High Heels and Holidays

Chapter Twenty

Maggie went from asleep to awake in the space of a single heartbeat, her arms and legs thrashing as she tried to get away from the hand covering her mouth.

"Shhh, sweetings, it's only me. I didn't wish to wake Felicity. Can I safely take my hand away now? You won't cry out?"

She nodded furiously.

Alex lifted his hand.

Maggie punched him, hard, in the chest.

"Well, that was only to be expected," he said, rubbing at his chest as she kicked back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed—then hauled back to hit him again. "And even condoned," he added, neatly sidestepping the intended blow so that a still groggy Maggie sort of pin-wheeled back down onto the mattress. "Once, that is. I didn't expect you to retire so early, my dear."

Maggie pushed her fingers through her hair, then rubbed at her eyes. "Faith thought we were going to have a pajama party—talk about boys and braid each other's hair, so I told her I had a headache and came in here. And it wasn't a lie, either. Still isn't, as a matter of fact. What time is it?"

"Nearly midnight," Alex told her, holding out her slippers, the white ones embroidered on the front with the words left and other left. "Please forgive me. There's something I feel I should show you, but I was detained on my errand quite a bit longer than I'd intended."

"Detained, huh? That's pretty Englishman's code for you ran out like a coward and left me here with Faith." Maggie pushed away the slippers and headed for the bathroom, wishing she could accomplish that feat in one straight line, but she couldn't. Sleep always turned her sense of direction and her balance temporarily stupid, and she half staggered toward the door, scratching at an itch on her left side. "Don't say anything else until I get back. I've got to brush my teeth and—I've got to brush my teeth. I'll meet you in the living room, okay?"

"Only if I can control my passion, my dear," Alex called after her quietly.

"Bite me ..."

Once blinking at the bright light in the bathroom, Maggie tried to focus on her reflection in the mirror above the sink. How many times had she written that her heroines woke wonderfully sleep-tousled? How many times had she continued at dawn a love scene that had begun the evening before and ended with the lovers sleeping in each other's arms?

Good thing she wrote fiction, because reality was a whole other bag of worms. Imagine how her readers would like it if she wrote a morning love scene filled with spiky, ratted hair, sleep-creased cheeks, a mouth that tasted like something had died in it—oh, and a crushing need to use the facilities?

Yeah, that'd sell a lot of copies. Critics complained that romance novels gave an unrealistic vision of life. That wasn't true. Happily ever after—or at least lifelong commitment to each other—wasn't a fantasy. Heroines that didn't rumple, who were always freshly combed and dewy-eyed? Now that was a fantasy someone really should address. Just not her.

Still widely opening and closing her eyes in her attempt to shift her brain into gear, Maggie entered the living room to see Alex standing at her desk, holding a floppy disk by its edges.

"What's that?"

"Something I happened to discover this afternoon at Jonathan West's apartment, actually."

Okay, she was awake now. "You what?" She turned to look down the hallway, then repeated in a near whisper. "You what? That's ... that's evidence, Alex. For crying out loud, you took evidence? Where was Steve? He doesn't know you have this, does he? No, no, of course he doesn't. Cripes, Alex, how many times are we going to have to go through this, huh? There are rules. Laws. Consequences. You can't just—where exactly did you find it? What makes you think it's special?"

"Fifteen seconds," Alex said, replacing the large gold watch he carried on a chair and tucked into his pocket. "I believe we're making progress."

"If I were more awake, I'd have a snappy comeback for that," Maggie said, carefully taking the disk out of his hand before sitting down at her desk and waking her computer. "Now tell me all about this thing before we look at it."

Alex's recounting of what had transpired at Jonathan West's apartment took only a few minutes, and by the time he was finished Maggie's curiosity had completely overcome any thoughts about the legality of what they were about to do. She slipped the disk into the machine and double clicked on the icon to open it.

"You know, I couldn't do this if I hadn't bought that new program—Microsoft Office for Macs—because this is a Word program. I use AppleWorks because it comes free with my Mac, but I bought the Microsoft stuff because I'm always getting files in Word and then I have to tell the person I can't open them. Well, maybe I could, but I don't read manuals because I don't understand them. Click here, stupid—that I understand. Ah, here we go."

