The Last Cheerleader

My experience, however, was a bit strained because I’d been found at a crime scene, with blood all over me.

Inside the El Segundo police station, I’d been allowed to wash most of the blood off me. A female officer stood outside the bathroom door, “just in case I needed help.”

Yeah, right.

After I’d done the best I could, I was escorted to an interview room where a Lieutenant Davies sat across from me at a table. He didn’t tell me much, but I knew by now that he was wondering if I’d also killed Tony and Arnold. Although the ESPD and the LAPD were entirely separate entities, surely they shared information when something as important as murder was involved.

The one thing that probably kept me out of jail, at least for the moment, was the open bathroom window and the blood on the sill. I could have set that up, they thought at first, to make it look as if someone else had killed Craig Dinsmore and then escaped out that window. But when my prints didn’t turn up on the murder weapon and there was a third, unidentified person’s blood type on that sill, they couldn’t charge me.

Which did not, however, exonerate me entirely. I could have been an accomplice, the lieutenant said, and just didn’t make it to the window before the police broke in.

“I’ve been wondering about that,” I said. “How did you know to show up when you did?”

He hesitated again, but shrugged. “We had an anonymous phone call saying a murder had been committed in that room.”

“Do you mind telling me when that call came in?”

He hesitated, but said, “One-forty or thereabouts.”

“So, whoever it was, they called you while I was in Craig’s room.”

He didn’t answer that, and for good reason, I thought. If I were an accomplice to the crime, why would the other killer call the cops at a time when I’d be caught there?

I spent the next couple of hours in the interview room dealing with questions I had no answers to. In between questions I had time to think, and I figured that whoever had killed Craig did it while I was pounding on the door the first time. When I came back with a key, the killer was just getting ready to go out the window, but he hesitated when he heard me come in. The noise I’d heard while I was looking at Craig’s manuscript must have been the killer climbing, finally, through that window. I’d been so quiet, he probably thought I’d gone.

Or maybe he was afraid that I might decide I needed to pee.

“Ms. Conahan,” the lieutenant said at last in a hard voice, “I don’t believe in coincidence. There were two murders last night in Brentwood, and the LAPD says that both men were closely connected to you. Now there’s this third murder. I would think you might be getting nervous about that.”

“Well, I’m not nervous,” I said calmly. “I’m sad. I’ve lost two very good authors and an ex-husband who didn’t deserve to die. But I didn’t do anything, so there’s nothing for me to be nervous about.”

Lieutenant Davies fell silent, and I suspected he was using that psychological technique of not speaking, which usually forces the other person to break the silence by saying something.

He’d probably never had an agent as a suspect, and didn’t know that we were well-versed in those kinds of tricks, from constant negotiations. Though, come to think of it, the odds that no agent had ever committed murder upon an author were probably worse than an old, broken-down nag winning at the Hollywood Park racetrack.

I reached for my purse on the table and stood. “Unless you intend to arrest me,” I said firmly, “I’m leaving. I have work to do.”

It was a bluff, but a safe one. If he’d had enough evidence to hold me, I’d be booked and behind bars by now.

The lieutenant smiled, but it was a tight smile, not quite making it to his eyes. I noticed that his teeth were very white against his tanned skin, and that there was an odd little scar on his left cheek. Overall he might be considered quite handsome, but the eyes took away from that. They were all business, not giving anything up.

“I have to ask you not to leave town,” he said.

“I wasn’t planning to,” I answered.

He nodded and stood. “I’ll walk you out.”

I stopped by the office before heading home, and found Nia still there. She hadn’t left at three after all, but was in my workout room, which connected to the office. She was sweating away on the exercise bike, a cordless phone from the office on the floor. The door from the workout room to the reception room was open, which meant that she’d been listening for anyone who might walk in.

“Hi,” I said, dropping my purse on a chair and stepping behind the Chinese screen that served as a changing room. Pulling off my suit and tugging on workout clothes, I did my usual stretching exercises, then climbed on the treadmill next to Nia and started it up.

“Anything new?” I asked.

