Dying to Get Published (18 page)

Jennifer nodded vigorously. "Most definitely. Didn't you mention something about Penney Richmond having a lover?"

"She was fond of entertaining on Friday nights, or so I've been told, although I personally haven't seen anyone I thought was in to see her recently," Mrs. Walker said. "I assumed the gentleman who used to come regularly was her lover, but assuming for purposes of gossip and assuming for a murder investigation, I suppose, would be two separate things."

"Do you know what he looks like?"

"But of course, although I suppose
looked
like would be more appropriate. He was that incredibly handsome newsman—the one that took a dive off that building in Macon. Kyle Browning."

Chapter 27

"Get over here right now!" Teri insisted over the phone.

"What are you doing?" Jennifer demanded, balancing a spoonful of jelly in midair, dripping a little onto her kitchen counter. "I can't go to the Channel 14 studios. That's why I sent you, remember?" She dabbed a bit of the red goo in each of three thumbprint cookies resting on an aluminum baking pan atop her stove. "Besides, I've got two dozen more cookies to bake before Dee Dee picks them up at two o'clock."

"I don't care. I can't find that damn document you wanted me to get and I'm not coming back tomorrow to get it! How many hands does that man have anyway?"

"I told you to watch out for Moore."

"Moore? Moore's a pussy cat. I'm talking about that Allen dude."

John Allen was hitting on Teri? Adonislike John Allen who had never given her more than a
bored, where's-my-mail stare?

"Allen's not supposed to be there until late," Jennifer argued.

"The best I can tell he had some kind of meeting with the higher-ups at nine o'clock, but don't quote me. How the heck am I supposed to know what's going on? I'm not even a real temp."

"You don't have to know anything. All you have to do is find one lousy—"

"I mean it, Jennifer. Are you listening to me? You've got to come now. We don't have much time."

Jennifer dropped the spoon into the jelly jar and licked her finger. "I can't come at all, not with Moore, Allen, and Edith there. You are there for a reason. I am here for a reason. What part of this scenario don't you understand? And who's listening to this conversation, anyway?"

"No one. They're gone. All of them. Outta here. And that's what I'm going to be if you don't hop in your buggy and get your ornery self over here this minute."

"How'd you get rid of them?"

"Don't worry. I took care of it."

"Teri…"

"Okay. I sorta called the police anonymously and suggested that an officer might want to question them because you'd been working here last week."

"You what?"

"Don't have a hissy fit. It worked. The police called them in, and there's no one in the office now except for me. I told Edith not to worry, I'd cover. I've looked through everything I can think of, Jen. It'd sure help if I had a clue what I was looking for."

Teri could come up with a plan to evacuate a news office, but she couldn't find a simple party roster.

"It's a list of names—last name first—phone numbers, addresses—"

"You better make it quick," Teri warned. "It's almost ten-thirty, and you can bet the police will let at least Moore loose in time for his broadcast at noon."

She'd kill her! She would go to Channel 14 and kill her—strangle her with her bare hands. But then thoughts like that were what got her into this mess to begin with.

"Tell the receptionist you're my supervisor," Teri instructed. "I've already told her you'd be over in a few minutes to do my evaluation. Just get your skinny little self over here now."

Jennifer was going for a 1950s Lana Turner look, a scarf wrapped around her hair and neck, big, dark glasses shielding half her face, and lipstick the color of a fire engine. An oversized, calf-length, all-weather coat covered her from the neck down. She ducked down the hall and slipped into Moore's office.

Teri turned and stared at her openmouthed. "You look like Audrey Hepburn swallowed by a manatee. How'd you get past the receptionist?"

"She was flirting with the security guard. They didn't even notice me."

"Whoa-ho. They'd have to be in one serious clinch not to notice you."

Jennifer took a long look at Teri. She was dressed in a tight spandex top and a leather miniskirt that showed more of her bronze, athletic legs than should have been legally allowed. "Is that a really wide belt or what?"

"The tag said it was a skirt. Who am I to argue? Besides, I figured if I could keep the boss distracted, he might not be so suspicious."

Distracted? She was surprised Moore hadn't had a heart attack.

Jennifer tossed her purse onto her former desk. "We don't have much time. I've got cookies to bake and police to avoid. Where have you looked?"

"There." Teri pointed to the filing cabinet. "And I went through Moore's desk drawers. Unless he's got the list coded somehow, I don't think it's there."

"And Edith's computer?"

"I looked through some of it, and her desk, but I didn't find anything. I wouldn't be surprised if she's rigged one of the drawers with explosives. That woman gives me the creeps."

"She's just efficient. You could learn something from her," Jennifer added under her breath.

She plunked herself down in Edith's chair, tossed off her dark glasses, and rifled through the desk drawer. Nothing there, just as Teri had said. She pulled open the small file drawer on the right side of the desk, extracted a handful of manila folders, and plopped them down in front of her. The third one down was labeled BOOK SIGNINGS." Inside was a tentative schedule of times and places Steve Moore would be promoting his book when it came out. It must be the tour Moore had wanted her to join him on, she thought. The next page down was a list of names and addresses with a sticky label on top reminding Edith to send all the people on the list notification of local and Atlanta book signings. It was the names of the guests who attended the party Jennifer had catered.

"I found it," she called to Teri.

"Found what?" a voice demanded. Jennifer looked up to see Lily Dawber standing in the doorway.

Oh crud. Mrs. Adonis, looking her domineering best. Jennifer ducked her head and covered her eyes with the glasses. If only she had John Allen nearby to toss to the shark.

"Can I help you?" Teri asked, sashaying over to Dawber.

