Authors: Elizabeth Peters
Naked Once More
Elizabeth Peters
Other Books by Elizabeth Peters
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To Pansy—She knows who she is, and soon the whole world will know.
All across America there are strange little roads that lead nowhere. Deep-rutted and narrow, slick with icy scum in winter, hidden by weeds in summer, they wind over remote hills and brambled woodlands, to end abruptly and without apparent purpose in remote spots far from any sign of human habitation. Occasionally a clue as to their function may appear: a rusty beer can, a scrap of plastic, a few scattered bricks from a long-abandoned house.
It was at the end of such a road that Kathleen Darcy’s car was found. The searchers took almost a week to find it, since there was no sensible reason why she, or anyone else, should have gone there. Several days of heavy rainfall had hidden any tracks leading into or out of the place, and had encouraged the violent outburst of vegetation characteristic of a southern spring. The search parties spread out from the abandoned vehicle, cursing poison ivy and brambles fierce as barbed wire, keeping a wary eye out for bears and rabid raccoons. They found what they expected to find: nothing. In the overgrown tangle of the mountainside, riddled with caves and abandoned mine shafts, a body might lie undiscovered for years—at least by human searchers. There were black bears and bobcats in the area, foxes and feral dogs. And buzzards. Not far from the clearing, white water tumbled over boulders in its race to the river. Swollen by rain, it could carry heavier objects than the body of a slender woman.
Quite possibly she had taken steps to ensure she would never be found. Among the papers found in her purse was one that might be construed as a last message. “Looked like a poem,” one of the searchers reported later, to an avid audience at the Elite Bar and Grill. “It was in her handwriting, but sheriff said she never wrote it herself; she copied it off some foreigner. Had some foreign words in it, anyhow. Greek, maybe.”
“Latin,” said a more erudite member of the audience.
“Latin, Greek, what the hell. Greek to me, anyhow.” The narrator chuckled. “Meant she was scared of dying.”
“I don’t know anybody who’s crazy about the idea,” the erudite one said dryly. “But I wouldn’t of spent much time worrying about it if I’d been her. How much she make off that book of hers—a million, two mill?”
The other man shrugged, belched, and pronounced Kathleen Darcy’s epitaph. “She was one weird lady.”
A similar sentiment echoed, albeit ever so distantly, in the mind of Christopher Dawley as he watched his client wend her way toward the table he had reserved (albeit ever so reluctantly) at the Tavern on the Green. Chris hated the Tavern on the Green. Jacqueline Kirby loved it, though, and Chris would have acceded to her wish even if she had not been his favorite client, because he was a gentleman as well as a literary agent. (Contrary to the opinions of some authors, the two categories frequently overlap.)
Writers constantly, and in most cases justifiably, complain about the paucity of their pay. The literary agent’s standard fee is therefore ten percent of paucity—i.e., not much. But ten percent of Jacqueline, author of two best-selling novels, constituted a tidy sum. That was one of the reasons why she was Chris’s favorite client.
Sometimes he thought it was the only reason. She had a number of infuriating characteristics. The way she dressed, for instance. Chris was a quiet man of conservative habits and attire, who preferred to remain inconspicuous. Appearing in public with Jacqueline was guaranteed to make anyone the cynosure of all eyes. This was one of the most flamboyant outfits he had seen her wear, which was saying a good deal.
The cloak that swathed her from neck to ankles was a bewildering swirl of iridescent sea colors, green and blue, pale lavender and ice-gray, overlaid with feathers, sequins, embroidery and other unidentifiable substances. And the hat! Since she hit the
Times
best-seller list, Jacqueline had gone mad about hats. This one was purple. The eight-inch brim was weighted down by lavender and turquoise plumes, almost hiding the dark glasses that covered the upper third of Jacqueline’s face. She wore matching purple gloves and a jangle of gold bracelets. Further extravagances were concealed by the hat and the cloak. In the cheerful, calculated country charm of the garden room she looked as alien as a… Chris couldn’t think of an appropriate comparison. He was a literary agent, not a writer.
Between the dark glasses and the hat, Jacqueline’s vision was obviously not at its best, but she made it to the table with only a few stumbles, and was helped into her chair by the maître d’, on whose face fascination warred with consternation. He retreated. Jacqueline peered out from under the brim of the hat. An enchanting smile curved her wide mouth.
“Dahling!”
“Cut it out.” Chris resumed his seat. He had been about to give her the chaste peck that is conventional in the media professions, including publishing, but the possibility of becoming entangled in the cloak, not to mention the hat, had discouraged the idea. “I hate it when you go into one of your acts,” he added grumpily. “Who are you today? Jackie Kennedy, Jackie Collins, Michael Jackson…?”
“You cut me to the quick!” Jacqueline pressed a purple hand to her heaving bosom. “You know I have my own unmistakable style, and excellent reasons for behaving as I do.”