She slipped on her computer glasses and leaned closer to the monitor as Alex read over her shoulder, turning her new wide-screen monitor slightly in his direction. " 'There exists in this world a fine line between love and hate. Lovers do not believe this, of course, until the moment ...' It's a manuscript?"

"Yeah, sure looks like it. Well, that's okay then, except if you'd copped a copy of Jonathan's favorite solitaire program you wouldn't be going to jail," Maggie said, using the mouse to roll through the first pages. "No title page, no header, no pagination—nothing. And see all those squiggly red underlines, those squiggly green underlines? Red's for misspelled words, green is for bad spacing, incorrect phrasing, stuff like that."

She swiveled around to look at Alex. "This is Jonathan's all right. Bernie told me this is how he used to send his stuff in to her. It drove her nuts, but Jonathan said he was an artiste, and couldn't interrupt his muse for mundane things like headers, and punctuation. He didn't run the spell-checker, that's for sure. But the program keeps a page total at the bottom and there are over four hundred pages here, Alex. This is probably a complete manuscript. Wow, an undiscovered West. How about that. Bernie will go nuts. It'll sell, even if it stinks, just because Jonathan was murdered."

"Is there a way for you to know when he wrote this?"

"Sure," Maggie said, swiveling back to the desk once more. "I just need to hit info and—there it is. Created, January second of this year, and modified—meaning the last time he changed anything on it—November nineteenth. He'd just finished it a couple of weeks ago. And you found this in the toaster?"

"Unusual, I grant you, although we should admit that anyone looking for the computer disk would hardly look there, so it was quite safe—although why he would feel the necessity for safety is troublesome. Then again, the man did drink a bit, and what seems strange to us may have appeared quite logical to him. But more unusual is that I did not see a computer on the man's desk."

"Maybe he had a laptop and kept it in a closet, or something?"

"Perhaps. We'll have to inquire of the left –tenant, as I'm confident he conducted a thorough search of the premises. However, not being bound by rules of evidence and all that sort of drivel, why don't we suppose, just for the moment, that someone—our murderer—removed Jonathan's computer."

"Because they wanted something that was on that computer," Maggie said, fully alert now and happy to take this ball and run with it. "And maybe that's why you found the disk in the toaster. Because Jonathan was afraid someone was trying to steal his work and wanted to hide a copy? But why would anyone want to steal Jonathan's manuscript? His last books were lousy."

"May he rest in peace," Alex said with a wink, then poured them each a glass of wine and they moved to the couch, Maggie curling up in one corner. "Plus, as long as we're considering things—if we're to connect the dead rats with the murders, and those rats were sent by devotees of Mr. West's books, why is the man dead at all?"

"Right. That doesn't make sense, does it? I was so caught up with Faith and that urine machine that I hadn't really thought about that too much yet. Why kill Jonathan? Unless we're wrong, and some fan—fans—of his aren't behind the rats, and someone just wants everyone who contributed to No Secret Anymore dead. We took a giant leap of logic there, Alex, assuming it was someone who felt we'd destroyed Jonathan's career. Maybe there's something in the plot of No Secret Anymore that pulled some nutcase's chain."

"Can you summarize the plot for me?"

"Sure. Crime in the past uncovered in the present. Ten chapters, ten suspects, then Jonathan wrapped it all up in this ridiculous epilogue that made about as much sense as one of those ING commercials. Do you think we have to go back to Valentino Gates and Lord Bryon? That one or both of them is Nevus—Rat Boy? Because I still say they couldn't kill anybody. Oh, that's right! That's where we got the idea about someone wanting to avenge Jonathan—from the fan letters. But with Jonathan dead?" She shook her head. "Man, I don't know what's going on, but I have the feeling you're going to tell me that Faith has to stay here, right?"

"I'm sorry, my dear."

