Carole Douglas - Cat in an Alphabet Soup

“There’s been no progress on the murder investigation?”

“Nothing visible. Maybe it’s the lull before the lasagna hits the plate glass.”

“That’s what you call it in New York, huh?”

“That’s what I call it anywhere—damn messy. Got any ideas where I can stage a respectful service in a hurry?” Temple ransacked her tote bag and pulled out one of Electra’s cards—an embossed blue ribbon tortured into a rococo knot on a pink pearlized background. “Try her; she can switch from white to black in a flash.”

“Okaaay. You’ve got an answer to everything. At least the worst of your work with this circus is done. Hope you find your kitty.”

“Thanks.”

Temple remained desk-bound after Lorna left, her face propped on her hands, the Pennyroyal Press folder swimming before her vision in a hot metallic haze.

Chester Royal had been the perfect murder candidate. He had hubris and a lifelong history of maltreating people’s hearts and minds as well as their bodies. That was the trouble. He was too perfectly odious. Anyone could have done it. Heck, the man had managed to rile Temple in the two minutes their paths had crossed at the ABA. If she had been the sort to get mad and get even, she might have grabbed the nearest knitting needle and purled his chest cavity, too....

But only one candidate for killer had made a major lifestyle change for the better since Chester’s universally unmourned demise. Temple snagged her glasses and tote bag and headed back out to the acres of exhibition.

18

A Mavis in Flight

T emple found passingroom on the convention floor now. Some attendees had no doubt left town. Others had finished their book business and were ranging farther afield in search of bookies and other less-than-literary Las Vegas drawing cards.

Consulting the convention guidebook she pulled from her tote—a tome the size of the Reno phone directory—Temple hunted under the L’s. Not long after that she was sailing past the usual alphabet soup of signage, including the Bantam-Doubleday-Dell consortium under the familiar logo of the red rooster and the entwined anchor and dolphin.

Time-Life Books, long since stripped of the popular navy book bags that were its ABA trademark, reeled by on Temple’s right. At the Zebra/Pinnacle’s booths Temple almost tripped over stacks of giveaway paperback romances featuring equally well stacked cover girls, though the awesomely developed bare-chested heroes gave the heroines a run for their cleavage.

Aisle numbers high above the exhibits were hitting 2400. Temple angled cross-traffic and headed down to 2570-82.

And there the quarry was, chatting happily to all comers—Mavis Davis, already if unofficially ensconced at the Lodestar-Comet-Orion-Styx booths, pumping up the public for her first book under a change of colophon.

“Hello!” She greeted Temple like an old friend, and indeed any familiar face in the press of an ABA soon came to seem like one.

“Hello, yourself. I hear you’ve been making news.”

“Oh, but it won’t come out until the next issue of Publishers Weekly . You can’t publicize it.” Anxiety was still as much a part of Mavis Davis as her perm-crinkled hair. Her eyes looked even more haunted behind the surface euphoria. Performance pressure, maybe? Or guilt?

“Of course not,” Temple said soothingly. “But just in case Lieutenant Molina wants to reach those who worked with Chester Royal, I’ll need to put her in quick touch with everybody once you’ve all left Vegas. You’ll be accessible through a new house now.”

“Well, yes.” Insecurity peeked more boldly through the facade of Mavis’s obvious joy and relief. “I wouldn’t want... the police to think I was making myself unavailable.”

“Why don’t we get off our feet? You must be exhausted, standing on this hard floor all afternoon. Come to the staff room and I’ll get you a soft drink.”

“All right.” Mavis looked around uneasily, searching for someone to say no for her. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to leave, but they really haven’t anything planned for me to do here. It’s all been so sudden.”

“I’d love to hear about it. I couldn’t be happier for you,” Temple said with sincerity. The poor woman was dying for a sympathetic ear, and Temple had at least two of them.

She steered Mavis back to the same large bland room dominated by a conference table where Temple had met Lorna Fennick and glimpsed the background for this killing.

“Sit down; I’ll get you a drink—diet orange okay? Great. Now.” Temple had installed Mavis on a chair near the table corner. She claimed the one across the corner from it. That made the big empty table vanish, made them seem like two friends meeting for lunch at a cafeteria. “Tell me all about your great new publisher.”

“It’s not only a new publisher, Miss Barr. It’s a new agent. The agency is one of the most respected in Manhattan. Imagine. I’ve got the same agent who handles Michener.”

“I don’t have to imagine it, it’s true. How did it happen?”

“Well, my new agent approached me and said that he’d long felt that my career had not been as strongly promoted as it could have been. That I was ‘untapped potential.’ That he couldn’t ethically encourage me to leave my current agent, but that it would serve me far better to have New York City representation, and that—”

“Wait a minute. Your old agent, Chester’s friend, wasn’t based in New York?”

“No. And he wasn’t really a literary agent. He was a lawyer. Mr. Royal said that’s all I needed anyway, that the really big authors just have lawyers look over their contracts. He was a friend of Mr. Royal’s from way back.”

“Where was he based?

“Albert Lea, Minnesota.”

Temple gulped diet orange soda that tasted like a chemically addicted tangerine. She could hardly believe her sympathetic ears. Even Temple knew that having a literary agent in a tiny Minnesota town made as much sense as having a film agent in Nome, Alaska.

“Is he here, at the ABA?”

“I guess so.” Mavis’s seesaw voice wavered into a low range. “I haven’t seen him,” she admitted. “I don’t want to see him! According to what my new representatives are saying, it’s clear to me that... now you mustn’t tell a soul”—Temple shook her head so vigorously her glasses did a bebop on the bridge of her nose—“my ex-agent wasn’t exactly doing his best to see that I got what I deserved. Mr. Royal’s old friend was... behind the times.” Mavis’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not pleased about it.”

And would be even less so later, Temple guessed, when Mavis began to grasp the extent of her editorial enslavement. Or was this just an act? Hell hath no fury—or guile—like a writer ripped off.

“Mavis,” she began carefully, “I need to make sure that Lieutenant Molina is aware of all the people connected to Chester Royal who are at the ABA. What’s this man’s name?”

“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” Mavis said, waffling.

Temple stifled an impulse to point out that she’d just admitted the man had stolen her blind. “You’ll get in trouble if you’re not forthcoming to Lieutenant Molina, and I’ll get in trouble if the lieutenant finds out there were some facts I overlooked mentioning.”

“You don’t think he... iced”—this was intoned with great drama and a surprising amount of relish—“Mr. Royal?”

“I don’t think he even flushed him, but I need to know his name.”