Somebody Killed His Editor: Holmes & Moriarity, Book 1 (3 page)

“You walked?”

You’d have thought Rachel was a native Californian, given the horror in her voice.

“About five miles. I had a flat tire. That’s the least of it.” I took bitter satisfaction in delivering my bad news. “I found a body in the woods.”

“You—?” She couldn’t even finish it. She stared at me. Light dawned in her almond-shaped eyes, then faded, as she read my grim expression. “Bloody
hell
. You’re serious?”

Did she really think I was desperate enough to reinvent myself as the kind of nut who claims they’ve witnessed murders or been abducted by space aliens? Actually, I
was
that desperate, I just wasn’t that imaginative.

“I’m serious. I stopped to change shoes by this Japanese teahouse in the woods, and there was a dead woman…lying there.” As opposed to a dead woman doing what?

Rachel was staring at my encrusted trainers. In tones used by the medium at a séance she repeated,

“The teahouse…in the woods?”

“Rachel, snap out of it. Maybe it was a temple. Or a gardening shed. How do I know? The point is the
dead
woman.”

She swallowed hard. “Are you sure she was dead?”

“Affirmative. We need to tell someone.” We were beginning to attract attention. Rachel’s coterie crowded around asking what the problem was. Luckily, across the room, Steven Krass was still hanging on J.X. Moriarity’s every word. Probably planning to give him my slot in Wheaton & Woodhouse’s spring catalog. Not that I’m paranoid.

“Who’s in charge here?” I asked.

“Edgar and Rita Croft,” Rachel said.

An award-winning couple, I had no doubt. “Well, we’d better tell them. They’ll have to call the authorities. Although, I don’t know how anyone is getting in here, unless there’s another road?”

Somebody Killed His Editor

“Bloody
hell
,” said Rachel again. Turning, she led the way through the mob to a long buffet table where a tall, big-boned, impossibly raven-haired woman of about sixty was stuffing assorted muffins into plastic bags.

“Rita, something dreadful has happened.”

Rita barely paused in the muffin retrieval. “Honey, they’re trying to fix the cappuccino machine,” she replied, bagging like she was in the express checkout line and shooting for employee of the month.

“This is Christopher Holmes, and—”

Rita paused, brown fingers sinking into a chocolate muffin. She stared at me with a kind of disbelieving recognition.

At last, I thought, and my spirits rose. A fan. She was the right demographic, though sadly the over-fifty demo isn’t the one most publishing houses actively court these days.

“You’re two days late, mister,” she informed me crisply. “Get this straight. There’s no refund on the cabin
or
the conference.”

So much for fandom. I shot Rachel a look. She knew perfectly well I hadn’t planned on really participating in this conference. I mean, I wasn’t about to sit through workshops given by enthusiastic twenty-somethings on Getting That First Novel Down on Paper or Finding Your Hero’s Fatal Flaw (like you’d have to dig very deep to find a guy’s fatal flaw). The very idea gave me cold chills. Or maybe that was my five-mile forced march in the rain.

“Sorry about the mix-up,” I began, “but there’s something you should—”

“There was no mix-up on this end,” Rita retorted. “Your reservation was held in good faith.”

“Okay, but—”

“This conference—retreat, whatever you want to call it—sold out over three months ago.”

“Sure. I understand—”

“Cancellations have to be made two weeks in advance.”

I blurted, “There’s a dead body in your woods.”

Rita stared at me with pale blue eyes, while ripples of shock went around the pool of listeners.

“You might have broken that a bit more gently,” Rachel muttered.

I ignored this, prompting Rita. “Blonde, late forties maybe, purple pajamas, gold toe ring?”

Rachel sucked in her breath.
“Peaches Sadler.”

More ripples on the pink pond—I was wondering how Rachel recognized the dead woman from a description of her PJs and toe ring.

Peaches Sadler
. That had to be her real name. No marketing department would concoct “Peaches Sadler.” But why was that name so familiar to me?

“Well,” drawled Rita, seemingly unmoved. “That explains that.”

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Josh Lanyon

That explains what? I wondered, but there wasn’t opportunity to ask. Rita said something about finding Edgar and disappeared through a side door off the meeting room. Meanwhile, the news of Peaches’

demise was being passed from person to person in a grown-up version of Telephone—and probably about as accurately.

