Death By Chick Lit (24 page)

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Authors: Lynn Harris

BOOK: Death By Chick Lit
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“Are you still gonna work with them?” Doug asked.
“If you call it work. I need the money. If I ever see it,” said Annabel. “Far as I know, they don’t actually kill people—though they don’t exactly step up when their ‘authors’ die. But mainly, Lo? I was embarrassed. I knew you would think the whole thing was sketchy. I knew you’d be pissed off that you were actually writing—or trying to write—while people sped past you and hit the jackpot, seemingly, or actually, without doing anything. And I knew I might be one of those people. I took everything out on you, like a huge spaz, because I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Well, you’re right,” said Lola. “It is sketchy, and I would have been pissed. But I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t have done the exact same thing in your shoes.” In fact, she was smarting a little that this company had never contacted her about a project. Even just to give her the opportunity to say no. Which is what she’d like to think she would have said, but she wasn’t entirely sure.
They were just about home. Lola’s trumpet vines stirred a bit in the feeble breeze. “Hey, Annabel,” said Lola. “By any chance is this company called The Cover?”
“Shh!” said Annabel, eyes wide. “How did you know?”
Just then, a chunky figure emerged from behind a hollyhock.
“Reading Guy!” said Lola.
Fifty-two
“Reading Guy, huh?” said Reading Guy, his hands up. “I expected worse.” He pushed up his glasses with one hand, then returned to I-come-in-peace position. “Name’s Bailey.”
“Any particular reason you’re hanging around my wife’s garden, Mr. Bailey?” Doug asked.
“The tomatoes aren’t even ready yet,” said Lola, glaring, hands on hips.
“There’s something you need to know about me,” Reading Guy said, letting his hands fall by his high-waisted sides. Now his voice sounded remarkably . . . normal. No heavy, snotty breathing, no mention of having crafted any sort of Lola doll using her real fingernail clippings. “Or rather, about your mom.”
“My mom?!”
Reading Guy sighed, his froggy head coming to rest even closer to his shoulders. “She hired me.”
“Hired you? For what?”
“Well, you know, she worries about you,” said Reading Guy, hiking up his pants. “She wanted me to keep an eye on you.”
Lola stared.
“I’m a part-time private detective. And a chick lit fan, as you know. Perfect match, she thought.”
“You’re kidding.” Lola squinted, urging her memory to make sense of this. “So that time outside Earl’s, why did you tell me I was next?”
“You were. If the killer were going by the
Day
bestseller list. Your mom actually alerted me to that.”
Damn,
she’s good. Lola couldn’t help a slight smile. “But what about tonight? If you’re supposed to be keeping an eye on me, how come you’re here instead of the crime scene? You do know about that, right?”
“Yeah,” Reading Guy looked back over Lola’s shoulder. “Got there right about when these two did. Managed to lay low.” He fiddled with a leaf. “As I said, I’m only part-time. And frankly, not that good. Plus, I don’t have a car. Oh, and Bailey’s my first name—”
“Why did you bother following me to Coney Island?” she asked. “I was clearly just on a date with my husband, who, not that we’re not both feminists, is perfectly capable of protecting me as the situation warrants.”
“Oh, I didn’t follow you that day,” Reading Guy said. He rubbed his glasses on a loose plaid shirttail. “I just had some time to kill before a meeting with the antidevelopment coalition. It’s a crime what those voracious capitalists want to do to a place of such deep cultural and historical significance, not to mention unsurpassed corn dogs.”
