They’d work it out. They had to. Because he couldn’t imagine it any other way.
Blake had gone to the head, then relocated when he came out. So Alden drifted toward Roz, who now stood by a refreshment table to the left of the audience. Almost fifty fans, he guessed. They stood and clapped and shouted at the arrival of the dramatic Dame Enolia Honeywood.
OK, she wasn’t a Dame, as far as he knew. But she should’ve been. Especially in that flowing dress—not unlike Mae’s, except Enolia’s was splashed with a tropical floral print. Big jewelry, silver-blond hair, emphatic pink makeup and probably a little surgical touch-up gave her a polished look.
He knew she was in her sixties. She could’ve passed for a decade younger at least. She wasn’t a beautiful woman, but she was attractively confident. She didn’t seem like someone trying too hard to be famous for social media. She didn’t need to. She had beach pails full of charisma out of the gate.
“Hello, my dears!” she called out, waving around a shiny jacketed hardcover of her book. “Craig here is going to give you all a special memento of this occasion as I talk. Just be patient, and everyone will get one.”
The crowd murmured in excitement as the fortyish balding man in the bow tie and wire-rimmed eyeglasses who’d followed her out of the hallway—seriously, a nerd right out of Central Casting—smiled nervously and shifted the open box he carried onto one arm. He moved toward the crowd and began handing out cellophane-wrapped rectangular objects sealed with red curly ribbons. It took a moment for Alden to realize they were thick sugar cookies decorated with the cover of Enolia’s novel.
Alden had reached Roz by now and bent over to whisper in her ear. “A generous gesture,” he said.
“She can afford it,” Roz murmured back. She offered him a half-full glass of champagne, and he took it gladly, quaffing a refreshing sip of cool bubbles. It wasn’t high quality, but even mediocre champagne had its appeal. Especially since he’d finished his coffee ages ago. Caffeine, meet alcohol. Shall we dance?
“All right, settle down. I’m going to tell you a story,” Enolia called out, ignoring the podium as she paced in front of the audience.
A flash made Alden jump. He turned to see their staff photographer, Hai Yung, shooting photos with his big camera.
“No flash, please,” Craig declared.
“It’s fine, Craig. You may take a few photos with the flash,” Enolia called out to Hai, whose superpower was being invisible in most situations. It was how he got such great photos.
“I don’t have to, ma’am,” the twentysomething photographer replied, looking embarrassed.
“Please,” the author said. “You don’t mind, do you, my friends?”
The crowd laughed, some said no, and with the slightest cringe, Hai shot a few more photos of Enolia in various theatrical poses, holding up her book each time. Then he ostentatiously popped the flash off the camera, stowed it in his backpack and retreated between two rows of bookshelves.
Enolia nodded, an amused smile on her face. Clearly, she wanted to milk the photo op. But she was cheeky enough to tweak the nose of the press while she was doing it.
Alden spotted freelancer Sheryl Pugh as she stood, looked around, then scurried out of her row, around the crowd and Enolia, and toward the back hallway. Restroom, he guessed.
Enolia watched her go. “Was it something I said?”
Laughter followed. A disheveled woman with three kids came out of the hallway, looking frustrated. “Get that lovely woman a glass of champagne,” Enolia called to the bookseller at the refreshment table. “And will someone give her a seat, please?”
An older man got up, but the mom waved him off, smiled at Enolia and retreated to the children’s section to watch. Alden felt for her. Not everyone wanted to be in the spotlight, and Enolia seemed to be going out of her way to embarrass people. Maybe she’d been a standup comic in a previous life.
He looked at Roz, who shrugged. But she also had a question in her hazel eyes. What did Roz know that he didn’t?
“Now, where was I?” Enolia asked the crowd.
“You were going to tell us a story!” a man called from the third row.
“That’s right. I was,” she said. “But you know what I’d rather do right now? Read you a scene from my book. Would you like that?”
Cheers greeted her proposal. She could’ve proposed baking more book cookies and gotten the same reaction, Alden suspected. But he was excited to hear her read, too. Theatrics aside, her books always kept him hooked.
Enolia moved behind the podium, donned a pair of reading glasses that had been stowed there, and opened the book to a spot denoted by a big, obvious bookmark. She ran her finger down the page. “Now just let me find it …”
She lifted her eyes to the audience before she looked down and read, “The body of Renda Child retained a ghastly beauty that reminded Detective Harbaugh of the last time he’d seen her, pale and far too thin, as she stalked the runway in New York.”
Enolia surveyed the crowd, enjoying her fans’ murmurs, then their rapt hush … until a piercing scream shattered the silence.
Chapter Three
Roz’s head whipped toward the sound as half the audience stood and even Enolia startled. Not part of her act, then, she thought.
