Dying to Get Published (4 page)

There was nothing to do but take it. The injured petal fluttered to the floor as the bouquet joined the single flower. She watched it drift down as though in slow motion.

She looked up and grinned sheepishly. "I'll be right out."

She slipped into the narrow space that served as a kitchen and frantically looked about. No one had given her flowers in a long time. All her vases were boxed up in the closet. She grabbed a ceramic tea pot, filled it under the faucet, and plopped the roses in.

The man brought you flowers, and he looks gorgeous. Don't get distracted. Remember your mission. You're to get rid of this guy. You're a woman with a plan. And Jaimie be quiet. That little display of fatherly concern doesn't mean diddly.

When she returned to the front door, Sam was bending down admiring something the boy was clutching in his hand. It looked suspiciously like the flattened carcass of a frog.

"OK. We're a go," she announced. Now she was sounding like some escapee from flight attendant school.

Sam took her shawl, draped it over her shoulders, and offered her his elbow.

Eddie ran ahead and punched the
down
button on the elevator.  He stood swaying back and forth, waiting for them.  "She's… she's pretty," he said, covered his face, threw back his head, and laughed.

"I noticed that, too," Sam agreed.

Jennifer and Sam dined on the veranda, that is, if a French restaurant can have a veranda. But then, she supposed, all outdoor porches in Georgia, French or otherwise, could be termed verandas.

The stars twinkled in the black of the night. The breeze was unusually warm for so early in spring. The food—well, the food was adequate. What could she say? Dining out is a mixed blessing for a caterer, especially one who worked for a cook as exacting as Dee Dee.

But the wine—the wine was yummy. And deceptive. One glass was normally Jennifer's limit, and she'd had two. If Sam had looked gorgeous before, he was looking downright heavenly about now.

"So you're a caterer and you write books on the side. What'd you major in at college that you wound up doing something like that?"

Jennifer almost choked on the sip of wine she was savoring. She coughed and cleared her throat. "Psychology."

"Psychology?"

"Yeah. I like to think of it as one of those freedom majors."

"What do you mean—a
freedom
major?"

"You can't do anything with it, so you're free to do whatever you want."

"Yeah. I got one of those, too. English."

She raised her wine glass in a mock toast.

Sam leaned closer. "I want to ask you something else."

"Blue," she said. "At the moment, it's a deep, dark blue." She stared into his eyes. "But this afternoon it was more of a mauve, and yesterday—"

"What are you talking about?" he asked, taking the wine glass from her hand and setting it next to his, well out of her reach.

She blinked and shook her head. "Ask away."

"When you're catering an event, I suppose you hear a lot of what's going on. How do people react to you?"

"Like furniture. I like to think of myself as a nice, mahogany sideboard—eighteenth century American."

"Elegant, classic. I can see how…"  He shook his head. "My God, I'm beginning to understand you."

She smiled. The wine was definitely giving her a warm fuzzy glow. "They either treat me like furniture or they hit on me.  But mostly it's furniture. One time at a bar mitzvah some joker was telling his wife about sleeping with her best friend. He'd gotten her off in a corner, and I swung by with a salver. I heard the whole sorry story while she cried, and I cried, and she stuffed her mouth with cheese straws. The three of us—we could have been in their den at home—with me as the TV tray."

Sam nodded. "Good. When Steve Moore calls you for a catering job, I want you to take it."

She pinched off a piece of warm, crusty bread and popped it into her mouth. The conversation was taking a decidedly unpleasant turn. Jennifer screwed up her face. She sensed some of the aggressiveness she had found so irritating in Sam at the wedding breaking through his perfect-man veneer.

She swallowed. "I don't like him. He's yucky."

"Of course you don't like him, but I'm asking you do it anyway. Don't worry. I'll be there with you."

"You? Not without a TB test, you won't." She shook the fog she had encouraged from her mind. The flow of the conversation was finally falling into place. Mr. White Roses Sam was attempting to seduce her
into
her catering outfit, not
out
of her intimate apparel. How dare he use her like that?

"What'd he do? Kill somebody?"

"He didn't exactly
do
anything. He wrote a book that could well become a bestseller."

She rolled her eyes. "So who, other than me, hasn't?"

"Do you remember when Kyle Browning committed suicide last fall?"

"Sure. I always liked him when he was on national TV. Then he got mixed up in that scandal when all those news people died in that hurricane in the Carolinas, and he got banished from New York to Macon. And then he jumped off the Channel 14 building like that…. It didn't make any sense. The skyscrapers are a lot higher in New York."

"Some of us don't think Browning's death was a suicide, and—"

"And you think Moore knows something. So why don't you just ask him?"

"I did. He's
not talking—at least not to me.
"

"If you think Moore is saving his secrets for his book, then you'll have no story once the book is out. You'll look like one of those tabloid reporters who's out to scoop something Moore is ready to tell anyway." She really should have a clearer mind if she were going to discuss anything more complicated than her list of dreaded date questions. Those she could answer while plotting an entire twenty-page short story.

"But I don't think Moore's book addresses Browning except from the aspect of his so-called suicide. Moore will capitalize on the publicity surrounding Browning's death, but he won't dare speculate on murder."

"Why are you so sure Moore knows something?"

"He has to. They were friends for years, and when Browning came to Macon, Moore worked with the man every day. He may not even realize what he knows."

They sat in silence for several seconds as Sam studied Jennifer's face. "So, what do you say? Will you help?"

