by Jane Haddam
“No one can bring her back,” Adrienne said. “I’ve been thinking about it and thinking about it. Nobody can bring her back. And I get so angry.”
“Everybody gets angry,” I said. “Everybody thinks crazy things like maybe it was their fault.” She jerked in my arms. I was right on target. “None of that matters,” I said. “None of it’s true. You’re going to feel bad for a while. That’s all right. You have a right to feel bad and you have to feel bad before you can feel good again. Only it helps to feel bad with company. Even if you don’t like to cry.”
She wriggled out of my arms and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “It wasn’t my fault,” she said. “Somebody did it on purpose.”
“Yes, they did.”
“Is that the same thing? As Mrs. Arbeth? Is making someone dead—”
“Murdering someone.”
“Is that like Mrs. Arbeth?”
“That’s worse than Mrs. Arbeth. Mrs. Arbeth can always get religion someday and straighten herself out.”
Adrienne treated me to a good, healthy grimace of contempt. I couldn’t help a smile. We both knew Cassie Arbeth was going to straighten herself out around the time the United States and Russia implemented a viable nuclear arms reduction pact.
Adrienne yawned. “I want to go to sleep,” she said. “But I think Phoebe wants me to watch ‘Sesame Street.’”
“You can’t watch ‘Sesame Street’ until we get the cable hooked up. There’s no reception in this part of Manhattan. I’ll put you to bed in my room.”
“Don’t forget the cat,” Adrienne said.
I couldn’t have forgotten the cat if I’d wanted to. Camille had attached herself to Adrienne’s brand-new Saks Fifth Avenue cardigan.
By the time I put them down in my bed, they were both already asleep.
In the kitchen, Phoebe was icing butter cookies to look like jack-o’-lanterns. The butter cookies were spread across the AWR stationery and the romantic suspense posters, letting them know what was what. I made a stack of iced butter cookies and started eating them.
“Had lunch with Amelia,” I said. “Never got a chance to eat anything.”
“You going to tell me what was wrong with Verna and Amelia?”
“Later. And I’ll have to swear you to secrecy.”
“So swear me. How was Adrienne?”
“Okay, I think. Rocky but okay. She went to sleep in my room.” I tried a marzipan frog. My stomach decided it didn’t like me anymore.
Televisions, I thought. Televisions, televisions. What was wrong with televisions? I took a piece of AWR letterhead, turned it upside down so that I had a blank sheet, and began to make doodles in the upper right-hand corner with a green razor point. Televisions.
“Phoebe,” I said. “Did you say something last night about televisions? About Adrienne never had a television?”
“That’s right,” Phoebe swatted my hand away from a new stack of butter cookies. “She had to go over to that awful woman’s house to watch television.”
“You remember when we went into Sarah’s half of the house? When Adrienne was packing and we were cleaning up after the robbery?”
“You were cleaning up after the robbery.”
“Phoebe,” I said. “If there wasn’t a television, what did they steal?”
Phoebe stopped icing her cookies. She frowned. “Maybe they didn’t steal anything. They came in and there was nothing to steal, so they left.”
“They took out a couple of drawers in the meantime.”
“Pique.”
“If it was pique, they’d have trashed the place,” I said. “That sort usually do. Also, think about what got handled. Sarah’s desk. The writing desk in Sarah’s room. The drawers in the vanity table. Nothing else.”
“So?”
I wrote “Revised Schedule” on top of the sheet in front of me, then:
Thurs.//Fri.: Verna dies.
Fri. lunch: Sarah, me poisoned at Dana’s.
Caroline’s office vandalized.
Weekend: Sarah’s house robbed.
Mon.: Sarah’s body found in Caroline’s apartment. Fire.
I pushed the paper across the table.
“I left out the important thing about the fire,” I said. “Somebody burned a lot of papers and a manuscript. That was it.”
“So?”
