Last Writes (A Ghostwriter Mystery)

by C. A. Larmer

  “Yes, he is amazing,” Roxy said. “Which is why I was surprised to hear David Lone has switched camps.”

  Amy brushed a hand down her long black hair, as though checking for wayward strands. “I have to be honest with you, Roxy. I love Oliver, we all do. He’s such a sweet man. But I am slightly more ambitious than him, that has to be said. My clients like that about me, everybody does. Let me see if I can remember what Peter Carey said only last month ... Oh yes, he said, I’ve got ‘cash gushing through my veins’. I love that! Hilarious. He’s hilarious, I must introduce you some time.”

  Name dropping—another thing that Roxy despised. She ignored this and said, “Is that what you promised Norman Hicks, as well? More money? More famous fellow clients? Or did you try a different sales pitch with him?”

  Amy snapped her lips shut and considered this for a moment. “I never discuss my client negotiations with other potential clients.” She smudged her lips into a wide smile. “You are a potential client, I gather? Is that what this is all about?”

  Roxy leaned back in her chair just as Fenella appeared with her coffee and a teapot and cup for Amy. “Thanks, Fen,” Roxy said, taking a small sip. Fenella gave her a conspiratorial grin before she loped away. “Actually, Amy, I’m here to set the record straight.”

  “Oh?” Amy batted her eyelids as she carefully poured herself some tea. She looked as innocent as a lamb. It was time, Roxy decided, for the slaughter.

  “Yes, I’m working on behalf of Oliver, actually, trying to work out who the hell is trying to frame him.”

  The innocent lamb look wavered, but not for long. “How do you mean? Exactly?”

  “I mean, Oliver Horowitz didn’t kill Tina Passion or William Glad or Seymour Silva but someone sure wants it to look that way.”

  Amy gently patted her hair and batted her eyelids again. She was so good at that. “Why would someone want to do such a hideous thing?”

  “That’s what I want to know. Any ideas?” Again, the madly batting eyelashes, so Roxy tried a different tack. “Seems to me that at least one person stands to gain by Oliver’s demise.”

  “Oh? And who would that be?”

  “Another agent, I’d say. Another more ambitious agent with cash gushing through her veins.”

  Amy had stopped batting her eyelashes. She placed her teacup down with a thud. Her smile was gone and she suddenly looked about ten years older. “If you are insinuating I had anything to do with any of those deaths, or with trying to frame Oliver Horowitz for them, I think you are not as smart as I gave you credit for.”

  “Ouch,” Roxy said drolly.

  Amy stared at her for a few icy moments. “I have no wish to see Oliver in trouble but I do have to say this: if Oliver is losing clients, it’s because of Oliver, not me. He just doesn’t have what it takes to play with the big boys. He’s small fry. There, I’ve said it. I can’t help it if his clients eventually work it out and come to me.”

  “Except you keep approaching them. You approached Seymour and Norm, and stole them from Oliver. You approached David, not the other way around. And, if I recall correctly, you also tried to steal Tina Passion away.”

  Her jaw dropped and she rolled her eyes like a Year Nine school girl. “Oh my God! Stole them? Listen to yourself! They’re not inanimate objects, you know? They came of their own free will. I have a much better deal I can offer writers. I’m gutsier, I’m more determined, and I get results.”

  “Did you ever give that sales pitch to William Glad? Did you try to steal him from Oliver as well?”

  “The gardening writer?” He eyebrows shot upwards. “No, why would I? He was well past his use-by date.”

  Now where had she heard that line before? “Charming,” Roxy said. “He’s dead, you know.”

  “Of course I know. What? Are you seriously trying to blame that on me now as well?”

  “I’m just trying to piece it all together and you seem to be popping up a lot lately.”

  “Because I’m extremely good at what I do. That’s all there is to it. And if you could see past your own blind loyalty, you’d sign up with me as well.”

  “No thank you.”

  “Then I guess this meeting is over,” Amy announced, reaching for her iPad and briefcase and pushing her chair back. She stopped suddenly and said, “Just be careful with that blind loyalty of yours, Roxy. It might come back to bite you in the butt one day.”

