A Deadly Fall (16 page)
Authors: Carol Lee
CHAPTER 1
The ride to the police station in the back seat of the patrol car was not the way I had described it in my recently published book,
Death by Grammar
. Write what you know, we amateur novelists are told, and what did I know but grammar? The murder bits I'd made up—not terribly well, evidently, as I had failed to imagine all the grim details of a police car interior, and the whole process leading up to the humiliating trip.
It really was all Ryan's fault, I decided, alternating between glaring at him and stroking his emo haircut—isn't 24 a little old to be dressing like Justin Bieber?—as he threw up into my evening bag. If Ryan hadn't brought his silly sword to the party and had it stolen, well, why not back all the way up and simply say if Ryan had kept his nose to himself and not read my manuscript.
Ryan heaved again, which really was a terrible pity as the bag had been my one girly accessory in the otherwise drab garb of Georges Sand, mid-19th century cross-dresser and male-writer-impersonator. Since I was impersonating a writer, what better costume to wear to my publisher's ball?
But I'm getting way ahead of myself, so I tried to focus on the events of the evening, suspecting I was going to need every bit of concentration I could muster, which was predictably little, under the circumstances.
“Aunt Bev, what's going on?” Ryan mumbled pitifully from my lap where his head now rested, sweaty and heavy and somehow childlike.
“We're on our way to the police station,” I said, cheerfully, feeling a little like Mr. Rogers on acid. “Just routine questioning and paperwork, I assume. Just relax, sweetie. This won't take long.”
One of the uniformed officers glanced back at us through the bulletproof Plexiglas partition and nodded. I smiled, and looked quickly away, feeling as though he would see even a slight facial expression as an admission of guilt.
I looked back down at Ryan, thinking of all the times I'd held him like this, ever since he was dropped on our doorstep following his parents' horrific automobile accident. I still remember that stolid little eight year old, standing with his book bag and his stuffed giraffe, his father's sister, who had been babysitting him when the accident occurred, looking everywhere but at us as she stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders, arms extended, and explained that she traveled for work and couldn't look after him properly until his parents got home.
What drifted unsaid in the air between us was “
if
his parents ever come home.” Which seemed highly unlikely as they were both in critical condition.
“Come in, Ryan,” I said as warmly as I could, opening my arms to him. He hesitated, and then walked stiffly into them, his warrior's heart and his little boy's fear fighting for control; not crying and throwing himself at me was the best he could do, and I honored it by not weeping and gathering him into my arms like a baby.
I think I became his mother in that instant, though Ron and I held out hope against hope that my sister and her husband would live. His Aunt Kelly, Ron, my husband, and I were all the family Ryan had, besides his parents who lay burned and broken at the Morrisville Regional Hospital, both in critical condition, neither expected to live.
My sister Ally and I had never been close, but for Ryan, I would have put up with Medusa herself. And as I noted, there wasn't much left on either side of the family.
I don't know how Ryan might have turned out had his parents lived. They were hard partiers, both of them, and Ally's husband, Geoff, had been part of Ron's law firm, so there was plenty of money to fuel their country club, their trips to Bermuda, their big, cheerless McMansion. There was little time for Ryan.
I stroked his damp blond hair again—still soft and fine like a little boy's. He had not too long ago graduated from the college where I taught English—trying to herd the catlike kids of upper-middle-class families into a group of erudite, well-read, thoughtful
educated
young people.
So now what? Not for the first time I wished Ron were still with me—he'd know what to do. I was a teacher, for God's sake. A closet writer. A gardener, cook, and half-baked interior decorator. Yes, OK, I wrote quaint murder mysteries in which the killer was never the one you suspected, but I had never really been involved in anything remotely like this.
I'd never really
found
a body before.
***
“Watch your heads,” the officer said, just as I'd heard them say a hundred time on the crime shows I watched obsessively on TV. I told myself it was research, though I didn't have a clue if the way they portrayed a murder investigation was how it one was really conducted.
Ryan was still woozy and had difficulty finding his feet. Two officers supported him out of the squad car and into the emergency room while a third escorted me.
It had already been a long night.
There had been roughly one hundred guests at the launch reception my publisher had arranged for
Death by Grammar
, so each had to be questioned in turn, their local and home addresses noted, and their activities leading up to the discovery of the body carefully catalogued.
I, of course, had discovered the body.
I'll admit it: Jules Ferne had never been one of my favorite people. Yes, I'm a college English professor; Jules is—was—a literary
snob
.
“A
mystery
,” he had sighed, glancing at me over the tops of his large, out-of-fashion glasses. “One sees so many of them these days. And most of them are entirely lacking in literary merit.” He had glanced down at my manuscript, stacked tidily on his pristine desk. “Still, at least your work is grammatically sound.”
“Thank you,” I'd managed, uncertain whether to laugh or cry. I had never intended to publish my work; I had written it strictly for pleasure, and to while away the hours that Ron spent in New York City, or in his office, cosseting his well-off clients' business affairs. And maybe it was my little act of rebellion. I'd always been such a
good
girl, it was a way to get in touch with my inner felon, and get rid of, if in fantasy only, all those people I'd ever wished out of my life.
