Almost True Confessions

by Jane O'Connor

  At first Rannie thought it was for jewelry. Then she watched her mother place two tiny budlike devices into it. Hearing aids.

  “Mother, when did you get those?”

  “A couple of months ago. I hate them, but your sisters said I was driving them nuts making them repeat everything. And these miserable things do help. They should—they cost almost six thousand dollars.” Harriet snapped the case shut. On the top, in a silver high-tech font, was stamped AUDEO.

  Audeo.

  Rannie sank on the bed stunned.

  “My doctor says they’re state of the art.”

  The acknowledgment in Ret Sullivan’s book. It had been “Audeo” with an “e” until Rannie had—incorrectly, she now realized—changed it to “Audio.”

  “What’s wrong?” Harriet asked.

  “Nothing, really. Just tired, too.” Rannie kissed her mother’s moisturized cheek. “Sleep well, Mother. I’m glad you’re here.”

  In her bedroom Rannie found the printout of Portrait of a Lady. The acknowledgment to Audeo/Audio read, “Who was my ears and without whom I never could have written this book.”

  Rannie’s hands trembled. Larry was Audeo. He had done the fieldwork for Ret’s book on Charlotte Cummings. The reason that the descriptions of rooms in the Cummings mansion seemed so vivid was because Larry must have somehow wangled his way in there. And not only was he involved with Ret up to his hearing-impaired ears, Dina confirmed he’d also been carrying on with Ellen. Rannie tried to untangle the implications of all this. Did Ellen know Larry was Audeo? Probably so. Did Larry know Rannie had copyedited Portrait of a Lady? Yes, he’d intimated as much. Did he know that Rannie had found Ret’s body? Yes, odds were Ellen had told him.

  Ellen’s sudden urge to hit a Caribbean beach had been motivated by fear . . . fear that Larry had murdered Ret? But if that had been the case, surely Ellen would have told the police. Then it occurred to Rannie. Perhaps Ellen had.

  Rannie slipped on the same oversize T-shirt she had worn when Tim slept over. She curled into bed. She was frightened, and her hand, almost as if it had a life of its own, kept creeping toward her phone, fingers primed to punch in Tim’s number. But she restrained herself. Instead, she tried to make sense of what she knew, but it was like trying to fit together puzzle pieces that kept changing shape.

  She’d gone to the Dusk offices on Monday around eleven, then much later that same day dropped off the copyedited manuscript to Dina at S&S. That was when Rannie overheard Dina fielding a call from a Larry. Ellen was already dead by then, murdered hours earlier in Central Park.

  The memory of Larry entering the Dusk reception area in his mud-splattered trench coat flashed before Rannie and made her scalp tingle. Was Larry fully aware that Ellen was already lying on a slab at the morgue? Was calling S&S to speak to Ellen a ruse to support his innocence for later on when police questioning began? Nowhere near a foolproof alibi, to be sure. Still, she could hear Larry saying to the cops, “Why would I be trying to get in touch with Ellen if I’d murdered her that morning? Just ask her assistant, she’ll tell you I called.”

  Of course the far bigger, capital W why was, Why would Larry have any reason to murder Ellen? Or Ret. Rannie remained in bed and forced herself to shut her eyes, though it took all her willpower not to race into the den, screaming, “Mommy, I’m scared!”

  Chapter 18

  The first thing Rannie did upon waking was to check her suit. Unsurprisingly, the skirt had shmutz on it, shmutz that didn’t come off with a washcloth scrubbing. A trip to the dry cleaners, however, would have to wait until after Ellen’s gathering at S&S.

  Except for the highest-level suits, who wore exactly that, and the publicity department fashionistas, who were always chicly clad in black, standard publishing company attire was pretty much casual Friday every day. Yet Rannie felt compelled to look presentable and grown up today at Simon & Schuster. She was paying respects.

  It was only seven thirty, but the smell of coffee perking was unmistakable, and a real breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, prepared by Harriet, was waiting for Rannie, when she shambled into the kitchen.

  “Grandma, I don’t get it; you’ll eat ham but you won’t cook bacon?” Nate was asking over his baconless plate.

  “I don’t eat ham, darling. I said I eat prosciutto.”