“I tried to make a list like this at Nick’s this morning,” I said, “but I got sidetracked. I’d have left out the robbery then anyway. But look at this. Somebody robs Sarah’s house and disturbs a lot of papers but doesn’t take anything that we can figure out. Somebody goes to Caroline’s apartment, puts Sarah’s body in a chair, then rips up a manuscript and burns every paper in the place. Max said he vandalized Caroline’s office all on his own, but he could have been put up to it, couldn’t he?”
“Max Brady ripped up Caroline Dooley’s office?” Phoebe said.
“We’ve all been assuming Sarah wasn’t really a target,” I said, “because there didn’t seem to be any point. Marilou, yes. Me, it’s happened before. But what if killing Sarah was the whole point?”
“What for?”
“She sent that manuscript to the whole world,” I said. “She sent it to Verna. According to Amelia, Verna was burned out. She couldn’t write to save her life. According to Max, he didn’t write Verna’s romantic suspense.”
“You think Verna took Sarah’s manuscript and handed it in as her own?”
“Maybe.”
“But Verna died before Sarah did.”
“Verna wasn’t the only one with a stake in Verna Train novels.” I reached for the phone. “As far as I can tell, she wasn’t even the one with the biggest stake in Verna Train novels.”
I dialed Max Brady’s apartment, let the phone ring two dozen times (twelve rings to the minute, according to the phone company), hung up, and tried DeAndrea’s place. No answer there either. I got up and headed into the hall for my coat.
“It all comes down to Max,” I said. “No matter how I look at it, it always comes down to Max.”
“You think Max killed Sarah?”
“No,” I said. “I think if I can keep Max sober long enough, he can tell me who killed Sarah. Even if he doesn’t think he knows.”
“Oh, fine,” Phoebe said. “Where are you going?”
I was halfway through the hall. “Bogie’s,” I called back. “If DeAndrea isn’t there, Karen and Billy may know where Max is.”
TWENTY-FOUR
BILLY AND KAREN MAY have known where Max Brady was, but I didn’t get a chance to ask them. By the time I got to Bogie’s, Billy was pinned behind the bar by a group of jump-the-gun Happy Hour freaks and Karen was on the sidewalk, surrounded by a circle of women who wanted more than anything to know how to deck a man three times their size with a flick of the wrist. Actually, it was more like a flick of the foot. As I came out of the cab, she had her foot hooked around the poor man’s leg and was tripping him forward. He fell sideways. Hopping.
DeAndrea was sitting on a barstool in a corner near the window, squinting over a stack of papers. He cleared a space for me.
“Ah,” he said. “You’ve come to the meeting.”
“Meeting?”
“Never mind.” He did his best to signal Billy for me, got a kind of baleful glare, and shrugged. “There’s an MWA dinner meeting tonight,” he said. “Here.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “As far as I can tell, with the possible exception of Mary Higgins Clark, people attend MWA meetings in inverse proportion to the money they’re making.”
I got out my cigarettes and lit one. “I came down to find Max Brady,” I said.
“Go ahead and find him,” DeAndrea said. “Last time I saw him, he was passed out on the bed in my apartment. He rouses periodically to use the facilities.”
“He’s drunk.”
“As a skunk.”
Billy came rushing down to our end of the bar, took my order for a Bloody Mary, and went r
ushing back. The Happy Hour group was ordering pousse-cafés. Out on the sidewalk, Karen’s anonymous volunteer was windmilling, trying to prevent himself from falling backward. Billy came back with the Bloody Mary.
“It’s this business with Caroline Dooley sabotaging his book,” I said. “And then the keys. He says he never had the keys—”
“Keys?” DeAndrea said. “Yeah, he had Caroline Dooley’s keys. After he ripped up Austin, Stoddard & Trapp. Dana and I found him at O’Lunney’s with all this stuff on him. That paperweight thing. Keys. People’s manuscripts.”
“People’s manuscripts?”
“Yeah. He must have gone out of there looking like Santa Claus, no joke. Security at that place must be dreadful.”
“What happened to the keys?”
“I put them in an envelope and addressed them to AST and Dana went off and mailed them. We didn’t think we could trust Max with the keys. I was a little pissed off, if you want to know the truth. I mean, she got him started on that nonsense to begin with. Caroline’s doing this to your book. Caroline’s doing that to your book. Caroline wasn’t doing anything to his book. It was an awful book.”