With a graceful shrug she divested herself of the cloak. It fell in rainbow confusion over the back of her chair and spread itself across several square feet of rose-covered carpeting before she scooped it in and tucked it under the table. Her dress was comparatively restrained: royal-purple silk crepe, draped to display her admirable torso, which was embellished with a collection of gold chains as extensive as the dowry of a wealthy Ubangi maiden.
Sunlight pouring through the glass roof and walls glittered blindingly off the display. Chris averted his eyes. “I know; you told me. ‘The only way I can keep my sanity in this business is to make fun of it—or at least its more preposterous aspects—and of myself.’ But that’s not the only reason. You enjoy this!”
“Of course I do.” Jacqueline gave the hat a deft quarter turn, exposing her face.
It was a countenance that looked austere, even forbidding, in repose. The chin was delicately rounded but protuberant; the wide, flexible mouth could smile as enigmatically as an archaic Greek goddess or tighten into merciless rigidity. Most of her hair was still hidden by the hat, but Chris had had occasion to observe and admire its bronze-brown luxuriance. He had no idea whether the color was original.
She was smiling enigmatically now, and her green eyes shone like emeralds, a sure sign of amusement—at herself, or someone else. “But I must defend myself from those importunate fans of mine. Being a celebrity is soooo exhausting.”
They had had the same conversation several times before. Chris couldn’t imagine why he was bothering to repeat himself. “It’s your own fault. If you hadn’t made such a spectacle of yourself on the
Today
show and said those outrageous things in the
People
interview, and—”
“You were the one who insisted I do all those interviews,” Jacqueline interrupted.
“It’s part of the job,” Chris mumbled.
“What?” Jacqueline leaned forward. “I can’t hear you.”
“I can hear
you,
and so can everybody else in the room. I said, as I have said a hundred times, that publicity is part of the job. You know that, and the—er—panache with which you perform would lead one to suspect that you love doing it. So don’t give me that martyred look.”
“But it shouldn’t be part of the job. Nathaniel Hawthorne wasn’t pursued by fanatical fans. Emerson never made the talk-show circuit. Louisa May Alcott—”
This was a new variant on an old theme, and Chris was carried away by the joy of debate. “Twain and Dickens did the lecture circuits and Alcott was besieged by her fans. Remember the scene in
Jo’s Boys,
where she tried to pretend she was the maid to escape the attentions of one pushy family that invaded her study?”
“I remember.” Jacqueline grinned widely. “But I thought men never read Alcott.”
“My literary background is more extensive than you dream,” Chris said. “I’ve even read Laura Ingalls Wilder.”
A waiter circled cautiously around the hat and deposited two glasses tinkling with ice cubes and filled with a clear frosty liquid. Jacqueline raised her glass and took a long sip.
“Feeling better?” Chris inquired.
“Yes, much. But honestly, Chris, this promotional thing has gotten out of hand. You saw the schedule of that tour they arranged for me last fall—every pinky-dink bookstore from L.A. to Maine, every local newspaper, every two-bit radio and TV station.… I’ll never forget the disc jockey in Centerville, Iowa, who called me ‘man’ and suggested that a tête-à-tête in the alley with him and his drug collection would give me new insights into the sexual habits of the Cro-Magnon.”
Chris’s eyes widened. “You never told me that.”
“I try to spare you when I can.” Jacqueline patted his hand.
“Did you?”
“Did I what? Really, Chris.” Lashes coated with something dark and shiny veiled her eyes, and she said reminiscently, “He was cute. Even if he did pronounce the
g
in Cro-Magnon.”
“Jacqueline, did you—”
“Of course not. The point I am endeavoring to make, despite your interruptions, is that the writing biz is not for writers these days, it’s for performers. Whatever happened to the reclusive author scribbling by candlelight in her ivory tower, companied only by shadows?”
“There never was.… Well, Emily Dickinson, of course, but she—”
“Writing is supposed to be for introverts. If you like people, you aren’t supposed to become a writer. You’re supposed to become an actor or a nurse or an insurance salesman or a—”
“All right, all right.” Chris signaled the waiter. It seemed to him that Jacqueline had scarcely paused to draw breath, much less drink, but she had expeditiously disposed of her martini. He went on, “I don’t disagree with you in theory. But what you’re saying has nothing to do with the real world. The way it is is the way it is, and your grousing isn’t going to change the way it is.”
“Irrelevant, you mean,” Jacqueline mused. “Or irrevelant, as my grand—as a young friend of mine says.”
She sipped genteelly at her second drink, and Chris pondered her near slip of the tongue. Grandson? Grandniece? Jacqueline talked, interminably at times, about everything except her personal life. Presumably there had been a Mr. Kirby, or perhaps a Professor or Dr. Kirby. No one seemed to know what had become of this individual. Jacqueline never spoke of him. She had children—more than one, but precisely how many? Questions designed to elicit this information went unanswered.