by Jane Haddam
She put the chicken—enough to feed the neighborhood—on a-large dinner plate and brought it to me, together with fork, knife, soupspoon, and butter. I pushed it around and tried to decide if the idea of eating bothered me more than the idea of telling Phoebe I wouldn’t.
Then I remembered something else.
“Did Amelia and Verna have a fight?”
Phoebe bit her lip and looked oddly un-Phoebe-like. “Why?” she asked me. “Did Amelia say something?”
“I haven’t talked to Amelia. It’s something this clerk in a bookstore said. Something she said she saw in Romantic Times. About Verna being kicked out of Farret and Amelia giving her a little push. Or something. I thought she must have got the story wrong. Amelia’s a piss but she isn’t usually vindictive. And she’ll help people if they ask her to.”
“I know what you mean,” Phoebe said, “but not this time.” She saw the surprise on my face and threw up her hands. “What am I going to tell you? It was about a year ago. There wasn’t a fight, really. In fact, as far as I can tell, she and Verna were still friendly.”
“But she wouldn’t intervene with Farret?”
“She intervened with Farret,” Phoebe said, “only she intervened to get Verna thrown out.”
“But why?”
Phoebe shrugged. “Don’t ask me,” she said. “I’m just president of this organization. I tried to get Verna to bring a complaint with the AWR board, but she wouldn’t do it. Said she and Amelia were working it out among themselves, I could stuff it, et cetera. So Farret cut her loose, Amelia invited her up to Rhinebeck for the weekend, and that was that.”
“Anyone know what it’s about?”
“No.”
I stretched across the table and got the receiver from the wall phone. “Dial Amelia for me,” I said.
“In Rhinebeck?”
“Of course in Rhinebeck.”
The stiffness in Phoebe’s back said she didn’t think I’d be any more successful than she had been, but she dialed. There was always a chance Amelia would tell me something.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Amelia said when I finally got her on the line. Getting Amelia on the line meant going through three secretaries (all muddled), two connections, and five renditions of “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.” I considered complaining about this. I didn’t.
“I’m taking a bath,” Amelia said.
“I’m smoking a cigarette,” I said. “I just wanted to ask you a question.”
“You are interrupting my time with my Muse.”
I lit a new cigarette with the butt of an old one and forcibly stopped myself from telling Amelia what I thought of that. Since the death of Myrra Agenworth, Amelia Samson had been the premier category romance writer in the United States. She hadn’t actually written anything for twenty years. She had “secretaries.” The “secretaries” got outlines and character sketches. The “secretaries” wrote the books. Amelia’s formula being what it was, the “secretaries” had been writing the same book once a week since the system was put in operation.
It has always been my opinion that Amelia’s Muse quotes the Dow Jones.
“Phoebe said you had a fight with Verna,” I said.
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I didn’t have a fight with Verna,” Amelia said. “We were always on amiable terms.”
“So you had her kicked out of Farret?”
“I didn’t,” Amelia stopped. She took a deep breath. I could hear the sound of ice in a glass in the background. “Why,” she said, “do you want to know about Verna?”
I considered possible answers to this. The truth was simple—I wanted to know because the story didn’t make sense, because I was curious, because I can’t stand not knowing what is going on. The truth was going to get nowhere with Amelia. Dramatics might.
“Verna is dead,” I said virtuously. “Somebody tried to kill me.”
There was a background sound of ice in a gin glass, a deep breath that meant Amelia was taking a drag of a Secret Cigarette. Amelia smoked only Secret Cigarettes. No fan ever saw her with a butt in her hand.
“Nobody killed Verna,” Amelia said positively.
“Are you going to deny someone tried to kill me?”
“A maniac.”
I chalked one up for the grapevine. Every romance writer, mystery writer, agent, and editor in New York probably already knew more about my illness than I did.
“They found Sarah English’s body today,” I said. “She’d been dead four days. They found her in Caroline’s apartment. Verna’s dead, Amelia. All I want to know—”
“I can’t tell you over the phone.”
