Cadaver at the Con

by Winnie Reed

  “A dead man who happened to be staring threateningly at her during the signing yesterday,” I reminded both of my aunties. “I’m sorry, but it just seems too much to be a coincidence.”

  I then turned to Trixie. “Don’t tell me this doesn’t spark your interest. The reporter in you wants to know why she turned on me like she did. Why she fled the room as soon as a handful of women came in to distract me.”

  “She probably fled the room because she was afraid even more people would accost her.” Nell sounded downright hostile, like she was offended on Deidre’s behalf.

  I rubbed her shoulder, feeling regretful. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, that was the last thing I ever wanted to do. “I’m sorry. I know you’re a fan of hers, and it’s not like I think she had anything to do with the death. But she seems shaken up, distracted, sullen, and I think that’s something we could take to Joe. Detective Sullivan,” I added quickly, before Trixie had the chance to tease me again.

  Only she wasn’t about the tease me. Just the opposite.

  Her eyes glowed with a light I recognized. She was intrigued, and her reporter’s instinct meant she couldn’t help but want to learn more. Maybe we had that in common. “In case she did know the man.”

  “Exactly. Maybe he needs to talk to her. What if this guy was, I don’t know, stalking her? What if he was an even bigger threat than anybody’s giving him credit for? Or she might have known him just as one person to another. If they had any sort of history at all, Joe should talk to her. I mean, there are so many people here. They’d never get through everybody. Maybe he hasn’t spoken to her at all yet.” I looked to Nell, who wasn’t a fan of any of this. Not by a long shot. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to feel like, I don’t know. A traitor. But wouldn’t you wanna know if your favorite writer was being stalked? Wouldn’t you want the police to have a reason to speak with her, so she can tell them the truth?”

  Nell shrugged, but before she had the chance to answer, a voice came from the speakers set near the ceiling. “Georgia Steel, please come to the front desk.”

  “Georgia?” I looked to my aunts, who shrugged, before turning and darting through the crowd on the casino floor. Why it mattered so much, I had no idea. I didn’t even know the girl.

  I hadn’t even gotten the chance to crack open her book.

  I only knew I felt sorry for her, being there alone. Deke once compared me to my father and his need to fix things, to protect and defend people. To save the world.

  Maybe he was right about that. Maybe I had an instinct to help people whose luck wasn’t running high.

  No big surprise, the sight of Joe Sullivan at the front desk. Even now, in full-on police mode, he attracted more than a few interested gazes from men and women alike. Did he deliberately pose himself in such a way, leaning against the desk, one hand in his pocket? He was so stinking cool and he didn’t know it.

  He didn’t look so cool when he saw me coming. “This isn’t your problem,” he reminded me as I dashed over. “Just keep out of it.”

  Who did that sound like? Oh, right. The dead guy. And I hadn’t listened then, either.

  “What’s wrong? Did you page Georgia?” I whispered, looking around as I did. We were attracting attention. Was that my doing? I knew it probably was and felt bad.

  But not badly enough to walk away. Maybe Joe was right when he gave me grief. Not that I’d ever tell him that.

  “What do I have to do to get you to listen to me?” He asked with a scowl. “Do I have to arrest you? Is that what you’re going to drive me to do?”

  “If you arrest me, there wouldn’t be any getting rid of me at all. Right?” I gave him a tight smile, trying to remember how to be cute. I used to be able to turn the cuteness on in the blink of an eye to get myself out of trouble with my father.

  Maybe it was only the sort of thing I could use on a parent, or maybe I was just too old for the trick to work. Either way, Joe hardly seemed impressed.

  “You make a strong point,” he grumbled.

  Just then, Georgia came into view. When she saw Joe standing with me at the desk, her face fell and she stumbled a little. This was clearly taking her by surprise.

  I wished I could talk to her, encourage her. Anything to make her feel better. I knew what it was like to face the police when the chips were stacked against me—just recently, in fact, when I stupidly touched the handle of the knife sticking out of James Flynn’s heart. Joe could swear on a stack of Bibles that he never considered me a suspect, but I had my doubts.

  Besides, he’d certainly treated me like one for a while there.

  “Is everything all right, Detective?” Georgia murmured when she reached us. “Have you found anything?”

  Joe nodded toward me in a very deliberate way, and just a quirk of his eyebrows spoke volumes. He wanted me out of there. And I would’ve done what he wanted, really, only I couldn’t when Georgia looked so devastated.

  And that expression gave me pause, too. The way she chewed her lip, the way her chin quivered.

  She couldn’t be guilty, could she? Not somebody like her. She wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.

  Though maybe it wouldn’t have taken cold blood to kill that man. If it was in self-defense, I wished she would just come out and say it.

  Joe glanced my way before answering. “We found the victim’s car parked down the street,” he murmured. “I’m going to have to bring you in for further questioning.”

  I ached for her, I really did. She looked like she was about to cry. “Why? What for? I never went near anybody’s car.”

  “We really should take this down to the station,” he murmured, looking around at the people who were clearly making a point of lingering nearby in case there was something they could hear.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” I blurted out. “In case you don’t want to be alone?”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary—” Joe began, but Georgia spoke over him.

