The Last Cheerleader
MIRA Books, December 2003
ISBN # 1-55166-723-1

When a train comes bearing down on one, there's always a warning. The tracks shake and noise vibrates through them, like the sound of a thousand poor souls in hell. There's a heavy smell of oil in the air, and if anyone is on those tracks—if they can't get off no matter how hard they try—there is also the dreadful, sickening scent of fear.

That's the way it was for me with Tony. I'd loved him far too long and should have left him long ago. For three years I was on those tracks, and I heard and smelled all the warnings. I just couldn't get off. I watched for three years while he flirted with other women and didn't show up on time, drank my coffee and never even brought me a bean. Tony didn't spend much, and I always knew why. He held onto money as if it pained his palm to pull it out of his pocket. I tried to tell him that if you hold onto money like that it'll just stop coming, that it's like a cat, and if you pay too much attention it sticks its nose in the air and prances the other way. I told him he should be more generous, give some of it away, if only to a poor box at a church. I swore that it would always come back two-fold, if not more.

Tony was horrified at that idea. He said he didn't have "enough" to give away, and I always thought he felt the same way about love. He was terrified that if he gave that to someone, even himself, something terrible would happen. As if he'd wake one morning and find he wasn't there anymore, that so much had been given away, there would be nothing left.

And what about you? one might well ask. What was wrong with me, that for three years I hoped against hope that one day this fool would wake up in his West Hollywood penthouse and find that he couldn't live another moment without me?

Well, this is what I tell myself, slipping out of my Gucci pumps and slinging my feet up onto my new antique desk: Tony wasn't someone I could all that easily leave. I'm a literary agent, known as one of the best, and Tony sold more books than all my other clients combined—books that turned like little miracles into movies and made millions of dollars. In these days of slow sales in New York, of literary agents dropping by the dozens back there and moving to places like Connecticut and Vermont, working out of their homes to squeeze a dime for all it's worth, Tony still came up with one blockbuster after another. And Tony was mine. To leave him might have been slaying the goose with the golden egg.

Slaying. An odd word to think of, under the circumstance. I've been dwelling more on Tony today because they found him dead last night. Worse—right next to him on the bedroom floor was Arnold Wescott, who for the past ten years had been my ex.

The police called at the crack of dawn to notify as well as to question me. I drove from my new home in Malibu to Tony's penthouse apartment in Brentwood to identify the bodies, my thoughts a jumbled mess all the way. Tony and Arnold, together? Murdered together? I couldn't wrap my mind around it.

It didn't get better with the terrible wrenching shock of seeing Tony on the floor with his forehead crushed in. As the police detective watched, I turned to Arnold, my heart thumping and questions like wasps still buzzing in my brain. Who could have done this? How did it happen?

I had questions, but no answers. This was Tony's apartment, and in the first place I couldn't understand what Arnold was doing here. So far as I knew, they'd never had any real connection to each other. Only once in awhile did they cross paths in my office, and the two couldn't have been less alike. Even in death, while Tony's beautiful Italian face looked pained, Arnold's was placid, as if he'd finally found peace.

In fact, Arnold—a Woody Allen look-alike—didn't appear much different from any other day. Which is to say that all the while I'd been married to him, Arnold Durkin seemed largely comatose. The most energy I ever saw him put out was the time he asked me to wear a metal bra so he could see if it really would deflect bullets.

Arnold was sweet if morose, and I was still struggling to build my stable of authors from an old thirty's-era store-front office the wrong end of Hollywood. Nights, however, I was into any adventure that came my way. So I stupidly let Arnold put the bra on me, his nervous little fingers shaking as he made sure my breasts were evenly cupped. Then, sweat pouring down his forehead, he stepped back six paces and let fly with the bullets.

Arnold was a toy designer, and how a man who spent thirty-two years in a clinical depression could possibly design a toy that a child would like is beyond me. Well, come to think of it, he never did manage that. After scaring half the world's children to death with GORP, a seven-headed beast that spewed forth murderous threats when his biceps were flexed, he'd turned to designing toys. The little rubber bullets were part of a model for "GOTCHA," his latest adult toy. Designed to be pointed at ex-girlfriends wearing metal bras, he had a male doll, too, wearing a metal jock strap.

That day, the bullets came zooming toward my chest, and I couldn't help it—I flinched, bent over, and one bullet went straight for my eye.

Arnold had to get me to the hospital where an unbelieving intern was sure that my husband had deliberately popped me one. That only made me laugh so hard the tears stung the abrasion on my cornea. Arnold, violent? No way. Arnold was meek and mild, and he never once had deliberately lifted a finger in my direction—or any other appendage, for that matter.

