The Last Cheerleader

“How are you feeling about Tony?” she asked pointedly.

“Oh, I don’t know. Confused, I suppose.” I looked at her. “Did you ever hear any rumors about either of them being gay?”

“Gay!” she said, her eyes widening. “Never!”

I remembered that she didn’t know about the Chinese dildo or the police suspicions about the murders being a gay crime. The cops had asked me not to divulge any information at all about the crime scene. Detective Rucker, the scruffy one, had told me that they wanted to keep certain information out of the papers, the better to catch the killer.

Even so, I was tempted to tell Nia about it, as I knew how well she could keep a secret. It was only my word to the detective that held me back.

“Do you think they were gay?” Nia asked.

I shook my head. “Just wondering. Since they were together in Tony’s apartment, you know? And other things.”

“Other things like the fact that they were both basically unattainable?” she asked, raising a dark eyebrow. “Mary Beth, we’ve talked about that. As long as I’ve known you, which is now about three and three-quarter years, you’ve never even looked at men who were available. When you get interested in a man, they’re always either married, engaged or gay. It’s that Conahan Wall. In this case, though, just because Tony and Arnold were both more or less unattainable, that doesn’t mean they were gay.”

“I know that,” I said a bit snappily, then took my tone back with a smile. A long time ago, I’d had to admit that Nia was right about me and the kind of men I chose to go for. I’ve even thanked her for pointing it out—not that I’ve changed any, just because I know about it.

“I wish you’d tell me what happened to you,” she said. “What’s that wall about, anyway?”

I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and took out my purse, then reapplied powder and lipstick. My hand shook from exhaustion, and despite the expensive black suit and Gucci heels I looked like hell. But since I wasn’t going anywhere except to Craig’s motel—which he’d told me was a run-down hole-inthe-wall—it didn’t much matter.

“Let’s talk another time,” I said, closing my compact with a loud snap. “I just can’t get into all of that now.”

“It’s not just now. You never want to get into it.”

I ignored that and stood. “You’ll hold down the fort till you go home at three?”

“Of course. And I’ll keep calling around for Craig, in case you don’t find him. Will you be back in time to talk to Paul Whitmore, one way or the other?”

“I’ll have my cell phone with me, and if I know anything by two, I’ll call him from wherever I am.”

“What if you don’t find Craig, and Whitmore calls here? What do you want me to tell him?”

I thought for a moment. “Tell him Craig flew to Maui yesterday to gather inspiration from his beach house there.”

She grinned. “So he’s supposed to be rich, confident and simply unreachable.”

I grinned back. “Tell Paul I’ve tried and tried, but according to his housekeeper, he’s incommunicado.”

I held out the packet of messages. “Anyone else in this stack…if they call again, tell them I’m sorry I missed their calls and I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

“Right,” Nia said, smiling. “And would ye be wantin’ me to stand on me head as well?”

“Gee, a black woman from Dublin with an Irish brogue,” I said on my way out the door. “What a sight. Almost wipes away that scene at Tony’s last night.”

Traffic was heavy from Century City to El Segundo, which entailed going past LAX. I had time to think about Craig, Paul Whitmore, and what I was going to do to get Craig even more money—provided he wanted me to try.

Negotiating was a lesson I’d learned long ago, though more to survive in L.A. than anything. I’d worked in L.A. for a television station after finishing high school in San Francisco—just on the writing staff, but hoping to be on camera eventually. I’d even gone out to crime scenes on breaking news stories, both as an observer and to show that I had initiative and wanted to learn. I did learn, and as a result I knew more now about the law and crime than most people who aren’t actually in the field. In fact, when I decided to become a literary agent, it was largely because someone at work had shown me his book, a true-crime novel, and asked me to read it, to see if I thought it was any good. Arnold and I were on the edge of divorce and I had time on my hands, so I went for it.

The book was great, and after I’d fixed a few minor things for my co-worker, I encouraged him to send it to an agent. He asked me if I would act as his agent, and when I found out that all you really needed to represent a writer was a telephone and some letterhead, I went for it. I started making calls, telling editors I was “Mary Beth Conahan of the agency by the same name,” and leaving my home phone and fax number. Within two months I’d sold the guy’s book to a major publishing house, and negotiated a good contract for him, to boot.

