So much for an alibi.
“Vivienne hated her, you know.”
The words startled me out of my thoughts, and when I glanced up, that strange expression had returned to Whitney’s face.
“Who?”
“Simona.Vivienne hated her.”When I didn’t say anything, Whitney continued, “Vivienne always had to be the best, you see.But by then, Vivienne was…well, she was established.She wasn’t the bright new thing anymore.She’d been around for, God, twenty years?In some ways, she was still at the top of her career.The TV show helped.And the true crime books.And it didn’t hurt that she was always running into old college friends and former neighbors and distant cousins, all of them getting caught up in murders that Vivienne had to solve.But tastes change.People want something new.And Vivienne was never able to break into the literary mystery—that circle of critics and tastemakers never accepted her.”
“And Simona was young and brilliant and—what did you call it?A bright new thing?”
“I don’t know why Vivienne cared,” Whitney said.“She had everything she wanted.But she couldn’t stand Simona; you could spot it from a mile away.She smiled, sure.She was polite—Vivienne was never rude.But you spent two seconds around them, and you were going to get frostbite.I think Vivienne was actually happy when the police arrested Simona.”
“Do you think Vivienne framed her?”
“I don’t—” She stopped and checked my face.“I don’t know.When you said this might be connected—I don’t know what I thought.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted Robert Kessler dead?I mean, I got the bare bones—Steven had an argument with him, and Margaux found the body.But anybody else?”
“It wasn’t Steven,” Whitney said, shaking her head.“Steven and I met over drinks that night.We were discussing some edits he’d sent me.”
“I didn’t realize Steven was your editor.”
She offered that strange look again, like somehow I kept missing the obvious.“We were all tangled up in each other’s lives back then.That was before Langstoff and Lock dropped me.”
And now Steven was dead too.
She kept watching me.She didn’t move.She didn’t even seem to breathe.And I had that animal response to too much eye contact: the need to shrink down, run away, find somewhere to hide.
“You’re serious?”she asked.“When you say who else might have wanted Robert dead?”
I nodded.
“And you think this person might have killed Vivienne too?”She picked up her coffee and set it down again.“Oh my God.And Steven.”
“It’s possible.”
“Did you know,” Whitney said with a fresh wariness, “that the person who finds the victim is often the killer?”
Of course I knew that.I was a mystery writer.But I restrained myself to a nod, and then I said, “But Margaux didn’t have a motive—”
“Yes,” Whitney said.“She did.”Setting aside her coffee, she leaned over the table, and her voice dropped so low that I had to inch closer to hear her.“Robert was the one who convinced Vivienne she didn’t need an agent anymore.”
“Wait, what?”
“Vivienne was going to fire Margaux.She was going to get rid of her.Vivienne was smart.She was savvy.She knew the business inside and out.Why give fifteen or twenty percent of her money to somebody for doing the work Vivienne could do herself?”
It wasn’t that simple, I knew—some writers had the fantasy that they could build a career in traditional publishing without an agent, usually under the assumption that they would handle the contracts and negotiations themselves or through a lawyer.And a few of them did manage to make it work.But the reality was that most agents’ value lay not in the negotiations but in their contacts with editors at various publishing houses.And editors changed.They retired, or they quit, or they moved houses.Writers who didn’t use agents often found that they didn’t need an agent until they did—and it was too late.
Someone like Vivienne, though—with her clout and sales record—could have made it work.And twenty percent of the take would have been significant, especially, as I knew firsthand, when Vivienne’s personal finances had been much more precarious than the world had ever known.
“This didn’t—” I stopped.“Let me guess: that’s not in the book.”
“Of course not.Because who wrote it?”Leaning back, Whitney pulled her purse into her lap.She looked smaller than she had, her shoulders hunched as she glanced around the room.“Vivienne controlled the story from the beginning.”
Chapter 18
After Whitney left, I was stuck with cold coffee and even colder thoughts.