So it was a bit of a shock when the cops called last night and said they'd found Arnold dead. Not only that, but he was found next to another man's body in that man's bedroom. Further, the other man was Tony Price, my best-selling author and long-hungered-after love.

Even more of a shock was that both men lay side by side on the floor, and next to them was what the police were sure was the murder weapon—a rare ivory Chinese dildo, a favorite of the gay crowd in West Hollywood.

As I've said, the fact that Tony was dead too, was something that stunned me for several moments. Once I managed to collect my thoughts, however, I realized that my opportunity to get off those train tracks had come at last. Oh, it might be awhile before I got my whole body off, grief being what it is. I might leave behind a leg or a foot at first, but I wouldn't be trussed to the tracks any longer, and I'd have a chance to roll free.

If that sounds cold, it's only because I'd learned to restrain my feelings for Tony over a long period of time—a matter of self-preservation, having been given so little encouragement from that side. He loved going to dinner with me, taking walks with me, even traveling with me. He even said often that he loved me. "Just not that way," he would add. I'd begun to feel like one of those poor women who go on Montel Williams to reveal, at long last, their love for a male friend. Hoping, of course, that he'll bubble over with passion and cry, "I've always loved you too!" Inevitably, the friend does end up saying that, but adding the same as Tony: "Just not that way."

Having lived through a brief and sexless marriage with Arnold, and then a "relationship" with Tony, whatever the hell kind that was, I'd begun to feel as if I had more heads than GORP, not to mention biceps in all the wrong places. Or maybe I was a Ms. Potato Head, with my eyes, ears and nose all screwed up, ugly as sin. The fact that my mirror didn't support any of that paranoia helped—well-cared-for masses of reddish blonde hair being "in" now, as they are. But there were days....

Now, given the scene before me in Tony's apartment, I had to wonder—and not for the first time—were Tony and Arnold gay? I never was the kind of woman who immediately labeled a man gay if he wasn't interested in my womanly charms. But why else would the two of them be here in Tony's penthouse, and what else could the ornately carved Chinese sex toy be about?

The police, of course, wouldn't tell me a thing except that there would be autopsies, and forensics could take a few days. A Detective Dan Rucker was in charge. He looked to be thirty-something and I guessed that by some standards—not mine—he might be considered cute. He had bright blue eyes and sandy hair that curled below his ears, and he wore an Anaheim Angels baseball cap that he kept putting on and taking off. Every time he took it off he ran his fingers through his hair as if to make sure it was straight, but it never was. He sported at least a two-day growth of beard, and overall, the look was a bit too scruffy for me. He smelled nice, though. Like oranges warming under a noonday sun.

If this were a crime novel, of course, I would have been drawn to the good detective immediately, scruffy or not. We'd have fallen into each other's arms by sunset, and then we'd have gone off on a crime-busting romp together, to avenge the killing of my ex-husband and my...whatever.

This wasn't a crime novel, though, and Detective Rucker might have smelled like an orange, but he acted like a sour lemon.

"We'll need you to come down to the station in the morning to answer more questions," he said abruptly, not even looking at me as he paced off the room. He didn't seem overly suspicious of me, even though I was so close to the deceased. The truth is, I got the distinct impression that the police were thinking of this as a "gay murder." There had been several, beginning this past spring, and then two more since summer had arrived. Most were in West Hollywood, but one or two were in other areas. The sheriff's department in West Hollywood had waged a campaign to catch the killers, and while they'd found some of the murders to be gay-bashings by gangs, other cases were still open.

I had agreed to go to the police station this morning for further questioning, but wondered: Would justice be done for Tony and Arnold? What if it wasn't a gay-oriented crime? What if it was something entirely different? And why had this happened to two men who were close to me?

I was staring out my office windows around 10:30 and musing upon this when my phone rang, and a few seconds later my intercom buzzed. I'd asked Nia, my assistant, not to disturb me except for something important, so I knew I'd have to take it though it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. I'd already spent an hour at the police station saying "yes, no, yes, no, I don't know, and maybe." Detective Rucker still hadn't looked as if he'd had a shower or shaved, and I still wasn't impressed by his attitude. He was short with me and talked as if I were taking up his valuable time, whereas he'd been the one to tell me to be there. He seemed to find it hard to sit still, and was up and down, up and down, as we talked. I'd left there on edge, as if I'd taken his ragged energy in and brought it to the office with me. I definitely didn't feel like talking on the phone now, even though I knew I should, and why.

Paul Whitmore.

After a few minutes Nia stuck her head around the door. Her short black cut looked frazzled, and I knew she'd been running her pencil's eraser through it in irritation.

"That's Paul Whitmore on the phone," she said, confirming my every fear. "You want me to tell him you're tied up? He's called a half-dozen times since I came in this morning."

