Chapter 18
After Whitney left, I was stuck with cold coffee and even colder thoughts.
On top of that, the conversation had strained my throat; it had registered only distantly at the time, mostly because of the mixture of adrenaline and intense focus that kind of, uh, interview brought out.
Now, though, it hurt in earnest—a dull, scratchy throbbing that was like the worst strep throat in the world combined with a bruise.
I grabbed a bottle of water and an iced coffee and hoped they’d help.
I took my time making my way across campus.
The late afternoon had clotted into a not-so-creamy scum of clouds, with darker ones moving in from the west. Rain again, and not far off.
Maybe not a lot, but more of the steady drizzle that was the hallmark of the Pacific Northwest. Without the sunshine, the day was colder, and the breeze cut through my jacket and made long, rushing sounds that wiped out everything else.
A few other figures scurried across campus—several of them exhibiting that Oregonian trait: a complete imperviousness to rain and damp.
(I swear to God, Bobby could go out in a monsoon and come back in dry as a bone, but those of us from warmer climes soaked up water like we were sponges.) And while cold water and iced coffee did feel great on my throat, they weren’t exactly ideal on a day that was well on its way to becoming blustery.
Whatever store of energy I’d tapped into, it ran out halfway across campus.
Exhaustion settled into its place—physical exhaustion from the attack and a night of medicated sleep, and emotional exhaustion from all of it: Vivienne, Steven, Keme, and that brush with death.
Cold sweat broke out across my forehead.
When I reached the conference center, my legs were shaking.
I found an empty chair in the long, windowed hall and sat with the clouds at my back.
After a few minutes, I felt better. Well enough to think, anyway.
And thinking was definitely preferable to getting up and moving around again, so I sat there and thought.
If Margaux had killed Robert—
“There you are!” The voice was jovial but scolding—a you’re-in-trouble-mister that didn’t quite land as joking.
Spenser strode toward me, hands pumping energetically.
Something about the stride made me think of a game show host approaching a fresh victim.
Er, new contestant. “I’ve been looking all over for you.
Oh my God, I heard what happened. You were attacked!
Thank God you’re okay!” Then he laughed.
“Otherwise I’d never get more Will Gower, right? ”
I smiled weakly. “Not sure if that’s a bad thing.”
“Of course it’s a bad thing! Listen, I’ve been telling everyone how amazing book one is. And we all agree that we can’t wait for book two.”
“Uh huh.”
“We’re excited about it.”
My “Uh huh” was a little less charitable this time.
“We think Will Gower needs a new secretary. I hate to say it, but Ricky is a little annoying. And we think you really need to—”
I take zero responsibility for what happened next.
“Who is ‘we’?” I said, and there was a little snap, crackle, and pop to the words.
Spenser blinked at me. “Well, all of us. The people who bought your book. We were wondering if you could do a teaser chapter. Oh, and a pre-order wouldn’t be too much to ask either so that we at least know that book two is coming, because a lot of us don’t like to start series until all the books are out, so I think we’re making an exception for you. ”
It was a high-ceilinged hall with a lot of glass. Voices rose. Echoes doubled everything.
“Really?” I said. “All of you think that?”
The question caught Spenser flat-footed, but a moment later, he was saying, “Absolutely. Now, I know it’s a big job, but I’d be happy to help.
Oh, and who’s your cover designer, because we were thinking maybe it would help if you changed the covers so they looked more like, well, you know, a real book.
We’d love to see Will Gower on the cover. ”
It wasn’t pain anymore. My throat felt tight. My chest, too. Yellow spots tinged with blue swam in my vision.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“Well, we’re in the middle of a conversation—”
Halfway through the act of pushing myself to my feet, I froze.
Spenser must have sensed something because he started wringing his hands. “Um, that is to say, if you’re not feeling well—”
“I’m not,” I said. “Excuse me.”
Spenser took a step back and stumbled. Pain flashed across his face, and before he could stop himself, he reached for his leg.
His eyes met my eyes.
I turned, ducking my head, and hurried away. The crowd blurred around me—faces and bodies and voices. A mixture of perfumes and sweat and what was unmistakably way too much onion. The hallway tunneled ahead of me, narrowing in on itself.
It was impossible.
There was no way.
