Dirty Tricks: A Kate Lawrence Mystery (19 page)

Sixteen

Safely back in her office behind a
closed door, Isabelle sank down at her desk and put her head in her hands. What
had she done? By presenting a solution to the problem of party guests, she had
inadvertently opened the door to having that Farnsworth woman invade her
territory yet again. The possibility of her being invited to the Halloween
party had never occurred to her. Damn and blast. Was there no end to her
interference in Isabelle’s life?

She stared bleakly at the closed
door and wondered if she were doomed to sit behind it indefinitely. Solitude
was something she had always prized, but involuntary isolation was another
thing altogether. Just as she’d felt she was making some progress with the
residents this morning, which she freely attributed to Kate’s management of the
situation, that Farnsworth person got in the way again. Wasn’t it enough that
Maybelle
or M.M. or whatever she was calling herself today
had singlehandedly crushed Isabelle’s dream of having a romance novel
published? Technically excellent, she’d said in her e-mail rejection, but
lacking the emotional depth Romantic Nights sought in its titles. Perhaps at a
later date, if she cared to try again blah
blah
blah
.

But Isabelle wouldn’t try again.
She couldn’t. The manuscript she’d submitted to Romantic Nights had taken her
years to craft. It was the very best she could do. Trying again would only
compound her humiliation when she submitted more of the same, so what was the
point? And if a small press like Romantic Nights wouldn’t give her a chance,
how would she ever persuade larger, more sophisticated publishers to look at
her work?

Fresh anger burned in her cheeks
as she powered on her computer and logged into her Amazon account. She searched
the books department for author Farnsworth and was taken aback when more than
two dozen
Ariadne
Merriwether
titles populated the screen. Until her conversation with May of a week ago,
she’d had no idea that popular mystery author
Maybelle
Farnsworth and romance publisher M.M. Farnsworth were one and the same, but now
she would use that information to her advantage. She would teach publisher
Farnsworth a lesson in humility by trashing author Farnsworth, which apparently
was very easy to do. Better yet, no one would ever know, as reviews could be
posted anonymously. It would be Isabelle’s little secret.

One by one, she purchased the
latest half-dozen e-books in the
Ariadne
Merriwether
series and had them delivered to her computer.
The e-book versions were inexpensive, and it wasn’t as if she intended to read
more than a few pages of each one. She would merely scan a title until she
found enough typos and grammatical errors, formatting or other flaws, to give
her negative comments credibility. Plot twists, characterizations, story
line—they meant nothing to Isabelle. She needed specific ammunition with which
to convince prospective purchasers that, while the books of
Maybelle
Farnsworth were mildly amusing, at best, they clearly had been produced by an
author who didn’t value her readers sufficiently to have her manuscripts
competently edited.

Isabelle had read enough snarky,
unsubstantive
reviews to know just how to word hers. She
would make a few dismissive general comments, find a typo to cite, click and
post, all under the protection of an alias, of course.

She paused as she considered what
name to use. Perhaps
Desirèe
L’Amour
,
the pen name she’d used for her romance novel? No, too risky. If the woman even
bothered to read her own reviews, she might make the connection too readily,
and what was the fun in that? Her review name had to be slyer, subtler. Ah, she
had it. I.M.D.L., her reviews would be signed, here to avenge humiliated writers
everywhere.

She pulled out a lined pad and
prepared to make notes as she scanned the first title. It took only minutes to
find a
SpellCheck
error, “than” instead of “that.”
Isabelle hadn’t read a book in ten years that was free of such errors because few
authors, and even their editors, bothered to learn how to spell anymore. They
relied on
SpellCheck
or similar programs to pick up
spelling errors. Unfortunately, the programs failed to consider context. As
long as a letter sequence created a correctly spelled word, any word, it would
be accepted.

Isabelle knew herself to be an
excellent speller and grammarian, both of which made her current task easier—so
easy, in fact, that she breezed through the first three reviews in only a
couple of hours. Resolving to do another three after lunch, which she had
brought with her, she turned her attention to her Vista View work, polishing
off the day’s spreadsheets and reports in short order. As had been the case
with most of her previous jobs, her current position offered little challenge. She
remembered to send an e-mail to her managers, reminding them of Vista View’s
longstanding visitors’ policy and urging that it be extended to the upcoming
Halloween party, so long as attendance was closely supervised and legal maximums
were not exceeded.

