Aftermath Page 12

  “Something scary?” I managed to say.

  “A love scene actually. There’s usually only one or two per book, but it raises the stakes for the main characters—horror works best when there’s a lot to lose.”

  Bebe stood. “Coffee?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” David said. While Bebe exited with lots of hip action, he lounged on the sofa to my left that completed the U-shape of furniture around the low table.

  I asked, “How did you manage to sneak up on me?”

  “I wasn’t sneaking. The wall behind you conceals a pocket door that leads into another wing of the house. That’s where I do my work.” He settled in, hands behind his head, elbows jutting out. “Your father gave me the idea, actually. I was at his place one time, and Brady rose up through the floor like a vampire in a haunted house. Scared the shit out of me.”

  “So you like to scare your guests, too?”

  “Of course, they expect it. Do you like a good scare, or do you prefer the love scenes?” He gave me a rakish smile that suggested bedrooms rather than dungeons.

  I gulped some coffee. “In your books, um, like you just said, there are way more scary scenes…and they’re really good.”

  “There are more of them because they’re a snap for me to write. I like doing the love scenes best—they’re a lot more challenging. If they came easily, I guess I’d be a romance writer instead.” His grin widened.

  “But you never had any doubt you’d be some kind of author?”

  “It’s all I’m good at.” He gave me a playful shrug. “Well, that’s not entirely true.”

  I could tell he knew exactly what he was doing to me. However, before I could cool his jets so mine could settle down as well, I heard Bebe in her heels coming down the hallway. For her benefit, I said, “I appreciate you spending your morning break with me. Is it hard for you to stop and then get started again?”

  As soon as I’d said it, I winced at the double entendre, but he didn’t run with it. Instead, he replied, “I do what Hemingway did: always stop at a place where I know what’s going to happen next.”

  Bebe entered with a matching mug of coffee. She set it before David on the tray, bending over more deeply than she needed to: bombs away.

  Despite the flesh show only a few feet from him, he still was looking at me. Maybe he knew what was going to happen next, but I had no idea.

  CHAPTER 11

  Bebe straightened and glanced from David to me and back again. Her brogue came out a little thicker, as if to draw his attention. “May I do anything else for you now, Mr. Stark?”

  David said, “I’m good.” He looked at me. “You?”

  “Fine, thanks.” The coffee had cooled, and I’d guzzled most of it already. If I asked for a warm-up, though, Bebe would never leave us alone.

  He smiled up at his assistant. She nodded and withdrew, again taking her time to exit, like an actor eager to hold the spotlight for as long as possible before leaving the set.

  My host bolted some coffee and said, “I never do this, but let me show you the slaughterhouse.”

  I almost dropped my mug. “The what?”

  “You know, the chamber of horrors: what everybody conceives of as my work area.” We set down our drinks, and David took me over to the wall of cherry paneling behind my chair. “See this?” He tapped two fingers against a faint rectangular outline in the grain and pushed. The cutout depressed a quarter-inch. What looked like a mere seam between panels edged back, and a floor-to-ceiling section slid to our left with the sound of a chair sliding across hardwood.

  The door-wide gap revealed an airy space that would’ve suited Andy, who was an architect. In addition to a plain pine standing desk with a high-end laptop, the only other furnishings on the caramel-colored floor were a lounge chair, footstool, and lamp. Huge windows in the back showed the trees that shielded David’s home, and overhead lights suspended from exposed beams brightened the room—necessary because a low, dense cover of snow clouds had made the morning already look like dusk. Aromas of coffee and vanilla-scented floor wax replaced the smell of burning firewood from the other room.

  Once inside, he showed me the doorbell-like button on the crème wall and used it to close the panel. Beside the button was a set of wall switches for the lights and the automated window blinds that nestled against each of the wood beams.

  I pictured the outside of the house again so I could get my bearings. We now stood in the stone manor wing. It was as if David had aped the exterior of my father’s place but instead of continuing that theme within, he created a work area that better reflected his personal interior. His “slaughterhouse” comment now made me smile. He wanted to show me his true self. Just as I’d loved the spaces Andy had designed, I adored this room, too. I could’ve stayed there forever.

  As I reveled in the bright, spacious simplicity, he pointed to a hallway on the opposite wall. “The manacles and iron maiden and all are in the other rooms. Shitload of bats, too.”

  Laughing, I asked, “Gifts from your fans?”

  “You have no idea. If you ever need a coffin, just call. Some guy shipped me three he’d made by hand, with custom carvings inside and out and hand-sewn linings.” He shook his head. “That probably used up all his savings, so I’m sure he’d appreciate a handout from you.”

  I pushed him playfully, in part because he deserved it, but I also wanted to see how he would react. Some guys hated physical contact unless they were doing the touching; that always spelled a quick end to my interest. Not that I was really interested. Just keeping my options open.

  David staggered back into the wall and made a big deal out of rubbing his shoulder, but he smiled as he did it. “Never mind,” he said. “It looks like I’ll be suing you for your entire inheritance. Sit down over there and let’s talk about money.”

