Dirty Tricks: A Kate Lawrence Mystery (11 page)

“Why, what happened during lunch?”
I prompted. “I was so pleased for you both that you seemed to be getting
along.”

“
Mmm
, so
was I. It would be lovely to have a friend closer to my own age up here in
Yankee country,” May agreed. “Not that you and
Strutter
aren’t darlings, and of course I just love Margo and John to death, but there’s
somethin
’ about being able to let your hair down with
a gal who remembers a lot of the same stuff you do, danced to the same music
and swooned over the same movie stars, you know?”

I did know. I was grateful every
day of my life for
Strutter
and Margo, who had become
my dearest friends outside my immediate family. How I would miss them if I had
to leave Connecticut, I thought with a pang before wrenching my mind back to
what May was saying.

“I totally get that. So what
happened at lunch?” I asked again.

May dropped both hands onto the
desk. “That’s just it. I don’t know. Was it something I said or something I
did? I haven’t a clue. All I know is I was blathering away about my little
publishing business …”

“You shared that with Isabelle? I
thought Romantic Nights was strictly off limits as a topic of conversation.”

“You’re right, it usually is, but
as soon as Isabelle confided that she was an aspiring author, I just knew she
was a kindred spirit. All these years she’s been
toilin
’
away at tedious jobs, making her bosses look good while keeping her own hopes
and dreams locked away. Why, it just broke my heart to hear her talk. So I
decided to inspire her by sharing my own history. When I got to the part about
not being satisfied just writing mystery stories any longer and setting up shop
with Romantic Nights, the strangest look came over her face, almost as if she
was in shock. After that, she barely said another word, pushed her food around
for a little while and then put her fork down and went back to her office,
pleading a sudden headache.”

May looked to me for a reasonable
explanation, but I had none to offer. “What were you talking about just before
you told Isabelle about Romantic Nights?” I asked her.

May thought for a moment. “I
believe she was
tellin
’ me about how hard it was to
find an agent and how she’d begun sending out her manuscript to smaller presses
herself, but she hadn’t had any luck so far.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind,
two puzzle pieces struggled to find each other. “Did she mention what kind of
novel she’d written?”

“Why, no, I don’t believe we ever
got that specific about her manuscript. She mentioned she had sent it to
Harlequin, Kensington and somewhere else … could it be Liquid Silver? I’d never
heard of that one, but Harlequin and Kensington publish mysteries along with a
whole bunch of other genres, so I assumed Isabelle had written a mystery. Seems
as if everyone else has,” she chuckled without much humor.

I digested this information for a
minute before clicking on a new tab on my computer and opening Google. I typed
Liquid Silver in the search bar before
asking
,“
What
other genres do Harlequin and Kensington
publish, May?”

“Oh, I guess you’d call it chick
lit—you know, women’s fiction, cozy mysteries, light suspense, fantasy,
romances
.
That sort of thing.
What
are you doing over there?”

I frowned as Google led me to the
website of Liquid Silver Books and read through their list of offerings.
“Liquid Silver publishes all those things, too, including romances.” I looked
at May and raised an eyebrow. “Any chance Isabelle wrote a romance, do you
think?
 
You know, the kind of thing you
publish—or reject, as the situation might be?”

May’s face morphed from puzzled to
horrified
before I’d finished speaking. “Oh,
lordy
, you don’t think it’s possible she sent her
manuscript to me, do you? And I rejected it?”

She had the picture. “I can’t be
sure, but it would explain her sudden change in attitude. Didn’t you tell me a
few days ago about a submission from a woman who kept a post office box in
Rocky Hill, right around the corner from here? You were saying the manuscript
she sent in wasn’t very good, but she wrote extremely well, remember?”

May
swallowed
hard. “I do remember. Did I tell you her name? The problem is, I delete
rejected submissions almost immediately, just send out a form e-mail and get
rid of everything else. Otherwise, my mailbox would be clogged all the time.
Wait!”