“I talked to Paul Whitmore after your last call about Craig, and it was weird. After how hot he seemed for Craig’s new book, he didn’t sound all that upset to hear he was dead.”

“Really? How did he sound?”

“Quiet. Didn’t say much, just to tell you he was sorry to hear it. Hung up rather quickly.”

“Hmm. He was probably signing another author already. Whatever it takes to keep the coffers filled.”

Not that I was anyone to talk. I’d been worrying a bit about my own coffers.

“And a Detective Rucker came by,” Nia said. “Yum!”

“Yum?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, God, don’t tell me you didn’t notice. That curly hair, and those gorgeous white teeth.”

I studied my teeth in the wall of mirrors in front of us. “You know something? Everybody has white teeth these days. Ever since all those actors started having their teeth whitened, everybody you meet hassuper-white teeth. If they all got together in a room and smiled, they’d blind each other.”

“Yeah. Well, don’t laugh, okay? I’m thinking of getting mine done, too.”

“You’re kidding. Your teeth are already white enough. You’re beautiful, Nia. Don’t you know that?”

“Not in the teeth,” she said. “They’re more a sort of off-white. How can I ever compete in the date market with off-white teeth?”

“True,” I said in a hopeless tone. “I can see it all now. You as an old maid, living a joyless, loveless life with only your cat and your off-white teeth.”

She groaned. “That so possible, it isn’t even funny.”

I slowed down my pace. “So you think Dan Rucker’s hot?”

“Well, I didn’t say he’s hot. I just think he looks like he could be, under that untidy disguise. What do you think?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t like his attitude.”

“Figures. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and I doubt he’s gay. Why would you like him?”

“Oh, shut up.”

We worked out silently for a while, until Nia said, “Why do I feel like I’m riding a horse? This seat hurts like hell.”

“You want me to get a recumbent?”

“Really? You’d do that?”

“Anything for you, my treasure trove.”

Nia was so good at her work, I had been thinking of making her a partner. I thought that I’d better wait though, to see how things went with Craig’s book and my income from it. Would Whitmore withdraw his offer now, or still publish it?

My guess was that since the book was finished, he’d go ahead and publish it. But could I still legally represent Craig in the sale? I’d never had a situation like this before, but I knew my contract with Craig gave me the right to sign for him if for some reason he wasn’t able to. For instance, if he’d just been impossible to reach and I had a great offer like the one from Whitmore, I could have signed for Craig rather than risk his losing the contract.

But what about when he was dead?

Damn. I wished now that I’d accepted the seven-figure offer from Whitmore that morning.

“By the way,” Nia said, breaking into my thoughts, “he’s coming back.”

“Who?”

“Detective Rucker. He called a little while ago and said he’d be coming back.”

“To see me?”

“What else? He’s already seen me, and I don’t recall any rings or bended knees.”

“What does he want?” I asked, frowning.

“I don’t know. He just said he had a few questions.”

“But how did he know I’d be here, when I didn’t know it myself until I left El Segundo?”

She grinned. “Maybe you’re star-crossed lovers, meant to be together from the beginning of time. Like, he just knew.”

“Oh, right. More likely he was following me. Or having me followed. I’ll bet he called you from the cell phone in his car, not twenty feet behind me.”

“Wow. He must really want to see you again, if that’s the case,” Nia said, laughing.

I couldn’t help laughing, too. “Hardly. The El Segundo police are ready to arrest me, now that I’ve got bodies falling on the ground all around me. Detective Rucker probably wants to be the first to arrive with handcuffs.”

“Handcuffs, eh? Now there’s a picture worth taking.”

“Oh, stop it!” I took the towel off my shoulder and wiped my face and neck with it. Bending over, I reached for my water bottle on the floor. I was standing with my back to the door, my butt in the air, when I heard from behind me, “No cuffs this time. If that’s what you like, though, I’ll make a note of it.”

I whirled around and saw Detective Dan Rucker with his arms folded and the first smile I’d seen on his face. He hadn’t shaved, but he was dressed in clean jeans and a black leather jacket over a white T-shirt. I almost thought I saw what Nia meant when she’d said yum.