  I headed to the standing desk instead. He had a thick leatherette mat over the hardwood, which I guess would make the hours of standing tolerable. Having spent my teenage and college years doing jobs on my feet, though, I couldn’t imagine wanting to go without a chair by choice. The laptop screen was black, so I brushed the touchpad. Nothing happened.

  “What are you up to?” he asked, walking over.

  “I wanted to read that love scene that was too much fun to abandon.”

  “Goddamn, you’re brash. No one sees my work until it’s ready.”

  Testing limits. He’d pegged me again—it definitely was part of my MO. I shrugged and said, “Can’t blame a girl for trying. Why so secretive?”

  He shot back, “Have you ever done any kind of art?”

  I looked at my boots. “Well, actually I always enjoyed writing. Or at least the thought of writing.” I looked up at him and confessed, “I haven’t managed to do any of it yet.”

  “If you ever start, you won’t want anybody to see it for a long time.”

  I snorted. “Because it’s going to suck so bad? Thanks a lot.”

  “All first drafts suck. Mine do, everybody’s does. It’s the nature of the beast. You have to write in order to rewrite—that’s where the real art comes in.” He shooed me away. “Sit down—you’re making me nervous over here.”

  I dropped into the lounge chair and put my booted feet up on the stool. “Tell me more about writing,” I said. “How do you do what you do?”

  David relaxed a little. He leaned back against his tall desk and tucked his hands in his front jeans pockets, a professor warming to his subject. “A beginning writer is the sorcerer’s apprentice,” he began.

  Not understanding, I frowned and shook my head. He tried again: “Writing well is like doing magic. Look at this.” He pushed a button on the laptop and it came to life with a symphonic sound and a lit-up screen. Pointing at the manuscript on the display, he said, “What we call letters and punctuation are just abstract symbols—meaningless pixels or ink on a page. It’s a
ll made up. When we come into this world, we don’t understand any of it.”

  He patted the area over his heart. “The only things we understand as little kids are basic emotions: mad, sad, glad, and scared. We have to be taught everything about language, the alphabet, what all these letters mean, because they don’t have any inherent meaning. You need to learn how each one sounds and how the combinations of them form words, each of which has a definition you also have to learn. Again, because it’s all made up. Are you with me now?”

  I said I was, and he continued, “None of it means anything—and yet….” He let that hang there a moment and gestured at the screen again. “And yet, if you take these abstract, meaningless marks and string them together in just the right way, you can make someone feel rage or cry or laugh or piss their pants in terror. These made-up symbols can cause a genuine, deep-down—real—emotion.” He tapped his heart again. “At our best, writers use something completely artificial and false—a lie—to produce an actual, true feeling in you. That, my friend, is doing magic.”

  I was impressed by his speech. However, the act of writing sounded even harder than I’d imagined, and I was glad I’d put it off for so long. I said, “You’re not giving me much hope of ever succeeding. How does the apprentice learn to be the sorcerer?”

  “You want to create magic tricks? You study magicians. Whenever you’re reading along in a book and catch yourself feeling something, one of the basic, deep-down emotions—mad, sad, glad, or scared—stop reading.” He clapped his hands once and then spread his fingers wide, as if he’d made a dove vanish. “You stop because right there the magician has done a trick. Go back and figure out how and why the trick worked: what combinations of words did the author use to establish the characters, action, dialogue, setting, and mood such that you actually felt something?”

  “Then what?”

  “You go to school on it, keep studying the tricks. Learn them so you can put a spin on those things and make the tricks your own. You’re smart, quick-witted. It’ll be a snap for you.”

  My stomach flipped as we looked at each other. Cade still had a lot going for him, but David definitely won in the charisma department. Finally, I said, “You’re a good teacher.”

  He shrugged. “I’m glad you think so, because now I’m going to piss you off. It’s time you learned about people and money.”

  That broke the mood. I sighed and asked, “Is this where you tell me about the error of giving fish to a man instead of teaching him to fish for himself?”

  “No, that’s bullshit. If you give a man a fish, he’ll ask you why you didn’t give him a bigger fish. If you teach a man to fish, he’ll demand that you give him your favorite fishing spot. To ask him to find his own damn spot is to deny him an opportunity. To ‘disenfranchise’ him. What I’m saying is, no matter what you do for folks, it’s never fucking enough.”

  “That’s a pretty cynical view of people.”

  “It’s based on experience.” He crossed his arms and went on. “Years ago, right after I started to hit the bestseller list, I volunteered to teach writing at the high school here and the nearby community college. Pay it forward, you know? I taught them how to fish, but the little bastards always wanted more: ‘Would you rewrite my story to make it better?’, ‘Can we work on a book together?’, ‘When will you introduce me to your agent?’” He made a sour face, eyeglasses flashing. “Everybody looking for an angle, so they wouldn’t have to work hard.”

  “That’s the way of the world,” I said. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” His expression turned even surlier, but I settled in for the argument. “Can you blame them for trying to get a leg-up and not have to rely on luck or fate or whatever?”

  He threw up his hands. “Yeah, I guess earning your way is too old school.”

  “In a bunch of interviews, you said your first manuscript was plucked out of the slush pile and given to an editor by a summer intern—some girl who went back to school without realizing you owed all your future success to her. You expect everyone to be that fortunate?”