Frantically, she clicked into her
Sent folder and ran the cursor down the list of e-mails sent out within the
past couple of weeks.
 
“I meant to clean
this out yesterday, but with one thing and another, I never got around to it.”
She focused on the list of names before her for another moment. “Aha! Here it
is,
Desirée
L’Amour
. All I
have is her e-mail address, but I know this is the one. I mean, who could
forget that over-the-top name? I remember us
talkin
’
about what a great editor she would make, but I didn’t think anyone with a pen
name that exotic would be interested in doing that sort of work.”

She pulled off her computer
glasses and turned around to gaze with dismay at Isabelle’s office door, which
was firmly closed. “Could it be?” she mused. “Yes, it could,” she answered
herself. “It’s been that kind of a week altogether.”

My thoughts
exactly.
“You do seem to be having a run of bad luck,” I commiserated.

May huffed in disgust and powered
off her laptop. “Well, girlfriend, as much fun as this has been, I’d best get
on home to see what new disasters are
waitin
’ for me
before Judy arrives. Can you give me a lift, or shall I call a cab?”

Nine

Isabelle sat in her office, her
back to the closed door, and stared out the window. She was oblivious now to
the riot of color she had been thoroughly enjoying up until an hour ago while
chatting with May over lunch. She glanced at her wristwatch, which read 2:15.
Would the woman never leave?

Cautiously, she crept to the front
window of her office and peeked through the vertical blinds, which she’d yanked
shut as soon as she’d reached her sanctuary. No, there sat May at the corner of
the sales desk, tapping away at the keys of her laptop. Doubtless she was
sending impersonal e-mails of rejection to other hopefuls whose dreams she so
routinely and ruthlessly dashed. What kind of person could do that with
complete equanimity day after day? She probably enjoyed it, Isabelle concluded.

Abandoning the window, she paced
restlessly back and forth across the small room, hugging herself to keep from
shrieking.
Of all the things to happen.
What were the
odds? How could it be that the principal of a small publishing company
ostensibly based in Atlanta, Georgia, was in fact doing business in
Wethersfield, Connecticut? Wasn’t that fraud or something?

She pulled her desk chair back to
the computer and sat down to double-check. Opening Google, she keyed in
Romantic Nights Press, clicked on the company’s website link, then Contact Us.
There it was in lurid lavender: M. Farnsworth, Publisher,
PO
Box 287430, Atlanta, Georgia, followed by an e-mail link. She should report M.
Farnsworth to the authorities for misleading the public, for misleading her. It
simply wasn’t right.

Distraught, Isabelle dropped her
head into her hands and tried to get a grip. She’d given May the excuse of a
vicious headache, so she had a ready-made alibi if anyone barged in and found
her in this posture. Not that anyone would dare to do that. Isabelle had
carefully cultivated the persona of stern taskmaster, cool and unapproachable
as she went about her daily duties, precisely to discourage any chummy
overtures from other members of the staff. It had worked fine—perhaps too well.
Last week, when she’d met Kate Lawrence and warmed to the woman in spite of
herself, had been Isabelle’s one lapse, and look where that had landed her.

Isabelle’s position at Vista View
as chief bean counter and pencil pusher had turned out to be precisely what she’d
thought she wanted and needed at this point in her life, only sometimes she did
get lonely. As much as she’d hated her previous jobs, there had been one or two
people at each place of employment with whom she felt at least superficial
kinship, enough to visit for a few minutes during the day or to share a sandwich
or a cup of coffee. Being alone nearly all of the time was harder than she’d
thought it would be.

It figured that the two people
she’d met in the last month toward whom she was drawn would turn out to be at
least witnesses to, and possibly responsible for, Isabelle’s most crushing
disappointment.

