The Last Cheerleader Read online

  Because the truth is, it doesn’t always matter how good or bad a book is. Once a seven-figure offer has been made and accepted, the news makes its way into Publishers Weekly and assorted media mags, and that’s the kind of money that talks here in Hollywood.

  “Dammit, Mary Beth, did you hang up on me?” Paul Whitmore roared through the phone.

  I gathered my wits and tried to mimic my cooing lovebirds again. “Of course not, Paul. I was just thinking.”

  “I hope you’re thinking that we’ve made a very good offer, and that Craig Dinsmore should be happy for what he can get. Rumors have it he’s on the skids.”

  “Oh, really?” I said in my best “ridiculous!” tone. “Where on earth did you ever hear something like that? Craig is doing extremely well, Paul. He’s just purchased a new home near Laguna Beach, you know. Not too far from the one Dean Koontz built a few years ago.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why would I lie?” I sure couldn’t tell him that Craig was holed up in a cheap motel over by the airport, writing his brains out in a push to survive. Or that I hadn’t yet told Craig about Paul’s six-figure offer. I knew he’d want to grab it and not try for more.

  “Listen, Paul, I have calls coming in by the dozens. I’ll have to get back to you.”

  “Wait.”

  “I really have to—”

  “Tell Craig Dinsmore we’ll come up by ten thousand. That’ll put him over the seven-figure mark, which I’m sure is what you’re angling for. I’ll also go from eight percent to ten percent on the paperback royalties. That’s the best we can do, Mary Beth, and it’s damn good.”

  Screw you, I thought. If you’re willing to go another ten, another twenty won’t hurt a bit.

  “I’ll pass the word along, Paul,” I said lightly. “That’s if I can rouse Craig. You know, he’s working round the clock to finish his next book, and he’s not always answering his phone.”

  “Then send a messenger, Mary Beth! This is my final offer, and I need to know by five p.m. my time. The offer’s only good till then.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Paul. Ta.”

  I hung up softly and sat thinking. Five his time meant two here, and since it was nearly eleven now, that gave me only three hours. Damn! My stomach was churning, and I realized I’d bitten off a nail during the call. I’d have to phone Craig and ask him if he wanted me to hold Paul Whitmore’s feet to the fire or accept what he said was his final offer. I personally didn’t believe it was final. Still, I couldn’t play fast and loose with Craig’s income without his consent, now that the offer was over seven figures.

  I called out to Nia on the intercom and asked her to find Craig for me as quickly as possible.

  “I’m already on it,” she said. “He still isn’t answering his phone, and his machine’s turned off. I’m trying all the bars around that area now.”

  “You think he’s started drinking again?” I asked worriedly.

  “Not necessarily. I just don’t know where else to start. And you know how he likes to hang out in bars and talk.”

  Craig became a near hermit last year when he began to attend AA meetings. Then, in the fall, he told me he wasn’t going to the meetings anymore. He felt that saying “I am an alcoholic” only imprinted it on his mind—thus making it a fact that could never be erased, leaving no hope for a “cure.”

  “I’m going it alone now,” he’d said. “I’m doing yoga, meditation, vitamins and herbs. My yoga teacher says that while I may have a problem with alcohol right now, it’s not right to label myself an alcoholic, or anything else, for life. That not doing so leaves the door wide-open for releasing the problem. Or, as he calls it, the challenge.”

  That kind of approach made me a bit nervous. It was hanging out in bars and entertaining the other hangers-on with tales of past exploits and publishing successes that had started Craig on that downward slide. All too often talking becomes the highlight of the day, taking over an author’s life and keeping him from applying his butt to a chair and his fingers to the keys.

  Nia knocked softly and opened my door. “No luck so far with the bars. You want me to go look for him?”

  Her hair was even more disheveled now, and I knew she’d been tugging at it while on the phone. There were shadows under her eyes, too, as if she hadn’t slept well.

  “No, I’ll go,” I said. “You’ve done enough today, fielding all those calls.”