But whoever had been in Hemlock House the night before—whoever had attacked me—Keme had hit them hard. Hard enough to cause lasting damage. Hard enough that today, for example, they might be limping.
It didn’t make any sense, though. Why would Spenser have been in the house?
Why would he have wanted to hurt me? He was a little too excited about the Will Gower books (okay, books, plural, was a stretch at this point), but that wasn’t an explanation for why he might have broken into my house and tried to kill me.
On the other hand, there was a reason Stephen King had written Misery.
Something buzzed at the edge of my perception, and then the buzz came again, closer. I didn’t even realize it was a voice—much less someone saying my name—until a hand closed around my arm, and Julian smiled into my face. Then his smile evaporated, and he said, “Are you okay? What happened?”
It was like coming out of a cloud. Or—more prosaically—suddenly sobering up. The world around me snapped back into focus. People solidified. The hallway opened up. I took a breath and then a deeper one.
“Dash—”
“Sorry.” I even managed to smile. “Lost in my own head.”
“Looks like a dark place.” But Julian only squeezed my arm once and said, “I’m glad I spotted you.
I was hoping we could grab that drink—we still haven’t had a chance to talk about Mr. Murder.
” A smile creased his cheek. “There’s a lot of hurry-up-and-wait in this industry.
I’d love to get our part done so that we can sit around and wait for everybody else to do their jobs. ”
“God, yes. I’m so sorry. I’ve been kind of busy—”
“With a murder? Yeah, I know.” That smile again. And he squeezed my arm once more, his hand lingering. “You’re a busy guy, I get it.”
I laughed, and I managed to turn it into a movement that let me dislodge his hand—politely, I hoped. “Right. Stumble over a dead body. Dentist appointment. Denouement in the drawing room. It’s a full schedule.”
Julian laughed—a little too heartily for what was, admittedly, a weak joke. He didn’t put his hand on my arm again, but his eyes…lingered.
“Uh, right,” I said. “So, we should get a drink.”
“We should.”
“And talk.”
He grinned. “Unless you had something else in mind.”
He was handsome. He wasn’t Bobby (my God), but he was fit, toned, and had that dark intensity that a teenage Dash would have found intoxicating (he also would have called it brooding, and it was one of teenage Dash’s biggest weak spots).
“Like dinner,” he said into that missing beat.
“Right.” I laughed again. “Uh, maybe. Let me talk to Bobby.”
“Sure.”
“My boyfriend.”
Julian’s grin got bigger. “Invite him.”
“Right,” I said. “Right.”
And then we stood there, looking at each other.
For some reason, that made Julian laugh after about thirty seconds.
“How about this? I’m going to get a table at the bar—let’s say, in an hour?
We’ll talk. We’ll order nachos. We’ll figure out how I can make you happy, because that is literally the definition of my job.
” He gave my jacket a little tug—on the placket this time.
“And we’ll see where it goes from there. ”
Before I could say anything, Julian started off into the crowd.
As he moved away, I became aware of the full-body flush running through me.
Too much attention, I told myself. Too many people.
It was almost enough to distract me from the pain in my throat—while the coffee and cold water had helped, they couldn’t keep up with how much talking I was doing.
I decided to check the conference registration desk to see if they had any painkillers.
The encounter with Julian served, if nothing else, to brush aside my irrational burst of fear after that conversation with Spenser.
Spenser was an overenthusiastic fan who didn’t have good social skills.
It didn’t mean anything that he’d—what? Turned his ankle?
Pulled a muscle? That happened to people all the time.
For now, the person I needed to focus on was Margaux. She had a motive. She had found Robert’s body. She had known that Vivienne and Steven suspected that Robert’s real killer had escaped justice.
But all of that was in the past. I needed something now. Something I could use.
I needed leverage.
The conference registration desk was staffed by two men who must have been brothers.
They had the same round faces, the same thinning rings of hair, and the same Detectives and Dragons shirts.
(Seriously, was I missing out? How had I never heard of this series before?) One’s nametag said Sam. The other’s said Frodo.
It had to be a joke.
Right?
“—comes around to check things one more time, I’m going to quit,” Sam was saying. “He’s driving me crazy!”
“He’s stressed,” Frodo says. “I mean, two people are dead. He’s under a lot of pressure.”
“He was like this before the conference even started! He double-checked every single author packet I did. And then he told me I needed a haircut!”
