Voices in the Wardrobe (7 page)

Oh, boy.

Nine

“Whoa girl, you drive a Dodge Ram? Who'd a thought?” Kenny drove his rental, a bright red something-to-ruther.

He'd been explaining to her why he was at the conference and trying to lay a guilt trip on her for not returning his calls. All the while Charlie was hurrying out to the parking lot, intent upon rushing to the Sea Spa, and postponing him, when she saw more cameras and the ferret from the
Union-Tribune
sniffing around her truck.

So, planning to tell her client to shove off, midway through the sentence Charlie changed to, “Kenny? Where's your car? I need to make a fast getaway.” Studs are suckers for that kind of talk.

When they were nearly there she thought to mention they'd need to eat before they reached their destination. Charlie couldn't believe it when he pulled into a Carl's Junior for lunch. Kenny was a sometime health nut. “But this is junk food.”

“I'm on vacation. So why that heart-stopping smile when I said I'd finished the Myrtle book? You know, I haven't felt that good since my mommy told me I'd passed potty training.”

“I have a nibble on the proposal.”

“Who?” he said around a loaded burger.

“Pitman's.” She tore her burger into ragged halves and passed one over to his side of the table, sneaking a couple of his fries in return. “I just found out Friday. You must have had a boring winter in Iowa to finish it this soon.”

“They turned down the last one after nibbles.”

“New editor. This one could be different.” Charlie met this creature last October when she and her mother traveled to Iowa on family matters. And she learned more about family than she'd ever wanted to know. Charlie had grown up thinking she'd been adopted from an agency in Boulder where she was raised and her daughter born. She and Libby had dark, almost black eyes in stark contrast to their light hair, Libby a platinum blonde and Charlie's hair with more of a bronze shade. But when Charlie visited Myrtle, Iowa for the first and she vowed last time, she found at least a fourth of the people there had the same color eyes—including Kenny Cowper who wrote under the name of Kenneth Cooper.

“Nice old Iowa” had been something of a surprise. And so had Kenny Cowper.

“So tell me again why you are at this conference?”

“I thought an exposé on charlatans in the entertainment industry might be a possible article. And I thought it would be fun to hand deliver a completed book manuscript to my new agent.”

“You've already got an assignment for this article.”

“Right. But you get to check out the contract. I have divorced Jethro Larue for good.”

As Kenny had predicted, Jeth Larue, a fairly formidable New York literary agent, had not liked Kenny's proposal for a book dealing largely with the conundrum of nursing homes and those who dwell interminably and helplessly within. Jeth had a mother so incarcerated whom he couldn't bear to visit and found the whole subject distasteful. He was also of the age where he was the next generation up for this lovely existence.

Kenny's title for it was
The Curse of Myrtle, Iowa, the United States, and The Developed World
. Neither he nor Charlie thought that would be the final title but both were too involved in the problem it posed to think up the perfect one and Charlie figured this title would entice enough curiosity to get a close examination. If accepted, it would be his fifth published book, plus he had credits as an investigative reporter for the
Miami Herald
and at least ten article credits with major news magazines.

Plus which he was way more than presentable, too way more, and the guy could pitch, an indispensable asset in an industry in which major decision makers too often have little inclination to read. Agents and editors read what their assistants pass on and then must pitch to higher levels to wheedle contracts. That's one of the reasons why new material is often presented as similar to the latest bestseller or star in a genre or category. Plus, the stud had business savvy. His first agent didn't know the half there. Kenny'd been born and raised in Myrtle, moved to Florida, and returned to save its only pool hall. He'd renamed it Viagra's. It was a hit.

“Does that sudden photo op back at the Islandia mean I get my picture with you in the paper instead of Hilsten tomorrow?”

There was only one official San Diego sheriff's car in the parking lot at the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol, but quite a few other cars. And when Charlie and Kenny entered, after ignoring Dashiell the gatekeeper, the place seemed to be humming. No one at the front desk or in the office, or in Maggie's room, but they followed sound to find her in a mirrored gym on the pool level sweating out an exercise-dance routine to the rhythms of Swank Swill with twenty-five, maybe thirty others. Unlike the screenwriters' conference, all but three of those participating here were female.

