Somebody Killed His Editor: Holmes & Moriarity, Book 1 (16 page)

I yanked back the plaid curtains and returned the favor as I was wearing some kind of dark blue facial mud mask in addition to the pale blue hair mask. Mindy Newburgh’s eyes went enormous behind the rhinestone glasses and she fell off the milk crate she was standing on to peer in my window.

“Are you all right?” I called, trying to squint down past the sill.

She picked herself up and climbed back on the milk crate. “Christopher Holmes, what on earth are you doing in there?”

Other than the Peeping Tom thing she was starting to remind me more and more of my own grandmother. Or perhaps Miss Butterwith.

“I’m killing time,” I replied through the glass. “And, for the record, that’s the
only
thing I’ve killed since I got here.”

Somebody Killed His Editor

Wasted
would be a better word for it.

“You look like you belong in that Blue Man Group.”

“Maybe I can find work with them after I get out of prison.”

She made a tsking sound. “That’s actually why I came down here. I wanted to apologize for Georgie.

He’d told J.X. about your midnight escapade before I had a chance to stop him.”

“I didn’t kill anyone.”

“I know that, silly. You couldn’t hurt a fly.”

Actually I was pretty good at pinging flies right out of the air, but I tried to look appropriately harmless. “Someone’s trying to frame me.”

“It’s not George.” Mindy wobbled on the milk crate. “He felt that it was his duty to tell what he saw.

It’s nothing personal, kiddo. George doesn’t have a lot of imagination.”

I was about to take issue with that statement, when she added, “Anyway, if you
did
whack Steven, you did us all a favor.”

“I appreciate the support, but I didn’t kill him.”

“I suppose not. You couldn’t have killed Peaches, and it’s obvious the two murders are connected.”

“What’s the connection, though?”

“I think Steven saw whoever killed Peaches.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Remember last night in the bar when we were all at the Wheaton & Woodhouse table…?” She trailed off awkwardly as it occurred to her why I had been at the Wheaton & Woodhouse table last night.

“Vaguely,” I replied.

“Steven was an asshole,” Mindy said. “For the record.” Her breath steamed the glass between us.

“For the record, thank you. What did you see last night?”

“It’s not that I
saw
anything exactly, but didn’t you think Steven was challenging someone when he was talking about anyone who had information about Peaches’ murder needed to come forward?”

“He was challenging J.X.”

Mindy nodded solemnly.

If I’d been standing on a milk crate, I’d probably have tumbled off it. “You don’t think
J.X
…?”

“If Steven was killed because he knew something about Peaches’ death, well, I happened to overhear J.X. and Peaches arguing the night before she was found murdered.”

“About what?”

“I didn’t hear it all. But she called him queer.”

“Isn’t—” I caught myself in time, “—that something?” I managed.

“I think J.X. probably is…” Mindy wobbled her hand indicating AC/DC—and nearly fell off her pedestal again. “He and Peaches definitely had a thang goin’ on.”

www.samhainpublishing.com 93

Josh Lanyon

I can’t tell you how disturbing it is to hear an apple-cheeked granny utter the words “thang goin’ on.”

“Definitely? I thought he was married?”

“What’s that these days?”

Well, she was talking to the right person now. I concurred bitterly and Mindy said, “Peaches was not above telling J.X.’s wife out of spite. She was a
very
spiteful person.”

“How do you know?”

“I know,” she said, “because she came onto Georgie, and that was simply to prove to me that she could get anyone she wanted. Of course Georgie wasn’t having any of it.”

My mud-coated face was starting to crack. “Of course not.”

“She also tried to convince Steven to let her try her hand at writing a new series of thrillers about a divorced Jewish female assassin.”

“I thought you already—”

“Exactly.”

“And was Krass entertaining that idea?”

Mindy’s expression changed. I think it belatedly dawned on her that she was building a nice motive for murder for herself. “Of course not. It gives you an idea of the kind of person Peaches Sadler was.

Absolutely ruthless. She and Steven were two of a kind.”

I thought this over slowly as the wind shook the window in its frame. “So you think Krass was killed by J.X.?”

