Chapter Twenty-Six

 

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.”

“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 use 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.”

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 a wide berth 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 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 William Morris 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 deerstalker. 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.

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.

The room gradually warmed, and the shadows softened and blurred.

I jerked awake. Someone was pounding hard on the door. Jackknifing up into sitting position, I sat rigid, heart hammering. My gaze fell on the poker conveniently placed beside the bed, and I rolled out of bed, snatching it up.

“Kit? Can you hear me? Kit?”

Poker poised, I paused. Not a line I would have written myself, but rather accurate under the circumstances.

“Kit.”

“J.X.?”

“Who do you—? Open the goddamned door,” he yelled, sounding uncharacteristically bad-tempered. I went to the window, peered out, and sure enough J.X. was staring up at the stormy skies with an expression that clearly read, why me?

I shoved the desk away from the door and unbolted it.

J.X. pushed the door open. “I thought something had happened to you. What the hell are you doing in here? Rearranging the furniture?” He squeezed past the desk and slammed the door shut. Without looking at me, he slid the bolt.

My heart unaccountably sped up. “Do you mind? I was sleeping.”

He turned then. “Again? Are you sure you don’t have sleeping sickness?”

“What do you mean, again? Most people do try to schedule a little shut-eye into every twenty-four hours.”

We were glaring at each other, and I suddenly wondered why. Was it simply because we didn’t know how to relate to each other if we weren’t arguing? The silence between us was abrupt and awkward.

J.X. tore his gaze from me and looked at the bed with the rumpled sheets and blankets. His profile was unreasonably grim. Maybe he was in pain. There was a neatly taped square of white gauze on the back of his head. He was certainly pale, and there were shadows beneath his eyes. I probably didn’t look much better.

“Aren’t you supposed to be lying down?” In case that sounded like maybe I wanted him lying down with me, I added aggressively, “What are you doing here?”

“Why did you leave the lodge? It’s not safe down here.”

“It’s not safe up there either.”

“It’s safer there than it is here.”

“I felt perfectly safe until two minutes ago when you woke me out of a peaceful sleep.”

“Which goes to show how much you know.”

Luckily testosterone is not flammable, so the cabin did not spontaneously combust while we squared off.

Then J.X. had to go and spoil all our fun by saying calmly, “You didn’t give me a chance to thank you.”

“No thanks necessary,” I clipped. “It’s all part of the service.”

Damn it. He was looking at me in that particular way of his, his dark eyes a little quizzical, his mouth tugging into a reluctant smile. Why did he have to do that? It was so much easier when we were hassling each other.

“I owe you an apology,” he said.

“Probably.” I added, “But I actually am an egotistical, self-centered prick. I just…don’t approve of murder. On general principles.”

“I understand.” He reached a hand out and brushed my bare shoulder. “You’re getting goose bumps.”

“Fancy that,” I exclaimed mockingly. “It must be you. It can’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that it’s forty degrees in he—”

His hand closed on my shoulder, and he drew me forward. He said softly, “Let me warm you up.”