“Amelia, I’m sick, for God’s sake. I can’t go hauling out to Rhinebeck.”
“The Russian Tea Room,” Amelia said.
“Now?”
“I’ll make reservations for lunch at one.” Another pause. “If you’re pulling some kind of shit,” she said, “I’ll poison your soup myself.”
She hung up.
I handed the receiver to Phoebe.
“Lunch at the Russian Tea Room,” I said. “Everybody else goes to Le Cirque, Amelia goes to the Russian Tea Room.”
“She’s going to tell you what happened?”
“She didn’t exactly say.”
“If she tells you, tell me,” Phoebe said. “I’ve got an open file at AWR.”
“Right,” I said. I pushed the chicken and potatoes away and got up, stretching. It had not been the most sensible first day out of the hospital. If Nick hadn’t gone home to his apartment for the first time in three months, he would have lectured me. I was surprised he hadn’t called to lecture me on the phone.
“Television tomorrow,” Phoebe said, waving at the chalkboard.
“Four o’clock in the morning,” I said. “That’s why Marilou takes drugs. She has to get up at four o’clock in the morning.”
“I’m going to take Adrienne out and buy her a television,” Phoebe said. “Speaking of television, she tells me she’s never had one.”
I nodded wearily, heading for the living room. Halfway to the hall, I stopped, bothered. Someone had said something that didn’t make sense. Phoebe had said something that didn’t make sense. Worse, it made the opposite of sense. I tried to remember what it was, but couldn’t. I gave it up. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be important enough to keep me from sleep.
Adrienne was lying at the edge of the far side of my bed, one arm around a teddy bear and the other around Camille. Phoebe had wrapped Adrienne’s braids into a crown on the top of her head, to make it easier for her to sleep.
I put on a pair of pajamas and got in the empty side, surprised at how little space children occupy in the material universe.
NINETEEN
I FOUND THE LITTLE silver thing in the pocket of my dress when I reached for cigarettes. It had been on my bedside table, and so had the cigarettes, so I figured I must have swept the whole mess into my pocket without looking on my way out the door that morning. I lay the little silver thing in the palm of one hand and prodded it with the fingers of the other, trying to decide what it was. Then a disembodied voice above my head said, “Miss McKenna, you’re ruining my concentration,” and I had to put it back in my pocket.
I was in Makeup. The disembodied voice above my head belonged to Angelo, who was a one-man crusade for the Preservation of Gay Culture. Angelo had three earrings in his left ear, four handkerchiefs stuffed so tightly down the front of his jeans they creased when he inhaled, an electric blue satin shirt, and mink eyelashes. I was all but strapped into a hydraulic dentist’s chair with black plastic upholstered seats and mysterious chrome torture instruments welded to the frame. A great many arc lights were trained on a point a little to the left of my nose. It was quarter after five in the morning.
The Network had sent a stretch limousine for me, complete with uniformed driver guaranteed to be deaf. The driver has to be deaf or he’d hear what the Guest says about the Network for forcing the G
uest out of bed at this hour of the morning. He has to be uniformed to make muggers think he’s a cop. Muggers generally being drug addicts, this is not entirely impossible. My driver held the door for me, showed me the location of coffee and cigarettes (built into an imitation NASA Central that popped out of the back of the driver’s seat), and asked me if I wanted to watch television. The television came out of a trap door in the roof on a crane. I could also make phone calls. I started doing some serious smoking.
I intended to catch Marilou Saunders as soon as I walked in the door. I had a crazy idea I could lock her in her dressing room and force her to talk by threatening to read her something. It wasn’t possible. She was there. She came sweeping into her dressing room surrounded by a multitude of little old ladies in gray cotton smocks embroidered with the Network logo, looking like a junkie after four weeks of good luck. The little old ladies formed a barrier. The door to her dressing room was locked. Miss Saunders was Unavailable until Air Time. By the time Air Time came around, I was imprisoned in the chair.