"Not half as much as I am. She got all nuts about someone trying to kill her and refused to take Brock out for his evening walk, and Paul wouldn't do it and Sterling was sleeping on the couch when I went looking for him, so I had to walk the damn dog. And she dressed him up first in his own coat and booties—booties, Alex!—even a stupid matching plaid tam hat with a pom-pom on it. So there I am, walking this damn dog, carrying a plastic bag with me for his—well, you know what for. I'm not doing it again, Alex. Let her toilet train the mutt, or something."

"You went out on your own?" Alex asked, getting to his feet. "I thought we understood—"

"No, you understood. I had a whiny little dog crossing his back legs and looking like his eyeballs were starting to float. Besides, nobody could have done anything to me out there—they'd be too busy laughing their butts off at Brock. Now go away and let me read more of Jonathan's opus, because we're going to have to figure out some way to give it to Steve tomorrow without having him slap us in handcuffs. Well, you. I'm just the accessory after the fact. Go away now—I can't read anything with someone hanging over my back."

Maggie would have kept reading all night, until she'd finished the manuscript, except that reading Jonathan's jumble of mistakes along with his words had her eyes crossing by page two hundred and she gave it up and went to bed, only to wake up to the sound of someone chanting ... and two, and three, and four, and rest. And one, and two, and three ...

She slammed her way down the hall to see Faith dressed in skintight Day-Glo pink workout leggings and a matching sleeveless top that definitely strained around the boobs. She had a small step thingamabob in the center of the room and was hopping up and down on it as some ditz with an annoyingly nasal voice counted out cadence from the TV.

"What are you doing?" she asked, stepping between the television and Faith. "Are you nuts? It's seven o'clock in the morning."

"It's eight-thirty, and I'm exercising, which would be obvious to you if you ever did it," Felicity told her, not missing a beat as she hopped up, hopped down, hopped up again. "Oh, Sterling came by earlier and took Brock out for me—wasn't that nice, isn't he a dear? Brock wasn't feeling cooperative, though, so Sterling will have to do it again. Come on, Maggie, have a nice big glass of OJ and join me."

"I'd rather eat glass," Maggie said, heading for the kitchen and the orange juice part of Felicity's recommendation. Sipping from a large tumbler, she made her way back to the living room, swinging her right hand in time with the television workout Nazi as Felicity laid on the floor, her hands under her lower back, bicycling her legs in the air. "Feel the burn, oh yeah, baby, feel the burn!" she instructed, undoing the dead bolts on the front door and hoping no one had walked off with her newspaper.

"Bernie? J.P? What are you two doing here so—"

"We met up in the lobby," J.P. told her. "It's eight-thirty, why aren't you dressed yet?"

"Why do you think I'm a writer—so I don't have to get dressed."

The two women slipped past Maggie into the living room, Bernie waving a copy of the Post above her head. "You've done it again, Maggie. Made the front page this time, too. Look!"

Maggie tried to reach the newspaper. "I would, if you'd stop waving it like a flag. And what do you mean I—oh, God!"

Bernie gave her a kiss on the cheek. "I couldn't be prouder of you if you were my own daughter—which you're not, because I'm not that old. Isn't it terrific! You can't buy this kind of publicity."

" 'Life Imitates Art—When it comes to death, is bestselling novelist Cleo Dooley a carrier?' Oh, yeah, Bernie, that's just terrific. Just peachy," Maggie said, opening the newspaper. "Oh, look at this—a sidebar listing all the murders I've been involved in—even England. They've got a freaking timeline! Who told them?"

Bernie peered over her shoulder. "That's the only thing I don't like. If they were going to put up a sidebar, why couldn't it have been a listing of your titles. I should messenger one over. You know, in case they do a follow-up story tomorrow."

"You're a sick woman, Bernie. Damn, there it is, second paragraph. My real name," Maggie said, reading the article as she sat down in her desk chair, trying not to think about how all of these murders had only begun happening since Alex had shown up in her life. "Look at this—they've got Francis. They've got Jonathan. They've got the rats? Bernie, they've got the rats! I thought Steve said they were going to withhold that information from the press. Somebody talked. Somebody leaked this to the press, somebody who knows what we know. Is it only the Post? Because if it's only the Post, maybe that's not too bad and—oh, shit."

