Cadaver at the Con

by Winnie Reed

  “I’m just saying. They’re like every other forum. People talk about their favorite books, their favorite writers. People post fan art. There are private boards where members post samples of works in progress to get feedback.”

  “From what I heard, this dead guy spent a lot of time on certain forums and started stalking an author he met there. I was hoping to go online and find some of his posts. I guess I can search by username and hope Google pulls some examples.”

  “Yeah, you can do that. It’s good you have the name to go by, since there are way too many examples of toxic people on those boards. I swear, some people live just to make others unhappy. It’s ridiculous. I’ve walked away many times because of people like that.”

  “But you go back?”

  “Well, sure. Because I learn about new authors and pay attention to what people love.”

  “Because you’re so darn good at what you do.” I opened my laptop. “Any urls you can share?” I typed out the names in an empty document to use once we were off the phone.

  “I wonder if he harassed anybody else…” Darcy mused once she’d finished rattling off a handful of names.

  “I’d bet he did.” And I would’ve bet anything Deidre Price was one of those people. Nobody who glared at someone the way Lawrence had glared at her did so out of nowhere. He hadn’t just arrived yesterday, seen her for the first time and decided she was his enemy.

  “If I know my sister, you’ll find a way to learn everything there is to know about this guy. You’ll know his shoe size, which side of the bed he slept on, whether he preferred the toilet paper over or under the roll…”

  “I think you have a little too much faith in me,” I laughed. “And he was probably an under-the-roll guy. He just struck me as the type.”

  “Yeah, under-the-roll people are much more likely to stalk and harass,” she agreed. “But I don’t have too much faith in you. I have just the right amount.”

  Somebody did. That was a start.

  Once we were off the phone, I settled in to do a little research.

  “Okay, Lawrence,” I whispered, tapping on the keys. “Who were you?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  There was nothing like the beach first thing in the morning. Before the morning invasion of tourists. There was a sense of peace like nothing else, with the soft crashing of waves in the near distance.

  I took a few deep breaths of salt air and smiled, really and truly, for maybe the first time all weekend. I could finally hear myself think. There was no one to sidestep, no one to apologize to after bumping into them. No one to squeeze my way past, no line to stand in.

  Bliss, in other words.

  Everything was so quiet and peaceful, the metal grates pulled down over the storefronts. They’d be open soon enough, and the enticing aroma of fried food—some of which had no business being fried, though that never stopped me from trying it—would pull people in.

  My stomach growled at the thought of deep-fried peanut butter cups. I made a mental note to grab some before going home.

  For now, the boardwalk belonged to me and the intrepid folks eager to run or bike or stroll in the early hours. I’d never be the sort of person who woke up early for the sake of exercise. It just wasn’t me. When I woke early, it was either because the café needed opening or because I was in the habit of opening the café and couldn’t sleep past five if I tried.

  I figured all the time spent on my feet, behind the counter and in the kitchen, made up for not ever being much of a runner. That, and all the dog walking I was doing as of late. Lola would’ve loved this awesomely wide boardwalk.

  One of the few businesses open at that time of morning sat pretty far from the hotel, not that I minded. The more space I could put between me and that hive of morbid curiosity, the better.

  To think, I’d been one of those curious people so many times.

  He was waiting for me, just like he said he’d be. The slump of his shoulders, the sagging of his normally taut cheeks and jaw. So tired, so burned out.

  “You work too hard,” I called out as I approached.

  Joe’s head lifted before he found me, and his smile was bemused. “Maybe I could’ve slept in this morning if somebody didn’t text me at midnight, asking me to meet her for breakfast.”

  “You wouldn’t have slept in. Don’t even pretend.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Good morning.”

  “Good morning. Did you get any sleep at all?”

  “A few hours. You couldn’t have gotten much more yourself, if you were researching our guy at midnight.”

  “I didn’t fall asleep ‘til past two,” I admitted before barely stifling a yawn. “Come on. I need coffee.”

  “And I need to know why you demanded I meet you for breakfast this morning.” He followed me into the little boardwalk diner, which was already pleasantly busy even so early. The heavenly aroma of bacon, French toast, coffee and frying potatoes wafted over me.

  And darned if it didn’t make me feel more awake.

  There were plenty of available tables, and we took one toward the back of the room. Joe faced the front of the restaurant, I noticed.

  “You wanna be sure you can see everybody who comes in,” I observed, sitting across from him in the booth.

  “So observant,” he smirked.

  “I’ve been trying to be more observant lately, not that it’s doing much good. When there are hundreds of people to observe…”

  “Nobody asked you to observe anyone,” he reminded me in a not-too-gentle tone.

  “Yeah, no kidding. But I can’t help it. Somebody at the hotel is a killer.”

  “You don’t know if they’re at the hotel or not. Anybody with an ounce of sense would’ve been outta there in a heartbeat. And you know it.” He accepted the coffee our server poured without asking if we wanted it or not. I did the same.

  Maybe we looked like we needed it.

  “Wouldn’t that make them look guilty?” I pointed out. “Right? If they were a convention attendee?”

