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Award-Winning
Author ~ Writing Instructor ~ Bookseller
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| "I’m
ready for my close-up now...Dr. Freud." |
Dem Bones' Revenge
Chapter One
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"You do see I have no choice, don’t you, Tracy?"
the breathy voice said over the phone. "I have to kill
you."
From where I stood, anyone who could ask that question didn’t
care how I saw it. Only six a.m., and this was already shaping
up to be a day enshrined in hell.
"Without the changes to Deadly Shadows we require, I’ll
have to reject the book and kill your series," my editor,
Carolyn, murmured from her superior perch as Senior Editor at
Perkins & Pimm, Publishers.
Kill the Tessa Graham Mystery Series? Cold rose through my bare
feet from the chilly oak parquet of my study floor, as hot air
from the heating vent hit my head. The room spun around me.
But my only thought was how much I hated Carolyn’s voice.
An editor’s speech should resonate with the bold assurance
a writer needs to cling to, not sound like she was working a
sex line.
"Huh?" I stammered eloquently. "I don’t
get it."
I really didn’t. My only doubt when writing Deadly Shadows
was whether I'd raised the bar too high to hit it again. If
Carolyn didn’t agree, why had she given me that generous
advance after reading the opening chapters? Would they want
that money back? Hah! They were gonna have to catch me first.
"We'll need those changes by Wednesday," she concluded.
"You mean next Wednesday, right?" This was Monday.
"No, this Wednesday." That hooker voice took on the
brisk disapproval my third grade teacher always used when she
justified putting a gag on me. Carolyn promised to fax a list
of each and every place where the book fell short of her expectations.
Ever gracious, she used a dial tone to say good-bye.
My head kept spinning, and this time, it wasn’t the heat.
Deadly Shadows was a good book, dammit. There had to be a way
around this. I’d find it, too–-as soon as my brain
kicked in. If morning was really meant to be the best time of
the day, they'd have scheduled it later, when I was awake enough
to appreciate it.
I padded to the short bookcase below the window and hovered
over the fax, only to be accosted by another angry voice.
"Tracy, what did you do with my tie?" My aggrieved
husband, Drew, glared at me from the doorway.
Maintaining his customary lawyerish dignity took some doing–-all
Drew wore was an unbuttoned blue oxford shirt and a pair of
dingy Jockey shorts, so baggy they’d morphed into boxers.
The sight of those hunky pecs peaking through the stiff button-down
shirt almost thawed the freeze my editor's remarks had left
in me. Only the dimples I loved were nowhere in evidence on
Drew’s chiseled face, and today his normally warm golden
brown eyes weren’t taking any prisoners. Didn’t
anyone love me anymore?
"Where’s my tie?" Drew roared as if the fate
of the world depended on it.
He had more than one tie. Hell, he had dozens. He meant his
lucky tie, though Drew was too anal to admit to superstition.
He’d worn that navy-and-maroon tie and those worn-out
undies on the first day of every trial he’d ever won.
But never had as much been riding on them as in the plagiarism
suit beginning today.
Literary conflicts weren’t Drew’s specialty. He’d
been roped into this case at the client’s insistence.
Stacking the deck still higher was the fact that Drew's client,
whose claims were probably true, seemed an oily bastard--while
the cheating plaintiff was a loveable old codger the jury could
easily take to its heart. If Drew didn’t find a way around
those obstacles, he could kiss good-bye to making senior partner
at Slaughter, Cohen, Rather, Word & Dragger, Attorneys-at-Law.
I started to reassure Drew, only that was when the fax began
spitting out the bitch’s poison. "That’s from
Carolyn. She’s a heartbeat away from dropping my series."
"Babe, no...." Warmth flooded Drew’s eyes. He
came over and cupped my face in his hands, as if he intended
to comfort me. Instead, he sprayed morning breath up my nose
by shouting, "You wouldn’t be in a bind now if you
hadn’t spent your whole advance on that stupid truck.
Who in Los Angeles drives a pickup?"
Everyone who didn’t drive an SUV.
"You only bought that boat so your mother would stop making
you drive her places."
"Not true. I love my truck."
The fax kept spitting out pages. Jeez, were they paying her
by the word? Too pissed to look at that roadmap to the end of
my life, I let the sheets fall into toxic curls on the wooden
floor.
"Why couldn’t you have kept your Jeep, Tracy?"
Drew complained. "Your mother didn’t like that, either."
But she was starting to.
The fax finally ended. Fortunately, the doorbell rang before
I succumbed to temptation and stomped those nasty paper curls
into dust.
As I pushed past him, Drew yelled, "Wait. My tie?"
"Relax, Drew. I sent it to the cleaners."
He flapped his arms like a dodo bird. "You what? I have
to go into court on an area of law that I know nothing about
and–-"
"It’s in the cleaner bag in your closet," I
shouted over my shoulder. If he got any tighter, I was gonna
need a nap.
The doorbell rang again. On the living room sofa, the big lump
under my ecru down comforter shifted irritably. Drew’s
eyes traveled pointedly from it to me, punctuating another cause
of tension between us. The movement caused a salt-and-pepper
haystack to peak from the top, pillow-hair that belonged to
Drew’s Uncle Philly. I’d met him a couple of months
before and invited him to visit us. It was probably a coincidence
that as the visit stretched, our cozy condo seemed to compress.
Especially after Philly’s things filled every available
inch of space.
I stubbed my toe on one of the open suitcases that overflowed
across the floor like a salesman’s sample cases--if the
salesman represented Goodwill. When I stopped to rub my toe,
Drew rushed to block my path to the door.