“I’m getting old. I had to leave my luggage by the road.” I automatically reached for one of the chocolate muffins in the bag left lying there. Despite a decent lunch at the Encounter Restaurant at LAX, I was starving. Running for my life does that to me. “So who’s Peaches Sadler?”

Rachel’s eyes did this uncharacteristic slide away from mine. “Peaches Sadler is the author of
Some
Like It Haute
. The bestselling comic crime novel of last year. You know, literary, but with that sexy chick-lit sensibility. She’s huge. She…was.”

I was listening to Rachel’s tone rather than her words as I crammed the muffin in my mouth, the chocolaty sweetness melting on my tongue. “Hold on a sec,” I said thickly, and dusted the crumbs from my chin. “Isn’t she the broad who wrote that essay in the
New York Times?
‘Who Killed Miss Marple?’ was the title, and she basically blamed the decline of the classic mystery on hacks like me. ‘Sherlock Holmes’s
other
brother and his ilk,’ that’s what she wrote.”

Rachel gnawed her carmine-stained lips—something I’d never seen her do before. “I don’t think she was singling
you
out so much as generalizing about the—”

“The hell she wasn’t. That bitch dissected—savaged—three of my most popular titles. She called Miss Butterwith a nosy old bat with ugly shoes and no sense of humor. She said she was like Frankenstein’s Bride, a grotesque
pasticcio
of her older and more clever sisters.”

I hadn’t even known what “
pasticcio”
was before reading that essay—every word of which was branded into my memory.

Rachel looked more uneasy than ever. “Do keep in mind that Peaches wrote that in answer to another essay very critical of the new direction that mystery fiction has taken—” She glanced past my shoulder and pasted on a twitchy white smile. “Hullo, J.X.”

Instantly my body went so rigid that my head shook—and for the life of me I couldn’t have explained why. I thought of the man in purely professional terms—and that’s about
all
he was wearing when I thought of him. I glanced around, trying not to crack my fused spine. J.X. Moriarity offered that sardonic grin that was so effective on his book jackets. A tiny gold stud glinted in his ear.

“Kit Holmes,” said the only person in the world who called me Kit instead of Christopher. “As I live and breathe.”

“
Such
a bad habit,” I murmured.

“I thought I recognized you.”

Really? He remembered me looking like Swamp Thing? How flattering.

18

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Somebody Killed His Editor

“We meet again,” I said as casually as though I’d stumbled over him on Park Avenue—or maybe under a bush in Central Park. “How’ve you been?” Not that I had to ask. He looked great, and you had only to open
Publisher’s Weekly
to see his latest thriller climbing the charts like Jack the Giant Killer scaling the beanstalk. Not that I begrudge anyone his success. Much.

“Good. Great.” He offered his hand, which seemed formal given the vividness of my own memories. I switched the muffin to shake—hoping that I was not smearing his palm with chocolate. He raised his eyebrows. “Cold hands, cold heart,” he said.

“Ha,” says I.

He looked me up and down. “You’re soaked through.”

“You really
did
used to be a police detective.”

“Have you heard about Peaches?” Rachel whispered, forestalling further civilities.

He still had my hand, which is why I felt him stiffen. “What about her?” He sounded…frosty. Or maybe I was projecting. I’d have sold my soul for a hot shower and a change of clothes about then.

The side door swung open and Rita returned with a tall, square-jawed man with a gorgeous shock of silvery hair like a well-aged Clark Gable. He wore cowboy boots and an olive shooting jacket.

“You’re the young fella who found Ms. Sadler?” He had an attractive raspy voice, very different from J.X.’s husky tenor.

Speaking of which, J.X. was stone silent.

I nodded. “She was lying by that Japanese temple in the woods.”

“The shrine? And you’re sure she was…”

“I’m sure.”

“This is a real tragedy.” He shook his head regretfully. “A real shame.”

“It’s bad news for the conference, that’s for sure,” Rita said. “And it’s bad news for us. What would she have been doing out there in this weather?” She sounded indignant. “She was asking for trouble!”

Edgar said to me, “Young fella, would you mind showing us where she is?”

I did mind, actually. I was dirty, wet, exhausted, and I prefer my dead bodies between the pages of a mystery novel. “
Me?
She’s right there at the shrine. You know where the shrine is, right?”