She took a break and moved to one
of her visitors’ chairs to rest her eyes and eat her chicken salad. In a way it
was too bad, she reflected, thinking about her conversation that morning with
Bert and the others. If it weren’t for the tedious nature of the job, which
would be unbearable without something else, like the romance writing she had
planned, to alleviate the boredom, she might quite like Vista View and could
see herself finding suitable companionship among some of the residents. The
facility itself was attractive and comfortable, and she had come to appreciate
the friendly staff, not to mention Dominick’s tasty and nutritious meals.

Her little apartment suited her
down to the ground. It would be too bad to have to give it up, but she knew now
it would be impossible for her to continue here. She couldn’t put up with the
Farnsworth woman’s presence, and as the aunt of one of the Mack Realty agents
and the friendly acquaintance of several of the residents, present she would be.
No, best that Isabelle make a clean break and go elsewhere. Fortunately, money
wasn’t a problem, thanks to her recent inheritance, but Isabelle wasn’t one to
remain idle for long. She would need to find something productive to do with
her time.

She replaced the lid on her empty
salad container and returned to her computer. At least she would strike a blow
for rejected writers and teach Ms. High-and-Mighty Farnsworth how it felt to be
on the receiving end of insensitive criticism. That should help, she thought as
she resumed her self-assigned task.

So why didn’t she feel any better?

Seventeen

“That’s it!” May slapped her desk
with both palms and frowned fiercely at her computer screen, startling
Strutter
and me as we sipped cups of soup, a delayed lunch,
in what had become May’s
de facto
office. Although the renovations on her house were now complete, May lingered
at the Law Barn, as reluctant to leave as we would be to see her go. “I’ve had
enough of Isabelle
Marchand
and her wounded ego.”

I goggled at her over the rim of
my soup mug. “You’ve heard from
Izzy
?” Despite my
best intentions, Bert’s nickname for Isabelle had stuck.

“That’s odd, after
cold-shouldering you the way she did when you were at Vista View,”
Strutter
agreed. “What did she say?”

May yanked off her computer
spectacles and dropped them on the desk.

“I heard from her, all right, but
she didn’t say anything, at least not directly to me. Oh, no, that would have
been too straightforward, require too much integrity. She’s taken the anonymous
sniper route preferred by literary weasels everywhere and started trashing my
mystery novels by posting snarky reviews.”

She jumped up and stalked into the
lobby, where she paced back and forth in fury.
Strutter
and I abandoned our lunch to have a look at her computer screen. It was open to
a review of May’s latest
Ariadne
Merriwether
novel,
Miss
Merriwether
Investigates
:
 
“Typical cozy, utterly
predictable,” I read and jumped ahead a few lines. “All in all, a mediocre
read. I would have given it two stars but for the typographical errors, which
should have been caught and corrected before publication. Such negligence is
clear evidence that the author has little respect for her readers.” Two
typographical errors were cited, complete with location numbers for the e-book
editions. I blanched, and my eyes jumped to the review’s headline, where the
reviewer had given
Miss
Merriwether
a damning one-star rating.

“I.M.D.L, Rocky Hill,
Connecticut,” I read the signature aloud. “You’re right, it’s a cheap shot, but
it could be a coincidence that the reviewer—and I use the term loosely in this
case—is from Rocky Hill. What makes you so certain this is Isabelle
Marchand’s
doing?”

May hugged herself and kept
pacing, obviously needing to blow off steam. “Up until today I wasn’t entirely
sure that Isabelle and
Desirèe
were
the same person, but I am now. This isn’t my first rodeo, ladies. Remember my
telling you how the authors whose work I reject sometimes try to get even with
me by posting snide reviews of my personal titles? They use aliases, of course,
but very often they forget to block the city and state of origin.”

“Like this one,”
Strutter
confirmed. “It’s suspicious, but how can you be sure
it’s her?”

May
huffed
in disgust. “You may also recall my saying that most people’s writing exhibits
consistent characteristics whether they’re drafting a novel or dashing off a
letter. They make the same
mistakes,
misspell the same
words, things like that. This review has
Desirèe
L’Amour
all over it.”

Strutter
and I scanned the words on the screen before us again.

