Dirty Tricks: A Kate Lawrence Mystery (13 page)

After we settled ourselves in a
big booth in a back corner of the diner and placed our orders for bodacious
omelets, Margo asked Judy, who had driven in from her home in Doylestown,
Pennsylvania, why her husband hadn’t joined her to enjoy our magnificent fall
foliage, if nothing else.

“Drag Bob away from his weekend
golf games? You must not have been married very long,” Judy laughed. “That’s
why I started writing—did May tell you that?—because Bob became addicted to
chasing a little white ball around the course, and I turned into a golf widow.
I started keeping a journal about the kind of retirement I’d always imagined we
would have. Bob made a nice living over the years.”

“What line of work was he in?” I
prompted.

“He was a salesman. You wouldn’t
believe how much a good one can earn. When one commodity or company would
fizzle, he’d just move along to something else, salaried, commissioned,
whatever. It didn’t really matter, because he could sell anything. Not having
kids, we didn’t have many expenses, and with my teaching salary, great health
insurance and a very comfortable pension after thirty-five years, we were all
set for a terrific retirement.”

Her laugh was a bit hollow as she
reached for her coffee. Margo exchanged glances with May and made a
kind-hearted attempt to lighten the mood. “Talk about
makin
’
lemonade out of lemons, you’re positively an inspiration to golf widows
everywhere.” She gave Judy a bawdy wink.

“Speaking of inspiration,”
Strutter
chimed in, “dare I ask where you get yours? Margo
shared one of your recent titles with me, and my goodness, I was blushing
before the end of the first chapter.”

I directed a puzzled look her way.
“I didn’t think women of color blushed.”

“Oh, yes, we do. You just have to
pay attention. We sunburn, too, in case that was your next question.”

Judy covered a smile with her
napkin before replying. “To answer your question, inspiration for erotic
romance can come from almost anywhere. Mine happens to come from my own love
life, which I’m sure
surprises
you, considering my age
and the fact that Bob and I have been married practically forever.”

“Not at all,” I protested politely
at the same time that Margo and
Strutter
murmured
equally weak denials. May just grinned and popped a piece of toast into her
mouth.

Judy gave us her best
grandmotherly smile and continued, unfazed. “Even mature women can have very
healthy libidos, you know, and it doesn’t make us sluts. Before Bob discovered
golf, I was his favorite hobby, as a matter of fact, but when his new mistress
became the Midtown Country Club, I was forced to
rechannel
my energies, so to speak.”

“Thank goodness she has an active
imagination and an excellent grasp of the English language,” May beamed. “More
importantly, I’m so thankful she found her way to my little
publishin
’
company.”

I had a question I couldn’t help
asking. “But if your only experience has been with your husband, how do you
manage to come up with some of the more, uh, adventurous couplings—and even
triplings
—you describe in your books?” I blurted.

Strutter
looked shocked, and even Margo raised her eyebrows, but Judy remained
unflustered.

“Barbie dolls,” she told me
serenely, “specifically Barbie, Ken and Midge. They’re not fully articulated,
but you can move their arms and legs around enough to be able to tell if a
position is plausible. You can also figure out if there’s any possibility of
romance involved, or if it’s just gymnastics. May’s very strict about that,”
she assured us.
“Not too athletic and, above all, not
laughable.”

May nodded her approval. “We’re
looking for romance in the bedroom, not comedy. I leave the jokes to Margo in
that area.” She slapped her niece’s hand lightly.

Margo stuck out her tongue. “I’m
afraid May knows too much about my misspent youth. I’m a happily married woman
now. So how did you two get together? Surely the bigger publishers would have
been tickled to get your stuff, Judy. It’s exceptionally well written. Even I
can tell that. Is Random House prudish about your chosen genre?”