“Did you see that thing I was holding?” I asked Angelo.
“I can see the pores in your face,” Angelo said. “If you don’t shut up, everybody in America will see the pores in your face.”
“They’ll love the pores in my face,” I said. I got the little silver thing out of my pocket. “Look at this. Do you know what it is?”
“You’re ruining your lip line.”
“Give me the lip line I’ve always had. I like it.”
“Nobody else does.”
“What is this thing?”
Angelo gave an exaggerated sigh, bent over my palm, and closed one eye like a jeweler looking through a magnifying piece. He straightened almost instantly.
“It’s a little silver thing,” he said.
I almost asked him if he knew Phoebe Damereaux. I didn’t, because he probably did. Phoebe had appeared on “Wake Up and Shine” more often than I’d want to count. I wasn’t ready for a lecture on how he wished everybody could be as cooperative as Miss Damereaux. People are always giving me lectures about how everybody should be as cooperative as Miss Damereaux.
“You’re going to need all the help you can get,” Angelo said.
“There’s nothing wrong with my face.”
“I’m not worried about your face. I’m worried about her.” He swiveled a hip in the direction I took to be toward the set and smirked. “It’s bad enough she can’t read. It’s bad enough she won’t listen to the tapes they give her with the synopses of the books on them. Today she’s still high from last night.”
“Oh, fine.”
“And she doesn’t like you much, either. Tried to get you thrown off the schedule. Not that that makes you anything unusual with her, if you know what I mean.”
“Austin, Stoddard & Trapp owns the Network.”
“The Network owns Austin, Stoddard & Trapp.”
“Same difference.”
“Possibly she got enough speed into herself to stand up straight,” Angelo said. “Or they got enough speed into her. She’s a puddle.”
“How does that woman get anything done?” I asked him. “She runs an interview show. She’s written a book—”
“Written a book? She uses books for coasters. She thinks books are bound toilet tissue.”
“That’s what I said,” I told him, “but someone who should know says she’s actually written a book. It doesn’t change what I said about the show. When does she get off that stuff long enough to do the show?”
Angelo smirked again, letting me see his dimple. “She doesn’t run the show,” he said. “The show runs her. She shows up for the show. The show feeds her intravenously. She’s colorful, you see.”
“She still has to go on, for God’s sake.”
“She’s propped up in her chair. Once she gets in front of the camera, she goes on automatic pilot. It doesn’t matter how outrageous she is. She’s supposed to be outrageous. That sells the show.”
“To whom?”
“The Network will do anything for her,” Angelo said. “She’s the first thing with decent ratings against that cheerleader at NBC. The Network will do anything.” He pursed his lips. For the first time, I realized he was wearing lipstick. Dimestore Vermilion Passion lipstick. “Well,” he conceded, “not anything.”
“They won’t buy her drugs for her,” I said.
“Oh, they’d do that if they had to.” Angelo gave me a limp wrist. He was very proud of his limp wrist. “Fortunately, Ms. Saunders has her own connections in that regard. What they won’t give her is an alibi.”
“Alibi?”
“Some bimbo says our dear Ms. Saunders was hanging around when she—the bimbo—got poisoned, and apparently she was, or she doesn’t remember, which is more likely, but anyway, they won’t do it for her. They’ll make sure nobody talks to her, but they won’t lie to the police for her.” He gave me his dimple again. “I won’t do it either,” he said.
I was very, very cautious. Even through terminal fatigue, I knew how important this was. “She asked you to give her an alibi for a time someone was poisoned?”
“She asked everybody,” Angelo said. “She asked the night clerk, and he isn’t even here in the middle of the afternoon—the alibi time, sweetheart.”
A red light stuck in the wall over the mirror started to flash. Angelo made agitated stabs at my eyelids with what looked like a surgical instrument.
“That’s two minutes,” he said. “You have to get moving.”
