The Chick and the Dead (8 page)

well, I couldn't find any evidence of that, either. And believe me, there were pages (and pages) of Internet sites devoted to the movie, the book, and its author.

Again, the little voice of doubt whispered in my ear.

It sounded like my dad.

I told it to shut up and glanced toward where Didi sat in the chair across from my desk. She was wearing the outfit she'd worn when I met her, and she adjusted the gauzy pink scarf that matched the bow around the neck of the appliquéd poodle on her skirt.

"If you wrote the book, how come you never told anyone?" I asked her.

"I did." She frowned. "I told plenty of people."

"Then why didn't they come forward when your sister published it?" She shrugged.

It wasn't much of an answer, and it didn't do much to bolster my confidence. I tried another avenue of questioning.

"Why can't Harmony just talk to Merilee and ask for money?"

"Merilee doesn't know Harmony exists."

"I could tell her."

"It wouldn't make a difference." Didi rose and walked to the other side of my office. When she spoke, she kept her back to me. "My family didn't disown me or anything, but they were very unhappy," she said. "You know, when I got into trouble. Oh, they let me live there in theOhioCity house, me and Judy. But things were never the same between us. They barely spoke to me. And poor little Judy, they treated her like she was dirty."

It took me a moment to figure out that I'd heard Didi use the expression before.
Getting into trouble
was obviously mid-twentieth century code for
pregnant
. "Nobody cares about stuff like that anymore," I told Didi. "When Merilee connects with the only daughter of the only daughter of her only sister, I bet she'll get all warm and fuzzy. And when she finally kicks the bucket. Harmony will inherit a bundle." When Didi turned to me, she rolled her eyes. "Harmony won't inherit one red cent. Merilee's will leaves everything to the Grand Order of the Grand Daughters of the Grand Army of the Republic. No one can make her change it."

I wasn't buying it. After all, I had been raised in the upper middle class. Growing up, I'd heard plenty of stories about money, and often they were based on someone being pissed at someone else who didn't leave the first someone a big enough piece of the pie. "Harmony could contest the will."

"She could," Didi admitted. "If she was smart enough. Which she'll never be if she never goes to a good school. And if she can find a lawyer who will believe her when she tells him that she's not only the great-niece of a famous author, but the only surviving relative, too. Which she won't, because let's face it, Harmony doesn't exactly look like the type who has tens of millions of dollars coming to her."

"Tens of millions?" I gulped down my surprise. "You mean we're talking that kind of money?" Didi pouted in an oh-poor-me sort of way that made me think she'd used this tactic before. "Don't worry," she said, tears suddenly watering down her voice. "You'll get some of that money. It's all you care about, anyway."

I bet the bowed pink lips and the tearful blue eyes worked plenty good on suckers who were susceptible to that sort of thing. Just like I bet that in Didi's lifetime, she'd found plenty of suckers to use them on.

Bad news for her, I was not one of them. Besides, she got me all wrong. I had to defend my reputation and my motives.

I jumped to my feet. "That is so not true," I said. "It's not the money I'm thinking about. At least not in the way you think I'm thinking about it. Sure, I need money. And sure, I'd love to be paid for working on your case. But what I was thinking is that if there's a lot of money involved—"

"There is." She nodded.

"And if Merilee was underhanded enough to steal your manuscript—" Didi's top lip quivered. "She did. She waited until I was dead, then published it under her name."

"Then if she's got that much at stake—"

"She does."

"Will you let me get a word in edgewise here?"

Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to speak that edgewise word. No sooner had I screeched the question than I realized that my office door was open. Sometime while I was talking to Didi, Ella had walked in. By the time I realized it, I was already emphasizing my point by stabbing one finger into what must have looked to her like an empty corner of my office.

I scrambled to come up with an explanation that sounded even half plausible. I shouldn't have wasted my brain cells.

Because Ella didn't even notice.

How could she when her eyes were glowing, her cheeks were crimson, and her breaths were coming so fast, I thought she'd stroke out right there on my office floor?

"Ella?" Instinctively I moved forward, one hand out to catch her when she collapsed. Which I was pretty sure she was about to do.

