Cat in an Alphabet Soup Read online

  “You know why,” Lorna put in. “Book reviewers have zero clout because book sections get virtually no advertising support. We’d get more coverage at the ABA if newspapers got more publisher and bookstore ad bucks. Money talks.”

  “Yeah, that’s why our conventions draw so many city-desk types who only want to cover an ABA to flack their own coffee-stained manuscripts, most of which are best suited for use as blotter paper at a puppy academy.”

  “That’s the point, Claudia.” Lorna Fennick sipped from a Styrofoam cup. “The ABA does attract members of the press, whatever the motive, and every reporter eats up something meaty like murder, especially at an unlikely place like an ABA.”

  “I don’t know about that ‘unlikely’ part,” Claudia retorted. “You shouldn’t be surprised by what happens when egos collide at an ABA. Not two days ago Chester Royal called you a ‘ball-busting press-release pusher’ to your face.”

  Lorna flushed. “Chester Royal was rotten to everyone; it was part of his mystique,” she explained to Temple. “Some people think that’s the only way to express power.”

  “I take it the victim was a wee bit unlikable?” Temple said as An Awful Thought occurred. “That could prolong the investigation into next week—of the year 2023!” Claudia sniffed. “Listen, Little Miss Lollipop, Royal even had a run-in with you. Don’t you remember? You were in the press room and mentioned that the Vegas papers weren’t big on covering culture.”

  Temple’s eyebrows had lifted at the ‘Little Miss Lollipop’ crack and stayed there. “I remember some guy going into a Geritol tirade about the book business being ‘thrills and chills and bottom line, not literature.’ I think he called me ‘Girlie.’ ”

  Lorna groaned. “That’s Chester. Or was Chester. He played professional curmudgeon.”

  “Heavy on the ‘cur,’ ” Claudia added, scanning Lorna’s sheaf of press releases. “Frankly, Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce is lucky to unload the old grouch. I’ve heard he was getting so senile lately he was deep-sixing the imprint. Mr. Bigwig’s regrets are for show only.”

  “Hardly.” Lorna Fennick’s voice had turned sharp as filed tacks. “Pennyroyal Press practically invented the medical thriller as a salable subgenre. The imprint is extremely profitable.”

  “Without Royal?” Temple wondered, looking up from skimming the late Chester Royal’s bio.

  Before Lorna could answer, Claudia Esterbrook did. “More so, without him. I hear he had the RCD brass by the monkey’s marbles. No one had any control, editorial or fiscal, over him or Pennyroyal Press. And PP pulled down a very pretty penny, I hear—or did until lately.”

  “Does,” Lorna Fennick said through her teeth. They were exceptionally handsome, and probably expensive. “We’re hardly helping Miss Barr with rumor-mill speculations.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Esterbrook snapped. “Look; I’m outa here. Mr. Razor Mouth is getting ready to spit-polish the podium even as we shilly-shally. You can stay and feed fairy tales to Miss Barr, Lorna. That’s all the press sees fit to print anyway.”

  “Whew,” said Temple when the door had crisped shut behind the woman.

  “It’s a rough job.”

  “So’s mine—now,” Temple said. “You’re in for a tough time, too. The local police will need a crash course in book publishing to investigate this case. They’ll want to know who,what,when,where, and why not. It’s the last thing your staff will want to deal with.”

  Lorna pulled out a wine snakeskin cigarette case and lighter and gave Temple a quizzical look. When Temple nodded, she lit up and inhaled until her cheeks were concave.

  “Claudia’s right,” she admitted on a dragonish puff of exhaled smoke. “Chester was a Royal pain. That’s between us.” Her eyes narrowed. “You ever flacked for a publisher? You have some insight on corporate ins and outs.”

  “Repertory theater. The same thing: sell arts and entertainment; snuff scandal and any ragged bottom-line stuff.”

  “Where?”

  “Minneapolis.”

  “The Guthrie.” Lorna’s murky eyes glinted with respect. “How’d you end up in Las Vegas, for gawd’s sake?”

  Temple sighed. “A long and personal story. I’m saving it for the movie.”

  “Anyway, you know how obnoxious these egotistical artsy types can be.”