I was twenty-two at the time, and it was the first I’d ever even thought of becoming an agent. I was also kind of naive, and had no idea what it took to set up my own business. So I just stumbled into it, willy-nilly, and set my sails toward becoming Mary Beth Conahan, Literary Agent, for real. The first few years were more difficult than I’d ever imagined they would be, and I have to admit I often drank too much at the end of the day. I even messed around with drugs a bit. But then something happened, and for the last seven years I’ve been clean of drugs and only drink wine now and then. I’ve also worked my ass off to succeed.

I started out with new, untried authors whose first books were exciting enough to interest publishers but needed editing before they were decent enough to go out. I edited their books free, feeling it was unethical to charge. Because of that, I’ve built a loyal clientele over the past seven years, and at the age of thirty-three I now have a stable of wonderful authors. I fly to New York and Europe at regular intervals, dine with editors, schmooze with them at all the important cocktail parties, and I’ve gained their loyalty by not sending them books I know are unacceptable—not even to please an anxious-to-get-going author.

One exception to that was Tony Price. I knew his first novel, which was dark and made a case for the death penalty, would be highly controversial, at a time when a sizable portion of the population was marching against the death penalty. I’d pushed it out there, though, and after nine publishers had turned the book down, one accepted it—and the rest is history. Since then, his work had grown increasingly lighter, which made it easier to sell, though it always did have an edge, a bite to it.

I know that in my thoughts I’d been hard on Tony this morning, but I think that’s only a wall I’d put up at the sight of him, dead, so that I wouldn’t be too gob-smacked by it. The good side of Tony Price was that he was intelligent, funny, supportive…about some things, anyway, like my work…and I loved hanging out with him. We had more fun together than I’ve ever had with anyone I’ve known.

The downside was that I kept wanting to jump his bones, and I could just see how that would turn out—with him pushing me away and assuming that “just friends” attitude that I never could seem to break through. So I’d never even dared to try.

Good thing, I supposed, now that it seems he was gay. Over the years of working in Hollywood, I’d adopted some pretty good radar for detecting whether a man was either married or gay. With Tony, however, I had to admit that I never suspected. If anything, I thought he was probably just nonsexual and put all his energies into his books.

It would have been so much easier if I’d just known up front. But like Rock Hudson, he looked, sounded, walked and behaved like the typical macho man. He was the first man, I do believe, to ever fool me that way.

The traffic finally moved and I came to Imperial Avenue, turning right and looking for the Lazy Sands Motel that Craig had told me about. He’d said it was one of the few still there from fifty years ago, and except for a rat, which he’d made into a companion, and the fact that it was filthy when he first moved into it last year, he liked his little hideout. He said it helped him to stay focused. And sober. In the early mornings, before most people were up and while there was little traffic along Imperial and Vista Del Mar, he would run down to the beach and do his yoga there.

He’d made his stay in El Segundo sound like an adventure, and it didn’t seem too bad a deal, I thought. Until I saw the Lazy Sands. It was several blocks up from the beach, on a lot that looked like a junkyard. Rusted-out, abandoned cars were everywhere, and there was even a junkyard dog—a mix that looked like part Lab and part wolf. I parked as close to the lobby as I could get, but Wolf still managed to get between me and the door, his fangs bared and a warning growl deep in his throat.

I use the word lobby loosely, because the windows were covered in graffiti and dirt that looked as if it hadn’t been washed off since the seventies. The room had the shape of a lobby, and the usual kind of entrance to one, but I couldn’t even see through those windows enough to tell if there was anyone in there.

I don’t have a dog, but I love watching shows about them. So I smiled at Wolf and spoke in a high, soft voice, just like Uncle Mattie, the dog trainer to the stars, had said to do on PBS.

“Good boy, good boy!” I said cautiously, moving a foot forward. But Wolf came toward me and bared his fangs as if he really meant business this time.

It was then, fortunately, that the lobby door opened. An old man with gray stubble stood there, looking at me. “Tinkerbell!” he cried.

