George might have taken it amiss if I patted myself on the back at this point, but I allowed myself a small smile of satisfaction. I had thought he might be the easiest to nudge, shall we say, into confiding in me, and it seemed as if I had read him correctly.
“No one’s accusing you of murdering her, George,” I said, and he began to relax. “Yet.”
His eyes widened as I added that last word. He began to babble so fast, I couldn’t make out what he was saying, and I held up a hand to shush him.
“I’m certain, George, that it can’t be as bad as all that. First, and simplest, just answer this: do you have an alibi for this afternoon, when someone killed her?”
Miserable, George shook his head “no.”
“I’ll bet you were here, in your room alone, weren’t you?” I asked. He nodded.
“Ah, that’s too bad, George,” I said with grave concern. “I’m just thrilled as I can be, let me tell you, that I was in plain sight of several people during the time when Ms. Harper managed to get herself killed.” I laughed in self-deprecation. “Otherwise, I know who’d be number one on the hit parade of suspects!”
George managed a weak smile at that sally before I continued. “But enough of my ill-placed humor, George. We should concentrate on exonerating you. ” He nodded, his head bobbing up and down like a Ping-Pong ball.
“Now, I didn’t get very many details from Norah,” I said. That much was certainly true, since Norah hadn’t given me any details of George’s affair with the late unlamented. “And you don’t have to share every little bit with me, George.” He smiled wanly at that. “But if we’re going to make sure you’re out of this, we have to sort out why you’d have wanted to murder her in the first place. Surely an affaire du coeur gone sour wouldn’t be enough reason?”
George pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket and began to mop his suddenly febrile brow with it. “Afraid it’s not that simple, Simon. Not that simple at all.”
“My dear George, whatever do you mean?” I leaned forward slightly in my chair, as if I were hanging on his every word. Which, naturally, I was, since I figured we were about to get to the really good dirt.
“Wasn’t an affair of the heart, so much as affair of the loins.” George uttered the words in tones of disgust, yet he couldn’t help the salaciously reminiscent smile hanging on his lips. “Woman was like a panther. Never satisfied, always wanting more.”
Then he looked embarrassed at having admitted that to me.
I laughed, deep from my chest. “But you were certainly man enough for her, I’m sure, George.” He preened a bit at that. He really fancied himself as a ladies’ man. And, for all I knew, he really was. He was famous, wealthy, and not totally devoid of attractions. Some women no doubt actually liked the garden-gnome type.
“How did you meet her, George?”
“Through Nina,” George said, his brow furrowing. “Had no idea at the time, naturally, that it was a put-up job between the two of them. Wanda was working for Nina, but I didn’t know that.”
I sat back in my chair, hands steepled, chin propped on forefingers. “Aha! I thought I saw the hand of Lady Machiavelli in all of this.”
George laughed, the first sound of pure amusement since I had come into his room. “Good name for the wench! Nina could have taught Signor Niccolo a thing or two.”
This wasn’t moving along quite as fast as I’d like, so I decided to nudge him into a higher gear. “So Wanda entrapped you in some kind of compromising situation, I take it?”
His face turned an alarming shade of red, and I was on the point of suggesting I ring for a shot of whiskey when his eyes stopped popping and his breathing slowed down to a near-normal rate again. “Told you she was never satisfied, right? Always wanted to be trying something new and different. ‘Adventurous,’ she called herself. Fool that I was, I went along with her.” He shuddered. “Though I suppose I ought to have known better.”
“And someone walked in on you?” I didn’t have to pretend to be mortified for his sake. He had clearly been led into a rather nasty trap.
“Not precisely,” George said, then took a deep breath before he could force himself to continue. “Someone taking a video of us without my knowledge.”
“Oh, dear,” I said. “And I suppose they—meaning Nina, chiefly, of course—threatened to embarrass you with it.”
George nodded miserably.
I could just imagine the headlines in the scandal sheets here, all about how the noted best-selling author of romantic fiction liked kinky sex. George would become a laughingstock. His sales would probably go through the roof, but he’d be too embarrassed to show his face in public again.
“Poor George,” I said in total and sincere sympathy. Until these past few days at Kinsale House, I had thought Nina possessed the usual share of ethics, but evidently I was wrong.
I was nevertheless puzzled about something. “Why, George? I mean, why would Nina go to these lengths to put a client in her control like this?”
“She’s power-mad,” George said. “The ultimate control freak. Wants you to do everything her way, and the better you sell, the more she wants out of you. Once she signs you, she doesn’t want to let you go.”