Nia came in at seven every morning because of the time difference between LA and New York. A lot of our business is done when editors are getting geared up back there around ten o'clock or so. Nia fielded calls and returned ones that were important but didn't need my personal touch.

"Don't I wish I were tied up somewhere," I replied with a sigh, "like on a warm deserted island with a delightful man tickling my naked body with palm leaves. Anything but deal with an editor right now."

Returning Nia's smile, I added, "But no. I'll talk to him."

Sliding my feet off the desk and setting them squarely on the floor, I stiffened my spine, reached for the phone, and held the receiver to my ear. At the same time my eyes scanned my beloved newish office with its floor to ceiling windows overlooking the high-rises of Century City. My desk was a Louis XV, and facing it were the antique chairs on which my authors sat. On a small cherry-wood desk sign were these simple words engraved in gold: Mary Beth Conahan, Literary Agent. In a corner a white and gold floor-to-ceiling cage held two love birds that cooed loudly as if sounding a warning bell at the mere mention of the name Paul Whitmore—the most important editor in New York City.

The lovebirds had been given to me one Christmas by Tony, and of course I foolishly saw them as a "sign" that he loved me after all. Until I found that he'd given the same gift to his assistant, his maid, his typist, and several other people, as a thank-you for the good work they'd been doing.

I wondered how long my new digs would last, now that Tony, the golden goose, was gone. The rest of my stable, though exemplary in many ways, wasn't in his best-selling category.

Putting a smile in my voice, just as the old Ma Bell operators were told to do, I chirped, "Hello, Paul. What can I do for you?"

"For God's sake, Mary Beth, what do you mean, what can you do for me? We're in the middle of negotiations with Craig Dinsmore! I've been trying to reach you all morning!"

Paul Whitmore worked for Bronson & Bronson, one of the few publishing houses in New York City that amazingly still had deep pockets. As such, most agents bowed and kissed Paul's feet the minute he phoned.

Most, I said. Not me.

"I'm sorry, Paul," I said softly with fake remorse. "Your last offer...it didn't really sit well with my author. And when you didn't call back yesterday afternoon, I assumed our negotiations were over."

Whitmore's voice, though still irritable, responded to my tone. "Of course they weren't over," he said more reasonably. "My dear, you know I love Craig Dinsmore's book. Everyone in-house loves his writing. We just have to come to terms, Mary Beth."

"But I don't see how that's possible," I said, choosing not to take offense at the "my dear."

"What do you mean, not possible? Anything is possible!"

"Not if you don't come up with more money, Paul. Craig is firm on that."

I tapped lightly on my chin with my favorite gold pen, studied my manicured toes through luxuriously sheer stockings, and took a deep breath. The truth was, Craig Dinsmore was on the verge of bankruptcy, and Paul had offered a high six figures for LOST LEGACY, Craig's true crime book about a fallen mafia don. If the deal went through, it could save his neck. But the more desperate my authors became during negotiations, the more relaxed I had to be. And I wanted a solid seven figures. That was the one thing that would make Hollywood perk up its ears and clamor to make a movie out of Craig's book.

Because the truth is, it doesn't always matter how good or bad a book is. Once a seven-figure offer has been made and accepted, the news of it makes its way into Publisher's Weekly and assorted media mags, and that's the kind of money that talks here in Hollywood.

"Dammit, Mary Beth, did you hang up on me?" Paul Whitmore roared through the phone.

I gathered my wits and tried to mimic my cooing love birds again. "Of course not, Paul. I was just thinking."

"I hope you're thinking that we've made a very good offer, and that Craig Dinsmore should be happy for what he can get. Rumors have it he's on the skids."

"Oh, really?" I said in my best "ridiculous!" tone. "Where on earth did you ever hear something like that? Craig is doing extremely well, Paul. He's just purchased a new home near Laguna Beach, you know. Not too far from the one Dean Koontz built a few years ago."

"I don't believe it."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, why would I lie?" I sure couldn't tell him that Craig was holed up in a cheap motel over by the airport, writing his brains out in a push to survive. Or that I hadn't yet told Craig about Paul's six-figure offer. I knew he'd want to grab it and not try for more.

I decided a distraction was in order. "I have a wonderful Dean Koontz story, if you'd like to hear it."

Paul sighed, loudly. "Go ahead. I suppose there's no stopping you."

"Well, a friend of a friend told me that while Dean was building his home down there, he took someone by to show it to him. But the road up to the building site was a mess of mud from heavy equipment and couldn't be navigated by the car they were in. So Dean and his friend—at least this is what I was told—drove up to Newport Beach and a new car lot. Dean went in, picked out a sturdy SUV, and paid cash for it—just so he could get up the road that day to his new home. Classy, huh?"

