“Who remembers a—”
“Still plays on Cable, so don’t tell me I’m old and out of touch.” It was a challenge, not one that any of them was likely to take up. Monique was somewhere in her forties, and woe to the person who pointed it out. Besides, it was her house.
“Don’t forget the pig in Charlotte’s Web,” April added. “His name was Wilbur, too.”
“My point exactly. Too many animal references. If you feel compelled to stay with a similar sounding name,” Monique instructed, “I’d suggest Will or William, which has gained even greater respect of late with the overwhelming popularity of the prince—”
“Right. Will Smith,” Teri agreed.
Monique glared at her. “I was referring to the heir to the British throne, not the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Actually, even better than William is its nickname Liam. It’s in vogue right now. Remember, popular actor names are almost always a sure bet.”
“I happen to like—” Teri began.
“Character names,” Monique continued, warming to her lecture opportunity, “must be selected with regard to the type of role they’ll play in the book. A hero must have a heroic name. Unfortunately, Wilbur, a perfectly good name, has been opted for some not-so-romantic uses. I suppose it could be a villain’s name or the name of a minor character, but in this context it simply won’t do. Maybe before the horse—”
“And the pig,” April chimed in.
“—but not now,” Monique continued. “I’d hate to see your work rejected for so simple an error. Remember, we’re fighting unconscious associations every time an editor or an agent reads our work. Do you really think Gone with the Wind would have been a runaway bestseller if Margaret Mitchell hadn’t changed her heroine’s name from Pansy to Scarlett?”
“All right. Point taken.” Teri rolled her eyes. “So do you or don’t you want me to read tonight?”
“Read,” Monique instructed her.
“`Chandra held her breath as Wilbur—’”
April shuddered. “See what I mean? Chandra and Wilbur? They’re phonetically incompatible.”
“Okay, okay.” Teri was no longer amused. “I’ll change it.”
Monique raised an eyebrow at April, her indication that no more interruptions would be tolerated.
“‘Chandra held her breath as Wilbur moved about the room. She could barely see his expensive Italian shoes through the downward slats of the closet door, but the unmistakable scent of his imported aftershave wafted into the enclosed space and made her head reel, reminding her of their last encounter at the dock when he’d pulled her from the choppy waters and held her in his arms, his thick biceps engulfing her with his strength. Her head had nestled against his neck, and his deep Barry White voice resonated from the sleek coppery skin of his sinewy throat.
“‘She wanted to trust him, almost as much as she wanted him, but did she dare? Two people were already dead and Wilbur had been the first on the scene of every homicide. He was either one step ahead of the police, one step behind the murderer, or... She couldn’t bring herself to even think it. If she wasn’t careful, trusting him could make her the next victim of the deadly Passion Bay murderer.’”
Too bad Leigh Ann wasn’t there to hear that last sentence, Jennifer mused. Wilbur was a hero—they’d all read Teri’s synopsis—but it was too soon to know which side, friend or foe, Gavin Lawless would fall on.
Just as Teri turned the page and drew in a great breath of air, they heard the front door swing open. Leigh Ann rushed in with a flustered, “I’m here, I’m here. What did I miss?” She plopped onto the sectional. Her face was flushed, her hair in disarray.
Thank God she was all right. Actually better than all right. Leigh Ann looked prettier than Jennifer had ever seen her.
“Shhh,” Monique warned.
Leigh Ann covered her mouth, whispered, “I’m sorry,” kicked off her shoes, and curled her feet up on the sofa cushion.
Jennifer grabbed her hand and asked, “Where the heck have you been?”
Leigh Ann drew in a great gulp of air, but Teri swatted at them with her pages. Jennifer dropped Leigh Ann’s hand and turned around like a good little critique partner. They would talk later.
“So glad you could join us,” Teri said, too sweetly to be sincere. “You need to get your phone fixed, my friend. It obviously won’t allow you to make outgoing calls.”
Teri had been worried, too.
“I’ll let you take home the part you missed,” she told Leigh Ann, and then began reading again.