“Uh, no…it’s not Tinkerbell,” I said, bemused. “Just me. Mary Beth Conahan.”

“Damn you, Tinkerbell!” he yelled. “Get away from the lady!”

Wolf—or Tinkerbell, as I now realized—backed off. She didn’t go far, though, standing her ground about ten feet away. I calculated whether I’d be able to make a run for the inside before she could reach me.

“Don’t worry, she’s harmless,” the old man said. “She just likes to let people know she’s on the job. As long as you don’t look her in the eye, she won’t hurt you. If you look her in the eye she’ll see it as a challenge.”

“And then?”

“Well, then, God knows what she’ll do,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s not mine, she’s just been here forever. Some bum left her behind one day.”

I carefully kept my gaze on the man. “I’m looking for a friend,” I said. “Craig Dinsmore. Can you tell me what room he’s in?”

“You mean that writer fella? Crazy as a loon, he is. In there all hours of the day and night, typing away. Have to charge him extra for lights if he stays here much longer.” He peered at me. “You say he’s a friend of yours?”

“Yes. I’m just checking up, making sure he’s all right.”

The old man didn’t look impressed.

“He asked me to,” I added.

“Well…it’s no skin off my back. Paid his room through the next week, after all. Number twenty-six.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Can I get there without Tinkerbell here biting my leg off?”

“Like I said…” The man replied with a shrug.

“Yeah. Don’t look her in the eye.”

Relieved to get back in my car, I drove to Craig’s room, parking in the space in front of it. Stepping out, I looked for Tinkerbell but didn’t see her anywhere. As I stepped out of the car, though, I heard a growl. Startled, I looked around and saw that she was right behind my car, and had probably followed me from the office.

With more fear than I wanted to admit, I looked away and crossed over to Craig’s room. I love dogs in general, but I don’t like being around big dogs who take eye-to-eye contact as a challenge to ravage my neck.

I knocked several times on the green, peeling door of number twenty-six, and when Craig didn’t answer I went to the window. It had six square-foot panes, and one of them was broken. It had been covered from inside with see-through plastic wrap, something I hadn’t noticed when I’d parked. Curtains were closed across the entire window.

I wondered if the place had a repairman, then realized that repairs were probably done by the old man. He’d looked besieged by arthritis and possibly osteoporosis, as his back was badly stooped. Add to that the dirty lobby windows, and I doubted that he kept up with anything here. He probably got free rent for acting as “manager” for a slum landlord who never came around and didn’t care. That would leave the tenants to make their own repairs. A sort of DIY motel.

Craig no longer owned a car, so the fact that his old BMW wasn’t here didn’t tell me anything. I finally decided that he must run to the beach in the afternoons as well as the mornings, since he wasn’t hunkered down at his computer—as he’d sworn he was doing 24/7.

Unless he’s hitting the bars again.

I took out my cell phone and called Nia. “He’s not here,” I said. “Have you had any luck?”

“No, I’m sorry. I gave his description to the bartenders at all the bars around there, from Playa del Rey to El Segundo, then to Manhattan Beach and LAX. Even the bars that are probably too expensive for his budget. No one’s seen him for a couple of days.”

“Does that mean he has been in some of those bars recently?” I asked.

“Two of them,” Nia said. “I wondered if he’d been drinking, and I asked if they’d had any trouble with him. Both bartenders said that the times they’d seen him he was drinking only coffee. They said he drank a lot of that. Also—you’ll like hearing this—he always had paper and pencil with him, and spent a lot of time there writing. That’s when he wasn’t talking to customers or the bartender about writing, of course. He did a lot of that, too.”

I relaxed a bit. “I’ll go down to the beach and look for him,” I said. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was one-fifteen. Less than an hour left now to present him with Paul Whitmore’s “final” offer.

“Tell you what, Nia. How about if you call Whit-more right now and tell him the story about Maui. It’ll sound better if we get back to him before his so-called deadline, and that could give me more leeway. I’m willing to bet that if he thinks Craig is in a beach house in Hawaii, pounding away at his computer, he’ll give me more time.”

“He does seem to want Craig real bad. Funny, don’t you think?”

“Funny how?”

