The Last Thing She Said

by Lauren Carr

  “Sounds like—”

  Francine nodded her head. “That’s exactly what it is—only they keep their clothes on. I think. Maybe. I guess it depends. Some writers can get awfully desperate.”

  “But I thought writers didn’t need literary agents to get published anymore,” Jacqui said. “Technology. The internet. They can do it on their own nowadays.”

  “Some feel that the only way to make it to the big time is to do it with big agents and publishers,” Francine said with a shrug of her shoulders.

  They were finishing their drinks when they noticed a steady stream of the conference attendees leaving. A check of the time confirmed that cocktail hour was ending, and the banquet would begin soon.

  Timing could not have been more perfect. The bartender had served Jacqui and Francine their second chocolate martini just as the last writer left Sue Richardson alone. Francine wasted no time in hurrying over to the agent while she was gathering her belongings.

  “Ms. Richardson,” Francine said, “could I speak to you for a minute?”

  “I’m sorry,” the elderly woman said, “but it’s time for the banquet. Come to my presentation afterwards. I’ll say all that you need to know there. Or you can sign up to pitch to my son. It’s only seventy-five dollars. You’ll have a whole fifteen minutes. Last I heard, there were two slots left.”

  “I’m not looking for an agent,” Francine said. “I don’t need one.”

  “Lucky you.” Sue eased her chair forward.

  “It’s about Mercedes Livingston,” Francine said as the agent wheeled past her. “She’s been found, and she has heirs.”

  The wheelchair stopped.

  Carrying her and Francine’s drinks, Jacqui stood before her. “I believe you can spare us a couple of minutes.”

  “And I’m not paying seventy-five dollars for it.” Francine plopped down at a nearby table.

  Sue Richardson rolled up to the table. “Doesn’t matter if she’s alive or not. Mercedes Livingston has been declared legally dead. At the time she was declared dead, there were no heirs. That means I inherited the rights to The Last Thing She Said. Her children can blame their mother for that.”

  “That’s not what we’re here about.” Jacqui slid one of the drinks across the table to Francine. “It’s about her husband George.”

  “What about him?”

  “Someone murdered him on the night that Mercedes went missing. We’re trying to find out by whom.”

  “Talk to Mercedes. He was getting into her rental car the last time he was seen alive.”

  “We have a witness who is ready to testify that Mercedes’s car was already gone from the parking lot when she left on foot to go to Harpers Ferry at the bottom of the hill,” Jacqui said. “He’d noticed it during Mercedes’s speech. He couldn’t miss it because it was such a hot red number. Mercedes was tied up at the book signing after her speech. The Camero was gone when Mercedes walked out of the hotel.”

  “The only explanation is that someone else took the Camaro and used it to abduct George Livingston,” Francine said. “Whoever it was had to have gotten access to her car keys.”

  Sue’s eyeballs seemed to pop out of her wrinkled face. “Well, it wasn’t me!”

  “As her agent, you had access to Mercedes Livingston’s room,” Francine said. “You could have taken her keys at any time.”

  “But I didn’t.” Sue shook a wrinkled claw at her. “I wasn’t the last one to see her that night. There was one person who saw Mercedes later. Robin Spencer. She saw Mercedes when she came back from meeting her husband. Mercedes told her that she had a migraine and went up to her room to lie down.” She nodded her head. “She was gone by the time the awards ceremony was over.”

  Jacqui and Francine exchanged glances. They had forgotten that tiny tidbit. Mercedes had written in her letter that she had left with Billy right after the book signing. Robin Spencer had lied to Sue Richardson to buy her time.

  “Were the car keys in Mercedes’s room?” Jacqui asked while taking note of an overweight man in a suit crossing the lounge to join them. Instead of taking a seat, he stood over the literary agent.

  Sue Richardson shrugged her shoulders. “How should I know, and why should I care?” Her face turned angry.

  “What’s wrong, Mom?” the man asked.