“‘Wilbur slipped off his loafers. She could only see the lower half of him through the slits. He pulled open a dresser drawer and drew out a pair of navy blue silk pajamas. If he put them on and slipped into bed, Chandra could be stuck in that closet all night. She squirmed...’”
Jennifer would like to stick Leigh Ann in a closet. Better there than who knew where with Gavin, doing who knew what.
At least Leigh Ann was accounted for. That left Al Carpenter, and where he was was anybody’s guess. Sheena said she’d last seen him shortly after she collapsed in his arms and right before the police arrived. Al had been one of the first on the scene, and the one who called 911. He told Sheena he needed to take care of something, but that had been two days ago. He still hadn’t made it in to work as of six o’clock this evening. She’d checked before coming to Monique’s. But he’d have to show up eventually. Or, at the very least, telephone his wife Candy.
She wanted to talk to Sam. He had never made it over to her apartment Sunday. He’d called late, waking her up, to say a body had been found in an abandoned house along route 74 about one o’clock that afternoon. He promised to see her later tonight. It’d be good to see him, to have some time alone together. She’d been horrid to him at the reunion. Maybe she could make it up to him, and maybe he could help take her mind off of Danny’s death.
“‘Wilbur’s full lips found her own and...’”
Jennifer smiled. Romantic suspense. She couldn’t help but love it. Her mind strayed for no more than thirty seconds and ol’ Chandra had made it out of that closet and into Wilbur’s waiting arms. No wonder readers adored the genre. The reader could always be sure, despite how he was portrayed, the man the heroine fell in love with was a good guy. Too bad that wasn’t true in real life.
Leigh Ann nudged her shoulder and leaned down. “Want to grab a bite later?” she whispered.
Monique glared at them, and for a moment Jennifer was afraid that Monique was going to ask them to share with everyone what Leigh Ann had said, and they’d all wind up having “a bite.” Like having to distribute bubble gum to an entire class for getting caught chewing it. It wasn’t easy trying to divide two sticks of gum into thirty-three pieces.
Jennifer nodded. She wasn’t about to let Leigh Ann get away from her now. She tossed Monique a challenging look.
“‘...and Chandra and Wilbur sank back against the soft satin of his sheets.’” Teri laid the papers in her lap.
“Comments?” Monique asked.
“Seems to me Chandra isn’t thinking with her head,” April observed. “Sex is fine in its place, but when you let it interfere with your reasoning powers, well, it just makes us women look foolish. She can’t sleep with some guy she thinks may be a murderer. Come on!”
“I agree,” Jennifer said, turning to look directly at Leigh Ann. “It’s ridiculous. A woman should never fool around with a man she barely knows. Right, Leigh Ann?”
“Right,” Leigh Ann repeated, smiling as though she’d missed Jennifer’s point entirely.
Jennifer sighed. What really mattered, she supposed, was that Leigh Ann was safe. Even if only for the moment.
Chapter 19
“I’m in love,” Leigh Ann declared, chomping on an overfilled eclair while sitting in a slick, molded plastic booth at the all night bakery around the corner from Monique’s house. Her tongue fished for and found the bit of vanilla cream filling caught in the corner of her mouth.
Leigh
Ann had used the L word. This could not be good, not good at all.
“You can’t be,” Jennifer blurted out, suddenly not at all interested in her bear claw. It had looked so good not two seconds before. “I mean you’ve only spent how long with this guy?”
“Actually one evening, two fun-filled days, and two glorious nights.” She sounded like she was describing a giveaway vacation on some game show. “Besides, I’ve known him for years.”
Leigh Ann took another huge bite. Apparently love had done great things for her appetite.
“That doesn’t count,” Jennifer reasoned. “You only knew him in high school. It’s not the same thing. Knowing requires regular or at least occasional contact, like dating, talking, maybe a letter or two. Not years without so much as a hello.”
“Gavin doesn’t date,” Leigh Ann told her, as though that were some kind of virtue.
“He does know how to talk. I heard him. Presumably he knows how to write. I understand he’s written some songs. Can he dial a telephone?”