"Some people have more money than they know what to do with," Paul groused. "I'm just glad we aren't the ones paying for it."

I laughed. "Sour grapes, Paul! Listen, I have calls coming in by the dozens. I'll have to get back to you."

"Wait."

"I really have to—"

"Tell Craig Dinsmore we'll come up by ten thousand on the advance. That'll put him over the seven-figure mark, which I'm sure is what you're angling for. I'll also go from 8% to 10% on the paperback royalties. That's the best we can do, Mary Beth, and it's damned good."

Screw you, I thought. If you're willing to go another ten, another twenty won't hurt a bit.

"I'll pass the word along, Paul," I said lightly. "That's if I can rouse Craig. You know, he's working 'round the clock to finish his next book, and he's not always answering his phone."

"Then send a messenger, Mary Beth! This is my final offer, and I need to know by five p.m. my time. The offer's only good till then."

"I'll see what I can do, Paul. Ta."

I hung up softly and sat thinking. Five his time meant two here, and since it was nearly eleven now, that gave me only three hours. Damn! My stomach was churning, and I realized I'd bitten off a nail during the call. I'd have to phone Craig and ask him if he wanted me to hold Paul Whitmore's feet to the fire or accept what he said was his final offer. I personally didn't believe it was final. Still, I couldn't play fast and loose with Craig's income, now that the offer was over seven figures.

I called out to Nia on the intercom and asked her to find Craig for me as quickly as possible.

"I'm already on it," she said. "He still doesn't answer, and his machine's turned off. I'm trying all the bars around that area now."

"You think he's started drinking again?" I asked worriedly.

"Not necessarily. I just don't know where else to start. And you know how he likes to hang out in bars and talk."

Craig became a near-hermit last year when he began to attend AA meetings. Then, in the fall, he told me he wasn't going to the meetings anymore, that he felt that saying, "I am an alcoholic" only imprinted it on his mind—thus making it a fact that could never be erased, leaving no hope for a "cure."

"I'm going it alone now," he'd said. "I'm doing yoga, meditation, vitamins and herbs. My yoga teacher says that while I may have a problem with alcohol right now, it's not right to label myself an 'alcoholic' or anything else for life. That not doing so leaves the door wide open for releasing the problem. Or, as he calls it, the challenge."

That kind of approach made me a bit nervous. It was hanging out in bars and entertaining the other hangers-on with tales of past exploits and publishing success that had started Craig on that downward slide. All too often the talk becomes the highlight of the day, taking over an author's life and keeping him from applying his butt to a chair and his fingers to the keys.

Nia knocked softly and opened my door. "No luck with the bars. You want me to go look for him?"

Her hair was even more disheveled now, and I knew she'd been tugging at it while on the phone. There were shadows under her eyes, too, as if she hadn't slept well.

"No, I'll go," I said. "You've done enough today, fielding all those calls."

She came over and sat tiredly in one of the chairs across from me. "Here are the messages." She handed a monument-sized stack of them across the desk.

"There must be a hundred here," I said, groaning.

"Fifty or so, anyway."

"Anything time urgent?"

She shook her head. "Mostly the usual, authors calling to see if you got their manuscripts and if you've got them a deal yet. Editors returning your calls from yesterday. Most of the editors called early, while you were at the police station this morning. How did that go?"

I stared out the window, questions starting to whirl through my brain again. "I don't think I was much help. They wanted me to tell them anything I knew about the private lives of Tony and Arnold. I haven't known much about Arnold's life, though, since we were divorced ten years ago. I told them I never asked for alimony, so there wasn't much reason for us to stay in touch. We ran into each other now and then in restaurants, and once in a while he came by here to talk about that book I'd sold for him years ago. As for Tony..." I shrugged.

"How are you feeling about Tony?" she asked pointedly.

"Oh, I don't know. Confused, I suppose." I looked at her. "Did you ever hear any rumors about either of them being gay?"

"Gay!" she said, her eyes widening. "Never!"

I remembered that she didn't know about the Chinese dildo or the police suspicions about gay-bashing, thus her surprise at my question. The cops had asked me not to divulge any information at all about the crime scene. Detective Rucker, the scruffy one, had told me that they wanted to keep certain information out of the papers, the better to catch the killer.

Even so, I was tempted to tell Nia about it, as I knew how well she could keep a secret. It was only my word to the detective that held me back.

"Do you think they were gay?" Nia asked.

I shook my head. "Just wondering. Since they were together in Tony's apartment, you know? And other things."

"Other things like the fact that they were both basically unattainable?" she asked, raising a dark brow. "Mary Beth, we've talked about that. As long as I've known you, which is now about three and three quarter years, you've never even looked at men who were available. When you get interested in a man, they're always either married, engaged, or gay. It's that Conahan Wall. In this case, though, just because Tony and Arnold were both more or less unattainable, that doesn't mean they were gay."