Only she didn't.

Instead, Ella grabbed my outstretched hand with both of hers. "The limo just pulled in," she said, and she jumped up and down. Like a kid on Christmas morning. "Come on, Pepper. You want to be part of this historic event, don't you?"

She didn't give me the opportunity to respond. Out in the hallway, the sounds of excited voices rose to fever pitch. Then they stopped cold. Silence descended. Both Ella and I knew what it meant. The door of the administration building had opened.

Merilee Bowman had arrived.

Ella gulped in a breath. She dragged me into the hallway and through the crowd. We ended up at the front of the reception line.

I don't know what I expected. Mink, maybe. Or at least a Kate Spade bag and a pair of really kicky little shoes.

Instead, the woman who stood inside the front door was dressed in a drab brown suit and a white oxford cloth shirt that was buttoned all the way up her scrawny neck. The shoes? Brown loafers. Enough said.

Her hair was the same color as her suit and her shoes. It was shot through with gray and cut short, like a man's, and it was so thin, I could see her scalp. Except for a touch of color on her lips—mauve, which did nothing for her sallow complexion—she wasn't wearing a speck of makeup. Believe me, if I had tens of millions, I would have made a little more of a fashion statement. Like a deer in the headlights of an eighteen-wheeler, the woman blinked at the crowd assembled in the office reception area. She sniffled and swallowed, and the scent of menthol was as thick around her as the paparazzi I could see outside the open door. They scrambled, not to get into the office but to jockey for a place closer to the limo parked right outside. It was as big as a boat and so shiny, the morning sun glinted off it like sparkling stars.

I noticed that Dan Callahan—or at least the leather-and-jeans-clad photographer I'd seen the day before and thought was Dan—wasn't in the pack.

"I'm Trish Kingston, Miss Bowman's secretary," the scrawny woman said, and I gave myself a mental slap. Of course! This woman was forty, maybe. Too young to be the famous author whose not-so-famous sister had died way back in the fifties when they were both adults. Trish scraped her palms over her brown skirt and extended one bony hand. She didn't so much shake Ella's as she clung to it for dear life. "Everything's ready, isn't it? Everything's perfect? Please tell me everything's just the way we discussed it on the phone."

Ella's smile was beatific. "It sure is," she said, and Trish breathed a sigh of relief. A wave of menthol washed over me.

Ella looked past the secretary and out the door toward the limo. "Is she happy to be here?"

"Happy?" Trish repeated the word as if she wasn't quite sure what it meant. Her slender shoulders rose and fell inside the boxy brown jacket. She worked over the lozenge in her mouth as if the harder she sucked it, the better she'd be able to think. "I dunno. It's kind of hard to tell with Miss Bowman. But if you're ready…" She glanced around at the assembled crowd of Garden View employees before she looked over her shoulder to where the extra security guards the cemetery had hired for the occasion had set up a barrier and were busy keeping the eager reporters and photographers behind it. Ella raised her chin. She looped one arm through mine, and like it or not, I found myself front and center as we processed outside to greet our guest of honor.

We arranged ourselves in a phalanx outside the door. As soon as I untangled myself from Ella, I scrambled over to the side next to Trish Kingston and let Ella and Jim take center stage. Didi, I noticed, was nowhere to be seen.

Before I had a chance to think about it and what it meant, the limo driver popped out of the car and walked over to the back door. He opened it and stood aside.

Ella held her breath.

Jim sucked in his gut.

Trish mumbled something that sounded like, "Oh please, God, don't let anything go wrong." And Merilee Bowman stepped out of the car.

Okay, all that stuff I said about fashion statements? I take it all back. Even with tens of millions, I couldn't have made a fashion statement like Merilee Bowman made a fashion statement. It was ostentatious, that's for certain, what with the robin's egg blue picture hat and the matching suit and alligator pumps.

It was flashy, or at least the golf ball-size diamond she wore around her slender neck was. It was over-the-top. Just like the smile she aimed at the photographers all around us who clicked picture after picture.