Leigh Ann looked at Jennifer as though she pitied her shallowness.
She had to restrain herself from reaching across the table and shaking Leigh Ann. The woman simply refused to get it.
“Exactly where have you been?”
“I told you. With Gavin.”
“Specifics. Now. I dropped by your apartment, called you dozens of times, left so many messages on your answering machine—”
“I meant to speak to you about that. Don’t you think you’ve been a little excessive?”
“Leigh Ann. I don’t seem to be getting through to you. Ben Underwood is back in town.” She was ashamed she’d said it even as the words left her mouth.
“So? He didn’t bother anybody at the reunion, and I have Gavin to watch over me.”
What she’d really wanted to say was that Danny had been murdered, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Not without any proof. So she’d dropped back to their mothers’ old scare tactic. Seems it no longer worked on Leigh Ann. With Gavin by her side, she felt invincible.
“Your friend Gavin has written a song about Jimmy Mitch—”
“You heard it! So what do you think? My man has talent.”
“Quit it!” Jennifer demanded, slapping her palm against the Formica tabletop. “Gavin might as well have taken out a full-page ad in the Telegraph saying ‘take your best shot.’ He’s set himself up. In his song, he says Jimmy was murdered, and he threatens whoever killed him.”
“Is that what you got out of it?”
Jennifer was exasperated beyond words.
Leigh Ann leaned forward. “Gavin can take care of me.”
“And who’s going to take care of Gavin?”
“We’re fine. Really. We moved to another motel—” Leigh Ann put a hand over her mouth as though she’d let something slip that she shouldn’t have.
Jennifer sat up. “Spill it. Why did you move?”
“The night of the reunion, we went back to his room to pick up some kind of equipment. He was planning to sing, you know. He has the most beautiful—”
“Leigh Ann...” Jennifer warned.
“Okay. Sheesh. You’re so impatient. When we got there, he said something wasn’t right. He does something when he leaves, puts a piece of paper or something between the door and the frame when he closes it, so he can tell if anyone has been in there. And sure enough, the paper was on the floor.” She looked up at Jennifer from under her eyelashes. “It was no big deal. We didn’t go in. He had the management remove his belongings.”
“No big deal?” Jennifer exploded. “Tell that to someone who’s standing next to the guy who catches the hand grenade.”
“Calm down,” Leigh Ann soothed. “No one has tried to harm us. Besides, I think it was just the maid.”
It was like talking to a stone wall. In Leigh Ann’s eyes, Gavin was hero material. In Jennifer’s...well, she hadn’t quite figured out exactly what Gavin was just yet.
“So that’s why I didn’t see you later at the reunion.”
Leigh Ann nodded.
Jennifer peered through the glass walls and into the dark just out of range of the store’s lights. It looked creepy. She didn’t like it that people she couldn’t see could see her, especially when someone she knew had just died. And when someone she cared about had just lost her mind.
“Couldn’t you have at least gotten reacquainted with him before you...you took up with him?”
“I know all I need to know about Gavin,” Leigh Ann informed her, gulping down her coffee. “Besides, Gavin insisted I move back to my apartment.”
Jennifer cocked her eyebrow.
“Alone. A girl only has so many sick days. Look, Jen, if I’d wanted a lecture, I would have invited Monique, not you.” She grabbed Jennifer’s hand. “Can’t you just be happy for me?”
It seemed like such a simple request, and it was what friends were supposed to do. But not under these circumstances. All of her motherly instincts were making her skin prickle, the same ones, she was sure, her own mother had felt when she’d told her she was going out with Danny Buckner. And the same ones that would jump all over her if her own daughter brought home a Gavin or a Danny.
“Won’t he be going back to California soon?” Jennifer asked hopefully.
“Not if this deal goes through.”
This was worse than she’d thought. “You mean Gavin might move back to Macon permanently?”
“Of course not, but for a while, at least until his career makes it necessary for him to leave.”
Somehow this all seemed backward. Gavin should have started out in Macon, not be coming back here now. There had to be more to the story.