  And the relief washing over her face was enough to convince me that I’d said the right thing. “Yes, would you? This is totally crazy, I don’t even know you. But—”

  “Don’t even worry about it.” I turned to Joe, feeling maybe a little more triumphant than I should. “All right, Detective. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “It’s like I never left.” I looked around the interrogation room while Georgia and I waited for Joe. Nothing had changed. Granted, not all that much time had passed.

  Georgia blurted out a laugh, which meant she stopped fidgeting and biting her lip for a second. “What, have you been here a lot? Is there something I should know?”

  “Oh, no. Don’t get the wrong idea. There was a whole big mix-up a while back. That’s how I met Detective Sullivan.” I almost called him Detective Joe. I needed to get out of that habit.

  “He hates me,” she whispered, looking down at the hands which she had folded on the metal table. Even folded, they shook.

  “No, he doesn’t. He’s just doing his job. And trust me, it’s very rare that I defend him. So you can trust me.”

  She nodded, but didn’t look convinced. All I could do was remember how it felt to be in her position, when it felt like the people in charge didn’t want to listen.

  “That’s a pretty dress,” I offered as a way to get her mind off the issue at hand. It was black, printed with tiny cherries, with a full skirt.

  “Thanks,” she grinned. “It has pockets.” Which naturally was the thing a woman said when her dress had pockets.

  “I love it even more!”

  “I bought it just for…” Her smile slipped until it looked more like a grimace, while she waved her arms around the room. “For this.”

  “For the conference, where you’re gonna do great later on. When you have your signing. It’ll be awesome.”

  “If they let me leave.” She got choked up then, pressing her lips together though her chin quivered.

  “They will. Don’t worry about it. Y
ou’ll be okay.” I had to stop writing checks I couldn’t cash, but I couldn’t help myself. Somebody had to comfort this poor girl. It was the right thing, coming with her. She needed a friend, even if that friend was little more than a stranger.

  Joe came into the room and closed the door maybe a little louder than he needed to. Oh, yes, he was good and mad. I knew it had to do with me, but I had already gotten myself into this little mess. I couldn’t let Georgia sit here alone, though.

  Although it did seem a little wrong for me to be in the room with her while he asked questions. “I can wait outside,” I offered, eyeing him.

  He chuckled as he sat. “What, now you’re going to decide to be discreet?”

  “Honestly, I’m not trying to insert myself where I don’t belong. Really,” I added when he didn’t look convinced.

  Georgia cleared her throat. “Unless there’s something you don’t think she should know, I would like it if she was in here with me. I’m so nervous.”

  Joe and I had a very loud, violent, passionate conversation without saying a word. I knew I was going to get an ear full the next time we talked. His brows lifted. So did mine. His eyes widened. Mine went wider than his.

  But he sighed, meaning I was the winner—for the time being. It was a very hollow victory. “So long as she promises to stay in the corner, and not say a word,” he told Georgia with his eyes on me.

  I raised my right hand. “I promise. You won’t even know I’m here.”

  He only shook his head. He then turned his attention to Georgia while I positioned myself in the corner. “Ms. Steel, when we spoke earlier, you claimed to have no knowledge of the deceased. No relationship, nothing. Isn’t that so?”

  Oof. Even I knew that wasn’t the smartest move she could’ve made. Of course, she probably didn’t know at the time that I’d already spilled the beans and told Joe about the way the dead man had threatened her.

  She hesitated before nodding, which was another mistake. She was a smart girl, or she must’ve been if she wrote an entire book by herself. Smarts didn’t matter so much in a time like this, when somebody faced a situation they couldn’t have predicted and had no way of navigating. “That’s right,” she whispered, and it was clear she knew it was a trap.

  “Even though I have an eyewitness account of the deceased harassing you yesterday?” Joe didn’t look at me, but it didn’t matter. She had to know who squealed.

  And I practically bit my tongue off to keep from defending myself. I’d only wanted him to know the guy was bad news. But no, I had promised not to say anything, and I didn’t need to give Joe further ammunition against me. I stayed quiet, even though it practically killed me.

  Georgia shrugged, shifting like she was uncomfortable. “I only meant I didn’t actually know him. Yes, he was harassing me, but I never met him before yesterday. That’s the truth, the whole truth.”

  Joe sat back in his seat, folded his arms in what he probably thought was an intimidating way. “All right. Why don’t we start telling a little truth. The whole truth, like you just said. When did you first meet him? Not in person, but in general. I highly doubt he walked up to you yesterday at random because he felt like bullying you. When did it start?”

  She started jiggling her foot under the table. I wished she wouldn’t. I really wanted to believe in her, but all of her behavior up to this point gave the impression of somebody with a lot to hide. Even though I had never attended a single day of law school, I wished I was her lawyer. I would gently remind her of what a bad light she was painting herself in.

  Joe had no patience for this. “Ms. Steel? It’s a pretty simple question. Why does it seem like you’re so intent on avoiding giving me an answer?”

  “It’s not easy to answer, Detective. I know I’m not doing myself any favors. But… There’s a lot going on here, and I’m not at liberty to talk about most of it.”