For thirty years she had dreamed
of becoming a published author. Year after year as she dutifully took the
minutes of hundreds of mind-numbingly tedious meetings, made travel
arrangements for dozens of incompetent managers to destinations she would never
see, and pretended enthusiasm she’d never actually felt for their short-sighted
goals and crass aspirations, she had clung to her own heart’s desire,
determined one day to attain it. It would happen, she told herself, when she
had the time and energy to apply herself fully to the task of seeking
publication.

A fresh wave of humiliation washed
over her as she recalled the details of her decision to submit her manuscript
to Romantic Nights. She had researched the process
thoroughly,
totally done her homework and made certain her submission was faultlessly
edited and formatted according to the company’s guidelines. She had joined the
major romance writers’ organizations and participated in their on-line chat
groups, reading the horror stories of aspiring authors who had been shabbily
treated by agents.

She vowed never to put herself at
the mercy of a third party. She would represent herself. That had brought
prompt rejections from two major publishers, which refused to entertain
submissions from writers lacking agents. So Isabelle had developed a short list
of smaller, independent presses she would approach. Of these, Romantic Nights
seemed to be the most promising. All of the titles chosen for publication by
Romantic Nights were selected personally by its publisher, who made it clear in
the on-line submission requirements that she valued accomplished writing, as
well as engrossing stories. Authors were expected to submit three grammatical,
correctly punctuated samples which would be reviewed by M. Farnsworth
personally.

Isabelle glowered at the computer
screen as she scanned the subgenres published by Romantic Nights. They included
historical romance, young adult stories, contemporary romance and erotic
romance—a.k.a. soft porn.

She should have known that a
publisher who peddled smut, no matter what polite words were used to disguise
it, would be incapable of appreciating her restrained submission. “Doesn’t
quite meet our needs,” the rejection had read, infuriatingly vague and
uninformative. “Best of luck placing this title elsewhere,” as if she would
willingly subject herself to this particular sort of abuse ever again, she
thought, mourning afresh for the death of her dream. At the very least she
deserved to know specifically why her manuscript didn’t “quite meet” Romantic
Nights’ needs. Would a few lines of constructive criticism have been too much
to ask? How long would it have taken to jot them down, a few minutes? Isabelle
had invested two years in creating and honing her manuscript.

She jumped to her feet and went to
glare once again through the blinds. May still sat there, chatting away with
Kate just as if she weren’t responsible for killing Isabelle’s long-cherished
hopes. She had murdered them, Isabelle thought, which seemed appropriate for a
woman whose secondary
occupation
was writing grisly
mysteries. May should have stuck to that and not branched out into ruining
other people’s lives so cavalierly.

Maybelle
Farnsworth needed to be taught a lesson, Isabelle concluded darkly as she
watched May packing up her laptop, and Isabelle herself might be just the one
to do it. She’d made rather a specialty of setting miscreants straight over the
years, and she was good at it.

Quickly, she reviewed their
lunchtime conversation during which May had confided the exact nature of her
business venture. At first Isabelle had been intrigued and attentive, but when
the name of May’s publishing company, Romantic Nights, had been spoken aloud,
Isabelle’s interest turned to horror. She froze in confusion, only
half-listening as May continued to babble about the rigors of starting a new
business, how much work and how little profit was involved in publishing, blah
blah
blah
,

Was it possible that May was aware
of Isabelle’s submission, which she had so summarily dismissed, and was
taunting her? Now that Isabelle’s temper was giving way to reason, she thought
not. She let the blinds fall shut and regarded her reflection in a small mirror
her predecessor had left propped atop the filing cabinets. No, she decided. No
one would connect the severe-looking, soon-to-be senior citizen with her
sensible haircut and unadorned earlobes to a romance writer calling herself
Desirée
L’Amour
, the pen name
Isabelle had used consistently in her submission. Even her PO
box
in Rocky Hill bore
Desirée’s
name. Her secret was safe, thank heaven.

Now, how to give Ms.
Lah-di-dah
Farnsworth a taste of her own medicine?