Cat in an Alphabet Soup Read online

  “That’s either very good or very bad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Either he’s an expert tail and even we couldn’t detect him, or he took our fee, made the drop and went home to twiddle his thumbs.”

  “I had to try, Temple. Surely if they’ve got the money they’ll release the cats. Maybe Baker and Taylor will suddenly show up at the ABA in time for the last day.”

  “Maybe,” Temple said. “Does it really end tomorrow? I can hardly wait.” She bent to fuss with her left shoe. Somewhere on her circuitous route, she’d picked up a genuine grain of sand.

  The Pennyroyal Press press kit came in a copper-colored folder with the imprint’s logo embossed dead center, a coin depicting— not the familiar profile of Lincoln—but a crowned king in profile. The word “Pennyroyal” curved above the coin; the word “Press” smiled modestly below it.

  Temple sat at her desk skimming the accumulated paper trail on the personalities in the case. Most of the ABA’s hubbub had peaked. In twenty-four hours, the five-day mania would end for another year with a whimper. To every thing there is a season.

  This was Monday; already some booksellers were leaving. Tuesday afternoon the exhibitors would decamp. On Wednesday the center setup crew would tear down and put up; by Thursday a new crew of conventioneers would throng the vast complex.

  And Lieutenant Molina would have an unsolved murder on her books to make this an ABA to remember.

  Temple frowned at the photographs of Pennyroyal’s reigning authors. Mavis Davis made an unlikely candidate for cold-blooded murderer, and neither Lanyard Hunter nor Owen Tharp had a motive, to hear them tell it. At this point Temple wasn’t inclined to credit anyone’s declaration of disinterest.

  Look at Lorna Fennick, who’d never mentioned her time as an assistant to Chester Royal. Apparently the experience had been enough to discourage Lorna from becoming an editor and she’d fled to the safer—more ethical?—field of public relations. Then there was the choice of weapon—a knitting needle. The more Temple considered it, the likelier it was a woman’s weapon.

  Mavis Davis, Lorna Fennick, Chester’s editor ex-wife Rowena Novak—all made excellent candidates for the author of the ‘stet’ scrawled across the dead man’s chest.

  Stet. It meant “let it stand.” In this case, it meant let him end as he began, as nothing. A bitter epitaph even for a murder victim, as if a man’s life were only so much editorial dead matter. Or did Royal’s death restore something in the murderer’s mind? Self-esteem? Justice? Who would be bitter in that way but a wronged wordsmith? Possibly a writer, possibly another editor who’d been overruled. Or a would-be editor who’d been abused.

  Almost anyone could have done it. It didn’t require great strength or cunning, just surprise. Anyone could smuggle a knitting needle into the ABA, though a woman would have a better pretext. If Chester Royal had secretly remained behind after the center closed on setup day, someone else could have, claiming an after-hours meeting, say. Getting out later would be much easier than leaving and trying to get in again. Maybe Royal himself had requested the meeting with the killer.

  Temple eyed her desk phone, an innocuous beige business model. She ought to look further into Royal’s malpractice conviction, but the only one with clout enough to do that was C. R. Molina. She’d rather give a hot tip to Hitler’s grandmother. Still....

  While she was talking to the lieutenant, she could mention the string of cat disappearances—B and T and now Louie. Might as well multiply culpability times humility and beg help across the board. None of this was Temple’s business, anyway, except for Louie.

  That’s what she told herself as she looked up the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police number and dialed. It took ages to get through to Molina. Temple couldn’t decide whether she was lucky or unlucky to find the lieutenant in.

  “Yes.” It was said so abruptly that Temple almost hung up. Instead she gave her name.

  “Yes.” The lieutenant didn’t sound even vaguely interested.

  That made Temple mad enough to ... talk.

  “I don’t know how the Chester Royal investigation is going—” Pause. Perhaps Molina would tell her. Naw. “But I’ve discovered something in his background that you may not know about.” Pause. Molina was not forthcoming with the encouraging little murmurs that make a phone conversation a two-way street. “Royal was a doctor. Until he was forced to stop practicing medicine because of a malpractice conviction.”

  “Where? When?”

  “Why do you think I’m calling you? You must have access to stuff like this on some computer. Had to have been in the early to mid-fifties, because he couldn’t have finished medical school until about 1950, and according to the press release he started dabbling in publishing in 1957. He was an ob/gyn. I bet the case made the papers, wherever it was.”

  “I’ll check it out.”

  “Great! Could you let me know what you find out?”

  A dial tone; Molina had hung up. No chance to mention the missing cats.

  “You’re welcome!” Temple cradled the phone with an emphasis that could not be termed polite.

  “Whew! Who pushed your buttons?”

  Lorna Fennick stood in the doorway, with raised eyebrows.

  “A public official. I’m sorry you saw me being petty and unprofessional, but the line was dead.”

  “Don’t apologize. I feel like flinging some office equipment today, too.” Lorna came over to perch on the desk edge, pushing her lank hair behind one ear.