  She came over and sat tiredly in one of the chairs across from me. “Here are the messages.” She handed a monument-size stack of them across the desk.

  “There must be a hundred here,” I said, groaning.

  “Fifty or so, anyway.”

  “Anything urgent?”

  She shook her head. “Mostly the usual, authors calling to see if you got their manuscripts and if you’ve got them a deal yet. Editors returning your calls from yesterday. Most of the editors called early, while you were at the police station this morning. How did that go?”

  I stared out the window, questions starting to whirl through my brain again. “I don’t think I was much help. They wanted me to tell them anything I knew about the private lives of Tony and Arnold. I haven’t known much about Arnold’s life, though, since we were divorced ten years ago. I told them I never asked for alimony, so there wasn’t much reason for us to stay in touch. We ran into each other now and then in restaurants, and once in a while he came by here to talk about that toy-creations book I sold for him years ago. As for Tony…” I shrugged.

  “How are you feeling about Tony?” she asked pointedly.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Confused, I suppose.” I looked at her. “Did you ever hear any rumors about either of them being gay?”

  “Gay!” she said, her eyes widening. “Never!”

  I remembered that she didn’t know about the Chinese dildo or the police suspicions about the murders being a gay crime. The cops had asked me not to divulge any information at all about the crime scene. Detective Rucker, the scruffy one, had told me that they wanted to keep certain information out of the papers, the better to catch the killer.

  Even so, I was tempted to tell Nia about it, as I knew how well she could keep a secret. It was only my word to the detective that held me back.

  “Do you think they were gay?” Nia asked.

  I shook my head. “Just wondering. Since they were together in Tony’s apartment, you know? And other things.”

  “Other things like the fact that they were both basically unattainable?” she asked, raising a dark eyebrow. “Mary Beth, we’ve talked about that. As long as I’ve known you, which is now about three and three-quarter years, you’ve never even looked at men who were available. When you get interested in a man, they’re always either married, engaged or gay. It’s that Conahan Wall. In this case, though, just because Tony and Arnold were both more or less unattainable, that doesn’t mean they were gay.”

  “I know that,” I said a bit snappily, then took my tone back with a smile. A long time ago, I’d had to admit that Nia was right about me and the kind of men I chose to go for. I’ve even thanked her for pointing it out—not that I’ve changed any, just because I know about it.

  “I wish you’d tell me what happened to you,” she said. “What’s that wall about, anyway?”

  I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and took out my purse, then reapplied powder and lipstick. My hand shook from exhaustion, and despite the expensive black suit and Gucci heels I looked like hell. But since I wasn’t going anywhere except to Craig’s motel—which he’d told me was a run-down hole-inthe-wall—it didn’t much matter.

  “Let’s talk another time,” I said, closing my compact with a loud snap. “I just can’t get into all of that now.”

  “It’s not just now. You never want to get into it.”

  I ignored that and stood. “You’ll hold down the fort till you go home at three?”

  “Of course. And I’ll keep calling around for Craig, in case you
don’t find him. Will you be back in time to talk to Paul Whitmore, one way or the other?”

  “I’ll have my cell phone with me, and if I know anything by two, I’ll call him from wherever I am.”

  “What if you don’t find Craig, and Whitmore calls here? What do you want me to tell him?”

  I thought for a moment. “Tell him Craig flew to Maui yesterday to gather inspiration from his beach house there.”

  She grinned. “So he’s supposed to be rich, confident and simply unreachable.”

  I grinned back. “Tell Paul I’ve tried and tried, but according to his housekeeper, he’s incommunicado.”

  I held out the packet of messages. “Anyone else in this stack…if they call again, tell them I’m sorry I missed their calls and I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

  “Right,” Nia said, smiling. “And would ye be wantin’ me to stand on me head as well?”

  “Gee, a black woman from Dublin with an Irish brogue,” I said on my way out the door. “What a sight. Almost wipes away that scene at Tony’s last night.”

  Traffic was heavy from Century City to El Segundo, which entailed going past LAX. I had time to think about Craig, Paul Whitmore, and what I was going to do to get Craig even more money—provided he wanted me to try.

