Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Twenty

“I’m curious about something, Ms. Randall,” Richard Gross said.

Gross had arrived about half an hour later, Melanie Joan having taken a break from screaming at me for accusing her of being a plagiarist to call him. Then she’d huffed her way upstairs to make herself more presentable for Richard Gross.

I wasn’t sure what I had expected the great and powerful Richard Gross to look like. But the rather legendary Hollywood power broker, one who had begun his career Out There as a lawyer, looked more like an actor, reminding me somewhat of Michael Douglas. Not the Romancing the Stone Michael Douglas. The older one from Netflix. Long silver hair, toffee-colored tan, not much taller than I was, trim-skinny, killer eyes that were so blue I suspected contact lenses. Not many more lines in his face than Melanie Joan had. Maybe they used the same nip/tucker.

Samantha Heller was also in the living room with us. I had called her while Melanie Joan was upstairs primping. When Samantha arrived, I lied to both Melanie Joan and Richard Gross, saying that I had previously invited Samantha over for a drink today.

I wasn’t worried about getting rolled by a Hollywood hotshot like Gross, but I decided I could use a little backup in getting Melanie Joan calmed down, especially after Spike had left for work.

Rosie immediately took to Samantha. Growled at Gross. Good girl, I thought.

Gross and Melanie Joan were on the couch. Samantha and I were in the surprisingly comfy antique chairs that had come with the house, on the other side of the coffee table I’d recently purchased.

Gross, I noticed, had a proprietary hand on Melanie Joan Hall’s knee, occasionally patting it. Like he wanted her to be the good girl. He had already spent a fair amount of time telling me I was pretty much the opposite for upsetting Melanie Joan this way.

“I’ll need to take those pages with me when I leave,” he said. “By tomorrow I’ll have hired the best forensics firm in Boston.”

“No,” I said.

“Excuse me?” Gross said.

My answer seemed to startle him, as if he had been ready to move on to his next statement. Or perhaps no just confused him.

“No,” I said, “you can’t take the pages. Examining them is my job.”

“Sunny’s right,” Samantha Heller said. “We all need to let her do her job.”

“By attacking my character?” Melanie Joan said.

“By trying to get at the truth,” Samantha said patiently.

“Whose side are you on?” Melanie Joan said.

“The same side I’m always on,” Samantha said to her. “Yours.”

Samantha and Gross had barely spoken to each other. But the dislike they so obviously shared for each other, bordering on contempt, made me think of atmospheric electricity. Just not in any kind of positive way.

“Melanie Joan may have hired Ms. Randall here as an investigator,” Gross said. “But I am now overseeing her brand, something that involves so much more than her books, Samantha.” He looked at Melanie Joan and smiled. “This lady is so much more than an author now. She’s an industry.”

“An industry that starts with her books,” Samantha said.

“And now someone wants to give the impression that the books and the industry both began with plagiarism, Mr. Gross,” I said.

“Call me Richard,” he said.

There was, I decided in the moment, no reason to tell him that I’d happily been considering calling him “Dick.”

“Now this person, whoever it is, is even manufacturing evidence against me!” Melanie Joan said.

Gross patted her knee and turned slightly, so he was more fully facing me.

“Not to make too fine a point of things,” Gross said, “but my understanding is that Melanie Joan hired you to find out who is harassing her and not to harass her yourself.”

I smiled.

“I’m harassing her?” I said. “I’m going to have to call bullshit on that one, Mr. Gross. You know that’s not what I did, or am doing. So does Melanie Joan. And Samantha. And people in outer space if they can hear us. What I am trying to find out right now is if Melanie Joan has any idea where this document might have come from. Or from whom.”

I held my smile.

“Is all,” I said.

“We know you’re the victim, Melanie Joan,” Samantha Heller said. “Sunny’s just looking for some cooperation here. So she can do her job.”

“I understand that,” Melanie Joan said. “I’m not an idiot. But what I will not do is sit here and allow Sunny, as fond as I am of her, to insult me.”

“That is not my intent,” I said. “But somebody broke into my office because he or she wanted me to see these pages. And wanted you to see them, and perhaps other pages that will follow. What you really need to understand is that all of this means that you and I are both being watched, Melanie Joan. Your hotel room. My office. If your situation isn’t necessarily escalating, it is certainly continuing at a rapid clip.”

I shot a quick look at Samantha. She nodded.

“The more I know,” I continued, “the more I can do to end this as quickly as possible. That means doing what you hired me to do, which is find out who this person is and then make them go away.”

“It’s not me who copied somebody else’s work!” Melanie Joan said. “Don’t you see? It’s the other way around!”

I told her then, with as much conviction as I could muster, that we all understood that had to be the case. I knew of a place in Boston, I said, where I might be able to have the ink and the paper tested, as a way of possibly determining the age of both, even though I suspected that to be a long shot, at best.

“But what will that prove?” Melanie Joan said.

“Hopefully that whoever wrote this wrote it recently, and not at the time when you were beginning to write A Girl and Not a God,” I said. “And that you still might be the victim of a shakedown, or a grift. Or both.”

“With all due respect,” Gross said, “I still believe my people are better able to handle this sort of authentication in a more efficacious manner than you can.”

I looked around the room, as if confused.

“All due respect?” I said. “Here?”

“Now, now,” Melanie Joan said. “We’re all supposed to be on the same team here.”

“You sure about that, MJ?” Samantha Heller said.

“Now, Samantha, you know you and Richard have been getting along much better lately,” Melanie Joan said.

Samantha grinned.

“You sure about that?” Samantha Heller asked.

I picked up the papers, just to have something to do with my hands.

“You don’t know who might have written this?” I said.

“I do not!”

“You’re certain of that?” I said.

She gave me a long look. “You know, Sunny,” she said, “sometimes I think you don’t know me at all.”

“You know, Melanie Joan,” I said, “can’t lie. Sometimes I feel the exact same way.”

She stood then and announced that she would be staying with Richard tonight. I told her I couldn’t protect her at the Mandarin. Richard Gross, sounding insulted, told me that he was all the protection Melanie Joan needed.

“I’ll be in touch,” Gross said to me. “I have a solid lead on that email. Or at least my people do.”

“Care to share?” I said.

“Need to know,” he said.

When they were gone, I said to Samantha Heller, “I know you are far more invested in Melanie Joan Inc. than I am, or ever will be. But she may know more about these pages than she’s telling.”

“No comment,” Samantha said.

“And while I know that we’re both on her side,” I said, “we at least have to now entertain the notion that she is both a thief and a liar. If we weren’t entertaining that notion previously.”

“But hoping she’s not.”

“Back at you.”

I offered her the drink I’d lied about having invited her over to have before she left. She declined. I fixed myself a Jameson and watched an episode of Ted Lasso I’d already watched because Ted and the gang always managed to lift my spirits. Then I built myself a world-class salad, walked Rosie all the way to Beacon Street and back, made sure to set the alarm here when we were done, went upstairs, washed my face, looked for any new facial lines that I might have acquired, moisturized, and brushed.

Then I got into bed and opened my laptop and began to read again, this time about Melanie Joan Hall’s most memorable character:

Herself.