Sam started to reply, noticed me, and said, “Can we help you?”
I eased into the conversation by asking for painkillers, and then I stood there, trying to figure out how to get around to what I really wanted to ask.
Sam was still rummaging through the first aid kit, looking for Tylenol, ibuprofen, or anything in that vein, when Graeme appeared.
He was pink-cheeked, his thinning hair mussed, and as I watched him approach, he kept trying to clean his glasses on his shirt, checking them, and then cleaning them again.
He walked right past me and said to Frodo, “What did the caterers say about the dessert?”
Frodo was about to launch into an explanation—and trust me, I was all ears (someone said the magic word)—but decided I’d better cut in before Graeme got too busy.
“Graeme, sorry,” I said. “Quick question: do you know where Margaux is?”
He frowned at me. He took a moment, as though trying to place me, before he said, “No. I can see if she’s on the program.”
“Do you mind?”
He flipped through the program, frowning, and shook his head. “Sorry, she doesn’t have any events scheduled right now. Do you want me to text her?”
I considered it, then shook my head. “But by any chance, do you know if she had any events Thursday night?”
Graeme didn’t say, The night Vivienne was murdered, but you could practically hear it ringing in the air.
“Just wondering,” I said in my most carefree tone. “Checking all my boxes. You know.”
Another long moment passed. Then he flipped back several pages, scanned it, and said, “She didn’t have any events. Not when…not for the time I think you’re asking about.”
“No one-on-ones.”
Something flickered in Graeme’s expression, but I couldn’t tell what it was. “No. Nothing official, anyway.”
“Okay. Great. Thank you.”
“Is this something I need to know about?”
“Uh, no. No, I don’t think so. Like I said, checking boxes.”
Graeme nodded and, tucking the clipboard under his arm, turned back to his conversation with Frodo.
Sam handed me a packet of Tylenol, and I took the pills with a swig of water while my mind raced.
Margaux had lied. She had told me she’d had one-on-ones at the time Vivienne was being killed.
At the time, it had seemed believable—after all, there had been a lot of one-on-one meetings happening around then.
But now that I thought back, it didn’t make any sense; Margaux had been holding her pitch sessions or whatever they were the next day.
When Bobby and I had talked to her. And that meant Margaux didn’t have an alibi for Vivienne’s murder.
I checked my phone. I had enough time for a quick confrontation (yikes, since when had that become part of my vocabulary?), and I could still make it to dinner with Bobby.
I was still trying to decide if I should ask Graeme to text Margaux—although, a part of me wondered, would that tip her off?—when a familiar voice shouted, “Mr. Dane!”
I spent my whole teenage life wishing I were popular, and now I was having serious regrets. I was going to have to start making sacrificial offerings to Obnoxia, the Roman goddess of everyone leave me alone.
But I managed to put a smile on my face when Charlie, AJ, and Thatcher emerged from the crowd.
Charlie was wearing a much smaller bandage now, and although their color still wasn’t great, they were beaming at me.
AJ wore a full glower, and Thatcher had popped those buttons on his shirt again and was letting the chest hair breathe.
“Mr. Dane—I mean, Mr. Dash! I got Maggie McLaughlin to sign my copy of Detectives and Dragons, and she asked me about my writing, and I told her.” The last bit was delivered in a whisper of excited disbelief.
“Charlie’s supposed to be resting,” AJ said. “But they said if you could investigate a murder, they were going to come to the conference too.”
“No,” I said, “Charlie, absolutely do not do that. Go home right now.”
But Charlie beamed at me and proceeded to show me their autographed book.
“Well?” AJ said. “Did you figure it out?”
“I’m working on it,” I said—pausing to ooh at whatever Maggie McLaughlin had scribbled on the title page of Dwarven Deception.
(The handwriting was illegible, not that I had any room to talk.) My attention was split, which was the only reason why I continued, “I need to talk to Margaux, but I can’t find her. ”
“We saw her,” AJ said.
“Uh, no,” Thatcher said. He tugged at his beanie. “I don’t think that was her.”
“Are you blind? It was totally her. She took over one of those multipurpose rooms like it was her office. Do you want me to show you?”
Charlie closed the book to stare at me expectantly. Thatcher slouched, arms folded across his chest. AJ’s expression suggested I needed to, um, poop or get off the pot.
“Show me.”