“Whoa, Nelly!” she said now, slipping off the exercise bike. Looking at me pointedly, she said, “I’ll betcha I have some work to do in the other room.”

She disappeared into the outer office, pulling the door shut behind her and leaving me red-faced and with no sharp dialogue as backup.

“Have a seat, Detective,” I said, taking refuge behind the Chinese screen. “I need to change.”

Nia’s teasing rang in my ears, along with the idea she’d put in my head—that Dan Rucker might be interested in me as something other than a suspect. I felt awkward, and my hands shook as I pulled off my workout clothes and wriggled back into my suit. Getting stockings on wasn’t even an issue. I left them on the chair, rolled into a small bundle. Slipping into my heels, I was aware that Rucker could hear every movement I was making, and I felt like a little girl in fourth grade. That little boy behind her? He’d just sent her a note saying, I like you—do you like me? Was he looking at her braids, and were they straight or messed up? Was her dress buttoned at the neck in back? What did he really think of her?

The fact that I cared surprised me, and I wanted to disappear. What on earth was I thinking? There was nothing for it but to go out there with my chin up and confidence streaming from my pores.

“Now, then. What can I do for you?” I asked briskly, leading Rucker into my office. I took a seat at my desk and put my best negotiating face on. Detective Rucker didn’t sit in the chair across from me as expected, however. Instead, he came around beside me and plunked his butt onto the edge of my brand-new-to-me antique desk. He was so close I could smell the oranges again, and I gritted my teeth and resisted the impulse to grab my letter opener and stick him in the thigh with it.

“Nice office,” he said, folding his arms and looking around, taking in the view. “You must be doing well.”

“I do okay. And I worked for it. No one handed it to me.”

He nodded. “You don’t have to be defensive about it. I know.”

“You know?”

“Sure. I’ve been checking up on you. I know how you started out and that you just moved here to the high-rent district a couple of years ago. I know you bought a home in Malibu, too, at about the same time. Pretty nice digs.”

I tried not to show how flustered I was. Standing, I moved away from him and crossed to the other side of the room, where I had a sofa and coffee table. I sat on the sofa, crossing my legs and folding my arms—an automatic defensive posture, I realized suddenly. I never would have done this in front of an editor, as it would have weakened my position.

Carefully, I unfolded my assorted limbs, leaning back against the cushions and forcing my spine to relax.

“I do all right,” I said coolly. “Is there some purpose to this, Detective? Is it going somewhere?”

“I’m just kind of curious about your relationship with Tony Price. It seems you and he went out a lot. You even went on trips together.”

“And?”

“And Price’s murder looks as if it might have been a crime of passion.”

I laughed. “You think I killed Tony in a moment of passion?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Well, you’re wrong. If anything, Tony’s death will hurt me, especially in terms of financial loss. The best thing for me would have been if he’d lived to be a hundred.”

“And kept writing till then, of course.”

“All right, what are you getting at?” I snapped. Reaching for the cordless phone on the coffee table, I said calmly, “And is this supposed to be a formal interview? Do I need my lawyer here?”

“Nah, relax. This is off the record. I’ll let you know when you need a lawyer.”

He came over and stood above me, hands in his pockets. “The thing is, if Tony Price wasn’t writing well, if he hit a wall and couldn’t get going again, or if he’d decided to drop you as his agent—”

“Sorry to burst your bubble,” I said, putting the phone down. “None of that is true.”

I stood again and walked over to the windows, giving him my back while studying the traffic below. It was a negotiating technique, one I often used to gain time and balance. I noted that the freeways were jammed with commuters winding their way from one end of the city to the other. It was late June, and I knew it was hot out there. I could picture the drivers without air-conditioning loosening their ties and belts, or the buttons on their blouses. Almost everyone would be swilling down bottled water so they wouldn’t dehydrate on their three-hour commutes home to where the rents were reasonable.