Mindy shrugged. “I don’t know, but who’s better placed to hide evidence and control the investigation? And he did lock you up, which really wasn’t necessary in my opinion.”

“I appreciate that.”

She had a point, although I couldn’t really see J.X. losing control to the extent that he would resort to murder. Not that I really knew that much about him—nor did he rank high on my People I’d Like to Know Better list.

The rain was coming down harder now. Mindy’s nose was as pink as her cheeks. She looked skyward and then peered at me through the glass. “Is there anything you need?”

“Paper, pens, ice, another blanket, coffee…”

The top of her head disappeared from sight while I was still talking.

I spent another very long hour washing off all the gunk I had applied, pacing the room and listening to the rain, and trying to outline my ideas for a Regency P.I. novel with a pencil and the single sheet of stationery supplied by the lodge. The lack of paper wasn’t a problem because I was out of ideas not long after I wrote the words
London 1815
.

94

www.samhainpublishing.com

Somebody Killed His Editor

When someone pounded on my cabin door shortly before lunch, I jumped to my feet in the hope that the killer had finally arrived to put me out of my misery. The key scraped the lock and the door swung open. A tall figure filled the frame. At first I thought it was J.X., and I was very irritated at the way my startled heart sped up.

“I thought you might be getting chilly down here,” Edgar said, holding out a carrier of wood.

I was pretty damn cold by then, so I did appreciate the thought.

“You do know how to light a fire?” Edgar asked.

“Well…I’m used to the gas kind, to tell the truth.”

I appreciated the fact that he didn’t so much as roll his eyes. I sat on the bed so he could see how non-threatening and harmless I was, and he carried the wood in and laid the fire. By the time he stood up again, it was crackling merrily and already starting to throw off a little heat.

“Rita’s getting your lunch ready to bring down now.”

“Thanks.”

“There are candles and matches in the desk drawer if the power goes out.”

“Please tell me the power isn’t going out.”

“We’ve had a couple of flickers today.”

“Great.”

He nodded, polite but distant, and headed for the door. He paused on the step as though about to say something. Or maybe he was waiting for me to say something, but I had no idea of what to say.
I didn’t do
it!
They all said that, right?

Edgar went out and locked the door and I did a couple more turns around the room. I felt increasingly trapped and desperate. It was silly because I was doing exactly what I’d have done by choice. It was the knowledge that I
didn’t
have choice. That I couldn’t leave—and that my peers believed I had killed another person.

It was incredibly depressing.

There was a rattling sound outside the door and another thump.

“It’s open,” I called, to be funny.

The key scraped in the lock and the door swung open to reveal Rita, holding a rolled blanket beneath her arm, stooping down to pick up a lunch tray.

I said, “I’d offer to get that for you, but I don’t want you to mistake my enthusiasm for lunch for a jailbreak.”

She gave a dry cackle, which I was grateful for. “That old lady friend of yours gave me a list of things you need.” She lugged the tray over to the desk and deposited it there.

It was a very nice tray. She had loaded it up with sandwiches and cookies and chips and pieces of fruit. There was an ice bucket and a yellow legal pad and a couple of pens.

www.samhainpublishing.com 95

Josh Lanyon

“Somebody’s going to bring you down an old coffee maker if we can find one,” she informed me.

“Thanks,” I said, and I really was touched. “What’s going on up at the lodge?”

“What do you think?” she asked dryly. “They’re talking. That’s all those folks do.”

“Has J.X. questioned everyone?”

She snorted. I couldn’t tell if that meant he hadn’t bothered now that I was incarcerated or that it had proved a total waste of time.

I sat down at the desk and unwrapped a corned beef on rye bread sandwich. All at once I was starving.

Nerves. What I actually needed was sleep and I was too wound up to close my eyes.

Rita tossed the extra blanket on the foot of the bed.

“I can’t say either of that pair was any loss,” she said. “Whoever did away with ’em did a community service in my opinion.”

“Krass was pretty rude last night,” I agreed around half a sandwich.

She gave another of those sharp laughs that sounded like something breaking off. “Yep, he had a real way with him, didn’t he? Well, I guess he shot his mouth off one too many times.”

