With a nonchalant shrug, he said, “It’s only for the pitch. We’ll be back with a crew if Simon gets approval.” Then he held up the waxed paper envelope, said thanks again, and disappeared back into the great room. A moment later, she heard his footsteps ascend the stairs.
Pouring a glass of wine, Annie discerned that Bill had a name that was as nondescript as the man himself. He was average height, average looks, average everything; his hair was a dull shade of brown, same as his eyes. She supposed, however, she should have told him he’d spoil his appetite if he ate a cookie before dinner. It could have opened the door to casual camaraderie that she might be able to use later to gather information as to why Simon was really there. If she at least had that, maybe Annie could relax.
Then an afterthought jumped into her mind: the cookies. Because Mary Beth hadn’t been at the breakfast table, she’d missed out on the packet of freshly made sugar cookies that Annie had wound up giving the guests as a thank-you in advance for helping pitch in with the pre-Simon housekeeping.
She inserted two cookies into another envelope and put away the wine. Then she made her way through the great room and climbed the stairs for the second time that day, though she rarely went up there. Annie knew that, celebrity or not, all of their guests deserved privacy. For some unknown reason, Mary Beth seemed like an exception.
Chapter 10
Someone was crying. Actually, it sounded more like a whimper.
Annie had reached Mary Beth’s door and raised her hand to knock, but paused it in midair. She waited a moment, then knocked anyway.
The whimpering stopped.
Annie knocked again. “Mary Beth? It’s Annie. I forgot to give you something.”
There was no response for a few seconds, then Annie heard footsteps approach the door. The handle turned slowly; the door creaked open.
“I’m sorry,” Mary Beth said, “I was napping.” But her eyes told a different story: thin, jagged red lines laced the white areas around her pupils, and mascara was smudged on her lower lids.
“Are you all right?” Annie asked.
She nodded and started to close the door. Which was when Annie did what she’d read about thousands of times in books and seen in films and on quirky TV cop shows: she wedged her foot inside the door.
“Please,” she said. “I brought cookies.” She held up the small bag. “I’m told they do wonders for curing sadness.” She smiled with what she hoped looked like empathy.
Closing her eyes, Mary Beth said, “Okay. Come in. But you might regret it.”
If Annie were anyone but Annie—like if she were someone with half a brain left in her head—she would have handed Mary Beth the cookies, bid her well, and left her the hell alone. Instead, Annie gently pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Mary Beth went to one of the small boudoir chairs by the window and sat down. Annie shut the door behind her and joined her guest by settling on the matching chair. She placed the cookies on the round tea table between them.
With her small chin tipped down toward the hardwood floor that still gleamed as it had gleamed when it was installed three months earlier, the young woman said, “This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.”
The declaration sounded portentous; it skated on the edge of mystery as Annie had imagined. Perhaps she hadn’t been wrong.
Purposefully keeping her voice low, Annie asked, “This isn’t how what was supposed to happen?”
“It’s messed up. Don’t you see? I’m worried about Simon Anderson. When I heard he was going to be here, I knew it could be a problem for me. So I figured I only needed to stay out of his way. But when I saw him reading your book . . . and I wondered if he was somehow connected to you . . . well, I don’t know either one of you, you know?”
Yes, Annie thought,she knew that. She also knew that she did not know beans about Mary Beth or about what she was trying to tell her. But Annie said, “I know,” in order to keep the conversation going.
“When I read your note I was terrified that he’d start asking me questions about stuff I don’t know anything about. I knew it wouldn’t take long for someone like him to figure out I was lying.”
“Lying?” The question shot from Annie’s mouth before she had a chance to soften it.
Mary Beth nodded. Her voice fell to a whisper. “Once he knows I’m lying, he’ll start digging around. That’s what reporters do, isn’t it?”
Annie tried to choose her words more carefully. After all, as Mary Beth had said, they did not know each other. She suppressed a fleeting concern that the woman might need professional help, that she might be in danger either to herself or others. Pressing her lips together, hoping to garner courage, Annie asked, “If Simon starts, as you said, ‘digging around,’ will he learn something so terrible?”
What do you have to hide?Murphy would have added if she’d been in the vicinity.
“He’ll find out who I really am,” Mary Beth said.
Annie knew that as a writer she was naturally curious about people, places, situations. Mostly people. How they thought. Why they did the things they did. In short, what made them tick. Because of that, Mary Beth’s reply was one of the last things anyone should tell a mystery author if they neither wanted nor expected the next question. “Who are you, Mary Beth?”
“No one you know. No one you’ve met.”