His silvery eyebrows rose. “Sure, but—”

“I mean, you’ve called the sheriffs, surely? They’re on their way?”

“The phone lines are down,” J.X. said curtly. “They’ve been down since noon.”

I glanced his way. His chiseled features looked sharper than they had a few moments before.

“Well, what about cell phones?” As a self-proclaimed recluse, I didn’t bother with one, but I couldn’t believe the rest of these minions of technology weren’t packing.

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Josh Lanyon

“Have you noticed the mountains around us? Reception is impossible.” Rachel too wore a weird expression. Maybe it was the dawning realization that we were trapped here. Not exactly heartwarming news for me, either.

“Internet access?”

“The lodge doesn’t offer internet access,” Rachel informed me. “Writers don’t get anything done with internet access.”

“A two-way radio? Walkie-talkies?” I turned to Edgar Croft.

He shook his head regretfully. “Somewhere around here we must still have an old radio set. We’ll have to try to dig it out later.”

“Carrier pigeon?” I have a tendency to babble when I’m nervous. “Blanket and campfire?”

J.X. made a snorting sound.

Yep, the inference was that we were here for the duration. We could not phone out, and apparently we could not drive out. Which meant the police could not drive in—they could not even land a helicopter until the storm passed.

“Meantime…” Edgar said slowly. He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.

J.X. seemed to shake off his preoccupation. “Right,” he said briskly. “We’re losing daylight.”

They both gazed at me expectantly. “But…you don’t need
me
,” I protested. “You know where the shrine is. And I’ve got to get out of these wet clothes. Really. I’m prone to ch—”

“We can wait,” J.X. said. “It will save us time in the long run.”

Oh, he was loving this. And what was with the “we” stuff? Was he planning to join the expedition?

Once a cop always a cop?

“No, it won’t. She’s right there. You can’t miss her.” First body to the right.

He frowned at this non-civic mindedness, but what did I care what he thought? He was just a guy I had once—er—well, he was just a guy.

“I’m sure we can borrow some dry clothes for you, Christopher,” Rachel said, and I gave her an ungrateful look.

“Sure,” Edgar returned easily. “I’ll bring up some jeans and a flannel shirt.”

“We’ll meet you in the front lobby,” J.X. said. “Say ten minutes?”

If I was going to
say
anything, it would not be “ten minutes”. But I refrained, letting Rachel drag me away to her room. There was no sign of Satan Krass as we made our way through the crowd. He was probably off booby-trapping careers and destroying other unsuspecting people’s lives. The rest of the room had fallen into disbelieving and shocked murmurs. Bad news travels fast.

The hallway outside the dining room was deserted—as was the front desk. We climbed a steep rustic stairway to the second level. More Indian rugs and Indian baskets by way of decoration. Wrought-iron light fixtures that suggested cacti and tree branches hung from the sloped ceiling and cast a mellow glow over 20

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Somebody Killed His Editor

Charlie Russell prints and black-and-white photos of the winery back in the fifties. Rachel led the way down a long hallway. The murmur of voices from behind closed doors reminded me of bees in a hive.

I tried to avoid the mirrors in Rachel’s room, but it was like trying not to look at a traffic accident. All trace of the suave literary lion I’d been impersonating before I arrived at Hell’s Half Acre was gone—killed on safari. What remained was a forty-year-old man, average height, average weight, brown eyes, and dishwater blond hair cut in a very expensive haircut that, sopping wet, looked like every other haircut. The head-to-toe mud-coating was the most interesting thing about me.

Somewhere on my wilderness trek I’d lost one of the two tiny earrings gracing my right ear. I mean, one earring would have been bad enough.
Two
? And the damned things cost a fortune because I was allergic to any metal but platinum. I dropped the remaining stud on the glass shelf and opened the door to the shower.

I took a quick and scalding shower, toweled off and dressed in the oversized jeans and plaid flannel shirt Edgar Croft had dropped off for me. Edgar was about five inches taller than me. I looked like a little kid playing cowboy dress up. I opened my mouth to bitch to Rachel, then realized she hadn’t said a word since we’d come upstairs.

“Hey, are you okay?” I asked, poking my head out of the bathroom. She stood smoking at the open window, blowing a thin blue stream into the rain-swept air.