She gave me an expectant look, and I said thickly, “I didn’t kill him. Really.”

“Sure.” She nodded agreeably. “Not that I blame you. I don’t see how you could have killed Patty Ann, though.”

“Who’s Patty Ann?” The body count was climbing alarmingly, and I say that as someone who never wrote less than three murders a novel.

Rita burst out with more of that raspy laughter. “Patty Ann Stewbecki. The one calling herself—” Rita donned her version of a snooty English accent, “—
Peaches Sadler
.”

“You knew Peaches?”

“Honey, she grew up in these parts. You didn’t believe all that crap in those magazines, did you? All that stuff about growing up in New England and being a debutante and going to…where the hell was it?

What’s that famous women’s college?”

“Wellesley, Vassar, Smith, Bryn Mawr…?”

“One of them.” She waved the Seven Sisters off like Pig-Pen brushing at the fumes. “It was all crap.

She grew up right down the road. She was a few years behind me in high school. Hell, she dated my brother. What a pill she was. And then she comes along with her airs and graces, acting like she’s never had to eat in a dining room with other people or lay that bleached blonde head of hers on cotton sheets.”

“Was she complaining about the maid service too?” I tore open a bag of chips.

“No.” Rita snapped that one off. “She couldn’t have been sweeter to Debbie, but that wasn’t anything about Debbie or her being able to write stories. That was Patty Ann getting back at
me
.”

96

www.samhainpublishing.com

Somebody Killed His Editor

I crunched chips and contemplated. Debbie was the kid. Edgar and Rita’s daughter—though she looked more like a granddaughter. I remembered her grief and worry when she had escorted me to my cabin last night. Debbie had said something then about Rita and Peaches quarreling.

Neutrally, I said, “Why do you think she’d want to do that?”

“She didn’t need a reason.” Rita said wearily, “Some people are shit stirrers by nature. They just can’t help poking their sticks into other people’s business, and sometimes what they stir up is a nest of rattlesnakes.”

I thought I might get further if I tacked to the left. “Is Debbie a good writer?”

Rita’s hard face softened. “She’s pretty good. She doesn’t write about the kind of crap Patty Ann did, though. Sex and more sex. She’s a good kid.”

“She seemed shaken up yesterday.”

“Of course she did. Who wouldn’t be shaken up by a murder happening in your own backyard?”

“Did Patty Ann have any old enemies around here?”

Rita gave me a long look. “Honey, enemies are all she had. People like that? Even their friends hope to one day see them fall flat on their faces.”

www.samhainpublishing.com 97

I was dreaming about David.

We were arguing—nothing new there—but even in the dream, angry though I was, I had a sense of loss. A sense of the waste of it—the waste of what had once been real and genuine and good between us.

Love. Yes, we had loved each other once, and after love had gone, I still had tried to hang on. Maybe David had too. There had been plenty of affairs—even before we made our relationship official with a commitment ceremony—but he had never wanted to end
us
. Not until Dicky Dickison.

Something had changed for us both with Dicky. Maybe this time it really was love for David. Or maybe I had run out of lies to tell myself. Or the energy to keep lying even if I could have come up with a story I could believe in.

In the dream, for the first time, I accepted that it was my failure and my loss—that I was alone now because of the choices I had made along the way. For starters, always choosing career over relationship.

Was that because I’d known in my heart it was going to end this way? Everyone else had known. Maybe even David had known. But we had stuck it out for ten years. I might have stuck it out forever. Not because I still loved David or forgave him, but because my life was my work. I could shut David and his dick…er…Dickys out because my true life companions were Miss Butterwith and Mr. Pinkerton.

But in my dream it was hard to turn my back on David. Hard to walk away. Hard for David too because he came after me saying softly, “
Kit…
”

A gust of frigid air across my face. I unstuck my eyelashes, itched at my nose. That was funny. I never remembered David calling me…

“
Kit?
” a familiar and unwelcome voice demanded in my ear.

I sat up fast, the lousy mattress and my back both protesting the incautious move. I regret to say that the sound that issued forth from my lips was closer to girly squeal of terror than manly shout of outrage, but either way it worked and the sinister shadow looming over me backed up hastily.