Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016

The Pact by Margaret Maron

This year’s winner of both EQMM’s Readers Award and the Agatha Award for best novel, Margaret Maron can also count among her many literary honors the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master and Edgar Allan Poe awards. Writers’ organizations such as the MWA, and fan conventions such as that described in this story, are deeply entwined with EQMM’s history. The inspiration for some of the characters in this story came from real EQMM contributors.

“We first met at a Bouchercon over thirty years ago,” said the white-haired woman, who sipped a tall gin and tonic even though it was barely noon. She wore white slacks and a loose, peasant-style top with colorful hand-embroidered flowers on the sleeves and yoke. It looked expensive and almost disguised the extra thirty or forty pounds she was carrying. Around her neck was a lanyard with her nametag. Morna Brown, a name Lieutenant Steinbock remembered seeing among the pile of books on his wife’s nightstand.

He added it to the list he had begun and said, “What’s a Bouchercon?”

“It’s an annual conference begun by mystery fans to honor Anthony Boucher, a well-respected author, editor, and reviewer of mysteries,” said the other white-haired woman who sat facing him on the couch. Her nametag read Suzu Dunsel. From San Francisco. “Much bigger than this one, which is always held here in Maryland.”

Nibbling an olive from her martini, she explained, “Bouchercon moves around from city to city and that year it was in Philadelphia. We were all under contract to Ashton House back then, a major publisher that’s since folded, and Ashton’s publicist had arranged a dinner party for all their authors who were in Philly that weekend. There were ten or twelve of us, but the others were older and more established.”

“Or they were hardboiled men,” said Morna Brown in her soft Southern drawl. “We were part of the new wave of women mystery writers. I write what’s called Southern cozy and Suzu writes suspense with a female detective.”

Lieutenant Steinbock dutifully added the terms beside their names, then looked up from his notepad. “We being?”

“Morna and me, plus Nanette Parker, Dodie Cantrell, and of course poor Avis,” said Ms. Dunsel, as he added the names to the list he was compiling.

“Dodie Cantrell?” His eyes widened appreciatively at the name of a writer whose books used to appear regularly on the bestseller lists. “The one who wrote Death of an English Spinster? She’s my wife’s favorite author.”

“Be sure and tell her that if you interview her,” Ms. Brown said in her magnolia-flavored accent. “Her sales have been slipping lately.”

“Not as bad as Avis’s,” murmured Suzu Dunsel. She paused and looked at her friend in sudden consternation. “You don’t suppose that’s really why?”

“Why what?” asked Lieutenant Steinbock.

“Why Avis was murdered. And why someone tried to kill Dodie?”

“What?”

“We were having drinks in the lobby bar last night and the lead pipe fell off the railing over there.” Diamonds flashed from the rings on Morna Brown’s pudgy fingers as she gestured to the railing in question.

The hotel where Avis Arthur had been strangled in Room 706 sometime during the night featured a large central atrium that reached up fifteen stories to a clear glass ceiling. The rooms opened onto encircling balconies so that guests could step out of their rooms and look down into the lobby to the open bar and reception desks. The space that Lieutenant Steinbock had co-opted for interrogating witnesses was separated from the rooms here on the second floor by a low wall that was now barred with folding screens and a uniformed officer. A broad staircase led up from the lobby and the area overlooked the bar. Ferns and potted palms lined the waist-high railings on that side.

“Lead pipe?” asked Steinbock.

“The hotel gets into the spirit of the conference with its decorations,” she said. “They hung all the weapons from Clue on the railing there. Didn’t you notice?”

Steinbock walked across to the greenery, pushed aside a palm, and leaned over. Wired to the railing, directly above the lounge chairs in the bar below, was an assortment of oversized items: a tall plastic candlestick, a heavy lug wrench, a length of thick rope fashioned into a noose, large foam-board cutouts of a dagger and a revolver, and, yes, a three-foot-long section of pipe — replicas of all the weapons from Clue, just as he remembered from long-ago board games at his grandparents’ summer cottage.