Judy accepted a mug of coffee from
our waitress, as did the rest of us in turn. “I don’t know about Random House.
I never sent them anything, but even if they were a bit strait-laced back then,
I think
Fifty Shades of Grey
proves
they ultimately updated their thinking, along with everyone else in the
publishing industry. Things have changed so much, and not just in publishing.
There’s a tolerance for open sexuality in the U.S. now that’s almost European.
I mean, fifteen years ago, I would have been horrified at the notion of Viagra
and
Cialis
being advertised on television, wouldn’t
you? In fact, I would have been astounded to find such medications existed. Now
I wish I owned stock in Lilly and Pfizer,” she admitted.

“I’ll go you one better. I
do
own stock in Lilly and Pfizer,” May
bragged, and we all hooted.

“Now that’s foresight,”
Strutter
said with genuine admiration in her voice.

“More like foreplay, wouldn’t you
say?” Margo cracked, and we all dissolved into giggles, prompting curious
stares from diners at surrounding tables.

“But we’re
digressin
’,”
said May, dabbing her eyes with a paper napkin. “Tell these gals how we joined
forces—or should I say, hooked up?” Margo groaned and poked her in the ribs
with an elbow.

“Where was I?” Judy wondered
aloud. “Oh, yes, big publishers. Well, back in the nineties, it was practically
impossible for a fiction writer to get published without an agent, and it was
incredibly tough to get one, the self-important little snots. Over the course
of a year my first romance—which was pretty tame, by the way, lots of yearning
glances and heavy breathing, but nothing explicit—visited more major cities in
the U.S. than I ever did. Submissions were still mostly by snail mail, hard
copy, double-spaced, and packaged up in manuscript boxes with return postage. I
could have wallpapered my bedroom with the rejection letters I got from snarky
agents.

“Then one happy day the romance
market really took off. Publishers were actually conducting conferences around
the country on how to write something that fit their romance requirements. I
went to one of them and sold my revised manuscript to Avon… or was it Avalon?
You’d think I’d remember, but at this moment I don’t. Anyway, I thought I’d
died and gone to heaven.”

“You must have, after all that
time and effort,” I said, awed by her perseverance.

“For a while, probably,” May
agreed, draining her coffee and signaling a passing waitress for a refill.

“Then what happened?”
Strutter
prompted. We were totally engrossed by Judy’s
story, imagining ourselves in her shoes.

Judy continued
,
her eyes focused on something far away from our table in Rocky Hill. “I got an
advance of a couple of thousand dollars, which was thrilling. It was the last
thing about the process that was, though. From then on it was sheer drudgery.
First, some pretentious young editor, probably fresh out of Bryn
Mawr
, sent me instructions for what amounted to a total
rewrite.” She rolled her eyes, remembering. “By the time I slogged through
that, and a couple more revisions after that, which seemed to be intended to
make every romance novel read just like every other romance novel, the only
question in my mind was, why had they bought my book in the first place? The
final manuscript could have been written by anybody anywhere. They changed
almost everything about it, or
rather,
they insisted
that I change it. Even my original title didn’t make the cut.”

“My goodness, you didn’t even get
to name your own book?”
Strutter’s
eyes flashed as
she bridled on Judy’s behalf.

“Nope, and I didn’t have anything
to say about the cover either. They graciously allowed me to write under my own
name, but even that was a fight.”

“Wow,” was all I could manage.
“What did they want to call you?”

“I don’t remember that either, but
it was one of those one-from-column-A and one-from-column-B names that all
sound alike.
Victoria Ashford, Amber Crosby, Jillian
Greystone
, like that.
Anyway, I dug in my heels, and
they decided Judy Holloway was WASP-y enough for their purposes.”

“Unlike
Desirée
L’Amour
,” May murmured, looking suddenly wan. Judy
threw her a confused look.

“
Heck, at least that
would have been hot. Anyway, to cut to the chase, I fulfilled my contractual
obligations and walked away without looking back. At that point I didn’t care
if I ever wrote another book. It was such a relief to extricate myself from
that meat grinder.”

“I can believe it. So what made
you change your mind?” I was determined to hear the end of the story.

Here Judy reached across the table
to squeeze May’s hand.
“This one here.
She’s what made
me change my mind. Tell them, May.”