"I know that," I said a bit snappily, then took my tone back with a smile. A long time ago, I'd had to admit that Nia was right about me and the kind of men I chose to go for. I've even thanked her for pointing it out—not that I've changed any just because I know about it.

"I wish you'd tell me what happened to you," she said. "What's that wall about, anyway?"

I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and took out my purse, then re-applied powder and lipstick. My hand shook from exhaustion and despite the expensive black suit and Gucci heels I looked like hell. But since I wasn't going anywhere except to Craig's motel—which he'd told me was a rundown hole-in-the wall—it didn't much matter.

"Let's talk another time," I said, closing my compact with a loud snap. "I just can't get into all of that now."

"It's not just 'now.' You never want to get into it."

I ignored that and stood. "You'll hold down the fort till you go home at three?"

"Of course. And I'll keep calling around for Craig, in case you don't find him. Will you be back in time to talk to Paul Whitmore, one way or the other?"

"I'll have my cell phone with me, and if I know anything by two, I'll call him from wherever I am."

"What if you don't find Craig, and Whitmore calls here? What do you want me to tell him?"

I thought a moment. "Tell him Craig flew to Maui yesterday to gather inspiration from his beach house there."

She grinned. "So he's supposed to be rich, confident, and simply unreachable."

I grinned back. "Tell Paul I've tried and tried, but according to his housekeeper, he's incommunicado."

I held out the packet of messages. "Anyone else in this stack...if they call again, tell them I'm sorry I missed their calls and I'll be in touch tomorrow."

"Right," Nia said, smiling. "And would ye be wantin' me to stand on me head as well?"

"Gee, a black woman from Dublin, with an Irish brogue," I said on my way out the door. "What a sight. Almost wipes away that scene at Tony's last night."

***

Traffic was heavy from Century City to El Segundo, which entailed going past LAX. I had time to think about Craig, Paul Whitmore, and what I was going to do to get Craig even more money—provided he wanted me to try.

Negotiating was a lesson I'd learned long ago, though more to survive in LA than anything. I'd worked for a television station at first, just on the writing staff, but hoping to be on camera eventually. I'd even gone out on breaking news stories to crime scenes, both as an observer and to show that I had initiative and wanted to learn. I did learn, and as a result I knew more now about the law and crime than most people who aren't actually in the field. In fact, when I decided to become a literary agent, it was largely because someone at work had shown me his book, a "true crime" novel, and asked me to read it, to see if I thought it was any good. Arnold and I had recently been divorced, and I had time on my hands, so I went for it.

The book was great, and after I'd fixed a few minor things for him, I encouraged him to send it to an agent. He asked me if I would act as his agent, and when I found out that all you really needed to represent a writer was a telephone and some letterhead, I went for it. I started making calls, telling editors I was "Mary Beth Conahan of the agency by the same name," and leaving my home phone and fax number. Within two months I'd sold the guy's book to a major publishing house, and negotiated a good solid contract for him, to boot.

I was twenty-two at the time, and it was the first I'd ever even thought of becoming an agent. I was also kind of dumb, and had no idea what it took to set up my own business. So I just stumbled into it, willy-nilly, and set my sails toward becoming Mary Beth Conahan, Literary Agent, for real. The first few years were more difficult than I'd ever imagined they would be, and I have to admit I drank too much at the end of the day. I even messed around with drugs a bit. But then something happened, and for the last seven years I've been clean of drugs and only drink wine now and then. I've also worked my ass off to succeed.

I'd started out with new, untried authors whose first books were exciting enough to interest publishers, but needed editing before they were decent enough to go out. I had edited their books free, feeling it was unethical to charge. Because of that, I had built a loyal clientele over the past ten years, and at the age of thirty-three I now have a stable of wonderful authors. I flew to New York and Europe at regular intervals, dined with editors, schmoozed with them at all the important cocktail parties, and gained their loyalty, too, by not sending them books I knew to be unacceptable—not even to please an anxious-to-get-going author.

One exception to that was Tony Price. I knew his first book, which was dark and made a case for the death penalty, would be highly controversial at a time when a sizable portion of the population was marching against the death penalty. I'd pushed it out there, though, and after nine publishers had turned it down, one accepted it—and the rest is history. Since then, his work had grown increasingly lighter, which made it easier to sell, though it always did have an edge, a bite to it.

I know that in my thoughts I'd been hard on Tony this morning, but I think that's only a wall I'd put up at the sight of him, dead, so that I wouldn't be too gob-smacked by it. The good side of Tony Price was that he was intelligent, funny, supportive...about some things, anyway, like my work...and I loved hanging out with him. We had more fun together than I've ever had with anyone I've ever known.