"Who
are
you two?"

Teri took Dawber by the elbow and steered her toward John's office. "Mrs. Allen, you just missed your husband. Wouldn't you like to wait for him?

"I have to tell you," Teri added, "how much I loved you in the Miss Georgia pageant. As far as I'm concerned you were robbed. You're a lot more talented than that gal who won. I mean not just anyone can sing and dance ballet at the same time. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone—"

"Who are you?" Dawber repeated, extracting her elbow and rooting herself to the spot.

"Yasmine. Yasmine Simone, the new temp." Teri stuck out her hand.

"Yasmine?" Dawber took Teri's hand in one of those three-finger, what-kind-of-disease-comes-standard-with-that-miniskirt kind of grip. "How do you do?"

Thank goodness for Southern gentility. It almost always won out.

"So many of you young women are in and out of here, it's impossible to keep up. And who is she?" Dawber pointed at Jennifer as though she could neither see nor hear.

Jennifer turned away.

"Don't look," Teri warned, leaning in confidentially. "She's a witness in a murder case."

Dawber's eyes widened.

"Just seeing her can put you in danger. Steve Moore plans to question her in one of those shadow-type interviews on the noon news. No one is supposed to be in here."

"If she's that important, I don't see why they don't have John do the interview at six."

Maybe because John doesn't know how to string three words together
, Jennifer thought.

"She'll be out of here way before that. Witness protection program," Teri explained. She opened Allen's door and shoved Dawber inside. "Wait here while I move the moll to a more secure location."

Teri shut the door on Dawber's gaping mouth.

"Come on. Let's blow this joint." Teri grabbed her purse and Jennifer's as Jennifer scooped up the book signing file and shoved the rest back into the drawer.

They had barely cleared the doorway when they heard the ding of the elevator followed by the silky rich voice of Steve Moore. They turned and ran for the stairwell, slipping totally out of sight before Moore and whomever he was with appeared in the hallway.

"Moll?" Jennifer asked as they fled down the stairs. "You think I look like a moll?"

"I got us out of there, didn't I?"

"You sure did, Yasmine. And I don't suppose Moore is going to be at all suspicious when he finds Dawber in Allen's office babbling about some Mafia babe he's going to interview who's part of the witness protection program."

"Look, improvisation is not my strong point. I didn't hear you offering any explanations. We made it out—at least of the office—and no one knows who we are."

"Sure they do—Yasmine! Or at least they will when your book finally sells with your heroine's name in it. And a gun moll, of all things. You think just like you write, you know that?"

They came to a landing with a door marked 1.

"You check it out," Jennifer ordered.

Teri cracked the door and stuck her head out. "Come on. The place is full of people. Looks like some kind of tour group."

Jennifer laid a hand on Teri's arm. "Two seconds." She stripped off the coat, laid it over her arm, pulled off the scarf, and raked her lips with a tissue.

"Good thinking," Teri agreed. "At least we won't look like 'Teri and her trained porpoise.'"

It was a group all right—of fifth grade children. Not the easiest crowd Jennifer had ever tried to blend in with. She put on her best teacher face and headed straight for the door.

They gulped in the fresh air of freedom and sprinted toward their cars in the visitors' section.

"Catch you tonight," Teri called.

Chapter 28

Jennifer's critique group was a kind of sisterhood wrought from common ambition and eternal rejection. They embraced her warmly into the fold. After all, what was a little suspicion of murder among friends?

"Think of all the firsthand experience you're getting," April declared. "It's got to be great research to actually be behind those bars, know what it feels like to be caged, to be unjustly accused and left to rot for someone else's crime."

Leave it to April to put the best light on a situation and then turn it into "The Pit and the Pendulum." She pulled a bunch of grapes from the lunch bag perched precariously on her ever expanding abdomen. "Anyone want some?" she offered.

Leigh Ann withdrew her size-five feet from under her and leaned forward from her seat on Monique's couch. "Tell me about all those rugged, good-looking policemen, Jennifer. Don't you just love it when they pull their hats down to their eyebrows and put on those mirrored, wire-rimmed, glasses?" A little shudder visibly ran through her body. "All business, yet so mysterious. You stare into their faces, all the while never knowing what they're thinking, what they're feeling, what—"

"You're sick. You know that?" Teri declared from the spot where she was curled on the floor at Leigh Ann's feet. Thankfully she had traded her "work clothes" for sweatpants and an oversized shirt.

Monique let out her standard gasp of exasperation. "Just how can we help, Jennifer?" she asked. "Actually, I'm surprised someone didn't kill Penney Richmond years ago."

Four pairs of eyes made a collective turn toward Monique, who suddenly looked incredibly uncomfortable, so unlike the self-assured, rock-of-knowledge they were so accustomed to.

"You knew her, didn't you?" Jennifer asked.

"I've met her."

Jennifer studied the woman's face. "No. No, this is more than that. A lot of agents' names have come up during our meetings, but I don't recall you ever saying anything about Richmond."

"That's right, even when Jennifer came in here complaining what a witch the woman had been to her over the phone that time," Leigh Ann agreed, nodding enthusiastically.

"Yeah," Teri chimed in. "You usually have all kinds of comments whenever—"

"All right. You might as well know," Monique said. "It's not like it's a secret. Penney Richmond was the agent that sold my book."

Light dawned in April's eyes, and she paused in mid-chew, tapping her bottom lip with a grape. "Oh, my… She screwed you over, didn't she?"

"Let's just say she helped me understand the concept of justifiable homicide." Monique lay back in her chair and slowly started rocking.