Not only is Reading Guy exactly right about Coney, he’s also just kind of a dweeb, Lola realized, contrite. Well, a
huge
dweeb, really, but just a dweeb.
There was just one more stone to turn here.
“Can you hold on for one sec?” Lola asked, stepping aside.
“Dude, who has the better corn dogs, Pete’s Clam Stop or Nathan’s?” Doug asked Reading Guy.
“Hey, don’t forget that other place next to the haunted wax museum,” Annabel chimed in.
Lola had gotten out her now-famous phone. “Mom?”
“Lulu, I was just about to call you! I just read they caught the Chick Lit Killer! I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”
“The article you saw, did it happen to mention me?”
“No, it was just one of those breaking headlines from the
Times
. I get them e-mailed. No full story yet. But why do I have a feeling you had something to do with it?”
Lola laughed.
“No, really. Ask me why.”
“What? Oh. Okay, why? Why do you have a feeling I had something to do with it?”
“Because, well, I’d like to think
I
had something to do with your having something to do with it,” her mother replied.
“Wait, what?” asked Lola.
“So you did? Have something to do with it?”
“Well, I did kind of catch the killer,” said Lola. “Shortly after he caught me.”
“Oh honey! I’m so proud! Wait till I tell your father,” said Mrs. Somerville. “But first, let me stop talking in circles.”
“Yes, please!”
“Lola, about Wilma. I was actually on the phone with her the entire time she was at Bergdorf’s. That’s how I knew she didn’t do it. Had she been charged with the crime, I certainly would have come forward right away. But I called you and gave you a hint when the opportunity arose because I wanted to give you the chance to get ahead of the cops on the case.”
Whoa. “Which you knew I was working on because of the guy you hired to keep an eye on me.”
Mrs. Somerville paused. “Well, partly because I know
you
. But . . . yes. Also because, well, I found Bailey on The Craig List, and—” said Mrs. Somerville.
“Mom! That’s just—it’s
embarrassing
. I’m a grown, married woman. You have to figure out how to trust me.”
“Lola, I know. I do trust you. Completely. I
admire
you. You’re principled, thoughtful, you’ve got a real head on your shoulders—I couldn’t ask for a more wonderful daughter,” Mrs. Somerville said.
Lola’s heart took an extra beat, sort of the way it used to when a cute boy called. I so needed to hear that, she thought.
“And are you forgetting the part where I threw you a bone?”
“Yes,” said Lola, chastised.
“I know you love a caper. I know you’re looking for your next big thing,” her mother said. “I wasn’t at all surprised when Bailey told me he thought you were also trying to find the killer. Though I thought it was pretty funny that for a little while there you seemed to think he was the killer.”
Heh. Right.
“But, as you know,
I’m
a little cuckoo,” Mrs. Somerville went on. “I trust you—I just don’t trust myself not to go crazy with worry, especially when there’s a chick lit killer on the loose, even though your book isn’t technically chick lit,” she said. “Hiring Bailey was an indulgence. For me. I know it was probably a little over-the-top, but you have to admit, so were the circumstances. Anyway, I’m sorry. And I guess we won’t be needing him anymore, will we?”
Lola smiled. “Naw, Mom, you can keep him on the payroll if it makes that much difference to you.”
“Really?”
“Kidding!” said Lola. “But I understand, Mommy. And, well, it makes me happy to know I make you happy.”
“You do, Lulu, you do. Indescribably. Of course, we’d be even happier if you lived closer to home—”
“My next 3.5 million, I’ll buy you a pied-à-terre in New York,” said Lola. “Want to talk to your gumshoe?”
Lola handed the phone to Reading Guy with a kind smile. “You’re fired.”
 