“Sorry, May, I don’t know the
woman well enough to be able to say that. We’ve only exchanged a few words
during my days at Vista View, and I’ve never read anything she’s written,” said
Strutter
.

I shook my head uncertainly. “I’ve
spent quite a bit of time with her, but like
Strutter
,
I’ve never seen anything of hers in writing. Frankly, I can’t find any errors at
all in this review. What are you seeing that we don’t?”

May stopped striding back and
forth and put both hands on her hips. “That’s it exactly. There are no
mistakes, none. It’s mean spirited and petty, but it’s perfectly punctuated. If
you remember, Kate, I mentioned that it was too bad
Desirèe
didn’t have a yen to be an editor instead of a romance writer, because she’d
make a hell of a good one.”

I nodded slowly. “I do remember
your saying that.”

May
stomped
back to her desk and jostled her way between us. “So we’ve got perfect syntax
and a match on geographic locations, plus the timing is about right, since this
was posted a week after I told Isabelle about my connection with Romantic
Nights. Now take a good look at the alias she’s using.”

“I.M.D.L,”
Strutter
read dutifully. “I.M. could stand for Isabelle
Marchand
,
I guess, and D.L. could conceivably stand for
Desirèe
L’Amour
, but why would she even want to hint at that
connection if she’s bothering to use an alias?

“You’re not hearing it,” May
snapped.
“I.M.D.L. as in ‘I am
Desirèe
L’Amour
, and I’m here to stick it to
Maybelle
Farnsworth.
Don’t you get it? She absolutely
wants me to know it’s her and realize there’s not a thing in the world I can do
about it. In her mind, I’ve disrespected her work, so she’s
dissing
me back, only she gets to do it publicly. We might as well be in the
schoolyard, yelling, ‘So there,
nyah
,
nyah
.’”

She glowered at the screen for
another moment,
then
clicked the mouse a few times to
navigate to reviews for another one of her titles. She sorted them by date so
the most recently posted reviews came up first. Sure enough, there was one submitted
by I.M.D.L. It described the title as tedious and amateurish before condemning
it with a one-star rating. May jabbed a finger at the posting date.

“This was done the same day she
posted the other one, and I’ll just bet you there are more.”

Deftly, she maneuvered through the
reviews for her most recent titles, and sure enough, four more were soundly
panned by I.M.D.L. on the exact same day.

“Energetic assassin, I’ll give her
that,” May snorted. “Well, if she thinks I’m just going to lie down and take
it, she’s mistaken. Actions have consequences, and she needs to take
responsibility for hers.”

“But what can you do about it? You
told us these review sites allow people to say whatever they want, whether it
happens to be true or not, because reviews are categorized as opinions,”
Strutter
protested.

“That’s correct. This is a free
country, and everyone is entitled to an opinion, so I’m going to exercise my
right to express mine,” May told us. “The difference is
,
I won’t be hiding behind some phony identity when I do it.”

I was alarmed. “You’re going to
risk chastising her publicly in an on-line rebuttal? Oh, May, don’t do it. You
told us yourself that every other so-called reviewer will rise to her defense
and shred you like cabbage. Engaging with these people would be professional
suicide.”

She laughed without humor. “Easy,
there, I’m not an idiot. I will do what every other published author with any
common sense does under these circumstances, remain silent and keep writing the
best books I can. Eventually, the overwhelming number of thoughtful,
conscientious reviewers will prevail.” She powered off her laptop. “But I’m also
going to do what I.M.D.L. doesn’t have the guts to do, confront her face to
face. I’m going to tag along with Margo to Vista View tomorrow morning, and I
promise you that before noon, Isabelle and I will have had an open and
honest—and probably very loud—conversation in her office. I wouldn’t be
surprised if a little profanity is involved, too. I only hope Mack Realty
doesn’t lose the Vista View account because of it.”

Strutter
and I exchanged looks of concern. Vista View was our bread and butter during
lean times in the real estate business. There had been plenty of those in the
past few years, and we counted on the regular income the account produced.
Great.
Now I had something else to worry about.

True to her word, May accompanied
Margo to Vista View the following morning, although she drove her own car.
Strutter
and I spent the day on tenterhooks, tidying files
and doing busywork while consumed with curiosity and concern for both May and
Isabelle. Despite
Izzy’s
petty act of revenge, we
recognized it as the work of a woman whose heart had been broken—not by a
lover, in this case, but by a seemingly uncaring publisher who had crushed her
dream of publication with a few dismissive sentences.