  Temple nodded. “The best are usually sweethearts, though.”

  “Usually.”

  “Besides, Chester Royal wasn’t a temperamental author; from his bio, he was an editor in chief—and more chief than editor nowadays. Wasn’t his position mostly business, not art?”

  “More people are killed for bottom lines, baby, than art.”

  “Still, that ‘stet’ sounds like the last word from an author whose precious prose has been tinkered with. Could any writers on the Pennyroyal Press list harbor a grudge for past indignities?”

  “You’ve got the bios of the best-selling authors. The others have nothing much to gain—or lose.”

  Temple frowned at the standard press releases—stapled, two-page, double-spaced sheets with small half-tone photos of the author and latest book cover notched into the text. Mavis Davis. Lanyard Hunter. Owen Tharp.

  “I’ve never heard of them,” Temple confessed.

  Lorna rolled her eyes, her inhalation so deep it was almost suicidal. “Welcome to the majority of the U.S. population. Most people buy only three or four books a year, including cookbooks, travel guides and horoscopes. Only a tiny percentage of the pop. are regular readers. Divvy that up by reader tastes— literary versus genre fiction like mystery, romance and sci-fi, add nonfiction—and a steady readership of a hundred thousand or so can fuel a middling novelist’s career.”

  “Even a B act in Vegas pulls a bigger crowd in the six weeks during Lent,” Temple said.

  Lorna shrugged. “Facts of publishing life. Makes it hard to picture most authors as crazed killers over such meager stakes.”

  “Aha, but you aren’t considering artistic soul,” Temple said darkly. “I’ve known actors who would kill for a walk-on. This bunch, though”—she waved the releases—“looks pretty normal.”

  Lorna snickered. “Show me a normal author and I’ll show you a walking contradiction. Like acting, publishing is built on rejection. A successful author is either someone with incredible luck and an inch-thick skin—or a very long enemies list and a memory to match it.”

  “This Mavis Davis woman looks just like a nice woman from Peoria, Illinois, should: a fortyish Julia Child coming over with chicken soup.”

  “Have a chemist check the soup before you sip it. Mavis Davis writes the ‘Devils of Death’ series.” Lorna Fennick warmed to Temple’s blank look. “Instructive little tales of killer nurses. Her last one, Death on Delivery, was about a serial baby killer. She also features kidnapping obstetrics nurses. We call her the Queen of White-Cap Crime.”

  “Nice tag line. Is—”

  “Yes, it is. You think any publisher would concoct ‘Mavis Davis’? We urged a pseudonym, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “What about Lanyard Hunter?”

  “The name—or the author?”

  “The author. What’s his story?”

  Lorna lit a new Virginia Slim—her fourth—and studied her copy of the release. “An intriguing case. One of those medical impostors.”

  “You mean the guys who dress up in lab coat and stethoscope to become fake doctors in real hospitals?”

  Lorna nodded. “We don’t stress it in the release; we call him a ‘medicine buff.’ Hunter conned an amazing number of reputable hospitals into hiring him in an even more amazing range of specialties before his deception caught up with him. Chester Royal signed him to write an autobio, but it came out fiction—and this guy knows his hospitals, believe me. Reading his books would convince me to consult a Roto-Rooter franchise rather than a doctor any day.”

  Temple studied the photo of Lanyard Hunter, a handsome, prematurely silver-haired charmer in his early forties with a chamber of
commerce smile. “He’s so distinguished and humane-looking.”

  “Exactly why they should have run the other way when he presented himself as a doctor. He was too good to be true.”

  “It would take a clever, confident man to do something like that. He would have to feel superior to everyone around him. He would have to cultivate a certain distance that could make it easy to murder.”

  Lorna nodded soberly. “Lanyard Hunter is fascinating. I interviewed him for that release and if I didn’t know better, I’d let him remove my gallbladder. But he’s made a mint exploiting his knowledge of hospitals, and Pennyroyal Press gave him lead title status; why kill the giant that let him lay such golden eggs?”

  “And this last one—Owen Tharp?”