Three women looked at the ringing telephone while the fourth sat on the floor, legs spread, trying to touch her nose to her knee.

Ri-i-ng ... Ri-i-n-g ... Ri-i-ng ... Ri-i-ng ... My Doberman pinscher, Satan, is home but I'm not, please leave a message at the beep ... BEEP ... " You ungrateful child! I opened the paper this morning and what do I see but—"

"Okay, question answered. The story hit more than the Post," Maggie said, diving across the room to turn down the volume on the machine. "Love you, too, Mom," she said, grimacing at the machine before heading back to her glass of orange juice. There were already a bunch of messages, but she'd turned off the ringer on her phone in the bedroom, so she'd missed them. Thank God. "Faith, will you cut that out!"

"Four more, Maggie," Felicity said, bending her head once more, this time grasping her ankles with both hands.

"Yeah? Well, you'll have to do your own counting," Maggie said, picking up the remote and switching off the television.

"What's she doing down there anyway?" J.P. asked, coming back into the room carrying a glass of orange juice. "Is that Pilates? I don't know about Pilates. Pontius Pilate, I know about him, but that's not it, right? I put the kettle on. You don't have anything but instant coffee?"

"Sorry," Maggie said, reading the article once more. "If I had known you were coming I'd have hired Juan Valdez and a damn donkey."

"Um, testy this morning, isn't she?" J.P. said, lowering herself onto one of the couches. "Silly me, I figured you might want to cash in on that offer of free legal advice for life. My advice, by the way, is to hop the first Disney cruise and get the hell out of Dodge. Lose yourself in with the other cartoon characters."

"Funny," Maggie said, tossing the newspaper at her and then looking down at Felicity, who was now lying prone on the floor, her arms and legs splayed out as her silicone rapidly rose and fell as she breathed through her mouth. "All done? Good. You look terrible, Faith, by the way. Anything I can get you? You just have to ask, being my guest and all. So, what do you need? Pillow? Blanket? A chalk outline?"

"I like this girl, I really do," J.P. said, chuckling. "Hey, there goes your phone again, sunshine."

"I know that, J.P. I'm ignoring it. If I ignore it long enough, it might even go away."

"Yeah, I keep thinking that about the Bush administration ..."

"Good morning, ladies," Alex said from the doorway, and Maggie grabbed the Post and went at him with full intentions of beating him about the head and shoulders with it.

Naturally, he snatched it away from her first. "Yes, I've seen it, thank you. Socks brought a copy up to me earlier. I don't think they got your best side, unfortunately," he told her, and Maggie knew he was right, even as she wondered where the hell the Post had gotten her photograph.

"Oh, wait, I remember that photo," she said as Sterling struggled to slip a nervously yapping Brock into his little plaid coat yet again. "That's the one someone got as we were leaving Bernie's condo that one time, I think. I was the unknown female companion, right?"

"Yes, I believe you're correct," Alex told her, depositing the newspaper in the large trash can beneath Maggie's desk. "Ah, and before I forget, surrounded as I am by all you lovely ladies, Maggie, your father phoned me this morning when he couldn't reach you."

"Dad? Damn, I forgot all about him. Do you see what's happening to me here, Alex? Everything, damn it, that's what's happening to me. I forgot my own father. What did he say? Is he all right?"

"He's fine," Alex assured her. "But he's also on his way back to Ocean City, feeling that you have enough on your plate right now without having him underfoot."

"He saw the Post."

"Oh, sweetings, the story is not limited to the Post. I was first alerted to the fact that the media had picked up on the story as I watched the early morning news."

"Television, too? Why? Why me? I mean, seriously, folks. This story is about Francis, and Jonathan, not me. So why do I get singled out? What did I ever do to anybody? I mind my own business. I don't cause trouble. No, I don't do anything, I don't go anywhere—"

Sterling looked up from his task of maneuvering Brock's legs into the plaid coat. "We just got back from England, Maggie."

"Shh, Sterling," Alex told him. "Don't interrupt her. I think she's almost done. Are you almost done, Maggie? We do need to move on now. First, would you like to hear the message your father left for you?"