  “How many hundreds of people are attending that convention, do you think?” He rested his elbows on the tabletop, hands folded under his chin. “Do you think the absence of one single person would raise any eyebrows? I doubt it.”

  Darn it. I couldn’t argue that point.

  And it didn’t help Georgia, either. If she vanished, she’d be missed. By me, if by nobody else. She was supposed to have a signing that afternoon along with dozens of other authors. She couldn’t simply disappear without offering explanation.

  “Okay, fine.” Though I still didn’t believe his theory. Arguing with him would only make things worse. He was already doing everything he could.

  “Why did you want to see me this morning? Besides the joy you take in my presence?”

  “It’s definitely the joy thing.” I grinned. “You’re a walking ray of sunshine. That should’ve been your name.”

  “What, Ray?”

  “No. Sunshine.”

  It was good to see and hear him laugh. “Okay, all right. What’s going on?”

  “Like you said, I researched. Both the victim’s name and his online handle.” I shuddered. “And then I took a shower. But no matter how I scrubbed, I felt dirty.”

  “Like, kinky dirty?”

  Poor timing. Our server, a girl who couldn’t have been older than high school age, had just approached the table. Her jaw was maybe two inches from the floor after that.

  Joe cleared his throat and looked down at the table. “Two eggs over easy, bacon, wheat toast. And keep the coffee coming.”

  I managed to choke out a request for pancakes and bacon without laughing. Only after the blushing girl scurried off did I snort.

  “Stop,” Joe warned, glancing up at me.

  “You’re the one whose mind went to kink, when that was the last thing I had in mind,” I giggled. “No, I meant emotionally dirty. Toxic.”

  “Gotcha. Now you understand part of how I feel most of the t
ime. Some of us don’t spend our days writing about food and baking scones.”

  “I’ll try not to take that personally.”

  “Don’t.” He shook his head. “Sorry. It wasn’t meant as an insult, really. I’m frustrated.”

  “You’re tired,” I added. “You work too hard. You push too hard.”

  “I don’t have much of a choice.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “So. Tell me what you found last night. Entertain me. I could use a laugh.”

  “There isn’t much to laugh about. The guy was a real sleaze. I’m sorry, I know he’s dead and everything and it’s not nice to talk that way about dead people, but he was. A bully, a misogynist. No wonder he was single. I can’t imagine anybody wanting to be with a man like him.”

  “A lot of people put on an act when they go online and can hide behind a handle,” he observed before draining his cup.

  “Or maybe the person we see in real life is the act, and who they are online is the real version,” I suggested, lifting my brows.

  “Good point. Either way, they say things they would never say to a person’s face. Anybody can be brave when sitting behind a keyboard.”

  “He didn’t strike me as the brave type in real life,” I mused, staring into my very light, very sweet coffee. “Definitely the sort of guy who’d bully a tiny woman.”

  “Or grab an only slightly less tiny woman from behind.”

  “Right. It doesn’t take much courage to be that way.”

  “Bullies are always the biggest cowards, no matter what.”

  I nodded, remembering a few bullies of my own from my younger years. “This one was straight out of a textbook. Always something negative to say, always something to tear somebody down. But you know what’s funny? One of the boards I found his name on was devoted to women’s fiction.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Fiction devoted to chicks.” I rolled my eyes so he could see how little I thought of that. “You know. Female protagonists, relatable situations, strong heroines.”

  He blinked hard. “A guy like him? He was there to start trouble and scoff at that type of writing, then?”

  “No. That’s the funny part. I mean, yeah, he started trouble whenever he had the chance, but some of his posts were in defense of these books. He was at his nastiest when he tried to smack down anybody speaking poorly of the genre. He knew more about popular women’s fiction authors than anybody like him should know. Either he researched them so he could be better informed when he made fun, or he read and enjoyed it.”

  “Hmm. I’d lean toward the former rather than the latter.”

  “I’ll go the other way, then.”

  “Big surprise.” He tried to make eye contact with our server when she refilled his coffee, but the poor kid wasn’t about to look at him. She was probably already overwhelmed by his looks and the sheer masculinity rolling off him like the waves crashing against the beach. Teenage hormones and all that.

  I, on the other hand, was not a teenager. Yet I still had a hard time keeping my impulses under control. Like the urge to cover his hand with mine. Just to comfort him, so I told myself.

  But I didn’t do it, mostly because I didn’t want to see the look on his face when he asked if I’d lost my mind.

  “I just don’t see why a person would go to all the trouble of literally quoting passages he enjoyed and thought were, you know, well-written and insightful if he wasn’t a fan of the work,” I shrugged. “He had a passage for everything, I’m telling you. Example after example of beautiful prose, vivid descriptions, wit. All of it.”

  “Was he a writer, maybe?” Joe leaned his chin on his palm, staring over my shoulder. “We haven’t found much of an employment history. Maybe he was a writer who published under a pen name.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t that make sense? What if he was quoting his own work?” I couldn’t help laughing softly. “I’ll have to look through his posts, see who he’s quoting and look them up.”

  “You don’t have to do anything. Or go through anything. Nothing has to be done by you.”