  Sue reach up to grasp his arm. “Ed, these women are telling me that Mercedes Livingston is still alive.”

  “Actually, I didn’t say she was still alive,” Francine said.

  “Then what are you saying?” Ed demanded. “Who are you to come in here and upset my mother? Can’t you see she’s not a well woman?”

  “Mercedes Richardson only recently died,” Francine said.

  “And she left heirs who are most likely going to put in a claim for Mercedes’s copyright,” Sue said.

  “I’d like to see them try!” Ed said. “There was a whole court proceeding to declare her dead. If she was still alive, then she should have come forward then. Legally, she’s dead. Died without heirs. That means the copyright for The Last Thing She Said belongs to us fair and square.”

  “Don’t you even care about what happened that night?” Jacqui asked.

  “No,” Ed said with a scoff.

  Sue’s nostrils flared. “She was on the brink—no! Over the brink for something big. You know, just that night, one of our people had gotten a call from 60-Minutes to do an interview with Mercedes. 60-Minutes! All she had to do was sit down with them. But no! Mercedes had to run off with her lover instead!” Her voice trailed off.

  “Mom, it’s time to go to the banquet.” Ed grabbed the handles to her wheelchair and turned her around.

  Jacqui grabbed her cell phone from her handbag and jumped from her seat to follow them. “Wait a minute!”

  The Richardsons didn’t wait. They refused to slow down as the man pushed the woman in the wheelchair through the tight space of the hotel bar. It wasn’t until they were out of the lounge before Jacqui was able to dart around the wheelchair and grab the arm rests to cut them off.

  “We said nothing about Mercedes running off with any man.” She bore her eyes into the old woman’s.

  The two women glared at each other in silence.

  “You knew Mercedes Livingston ran away,” Jacqui said. “You knew all along. Even when you petitioned to have her declared dead, you knew she was alive and living the life she wanted.”

  “Her choice!” The old woman bit off each word. “Fame and fortune or love. She had the literary world at her feet and chose to throw it all away for some man.” She patted her chest with a bony claw. “I did what I had to do. We had a contract. All that money was collecting in escrow and she never came forward to stake her claim, so I did what I had to do.”

  “Mom had every legal right to the copyright,” Ed said.

  “Not if she knew Mercedes was alive,” Jacqui said.

  “How did you know?” Francine asked from where she had caught up to them.

  “We have nothing more to say.” Ed tried to move the wheelchair forward, but Jacqui blocked them.

  “Someone murdered Mercedes’s husband after she had left town,” Jacqui said. “The killer had to know about her plans to run away. How did you find out?”

  Sue chewed on her dentures. Her hands shook. “Doesn’t make any difference anymore anyway.”

  “Then tell us,” Francine said.

  “We overheard her and her guy telling Robin Spencer. We were having breakfast on the Hill House verandah. They didn’t see us because we were around the corner from them. But we were close enough to overhear them. I guess Robin Spencer had figured out what they were planning. That woman was wickedly clever—” Sue shook her head. Her mouth drew tight into a mass of wrinkles. “Put that woman in a room full of lawyers and she’d make each one of them look like a bunch of jackasses. I’m not just say
ing that. I’ve seen it happen. Only author I ever had who managed to screw the hell out of me to get out of her contract.”

  “She must be the one you’re looking for,” Ed said. “Only problem is she’s dead.”

  “No,” Sue said, “Robin was helping them. Mercedes had planned to drive the Camaro out someplace and meet this guy. I forget his name. Not important anyway. She was gonna leave the car wherever they’d met. It was Robin’s idea that she leave the Camaro in the hotel parking lot and go on foot to the historic section of town to meet this guy in an alley. That way, no one would have any idea where she’d gone missing. They were talking in low voices, but because of the acoustics, or I don’t know what, we heard the whole thing.”

  “And you were okay with one of your biggest authors just walking away?” Francine said.