Jennifer plucked off another piece of bread, swirled it in the sauce on her plate, and ate it. "Now why in the world would I do that?"

Sam shrugged. "I want to write a book exposing Browning's murder, but there's no way I can collect this information on my own. I need someone undercover, someone not connected with the news media, someone Moore likes. Someone like you. I'll pay you—just not right now. Part of the advance and part of the royalties. Once I get a contract—"

Jennifer's head suddenly cleared. "I want my name on the cover—first. I may not have any hard news experience, but I'm lousy with book smarts. I've got eight full-length novels finished, all with a beginning, an end, and no sagging middles—at least, not too saggy—which is more than you've got. If I even breathe on pages that actually go into production, I want credit."

"We'll have to hash out that name thing. I personally think it'd be more fair if we did it alphabetically."

"I just bet you do, Mr.
Culpepper
."

"We can work out the details later, but for now, have we got ourselves a deal?" Sam offered her his hand across the table.

Jennifer took it and shook it. "I want it in writing."

Sam's book had about as much chance of happening as a snowstorm hitting Macon—and that was only if it turned out that Browning had actually been murdered. Still, Jennifer couldn't resist any opportunity that might put her name on a book cover. She'd go ahead with her plan to kill Penney Richmond, but she'd help Sam, too. She'd consider it multiple submissions, as eggs in different baskets. One way or another, she was going to break into print.

Chapter 7

Dear Ms. Richmond:

It's people like you who give book publishing a bad name. The careless manner with which you treat unpublished writers is inexcusable. You had my manuscript,
The Corpse Found a Home
, for close to a year and then refused it. Just what were you doing with it? Learning how to read?

Too subtle. Jennifer wadded up the sheet of personalized stationery and tossed it at the wastepaper basket next to her desk. 

Muffy leaped from a curled position on the floor and batted the paper wad in midair. After knocking it to the floor, she collapsed onto the rug.

Jennifer sighed and stared out the open window that faced the grassy common area of the apartment building. Tulips and jonquils splashed color around the budding trees.

A couple spread out a blanket and settled beneath the shade of a blooming, pink dogwood. A pleasant way to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon. And a pleasant place for a grave site. Would you like to be buried there, Penney?

Dear Ms. Richmond:

I hate your guts. I wish you were dead.

Not subtle enough. She scrunched the page into a tight ball and sent it off to join its brothers in the growing paper pile. 

Muffy yawned widely, whined, and watched the paper as it flew past.

Dear Ms. Richmond:

A disease exists in the literary community, a disease that attacks and cripples the creative forces of young writers. It sucks the life from them, draining them of their talent, their hopes, and their dreams. And you—Penney Richmond—are the virus that causes that disease.

Not too bad. Fairly poetic. And it wouldn't look bad in print. Even if the press didn't quote the entire letter, they couldn't butcher it beyond recognition—or so she hoped.

Jennifer scrawled her name across the bottom and folded the stationery. She slipped it into an envelope, licked the flap, and sealed it. It would go out Monday morning. She'd need another one for Tuesday and a third, maybe even a fourth. Yes, a fourth. One letter meant irritated; two angry; three irate; but crazy didn't start until at least four.

She pulled out another sheet of paper.

Dear Ms. Richmond:

The sins we commit are tallied.

She squished the sheet into a tiny ball. It was better not to mention sin. Murder, after all, was a biggie.

How was she ever going to create three more convincing letters? She tapped her pen i
mpatiently against the desktop.
She hated writing letters… but her serial killer in
Poisoned Pen, Poisoned Heart
tormented his victims with vicious notes for weeks before he murdered them.

She went to the hall closet and rummaged through the manuscripts, extracted one, and carried it back to her desk, Muffy close at her heels. Leafing through the printed pages, she stopped at page thirty-seven. There it was, Marcus' first threatening letter. All she had to do was substitute the word
bullet
for the word
knife
.

I'm sitting in the dark thinking about how I'm going to kill you. The bullet will pierce your heart and stop it suddenly in mid-beat. I will hear that little gulp of air rushing to fill your chest cavity and deflate your lungs like useless, overstretched balloons. And I will silently watch your astonished face as your life gently ebbs from your irreparably damaged body.

Yuck. What kind of demented mind had she been suppressing? No matter. The letter would do just fine. No sane person would write something like that.

She copied it in pen onto a blank sheet of paper. She didn't need to sign this one. The first letter would provide a sample of her handwriting.

All she had to do was find two more letters. That would be a cinch. Her villain, nasty creature that he was, had written at least eight. She was on her way. Once all the letters had been sent, they'd lay the perfect trail for the police to follow when Penney Richmond turned up dead.

Chapter 8

"'I've never met anyone like you,' he whispered. His greedy mouth found hers as he crushed her to him, leaving her breathless. His fingers kneaded the silky flesh of her neck and then fell to explore the sensual secrets of her body. He groaned.'"

"He's not the only one groaning, Leigh Ann," Jennifer muttered from her spot on the floor next to Monique's sofa.

"You're not supposed to interrupt." Leigh Ann's eyes flared as she stuck out her diminutive chin. "You just don't like love scenes."

"Oh, no, sweetie. You don't get off that easy, Leigh," Teri said. "You've spent two hundred pages throwing these two people together and pulling them apart and all your hero can think of to say is
'
I never met anyone like you'? He's met dozens of women like her, but he never got one quite as pure as she is into his bed. She makes his blood boil. Honey, let us see him
sim
-mer." Teri's shoulders undulated with each syllable.