Obligingly, May picked up the
story. “It was at one of those writers’ conferences I attended a couple of
times where all the
wanna
-be and newly published writers
go to swan around being Authors with a capital A, give each other awards that
mean nothing to the reading public, and spout platitudes during cookie-cutter
panel discussions. Years ago I actually participated in one called “Putting the
Fun in Funerals,” if you can believe it.”

Margo couldn’t help emitting one
of her trademark snorts.

“Anyway, I was
toyin
’
with the idea of launching my own small press and looking to meet some talented
newcomers, but I wasn’t having much luck. I’d set myself up in a corner of the
main exhibition hall, not as the author of the
Ariadne
Merriwether
mysteries but as M. Farnsworth, freelance
editor … you know, bring me your work in progress, and I’ll edit two pages
while you wait at no charge.” She laughed.

“What’s funny about that?” I
wanted to know. “Offering free samples seems like a pretty good gimmick to me.”

May dabbed her lips for the final
time and pushed her empty plate away. “Let’s just say it was a real learning
experience—for me, not for any potential clients. The first thing I learned was
that most writers think their work is already flawless. Heaven forbid anyone
should mess with their deathless prose.
Never mind that most
of ‘
em
couldn’t tell a phrase from a compound
sentence, let alone punctuate either one correctly, poor things.”

“So I gather business wasn’t
brisk,”
Strutter
summed up.

 
“I felt like the lonely little petunia in the
onion patch until Judy took pity on me. She watched me for a while, sitting all
by myself behind my brave little sign, and came over and sat down at my table.
I read two pages of her work in progress and couldn’t find a single comma out
of place. We became friends and colleagues right then and there.”

The two women grinned at each
other, and my partners and I did the same.

“Just like the three of us did
back at BGB,” Margo recalled fondly, referring to our days at the Hartford law
firm where we’d first met.

“What a great story. I’m so glad
we all got a chance to meet,” I told Judy. “Tell us, how does your husband feel
about your unusual new hobby?”

“Hobby, nothing,” May corrected me
with amusement. “Judy here makes more in royalties than the rest of my authors
put together.”

“I’m glad we got the chance to
become acquainted, too,” said Judy. “As for my husband’s feelings about the
books I write, I couldn’t tell you, because he doesn’t read them.” She winked
at May. “As far as I’m concerned, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. If he
assumes I’m writing the fluffy little bodice rippers they called romances
twenty years ago, that’s his problem. I don’t wave my books in his face and
demand that he read them, but I’ve never hidden them, either. Frankly, as long
as the royalty checks keep rolling in, and I’ve stopped complaining about all
the time he spends on the golf course, he’s happy with our arrangement.”

“What husband wouldn’t be? My
husband J.D. would be over the moon,”
Strutter
joked.

Judy pulled her cell phone from
her shoulder bag and scanned through her messages, then frowned and slid out of
the booth. “Speaking of husbands, I haven’t heard from Bob since I left our
house in the wee hours of yesterday morning to make the drive here before
traffic got heavy. I know he’s probably just out on the golf course, but I’m a
little concerned. Be right back.” She headed for the diner’s exit.

“Has everything been okay at the
house?” Margo asked May in Judy’s absence.

“All quiet,” she confirmed. “There
haven’t been any further incidents since Duke was removed from the premises,
and the deadbolts were installed.”

“That’s a relief. Did you ever
hear anything from Carla Peterson?”

May nodded. “She called Friday
evening to say she grilled her son about how the dog could have gotten out of
his pen and wound up in my dining room, but he seemed completely clueless. He confessed
that he’d delegated the responsibility of putting Duke in his pen to his little
sister, so all Carla could figure is that Beth couldn’t get the padlock in
place correctly. It doesn’t explain how Duke got into my house, but it’s a
partial answer. At least she tried, and one way or another, I’m now acquainted
with one of my neighbors.”

“How much longer will Judy be with
you?”
Strutter
asked.