  Sue’s mouth formed a smirk. “We had a contract. With her dead, I’d inherit—”

  “Not as long as George Livingston was alive,” Jacqui said. “How convenient it was for you that just hours later, George Livingston ended up missing.”

  “We don’t have to take this.” Ed grabbed the wheelchair. “We’re late for the banquet.”

  Sue halted her son. “I never had time to do anything with George. I was at the conference the whole day—morning to night. Check with the feds who investigated the case.”

  “You’re a wealthy woman,” Jacqui said. “You could have hired someone to get rid of him for you.”

  “If I had, which I hadn’t, I would have been a hell of a lot smarter about it.” Sue shook her gnarled finger at her. “Do you know how much crap I had to go through to have Mercedes and George declared dead? Do you know how much money I spent on lawyers? If I was going to have had it done, I would have had him killed right off—not abducted. Hit him with a car. Poison him. Whatever. But don’t snatch him and hide his body. The kidnappers never provided any proof that they had them or that they were alive. George’s body didn’t turn up until ten years later.”

  “I think we’re done here.” Ed pushed the wheelchair between them to continue down the hall.

  “I guess we are,” Francine said in a soft voice.

  “We!” Jacqui spun around. “You said ‘we heard the whole thing.’ Who is the ‘we’?”

  Ed stopped the wheelchair. Jacqui and Francine went around to face her.

  Sue shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I never kept in touch with her. We were sitting together because the place was crowded. She was the little girl who had coordinated the conference—whatever her name is.”

  “Patricia Baker? Gavin Fallon’s ex-wife?” Francine asked.

  “Gavin Fallon.” Sue’s eyes grew big. “He was the one who had set up the 60 Minutes interview. He wanted to check out her calendar to schedule the shooting …” Her eyes glazed over with thought.

  “And?” Francine urged her to go on.

  “Mercedes gave him the key to her room to go get her organizer and make copies of her schedule.”

  “Gavin Fallon went up to Mercedes’s room after her speech,” Jacqui said, “which would have given him access to her car keys.”

  “Mercedes told Robin that she was going to leave everything behind,” Sue said. “She was only taking the clothes on her back and her purse. Nothing else. Her car keys would have been in her suite.”

  “If you heard that, so did Patricia,” Francine said. “She told Gavin. He’d know where to get the car keys to set Mercedes up.”

  Their momentary glee ended as Ed turned to them. “Listen, you two. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I do know this. You tell Mercedes Livingston’s kids to stay out of our way. If they want to come out of the woodwork and try their hands at becoming authors off her name, fine. But don’t even think of trying to sue for the rights for The Last Thing She Said.” He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “That’s ours.”

  “Your mother just admitted that she knew all along that Mercedes had just walked away from her life,” Jacqui said. “She was committing fraud when she petitioned to have her declared dead to get her hands on Mercedes’s copyright.”

  “I didn’t hear her say that,” Ed said with mocked innocence.

  “We’re witnesses,” Francine said.

  “Your words against ours.”

  “What if they do decide to sue?” Jacqui asked.

  “They have no idea who they’ll be messing with.” Ed grabbed the back of his mother’s chair and continued their way to the banquet room.

  “I think we just got threatened.” Francine turned to Jacqui to see her tapping the screen on her cell phone. “What have you got there?”

  With a slim grin, Jacqui tapped the screen on her phone.

  “You knew Mercedes Livingston ran away. You knew all along. Even when you petitioned to have her declared dead, you knew she was alive and living the life she wanted.”

  “Her choice! Fame and fortune or love. She had the literary world at her feet and chose to throw it all away for some man. I did what I had to do. We had a contract. All that money was collecting in escrow and she never came forward to stake her claim, so I did what I had to do.”

  Jacqui stopped the recording. “So much for our word against theirs.”

  “Know any good sue-happy lawyers?”

  “I’m sure Bruce does.”

  “I think we’ve earned another round of chocolatinis.” They went back into the lounge.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chris’s GPS directed them around a series of tight curves up Spencer Mountain. In the valley below, Deep Creek Lake seemed to grow smaller with each turn in their climb.