  “Oh?” Temple prepared to be sympathetic.

  “The first fallout from Royal’s death. Mavis Davis is abandoning Pennyroyal.”

  “Mavis Davis? She’s the last one I’d suspect.”

  Lorna nodded morosely. “The Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce biggies are hugely upset. When the big fish thrash, we minnows are in for a bumpy swim. Apparently, it’s a done deal. Mavis is going with Lodestar-Comet-Orion-Styx.”

  “Can she do that? Aren’t there option clauses?”

  “Sure, but option clauses are easy to wriggle out of if you can get big enough money from another house or you do a different kind of book.”

  “What about her wimpy agent?”

  Lorna studied Temple with surprise. “How’d you know about that?”

  “Isn’t that one of the things that cured you of editing? Watching Chester Royal steer his unknowing authors to an agent who was in his pocket?”

  Lorna sat up straighter. “You know that, too? Yeah, he did that, and I left. I never told anyone why. How’d you know?”

  Temple shrugged. “I’m around. I hear things. I listen. It’s part of my job.”

  “Please don’t breathe a word of the Davis defection. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I’m so depressed. This has been a hell of an ABA for RCD. Hell on public relations personnel, too. I had to tell someone.”

  “I know what you mean. I haven’t had the world’s best day, either.”

  “What happened?”

  “My cat’s missing, for one thing.”

  “You mean that big black tom from the feature story?”

  “Yeah. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

  “Sorry. But, hey, he was a stray. He probably just ran away. Cats’ll do that.”

  “I know,” Temple said with feeling, mentally adding Baker and Taylor to that toll. “But I have a hang-up about critters that skip out on me.”

  Lorna nodded. “So does RCD. God, it’s been frantic. Now Avenour wants me to set up a small memorial service for Chester. I just hope the local police let the staff leave town on schedule.”

  “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

  Temple found passing room 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.”

  “Earnest Jaspar—with two e’s and three a’s. But I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him all ABA.”

  Temple smiled. “Right now I’d say that’s a lucky thing for Mr. Jaspar.”

  “Yes, it is. I’m not a violent woman, Miss Barr,” Mavis said mildly, “but I do think I’d be tempted to, to—trip Mr. Jaspar if I saw him now.”

  “Heaven forbid.”

  Mavis looked down at the orange drink can as if she were reading her fortune in its gaudy contours. “You know, I’m beginning to realize that Mr. Royal had some old-fashioned ideas. Styx—that’s the house I’ll be writing for now—wants me to do a really Big Book. Not two days ago, I’d have said I couldn’t have done that without Mr. Royal. Now—”

  “Now you think you couldn’t do it with him?” Temple prodded gently.

  “Yes! He never wanted me to put the doctors in a bad light, but Styx says that people love to know that doctors have Achilles’ heels like the rest of us. And, frankly, Miss Barr, I’ve s
een some stuck-up stinkers of doctors.” Mavis suddenly recognized her anger and retreated. “Mr. Royal was a bit naive, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s possible,” Temple said with a straight face.

  “Still, what if these new people don’t know how to edit my books? What if they don’t like what I do on my own, all by myself?”

  “Didn’t you write your first book that way?”

  “Yes.” Mavis sounded uncertain nevertheless.

  “I’ll tell you what you do.” Temple leaned forward and donned her most emphatic expression. “You think about everything you ever saw or thought in those years as a nurse when nobody—doctors, patients, hospital administrators—thought you were looking and you write it all down to make the most exciting, true story you can. And you don’t worry a bit what Mr. Royal might think. He’s not here anymore.”

  “You’re sure I can do that? Just write what I know and it’ll be all right?”

  “Yes, I am, Mavis. Now you just sit here and finish your soft drink. I have to run along. Deadlines, you know.”

  “Sure. Thank you, Miss Barr.”

  Temple loved a source who thought you’d done her a favor by grilling her.

  She waved goodbye and darted off, only to pause in the hall outside the conference room. Where—or how—would she find a low-profile loner like Earnest Jaspar in the waning hours of the ABA? He wouldn’t make a booth his base of operations, and apparently he handled only Royal’s authors.

  She headed for the exhibit floor again. Had it only been three days ago she’d been tracking a rogue cat through the setting-up clutter? Pennyroyal Press’s booth looked as shiny and ferocious as it had Friday morning. The glittering, blown-up book covers resembled graphic teeth about to snap at the idle book browser. Those horrific covers made Temple nervous, brimming as they were with barely hidden hostility and ill will.

  And who should be holding up a corner of the display other than Lanyard Hunter and Owen Tharp in rapt consultation? They made such an unlikely pair that Temple stopped to watch them with a smile.

  Hunter, tall and angular, slouched into a suit that so replicated his thin frame it seemed to cover hangers rather than flesh and bone. Tharp, shorter and stouter, bristled as he talked, his compact body tense with unleashed energy, his gestures almost abrupt.