  “I expect people to try and fail and try again until they succeed.” He pushed off the table and started to pace. “I know the young guy you were with at Azteca. I’ve been down the street where Timothy lives. It’s a slum, but it doesn’t matter how much money you give those people—it’ll never be enough to save them. They’ll just develop more expensive vices or find other ways to self-destruct. Because that’s what’s keeping them on that street. They’re comfortable in failure; they like feeling sorry for themselves. It suits them.”

  There were so many fronts I wanted to fight David on, but I still really liked him despite his attitudes. Maybe I could change his thinking if I stayed levelheaded. Keeping my voice even, I told him, “I didn’t say I’d give them cash. I said I want to help them. My dad controlled this town and seemed to go out of his way to keep them down; I want to rectify that.”

  David seemed to struggle with what he wanted to say next. His expression softened, and he braced himself as if he were about to deliver a confession. Then his defenses kicked in and he replied, “I gotta tell you, Brady was a rat bastard in many respects. We grew up together, so I know everything about him—I mean everything—but the man understood money. He also knew what makes people tick and how to motivate them.”

  The abrupt change of topic threw me, and David’s implication that he knew some secrets about my father made my mind race. Abandoning the philanthropy discussion, I blurted, “Can you tell me why so many people around here seem to hate me? Someone even carved ‘MURDER’ on my rental car.”

  He frowned at me, walked over, and sat beside my boots on the footstool. “What was that last part again?”

  I told him about the flat tires, the tipped statue, and finding the word written in frost and gouged into the trunk lid.

  He asked, “What did the police chief think?”

  “He has no idea. Do you?”

  David shook his head. “You’re not going to keep sleeping there, are you? You might wind up like a victim from one of my books.”

  “Believe me, I’ve thought about that, but I don’t like the motel out on the highway, and I don’t know anywhere else to stay around here.”

  “I’ve got plenty of space.” My jaw dropped, and he started talking fast, “I mean, you could have a whole wing to yourself—we’d never even bump into each other. Until Cade gets this situation sorted out, it’s not safe over there.”

  “Before, I couldn’t even get in to see you without a literal engraved invitation. Now you want us to be roomies?”

  He stammered, “Well, you only just got here but you’re already running into all kinds of shit. It reflects badly on my hometown, and I’m in a position to help, so….”

  I stared at him. If he’d set his sights on me during our encounter at the restaurant, he could’ve staged the whole thing. He left ahead of us and could’ve driven straight to my dad’s place to wreak a little havoc and in the morning returned to gouge “MURDER” in the frost and into the trunk. Then I’d come running to him like some damned damsel in distress, our meeting time already set. He’d know those incidents would be weighing on my mind, and he would provide the perfect solution to ensure my safety.

  Viewed that way, it looked like a plot from one of his novels: scare the girl and have her run into the arms of the monster posing as her savior. On the other hand, maybe I was being paranoid and suspicious of a perfectly innocent offer. He did look concerned about me.

  Probing for flaws, I asked, “Won’t Bebe mind?”

  “Why would she?”

  I laughed. “Oh, please. You invite a single woman to stay here, and she’s not even going to bat those long lashes?”

  David was shaking his head before I’d finished. “We’re not a couple,” he said. I sneered at that, and he started his verbal tap dance again. “Not anymore. I admit we ha
d a thing years ago, when she first came to work for me. I was newly divorced, and Bebe…well, hell, she was even hotter back then. But now it’s strictly business, I swear.”

  “You’re full of it,” I said. “I’m as straight as they come, but with the way she looks and that accent? Even I’d fall for her if we stayed cooped up together all alone in the woods.”

  “She’s got a thing going with Cade, okay? Happy now?” He stared at his shoes. “She tossed me aside for a younger man. Someone who can keep up with her.”

  David looked plenty fit to me, so the “interactions” Cade had alluded to must’ve been extra-vigorous. Why hadn’t the police chief come in with me, then? Get a little morning loving while I had this meeting? I wanted to think it was because Cade liked me and maybe was hoping for something deeper. No way could I compete with Bebe, though, in any department. Just my luck—she’d been with both guys who’d caught my eye, and maybe she still switched between them whenever it suited her.

  Giving my booted ankle a squeeze, David said, “Hey, it’s a free country—girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do. Anyway, don’t worry about Bebe. Just think about my offer, okay?” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to get in another thousand words today. Come back and stay for a while, at least until Cade catches whoever’s trying to scare you.”

  I freed my leg and set my feet on the floor. “No promises. Even if I decide to come back, though, I can’t get in: Bebe took my Admit One card.”

  He reached into his wallet and handed over a solid black card bearing only a phone number and e-mail address. “Just flash this at her. It grants you permanent access. Text me first though—I’ll let you know when I’ll be coming up for air next.”

  I thanked him, tucked the card into my purse, and let him lead me back through the secret door, across the smoke-scented study, and into the main hall. I opened the closet to retrieve my coat. No sign of Bebe anywhere, not that I was disappointed. Given our tense encounter, and David’s obvious interest, I could picture her ready to ambush me. With an axe.