stomach it.”

  “Well, perhaps you should take a look at that first before you accuse me of anything.” There was a slight edge in his voice. He was clearly hurt. “Oliver’s no doubt got a copy upstairs.”

  “Then let’s go up, shall we?”

  She turned to the ground floor intercom and punched in the access code. A quick “beep” indicated it was unlocking, and David pushed the entry door, holding it open for her to walk through.

  Upstairs they found Oliver at his desk as always and, as David had predicted, he had the morning edition of the Daily Telegraph laid out in front of him, the shaken look still firmly on his face. It was clear he hadn’t got a wink of sleep last night, the bags under his eyes were bulging, his pallor now gray. Sharon sprang up from the sofa when she saw them, a look of devastation on her own face.