And now that he was looking, he realized that the barmaid was dressed as a decidedly sexy Miss Scarlet. The reception desk was manned by Professor Plum, Mr. Green, and Miss White, while Colonel Mustard sat at the concierge desk. And come to think of it, hadn’t the manager who cleared this space for his use been wearing a teal-blue suit?

Of course.

Miss Peacock.

Miss Peacock was the one who called them shortly before ten. Avis Arthur was scheduled to moderate a panel of her four friends at nine and when she did not answer repeated calls to either her cell phone or her room, Morna Brown had convinced the maid on that hall to open her door. Ms. Arthur lay crumpled on the floor, strangled to death with the pink chiffon scarf she’d worn to dinner the night before. She had apparently died sometime between ten last night and two this morning.

There was no keeping the death quiet, even though Miss Peacock had sent the maid home with orders not to discuss what she’d seen. Today was the final day of this mystery conference and word had spread rapidly through the hotel, leaving Avis Arthur fans stunned. “But I brought eighteen of her books with me to get her to sign them,” wailed one, while tempers were running high in the book room because the dealers had immediately jacked up prices on all their autographed Avis Arthur novels, even the remaindered ones that she’d signed last year.

Organizers were scrambling to pay tribute to Ms. Arthur at the awards banquet that evening. Her Triple Threat series featured French-born triplets — a brother and two identical sisters — who ran a small-town catering service in upstate New York and solved murders that seemed to pop up in every job. Her increasingly slender plots had been padded out with elaborate dessert recipes, and tonight’s awards banquet would now feature her famous chocolate mousse buried under crème fraîche and drizzled with warm caramel sauce.

Seven members of the Triple Threat Fan Club had drawn up a grid and were busily collecting alibis from every attendee who had ever made a condescending remark about mixing murder with recipes. Their president tearfully promised Lieutenant Steinbock that they would share anything they learned. As some four hundred people from nine different states had signed up for this conference, Lieutenant Steinbock doubted they would come up with any solid leads. He just hoped that he and his team could do better before the conference ended and everyone scattered.

The steel pipe that dangled eight feet above one of the lounge chairs in the bar below was probably not lead, thought Steinbock as he hefted it, but it was certainly heavy enough to do grievous bodily harm had it fallen directly on someone.

“As it was,” said Morna Brown, “Dodie got a big lump when it bounced off the back of her chair and hit her on the head.”

The lobby and bar had been buzzing with the conference attendees, but a hush fell over the crowd when the two authors joined Steinbock amid the greenery at the railing above them.

“We thought it was an accident,” said Suzu Dunsel, parting the fronds of an overgrown fern. “The wire that was holding that pipe in place was just looped around the outside and the pipe slipped out of the loop. When they put it back, they ran the wire through the pipe.”

“We joked that Avis or Nanette had decided it was time to activate the pact, since they hadn’t come down to the bar yet,” said Morna.

“Pact?” asked Steinbock, as they stepped away from the railing and the conferencegoers below resumed their speculations.

“We were young and green and thought we were immortal,” said Dunsel, who appeared to be in her early seventies. Her straight white hair was sleekly styled and her jaw line was firm. She wore jeans, a homespun linen shirt, and sandals. Unlike Morna Brown, whose pudgy fingers flashed with diamonds, Suzu Dunsel had been a California hippie in her youth and, except for a hammered-silver toe ring, she was ringless. “As time went on, though, we noticed how some of the writers we admired were starting to lose it.”

“They stayed too long at the ball,” Morna Brown said bluntly. “Instead of retiring from the limelight, they kept on writing and their last books were so weak that they tarnished their earlier ones.”

“So the five of us made a pact to protect each other’s reputation,” said Suzu. “We promised that if that started happening, one of us would go and kill the one who was losing it.”

“It was a joke,” said Morna.

“Avis was losing it, though,” Suzu said. “Her last book was pretty awful. Half of it was nothing but recipes. Don’t look at me like that, Morna. You thought so too.”

