Dead Men Don't Blog: A John Ray Mystery -...

I had something to write, a piece that was going to make some dame a hit with some dweeby Web community—though why a dame who looked like our Miss Vye aka Dashwood needed to write anything to gain popularity escaped me. Not that I was going to spend too much time thinking about it. She had some other kind of action going on and the less I knew about it, the better, as far as I was concerned. I was only interested in keeping up my part of the bargain and giving her a piece of writing: a vignette, a bit of a feuilleton. Something hard, solid, and bright, something that would flash up in a reader's face. Something as long or as short as I wanted, and for it, I was going win the gratitude of a dame who could make e.e. cummings resort to capital letters when she walked into the room.

I should have gone back to my office to start doing just that, writing that piece. But something told me that it might not be a bad idea to make a quick detour to my apartment: that maybe me holed up and working late in my office was just where someone wanted me to be.

When I got to the floor of my apartment, I unscrewed the bulb in the hallway light and the corridor went black. Yeah, there was a faint light coming from beneath my apartment door, and it wasn't from any lamp that I'd left on. I had been recently trying to reduce my carbon footprint and usually the place was as dark as Cormac McCarthy in an onion cellar. Seems I'd had an uninvited guest, or still had one.

I slipped off my Florsheims, eased open the door, and edged inside. Someone was in my bedroom slash office. I could hear the sound of papers being rifled. I flattened myself against the wall adjacent to the bedroom doorway and waited. After a few more minutes, the desk lamp went off, and I heard the familiar tattoo of six-inch heels jackhammering my floorboards. As she came through the door, I snicked on the living room light switch and had her in a clinch before she could say dangling participle.

"Lemme go!" she yelled.

"Settle down, Sugar," I hissed.

"I said, lemme go!"

She thrashed and tried to kick back at me with those stilettos, but I planted myself with legs apart to hold my balance and keep my shinbones clear. I tightened my grip. I don't like hurting dames, but I don't exactly hate it, either, if you know what I mean.

"Knock it off and pipe down," I said, "or you might end up spending some cooler time for breaking and entering. And my book editor friend at the Gazette won't be the first phone call I make about the whole sordid affair. Savvy?"

That took the gas out of her and she slumped, so much so that if I hadn't been holding her tight she'd have gone down faster than a Barnes & Noble clerk at a book signing. I tossed her onto the sofa and walked to the sideboard to pour us both a drink.

"Talk," I said, handing her a couple fingers of bourbon. "And make it non-fiction, or you won't like my feedback one bit."

"I… I just came by to see how things were going."

"Really?" I said. "Thought you'd interrupt the creative process, is that it?"

"No, I… I'm just anxious about all this. Overeager. I'm sorry. I knocked, and there was no answer, but the door was unlocked, and I just…"

"You just trespassed."

"Yes."

"That's funny," I said. "Since that door was locked when I left."

"Jack, I swear."

"Yeah, you apparently do a lot of things, Eustacia. Or should I say Elinor?"

She looked at me for a moment and then took a big swig of the Maker's Mark.

"No flies on you, Jack," she said, and her demeanor seemed to change, as if in concert with her identity.

"If you thought otherwise, you wouldn't have pegged me for whatever you've got going on, would you?"

"I'm not playing you for a sucker, if that's what you mean," she said.

"Really? Then what are you playing me for?"

"The door was open. I let myself in. The light in your bedroom was on and…"

"And?"

"I went in. There were papers everywhere, all your files were all over your desk and the floor."

"Odd coincidence that I should have two break-ins in one night, isn't it? According to you. But what's really odd," I said, "is that you still felt it was worthwhile going through all those papers and files anyway. Even though someone, according to you, had already been through them. But maybe you were looking for something different."

"I…" she was thinking fast, "I guess I was trying to figure out what they—whoever broke in here—was looking for."

"That's a good story, Angel. Maybe you should be a fiction writer instead of a literary agent."

She knocked off the rest of the bourbon without flinching, clacked her glass on the coffee table, and got up from the sofa.

"I know where my talents lay," she said, coming toward me.

"Lie," I corrected her, putting my drink on the sideboard.

"Only if you want me to, Jack." She starting cranking up the coquette routine, and put a hand on my chest. But I wasn't having any of it.

"Who are you?" I said. "What's your angle?"

"I'm a writer," she said.

I grabbed her wrist hard with one hand and gave her a fresh one across the cheek with the other.

"I'm an agent," she whimpered.

I smacked her hard again.

"I'm a writer!" she wept.