  “Your grandmother follows very strict dietary laws. They just happen to be her own and not the Bible’s. . . . Ummm, yum,” Rannie murmured as she tucked into the eggs, peppered to perfection, that Harriet had spooned out for her.

  “Are you still seeing that policeman?” her mother asked once Nate had left for school.

  Rannie scowled. So either Amy or Betsy—or both—had blabbed.

  “Former policeman. He has a restaurant now in the brownstone that he owns.” Rannie stopped herself. Why did she feel compelled to make Tim sound more white-collar haute bourgeoisie than he was? “Actually it’s a bar, a cop hangout called the Offbeat. And, no, I’m not seeing him anymore. He broke up with me. Yesterday as a matter of fact.”

  “I guess neither of us is doing so well in the romance department.” Harriet paused. “Nate was talking to me about college before. I told him to think twice about Wesleyan. My friend Lois Berman’s granddaughter goes there and evidently all the kids do there is smoke marijuana. I hope he ends up at Yale. Remember when Daddy, you, and I first visited?”

  “I was thinking about that yesterday when I was in New Haven.”

  “When you started college, suddenly we were empty nesters. Empty is the word, all right, and I had your father, remember.”

  Rannie squirmed. Suddenly she had an uncomfortable feeling that she knew where this conversation was heading; however, she gave her mother the benefit of the doubt.

  “Once Nate leaves for college, would you ever think about moving back to Shak—”

  “Mother, don’t start! Please!”

  “But you’re not working. You’ll be living alone. What would keep you here?”

  “Nate won’t be leaving until September! And believe it or not, I do have marketable skills. I’m making do with freelancing right now.” Rannie left the word “barely” out of the sentence. “So it’s not entirely inconceivable that by fall I’ll have a full-time job!”

  “Don’t get so huffy! Forget I said a word.” Harriet turned and began cleaning up plates, mugs. “I just want you to be happy. Is that so wrong?” she said from the sink, her back to Rannie.

  “Mother, moving home is not the answer.” That was a diplomatic alternative to saying, “Go back to Cleveland? Over my dead body!”

  While her mother went to bathe and get dressed, Rannie grabbed a yellow legal pad and tried to jot down things she might say about Ellen. Ret murdered. Ellen murdered. Who besides herself was as closely connected to both women? Only Larry.

  She glanced at clock on her cell. What kind of hours did cops keep? Rannie didn’t know, but she called Grieg anyway. When he didn’t pick up, she left a message to call her and within a minute her cell rang.

  “Listen, I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t already know,” Rannie began, “and maybe this means nothing, but I’m practically positive Larry Katz helped Ret Sullivan write the book on Charlotte Cummings.”

  “Yes.”

  Rannie couldn’t decide whether the yes was statement or question. In any case, she chose to interpret the answer as an invitation to continue. “In Portrait of a Lady there’s an acknowledgment to Audeo. Ret says that she could never have done the book without Audeo’s help. I think Larry Katz is Audeo.”

  “Ms. Bookman, why wait till now to tell me this?”

  So this wasn’t news to him?

  “I—I just figured it out late last night,” Rannie stammered. “My mother is visiting. I saw the case for her hearing aids. The company is called Audeo. Larry Katz wears hearing aids, too. I bet anything his are the same brand.”

  “Okay. Understood.”

  Was that all Grieg was going to say?
/>   “When I was copyediting the manuscript, I mistakenly corrected the acknowledgment and changed it to ‘Audio.’ ” “Mistakenly corrected”—did that count as an oxymoron like “jumbo shrimp”? Grieg, Rannie concluded, probably wasn’t interested in discussing that. . . . But Larry’s mud-stained raincoat, certainly that was pertinent. Squealing on anyone, but especially someone she’d always liked, felt übercreepy but in for a penny, in for a pound. So oink oink!

  “There’s something else I think you should know. When I went to Larry Katz’s office on Monday, I arrived at Dusk before he did, Dusk meaning the publishing house, not the time of day,” Rannie clarified.

  Silence.

  “You there?” Rannie inquired.

  “I’m here.”

  “So as I was saying, I was waiting for him, and when he arrived, I noticed—”

  “What time was that?”