“She’s totally round the bend, isn’t she?” I said, my voice calm, but inside I was, I’ll admit, freaking out just a bit. I, of all people, couldn’t afford an agent like this. If she ever got an inkling of the truth about me, no telling what she’d try to do with the knowledge.
I might have to kill her myself.
No, I shouldn’t even joke about something like that. A vampire following the old ways might not hesitate to get rid of someone like Nina who posed such an obvious threat. But I had most definitely not chosen the old ways when I became a vampire. I was one of the new, kinder, gentler breed of vampires, happy with the little pills that made biting people on the neck and draining them of blood a relic of the past.
Enough of that; back to the matter at hand. I had manipulated George fairly easily into telling me what I wanted to know, at least as far as it concerned him and his potential motive for murder. But would he prove as easy to manipulate when it came to digging up dirt on his fellow suspects?
I flashed back on something Nina had done earlier, and that gave me an idea.
“Tell me, George, what was that earlier today, with Nina and Dexter Harbaugh and that bit about the spider?” I laughed. “I thought Dexter was going to jump out of his skin.”
George shifted uneasily in his chair, even while he attempted to hide a grin. “I really shouldn’t be telling you this, Simon. I really shouldn’t.” His mouth closed in a prim line, but he was simply waiting for me to encourage him.
“Come, now, George, you can’t stop now! There’s obviously a good story to be told.”
“Dexter would be simply livid if he knew I’d told you, so you must promise not to breathe a word of it. Not a word! ”
“Of course, George, I wouldn’t dream of it,” I assured him. “Except, naturally, if it turns out that Dexter is the murderer.”
“Fair enough, Simon, fair enough!” His mouth split in a huge grin. “Man’s terrified of spiders. Can you believe it?”
I had to laugh. “I figured as much. Nina wouldn’t have said what she did if she hadn’t known he’d react in that way.”
George nodded emphatically. “Yes! Not only spiders, Simon! Not just spiders. Dexter is afraid of the dark. Has to have a light on at night, or he can’t sleep.”
“Really?” I said. “How on earth did you find out that little bit of information?”
George flushed at the implication he thought he read in my words. “Had to share quarters at a conference with him once, years ago, before either of us became very well known. Insisted a light be left on all night. Got him to admit to me he was afraid of the dark.”
I threw back my head and laughed. “I can see the headlines now. ‘Tough-guy writer needs night light.’ The press would have a field day with that one, not to mention the bit about the spiders. No wonder he makes his heroes so tough.”
George nodded. “Exactly. Who’d buy the books if they thought the author was a nancy-boy?”
I shot him a look at that one, and to his credit, he flushed and muttered, “Sorry. Didn’t mean it like it sounded.”
I decided to overlook it and move on.
“Okay, so Nina knows about ol’ Dex’s phobias. She could easily use that to manipulate him, keep him under her thumb. But I don’t see any connection between Dexter and Wanda Harper.”
I stared at George expectantly. He squirmed again in his chair.
He remained quiet, though I could sense he was bursting to tell me something.
“Okay, George, spill it!” I smiled to encourage him.
“Don’t know for sure,” he said at last. He focused his eyes on the floor. “Suspect, though, that Nina has a video of Dexter and that woman. Probably chasing him around the room with a spider. Screaming his head off like an old woman.” Then he couldn’t keep himself from laughing aloud at the thought of that.
I joined him. The vision of tough-guy Dexter Harbaugh being chased by a spider-wielding Wanda Harper was funny, even if it was cruel. The man was so obnoxious, I couldn’t help enjoying the thought of him cut down to size.
If I were Dexter Harbaugh, however, that could be humiliating enough to make me want to kill.
I figured he had the motive, if Nina was twisting the screws hard and he decided he’d had enough. But did he have the opportunity?
More digging was on the agenda, definitely. If George really had been in his room during the time when Wanda Harper met her killer out on the terrace, he wouldn’t be able to tell me about anyone else’s whereabouts at the time. It wouldn’t hurt to ask, though.
“Did you see, or hear, anyone else during the time that the murder must have occurred, George?”
Earlier, when he had told me he was here in this room when the murder took place, George hadn’t given off the vibes that would have told me he was lying. If he was clever enough, and cold enough, he could mask the emotions to keep me from feeling the truth. Now I could sense some hesitation in him. Was he about to lie to me? Or did he simply not want to tell me something?