“Dana,” I said. I put my hand in my pocket, looking for a fresh pack of cigarettes, and hit metal. I pulled the little silver thing into the light and stared at it, resentful.
“Look at this.” I held it out to DeAndrea. “What is it?”
He took it out of my hand. “A little silver thing,” he said.
I put it on the bar next to my drink. Outside, the male volunteer was going to his knees.
“Television sets,” I said. “And poison. And this thing.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what. It’s got something to do with Sarah’s manuscript. Only I don’t know what. And the thing about the poison—” I shrugged. “It’s like there are little pieces of things floating around in my head. Something I know about the poison that I can’t remember. Something wrong. And Dana. You said Dana and something hit me. Like, if I could shift gears somewhere, I’d know something about Dana. Only I don’t know what.”
“At least you’ve given up on Max,” DeAndrea said. “That was a dead end. Believe me. He might be capable sober, but the way things have been—”
Bill responded to a signal for another Bloody Mary by raising his eyes to the ceiling and pretending to search there for vodka. Outside, Karen started to approach her volunteer from behind, inching closer, gesturing with her hands.
“Max could have been in it with someone,” I said.
“Sure,” DeAndrea said. “He’d be the perfect accomplice. He couldn’t turn you in because he couldn’t remember doing anything.”
Billy put another Bloody Mary, this time with celery, in front of me. I took the celery out. On the sidewalk, Karen’s victim fell backward, pitched forward, was caught by the crowd.
It almost didn’t register. I was looking at my list again, trying to work a rebus without clues, when it sank in.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “What did she do?” I got off my seat and headed for the sidewalk, running into a Yuppie couple on their way in.
DeAndrea got off his seat and ran after me. “It’s all right,” he yelled. “It’s only a demonstration.”
I wedged through the crowd, grabbed Karen, and spun her around.
“What did you do?” I asked her. “Just now. He fell backward and pitched forward. And then he sort of fell.”
“It’s all right,” Karen said, looking a little panicked. “I was just—”
“What did you do?”
Karen spun at the male volunteer, hooked her ankle around his, and jerked. He fell backward. Then he pitched forward. Then he was in the air and floating toward the crowd.
Somebody caught him. I don’t know who.
“Dear God,” I said. “Phoebe was right.”
“Rape strategy,” Karen said. “It’s not really martial arts, it’s just this thing you learn to ward off rape—”
“Rape,” I said.
Karen didn’t like my tone. “I’m not in favor of it,” she said.
“Rape,” I said again.
I had grabbed the little silver thing when I ran from the bar. I was holding it in the palm of my hand, squeezing it, almost cutting myself. Now I held it out and stared at it.
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“What’s the little silver thing,” Karen said.
I put it in my pocket. “It’s a pen clip,” I said. “It’s the silver T-clip from a Tiffany T-pen.”
“McKenna?” Karen said. “Are you all right?”
I got a ten-dollar bill from my back pocket and thrust it into her hand. “To pay Billy for the drinks,” I said. “I’ve got to find a cab.”
TWENTY-FIVE
AT THE LAST MINUTE, I called Phoebe and left a message for Nick. I could have called Nick—it was only five-thirty and he was likely to be at the office—but I didn’t want a lecture and I didn’t want a shouting match. I got out of the cab a block above Dana’s building, tried three ruined pay phones before I was able to get a half-decent connection on a fourth, and told Phoebe,
“I’ll be home in less than an hour. Tell him I’ve got to see Tony Marsh official-unofficial. He knows how to set that up.”
“Where are you?”
“Trying to catch Dana before she leaves the office.”
“McKenna—”
I hung up. If Phoebe spent any time thinking about it, she’d realize no one went looking for Dana at five-thirty. Dana liked to do things during business hours. Dana broke routine only for large deals involving multimillion-dollar offers from German paperback houses. I was hoping it had been a dead week. I didn’t want to find Dana or talk to her. I wanted to search her files.
