Dying to Get Published (13 page)

He caught it and shook his head. "I don't eat lunch. Too much to do. Right now I'm running down last night's arrests. Can't you tell?"

"Can you get away with taking time off like this?" She gestured at their salads.

Sam shrugged. "I'll make it up tonight. I don't have to have my copy in until late, and the police department never closes. It's just that I like to have my articles in early enough to pretend I have a normal job, so I can at least catch a decent supper now and then."

"You love it, don't you?" Jennifer observed, catching a glimpse of passion in Sam's eyes.

"It has its rewards, but what I do is still only a job. What you do is more of a calling."

A calling that she sometimes wished would go call someone else.

"When did you start writing stories?" Sam asked.

Jennifer took his empty bowl and stuffed it along with her own into a plastic bag. Then she pulled out the lasagna and cut it in two, slipping each half onto a plastic plate. He took his and dove into the cheesy layers.

"I honestly don't remember. I didn't start with the mysteries until I was out of college. I tried working in advertising for two years and then my parents died. I sold their house, put the money in a small trust fund, and moved into the apartment where I live now. The fund almost pays the rent. Dee Dee was looking for someone to help her when she started the catering business, and it seemed a perfect fit. If I wanted to write for a living, I had to commit most of my time to it. Of course that was almost five years and eight novels ago."

"Are you any good?"

Now just how was she supposed to answer a question like that? "Of course, I'm good, at least, good enough. Why do you ask?"

"Five years is a long time. You must have had doubts. But if you can still say you're good, you have something far more important than talent."

Gall?

"Persistence," Sam continued. "You don't make it in a business like publishing without determination."

He was right there. Determination and many submissions.

"And you? Did you ever want to write fiction?"

"Naw. I'm doing what I want, searching out the truth, telling it like it is with as little bias as I can manage. Sounds corny, doesn't it?"

Actually it sounded wonderful. Most of the people she'd met in the newspaper business had become jaded. Sam, somehow, had remained a believer.

He smiled, a shy, confessional smile, and her heart jumped a little.

She
had
to keep her mission in mind. Her relationship with Sam
had
to be strictly business. She couldn't afford to get sidetracked. She needed a man to seduce. Unfortunately, it had to be Sam, this true believer. There was nobody else.

"Do you think you could come by my apartment Friday night, say about seven o'clock? I want to talk to you about laying out the book about Browning, decide how we're going to divide up the labor."

Sam nodded. "Sounds fine."

"I'll fix something to eat. I know you won't have time to grab anything before that."

"That seals it. I can be bought."

She hoped so.

Jennifer glanced at her watch. "It's getting late. I have to be back downstairs in half an hour."

Sam wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and helped her dispose of the rest of their dishes. "The last thing we want is someone to come looking for you." He stood up, offered her his hand, and pulled her to her feet.

"The mousse," she said plaintively.

"You can take it with you for an afternoon break. Tell you what: I'll even throw in my serving. But you've got to earn it."

They scoured the side of the building that overlooked the parking lot but found nothing. No bloodstains, murder weapons, or other telltale signs of mayhem. Not that Jennifer actually expected anything of substance, but she had hoped for a button ripped from the murderer's jacket. Almost every TV detective who lasted more than one season had at least one case that hinged on a button. Real life was so much harder than fiction.

Sam began to inspect the wall itself. It ran around the entire roof and was close to three feet high. Jennifer peeked over the edge. It was a long way down.

"Look at how narrow this is," she said. "If you climbed up on this wall, it wouldn't be thick enough for you to stand on. It certainly wouldn't be wide enough for a man who was over six-feet tall."

"So, what's your point?"

"Don't you think someone who is about to commit suicide wants to stand there for a moment, on the precipice, contemplating what he's about to do, before taking the plunge?"

"What is this? You think the guy's going to go around town looking for a place to perch before he takes the dive? Come on. Besides, he could have swung his legs over and sat on the top."

"Are you kidding? He'd fall off."

"Which he did. The question is whether or not he had help."

"Stand here," Jennifer ordered, positioning Sam with the back of his legs against the wall. "Look where your center of gravity, your abdomen, falls. It's above the rim."