Most of my stories took place in my imaginary version of Morrisville, the little upstate town where I had been born, raised, educated, and remained. There is a charm to small towns, but like a family, they can hem you in, stitch you into a stuffed representation of your true self because of their never-changing expectations. At various times I had fantasized throwing a cup of coffee across the diner at Louise, who, toad-like, sat at the cash register filing her nails. Or deliberately reshelving books in the library just to confound Mr. Franklin, whose pride it was that the spine of each book aligned on the shelves
just so
. Or sow annual rye in the glorious garden of Betty Buttons—her real name was Betty Carnavon, but I called her Betty Buttons for her bachelor buttons. Her garden was the envy of every woman in town, myself included.
I was just “the lady professor married to Ron Williams,” the lawyer at Williams, Franklin & Associates, a surprisingly high-powered law firm for such a relatively small town. Our shouting-distance proximity to New York City made the firm attractive to New Yorkers who wanted to keep their business affairs, particularly their fiduciary affairs, as quiet as possible, and even New York became a small town if you were one of its power brokers.
So I took out my aggressions in novel form. I murdered little old ladies who were extorting money from the owner of a posh hotel; I did in the trampy wife of the mayor whose behavior threatened to ruin him; I had even offed the head of my department via electrocution, staged by the janitor whose daughter the vindictive pedagogue had failed for failing to meet his
specific
requirements for a good grade.
The books had also been silent companions during Ron's increasingly frequent trips to New York; his increasing silence within our marriage; and finally, his death from a massive heart attack one ordinary evening after dinner while he lay reading on a patio chair on our deck. It was so—mundane, this death of his. There was none of the mystery, the intrigue, the murderer trying to cast suspicion elsewhere. It was just that: he died. He was there one day, gone the next.
As I'd never really intended to publish any of my books, when the first acceptance letter had arrived I'd gone completely off the ranch and uttered a curse word. “What the
hell
?”
Ryan meandered in from the kitchen, eating one of my famous Cowboy Cookies. He glanced at the return address and reddened.
“Oh,” he said, by way of explanation.
“Oh? Oh? What do you mean, oh?”
“I just think your books are good, Aunt Bev. I just wondered if someone would publish one. So I sent one in.” He shook his head, quizzically. “That's actually the first house I sent it to. That high school friend of yours, what’s her name, Lauren something, works there. I heard Uncle Ron talking about her working there, so I thought she might be able to get it noticed, but she's in non-fiction, I guess. What are the chances on the first try?”
What was even more alarming was that the books sold. I suspect I would have been frozen, unable to write another, had I not several already written, which I could dole out as my new publisher, Coz-Ease, demanded them. That gave me the breathing room to adjust to this new life, and eventually settle down to writing again.
Ryan had already chosen my pen-name when he sent my first query—B. T. Wallace—and so I remained, becoming one of the imprint's hotter properties—if you want to call bookish, imaginative, and somewhat solitary writers who would no doubt have fainted at the slightest drop of blood, hot.
By the time my fourth novel appeared, my publisher was doing well enough with them that I had been booked on a tour that launched in New York City at Two Steps, one of SoHo's chi-chi new hotel clubs. It didn't take much imagination to make it a masquerade ball, as that was where the big reveal of
Death by Grammar
had occurred. It was the caterer whodunit, not that that mattered under the present circumstances.
I had been sharing a glass of wine with a reviewer, when I had spotted Ryan heading toward the doors to the veranda, chatting up Jules. Ryan was costumed as a swashbuckling Porthos, while Jules was appropriately prim in a dancer's leotard, with a glittering cat's eye mask completing his
understated
ensemble.
I turned back to my companion who wanted to know how I researched the
way
my victims died, and I patiently and patently explained for what felt like the hundredth time that I read a lot. When I glanced back, neither Ryan nor Jules was visible. All the action was near the food and bar at the far end of the salon. Coz-Ease had offered up a selection of comfort snacks appropriate to the small-town setting of
Death by Grammar
: canapes directly out of the Betty Crocker cookbook, right down to the little Vienna sausages wrapped in phyllo dough, and
Mad Men
era cocktails.
I excused myself, and meandered out onto the veranda and over to the fountain, a small replica of the Trevi fountain, lit from behind the cascading water with ever-changing lights, casting a magical glow on everyone who passed, charmed and soothed by the interplay of sound and light when I saw it. A body. Floating face down, hands strapped behind his back with masking tape, the water in the pool red, and something terribly
wrong
with the feet. I assume I screamed, as moments later I was surrounded by guests, a babble of voices, waiters exchanging grim glances—and no Ryan. Two glasses, drained, sat on a waist-high stone ledge that separated the patio from five stories of city air above the streets of SoHo. And on the flagged floor I now saw the sword, bloody. A 17
th
century replica sword.
“Don't touch anything,” boomed a commanding voice. “Nothing. Everyone remain right where you are, please.”
That had been fast—a quick glance told me that hotel security stood at all the doors to the reception salon, as well as several near the street side of the patio.
I had been backing away, following the contours of the fountain toward the ivy-covered wall against which it stood. My high heel caught something, tripping me, and the next thing I knew I was sprawled over the blood-covered body of Ryan.
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