Somebody Killed His Editor: Holmes & Moriarity, Book 1 (26 page)

He nodded vaguely and felt the back of his head with cautious fingertips. She waved his fingers aside and began swabbing his scalp.

I really did not want to see J.X.’s head sewn up, but I couldn’t seem to make myself walk away.

“Any word from the sheriff’s department?” he asked Edgar, who had started to turn away from the crowd in the bar.

Edgar paused, shaking his head. “The good news is the wind blew the fog away. The bad news is the wind makes it impossible to land a helicopter.”

There were assorted moans and groans from everyone. Edgar and Rita proceeded to reassure their unwilling guests that there was plenty of food and drink and that, while they couldn’t feed and house everyone for free indefinitely, they could certainly cover one more night gratis.

“We have jobs. We have
lives
,” one woman protested.

“So far,” someone else muttered.

I wasn’t sure what they expected our hosts to do about either of those things. I imagined Edgar and Rita couldn’t wait to see the last of us. I listened without really hearing the discussion around me. Abruptly, 152

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Somebody Killed His Editor

I felt drained…let down. The adrenaline that had kept me moving while we hunted for J.X. was a memory now. A not very pleasant memory.

For a few more minutes I watched the ladies fussing pleasantly over J.X. Watched him smiling sheepishly, responding as best he could.

Edging back through the crowd, I left the bar. I didn’t have a direction in mind, but I knew that I couldn’t stand there any longer staring at J.X.

Someone else had the same idea and was walking down the hall ahead of me. I recognized Rachel’s distinctive sashay. Hearing footsteps behind her, she turned warily, and then relaxed.

“Oh, it’s you.” She didn’t exactly smile, but her expression was one of grudging approval. “Good work, Christopher.”

“Thanks.” It seemed an odd thing to take credit for—or maybe I was too tired to view it normally.

“What made you look down in the cellar?”

“Lucky guess. It was the only place I could think of that we hadn’t checked yet.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe this trip has been good for you after all.”

“Ha. Well, for the record, the next time you ask me to attend any kind of writing conference or convention, the answer is no.” I added, “Assuming you’re still representing me.”

She stiffened. “What does that mean? Are you firing me?”

I’d sort of meant it the other way around, but her attitude intrigued me—and gave me an opening.

“It depends. What exactly did Peaches have on you?”

Expressionless, she stared at me for several seconds. Then she said, “We can’t talk about this here.

Come up to my room.”

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Rachel lit a cigarette and went over to the window, shoving it open. Rain-scented air blew the rust-colored draperies out and sucked them back. She took a couple of nervous puffs, and then said, “You’re happy with your representation, right? I’ve never given you cause to doubt my commitment to your career?”

“Are we counting this weekend?”

She gave me a bleak-eyed look. “Yes, we
are
counting this weekend. How could I know it would turn into
Friday the 13th
? I was striving to do what’s best for you.”

“Okay. I accept that. And, yes, I’m happy with my representation.” I added, “Although I think you are seriously deluded when it comes to stories involving either kitten heels or demons. However, I accept that you have my best interests at heart. When it comes to my career at least.”

She considered that last reflectively. “They aren’t always compatible,” she admitted. “I don’t think living with David was good for your writing.”

“Now you tell me. I don’t think living with David was particularly good for me on any level.”

I could tell that she wasn’t really listening. “What I’m about to tell you will ruin my career if it ever gets out.”

I nodded. There seemed to be a lot of that going around this weekend.

Rachel took another nervous puff on her cigarette, before shooting me a sideways glance. “I’m not English. I wasn’t born in Hong Kong, British or otherwise.”

“I did wonder,” I admitted. “Your accent keeps slipping. I never noticed before. Probably because we never spent any real time together before.”

“I was actually born in San Francisco. I went to San Francisco State University. That’s where I met Patty. Peaches, I mean.”