Morna gave a reluctant nod. “Way too much foreshadowing and plot holes you could drive a Mack truck through.”

“So you think one of you four killed her?” asked Steinbock.

“No, of course not,” said Morna. “We’ve joked about it for years, in interviews and on panels, so our fans know about our pact.”

“And some of them really are fans,” said Suzu.

“Meaning?” said Steinbock.

“Fanatical,” she replied with a weary shake of her head. “They start thinking our characters are real and that they have a vested interest in whether or not we treat them well in our books. I killed off a major character two books back and I’m still getting hate mail from some of my fans.”

“I killed a cat in my last book,” said Morna, “and one of my readers threatened to come poison my dog.”

“Are they at this conference?” Steinbock asked.

Both women shrugged. “Who knows? They never sign their names.”

They started to turn from the railing when Morna Brown glanced toward the glass elevator that was descending to the lobby. “There’s Nanette and Dodie now!”

She waved to them and Steinbock saw a slender auburn-haired woman gesture in their direction to a shorter woman whose own once-red hair was now a rusty white.

Steinbock sent one of his team to escort them up to the open landing, which he was using for preliminary questioning. It took the officer several minutes because the two women were immediately besieged by fans holding out books to be signed. Eventually they disentangled themselves and started up the wide stairs. A portly man clutched an anthology of short stories and protested when the uniformed patrolman at the foot of the steps refused to let him pass.

With a swirl of colorful silk scarves, the shorter woman turned and in a clipped British accent said, “Do catch me later, ducks. We’re signing up here at two.”

“At three,” said the attractive auburn-haired writer with a roll of her eyes at Morna and Suzu. “And they’ve changed the place too, Dodie. Signings are in the green room now.”

“Where’s that?” the writer of British cozies asked, bewilderment in her face.

“Never mind, Dodie,” Morna Brown said. “We’ll show you.”

Steinbock was to learn that Dodie Cantrell was considered geographically challenged and couldn’t be trusted with directions or maps. Nor street numbers and addresses either, for that matter. In the early years before GPS and before publishers sent midlist female writers on publicity tours, the five of them had pooled their resources to hit all the bookstores in the Carolinas. Nanette Parker was driving, with Dodie beside her to read the map. They were almost to the Virginia border before the others in the car quit chattering and realized that Dodie had confused Wilmington, North Carolina with Wilmington, Delaware. After that, she was relegated to the backseat and never allowed to navigate again.

“Poor Avis,” she said, and tears glistened in her hazel eyes as Lieutenant Steinbock introduced himself. “I can’t believe she’s gone. Murdered! You must discover who did this horrid thing.”

Suzu Dunsel took her hand and led her to a chair. “How’s your head?”

“I still have the most dreadful lump,” Dodie Cantrell said, touching the back of her head. “But your aspirin helped a lot. Let me sleep.”

“Aspirin?” Suzu gave her a puzzled look. “I didn’t give you aspirin.”

“That was Morna, honey,” said Nanette. “We called her from the bar, remember?”

“Of course, of course,” Dodie said with an impatient wave of her hand. She straightened one of her silk scarves and smoothed it over her thin chest. “That bump must have addled my wits.”

“But then you never came,” said Morna.

“Please don’t say you waited up for me,” Dodie said, contrition on her face. “Nanette thought that you were already in bed and I remembered that little tin of aspirin Suzu gave me when we were in Madison, so I took two and went right to bed myself. I’m so dreadfully sorry.”

“Actually, I fell asleep watching the news,” Morna confessed. “One martini too many.”

As one, the four crime writers turned to Lieutenant Steinbock and pelted him with questions.

“Was the door unlocked?”

“Were there any clues?”

“Did Avis know her killer?”

“Was the killer right-handed?”

“Huh?” said Steinbock.

“The scarf around her neck,” Nanette said with exaggerated patience, as if explaining to a two-year-old. “The tension on the scarf would tell you which hand was dominant. Everyone knows that.”

“Unless the killer deliberately pulled with his left hand to throw the police off,” Morna said, trying to come to Steinbock’s aid.