  Roxy’s eyes widened. “Is that a threat?”

  Amy shrugged, placed the iPad in her case and stood up. “It’s a warning, that’s all. As far as I can see you’re on the wrong side, Roxy Parker. The wrong side indeed.”

  And with that she swept out of the café.

  Roxy stared after her for several minutes, thinking about what she had said, then picked up her cup and made her way to Lockie’s office, a small cluttered room at the back of the café with the words Head Honcho painted in black across the door. He looked around, slightly alarmed when she entered and she laughed.

  “It’s only me, relax.”

  He exhaled. “Thank goodness. Miss Perky left yet?”

  “If you’re talking about Amy Halloran, then yes.”

  He shuddered dramatically. “She’s a nooter, that one. Comes in from time to time, actin’ like ma best friend. Gives me the willies. All slick and slimy like. She’d sell her mother for a free packet o’ crisps, I would’nae put it past her.”

  “Yes, well I think that’s what appeals to her clients so much.” She slumped down in the office chair in front of his desk, placing her cup on top. “But not me, Lockie. In fact, quite the opposite. I think she just threatened me.”

  “Oh bloody hell, why?”

  “Don’t know, but I think she’s dodgy. They go on about Oliver being the link, but this Amy woman is also linked, at least to Seymour, whom she stole from under Olie’s nose. And now she’s pinched David Lone from him as well, the snake.”

  “But how does tha’ tie in with the other murders?”

  Roxy chewed on this for a moment. “Not sure, but she’s obviously ruthless, unashamedly so. It makes me wonder if she’d she be up for destroying the competition if she had to. I mean, how far does her ambition go?”

  “As far as murder, ye think?” He raised his bushy eyebrows and she shrugged again.

  “I don’t know, Lockie, I just don’t know.”

  “Well, be careful, eh? Whether it’s Amy or someone else, someone really is killin’ writers out there. Hate to see ye next. You’re ma favourite writer in Sydney.”

  “Aw shucks, thanks, Lockie.”

  “So how is Oliver? I hear he’s bein’ held for questionin’.”

  “Bloody hell, that’s only just happened. Who’d you hear that from this early in the morning?”

  He looked at her like she was clueless. “Who’d ya think?”

  “So Amy knows all about that already.”

  “Ay.”

  “I wonder where she gets her information.”

  “Didn’t ye say she’s now reppin’ David Lone?”

  She groaned. Of course, she now had her finger firmly on the pulse. Was that her intention all along?

  “Have ye spoken to Gilda lately? Surely she can fill ye in on all o’ this?”

  Roxy considered this. He was right. Max, too.

  It was time to call in the big guns.

  Chapter 26

  Half an hour later Gilda was strolling into the café, bedecked in a short, white summer dress and wedged sandals, a sun hat in one hand, a beach bag in the other, a black bikini just visible beneath her dress.

  “I was on my way to Bondi in case it’s not bleedingly obvious,” she said. “You got me in the nick of time.”

  “I didn’t think you guys ever got a day off.”

  “Now, thanks to you, I don’t.”

  Lockie appeared and she ordered a chocolate milkshake before taking the seat that Amy had recently vacated. She stared hard at her friend, waiting.

  “Thanks for mee
ting me,” Roxy began and Gilda nodded, glancing around.

  “At least you didn’t front up to the station this time. Much more discreet.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t called you back. I’ve been ... busy.”

  “Busy? We’re all busy, Roxy.” The edge in her voice was obvious and it spoke of hurt feelings and disappointment.

  “Okay, sorry, I’ve been slack. And I’ve been avoiding you because I don’t want to talk about Saturday night. About you and Max.”

  That seemed to thaw the ice and Gilda’s voice softened. “So we won’t talk about Saturday night. For now. So why did you finally phone me back?”

  “We need to talk about Oliver.” She leaned forward, dropped her voice a little. “You have to tell me what’s going on, why are the police questioning him again?”