“Well, word gets around real fast in the writing community, especially here in L.A., and especially if it’s news about a writer going downhill. Wouldn’t you think Whitmore and Bronson & Bronson Publishing would have heard about it by now?”

“As a matter of fact, I have thought of that,” I said, “which is why I’ve been doing damage control with Whitmore. But he really likes this book of Craig’s, and he doesn’t seem too concerned about a long-term contract. Which, in itself, makes me wonder. The book I sent him doesn’t, in my opinion, call for that kind of money or commitment. It’s almost as if something’s going on that I don’t know anything about.”

“You know,” Nia said, “I’ve been thinking the same thing. Craig’s always been a good writer, but this mafia book isn’t anything new, is it? Just the same old, same old?”

“I found it gripping when I read it,” I said. “But I’ll admit to being a bit stunned that Whitmore offered six figures for it, let alone seven. Listen, I’ve got to run. So call Whitmore and tell him the Maui story, but tread easy…oh, hell, you know what to do. You’ve got great diplomatic bones.”

“Thanks,” Nia said, chuckling. “Are you still going down to the beach, then?”

“Yes. I’ll let you know how it goes with Craig.”

I closed my cell phone and looked back at number twenty-six one more time. It was then I thought I saw a flicker of movement at the curtain inside Craig’s window.

I was tired and hot and responded accordingly. That bastard! Was he just not answering the door? How does he expect me to help him, for God’s sake?

Then, calming down, I realized that Craig couldn’t know I had good news for him about Lost Legacy. He’d probably spotted me out here and thought I’d come to nag him about the three-thousand-dollar advance I’d loaned him against his next potential check from Bronson & Bronson.

Or he was just being typically hermit-like. Some writers develop agoraphobia while writing a book and never even go out to the store for food. They’d starve rather than leave the house and the book for even a moment. Many never answer their telephones or collect their mail for weeks, unless they think a check will be in the box.

Craig Dinsmore hadn’t been like that in recent months, however. He was more the kind who needed to gab about his work, and as Nia had confirmed, he’d been out this week to the bars, doing just that. So if he was inside now, writing, and just didn’t want to answer the door, I should feel relieved. That meant he was working hard on the next book, a follow-up to Lost Legacy, and if that was the case, his money troubles were over. And so, thankfully, were mine.

Still, where writers are concerned, I’d learned never to take anything for granted. No deal is a deal until it’s signed.

I went back up onto the rickety little porch and banged on the window. “Craig, I know you’re in there! Open up! I’ve had a new offer from Whit-more, and it’s big. We need to talk!”

I listened intently and heard a sound like a bump inside.

“Craig, this is your life we’re talking about!”

I shook the door handle, hoping it might be unlocked. It wasn’t.

Resolutely, I trudged back to the lobby and pretended that Tinkerbell wasn’t there, poised on her haunches to spring. The inside of the lobby was dusty and smelled of mold, making me sneeze.

“I need the key to number twenty-six,” I said, dabbing at my nose with a Kleenex. “My friend isn’t answering, and I’m afraid he’s had another heart attack.”

“He’s got a bad heart?” the old man said nervously.

“Yes,” I lied. “And if he dies here, the cops will be milling about forever. They’ll want to go through your room, too—your office, your books, everything.”

I had guessed right that this would not be a good thing. The old man’s toughened hand quickly scrabbled along a board with hooks and came up with a key that had “26” on it.

Back at Craig’s room, I slid the key into the lock and pushed in fast, before he could know what I was doing and push me right back out.

“Listen, Craig! I’ve been negotiating my ass off to get you a good deal—”

I stopped in my tracks. He wasn’t here. There was only the one room, with a door to what must be a bathroom in back. Was he in the bathroom, then?

I walked closer to the door and called out, “Craig? It’s Mary Beth. Are you in there?”

No answer.

Then who had moved that curtain? Was it just the wind, coming through that plastic-covered window?

But there hadn’t been any wind that I had noticed. Not enough to have caused even a ripple.