"Tracy, tell me the truth," he said in a hoarse whisper.
"Have we adopted Philly?"
"Just till we find his real mom and dad."
"The last time I saw his mom, I was still riding a skateboard,
and they were lowering Grandma into the ground."
"So you don’t think that’s her at the door?"
He threw up his arms and stalked off toward the bedroom.
As I limped to the door, I plastered my most innocent expression
on my face. Too many of our callers lately were neighbors to
whom Philly had peddled the deal-of-a-lifetime. Best to be prepared.
Since my robe's sash had found the secret door in the washer
that half my socks used to gain their freedom, I clutched it
closed and eased the door open a crack.
Not an irate neighbor, after all. But not good news, either.
"Hey, Trace, time to start the closets," Randy Barlow
said.
I sometimes thought Randy Barlow, the thirtyish man filling
the hall outside my door, had been put together from leftover
parts like some benign Frankenstein. Where were the genetic
safeguards against combining the soft body of a gigantic Pillsbury
Doughboy, with the sun-bleached hair and leathery skin of a
surfer, and burning black eyes Rasputin would have killed for?
"What are you doing here, Randy? You said you'd come Wednesday
at ten." Probably the exact time my publisher's axe would
fall. How prophetic was that?
"Me, I didn't tell you nothin'. You know my mom does my
scheduling. She said to come Monday at six."
Randy's baggy painter pants were spattered with red paint and
smeared with Navaho White. He lumbered past me through my tiny
foyer, carrying his carpentry tools and scuffing his feet against
my slick parquet. I wondered how a guy that clumsy stayed on
a surfboard, but regular wipeouts might account for what didn’t
seem to be included between Randy’s ears.
"Randy, I talked to you last night, remember? You said
your mom was out. You know this wasn't the time we agreed on."
He dropped his tools–-as a native California, I could
say with certainty the floor shook like a 3.2 temblor. "Yeah,
well, later I got a call about another job I gotta start then."
Why is it contractors think that because they choose to live
in denial, you’re willing to share their demented roost?
Not that Randy was a licensed contractor. He was just a handyman
my mother strong-armed me into hiring to free up closet space
for Philly.
When Drew realized something else had been added to the mix,
his blood pressure would shoot so high, his head could blow
like Old Faithful. But I remembered another contractor rule
before I threw Randy out: Once you let them go, you never get
them back.
"Okay, but start with the hall closet, and stay away from
Drew," I warned.
The fax rang again. I groaned, but I should have expected it.
Not only couldn’t Carolyn talk like a normal adult, she
couldn’t send a complete fax in one try. How many pages
were there? Outrage rose in me like a mushroom cloud.
Drew stormed into the room. His shirt was buttoned now and cinched
with his lucky tie. But shirt tails peaked through his open
fly. "Tracy, that lunkhead punched through my closet wall–-"
The lunkhead followed on his heels. "It's gonna cost you
extra to fix it, too. It ain’t my fault your walls are
so thin, you can't tap 'em to find the studs."
Drew gave his glorious wavy light brown hair an indignant shake.
"Tap them? Is that what you call –"
Man, this was the last trial of the century I’d get up
for. "Holy freakin' Labor Day!" I threw my arms out
like a weather vane. "Drew, finish dressing–-Randy,
go to the hall closet"
The extent of my frustration must have been clear–-they
both left my sight, and that was all I cared about. Is it always
so nutty at this hour? Reason enough to sleep through it.
The telephone rang. I snatched the cordless from where it nested
among Philly's pipe paraphernalia on the walnut end table at
the side of the couch. "What?" I growled into it.
The dulcet tones of movie star Martha Collins’s voice
filled my ear. "And a lovely good morning to you, too,
darling."
You know that throaty voice as well as I do. It’s the
one that thrills you on the silver screen, the voice you consider
synonymous with sex and glamour, the one that entices you from
the radio to buy overpriced cat food. For me, it's different–-since
that's the voice that has harassed me since the minute I was
born.
"This isn’t a good time, Mother," I said firmly.
I raked my fingers through the blonde crow's nest that had formed
on my head during sleep. Even at that hour, Mother probably
looked like the quintessential Hollywood goddess: chic, icy
blonde and drop-dead gorgeous. To say our standards differ is
the understatement of the century.
"You’re certainly testy this morning, young lady.
If you had to face all the early movie calls I have, you’d
manage it better."
She always forgets I was there. I remembered how well she handled
toddling out the door before the sun came up; that’s how
I learned so many swear words.
"What do you want, Mother?"
"I want my cutie-pie son-in-law to come and get me."
Just because she hated my truck, she had no right pestering
Drew. "Have you forgotten he’s starting a critical
trial today?"
"The way you talk about it, how could I? He’s helping
the Swampland Production père et fils prove they didn’t
steal that boondoggle 'O6 script. Imagine being proud of writing
something so bloated. Four hours? It took San Francisco less
time to recover from the 1906 earthquake."
"That’s Marshland Productions," I corrected,
unfairly so. Since the Marshland duo seemed part of the Hollywood
minority she didn’t know, she’d absorbed her opinion
from me.
"Whatever. Don’t worry, darling. They won’t
be courting today," she said.
Elsewhere in the condo, I heard the soft sounds of a sledgehammer
crashing through another wall. Mother made me hire that dolt.
I lit into her.
"Courting, Mother? I love it when you use technical terms."
"You want technical, Tracy? Fine," Mother snapped.
"The police think I killed the plaintiff in Drew’s
case. How’s that for technical?"
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