Spanish Disco (11 page)

This Seale creep wasn’t going to give up. The magazine was a cross between a sleazy tabloid and serious journalism. Lots of movie star photos and glam covers mixed
with gossip. Glossy. And Seale sounded like an impossible putz. I’d heard a few tales about him hunting down stories. Calling him while in my present state of nausea made good sense. Perhaps my unparalleled bitchiness and irritation would scare him off. I dialed his room direct.

“Seale here.”

“Mr. Seale, I don’t believe I’ve had the displeasure of actually speaking to you. Cassandra Hayes.”

“Your reputation precedes you. What a pleasure to speak with you. Listen, I really think you should meet me for a cup of coffee. I have some information on Roland Riggs that might throw a damper on Lou O’Connor’s decision to publish Riggs’s next book. That
is
why you’re staying with him, isn’t it? Or is there some torrid love affair I should know about?”

“Yes. We’re fucking madly every minute of the day. But is that any of
your
fucking business?”

“Coffee or not, Miss Hayes?”

“Coffee. Just so I can pour it on your lap. Where?”

He gave me the address of his hotel, and I went to the bathroom and slapped on some wine-colored lipstick— God, I thought, even my makeup has something to do with alcohol. Then I took two Tylenol. Then one more for good measure. Chewed three Tums. Downed the rest of my coffee. The breakfast of champions.

I went downstairs.

“Where are you going?” Roland asked me, chipper as could be.

From behind my Ray-Bans I heard a frog in my throat
croak, “Have to meet some reporter for coffee. He wants to know what’s going on. Spotted me here. Followed me here. Who knows? One coffee with me, and he’ll crawl back under whatever rock he came from.”

Roland’s eyes registered panic. “What paper is he from?”

“Not a paper. A magazine. Look, Roland, I’ll get him to back off until we figure out what we’re doing about your poem…um…book.”

Roland escorted me to the door. Ten cats sprawled across the steps, blocking my path in a fur-lined calico carpet. Roland started sneezing uncontrollably.

“Allergic. Let me close the door.”

Shaking my head, I stepped over a fat striped cat with an enormous belly—kittens?—and made my way to my car.

The Sundial Resort is a rambling complex, complete with a pool bar, which is where I would have preferred to meet Donald Seale. Instead, I found him in the dining room at a back table, motioning for me to join him.

I was prepared to hate him at first sight. I was not prepared for how beautiful he was. His skin was the color of pale chocolate, and his eyes were large, round and very black. There was no discernible difference between his pupils and his irises. Just midnight eyes. I reminded myself that I hate beautiful people on principle and sat down, ignoring his proffered hand.

“First of all,” I opened, “anything I say is off the record. If you use anything I say, I will hunt you down and kill you slowly and painfully. I believe in genital mutilation as a matter of principle, Mr. Seale.”

“I heard you were a piece of work, but I had no idea…”

“I heard you were a prick. You don’t disappoint.”

“Listen. I’m here to help you.”

“No. Whatever it is you ‘have’ on Roland Riggs you have because you have betrayed his privacy. He moved here to get away from it all, and now you want to sell your little magazine and that is apparently worth your soul, so whatever it is, I’m not all that interested.”

“Roland Riggs is a public figure.”

“No. He’s a writer.”

“Same thing.”

“Oh. So are you fair game? Can I go picking through your garbage and find out you wear Trojans—extra small—and jack off to pictures of your grandmother?”

“Are you always this ingratiatingly charming before noon?” He clenched his jaw.

“No. Oh wait…you’re not fair game. You’re not a real writer. You’re a parasite. Sorry.”

“Have you thought of a career in stand-up if this publishing thing doesn’t work out?” He smiled in an attempt to loosen me up and flashed a perfectly straight set of gleaming white teeth. Clearly he bleached them. I was glad I kept my sunglasses on. The reflection would have blinded me. But I did pause for a moment.

“I made you laugh.”

“No. You made me grimace. Or a half-smile. Not a laugh. No truce. Where is the waitress with my coffee?”

“You and Roland tie one on last night?”

“What? You follow us?”

“No. Small island. Your arrival at Riggs’s compound stirred interest among the locals.”

“How does a guy get into the business of tearing people’s lives up for kicks?”

“I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, Miss Hayes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I didn’t go to a fancy college. I didn’t go to prep school. I didn’t have wealthy parents who sent me for riding lessons. By the way, because I can already see I’ve succeeded in irritating you again, I’ll let you know I’ve heard this about you through the grapevine. I haven’t been spying on you. I will add, however, that whatever your parents spent on charm school should be refunded.”

He wore an open-necked Oxford button-down, crisp and starched, and a pair of khakis. I looked down. In my hangover state, I couldn’t even remember what I was wearing. Thankfully, I had changed that morning. I wore an A-line black dress. No underpants—not that Seale would ever know. Black ballerina slippers. I instinctively felt my hair. Loose but without any noticeable knots or bedhead matted balls.

“Funny. Actually, I was kicked out of multiple private schools, but most of them had a no-refund clause.”

The waitress brought over coffee and a basket of breads.

“Look, if it means anything, honest to God I admire Roland Riggs. I think
Simple Simon
is a masterpiece. He’s better than Hemingway or Miller. Better than anyone. Which is why this story is…unbelievable.”

“And the story is?”

“Look, I don’t want you running back to Riggs with this. But, I might consider backing off if he gave me a one-on-one interview.”

“Is that what this is? Leveraging for the interview of a lifetime? You are a sleazy bastard.”

“Did you know your left eye twitches ever so imperceptibly when you’re angry?”

Donald Seale’s gaze held mine, and I felt my blood pressure rise from both anger and something akin to lust, but I forced myself to find physical flaws. His nose was straight and perfect, his neck hair, I noticed when he turned to smile at the waitress when she had brought our coffee, was even clipped clean. Nothing about him was untidy. I hated him.