  Gilda sighed. “I really shouldn’t be saying any of this ...”

  “I won’t repeat this to a soul, I promise. I just need to know. He’ll tell me eventually anyway, you know that.”

  “How well do you know Oliver?” Gilda asked, taking Roxy by surprise. “It’s just that the evidence is looking really bad for him.”

  She felt her stomach drop. “Like what?”

  “Like a lot of stuff I can’t tell you.”

  “Come on, Gilda, like what?”

  Gilda considered this for a few minutes, her mind clearly wrestling with itself while Lockie handed her the shake. She thanked him, took a few sips and then said, “There’s a phone.”

  “A phone?”

  “A cheap-as-chips, buy-anywhere mobile phone. They’ve traced it back to the phone calls both William Glad and Tina Passion received not long before they were killed.”

  “So?”

  “So they found it in Oliver’s office.”

  She shrunk back. “No way!”

  “Way. Big, whammy, whopping way. It had been hidden in a pot-plant by the door. Know the one?”

  She nodded, trying to get her head straight. “Someone must have planted it there. Excuse the pun.”

  Gilda gave her a cynical look. “What are the chances?”

  “I don’t know, but the chances of Oliver being a murderer are even less!”

  Roxy tried to get her head around that. It was obviously the reason the police had hauled Oliver back in today. Someone must have put it there, but who? And when? Had Amy been to see Oliver recently and planted the evidence? Had Norman Hicks? Or Lorenzo?

  “They’re dusting the phone for fingerprints but at this point it looks clean, which is suspicious in itself.”

  “The very fact that it was in Oliver’s office is suspicious,” Roxy railed. “Even if he did use that phone, he’d hardly hide it in his own bloody pot-plant for your lot to find.”

  Gilda shrugged. “You’d be surprised how stupid most crims are. You give them way too much credit.”

  “Have they considered anyone else? What about Norman Hicks or Amy Halloran, agent extraordinaire?”

  “What about them?”

  Roxy told Gilda her theories and, as she did so, she could tell Gilda was trying very hard not to scoff. “Amy could have killed all those writers to draw suspicion to Oliver and steal his clients away.”

  “She already had Seymour Silva, remember? Why kill him?”

  Roxy thought about this. “Maybe that was a separate thing? Maybe he was threatening to reveal the truth, that he wasn’t the real writer, and Amy was terrified it would destroy Norman’s book sales and her commission, so she shut him up. Only the truth came out anyway. So then she had to kill William and Tina to make it look like someone else. Someone like Oliver.”

  Gilda slurped on the milkshake and smiled. “Okay, that’s a theory. A pretty bloody crap one, but it’s a theory nonetheless. What’s Norman Hick’s motive?”

  “Exactly the same, in fact, they could have been in it together. He kills Seymour to shut him up and then has to kill the others to throw suspicion elsewhere. Oliver’s such an easy target. Everybody thinks agents are dodgy. He must have done it.” She paused, groaned. “I know, I know, I’m even having trouble buying it.”

  Gilda sat forward. “What about your friend David Lone?”

  “What about him?”

  “Do you think he could have done it?”

  This surprised Roxy and she tried to think. “If you mean does he have it in him, I don’t think so ... I mean, I don’t know, but I doubt it. In any case, it’s irrelevant. He couldn’t have done it. For starters, I was sitting a few seats behind him during his film premiere. There’s no way he got up and murdered Seymour quietly while that film was showing. I would have noticed, so would the gaggle of admirers he had around him at all times.”

  “Yeah, we’ve already ascertained that. I’m wondering about the other two, though. His alibis are less concrete for those ones.”

  Her heart sank. “I don’t know about William’s murder, but I’m his alibi for Tina.” She didn’t want to believe David capable of such a thing but she would believe anything to get Oliver off the hook. At this point throwing suspicion elsewhere seemed like his only salvation. The problem was, Gilda was way off.

  She told her about last Saturday night, blushing as she recalled how drunk she had been and how she had ended up at David’s place. She did not explain the reason she’d run screaming into David’s arms, did not want to get into that now, and Gilda didn’t seem to need an explanation.