  “Um, elevenish. His raincoat was a mess. It had been raining hard that morning. But Larry looked like he’d stomped in every mud puddle on the way in. He said that it had been impossible to get a cab and of course a car speeding by could have splattered him but . . .”

  “Hold on, Ms. Bookman, I want to make sure I’m understanding this. Are you saying that you think he might have killed Ellen Donahoe in Central Park and then continued on to his office to meet up with you?”

  Yes, that was what had occurred to Rannie, although hearing Grieg’s paraphrasing, it sounded either totally absurd or somewhat conspiratorial. “Well, truthfully, I don’t know what I think.”

  Maybe paranoia was setting in, but was Grieg considering the possibility that she and Larry were in cahoots—plotting and carrying out Ellen’s murder and Ret’s too? Only now Rannie was turning on Larry, to throw suspicion off herself. It was such a ridiculous 1950s noir reading—Larry in the Robert Mitchum role and herself standing in for Lana Turner—and yet actually no more ridiculous than Rannie suspecting Larry Katz of double homicide.

  “Listen, Sergeant. The Larry Katz I knew wouldn’t murder anyone.” True, although now it sounded like unconvincing backpedaling. “I simply thought it was important to tell you what I saw.”

  “Ms. Bookman, did you know Larry Katz was involved with Ms. Donahoe?”

  “I had my suspicions. But I found out for sure just yesterday” . . . although if the sergeant questioned Dina on this point, Dina would say that Rannie was already aware of their relationship. Didn’t Mother Bookman always say lying got you in trouble?

  Rannie could almost see another scenario playing out in Grieg’s head. This one starred Rannie as a psychopathically jealous ex-lover of Larry’s—Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction minus the boiled bunny—who murdered Ellen and, oh hell, might as well throw in Ret, too! Jilted and vengeful, Rannie was now scheming to frame poor Larry.

  Whatever you do, don’t start proclaiming your own innocence now! Rannie commanded herself, so when Grieg asked if there was anything else to tell him, all Rannie said was no.

  After they hung up, Rannie sat staring at her phone. Well, that certainly hadn’t gone well!

  A moment later Harriet emerged, announcing that she was meeting Mary at the Metropolitan at ten on the dot, when the museum opened, in order to avoid the crowds.

  “You’re welcome to join us, of course,” Harriet said stiffly, Rannie understanding that her mom was trying to put salve on the sore feelings from before.

  “Thanks but I can’t.”

  Instantly, Harriet looked aggrieved.

  “I have work that has to get done this morning.” Namely the eulogistic paragraphs about Ellen. Harriet, however, seemed to construe the reply as both a convenient excuse as well as “see-I-told-you-so” proof of Rannie’s wage-earning prowess.

  “Have fun!” Rannie said, handing her mother the spare set of keys. “Maybe we’ll go out for a bite tonight. There’s that Mexican place you like so much.”

  “No. Tonight I’m making dinner—my special chicken dish—for you and Nate, and Mary, too, if she’s free. I insist.” With that, Harriet Polichek Bookman bustled out the door.

  I am wearing the pair of earrings that Ellen gave me as a farewell present when I left Simon & Schuster.” Rannie tucked her hair behind both ears to reveal them to the audience. “Ellen said, ‘They are silver commas,’ although I debated this, arguing in favor of single quote marks . . . whichever, I love them. I mean, what better gift for a copy editor? And along with the earrings was a note in Ellen’s inimitable jagged print.”

  Several heads nodded. Everyone was gathered in the largest of S&S’s conference rooms, the gigantic eight-section burl-top table removed to accommodate rows of chairs. Rannie was facing the crowd of about a hundred people; surprisingly Larry Katz was not one of them.

  For a second, Rannie turned to take another look at the photo of Ellen projected on a screen behind her. It had been taken at a sales conference somewhere tropical, Ellen lounging on a chaise poolside, smiling happily and lifting a tall glass with a paper umbrella toward the camera.

  “Sadly, I no longer have the note and don’t remember it word for word. But its meaning has stayed with me. Ellen said that although we’d known each other for ten years and were privy to stuff that absolutely no one else knew about us, she was worried that we might drift apart. Often a work friendship seems deep and indestructible. Day-to-day proximity fosters a closeness that feels real and binding, and then once two people no longer collect paychecks from the same company, well—” Rannie shrugged. “I know I’ve experienced that and I imagine many of you have too. At the end of her note Ellen wrote ‘Please let’s stay friends. I’ll be so disappointed in both of us if we don’t.’