"If it was the only message on there, sure," Maggie said, looking at the rapidly blinking red message alert light. "Oh, okay, I'll do it."

"Fine," Alex told her, heading for the door once more. "But I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me. Sterling? Please remember that you and George and Vernon are to meet me just outside the Santas for Silver headquarters at ten-thirty."

Maggie wanted to ask Alex what was going on at ten-thirty, but he was gone before she could open her mouth, leaving her with nothing much else to do but listen to the messages. There were six:

"Miss Kelly, this is Roseanne Miller calling, from the staff of Fox news? If you'd be so kind as to return this call, Miss Spivak would like to arrange an interview at your earliest convenience. Our number here at the studio is—"

Maggie hit the skip button. "I don't think so, Ms. Spivak," she said, hunting for her nicotine inhaler on her desktop as Bernie woke her computer.

"Margaret? This is your mother ..."

"Yeah, wouldn't have known that one on my own," Maggie said, hitting skip again.

"Margaret, Dr. Bob Chalfont here. I just saw the morning news, and I'm very concerned about you, my dear. If you feel the need to talk about this, arrange an emergency appointment, please don't hesitate to—"

Another hit to the skip button.

"Margaret, it's Dad. I was hoping to talk to you, pumpkin. I saw the newspapers. Are you all right? Why didn't you tell me about this? Look, I'm going to go home this morning. Well, not home, not really. But I have a friend who has a summer place on Eleventh Street he rents out and he said I could crash there—that's the term, isn't it, crash? Isn't that what bachelors do? So, don't you worry about me, I'll be fine. I'll even try to ... try to talk to your mother, see if we can't work something out. Just as soon as she apologizes. All right, I'll call Alex—he gave me his cell phone number in case I needed it. A good man, Alex. I like him, and I know he'll take care of you. And I'll call you tonight."

"As soon as she apologizes? He's still on that? They're both nuts," Maggie said, shaking her head. "Maybe I can just send them each a nice poinsettia ..."

"You ungrate—" Maggie hit the skip button with the speed of a frog snagging a fly in midair.

And the last message: "Maggie, it's Bruce McCrae. Sorry to bother you. Is J.P. there with you? We had a ... we had a small disagreement this morning and I wanted to apologize, so if she shows up, will you have her call me, please? Thanks. Maggie, I saw the news, read the paper. How did they get that stuff about the dead rats? What's the matter with these cops, giving out inside information like that? Unnamed source, it says. What a crock. I can't believe Jonathan's dead, can you? And it blows our theory all to hell, too, doesn't it? Well, anyway, you're not there, obviously, so I'll hang up now. But if J.P. stops by, have her give me a call, okay? Thanks again. Stay safe."

"Trouble in paradise?" Maggie asked J.P., who had commandeered Maggie's plastic container of M&M's from the desk. "And here I thought yours was a match made in heaven."

"Zipper it, sunshine," J.P. said, picking through the container and taking out three blue M&M's, Maggie's favorites. "So I'm not the sweet, gullible little girl everyone thinks I am. I'm a criminal attorney, remember, and I don't take anyone at face value. I was checking up on him and, big deal, he caught me. That's all. But, hey, a girl can't be too careful these days."

"Checking up on him? How? And don't eat the blue ones. I always save those for last."

J.P. shrugged and picked up one more blue M&M, popped them all in her mouth. "You wouldn't want them back anyway, I already touched them. And nothing too terrible. Remember how we talked about getting people's cell phone records on-line? For a fee? I tried it with Bruce's number that first night. I don't know why, I just did. And Bruce came in and saw the printout I got back this morning before I could hide the damn thing. He'll get over it. He is over it—he just said so in that message."

"Maggie?"

"Not now, Faith," Maggie said, trying to ignore the fact that Felicity had come into the room wearing one towel on her head, one wrapped around her body from breast to thigh, and that's all. "And get dressed. Sterling will be back soon and you'll give the poor guy a heart attack."