I’d probably end up as one of them, now that Craig was gone, too. Even if Lost Legacy got published and I received my fifteen percent commission on it, that wouldn’t last long after taxes and my current expenses. And Craig wouldn’t be around to finish Under Covers.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said finally, turning back to Rucker. “I’ve lost two valuable authors and an ex-husband I actually still liked. This hasn’t been a red-letter day for me. If you’re arresting me, just say so. I’ll call my lawyer. If you’re not arresting me, this is over. Now.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re a pretty tough cookie, aren’t you?”

“I can handle myself,” I said.

I went back into the workout room, picked up my purse and took out my keys. “Especially with men like you.”

Damn, Mary Beth. I bit my lip. Had that sounded like the tough message I’d meant to send—or a challenge?

When I turned back he was standing only a few feet behind me. “I have no doubt of that,” he said.

I thought a minute, then made a rapid decision.

“Look,” I said, glancing at my watch, “I have to eat dinner. Would you like to join me?”

The eyes widened. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

“Absolutely not.” I gave my laugh the tiniest bit of a scornful edge. “Get hold of yourself. I just thought that if you insist on pummeling me with questions, it might be better if we do it where I don’t feel like I’m going to be thrown in a cell at a moment’s notice. Tony and Arnold were important to me. So was Craig. I’d like to help find their killer.”

“Uh…okay,” he said, his tone sounding suspicious. “Where would you like to go?”

“My house,” I said, handing him my personal card with the address and cell-phone number on it. Which, come to think of it, he probably already had, since he knew so much about me.

“Wow,” he said, “gold-plated lettering for a gold-plated address. Malibu, California…home of the stars.”

I sighed irritably. “Are you going to hold that against me?”

“Not at all. The view should be great.”

“Eight o’clock, then,” I said, sailing out the door. “Don’t be late.”

Better to be on your own turf and in power, I’d decided. The last thing I needed was to be summoned by the police again, just to sit and repeat, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Besides, I had plans for the good detective. Before this night was over, Detective Dan Rucker was going to tell me everything he knew about all three murders.

At home I changed into jeans and a T-shirt and took a cup of coffee down to the beach. Gulls came and settled near me, hoping I had food. They soon left, though, and went back to dipping up and down over the waves.

It was seven o’clock and the sun had begun its downward slide toward the sea. The sky was blood-red from all the smog that had been blown west from what had, over the past few hours, become an unseasonable Santa Ana wind—hot, heavy and dangerous, blowing trees into houses and causing all kinds of havoc, according to the drive-time news.

Here at the beach, though, it made the evening air balmy and gave us some of our best sunsets. The smog blows westward from inland when pushed by the Santa Anas—Devil Winds, as they’ve been called for years—and the setting sun filtered through the smog is incredibly beautiful.

Too much of the Santa Anas, however, can make a person crazy in the head. When they go on for days I become irritable and off my feed. Some days I want to kill everything in sight—even my authors.

Fortunately, that’s only a temporary aberration. I’d never really wished for any of my authors, including those three men, to be murdered. And now that they had been, where did that leave me? Grieving aside, that is.

And I did grieve. Now that I had time to be alone, I grieved for Arnold and Tony, both of whom I had loved so unsuccessfully, and for Craig, who deserved better and almost got it. He had worked hard to sober up and stay that way, and from the manuscript I’d seen on his desk in the motel, he was doing good work. Unexpectedly good work, even though the topic had been done before.

Why on earth would anyone want to kill him? Craig had been divorced for several years, and his ex, Julia, owned a successful antiques shop in New York City. Craig had told me Julia had never needed or asked for alimony.

Was it the new book, then? If I’d had time to do more than scan the pages, would I have found that he had tremendously damaging information against someone important? Information that was only lightly fictionalized?

But then the killer would surely have taken the manuscript with him.

Unless Craig had been clever enough to put a floppy disk or CD-Rom in a safe-deposit box, or some other secret place.

I sighed, drawing my knees up and leaning my chin on them, watching the neighbors walk by with their dogs or make their last run of the night. I usually made time each evening to run, but I hadn’t been able to lately. I did work out three times a week, and sometimes more. Working out gave me an endorphin high, and I felt afterward as if I could take on the world.