Now things began to make sense—including her enthusiasm for my reinventing myself. “Someone else who made up her history? Is it something in the air up here?” I thought it over. “Okay. I guess I can live with not having an English agent. I mean, it was kind of cool and cosmopolitan, but—”

“That’s not the confession,” she said painfully. “Or, rather, it is partly the confession, but…” She drew on the cigarette again. “All right. Here it is. After college I got into some trouble. I’m not going to try and make excuses. I was young and stupid.”

Somebody Killed His Editor

“Is
that
the confession?” I inquired when she didn’t continue. “Because a
lot
of people are young and stupid. Personally, I don’t think it’s as serious an offense as old and stupid.”

“I went to prison for embezzlement.”

“Oh.” My agent was a former embezzler. Yes, I could see how that might put a crimp in our working relationship.

“It was right after college. I was working as the receptionist at a high-end auto body repair shop. I was responsible for the petty cash and for making bank deposits.” She closed her eyes and shook her head.

Seconds passed. She opened her eyes and stared right at me. “Anyway. I did my time, and I swear to you, I have never since so much as taken a penny that didn’t belong to me. I don’t even pick change up off the sidewalk.”

“Me either. You don’t know
where
it’s been…”

She waited for me to get to it, and I was thinking rapidly while my mouth flapped. Because it
was
serious. She was an ex-crook and I was trusting her with my livelihood. What was left of it.

At last, I said, “Okay, Rachel. I believe you. Everything you’ve ever sent me matches the publisher’s royalty statements to the penny, and as you know, I do pay close attention to these things. You’ve been my agent for eight years, and you’re a hell of a lot better than the first guy I had.” I met her gaze, and I could read the strain there. “I’m not going to terminate our relationship.”

She relaxed a fraction. “Thank you. But you can see why everyone might not feel the same way?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s not information I would share. Is prison where you hooked up with Espie?”

She nodded. “We became friends. We were enrolled in one of those prison writing courses. I figured out right away that as much as I loved books and storytelling, I didn’t have what it takes to be a writer.

Espie did. And I thought maybe I would be good at the business side of it. And I am. Very good at it.”

“You are,” I agreed. “For the record, you’ve never threatened to break anyone’s legs, right?”

She grimaced.

“I’m joking. Not that I would have cared if you’d broken Krass’s legs.”

“I told you the truth,” she said quickly. “I went for a walk that morning and I came on you standing over his body. I had nothing to do with his death.”

“I believe you,” I said. “I can’t quite see you splitting someone’s head open with an axe. I think poison would be more your style. Or maybe a little jeweled dagger between the ribs.”

“You have a ghoulish sense of humor.”

“I didn’t used to. I think it’s this weekend.” I was silent, considering.

Watching me narrowly, Rachel asked, “What’s the matter?”

“Peaches knew the truth about your prison record obviously. That’s what she was blackmailing you with. If you didn’t hand Espie’s book over she was going to ruin you by exposing your past.”

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Josh Lanyon

Rachel stubbed out her cigarette in a drinking glass. “Yes. About a year after I moved to New York, I ran into her.” Her smile was caustic. “I was still young enough, naïve enough, to think you could be honest with people.”

“You can be honest with some people, Rachel. You have to use discretion.”

She flicked me a wry look. “Hm. Well, at least these days I’m better about judging people. Anyway, I ran into Peaches and it turned out that she was writing a book. I’d managed to sell Espie’s novel to Steven Krass at Gardener and Britain so I thought I was a hot-shot literary agent.” She shook her head. “God help me. But you have to understand. Peaches was a world-class manipulator.”

“And you had some kind of an affair?”

“I have worse luck than you when it comes to relationships.”

Stung, I said, “You know, for the record, I was in a stable relationship for ten years.”

“It was only stable because you were too preoccupied with your career to do anything about David’s philandering.”

“At least he wasn’t a blackmailing plagiarist.
Anyway
, you and Peaches came together over cosmopolitans and royalty clauses, and you spilled the beans about your summer at Camp Gotchabadgirl, and when she ripped off Espie’s first novel, there wasn’t anything you could do about it without wrecking your budding career.”

Rachel nodded dully.