“True,” Nanette conceded. “But if it was done in the heat of the moment—”

“If it was the heat of the moment,” objected Suzu, “surely the killer would just have grabbed up something heavy and smashed her over the head.”

“Grabbed up what?” asked Dodie. “What’s in a modern hotel room that can be used for a cosh these days? No thick glass ashtrays, no heavy telephones, no table lamps.”

“Ice bucket?” suggested Morna.

“On the bathroom counter,” Nanette reminded her with Midwestern logic. Steinbock was to learn that the hero of her series was a sexy cowboy who valued intellect over instinct. “She was killed in the bedroom.”

“A bottle of beer from the mini bar?”

“Ladies, please!” said Lieutenant Steinbock. “This isn’t a game of Clue. When did you four last see Ms. Arthur?”

Morna looked at her friends. “We had drinks in the bar after dinner, but Avis had a deadline looming, so she went back to her room to work. Around nine, wasn’t it?”

The others nodded.

“The bar closes at ten-thirty and that’s when I went up.”

“Really dumb for the bar to close that early,” Suzu Dunsel said, voicing what was clearly an old complaint. “Writers drink and we tip well too. They should stay open at least till midnight or—” She heard Steinbock’s weary sigh. “But I digress. Morna left at ten-thirty, Dodie wanted something for that bump on the back of her head so Nanette called Morna about ten forty-five. Right?”

Dodie nodded and Nanette said, “Right.” She brushed back a strand of russet hair. No gray hair for her. “Morna said she had some aspirin, so Dodie left then, but Suzu and I nursed our drinks and talked with some fans from the Midwest for a while.”

“Their names?” Steinbock asked, pen poised over his notepad.

“Oh, gosh, I don’t know. We meet so many people. There was a Mary. I do remember that.”

“And a man named Bob Witchger,” said Suzu. “I remember him because he’s from Wisconsin and always comes to my book signings out there.” She looked at Nanette. “And that woman on crutches with a broken leg. Wasn’t her name Elizabeth?”

Nanette shrugged. “Without my glasses, I’m too nearsighted to read a nametag unless it’s right in my face.”

“Lieutenant?”

They turned to see two plainclothes detectives herding three middle-aged women from New Jersey into the interrogation area from the second-floor hallway.

“We caught these three breaking into the murder room.”

“We weren’t breaking into it!” protested a sweet-faced woman in a flowing caftan. Her name tag IDed her as Dina Willner. “We stayed in Room 706 last year and we forgot that we’re two doors away from that this year.”

Steinbock raised a sceptical eyebrow. “All three of you forgot?”

“Her key card unlocked the door,” said one of the detectives.

“Does it unlock her own door?” asked Steinbock.

“We didn’t check,” the officer admitted and turned to go try it, but Ms. Willner turned bright red and Steinbock stopped him.

“You kept your keycard from last year?” he asked the embarrassed woman.

She nodded, shamefaced, and her two friends edged back a little.

“They don’t always change the code,” said Ms. Willner, “and it’s fun to check and see. This is only the second time an old card has worked. We would never go in and take anything, but we’re going to enter a short-story contest this fall and we thought this would make a good hook. It was research. Honest.”

“How long have you been coming to this convention?” asked Steinbock.

“Nine years.”

He held out his hand. “Give me the rest of the cards.”

The woman started to bluster, then opened her purse and handed him several plastic key cards, each with a room number written on the back in permanent ink. “Number 710 is our room.”

“Where were you between eleven and three last night?” he asked sternly.

“In our room. Asleep. We had to be up early for the Sisters in Crime breakfast at seven-thirty.”

The other two vigorously agreed and one of them said, “Are you finished with us? We want to go catch Parnell Hall’s humor panel.”

Steinbock nodded and handed back the keycard to 710. “But leave your contact information with this officer.”

As they started to go, Dina Willner paused. “You probably want to know if Avis Arthur had any enemies here.”

Steinbock frowned. “You know of an enemy?”