The downside was that I kept wanting to jump his bones, and I could just see how that would turn out—with him pushing me away and assuming that "just friends" attitude that I never could seem to break through. So I'd never even dared to try.

Good thing, I supposed, now that it seems he was gay. Over the years of working in Hollywood, I'd adopted some pretty good radar for detecting whether a man was either married or gay. With Tony, however, I had to admit that I never suspected. If anything, I thought he was probably just non-sexual and put all his energies into his books.

It would have been so much easier if I'd just known, upfront. But like Rock Hudson, he looked, sounded, walked and behaved in all ways like the typical macho man. The first man, I do believe, to ever fool me that way.

The traffic finally moved and I came to Imperial Avenue, turning right and looking for the Lazy Sands Motel that Craig had told me about. He'd said it was one of the few still there from fifty years ago, and except for a rat, which he'd made into a companion, and the fact that it was filthy when he first moved into it a year ago, he liked his little hideout. He said it helped him to stay focused. And sober. In the early mornings, before most people were up and there was little traffic along Imperial and Vista Del Mar, he would run down to the beach and do his yoga there.

He'd made it sound like an adventure, and it didn't seem too bad a deal, I thought. Until I saw the Lazy Sands. It was several blocks up from the beach, and on a lot that looked like a junkyard. Rusted-out, abandoned cars were everywhere, and there was even a junkyard dog—a mix that looked like part Lab and part wolf. I parked as close to the lobby as I could get, but Wolf still managed to get between me and the door, his fangs bared and a warning growl deep in his throat.

I use the word "lobby" loosely, because the windows were covered in graffiti and dirt that looked as if it hadn't been washed off since the seventies. The room had the shape of a lobby, and the usual kind of entrance to one, but I couldn’t even see through those windows enough to tell if there was anyone in there.

I don't have a dog, but I love watching shows about them. So I smiled at Wolf and spoke in a high, soft voice, just like Uncle Mattie, the dog-trainer to the stars, said to do on PBS.

"Good boy, good boy!" I said, cautiously, moving a foot forward. But Wolf came toward me and bared his fangs as if he really meant business this time.

It was then, fortunately, that the lobby door opened. An old man with a gray stubble stood there, looking at me. "Tinkerbell!" he cried.

"Uh, no...it's not Tinkerbell," I said, bemused. "Just me. Mary Beth Conahan."

"Damn you, Tinkerbell!" he yelled. "Get away from the lady!"

Wolf—or Tinkerbell, as I now realized—backed off. She didn't go far, though, standing her ground about ten feet away. I calculated whether I'd be able to make a run for the inside before she could reach me.

"Don't worry, she's harmless," the old man said. "She just likes to let people know she's on the job. As long as you don't look her in the eye, she won't hurt you. If you look her in the eye she'll see it as a challenge."

"And then?"

"Well, then, God knows what she'll do," he said, shaking his head. "She's not mine, she's just been here forever. Some bum left her behind one day."

I carefully kept my gaze on the old man. "I'm looking for a friend," I said. "Craig Dinsmore. Can you tell me what room he's in?"

"You mean that writer fella? Crazy as a loon, he is. In there all hours of the day and night, typing away. Have to charge him extra for lights if he stays here much longer." He peered at me. "You say he's a friend of yours?"

"Yes. I'm just checking up, making sure he's all right."

The old man didn't look impressed.

"He asked me to," I added.

"Well...it's no skin off my back. Paid his room through the next week, after all. Number twenty-six."

"Thanks," I said. "Can I get there without Tinkerbell here biting my leg off?"

"Like I said...." The old man replied with a shrug.

"Yeah. Don't look her in the eye."

Relieved to get back in my car, I drove to Craig's room, parking in the space in front of it. Stepping out, I looked for Tinkerbell but didn't see her anywhere. As I stepped out of the car, though, I heard a growl. Startled, I looked around and saw that he was right behind my car, and had probably followed me from the office.

With more fear than I wanted to admit, I looked away and crossed over to Craig's room. I love dogs in general, but I don't like being around big dogs who take eye-to-eye contact as a challenge to ravage my neck.

I knocked several times on the green, peeling door of number twenty-six, and when Craig didn't answer I went to the window. It had six square-foot panes, and one of them was broken. It had been covered from inside with a see-through plastic wrap, something I hadn't noticed when I'd parked.

I wondered if the place had a repairman, then realized that repairs were probably done by the old man. He'd looked besieged by arthritis and possibly osteoporosis, as his back was badly stooped. Add to that the dirty lobby windows, and I doubted that he kept up with anything here. He probably got free rent for acting as "manager" for a slum landlord who never came around and didn't care. That would leave the tenants to make their own repairs. A sort of DIY motel.