"Maggie," Felicity went on as if Maggie hadn't spoken, "I can't stay here. You don't have bottled water, you don't have a treadmill. You don't have a steam shower—Maggie, everyone has a steam shower. There isn't a single green leafy vegetable in your entire refrigerator. I can't live like this, I really can't."

"Tough," Maggie said, turning her back on the woman. "Believe me, I don't want you here any more than you want to be here, but we're just going to have to make the best of it, that's all. Now go get some clothes on. Please."

"Well, fine. But I'm ordering a treadmill, Maggie. And a bottled-water dispenser. And some broccoli! You can consider them all a present once I'm gone—oh, and then we're even-Steven for everything."

"Wait—no, you can't—I don't want—oh, God. Anybody—is there a Welcome sign on my back that I can't see? And why do I let her think I'm a doormat?" Maggie said as she made her way to her desk and began hunting through the top drawer for a nicotine cartridge to slip into her holder. "If anyone knew just how bad I want a cigarette right now ..."

"Not my drug of choice, but I know how you feel, hon," Bernie told her sympathetically. "Hey, how are you liking this, anyway?"

"Hmm? How am I liking what?" Maggie asked, ashamed to realize how good it felt to feel the nicotine cylinder pop open inside the inhaler. She lifted it to her mouth, ready to take a long, smokeless drag of air and chemicals.

"Bruce's book, of course," Bernie said, pointing to the computer screen. "He only gave you a draft, I see, not the finished product, but it's wonderful, isn't it? Maggie? Are you choking?"

Maggie's attempt to hold back a startled exclamation after her initial inhale had only made things worse, and now she'd swallowed down the wrong throat, as she used to call it when she was a kid, and her eyes were tearing as she ran into the kitchen for a glass of water. A minute later she was back, wiping at her eyes with a dish towel she'd grabbed from the counter. "Did you say what I thought you said?"

Bernie shrugged. "What did I say? You're reading Bruce's new book. I haven't read all of it yet, but if it holds up, I'd have to say it's the best thing he's ever done. He was a good six months past his deadline, you know, and I was beginning to worry. Especially since his last book didn't exactly burn up the lists. Maggie, are you sure you're all right?"

"No, I'm not all right. I've got to think, okay? Just everybody be real quiet, and let me think. Damn it, where's Alex?"

"The phone's ringing, sunshine," J.P. said as Maggie paced the carpet, sucking on the nicotine inhaler.

Maggie just waved in the machine's general direction and kept walking as Steve Wendell's voice came over the speaker.

"Maggie? I wanted you and Alex to know, I guess. We did a rush on the post, and West's wounds were not self-inflicted. The ME could tell from calluses on his hands or something that he was right-handed, and the cuts were definitely made by a left-handed person. We already knew some of that, considering there was no bloody knife or razor on the scene. Plus, he had a hell of a knot on his head. So it looks like the same MO as Oakes—knock the guy out, then hang him up or slit his wrists, make it look like suicide, but not so much so that we wouldn't be able to figure out it was murder. Really stupid. Anyway, it sure looks like we've got a very specialized serial killer here, so stay home, okay, and don't let anyone up to the condo, even if you know them. There was no forced entry, so we're thinking West and Oakes might have known their killer. West and Oakes? Hey, sounds like a singing group, doesn't it? Okay, gotta go. You'd damn well better be in the shower, and not out running around."

"Ah, he cares—isn't that sweet," Maggie groused, "and it's Hall and Oates that's the singing group. Duo. Whatever."

"Bruce is left-handed ..."

Maggie stopped in her tracks to turn and look at J.P. "What did you say? Why would you say that? You think Bruce killed them?"

"No, of course not," J.P. said, grabbing more blue M&M's. "It was just a comment, that's all. Bruce is left-handed. Big deal. My cousin Chaz is left-handed. It doesn't mean anything."

"But you checked on his cell phone records," Maggie prodded. Her mind was going in several different directions ... but every different thing she thought about kept coming back to Bruce McCrae.

"I told you. A woman can't be too careful these days."

"You went to bed with the man, Jemima!"

"Don't call me Jemima—and I went to bed with that body. Big difference, sunshine."