“Dexter Bumgartner,” said Ms. Willner. “He used to be a huge fan of her books. Last year, he was high bidder at the charity auction for a cameo in her new book.”

“Cameo?”

“Some writers let charities auction off the opportunity to be a character in their books. Dexter Bumgartner was so taken with Avis’s books and with Avis herself that he was almost like a stalker. He’d come over to her at the bar or hang around her signing table and try to monopolize her attention. She was so appalled when he bid twenty-three hundred dollars to be in her new book that instead of making him an innocuous secondary character, she made him a flasher with halitosis. He’s furious. Threatening to sue her. Telling everybody not to buy her book.”

As the three roommates headed off to their panel, Morna Brown said, “It was mean of Avis, but she could be pretty vindictive when someone rubbed her the wrong way and that Bumgartner man really was a big nuisance. He can’t sue, though. Anyone who wins that sort of bid has to sign a release or we’d never donate a cameo.”

With that, they left to sit on panels, sign books, or meet with their editors or agents.

By the time the awards banquet drew to a close that evening, Lieutenant Steinbock despaired of ever finding Avis Arthur’s killer. Her fan club had come up empty, no one on that seventh-floor hall had seen anything suspicious last night, and Dexter Bumgartner had a solid alibi — poker until midnight with two noir writers, two literary agents, and one of the local organizers, who had given him a lift to his brother’s home in Bethesda where he had spent the night.

Steinbock didn’t have much hope for forensics or DNA evidence. If the killer was one of those longtime friends, the ones who had made that frivolous pact so many years ago, there would be no unimpeachable proof. They had been in and out of each other’s rooms all weekend, so stray hairs or clear fingerprints or lipstick-stained wineglasses would mean nothing.

The conference would end at noon tomorrow. People would head to the airport or train station or retrieve their cars from the hotel’s garage and scatter to the four winds.

Avis’s friends gathered in Room 607 shortly after the bar closed. At the banquet, they had managed to give such heartfelt tributes to their murdered colleague that more than one fan wept openly to think there would be no more Triple Threat novels. Never again would her sleuthing triplets solve murders while exchanging witty ripostes as light and airy as a basket of buttery croissants.

For over thirty years, the five friends had kicked back in one of their rooms, away from their fans, to hold a postmortem of the current conference, to share industry gossip, to compete over which of them had received the most outrageous plot suggestions over the last few days or signed the most books. This year, the remaining four were in Morna’s room to raise a glass to Avis.

An ice bucket with champagne sat on the coffee table alongside a plate of crackers and cheese and two of the six major awards given out that night.

Suzu had won for best novel of the year and Nanette had won best short story. It was a bittersweet evening. All were nearing the end of their careers, and who knew how many more times they would meet at these conferences? Morna and Nanette both had high blood pressure, while Dodie and Suzu had their own private health issues that they didn’t talk about. Nevertheless, there was laughter as they remembered the early years of traveling together on a shoestring, of epic battles with bitchy editors and chauvinistic male reviewers. There were tears as they recalled how Avis had organized a week-long retreat to Hawaii when one of them lost a husband to cancer and another a son to war in Afghanistan the same month.

But there was no denying that Avis had possessed a dark side too. She had an inflated ego, did not take criticism lightly, and could be insanely jealous of any success the others enjoyed.

“She would have been livid that you two won tonight,” said Dodie, settling the beaded fringes of her evening gown. “She was short-listed in both categories too, wasn’t she?”

“I’ll be honest,” said Suzu. “I won’t miss her mangled French or the way those damn triplets always said Quel dommage! every time they stumbled over a body.”

Morna topped off their champagne glasses. “Or how she thought her books were so much more literary than ours.”

“Or the way she found fault with every restaurant we ever ate in,” murmured Nanette. She cut a small wedge of Brie and leaned back into the couch cushions. “So! Which one of us killed her?”

Dodie looked shocked, but Morna was amused. She took another sip of champagne and drawled, “Preemptory defense, Nan?”

Nanette tucked a strand of russet hair behind one ear and smiled. “You know my methods, Watson. They do say that offense is the best defense.”