On a round table in front of the window was a laptop computer that seemed fairly new. I wondered if Craig had bought it with money from the sale of his car. To the left were several used foam cups with dregs that must have been coffee, as well as the last crumbs of some sort of pastry. There was also an inexpensive, drugstore-variety answering machine that held nineteen unanswered calls, according to the blinking green light. A small portable printer was attached to the laptop and next to it were sheets of manuscript paper, about an inch high. An El Segundo library card was propped up against a lamp, and on the floor around the table were odd crumpled sheets that Craig had obviously tossed away as not right.

So he had been working. That was good. I started to turn back to the front door, but couldn’t resist a peek first at the finished sheets of manuscript. They were upside down, so I turned the entire stack over and saw the title: Under Covers.

Odd. Did he mean Undercover? A spy novel? That didn’t sound like Craig. He was more into investigative nonfiction like Lost Legacy, where real-life mafia slugs were found under upturned rocks.

A look at the next few pages revealed that the title was a play on words, and the book seemed to be a fictional account of the Hollywood scene “between the sheets.” He’d written about old Hollywood in the 1940s, accounts of wild exploits of high-level directors with young female stars, sexual harassment, and the fact that actors were forced to cover up their homosexuality to make them more of a heartthrob to female viewers. Names of stars, though, had been changed to protect the noninnocent.

I’d had no idea Craig was writing a book like this, and I couldn’t see Paul Whitmore paying the same thing for this book as he was offering for Lost Legacy. While its mafia-don story had been told before, Craig had added a psychological edge to it that had made Whitmore take notice. This book, though it seemed well written, was as stale as yesterday’s news. The casting-couch angle had been done before, over and over. In fact, some of it seemed familiar, as if I’d read it somewhere before.

What the hell was going on?

I’d taken a speed-reading course years before, so it didn’t take me long to read the first few chapters. Confused and concerned, though, I stopped reading at page thirty-four. Setting the page down, I did something I’d never done before. Pushing the “on” button on Craig’s computer, I sat on his chair and tried to bring up the Under Covers document. I was pretty good with computers, but there was something odd about this one: there were no documents on the hard drive. None at all. No letters, no memos, no books. If anything had ever been on the hard drive, it had obviously been wiped clean. Puzzled, I opened the CD-Rom drive and the floppy disk drive, but both were empty.

Before I had time to think it through, I heard a slight noise that seemed to be coming from behind the motel. A thud? Someone hitting the wall back there? Images of O.J. and Kato Kaelin came to mind—someone running into an air conditioner with blood on his hands.

Then I realized the sound must have come from the bathroom. Without thinking, I strode over there and threw the bathroom door open, determined to confront Craig about why he hadn’t been answering his calls and why the hell he was hiding from me. It was his own fault, I thought, if I caught him on the john.

But Craig wasn’t hiding at all. He was right there on the floor, blood all over his forehead that was slowly seeping onto the old, grubby tiles.

In shock, I could barely move. I looked at the window, which was open. Cheap plastic curtains in a gaudy flower pattern were blowing in a light salty breeze that came off the ocean from this side of the motel. There were marks on the sill that seemed to be blood, marks that might have come from a killer, possibly escaping that way.

I knelt down beside Craig, feeling for a pulse. I couldn’t find one anywhere. I touched his cheek. Still warm. He hadn’t been dead long.

Stroking his forehead, I couldn’t hold back tears. The poor guy never got the chance to get out of the hole he’d dug himself into. And we were so close to getting what he wanted.

Then, as if in a nightmare, I saw that the blood had originated at a large gash on Craig’s forehead, and that lying by his side was a bloody Chinese dildo—made of ivory, and intricately carved to please, I supposed, in all the right places. It looked very much like the one in Tony’s apartment the night before.

I knelt there for a long moment, so staggered I wasn’t able to stand. I guess I noticed the draft, finally, that slammed the front door shut. Grasping the bathroom sink, I pulled myself up slowly and realized there was blood on my skirt and my knees.

I was still standing over Craig’s body, blood all over me, when the police banged on the front door and piled in. “Don’t move!” they ordered, guns pointed directly at me.

I didn’t even breathe.

El Segundo is a smallish town along the coast, south of Santa Monica and north of Redondo Beach. It’s a nice town, growing perhaps too quickly, but the cops, I’d heard, were generally pretty friendly.