G Malliet - Death and the Lit Chick

Jay shook his head, all his arrogance returning. "You couldn't possibly know that. And I really fail to see how it's any of your busi-"

"Three little words."

"No. I didn't love her."

"Two words, actually. DeoxyriboNucleic Acid. DNA. Kimberlee was pregnant. Naturally we'll be testing to see who the father was."

"Good God. But I-"

"This would really be a good moment to tell me the truth. Your story of chaste, courtly love may not hold up."

Desmond Rumer, meanwhile, was looking at Jay with a steely hatred. He made to cross the room toward his rival, only to find Sergeant Kittle had stepped nimbly into his path. Reluctantly, Desmond backed away, but he remained standing, fists clenched at his sides.

"Oh, all right, all right!" Jay bellowed, then, collecting himself, said more equably, "We had begun an affair. But I didn't kill her and it's a far leap to try to claim I did. I was just afraid if you knew how far I was involved with her it would look bad for me. The situation had altered when she turned up, you know, dead."

"This admission at this late date is what looks, you know, bad. Just for your future reference. Sir."

"All right, I said. But I told you everything that was salient to your investigation. I went to her room at 10:30 to keep our prearranged rendezvous, but she wasn't there. She'd given me a key-I told you that."

St. Just nodded. "She was probably already dead by then."

St. Just still thought Jay had rather a wonderful motive, but he decided not to waste any more bullets on him.

"Just tell me," said St. Just, "one thing. Where did you meet her for your little secret get-togethers?"

"We always met at my place. Once or twice we went away for the odd weekend, met up in the Bahamas. I didn't even know where she lived, except in the vaguest terms. Kimberlee was evasive, always. It was part of her nature, I thought. I didn't know about… him. I didn't know he was the reason." He stole a glance at Desmond, who returned the glance with a glower of scarcely controlled loathing.

"That's what I thought," said St. Just. He turned, assessing each of the suspects, one by one. Eeney, meeney, miney… His eyes settled at last on one face in particular.

"But for the real liar, of course, the prize goes to the one who killed Kimberlee, and the one who killed Florie."

St. Just had once sat through an interrogation training course in analyzing facial expressions. Looking about, he saw nearly the whole gamut arrayed before him: Fear, guilt, puzzlement, annoyance, anger. Pretty much everything but joy and lust.

"This would have been a simple case to solve if so many of you hadn't lied about so many silly things," he reiterated. "Stolen books, love affairs-none of the secrets some of you have been hiding holds a candle to murder. Even in the case of Donna Doone, who has a sadder connection with Kimberlee. But Ms. Doone, we needed to have heard about that from you."

Donna nodded miserably. "She killed my brother. She was directly responsible for his death."

"And there is a case to be made that she was. Unsubstantiated allegations, cleverly worded-that poisonous type of writing was Kimberlee's specialty."

"I never knew," said Donna slowly, "what it was like to actually want to kill someone. But that's how I felt about Kimberlee. For a very long time. But I'd put it all behind me for the most part-I have my writing, you see. That helps me forget."

"Donna," said Winston. "You really shouldn't say any more." St. Just was more than a little surprised to see a look of stricken tenderness on his face. When had this connection sprung up between them?

She shook her head, returning his look with one of deep affection. "It's all right, Winston." She turned her eyes to St. Just. "When she came here, it just stirred it all up for me again. I hated the sight of her face. Hated… And then-she didn't know who I was, you see-I showed her my book, she asked to see it, and she laughed-"

"Donna," said Winston again. "Please. You need to take advice."

"But you didn't kill her, did you." This, also gently, came from St. Just.

"No," she said sadly. "And I guess you'll just have to take my word for it."

"Ms. Doone, I think I can do better than that." He turned again to the rest of the room. "Now, others here have far less serious secrets they've been at pains to hide. For example, this staged animosity toward Kimberlee…"

His eyes were on Magretta now, who gave him her patented "Who, me?" look of innocence.

"That really worked against you once she was killed, Magretta, when it became a dangerous game-for you. You should have helped us get a clearer picture from the start. The whole thing was a publicity stunt, wasn't it?"

"We-e-ell, not the whole thing," she said. "Kimberlee and I discovered by accident that press about bad blood between us made sales figures for both of us go up. You can track this kind of thing online these days, you know. Any newspaper article we could engineer, debating the worth, or not, of chick lit books-making it look like a spitting feud, you know-that caused quite a spike in both our online visitors and sales. So we went about deliberately stirring things. As Oscar Wilde said, 'There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.' It certainly worked to my advantage over time-if they, the press, mentioned Kimberlee, it got so they almost had to mention me. It was harmless."

"Let's let me be the judge of whether or not it was harmless, shall we?"

"How did you guess?" she asked.

"Partly because you overdid it. You overacted-how did B. A. King put it? You chewed the scenery. Yes. I gather that was the stamp of your previous career in the theater."

"Well, really," huffed Magretta. "I-"

"And you-" St. Just added, turning, "-you might also have told me, Quentin, that you were in on this little scheme. So much for high journalistic standards. You did nothing but create more little lies for us to clear away, before we could begin to see the larger truth."

"It's got nothing to do with anything… I told you, Kimberlee was going to give me a blurb. What was the harm? One hand washing the other."

"Yes, I wondered at that, Kimberlee promising you a blurb. She had to be getting more out of it than what you let on. The open-handed gesture was never in her repertoire, according to all of you, and your history with her hardly suggests she would be nursing some wistful nostalgia for an old friendship. Why on earth would she go out of her way to help you-unless there was something in it for Kimberlee? Let's see, who else? Oh, yes, Winston Chatley."

"Me?" His gaze flitted automatically toward Donna.

"It was B. A. King who suggested to me Winston had blackmailed Easterbrook, in order to get his books published. He implied Easterbrook had been having an affair and since it was his wife who happened to control the wealth… But I didn't believe a lot of what B. A. King told me, and I certainly doubted this. If Winston was such an excellent writer, as I've heard, why would blackmail be necessary to get published?"

The writers looked at him, stunned.

"You must be joking," said Magretta. "Haven't you learned anything in the past few days? Writers would kill to get published-just using a figure of speech there, of course," she added. "But would they stop at a spot of blackmail? No. Heavens no. Talent or a lack of it has nothing to do with getting published. That's why we're such desperate creatures."

They all nodded their heads in agreement.

"Yes, you've already told me the lengths you, personally, would go to in order to get what you wanted. B. A. King told me he heard a loud splash-something being thrown out of Kimberlee's room. I tended to dismiss that-he was so busy implicating everyone and dragging red herrings about the place. Plus, he was drunk and rambling half the time."