“I suppose any of us could have,” Suzu said slowly. “Although if it were me, I’d have done it years ago. The first time she claimed that I had leaked one of her catering plots to that other cozy writer — what was her name? The one that won an Agatha with a similar plot. You remember. She wrote two books set in a pastry shop, won the Agatha, and then got dropped by her publisher.”

“Don’t look at me, ducks,” said Dodie. “I can barely remember my own name, never mind someone from twenty years ago.”

There was a sudden awkward pause.

Dodie held out her glass for more champagne. The beaded fringes of her sleeve rustled softly in the dead silence. “Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed.”

“Oh, Dodie,” Nanette said helplessly.

Because, of course, they had noticed.

“Luck of the draw,” Dodie said. “And I’ve had six years longer than my mum, so no tears.”

Morna leaned over to hug her and the others gave her gentle pats. “How can you be so brave?”

“What’s my choice, ducks? It’s been bloody wonderful, though. I shall miss knowing you.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Well, no, I guess I won’t. According to my doctor, I probably shan’t remember any of you in another year or two. I’m starting to fade in and out and he doesn’t think I should try to fly by myself anymore.”

She downed the last of her champagne. “Do stop looking so glum. I don’t want it to end like this. This isn’t a wake.”

“Actually it is,” said Morna. “For Avis. Remember?”

She lifted the champagne bottle from the ice bucket and saw that it was almost empty. “I say we order another bottle,” she said and called room service.

“Put it on my tab,” said Dodie. “Room... Room... Oh, bollocks! What’s my room number?” She reached for her evening bag and pulled out a small notepad she had begun using to augment her failing memory.

“Never mind,” said Suzu. “Put it on mine, Morna. Room 312. And an order of French fries too.”

“In honor of the triplets?” said Dodie. “Quel dommage!”

They laughed and the evening turned normal again as they waited for room service.

“One thing,” said Morna in her soft Southern accent. “You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to, Dodie, but do you remember why you killed Avis?”

Dodie’s hazel eyes widened. “Me?”

“Nanette said you were coming up to my room for aspirin, but you never got here, did you?”

“I told you. I remembered I had some in my toiletries bag.”

“No, honey.” Morna’s voice was sad. “You mixed up the room numbers, didn’t you? This is Room 607, Avis was in 706.”

The others held their breath, remembering all the many times Dodie had transposed telephone numbers, addresses, and yes, room numbers too.

She started to deny it, then gave a what-the-hell shrug of her shoulders.

“Avis opened the door and she was thoroughly ticked that I had interrupted her train of thought just when she was writing the denouement.” Dodie was a good mimic and they could almost hear Avis’s exaggerated pronunciation of the term. “When I asked where you were, she realized that I’d muddled the room numbers and she said it was no wonder I couldn’t keep my plots straight. I should have left right then, but I was suddenly completely fed up with her endlessly superior airs. I said that she was the one who couldn’t tell the difference between foreshadowing and fair play and that she’d stolen her last plot from Agatha Christie and was stupid enough to think no one would notice. She slapped me, and it made my head hurt so bad that when she turned her back on me, I simply grabbed both ends of her scarf and pulled. And then I just kept pulling and pulling until—”

There was a knock at the door and Suzu jumped up to open it. The waiter entered with a bottle of champagne, a fresh bucket of ice, and a covered plate, which he set on the coffee table, then departed with the empty bottle and melted ice.

As the door closed behind him, Dodie looked at her old friends fearfully. “Must you tell that nice Lieutenant Steinbock? I so hate the thought of spending my last good days in jail.”

“He won’t hear it from me,” said Morna.

“Me either,” said Suzu as she untwisted the wire around the champagne cork. “Not now, anyhow.”

Nanette lifted the cover from the plate and the aroma of hot and crispy French fries filled the room. “Maybe next year,” she said. “Agreed?”

“Agreed,” said Suzu and Morna.

“Now then!” Nanette said briskly. “Who wants ketchup?”