Under other circumstances, I might have behaved myself. Being on television frightens me. I don’t have that much to say. What I do have to say is probably actionable. I am also overly aware that anything I say is going to be heard by my mother. No matter what my mother says in public, she is very careful to watch every show I’m on and read every word I’ve written.
This time I was too angry to care. I kept seeing the faces of Tony Marsh, and Nick, and even Phoebe when I told them Marilou and Sarah had been in that room. That, more than the fact that someone had killed Sarah and nearly killed me, fueled my rage. I heard my name called over a loudspeaker. I felt the clammy hand of a production assistant on my back. I saw a light go on over the curtained entrance to the set. The next thing I knew, I was trying to walk sideways across the stage while smiling directly at the camera with the light on over it.
Marilou Saunders was sprawled in a paisley wingback chair, hands folded in her lap, legs crossed at the knee, eyebrows arched. She was wearing a yellow peekaboo blouse just this side of legal and a skirt so straight it looked poured in concrete. Behind her was a publicity poster for her romantic suspense novel and a minidump of advance copies. The painting showed a man and a woman climbing a rope over a plunging canyon, woman first, man bringing up the rear and kissing her ankle passionately in the process. The woman was wearing an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse and four-inch high-heeled sandals. I took one of the books and stuffed it into my pocket.
“Patience!” Marilou said deliriously as I sat in the wingback opposite her. She snatched a copy of my book from the desk and held it in the air, backward, so my picture was showing. This let her audience know I had written a book without making them feel they knew enough about it to have to go out and buy it.
Marilou turned to the camera. “Well!” she said, leaving the country of delirium for the realm of orgasm. “We’ve been reading about you in the papers again, haven’t we? I believe the New York Post even had your—obituary?” She gave this last a broad interpretation and a wink. I had a sudden vision of her announcing the starvation toll in Ethiopia with a giggle. It was awesome to contemplate.
“Well!” Marilou gasped again. “You’re not dead, are you?”
You couldn’t have held me down with cast-iron constraints: Marilou’s face worked like a mechanical doll’s with a nervous tic. She had a copy of the Post by her chair. She was grinning at me.
“You certainly don’t look dead,” she trilled.
“No thanks to yo
u,” I said.
The smile never faltered. The eyes never stopped rolling. The words, however, were mangled. Marilou Saunders croaked.
“You had to just leave me there?” I asked her. “You couldn’t have waited for the ambulance? And what about Sarah?”
“We’re on the air,” Marilou hissed. The hissing was new. Nothing else was. Eyes continued to roll, smile continued to proclaim sunshine and light for the world. “You can’t do this.”
“They found Sarah’s body yesterday,” I said. “She’d been dead for four days. She must have been dead when you left.”
Jerky little hand signals were added to the rolling eyes and the smile. “I’m going to have your ass.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” someone in the back said. “We were broadcasting. That went out. What’s the matter with that asshole in the booth?”
“You just said asshole on a nationwide hookup,” somebody else said.
“Why don’t we break for a commercial?” Marilou giggled.
Nothing happened. Nothing happened. The same lights continued blinking on the same cameras. The same cameramen continued to point the same cameras in our direction. They could only hear the director in the booth, not us, but by then even I thought the director should have intervened.
Marilou staggered to her feet. “You bastard,” she screamed in the direction of the control booth. “You’ve always been after my ass, you goddamned self-righteous son of a bitch—”
All the lights in the studio went out.
Marilou looked around the darkened set, blinked, and threw herself into her wingback. “You bitch,” she said to me. “The two of you had it planned. That black bastard has had it in for me from the beginning, the Christ-damned stuck-up son of a whore, and this time you were in on it, goddamn you.”
“I was in on what?” I said. “You’re the one running around refusing to talk to people. You’re the one who said you were never there, which you were, because I saw you there, and how do I know you didn’t kill Sarah and put her body in Caroline’s apartment?”