“Peaches moved on up the food chain and, I’m guessing, you gave each other wide birth in the goldfish bowl that is New York publishing—until this weekend when you, Espie, Peaches and Krass were all thrown together again. Peaches, who had more nerve than sense, decided to replay her greatest hit and rip Espie off again by threatening you with exposure if you didn’t give her a peek at this magnum opus.

How am I doing so far?”

She said sarcastically, “Did you ever think of writing mysteries?”

“Funny. Funny, funny, girl,” I said. “So the question is, what did you tell Peaches? How did you plan to stall her?”

“What I didn’t do was kill her.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?” she asked suspiciously.

I gave her a lopsided grin. “Well, I’m sorry to say it’s not my faith in your better nature. You aren’t tall enough to have slammed Peaches over the head with a blunt instrument. You could have kneecapped her without problem, but—”

“Most amusing, Christopher.” She was glaring.

“There’s no way you could carry her and I don’t think you’re strong enough to have dragged her any distance. It’s possible you could have brained Krass since he was sitting down when he was hit, but no way 156

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Somebody Killed His Editor

in hell could you have knocked J.X. out unless you stood on a stool to do it, and you couldn’t have dragged him anywhere.”

“I’m touched by your belief in me.”

“Hey, I’ve got plenty of belief in you. I’m not phoning the William Morris Agency to pitch my new Regency P.I. demon project, am I?”

She blushed and looked away.

I asked, “Are you sure Espie had no idea what was going on between you and Peaches? Don’t you think she could probably put two and two together pretty fast?”

“Espie wouldn’t…”

Curiously, I watched her trail into silence. She said, “Espie couldn’t have…for the same reasons you think I couldn’t have.”

“Espie’s taller than you—nearly everyone is—and she’s a lot stronger than you. Not to mention the fact that she’s got the stomach for violence, which I don’t think you do.”

Rachel was shaking her head, rejecting this. “I know her. She wouldn’t commit murder. The other time…was an accident. She was a kid and she was…enraged. She didn’t understand the consequences.”

“I think she’d have been pretty enraged if she’d known what Peaches was up to.”

“She didn’t though.”

“You sound pretty sure.”

Rachel’s face twisted. “I am. Because she was angry with me the next morning. She thought…Peaches had propositioned me.”

“She did kind of.”

“Yes, but not that way. Someone was with Peaches that night, and Espie thought it was me because she had heard us arguing.”

Ah ha, Watson. The return of the mysterious gentleman who belonged to the boots Mindy had spied at the foot of Peach’s bed. It looked more and more like Mr. XO had been the last person to see Peaches alive.

~ * ~

It really wasn’t my problem, was it? Two unpleasant and probably highly deserving people had been violently dispatched. But since I was no longer in the front running for prime suspect, and since J.X. had been found safe and relatively sound, it seemed to me to be a very good time to hang up my deer stalker.

Before the killer decided to hang me up.

All I had to do was hole up in my cabin until the rescue teams arrived and then I could go back to my quiet, dull existence and decide whether I really had it in me to write about demons and whether I should fight David for possession of the player piano currently sitting in our—my—den.

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Josh Lanyon

It was, in fact, the course of least resistance—and what was wrong with that? For all those sententious speeches I had Miss B. deliver at the end of each novel, some people deserved killing.

The problem with murder was that it was contagious. Like eating potato chips, it was hard to stop at one—if only because concealing the first murder often led to a second and third murder. And while I sympathized with someone wanting to deliver Peaches her just reward—and maybe even Krass—I didn’t appreciate the attempt at sticking me with a murder rap. And I really didn’t appreciate someone trying to do away with J.X. Not that there hadn’t been times when I’d considered it myself. Still…

Yeah.

So after I left Rachel’s room, I didn’t go back to the bar. I didn’t want to ask any more questions, I didn’t want to see the uneasy way people watched each other, I didn’t want to hear any more lies—

I left the lodge and walked back through the silver, shivery rain to my cabin. I locked myself in, shoved the desk against the door and built up the fire in the grate. I undressed and got into bed and told myself to go to sleep.