"I'll agree with that," Bernie said, having left the desk, and dipping a hand into the M&M's container on her way over to the couches. "There was this pool boy in Miami about five years ago who'd oil me every day beside the pool—and in my suite. Hmm. You want to talk about bodies—"

"Bernie," Maggie said flatly, "don't help."

"Okay, here I am—where's Sterling?"

Maggie turned to look at Felicity, who was dressed now, war paint in place, and carrying a garment bag over one arm. "Sterling? He's walking your dumb mutt, who's probably constipated from all the treats you gave him last night. And then he's meeting Alex at ten-thirty. Why? And what are you all dolled-up for?"

"My in-ter-view, Maggie, remember?" she said in a singsong voice, the kind where the you're so stupid is not actually heard but definitely implied. "A new cable show, Noreen At Noon, except we're taping at two for tomorrow's show. Still, I need to be there early, to make sure everything is running smoothly. Well, if Sterling can't take me, how will I be able to go? Everybody says I can't be alone. Maggie, you'll have to go with me."

"And you'll want me to carry your garment bag and open doors for you, right? Maybe run off and get you a sparkling water to ease your parched throat? Sure, like that's going to happen."

Bernie stood up, raising her hand. "Your intrepid publisher to the rescue, Felicity. I've got my driver waiting downstairs. You'll be safe with him."

Felicity pouted. "You won't go with me?"

"We're a little busy here, Felicity," Bernie told her as, behind Felicity's back, Maggie frantically mouthed the word no over and over again as she shook her head. "Just go down there and tell Clyde where you need to go."

"Your chauffeur's name is Clyde?" Maggie said after Felicity wafted out of the condo on a nearly visible flying carpet of expensive scent.

"No, but I can't remember it, so now he's Clyde. Since they come and go so fast, I figure, from now on, they're all going to be Clyde. Hey, I tip well. Oh, and José quit to take a job as a roadie for some rock group, because I know you're going to ask—he said the fringe benefits were better. Now, why couldn't I go with Felicity? Not that I wanted to, you understand."

"I'm not sure. I'm not through thinking yet."

"Well, could you give us a clue about what it is you're not through thinking about yet?"

Maggie narrowed her eyes at J.P., considering the question. "No, I don't think I should. I think I should wait for Alex. Not Steve, not until I talk to Alex because then Steve would know that Alex had—well, I can't think about that part yet." She wheeled about to look at Bernie. "The manuscript, when did Bruce give it to you?"

Bernie frowned. "Why?"

"Bernie, work with me here—please," Maggie said, putting her hands together in a begging gesture.

Bernie looked at J.P. and said, "Oh boy, I haven't heard her sound this desperate since the night she wanted me to include her on my invitation to go backstage at Spamalot. Okay, Maggie, okay, I'm thinking—ten days ago? Two weeks? My assistant had to have logged it in, if you really need to know exactly. I was busy on something else—like getting ready to go to England with you to pick up a little bubonic plague—and let it sit until the other day. But that's probably close to the timeline. I know you authors think we're supposed to read something the moment it comes in—even if it comes in eight months late—but that's not how it works, and you know that, too. But Bruce has been bugging me by e-mail every damn day, so I started it and called him just before we left for England and told him that at least for the first fifty pages it was pretty damn good, and I'd get back to him when I was finished reading. Which I haven't done yet. Now tell me why you need to know this."

Well, that wasn't making any sense. "So the manuscript was in your office before even Francis was murdered, let alone Jonathan? And you told him you liked it so far, also before Francis and Jonathan were killed."

"Yes, I think I already heard something like that somewhere. And you need to know this why?"

Maggie put out her hands, waved off the question. "God, I wish Alex was here—not that I'd ever tell him that, because he'd never let me forget it. But I think—yes, I'm pretty sure I'm heading in the right direction. You have to do me a favor, Bernie. No, two favors, okay? One, do what I'm going to ask you to do—and two, don't ask me why I'm asking you to do it." She took a deep breath and said the words quickly as she exhaled: "I need you to call Bruce and tell him his manuscript stinks. And that's just for starters ..."