Chapter 9 #2
“Because she wanted to talk to me.” Margaux smiled, the expression hard. “Just like everybody else at this conference, Vivienne wanted an agent.”
“I thought you were her agent. So, what? You ended your professional association after Vivienne was arrested?”
“Are you kidding me? Yes, I ended it. Do you have any idea what happened to the rest of us?” She drew a deep breath and leaned forward in her chair.
“I’m being sued. Me. And that’s not to mention the agency and several of the publishers.
By men and women Vivienne put in prison, all of them claiming that she lied, that they’re wrongly imprisoned, that their civil rights have been violated. ”
“That sounds—”
“It doesn’t matter that, contractually, I’m indemnified against that kind of thing. It doesn’t matter that it’s not my fault Vivienne was a lying psychopath. I didn’t write the books.”
“If you’re indemnified,” Bobby asked, “shouldn’t the courts dismiss the lawsuits?”
“Yes. And they will. Eventually. Until then, it’s costing me a friggin’ fortune.
And that’s not to mention the writers who dropped me.
Up and disappeared. They wouldn’t answer calls.
They wouldn’t return emails. Do you know what one of them did?
They ended things by sending me a letter via certified mail.
A Dear John letter.” She sat back—her posture still perfect, but now somehow fatigued.
Shaking her head, she said, “The last two years.”
“That’s why you’re here,” Bobby said. “To find new writers.”
“It’s insane,” Margaux said. “It’s like I’ve been blackballed.
Do you know what it’s like, being an agent?
The emails never stop. It’s this constant deluge of queries, synopses, pitch packages.
There is never a shortage of writers who want an agent.
A lot of them want an agent just to say they have an agent, and you wouldn’t believe what a waste of time that is.
Want to guess what it’s been like the last two years? ”
“Crickets,” I said.
With a grim shake of her head, Margaux looked away, and her shell cracked.
It only lasted a moment, but the hurt and frustration there seemed real and deep.
Then her face smoothed out again, and she turned back to us.
“So, events like these are helpful. I talk to writers before they have a chance to google me. I sign a few. And I’ve always had an eye for talent. ”
“Do you find anyone good?” Bobby asked.
“Here and there,” Margaux said dryly. “I’ve already gotten one this weekend—that’s enough, if he pans out, to make it worth it.”
“So, when Vivienne said she wanted representation again—” I began.
“I told her to shove off.”
(Er, that’s kind of what she said.)
“Why would she come back to you?” Bobby asked. “Why not find a new agent? There’s got to be someone else—someone less experienced, someone desperate, someone who would see her as a real opportunity?”
“I don’t know,” Margaux said stiffly. “Vivienne said we had worked well together.”
“Did you?” I asked.
A bitter laugh escaped her. “If you call ignoring my feedback, going behind my back with editors, and in general ignoring me ‘working well together,’ then yes, I suppose we did.”
“Do you have any idea why Vivienne might have gone to the grotto?” I said.
Margaux pursed her lips. “Do you know, that’s the strangest thing?
I’ve been wondering that all day. Vivienne was so smart.
She fooled all of us for a long time, but it was more than that.
She spent years—decades—solving murders, facing down killers, and keeping herself alive while she did it.
And she didn’t do that by being stupid.”
“So, why go out to a dark, distant spot on campus with no cameras?” I asked.
Margaux was quiet again. Around us, the buzz of dozens of different conversations made the air crawl, but we’d fallen into a pocket of silence, and everything else was far away.
“I think,” Margaux finally said, “that Vivienne either trusted the wrong person, or she was too clever for her own good. Maybe both.”
“Any idea who?”
Margaux opened her mouth. And then she stopped and offered a tight-lipped smile and shook her head.
“Where did you go after you argued with Vivienne?” I asked.
“To cool down. Then back inside.”
“To a panel?” I asked. “Or a one-on-one?”
Margaux was slower to respond this time, and when she did, the words were measured. “Are you suggesting I had something to do with Vivienne’s death?”
“It’s routine procedure,” Bobby said, “to establish everyone’s whereabouts. And you did argue with Mrs. Carver shortly before her death.”
But Margaux didn’t even glance at him. Her gaze stayed on me. “I was holding one-on-ones.”
“With whom? Is there anyone who can confirm that?”
“I don’t think I’m going to answer that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t have to.”
“It would help—”
“I’ve helped you as much as I care to, Mr. Dane.
Now, if you want to talk about a contract for representation, we can do that.
If you want to talk about this book project, we can do that.
But I don’t know anything else about Vivienne’s death, and I’m not going to sit back and participate in your detective game. ”
“If you don’t tell us,” Bobby said, “you’ll end up telling the sheriff.”
“I’ll do that, then,” Margaux said and offered that same tight-lipped smile. “I have a feeling there’s less chance of being sued.”
“Vivienne told me she had a plan to get her life back on track,” I said. “She told me she was going to do what she always did: solve a murder.”
Margaux’s smile widened, and for the first time, it looked like genuine amusement—dark, yes, but genuine.
“What?” I asked.
“I find it funny that you, of all people, would take Vivienne at her word. How many of those murders do you believe she actually solved? And how many were like Matrika Nightingale—easy targets, and victims of Vivienne’s need for money and attention?
You should know better than anyone that the only thing the prosecution has to do is tell a better story than the defense, and Vivienne was always a great storyteller. ”
“You think she was going to manufacture something. You think she was lying.”
“Do you know how you could tell when Vivienne was lying?” Margaux said, and I could hear the punch line before she finished. “When she was moving her lips.”
“That’s a big accusation,” Bobby said. “There were problems with the investigation and prosecution of Matrika Nightingale, but there are smart, competent, and determined law-enforcement professionals around the world. I have a hard time believing Vivienne was so smart that she fooled all of them, over and over again.”
Margaux laughed.
“What?” I said.
“I don’t think she fooled them,” Margaux said. “I think they fooled themselves.”
“Do you have any proof?” Bobby asked.
(Which was, if I’m being honest, a very Bobby question.)
To my surprise, Margaux leaned forward again. “Aside from the pending lawsuits? Aside from the fortune I’ve already spent on lawyers?”
“Did you fact-check her books?” Bobby asked. “Who’s responsible for making sure there aren’t any errors?”
“No one. There are plenty of people whose job it is to make sure the publisher can’t get sued.
But that’s not the same as fact-checking.
I don’t fact-check. The editor doesn’t fact-check.
Nobody fact-checks. We’re not looking for a book that’s factually accurate. We’re looking for a book that sells.”
Bobby was too polite to say that this might be why Margaux found herself in her current predicament, but I could read it on his face.
“But I do have proof,” Margaux said. It took me a moment to make the connection back to Bobby’s question. “Steven Block, Vivienne’s editor at Florentium.”
“What about him?”
“If I’d listened to him, I’d have been a lot better off.”
“Why? What did he say?”
“And if you want a suspect, you ought to talk to him. They argued in the bar yesterday; Steven was holding court there, as he always does. Everyone saw it. Steven grabbed her, and Vivienne slapped him.”
“What? When?”
But Margaux ignored the question. “He called one night after you—after Vivienne was arrested. Late. Very late. Even for Steven, and he’s a night-owl.
And he was drunk, also strange—Steven likes a drink, but he knows how to hold his liquor.
He was in a panic. He kept talking about a book, another of Vivienne’s true crimes—and before you ask, I don’t know which one.
” Spreading those finely manicured nails against the tabletop, fingers tensed again, Margaux said, “He said Vivienne told him she’d gotten the wrong person. ”