The effect was lost on no one. Except for Trish, still muttering a prayer—this time to St. Jude, who I knew from my father's mother (a great believer in divine intervention) was the patron of impossible causes—a reverent hush fell over the crowd. There was no doubt about it: We were in the presence of royalty.

Big points for Ella, though. She may have looked as if she was about to swoon at Merilee's feet, but she kept her cool. She stepped forward and reached for Merilee's hand, and I guess I was right about the whole royalty thing, Ella bobbed a little curtsy.

"Miss Bowman…" Her voice failed, smothered beneath the excitement that clogged her breathing. Ella had to start again. "Miss Bowman, I'm Ella Silverman. I'm community relations manager here at Garden View and president of ISFTDS. Welcome."

Merilee's skin was porcelain. Her eyes were the same shade of baby blue as Didi's. From beneath her hat, I saw a sweep of silvery hair. She accepted Ella's homage and held on to her hand long enough to assure a good photo.

"We are honored to have you here," Ella said.

"Of course you are." Merilee smiled, and something told me that if she hadn't been busy making sure that the photographer who darted forward for a picture didn't get exactly the right shot, she would have patted Ella on the head.

Like a dog.

Have I mentioned that I'm a redhead?

I know, I know… there's the whole stereotype thing. Redheads are hot-tempered. Redheads are quick to judge. Redheads don't give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

Well, put me in a pigeonhole.

Because it's all true.

In my case, anyway.

All it took was that one moment and the hint of condescension that wafted around Merilee the way the smell of menthol did around Trish, and the bubble of Merilee's celebrity burst. At least for me. Free of the spell that seemed to have entranced everyone else, I crossed my arms over my chest and stepped back, watching as Ella introduced Merilee to Jim and the rest of the senior staff. Had this elegant, silver-haired egocentric stolen Didi's manuscript and taken the credit for Didi's work?

For the first time since Didi told me her tale of woe, I wanted to believe it. And not just because I wanted to help Harmony or because I was hoping to share in a little chunk of those tens of millions of dollars.

But if I had learned anything from my investigation into Gus Scarpetti's death, it was that nothing is that easy. Especially when it comes to private investigation for the dead.

It didn't matter whether I liked Merilee or not (and as I watched her bask in the adoration of her fans and accept it as if it was her due, I decided that I definitely did not). I had to look at the situation objectively. After all, it was Merilee's name on the covers of all those millions of books, not Didi's. It was Merilee who had the credentials, too. From what I'd learned during my research earlier that morning, nobody knew the American Civil War like Merilee did. She had been trained as a librarian, and early on in her career had taken an interest in the War Between the States and had made it her mission to learn everything there was to know about it. Even before
SFTD
was published, she was considered an expert. But I had also learned something else: Though she dangled the promise of
someday
in front of her millions of fans, Merilee had yet to produce another book.

Did that mean anything in terms of my investigation?

Sure. If I believed the gossip on the dozens of chat boards I'd looked over that morning, it meant: (a) Merilee was really dead and the woman who would be attending the premiere inCleveland was a body double.

(b) Merilee couldn't write another book because
SFTD
was the greatest book ever written and she couldn't compete with herself.

(c) Merilee was an alien who had been sent to this planet to prove that Earthlings are culturally imperfect. After all, who but a member of some super-human race could have produced a book that was perfect down to every last period and comma?

And

(d) She was working on it. At least that's what the "letter to our loyal members" signed by Ella on the ISFTDS Web site said. Merilee was a perfectionist and she was working on not just another book, but a
SFTD
sequel. When she was satisfied that it was good enough, she'd let the world—and the dozens of publishers clamoring for the rights with their pens poised over their checkbooks—know.

I was chewing over all this as Ella, Jim, and the superstar in question made their way down the line toward me, and it occurred to me that this was, in fact, the most salient argument to support Didi's claim. Merilee had made a boatload of money on her first book. Why on earth didn't she bust her ass to write another one?

"And this, of course, is Pepper. She's the tour guide here at Garden View." Ella got around to me sooner than I expected. I shook myself out of my thoughts and found Merilee Bowman directly in front of me. She was waiting for me
to
bow and scrape and kiss her ring, but I decided a more direct approach might better serve my purpose.