  “I’m curious.”

  “You’re incorrigible.”

  “What about it?” I leaned back when my food arrived, smelling like heaven on a platter. The little paper cup of whipped butter was just slightly melty, and I left it in the center of the top pancake after stacking them neatly.

  I realized Joe was watching me. “What?”

  “I’m fascinated by your process.”

  “My process?” I looked down at my food.

  “You don’t spread the butter. You leave it in the center.”

  “Yeah, so it melts down. And I cut around it and save that center section for last.” When he kept staring at me, I shrugged. “What?”

  “You’re so strange.”

  “Okay, Mr. Coffee Stirrer. Shame they use spoons here. You can’t chew on spoons.”

  “I could, if I didn’t mind breaking my teeth.” He dipped his toast into his egg, which made me gag.

  “And I’m strange. I never got the whole dippy egg thing.”

  “Which makes you even stranger.” He bit into his toast with great relish, smacking his lips together for effect.

  I told myself not to laugh but couldn’t help it.

  “If he was a writer,” I mused between bites, “maybe he was jealous of new writers who managed to get published and get their own signing at conferences. Maybe he didn’t like Georgia’s work and felt she didn’t deserve that sort of attention. Remember when she described how he felt about people who write too fast?”

  He nodded. “He thought they were hacks.”

  “Yeah, and she wasn’t kidding. He hated hacks. Hacks were his biggest enemies. He wanted to rid the world of hacks, people who churned out content for the sake of a greedy public. He hated them even more than he hated people who pirated books. Which is saying something.”

  “Just because a person writes quickly doesn’t make them a hack.” There he went, dipping that toast again.

  I managed to suppress another gag, but it wasn’t easy. “I agree. A lot of the people on the forums did, too. But some people agreed, too, which gave him fuel.”

  “Sure. All a person like that needs is one person who agrees with them.” He sighed. “This still tells me nothing about why he was here and why somebody would kill him.”

  I leaned in. “Come on. I know you don’t want to jump to conclusions. I totally get that. But what are the odds that he wasn’t here to stir trouble in real life, the way he did online? He wasn’t calling Georgia obsessively because he wanted to be friends. He had a personal problem with her. Maybe he considered her a hack and thought she had no business with a book deal and a signing at a major event.”

  “Did you see any altercation between them online?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know her handle, so I have no idea. I was only trying to get a feel for him.”

  He tapped the fingers of his left hand against the table while using the fork with his right. “I’d like to talk to Georgia again.”

  “She’s already—”

  “Let me finish.” He lowered his fork with a clink against the plate. “Not at the station, where she’s only going to fall apart again.”

  “Someplace less threatening.”

  “Right.”

  “Like where?”

  “Are you staying alone in your hotel room?”

  “Excuse me?” I asked while almost dropping my cup and wasting precious coffee.

  “Don’t get the wrong idea.”

  “Okay, kinky dirty.” And darned if our server wasn’t approaching the table when I said it.

  She turned around and walked away. Poor kid. We were scarring her for life.

  “I was thinking I could maybe talk to her there. Don’t even bother telling me how unusual that is,” he added, lifting his hands in self-defense. “I know it is. This is one of those times when I need to be able to talk to somebody in private, where they feel like they can open up. If she te
lls me something she’s not supposed to tell me, there might be a way I can arrive at the right destination some other way.”

  “I still can’t figure out what it could be. What she’s not supposed to say.”

  “I know. Neither can I. Between you and me, it’s the part of this that bothers me most. The fact that she says she can’t say anything. What could that mean?”

  I wiped my mouth and tossed my napkin to the plate. “There’s still another hour before the morning’s festivities. I can text her, ask her to meet me in my room.”

  Then, I thought twice. “You’d better hope nobody notices you walking in with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ll never hear the end of it.” When he shot me a confused expression, I shook my head. “Forget it.”

  “No. What do you mean?”

  Hmm. This would either give him an ego boost, or it would make him squirm. It was worth taking a chance. “You’re sort of popular among some of the attendees.”

  “No,” he insisted, waving a hand. “Just because Nell and Trixie—”

  “I’m not talking about them. Trust me. You’ve been noticed, let’s put it that way. And I don’t know if I wanna be the girl walking around with the detective who makes the ladies swoon.”

  He snorted. “Shut up.”

  Did he honestly not know? Was it possible?

  Why did it take me so long to get the idea? He didn’t notice the effect he had on women because he didn’t even think about it. He was still thinking about her. His wife.

  I decided against pursuing the subject any further.

  “I’ll walk back. You drive. I’m in Room 1013. Just, you know. Be cool about it.”

  He rolled his eyes before sliding sunglasses over them. “I’ll give it my best shot.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  At least I had time to hide my unmentionables before Joe showed up. The room hadn’t been cleaned yet—it was way too early for housekeeping to make their rounds—so I spread the covers back over the pillows and smoothed them out. I dashed to the bathroom and straightened up the towels, then straightened up the junk on the counter.

  How did one person manage to make such a mess? I wasn’t a sloppy person by nature. Maybe it had to do with staying in the hotel. It turned me into somebody different.