  “The compleat hack. He’s written novels in a dozen genres under two dozen names. Owen Tharp’s a phony, by the way. His stuff’s never lead title, but he’s fast, reliable and has a decidedly grisly bent that lends the list a touch of outright horror.”

  “Corpus Delicious?”

  “Cannibal morgue attendants.”

  “Scalpels Anonymous, P.A.?”

  “Sadistic plastic surgeons who deface their patients and drive them to suicide.”

  “I do have to wonder now, are the people who write these books normal?” Tharp certainly looked normal enough—middle-aged, middle-class, Midwestern.

  Lorna beamed like a comedian given a straight line. “Are any writers normal? Of course not. They write whatever fantasies are knocking around their brains and get paid for it, if they’re lucky.”

  “There are kinder, gentler things to write about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Uh... romance, families, the stock market,” Temple said.

  “Kind and gentle doesn’t sell. Sex and violence sells. And there’s plenty of it in the stock market, in families and between supposedly loving couples.”

  “If you put it that way, it’s a wonder more publishing personnel don’t get murdered.”

  “You sure it’s murder? The police haven’t said so.”

  “The body looked like it was left there by someone who enjoyed it.” Temple frowned. “Have the police mentioned how Royal was found?”

  “Dead,” Lorna said, her eyes narrowing. “There’s more?”

  “Not yet, but there may be.” Temple rapped the press releases she had collected from Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce into a neat pile on the tabletop. “Would you ask your people to make themselves available to me? I know the media and police in this town; the more I know, the more I can head them off at the pass—and the presses.”

  “You really think that there’s going to be more, rather than less, hubbub over this?”

  “You bet your Lily of France lingerie. Las Vegas is a lot more crime-conscious than it is book-conscious, but then you gave me the sad statistics yourself.”

  “I’ll take cooperation over hanging separately any day. We’re all in this together,” Lorna Fennick said with a conspiratorially arched eyebrow.

  The comment made Temple wonder why an imprint’s editor-in-chief would call his overlord’s publicity director a “ball-busting press-release pusher.”

  “You still here?” Temple was not pleased to find Crawford Buchanan sitting at her desk poking a pencil through the wire grating at the captive cat. It was past 6 p.m. and the office was otherwise empty.

  “We’re all in this together,” he sing-songed back. “Press solidarity. Speaking of which, Dubbs wants to know—any news on the missing pussycats?”

  “Oh, God... Baker and Taylor! Look, I’ve been a little busy running damage control on this dead body.”

  “You mean like that?” Buchanan’s lifted elbow revealed the Review-Journal’s PM edition. The headline, “Editor Dead at Convention Center,” leaped up at Temple.

  “At least the story’s below the fold.” She leaned over to skim the type.

  “Front page, though. Not many details. Went to press too fast. And that Lieutenant Molina’s closemouthed. Dubbs took two Ibuprofens this afternoon.”

  “He should take aspirin,” Temple snapped. “At his age, it’s better for his heart.”

  Buchanan spun from side to side in Temple’s chair. “A lack of stories like this is even better for his heart, T.B. Hey—ouch! That sucker snapped the pencil right out of my hand.”

  “Better pick on someone who isn’t bigger’n you, C.B.”

  That got Buchanan out of her chair, but he never stayed angry. He smiled smarmily and rapped his fingers along the top of the cat carrier. “All I can say is, you better uncover those cats and cool this murder, or the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, not to mention the ABA, will not be pleased with you. Ta-ta.”

  Temple watched his grizzled mop of curls saunter out of the office, just visible over assorted cubicle tops.

  "Shark!” she spit after him under her breath. Then she regarded the almost-forgotten carrier. “Are you okay, kitty? Did the mean little man hurt you? I thought not. Come on, let’s hit the road. I’m tired of this place.”

  4

  New Boy in Town

  The cat carrier banged Temple’s ankle in four-four time as she plodded through the late afternoon sunlight softening the Circle Ritz’s asphalt parking lot to the consistency of a half-baked Toll-House cookie.

  Her high heels sank in and stuck at each step, making her feel like a prospector trudging through a desert of hot fudge. She set down the carrier, unlatched the stockade gate, moved the carrier inside, and relatched the gate.