 
“You guys ready?”
Annabel sat in the TV room flipping channels as Lola peppered the popcorn in the giant wedding-present bowl they loved to hate. On the inside bottom, two smiling turtles in bride and groom gear held hands underneath a pink heart with Lola and Doug’s wedding date. Doug always threatened to sell it on eBay, date and all, but kept forgetting, mainly because it was perfect for popcorn, as long as one positioned any burned kernels over the offending reptiles.
“Almost!” Lola called.
Doug grabbed three Lundy Lagers. He and Lola joined Annabel on the couch. They clinked bottles. Lola settled in, her hand in Doug’s, her head on Annabel’s shoulder. Cheers, indeed.
 
The next morning, Doug brought Lola coffee in bed.
“What’s the occasion?” she asked.
“I love it when you don’t get killed.”
“I don’t get killed pretty much every day,” said Lola, pulling him down next to her, wrapping the sheet around them both, and kissing her husband hard. “Tomorrow, if you don’t mind, I’ll also take a scone.”
Fifty-three
Lola watered her garden, giving a silent but impassioned “I still love you” speech to each and every plant. Even you, wisteria.
And after a long shower, in which she employed every scented shampoo, gel, scrub, and wash she’d ever been given by last-minute birthday present shoppers, Lola toasted a bagel, wrapped a towel around her head, and sat down at her computer. Time to buckle down and start that book proposal. Doug, already at his desk, turned around.
“You smell like a smoothie.”
Lola grinned, sniffed her arm, nodded in agreement, and—just quick, before she started writing—glanced down the subject lines of her e-mail. “Asbestos turncoat,” “wardrobe froth effluvium,” “minesweeper bluefish,” “Welcome, Quetzalcoatl!” Junk, junk, junk, ju—oops, wait.
“Quetzalcoatl Everett Bloom arrived yesterday, healthy and happy. Mom Oona and Dad Mick, when not e-mailing, are resting comfortably. Click here for Flickr album (154 photos).”
“Doug?” Lola asked without turning around.
“Mmm?”
“If—
when
—I’m pregnant, we cannot give the baby a working title. Not even if we think it’s something we’ll never, ever use in a million years, like Beowulf, or Ashlee. Okay?”
“Okay. What? Why?”
“I’m forwarding you something.”
“Not even Kal-El?” came Doug’s voice.
“No way.”
Lola then saw that her long-suffering friend Sylvie had responded, only to Lola, to Oona’s e-mail.
“Lo, listen, it’s way too early to get excited, but, well, I’m excited and I wanted to tell you: I’m a teeny bit pregnant,” she wrote. “So far it’s just a double pink line in its mother’s eyes, so all sorts of horrible stuff could still happen, etc., etc., but right now, I’m happy just to be nominated. Thanks for talking the other day. I’ll keep you posted. XO, Sylvie. P.S. For the moment, we’re calling it Kevin Federline.”
“Hey, Sylvie is pregnant,” Lola told Doug, still facing her computer.
“That’s great!” said Doug, still facing his. “Anything else you want to tell me? I know it’s only been like twenty minutes since we, you know, but hey, we live in a high-speed age.”
“No no,” Lola blushed, “just an e-mail baby boom.”
“All rooty, just keep me in the loop,” Doug called from his side.
“Roger,” said Lola.
“I prefer Rogue,” said Doug. “If we’re still talking names.”
“Fine, but Rogue’s a girl,” said Lola, smiling to herself.
“God, I lov—”
“A mutant, right? Absorbs other people’s superpowers through contact with their skin?”
“Seriously. Please have my baby,” said Doug.
Lola paused. “I’m getting there,” she said. She wheeled halfway round in her chair, kissed Doug’s head, and then completed the circle back to her keyboard.
Just a bit of research before I start that book proposal. Lola clicked over to
Royalty.
 
Chick Lit Killer Happy Ending: Girl Gets Guy
Posted by Page Proof
 
Lola whooped and pointed to the screen. Doug rolled over to have a look.
 
After a dramatic confrontation on a bridge over Brooklyn’s Lundy Canal, police apprehended high-end interior landscape designer Leo Guinness, 34, who has confessed to the series of chick lit killings that have riveted the city and, at least temporarily, boosted book sales. Only through her own derring-do—and that of her adoring husband and best friend—did writer Lola Somerville, 32, who had been duped by the alleged killer into accepting a ride home, avoid the same fate, even though recent sales of her critically acclaimed
Pink Slip
had made her, technically, deserving of the killer’s wrath.
 
One tear, then another crept into Lola’s eyes. One for the joy of vindication, one for the sadness of how it had come to pass.
 
Mr. Guinness, apparently, had been acting out of deranged love for—
 
The phone rang.
Gotta be my mom or Annabel. Lola grabbed the receiver without checking the caller ID. “Hi.”
“Lola?”
Uh-oh.
“Yes, sorry. This is Lola. Who’s calling, please?
“Lola! Dixie Desmond here.”
Well! It had been a dog’s age since Lola had heard her agent’s voice. Clearly she was calling to tell Lola she had to get going, this morning, on her book about the murders.
“Saw your name on
Royalty
this morning—brava! Reminded me that I hadn’t called to offer kudos on making the bestseller list,” said Dixie.
Dixie was old-school, which Lola loved. Turned her nose up at e-mail, still called her secretary her secretary. She wore reading glasses on a chain around her neck. She was a person of middle age who actually ate lunch at lunch meetings; in other words, normal. Considering Dixie had probably never even held an iPod, it was a wonder she was able to nose out current trends.
“Thanks, Dixie,” said Lola. And now, here comes the book idea.
“And, of course, I’m just glad you’re okay, what with last night’s kerfuffle and all.”
“Thanks,” said Lola. “Me, too.”

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