Today, though, was different. Today I wanted to just sit in a funk and think about the state of my life.

As Rucker had said, I’d been living here at Malibu for about two years—the same amount of time I’d been at my office in Century City. My house was tiny and a fixer-upper, but it still took more money to get into it than my father had made in his lifetime. My pop had been a streetcar conductor in San Francisco, and a good man. He supported my mom and me the best he could, and even though times were often tough, we never really went without. When I graduated from high school I left home, like most kids, for freedom from parental control—but also because I wanted to get a good job and give the poor guy a break. He died a year later, almost as if it was a relief to leave, once I was out of the house and settled on my own. Sometimes I feel guilty about taking away his motivation to go on. Other times, I must admit I’m proud to have done so much for myself, as young as I was.

Not that I’ve always been thrilled with my career choice. The life of an agent, a manager, or any kind of broker, is unlike any other life I’ve known or even heard of. We spend our days walking a tightrope between editors and authors, trying to keep both of them happy with each other. Not always an easy task. A good agent, some believe, is the kind that’s feared by New York editors. Most editors, on the other hand, will tell you that they prefer agents who are “easy to work with.” Which sometimes means that those agents don’t get the best deals, because they haven’t got it in them to act like a shark with a friend.

Those of us who are “sometime sharks” believe that the only way to win is to make a difficult editor so intimidated that she or he will give the author a good deal, with either money or extra perks. We do whatever it takes to come to an agreeable conclusion. And though bullying is not a good habit to get into, it becomes one sometimes, before we even know it. As natural as breathing.

So yes, I’ve learned to negotiate, and I’ve been successful at it. When threatened, I always look at whatever skills I have to defend myself, and that’s what I did this afternoon. Detective Rucker had accepted my invitation even more quickly than I’d expected him to. He would come here for dinner thinking he could get something out of me, because surely I was the main suspect in all three deaths so far. He’d play his game. But more importantly, I’d play mine.

If I didn’t want to end up arrested, I needed something to go on—information of some kind that would help me find out who the real killer was.

“Nice place,” Dan Rucker said, whistling softly. The sun had gone below the horizon, but the sky was still streaked with bright red, and my white sofa, carpet and walls were all tinted pink. The gulls were now wheeling over the beach in droves, probably scoping out dead fish.

“Look at that sunset,” Rucker said.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

He nodded, standing at the window with his back to me. “Mind if I go out on the deck?”

“Be my guest, Detective. I’ll bring the wine out there.”

I watched as he went onto the deck and sat at a patio table with four chairs. Putting his feet up on one chair, he seemed comfortable about making himself at home.

Well, good. A couple of glasses of wine and he’d be even more ready to tell me what he knew.

I took a cold bottle of Chardonnay out, along with appetizers I’d defrosted and nuked.

“Any trouble getting here, with the traffic?” I asked.

It seems like that’s the first question people ask when a guest walks in and they don’t know what else to say.

“A little,” my guest answered, “but it’s thinned out pretty well by now.” He took a bite of a small cheese-and-ham tart and sighed. “Delicious. You’re a good cook.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve always been pretty handy with piecrust.”

He looked at me intently and I had to look away.

“Okay,” I said, flushing. “I got them at the store. You think I really had time to cook?”

He smiled. “But you heated them up so well.”

“I did, didn’t I? It’s a talent I have…heating things up.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” he said, grinning.

“Why, Detective, are you flirting with me?”

“You’re the one who made the comment,” he countered. “What else did you have in mind?”

“I, uh…nothing, really. And by the way, you’re moving awfully fast.”

“I don’t mean to. I’d just like to get the sex stuff out of the way so we can get down to business.”

I felt my face grow hot. “Sex stuff? Detective Rucker, wherever is your mind? And what do you mean by business?”

“I mean the real reason you invited me here,” he said.

“You suspect me of having a secret agenda?”

“I suspect you of just about everything right now, Mary Beth Conahan.”

He said it easily, as if he were merely commenting on the weather.