“Why’d he leave?” Jennifer asked.
“California?”
“No, Macon. Why’d he take off after high school? You were here, Phoenix Recording Studios was here, and we don’t have earthquakes.” A fact probably more of interest to Jennifer than to either Gavin or Leigh Ann. “Why’d he go? Don’t pretend you haven’t asked him.”
The happiness drained from Leigh Ann’s face. “He won’t talk much about it, but what happened with Jimmy really hit him hard. They were—”
“First cousins,” Jennifer finished.
“Right. How did you know?”
She shook her head. “Jimmy’s probably living the high life in Las Vegas, never giving one of us a second thought.”
It was a fantasy of hers, created in the dark nights of her childhood. So why should she think Jimmy was dead now? Because a song Gavin wrote reminded her of Jimmy’s disappearance? Maybe the song was simply one of Gavin’s fantasies. She’d hate for anyone to believe what she wrote was true. She was overreacting, just like Leigh Ann kept telling her. Or so she hoped.
Leigh Ann nodded enthusiastically. “I told Gavin I thought Jimmy ran away, too. The kid couldn’t stay out of trouble. His parents didn’t seem all that surprised. He’d run off before. Only this time he didn’t take anything with him, and he never came back.”
“No word? Not ever?”
Leigh Ann shook her head. “Not even a postcard.”
“Maybe there was some girl involved,” Jennifer suggested.
“I don’t think so,” Leigh Ann assured her. “Jimmy didn’t seem that far along socially.”
“So what’s Gavin think happened to him?”
“You heard the song. He thinks Jimmy’s dead. That summer, all Gavin wanted was to get away from here.”
“But he didn’t leave,” Jennifer pointed out, “at least, not until two years later.”
“He couldn’t. He was only sixteen, and his therapist—”
“Gavin was in therapy?”
“He took Jimmy’s disappearance really hard. He had...well, he had a kind of breakdown. He spent over a month in the hospital. I went to visit him there once. I wasn’t sure he even knew who I was. For a while they didn’t think he’d be able to come back to school in the fall, but he did.”
Jennifer nodded. Maybe writing that s
ong was Gavin’s way, however deranged, of dealing with Jimmy’s ghost. Maybe the people he believed he was threatening didn’t actually exist.
“Did you hear what happened at the reunion?” Jennifer asked.
Leigh Ann nodded. “We’d already left, but I caught it Sunday morning on the news. I tried to call you but I didn’t get an answer, and I didn’t want to leave a message on your machine.” She touched Jennifer’s hand. “I’m really sorry.”
As though Danny’s death were somehow her personal loss. In some way, she supposed, it was.
Headlights flashed through the window of the bakery as an old blue Chevy van with some kind of Hawaiian scene outlined with red hibiscuses painted on its side pulled up directly in front of the doors. The van lights went out and the driver’s door opened. Gavin. She should have known. If she could have picked a vehicle for him, that would be it, but why was he here? Could it be a coincidence?
He strode in and walked directly to their booth, nudging Leigh Ann over as he sat himself down and slung one arm behind her. Then he propped both booted feet on the bench next to Jennifer, one entire knee exposed through the rip in his jeans.
He looked Jennifer straight in the face, his streaked blond hair hanging over his eyebrows, his clear blue eyes cold as ice.
“You girls shouldn’t be out alone at night.”
“And why not?” Jennifer bristled, not at all sure she cared to have Gavin Lawless telling her what to do. Or calling her a girl.
“They’re killing people again,” he said.
Chapter 20
“Excuse me?” It took Jennifer several seconds to process what Gavin had said, and even then she was sure she must have misunderstood.
“You heard me,” Gavin insisted, dropping his feet to the floor and relaxing back against the booth.
“What do you mean? Who’s been killed?” Jennifer asked, certain she already knew his answer.
He shrugged. “Suicide. Murder. What’s the difference except in who gets the credit? The man’s dead.”
“So you think Danny Buckner was murdered.” Believing that Danny was murdered was becoming an epidemic.
Dying to Remember Page 9