"So one good push…"

"And over you'd tumble."

"Straight into the parking lot below."

She leaned over for another look with Sam standing so close to her she could almost feel his heart beating beneath his jacket.

And then she was in his arms, and he was kissing her passionately like one of those crazy, irrational moments in one of Leigh Ann's novels that never, ever happen in real life. One of those moments when a man does exactly what a woman wants him to do, exactly what she dreamed he would do but never does…

"I hate to break up the party," a deep voice bellowed.

Jennifer wasn't talking and neither was Sam. His mouth was too busy. Where were those words coming from?

"No one's allowed up here."

Sam loosened his grip and whispered into Jennifer's ear. "Sorry about that. He was coming up on us fast and I didn't have time to explain."

Explain? What did he need to explain?

She turned to face a white-haired man dressed in the uniform of a security guard.

"I hate to…
uh…
disturb you two. Looks like you were having quite a lunch up here. But since Browning took a leap off this roof, the brass doesn't want anybody up here. Too big a liability risk."

"Sorry, officer," Sam said. "We didn't know. We'll clear up our mess and get out of your way."

The man followed them back to the tablecloth, where Sam and Jennifer bent down and began gathering up their belongings.

"Were you on duty the day that Browning went over?" Sam asked.

"Yeah." The man shuddered. "It was quite a mess. His head cracked open like a cantaloupe."

Wonderful image, especially for a caterer.

"I don't guess any of you were really shocked, though," Jennifer suggested, corking the wine and lowering it into the basket. "I mean, he must have been depressed for some time to take his life like that."

"Depressed? Not that I know of. I talked to him just that morning. He seemed like he always did, only he had an interview with some celebrity for the evening news. I forget now who it was. But he was looking forward to it, some old friend of his and a real coup for the station. Yes sir, if he was going to kill himself, I think he would have picked another day."

Chapter 21

The room breathed seduction. Maybe gasped was more like it. Jennifer had been aiming for something like a scene in one of Leigh Ann's better novels, but she had a more contemporary setting in mind, not a medieval romance.

The room was dark, lit only by pink forty-watt bulbs that were supposed to bathe the apartment in a soft, other-worldly glow but created something more like a dim, "Oh, God, I'm going blind" effect.

A cluster of candles on the coffee table formed a bright pocket of light around a fishbowl of stemless, floating carnations. The critique group would give her a D- for the carnations, but the supermarket was all out of everything else, except for daisies. She'd gone with the carnations.

Maybe Sam wouldn't notice. If she played her part right, Sam wouldn't remember anything about the night except that she had been there.

Mentally, Jennifer went down her check list. The wine was chilling in the refrigerator, and Celtic harp music was barely audible in the background. The salads were on ice, a loaf of Dee Dee's best bread was sliced and waiting along with the ingredients for a quick pasta dish—assuming they made it to the
entree
. The sleeping pills were ground into a fine powder and sat waiting on the kitchen counter, enough to make Sam really, really relaxed when mixed with a little wine. She'd have to make sure he didn't take too much alcohol.

She'd planned it all so perfectly. Everything should go fine. Everything
would
go fine as long as Sam didn't kiss her like he had on the roof.

The doorbell rang. Jennifer grabbed up a sheer black shirt and slipped it over her black tank top and leggings. She straightened her collar, tossed back her long, wavy hair—men, she'd been told, loved women's hair long and down—and touched the corner of her eye where the liner and the shadow made a dramatic upward curve. Eye makeup made her eyes swell if she wore it too often, but she felt it was necessary tonight.

She drew in a deep breath and threw back the door lock.
Ready or not, Sam Culpepper, you are about to be seduced.

Sam greeted her with a puzzled, open-mouthed stare. "Jennifer?"

The cad. He could at least have thrown her a leer.

"Sam," she beamed, her mouth twitching at the corners as she consciously tried to take the plastic out of her smile. She took his hand, pulled him inside, and shut and locked the door behind him. The fly was in the parlor.

She watched as his eyes traveled from the coffee table to the stereo, to the dining table set with china—she owned only two good plates and two crystal water goblets, a gift from her mother to seed her hope chest. He arched an eyebrow. "I thought we were going to talk about the book."