Craig no longer owned a car, so the fact that his old BMW wasn't here didn't tell me anything. I finally decided that he must run to the beach in the afternoons as well as the mornings, since he wasn't hunkered down at his computer—as he'd sworn he was doing twenty-four-seven.

Unless he's hitting the bars again.

I took out my cell phone and called Nia. "He's not here," I said. "Have you had any luck?"

"No, I'm sorry. I gave his description to the bartenders at all the bars around there, from Playa del Rey to El Segundo, then to Manhattan Beach and LAX. Even the bars that are probably too expensive for his budget. No one's seen him for days."

"Does that mean he has been in some of those bars recently?" I asked.

"Two of them," Nia said. "I wondered if he'd been drinking, and I asked if they'd had any trouble with him. Both bartenders said that the times they'd seen him he was drinking only coffee. They said he drank a lot of that. Also—you'll like hearing this—he always had paper and pencil with him, and spent a lot of time there writing. That's when he wasn't talking to customers or the bartender about writing, of course. He did a lot of that too."

I relaxed a bit. "I'll go down to the beach and look for him," I said. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was 1:15. Less than an hour left now to present him with Paul Whitmore's "final" offer.

"Tell you what, Nia. How about if you call Whitmore right now and tell him the story about Maui. It'll sound better if we get back to him before his so-called deadline, and that could give me more leeway. I'm willing to bet that if he thinks Craig is in a beach house in Hawaii, pounding away at his computer, he'll give me more time."

"He does seem to want Craig real bad. Funny, don't you think?"

"Funny how?"

"Well, word gets around real fast in the writing community, especially here in LA, and especially if it's news about a writer going downhill. Wouldn't you think Whitmore and Bronson & Bronson Publishing would have heard about it by now?"

"As a matter of fact, I have thought of that," I said, "which is why I've been doing damage control with Whitmore. But he really likes this book of Craig's, and he doesn't seem too concerned about a long-term contract. Which, in itself, makes me wonder. The book I sent him doesn't, in my opinion, call for that kind of money or commitment. It's almost as if something's going on that I don't know anything about."

"You know," Nia said, "I've been thinking the same thing. Craig's always been a good writer, but this mafia book isn't anything new, is it? Just the same old, same old?"

"I found it gripping when I read it," I said. "But I'll admit to being a bit stunned that Whitmore's offered six figures for it, let alone seven. Listen, I've got to run. So call Whitmore and tell him the Maui story, but tread easy...oh, hell, you know what to do. You've got great diplomatic bones."

"Thanks," Nia said, chuckling. "Are you still going down to the beach, then?"

"Yes. I'll let you know how it goes with Craig."

I closed my cell phone and looked back at number twenty-six one more time. It was then I thought I saw a flicker of movement at the curtain inside Craig's window.

I was tired and hot and responded accordingly. That bastard! Was he just not answering the door? How does he expect me to help him, for God's sake?

Then, calming down, I realized that Craig couldn't know I had good news for him about LOST LEGACY. He'd probably spotted me out here and thought I'd come to nag him about the three-thousand-dollar advance I'd loaned him against his next potential check from Bronson & Bronson.

Or, he was just being typically hermit-like. Some writers develop agoraphobia while writing a book and never even go out to the store for food. They'd starve, rather than leave the house and the book for even a moment. Many never answer their telephones or collect their mail for weeks, unless they think a check will be in the box.

Craig Dinsmore hadn't been like that in recent months, however. He was more the kind who needed to gab about his work, and as Nia had confirmed, he'd been out this week to the bars, doing just that. So if he was inside now, writing, and just didn't want to answer the door, I should feel relieved. That meant he was already working on a book to follow LOST LEGACY, and if that were the case, his money troubles were over. And so, thankfully, were mine.

Still, where writers are concerned, I'd learned never to take anything for granted. No deal is a deal until it's signed.

I went back up onto the rickety little porch and banged on the window. "Craig, I know you're in there! Open up! I've had a new offer from Whitmore, and it's big. We need to talk!"

I listened intently and heard a sound like a bump inside.

"Craig, this is your life we're talking about!"

I shook the door handle, hoping it might be unlocked. It wasn't.

Resolutely, I trudged back to the lobby and pretended that Tinkerbell wasn't even there, poised on her haunches to spring. The inside of the lobby was dusty and smelled of mold, making me sneeze.

"I need the key to number twenty-six," I said, dabbing at my nose with a Kleenex. "My friend isn't answering, and I'm afraid he's had another heart attack."

"He's got a bad heart?" the old man said nervously.

"Yes," I lied. "And if he dies here, the cops will be milling about forever. They'll want to go through your room, too—your office, your books, everything."