  Even I had to shoot her a look when she said that. What was that supposed to mean?

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Joe demanded. I hated to hear that edge in his voice, since I knew what it meant. He was coming to the end of his temper.

  “Please, Detective. I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say. I was telling the truth when I said I never met him before yesterday. He was giving me trouble online for a while. He read my book, and I guess he didn’t like it or something. I don’t know. He wouldn’t leave me alone. But I swear, I never did anything to encourage him or start an argument. When he would try to argue with me, I would try to ignore him. I did everything I could, I swear.”

  Whether or not Joe believed her was a mystery. The man had a poker face unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

  What did she mean, there was something she wasn’t allowed to say? That didn’t make any sense. Again, I reminded myself of the conditions under which Joe had agreed to let me stay. Silly me, agreeing to them. This was torture.

  “So what you want me to believe is, a reader didn’t like your book and took that as an excuse to harass you. To threaten you.”

  Then, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat, Joe pulled out a cell phone wrapped in plastic bag. “To call you a dozen times yesterday alone.”

  My eyes just about fell out of my head. One look at Georgia’s stricken profile told me she felt roughly the same way.

  “That hardly seems like a case of somebody trying to deal with an overly dedicated reader, doesn’t it?” he asked. “It sounds more to me like the two of you had a relationship at some point, you broke it off, he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “That’s not true! Detective, please. You have to believe me.”

  “Just like I had to believe you had never met the deceased? You’ve already lied to me about that. What else are you lying about, Ms. Steel? What else have you conveniently forgotten to tell me?”

  Then, before she had the chance to come up with an answer, he did it for her. “No, my mistake. Let me rephrase. What else can you conveniently not tell me? And exactly what is that supposed to mean? If there was ever a time when it was important for you to be totally honest, that time is right now.”

  Oh, I wished I wasn’t there. I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out, and it wasn’t even me he was interrogating.

  I now understood that when Joe brought me in for questioning in relation to James Flynn’s death, he’d treated me with kid gloves. Sure, he was arrogant, and he did what he could to break me down. But he was never seriously considering me as a suspect.

  He never talked to me the way he was talking to Georgia, that was for sure.

  To my complete surprise, she shook her head. Staring down at her hands, she murmured, “I’m sorry. It’s complicated, like I said.”

  “How about jail, then? Is that complicated? I could arrest you right now. You’re deliberately withholding information. You’re impeding a criminal investigation. How does that sound?”

  She didn’t say anything, and the downward angle of her head meant her hair fell in front of her face. I couldn’t see her, she couldn’t see me.

  I took the opportunity to stare at Joe, pleading with him. I understood he had a job to do, and he knew a lot better than I did had to do it. Still, it seemed that he was going overboard. The poor girl didn’t know what to do with herself.

  He was unmoved by my silent plea. No big surprise there.

  After a few deep breaths, he tried another tactic. “If I asked for your phone, would I find any voicemails from this man?”

  She shook her head. “At least, I don’t think so. I deleted them. I never even listened to any of them but the first one, honest to God. I’ve blocked his number before. He must’ve picked up a different phone.”

  A quick look at the phone sitting on the table told me she was probably right. It was a simple little phone, what people called a dumb phone. The sort of thing a person could pick up at a gas station or convenience store.

  What the heck? Was he really that determined? Was he that obsessed?


  “I don’t answer calls from numbers I don’t recognize,” she continued. “And I was traveling most of yesterday, so by the time I picked up my phone he had already called so many times. I only listened to the first message to see who it was, and I instantly deleted all the other messages and blocked him again. Seriously, you can look at my phone. You’ll see the number’s blocked now.”

  Joe frowned, silent for a long moment, then nodded. “I believe you. But that still doesn’t explain why he would keep calling. What did he have against you? You say you thought maybe he didn’t like your book. What gives you the impression?”

  There she went again, fidgeting in her chair. “What else would it be? Like I said, I didn’t know him. Not personally. We met online.”

  “I know, that’s what you said. A lot of people meet up online. Sometimes romantically, for dating purposes.”

  “It wasn’t like that!” Her hands were shaking. She lowered them into her lap and clenched them tight, like that would help. “It was a forum for writers. Maybe he wanted to be a writer, I don’t know. He was sort of a bully in there, too. The sort of person who acted like only they knew what real, good books were about. Only certain genres, certain authors. He hated it whenever an author put out what he considered too much work in too short a time. Like the book should be slaved over, like it had to take years and years no matter the genre or the length or any of it. Anybody who wrote quickly was a hack. He always had an axe to grind.”

  “And somehow he found your phone number?” Joe asked, quirking one brow.

  “Yeah. I never knew it was so easy to find somebody’s personal information online. Believe me, I would never have ever, ever put my personal phone number out there for anything. Not long after he found me, I googled my name. Needless to say, it’s not very common. All of my previous addresses were there, my phone number, all of it. I was mortified.”

  Note to self: Google my name and see if I could protect my information.

  “The worst part is,” she continued, “I did try reporting him to the police once. Back home.”