She dropped his hand. She might as well have pinned a sign across her chest reading TAKE ME, YOU FOOL!

Her instincts told her to rip open the door, shove him back into the hall, and lock it after him. But she couldn't. She had to experience that gritty, real-life adrenaline rush of the criminal. And she needed Sam—not
needed
him, just plain, ordinary needed him—here, in her bed, all night.

She reached for his jacket. He shrugged it off and handed it to her. She hung it on the doorknob of the closet. "I thought you might like a little something before we talk," she purred, taking his arm and pulling him into the living area. She'd listened to enough of Leigh Ann's dialogue. If she could just get the words out without gagging, she should have enough lines stored up to at least get her through an hour with Sam, or however long it took him to pass out.

"A little something?" Sam repeated.

Damn! English majors and journalists were so literal.

She leaned against him and whispered up toward his ear, "Wine."

There was that stirring inside her again. How was she going to get close to this man and keep her objectivity if he sent butterflies racing to her nether reaches every time she was within six inches of him?

"Wine would be good."

Jennifer pushed Sam down onto the couch and reached for his collar. He folded his hand around hers.

"I'm just loosening your tie," she explained. He relaxed his grip but left his hand lightly folded over hers as she slid down the knot and unclasped his top button. She felt his grip tighten, and a tiny ball of panic formed in her stomach.

"I'll get that wine and be back in just a minute," she promised.

Jennifer escaped to the kitchen, where she shuddered against the counter. Was she out of her mind? She should have Steve Moore out there on her couch. She could run faster than he could, and she didn't have any problems staying on task around him—or stuffing him with sleeping pills. She had a funnel in the kitchen cabinet.

She shook the ground-up powder into a blue, long-stemmed glass, paused and then scooped out a little with a spoon. She didn't want to give him too much. She filled the glass with wine and then poured the pink one for herself. She'd seen too many whodunits—not to mention Danny Kaye's flagon-with-the-dragon, chalice-with-the-palace, vessel-with-the-pestle routine—where the drugged glass got switched to leave herself guessing which one had the pills. Blue was for boys; pink was for girls.

She swirled the red wine with a spoon until all of the white bits had disappeared, and then carried the glasses back to the couch. Sam was sitting stretched back with his eyes closed.

"You asleep?" she asked.

His eyes slowly opened. "I was just wondering how the accident happened."

"The accident?"

"The one where I died and went to heaven."

It was corny; it was stupid. If anyone else had said it, it would have made her mad.

She handed him the blue wineglass. He took a small sip and set it down on the coffee table. His arm was stretched out across the back of the couch, waiting. Jennifer took a big swig of wine and sat down next to him, her knee touching his. She stared at the wineglass she held in her lap. She felt his gaze travel over her profile and down the soft curls of her hair.

"I admire you," he said softly.

She whipped her head around to look at him in the gray light, that hair of his falling loose over one eyebrow, his dark eyes shining black in the dim light, and a sweet, half smile on his face. He reached for his wine and took another sip.

"You what?" she asked.

He shook his head. "You heard me."

"Why?"

"Because you have the courage to do what you want to do and because you won't let anyone tell you that you can't."

"Maybe I'm just stupid," she suggested.

He shook his head. "You're smart, you're damn good, and you know it. And it'll happen for you one day."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it has to. Because you won't give up."

Because you're willing to do anything—including pulling a ridiculous stunt like this—to make it happen
.

Jennifer shook her head.

"Look, I work in the newspaper business. Do you know how many journalists plan to write the great American novel? All of them. And do you know how many of them do? Very few, and only a small, small percentage of them ever get published.

"You've studied your field, and you know what you're doing—no illusions. You've got eight books, you tell me. Maybe it'll be your ninth or maybe your fourteenth, but it's got to happen for you. It's what you do. It's who you are." Sam took a big swallow of wine and replaced the glass on the table.

She could have kissed him. She wanted to kiss him. She took another drink of wine, waited for it to hit her stomach in one big burn, set her glass on the table next to his, and leaned forward to kiss the corner of his mouth.