  It was no accident that the late Robin Spencer bore the same name as her birthplace. Her ancestors had been the town’s founders. Spencer occupied a mountain bearing its name and one corner of Deep Creek Lake. The Spencer family’s five-star resort rested at the top of the mountain. Most of the residents consisted of a who’s who of Washington’s movers and shakers escaping city life for seasonal getaways or retirement as Lucille Del Vecchio had done.

  Receiving an earful of information from Jacqui and Francine about their encounter with Sue Richardson, Helen was unable to appreciate the view of the valley during their climb.

  “It’s too bad that Robin Spencer isn’t alive to tell us what happened after Mercedes left Hill House,” Helen said after recounting the news to Chris.

  “I wonder why Shannon didn’t mention in her letter that she had told Robin Spencer about her plans,” Chris said as he drove through the stone pillars marking the resort’s entrance.

  “Maybe because she didn’t suspect her of killing George.” Helen’s voice trailed off as her attention was drawn to the elegant resort before them. “For a suicide note, that letter was long enough without her going into extemporaneous information about Robin Spencer.” She let out a tired sigh. “I really wish Robin Spencer wasn’t dead. I mean, everyone who has met her talks about how clever and observant she was.” She shook a finger at him. “I bet you even today she would have been able to tell us who’d killed George.”

  “Well, let’s hope she told her assistant and she can tell us.”

  The front of the stone and cedar main lodge offered a view of the lake below. The back side of the resort offered a view of the valley and mountains in the distance.

  Chris bypassed the valet station to park in a garage attached to the hotel. As soon as he was released from the confines of the back seat, Sterling led the way to the Inn’s main entrance to examine an eight-foot-tall statue of a German shepherd that gave new meaning to “larger than life.”

  Squinting behind his mirrored sunglasses, Sterling planted his front paws on the pedestal to sniff at the oversized dog as if to determine which one was the rightful alpha.

  “Who is that?” Helen asked while Chris read the inscription.

  “The people of Spencer came together to elect a
leader, whose DNA has proven unparalleled loyalty to humans for thousands of years—a dog named Gnarly.”

  “The one accused of making terrorist threats?” Helen asked.

  “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said a male voice from behind them. “Gnarly has become the most notorious mayor in our state’s history. He’s been accused of trespassing, accepting bribes, violating the organized crime act, making terrorist threats, voter suppression, and—” he flashed Helen a broad grin, “the always reliable obstruction of justice.”

  Chris turned around to come face to face with Mac Faraday.

  His style was less casual than when they had previously met. Their previous meeting had been in a clandestine setting for Chris to pass on information for a case that Mac Faraday had been investigating.

  This meeting, in the open, at the five-star resort called for the multi-millionaire to wear a tailored suit with an open collar and faux leather shoes. Even his German Shepherd wore a rhinestone collar with a gold dog tag that Chris saw read “Mayor Gnarly”.

  Unlike most men who acquire sudden wealth, Mac Faraday had not allowed himself to let his body go as a result of rich food and luxury. He kept his frame slender by taking advantage of the various sporting activities that his resort offered. Except for a touch of gray in his auburn hair at his temples, he did not look old enough to be the father of two grown children, both of whom Chris had met while working yet another case.

  Sniffing and eying each other, the two German shepherds circled. Since Sterling was leashed, Chris ended up getting tied up while they became acquainted.

  A few years older, Gnarly was slightly taller than Sterling. He had more silver across his back and shoulders. Sterling’s fur was a redder hue.

  “How does a dog violate the organized crime act?” Helen wanted to know.

  “He’s a crime boss,” Mac said in a matter of fact tone. “Since Gnarly has taken office, our state attorney general’s office has racked up $270,604.93 in legal fees trying to pin something on him—all thanks to the chairman of our town council. Four different state prosecutors have worked the Gnarly case, including our state’s own attorney general.”