  “That was four months ago. So far Ellen and I had been getting together about once a week. Even if it was just for coffee. She was a good friend; she had such a good heart.”

  Suddenly the door to the conference room opened and in came Larry Katz, late as usual and in his signature trench coat. His entrance was enough of a distraction for Rannie to lose her train of thought. Larry remained standing at the back of the room, unable to find a seat. He was staring at her, but so of course were approximately a hundred other pairs of eyes. Flustered, Rannie shuffled through her scribbled notes and then opted for a speedy wrap-up. “All I want to say is that I won’t ever stop missing Ellen.”

  Rannie returned to her seat and tried listening to the last speakers instead of fixating on Larry Katz.

  At the end, as she made her way out of the conference room, past a shelf of bestsellers all acquired by Ellen, Larry waylaid her and, in a voice that Rannie wished wasn’t so loud or so angry, said, “We need to talk. Now.”

  They settled on the Sixth Avenue Deli, just far enough from the Simon & Schuster offices that other attendees from Ellen’s gathering were unlikely to show up. Rannie was hungry. No, make that famished, so she ordered a Rodney Dangerfield—a triple-decker on rye with pastrami, corned beef, roast beef, tomato, and coleslaw. Larry made do with coffee and a Danish.

  “Rannie, you honestly do think I murdered Ellen!” Larry was trying hard to keep his voice low. He sounded equal parts angry and mystified. No, actually much more angry than mystified. “I told that sergeant, ‘I’m happy to take a lie detector test, swab all the DNA you want from me. I’m innocent.’ ”

  Well, Sergeant Grieg certainly didn’t dillydally. Instead of responding to that, Rannie said, “You’re Audeo.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Oh, come off it, Larry.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “All right, for argument’s sake, what if you’re right. Without doubt Ret would have made damn sure I signed a very binding nondisclosure agreement.”

  Rannie nodded in a “point taken” way. Their order arrived, and once the waiter was out of earshot, Larry continued. “Ret never shared a byline or author credit in her life. You know that. Once the new book was out she was going to make sure the publicity spotlight was on her and nobody else.”

  Rannie prepared to take the first bite of her s
andwich, no mean feat, as it was almost three inches thick. Instead she put it down. “Hold on. Didn’t you tell me Ret was really on the fence about doing personal appearances?”

  “Yeah, I did. But my own guess is once the book came out, she would have jumped at any TV, Sesame Street included.” Larry took one bite of Danish and immediately put it back on the plate, which he pushed aside, muttering, “Stale.” Then glowering at Rannie, he spread out his hands. “Okay, who am I kidding? Yes, I’m Audeo.”

  “The police know?”

  He nodded sullenly and reached for one of Rannie’s pickle spears.

  “And Ellen, she knew too?”

  Another nod. “How’d you figure it out?”

  “My mother has the same hearing aids. Audeos.”

  Larry looked embarrassed. “So much for their bullshit claim to be invisible.” He grabbed another pickle off Rannie’s plate. “Look. All this stays between us, Rannie. Right? Nobody at Dusk can know about—about my arrangement with Ret. You understand how fucked I’d be.”

  Indeed she did. Larry had been paid to help Ret write a bestseller for another publishing house. If his bosses knew, he’d be out on his ear faster than you could say “conflict of interest.” Had Ret ever held this over Larry’s head?

  “I worked with her, on and off, for about six months. Took a few personal days. Used up some vacation time. It was fun. I interviewed a lot of people, even got inside the mansion on Fifth Avenue and got all the photos Ret wanted.” Larry laughed. “I had a phony ID saying I was an NYU art history professor. So I call and—easy peasy—in I go and get a private tour from the fancy-shmancy granddaughter. Buffy. Binky. Some shiksa name. But no matter what I did, it was never enough. Ret bitched how she was overpaying me, that I was cheating her, billing more hours than I worked. . . . The only person she ever trusted was the sister.”

  “Sister? Ret had no immediate family.”

  “Sister as in nun. Sister Dorothy Something.”