Somewhere in those files was a copy of Verna Train’s romantic suspense novel. Sarah’s novel wouldn’t be there, but I had a copy of that at home. I had to have the two manuscripts together to be absolutely sure.
I got off the elevator at twenty-six to find a dead floor. The lights were off in the reception room. The typewriter was put away. The green Dripmaster had been washed, dried, and turned on its head. I sat down. The manuscript was the most important thing, but not the only thing. Now that I was in Dana’s office, I could think of a few items it wouldn’t hurt to clean up before I got home to Nick’s apoplexy and Tony’s inevitable skepticism.
Like where Sarah’s body had been when the police searched the office.
Like how Sarah and I had both managed to take arsenic when it had only been intended for one of us.
Like, where the arsenic had come from.
I got out of my chair and headed for the center offices, trying to think of a reasonable explanation for being there if someone happened to be wandering around. First the general file room, then Dana’s office. I could always say I had come to look for Dana. No one would believe it, but I could say it.
I was out of the office and down the hall before it hit me. I had to back all the way up to be sure I wasn’t imagining things.
The green plastic Dripmaster.
The day Sarah died, it had been a blue plastic Dripmaster.
I walked across the carpet and touched it. On the floor in the corner I could see a small plastic dish of rat pellets. I had a sudden vision of myself spilling coffee into that corner while Sarah lurched around the reception room. There had been no plastic dish of rat pellets there then. There had been such a dish when I first came in to see Dana. A full dish.
All she’d had to do was dump the dish into the Dripmaster. She could have done it with Sarah in the room. She could have shielded the Dripmaster with her body while she “made coffee,” electric coffeemaker blend plus rat pellets. The water would have dissolved enough of them as it went through.
When she found me lying on the floor with the line open to 911, all she had to do was chuck the Dripmaster, hollow out one or two Halloween candies and put pellets in them, hide Sarah’s body, and wait. Of course, she hadn’t realized the
re would be Marilou to contend with. As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Marilou didn’t want to talk any more than Dana wanted her to.
Where had she hidden Sarah’s body? Where, for that matter, had she hidden the Dripmaster and the plastic dish for the rat pellets?
I started back toward the central offices.
The halls were dead dark and I was a little punchy. I wandered in and out of offices, around and around corridors, up and down back hallways. In the dark, Dana’s offices seemed endless, convoluted, sinister. In a suite full of paper, there are paper rustles, paper sighs, paper complaints. Paper shudders and snaps in the ghost breezes, the ghost drafts. Writers’ offices, literary agents’ offices, publishing houses all sound like haunted mansions after dark.
I held my breath, tried a door, looked in, found a ladies’ room. I tried another door and found a storage closet full of oversized black plastic garbage bags. The garbage bags made me hesitate, but I couldn’t decide what they made me think of. I closed the door and moved on. I could always come back, I told myself. My subconscious added, “in the morning.” The last thing I wanted was to go wandering around those offices any longer than I had to.
I no longer wanted to go wandering around those offices at all. I have, at various times in my life, broken into offices, apartments, and hotel suites after hours. I am always very brave going in and very chicken when I get there. I was very chicken now. Dana’s offices were spooking the hell out of me. I was beginning to think I’d arrived on the tail wind of a brainstorm. I should have tried to get Tony to listen to me first. Then if I met too much resistance, I could have tried to find out for myself. I could—
I had been moving while I was thinking. In the dark I hadn’t noticed the door. Even if I had, I’d have had no reason to expect it to be open. It was a big, ugly, splintered-wood double door, the kind often locked and barred to make a wall in a makeshift room. There had been “walls” like that at Farret and Writing Enterprises. I was so used to ancient-door-used-as-wall, I would never have tried to open it. I didn’t have to. I leaned against it. It pitched me into the hall.
It pitched me into more than the hall. It sent me sprawling headfirst across a utility corridor into a set of freight elevator doors. Those, too, were ancient and wooden. They swung on hinges instead of sliding on tracks. They opened whether the carriage was on that floor or not.