I had guessed right that this would not be a good thing. The old man's toughened hand quickly scrabbled along a board with hooks and came up with a key that had a "26" on it.

Back at Craig's room, I slid the key into the lock and pushed in fast, before he could know what I was doing and push me right back out.

"Listen, Craig! I've been negotiating my ass off to get you a good deal—"

I stopped in my tracks. He wasn't here. There was only the one room, with a door to what must be a bathroom in back. Was he in the bathroom, then?

I walked closer to the door and called out, "Craig? It's Mary Beth. Are you in there?"

No answer.

Then who had moved that curtain? Was it just the wind, coming through that plastic-covered window?

But there hadn't been any wind that I had noticed. Not enough to have caused even a ripple.

On a round table in front of the window was a laptop computer that looked fairly new. I wondered if Craig had bought it with money from the sale of his car. To the left were several used foam cups with dregs that must have been coffee, as well as the last crumbs of some sort of pastry. There was also an inexpensive, drugstore-variety answering machine that held nineteen unanswered calls, according to the blinking green light. Sheets of manuscript were neatly piled up to the right of the computer. An El Segundo library card was propped up against a lamp, and on the floor around the table were odd crumpled sheets that Craig had obviously tossed away as not right.

So he had been working. That was good. I started to turn back to the front door, but couldn't resist a peek, first, at the finished sheets of manuscript. They were upside down, so I turned the entire stack over and saw the title: Under Covers.

Odd. Did he mean Undercover? A spy novel? That didn't sound like Craig. He was more into investigative non-fiction like Lost Legacy, where real-life mafia slugs were found under up-turned rocks.

A look at the next few pages revealed that the title was a play on words, and the book seemed to be a fictional account of the Hollywood scene "between the sheets." He'd written accounts of wild exploits of high-level directors with young female stars, sexual harassment, and the fact that actors were still forced to cover up their homosexuality to make them more of a heartthrob to female viewers. Names of stars, though, had been changed to protect the non-innocent.

I'd had no idea Craig was writing a book like this, and I couldn't see Paul Whitmore paying the same thing for this book as he was offering for Lost Legacy. While the mafia don story had been told before, Craig had added a psychological edge to it that was probably what had made Whitmore take notice. This book, though it seemed well-written, was as stale as yesterday's news. The casting couch angle had been done before, over and over. In fact, some of it seemed familiar, as if I'd read it somewhere before.

What the hell was going on?

I'd taken a speed-reading course years before, so it didn't take me long to read the first few chapters. Confused and concerned, though, I stopped reading at page thirty-four. Setting the page down, I did something I'd never have done before. Pushing the "on" button on Craig's computer, I sat on his chair and tried to bring up the Under Covers document. I was pretty good with computers, but there was just one problem with this one—there were no documents on the hard drive. None at all. No letters, no memos, no books. If anything had ever been on the hard drive, it had obviously been wiped clean. Puzzled, I opened the CD-Rom drive and the floppy disk drive, but both were empty.

Before I had time to think it through, I heard a slight noise that seemed to be coming from behind the motel. A thud? Someone hitting the wall back there? Images of OJ and Kato Kaelin came to mind—someone running into an air conditioner with blood on his hands.

Then I realized the sound must have come from the bathroom. Without thinking, I strode over there and threw the bathroom door open, determined to confront Craig about why he hadn't been answering his calls, and why the hell he was hiding from me. It was his own fault, I thought, if I caught him on the john.

But Craig wasn't hiding at all. He was right there on the floor, blood all around his head and slowly seeping along his body to his shoes.

In shock, I could barely think or move. I looked at the window, which was open. Cheap plastic curtains in a gaudy flower pattern were blowing in a light salty breeze that came off the ocean from this side of the motel. There were marks on the sill that seemed to be blood, marks that might have come from a killer, possibly, escaping that way.

I knelt down beside Craig, feeling for a pulse. I couldn't find one anywhere. I touched his cheek. Still warm. He hadn't been dead long.

Stroking his forehead, I couldn't hold back tears. The poor guy never got to get out of the hole he'd dug himself into. And we were so close to getting what he wanted.

Then, as if in a nightmare, I saw that the blood had originated at a large gash on Craig's forehead, and that lying by his side was a bloody Chinese dildo—made of ivory, and intricately carved to please, I supposed, in all the right places. It looked very much like the one in Tony's apartment the night before.

I knelt there for a long moment, so staggered I wasn't able to stand. I guess I noticed the draft, finally, that slammed the front door shut. Grasping the bathroom sink I pulled myself up slowly and realized there was blood on my skirt and my knees.

I was still standing over Craig's body, blood all over me, when the police banged on the front door and piled in. "Don't move!" they ordered, guns pointed directly at me.

I didn't even breathe.