  Temple paused to soak up the indigo shade of an overarching palm tree and eye the cool blue apartment pool flanked by yellow calla lilies. Her favorite lounge chair sat empty near the water, just waiting to cradle her weary physique and frazzled psyche in the shade of a spreading oleander bush.... Home, sweet home.

  Temple had nearly reached the lounge chair before she spotted the stranger six seats over.

  “Oh.”

  He looked up from a Las Vegas guidebook. Born-blond hair, caramel-brown eyes, light tan, bright green short-sleeved shirt, muscles subtle enough to be interesting, and a quizzical look—mostly at the cat carrier. “Help you with that?”

  “Nope.” Temple resented any deference to her petite size. She deposited the carrier on the flagstones and sat primly on the edge of the lounge instead of collapsing full-length as usual. “I wonder if I dare let the poor thing out.”

  “What kind of poor thing is it?”

  “I’m not sure. Black. Feline. Heavy. Has a fearsome yowl.”

  “A stray?”

  “More like an unauthorized intruder. God, what a day!” Even a handsome stranger could not forestall Temple’s long-anticipated collapse. She groaned, then wriggled way, way back on the lounger, putting her feet up.

  The man came over, encasing her briefly in cool shadow before he crouched beside the carrier. “Take a look at it?”

  “But don’t lose it. The contents are a material witness in a murder.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  Temple shook her head. She debated removing her sunglasses to study her new acquaintance in full living color, but restrained herself.

  “You weren’t kidding.” The man hauled a long black boa of fur from the cramped carrier. “He must weigh close to twenty pounds.”

  “He?”

  “Definitely.”

  “You a vet?”

  “I spent a few weekends on the grandparents’ farm,” He cautiously released the cat to extend a tan hand, accompanying it with a smile that would blind a mole. “Matt Devine. I’m staying here now—I guess. Mrs. Lark was cordial but a little vague.”

  “Only a little? You must have made a real impression on her. Hi, Temple Barr. I’ve lived at the Circle Ritz for almost a year. You’ll love it, but you’ll have to like ‘a little vague’ a lot. Say, he is a big galoot, isn’t he?”

  Temple sat up to inspect the cat, who sniffed long and intently at the heel of her shoe, the aluminum tubing of the lounge chair and Matt De
vine’s hand.

  “Did you mean that,” Matt asked, “about him witnessing a murder?”

  Temple sighed. “I was exaggerating, a mortal sin for a public relations specialist.”

  Matt flinched a bit at her words. Maybe he had something against PR people, Temple thought. A lot of ordinarily nice folks did. PR people as a group were often stereotyped as devious, shallow and phony.

  “Actually,” she admitted, “Boston Blackie here should get a medal. If he hadn’t been AWOL at the convention center, I wouldn’t have found the body when I did, chasing him.”

  “That must be rough, finding a body.” Matt had moved to chaperon the cat’s explorations of the landscaping.

  “It’s not in my job description, for sure. Now I’m supposed to downplay the murder before it ruins the whole convention. Darn! This is my first assignment for the convention center. Booksellers sounded so stuffy; who’d have guessed? I need a drink.”

  “Sorry.” Matt displayed empty hands and ranged toward the calla lilies, where a black tail was vanishing. “Try Mrs. Lark.”

  “Didn’t she tell you to call her Electra?”

  “Yes, but—” Matt bent into the chest-high leaves. “I bet she doesn’t want this guy taking a dip in her lily pond, whatever she’s called.”

  “God, no! Back in the hoosegow for him. I gotta get to my apartment and find out if I’ve got any tuna fish; he can have the run of my place then.”

  An ungentlemanly yowl from the lilies indicated the cat’s capture.

  “What does Mrs. Lark—Electra—think about pets on the premises?” Matt Devine wondered.

  “It’s only for the night. Somebody had to take him, and I was the one unlucky enough to catch him. Lieutenant Molina of Sex and Homicide is looking at me with a goldarn evil eye. That is not a comfortable place to be, if you’ve ever met Lieutenant Molina.”

  Matt smiled at something that amused him, patted the cat’s sleek black head and stuffed it through the carrier door despite four black paws and a tail all lashing like octopus arms.