“Thought you said the place was almost closed down by the murder.” Kenny inspected the weightlifting and torture machine room next door through the windows. “They got some cool stuff here.”

Raoul had a few sacrifices in the pool and several others sat on the side watching. Maggie'd waved at them from the distressed line in the gym. Charlie said, “Let's go find either the VanZants, the law, or Luella Ridgeway. Maggie's smiling so I'm not rescuing her yet.”

“You don't make a lot more sense than my last agent.”

They found Detective Solomon in the auditorium with Caroline and Warren VanZant.

“Well, here's our famous Hollywood agent. In my minuscule experience of such things, I thought agents kept a lower profile. Our
Union-Tribune
is usually more immune to celebrity. And who is this gentleman?”

“I'm her bodyguard.” Kenny Cowper bent to smile sardonically upon them all.

“He's one of my authors, Kenneth Cooper,” Charlie said. “Caroline, I just saw Maggie and she seemed happy. Have you adjusted her drugs some more?”

“Drugs?” Solomon looked away from Kenny to study the Spa's proprietor.

“Medications,” Charlie corrected and tried to smile with conviction.

But Caroline VanZant was still torturing her neck looking up at Kenny. “Kenneth Cooper? The author?”

“Never heard of him,” Solomon said. “Now if we can get past the celebrity thing here, I want to know again exactly who was where when Judith Judd died. Not the clientele, I'm talking staff, you, your son.”

“Sorry, talk to you later,” and Charlie motioned the author out of the room and down the hall to the eddy-pool deck where every pool was filled with Jacuzzi bubbles, suffering cucumbers, bubbling brooks, and thunder in the distance. Charlie finally recognized what was so strange about Solomon's appearance: he had no eyebrows.

Dashiell squinted suspicion from the palms at the head of the pools. Charlie ignored him and walked to the windows, looking for Luella among the paths and plantings and cottages below. There was a long sweep of sea and she even got a glimpse of an edge of the famous marina. She didn't know “sea talk” but there was apparently an inlet or something at the north side of this promontory or point, whatever, that allowed the gentling of the swells that crashed against its end.

“You got a problem with that?” Kenny Cowper said behind her and she turned to see him leaning over Dashiell.

Charlie caught herself before she said, “Kenny, leave it.”

She'd watched this dog food commercial one of her clients had snared, too many times. It was about training dogs to stop inappropriate behavior of all sorts apparently but when used to keep a dog from Pooch Svelte, it elicited a snarl from a Chihuahua, a Doberman, and something shaggy in between.

She led her author off by the arm, but the bald jerk brought them both up short. “He's a sex addict. Be careful, Miss Greene.”

And good old Kenny had to turn around and retort, “Oh yeah? Well, she's a pervert.”

And several sufferers made the mistake of trying to sit up and bend tight seaweed wraps and cucumbers to get a look at such an extraordinary couple and the eddy pools were much disturbed.

“I can't take you anywhere,” Charlie groused when they walked outside among the sheds and paths and cottages. She'd seen some people wandering out here when she'd slipped upstairs to check Maggie's room. Luella's bag was still there and her Lexus in the parking lot.

“Wait a minute—is this the spa where that lady doctor was murdered?” Kenny asked now.

“Yeah, and my friend Maggie found her and when I got back she said she did it because she wanted to die. She's gone wacko on us.”

“Did she kill the doctor?”

“She's suicidal, not homicidal. And on and off. Depression and prescription drugs. Screwed-up hormones.”

“Rough.”

“I was going to take her back to the Islandia with me, but now I don't know.”

“I've heard women are pretty much ruled by their hormones. Must be really rough for women like you.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Kenny started off down a path to a row of small, mostly one-room cottages with porches. He looked in windows, tried some doors—the investigative reporter in him perking up. Most of the cottages appeared empty of furnishings. Two had wicker chairs on the porch that the wind had blown over. The sea breeze smelled wet and salty, tried to tug her hair from its navy blue tie down. The sun was dry and hot and forced Charlie to unbutton her tuxedo jacket. That reminded her of the other Tuxedo in her life and in her house and the effects of Science Diet mixed with Diazepam.