  “So you were with him all that night?”

  “Yep, from about eleven-ish when we left the party to about eleven the following morning.”

  Gilda thought about this. “I wonder why he didn’t say that then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the detective in charge, Frankie, has already questioned him and he refused to say who he was with on Saturday night. Just said he went home after the party with someone and it was none of their business. Didn’t seem important, so they didn’t stress the point.”

  Roxy considered this, and felt instant remorse. It was clear David was protecting her, and here she was trying to stick him in it. “Well that’s very gallant of him, but the scarlet woman was me. I was with him. All night.”

  “And was he any good?”

  “Sorry?”

  She laughed. “I’m messing with you, Roxy, don’t answer that.”

  “Hey, I was joking about the scarlet bit. We didn’t ... it’s not like that ...”

  Gilda smiled again. “It’s none of my business, Roxy.”

  “Seriously, there is no business to speak of. I got terribly drunk, passed out and woke up with a hangover you wouldn’t read about.”

  “I don’t remember you drinking that much,” she said and Roxy sighed.

  “I don’t either but I polished off an entire bottle of pinot grigio back at his place, apparently, which certainly didn’t help.”

  “Pinot Grigio? That’s not your style.”

  “Tell me about it, especially when he had some top bottle of merlot in his wine rack. See what happens when I’m unfaithful to my merlot? Seriously though, why would you ask about David? What possible motive could he have?”

  Gilda slumped a little in her chair. “I don’t know. He’s annoying the crap out of me. Isn’t that motive enough?”

  Roxy smiled. “Afraid not. Do you have any other suspects? Is there anyone else I should be looking at?”

  “You shouldn’t be looking at anyone, Roxy. I told you before, stay out of it.”

  “Is that why you’ve been calling me?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I don’t think you want me to stay out of it, at all. I think you want me to keep sticking my nose in. Otherwise you’d be avoiding me, not trying to talk to me. You know what I’m like. You know I’ll wheedle info out of you.”

  Gilda looked impressed. “You really do have the mind of a detective. I keep telling you, you’re wasted in your line of work. Wasted! You should sign up to the force.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Another
detective tactic. Okay, okay, you got me. Off the record, yes, I do secretly hope you keep at it. It’s the reason I’ve been calling you trying to get you aside. I’m taking sneaky peeks to see where things are at and I’m with you on this one. I don’t think Oliver’s got a devious bone in his body, let alone a violent one, but the evidence says otherwise so we have to play it very carefully.”

  “What can I do? How can I help? I have another theory, you know?”

  She told Gilda about Tina’s dad, about his pathological disapproval of her books and of Oliver’s involvement with them. “He could have set this all up to get back at both of them.”

  “And you think he’s a killer?”

  She deflated. “No, spent a few hours with him the other day and I think he’s a sweet old man who’s pining for his daughter.”

  “That’s what Frankie says, but first impressions aren’t always spot on. Not every murderer comes with the word ‘hate’ tattooed across their knuckles. We can’t always pick them. Tell me more about this Lorenzo guy.”

  Roxy smiled suddenly, enormously relieved to have Gilda on her side, and lighter for it, too. She proceeded to tell her friend all about the interview with Lorenzo and the things that Tina’s cousin Brianna had said. But, like her, Gilda did not seem convinced.

  “What’s very annoying about this case,” said Gilda, “is how all over the place it is. Sure, Lorenzo might have killed Tina that night after yet another argument about her books. As you say, another novel was coming out, perhaps he’d decided enough was enough. Great, that’s sorted. Problem is, how does that explain William’s macabre death? Let alone Seymour’s?”

  “Maybe they’re not connected?” suggested Roxy. “Maybe David Lone is barking up the wrong tree.”

  Gilda shook her head. “But we have the phone. That’s linked to two of the victims. And there are plenty of other connections between them, like you said—Oliver, Amy, Norman, not to mention the gardening shears. It’s like a giant maze, one path leads to another but then meets a dead end at the next.”