Still,
Izzy
had “poked the bear,” as Margo put it to me on the telephone Thursday evening.
“It takes some
doin
’ to get May riled up, but once
you’ve done it, look out. I have to say I’m a little worried about Isabelle. As
you well know, I was a bit of a handful in my younger years, and Auntie May was
the only one who could pin my ears back. I remember one whole month when all
she would allow me to say to her was, ‘Yes, Ma’am.’” She chuckled. “I have a
feelin
’ she hasn’t lost her touch.”

When May still hadn’t appeared at
the Law Barn by three o’clock,
Strutter
and I were
beside ourselves. We dropped all pretense of conducting business as usual and
took cups of tea into the lobby, where we sat and frankly waited. Fortunately,
things were slow, and the phone gave us a break.

“When does Emma leave to visit the
new boyfriend?”
Strutter
asked in an effort to make
conversation while trying valiantly not to look at her watch yet again.

“She’s flying out tomorrow, now
that you mention it. She’s trying to keep up the pretense that this is a very
casual thing, but come on. Flying across the country is about the least casual
gesture I can imagine, although that’s probably attributable to my advanced age
and general out-of-
touchness
with current standards
for such things. I haven’t even told Armando. He’s had enough on his mind
lately, and he’d go all Latino-protective on her.”

Strutter
sniffed into her teacup. “I can just picture J.D. fifteen years or so from now
under the same circumstances with Olivia. It wouldn’t be pretty.”

“Well, he’d best get a grip on
those daddy instincts. Like the song says, it’s a small world, and it’s getting
smaller by the day. All of this texting and Skype-
ing
and so on creates the illusion of proximity. It’s only the difficulty of
actually transporting our physical selves from one corner of the country to
another that reminds us of the reality, and frankly, I’m hoping against hope
this trip will be Emma’s wake-up call.
 
She can have a lovely fling,
then
come to her
senses. With any luck, I might not even have to tell Armando anything about
it.”

The latch on the Law Barn’s big
front door rattled promisingly, and we leaped to our feet as Margo arrived,
lugging the usual quota of paraphernalia required for a stint at Vista View. We
expected May to be right behind her, but we were disappointed.

“Where’s May?” I demanded and
hurried over to the door to check out the parking lot.
Strutter
peered over my shoulder. No May.

“Why, I’m just fine and dandy,
thanks for
askin
’, and how are y’all this lovely
afternoon? Yes, I’d appreciate some help with this stuff,” Margo huffed,
“thanks again.”

I shut the door with a bang, and
we hustled to help Margo with her burdens. “Is May coming in her own car or something?”

“How did it go?”
Strutter
asked at the same time, unable to help
herself
.

Margo regarded us both with
amusement. “Why do I get the
feelin
’ I am not the
belle of this ball? Somebody bring me a cup of that tea you’re
sittin
’ here
slurpin
’ down while
I’ve been
toilin
’ away at Vista View all day, and
I’ll fill you in.”

She flopped down on the sofa in
the lobby and crossed her legs. Wordlessly,
Strutter
and I ran into the copy room, threw together another mug of tea and raced back
to the lobby.

“Here,” said
Strutter
,
thrusting the mug at her.

I handed her a spoon and a
napkin.
 
“Now give.”
 

We resumed our seats and stared
fixedly at Margo while she stirred her tea thoughtfully.

“To answer your first question,
May is, in fact,
drivin
’ her own car today, and I
have no idea when or if she’ll be
joinin
’ us here.
Nor do I have much of anything to report about how things went between her and
Izzy
Marchand
, since most of
their conversation, if you can call
yellin
’
conversation, took place behind
Izzy’s
closed office
door.”

“
Ooohh
,
they were yelling?” I looked at
Strutter
, aghast.

“Right there in the middle of the
administration building?”
Strutter
seconded my
agitation. “Just remember, May is your relative, Margo, not ours. They can’t
hold her against Kate and me. So then what happened?”

Margo stuck out her tongue at
Strutter
. “Well, I heard some
bangin
’
noises as if one of them was
slammin
’ a fist on the
desk. Then there was more
hollerin
,’ and then …” She
paused, as if trying to recollect every detail.