“You know that blouse is illegal?”

“Be careful, it's easy to get lost out here.”

“Tell me about it. There's not a straight path to anywhere, inside or out. Is there a point to that, I wonder? This sure isn't Iowa.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You know you send mixed signals?”

Charlie was happy to hear her cell go off in her purse. She could turn her back on him. It was Ronald Dorland, a fairly new client with a book out last year. He'd had some minor success with filmwriting assignments before that and was astonished when she answered instead of her voice-mail message. He couldn't understand the first royalty statement for his book.

“You don't want to know,” Charlie told him.

“But I do. I took it to my accountant, Charlie. He didn't understand it either.”

“Join the crowd. Let's see, that would be Bootstrap, a subsidiary of Wonderhouse who just merged with Dallywood, a subsidiary of Sherman/Sturtz just bought out by a German brewery whose name I can't pronounce whose parent company makes titanium nuts and bolts and body parts for repairs.” Charlie should know, she had one of their plates implanted in her neck. “And itself part of a conglomerate specializing in diversification run by a management firm—SORRI.”

“But my publisher is Zulu Press, not any of those other publishers.”

“Merged with Bootstrap two years ago.”

“Which all means what?”

“Get kneepads.”

“I thought agents were supposed to keep authors from getting screwed.”

“Look, most writers never get published at all. I was able to get you a contract for a two thousand advance—you are now on the bottom rung of a very tall ladder. It's either the beginning of a climb or you fall off and expire as an author or turn to self-publishing, which is pretty much the same thing. With that advance you're lucky the books got out of the warehouse. With that advance there is no clout for an agent to use.” Charlie's commission on that advance didn't pay its share of the paperwork or overhead.

“So I'm never going to see any royalties? This is just like Hollywood.”

“Look at it this way, Ronald, kneepads are cheap.”

Ten

“Kneepads,” Kenny said, wide-eyed and for once not in total sarcastic control of a situation. “You talking praying or sodomy? Was that a client?”

“Well, it wasn't a gardener. Ronald published his first book last year and just received his first royalty statement.”

“Oh. You were talking—”

“Right.”

Luella Ridgeway, dressed in slacks and flats instead of business suit and heels, appeared from an angled walkway, talking on her cell. “Hang on a minute. Charlie, I need paper and pen. You have any in your purse?”

Before Charlie could make a move, a small notepad opened to a clean page descended from the porch above with a ballpoint and muscled forearm for a writing surface. Luella paused to stare up at the command center of this instant office, glance puzzlement at Charlie. “Okay, go ahead.”

Luella was small, smart, swift, and savvy. She used the proffered desk as if she expected no less from the world as Kenny held the pad still for her so she could hold the cell and the pen. He had to bend almost double over the railing. Charlie wished she had a camera.

“You're sure? What's the source on that? Okay. Go on.” Finally, she thanked her informant and punched off, tore out the pages she'd used and handed the notepad and pen back to the desk whom she thanked also and asked Charlie, “He for hire?”

“I only handle his writing talents. Luella Ridgeway, Kenneth Cooper. Luella is Dr. Judy's agent, also Congdon and Morse. So what you got?”

“Well, I've talked to her doctor, her lawyer, and her daughter.”

“She had a daughter?”

“And a granddaughter. And an ex. And a boyfriend.”

“Who'd have thought?”

“Charlie, I keep telling you to stop stereotyping everyone you meet. You miss so much that way.”

“Yeah, and she's totally cynical too,” Kenny added.

Charlie'd learned a lot from this woman and had always thought she wanted to be like Luella if she ever grew up. They wandered absently along the footpaths, Kenny's big shoes crunching gravel behind them.

“Anyway, the skinny here is Judith not only went out for a cigarette after her gig, but she swallowed a handful of pills as well. Washed them down with bottled water and somehow choked on the bottle. It's strongly suspected she had some help with the latter.”