“Cut to the chase, Mr. Seale.”

“Call me Don. And it’s a good thing you’re sitting down. Roland Riggs is Maria Martin.”

If he wanted me to register shock, he was sorely disappointed. Confusion was more like it.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Maria Martin.”

“Are you trying to tell me that he’s had a sex change?”

“You have no idea who Maria Martin is, do you?”

I shook my head. From an open soft-sided leather briefcase, Don pulled out a romance book. On the front was a beautiful woman with black hair and black eyes. A man in the uniform of the Union Army was kissing the hollow of her throat.

In
Indian Summer Moon,
Maria Martin takes you on another journey of unparalleled passion and breathtaking adventure as a beautiful Native American woman and the man she loves battle prejudice and a brewing Indian war. Against a backdrop of…

“What is this?”

“As romance writers go, Maria Martin is considered one of the best.”

“This is crap.”

“It’s also written by Roland Riggs.”

“Impossible.”

“Open to page 72. The sentence I want you to read is highlighted.”

“She felt confusion swirl around her like a whirl of locusts. Battering against her face, the locusts’ wings buzzed his name…. This is what you want me to read?”

“That’s lifted almost word for word from
Simple Simon.
Remember the scene where Simon doesn’t know whether to stay and fight or run? He talks about the confusion of locusts, remembering the family farm and the locusts dropping from the roof beams and crawling through every crevice. Some of the words…the confusion, the locusts, are identical.”

“You call this investigative reporting? So what?”

“Flip through the book, Cassie. All those highlighted words aren’t plagiarized per se, but they’re phrases the two books have in common. I’ve spent months poring over the two of them, and I’m convinced it’s the same writer.”

“So what? This Maria Martin’s a copycat. A bad copycat.”

“That’s what I thought, too. Until I hounded someone at Zephyr Press for the address for Maria Martin. After ten or fifteen phone calls, this woman finally relaxed a little on the phone with me. I can be charming if I want to be, you know.”

Again he blinded me with white teeth.

“She told me Maria Martin is an old woman who lives on Sanibel Island. She doesn’t do the romance book tours. She doesn’t answer fan mail. That’s pretty unusual for the romance trade. But her books are very popular anyway. She’s the ‘queen of unrequited love.’”

“So this Martin lives here, and you think she’s Roland Riggs. Arguably the greatest talent who ever lived is really a romance hack—that’s your theory? That’s what got me out of bed and dressed despite this insufferable hangover? That’s
all
you’ve got? Some similar phrasing?”

“It’s not as far-fetched as you think.”

“What did you do? Wake up this morning and smoke some particularly strong pot before you called me? This is absurd. You’re inventing a mystery that isn’t even there. This is like the Beatles and ‘Paul is dead.’ This is like Elvis being alive. This is bullshit.”

“I know I’m right, and when I prove it, I’m going to write the story of the decade. Unless he agrees to an interview with me.”

“He’ll never do it.”

“You could talk to him.”

“He has no reason to do it. He’s not this Maria Martin.”

As I said the word Maria, I faltered for a fraction of a second.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You know something.”

“Look, if you write this story, you will look like journalism’s biggest fool. Go ahead. Write it. See if you ever get the respect you stay awake at night craving.”

Donald Seale faltered himself. He blinked those dark eyes of his, and I knew I wounded him for a moment. I had guessed the chink in his armor. I hadn’t found a physical flaw, but I had found an emotional one.

Standing, I said, “I suggest you leave Sanibel before you make an even bigger ass of yourself.”

I grabbed a croissant for the road, shoving it in my purse. I took a swig of coffee.

“If you weren’t so intent on being a bitch, you might actually be very beautiful,” he whispered.

I stared him down. Then I turned and made my way toward the exit. The restaurant was empty. With my back to him, I lifted my dress and mooned Donald Seale.
Conversations’
hotshot journalist.

“Kiss mine,” I muttered and strolled out into the light of the midmorning Florida sun.

12

“M
aria?”

I eyed her as she cooked something so horrific the smell alone made me gag.

“Yes?” She didn’t look at me.

“In Mexico…did you ever have locusts?”

“Locusts?
Non comprende.
”

“Bugs. Like flying grasshoppers.”

“No. No flying grasshoppers.”

“Hmm. Thanks.”

I walked upstairs to my bedroom and took out the book I had filched from Donald Seale. He hadn’t asked for it back during our conversation, and I had put it in my purse as I stood. Passage after passage was highlighted. I had a copy of
Simple Simon
with me. Donald was right. Key
phrases and scenes were shared. In one passage in
Indian Summer Moon,
Maria Martin described her lead character:

Her hair fell halfway down her back, a cascade of black mica, almost liquid, perfect and shining. Her eyes were equally dark, and their effect was hypnotic.

In
Simple Simon,
the lead character visits a whorehouse:

Simon requested an Asian girl, and he was greeted by a young Korean beauty with a shy smile.

“Take your hair down,” he whispered. Trying to shut out the jungle, he forced himself to stare at her cascading hair, black liquid mica, perfect, shining. He was safe, he told himself. Breathing deeply, he turned her face to look at him, wanting to get lost in her eyes, dark black pools, pupils indistinguishable from irises, hypnotic and soothing at the same time. No fire, no gunshots. Just this one girl offering herself to him.

I turned pages in both books, flipping back and forth. I tried to tell myself Donald wasn’t onto anything. But I knew he was. But was it that Roland Riggs wrote romances when he wasn’t writing lengthy and commercially suicidal epic poems? Or was it that his housekeeper was a plagiarist? Or someone else who lived on the island? Or something else entirely? My head hurt. I decided to log on to my e-mail.