  Negotiating was a lesson I’d learned long ago, though more to survive in L.A. than anything. I’d worked in L.A. for a television station after finishing high school in San Francisco—just on the writing staff, but hoping to be on camera eventually. I’d even gone out to crime scenes on breaking news stories, both as an observer and to show that I had initiative and wanted to learn. I did learn, and as a result I knew more now about the law and crime than most people who aren’t actually in the field. In fact, when I decided to become a literary agent, it was largely because someone at work had shown me his book, a true-crime novel, and asked me to read it, to see if I thought it was any good. Arnold and I were on the edge of divorce and I had time on my hands, so I went for it.

  The book was great, and after I’d fixed a few minor things for my co-worker, I encouraged him to send it to an agent. He asked me if I would act as his agent, and when I found out that all you really needed to represent a writer was a telephone and some letterhead, I went for it. I started making calls, telling editors I was “Mary Beth Conahan of the agency by the same name,” and leaving my home phone and fax number. Within two months I’d sold the guy’s book to a major publishing house, and negotiated a good contract for him, to boot.

  I was twenty-two at the time, and it was the first I’d ever even thought of becoming an agent. I was also kind of naive, and had no idea what it took to set up my own business. So I just stumbled into it, willy-nilly, and set my sails toward becoming Mary Beth Conahan, Literary Agent, for real. The first few years were more difficult than I’d ever imagined they would be, and I have to admit I often drank too much at the end of the day. I even messed around with drugs a bit. But then something happened, and for the last seven years I’ve been clean of drugs and only drink wine now and then. I’ve also worked my ass off to succeed.

  I started out with new, untried authors whose first books were exciting enough to interest publishers but needed editing before they were decent enough to go out. I edited their books free, feeling it was unethical to charge. Because of that, I’ve built a loyal clientele over the past seven years, and at the age of thirty-three I now have a stable of wonderful authors. I fly to New York and Europe at regular intervals, dine with editors, schmooze with them at all the important cocktail parties, and I’ve gained their loyalty by not sending them books I know are unacceptable—not even to please an anxious-to-get-going author.

  One exception to that was Tony Price. I knew his first novel, which was dark and made a case for the death penalty, would be highly controversial, at a time when a sizable portion of the population was marching against the death penalty. I’d pushed it out there, though, and after nine publishers had turned the book down, one accepted it—and the rest is history. Since then, his work had grown increasingly lighter, which made it easier to sell, though it always did have an edge, a bite to it.

  I know that in my thoughts I’d been hard on Tony this morning, but I think that’s only a wall I’d put up at the sight of him, dead, so that I wouldn’t be too gob-smacked by it. The good side of Tony Price was that he was intelligent, funny, supportive…about some things, anyway, like my work…and I loved hanging out with him. We had more fun together than I’ve ever had with anyone I’ve known.

  The downside was that I kept wanting to jump his bones, and I could just see how that would turn out—with him pushing me away and assuming that “just friends” attitude that I never could seem to break through. So I’d never even dared to try.

  Good thing, I supposed, now that it seems he was gay. Over the years of working in Hollywood, I’d adopted some pretty good radar for detecting whether a man was either married or gay. With Tony, however, I had to admit that I never suspected. If anything, I thought he was probably just nonsexual and put all his energies into his books.

  It would have been so much easier if I’d just known up front. But like Rock Hudson, he looked, sounded, walked and behaved like the typical macho man. He was the first man, I do believe, to ever fool me that way.

  The traffic finally moved and I came to Imperial Avenue, turning right and looking for the Lazy Sands Motel that Craig had told me about. He’d said it was one of the few still there from fifty years ago, and except for a rat, which he’d made into a companion, and the fact that it was filthy when he first moved into it last year, he liked his little hideout. He said it helped him to stay focused. And sober. In the early mornings, before most people were up and while there was little traffic along Imperial and Vista Del Mar, he would run down to the beach and do his yoga there.

  He’d made his stay in El Segundo sound like an adventure, and it didn’t seem too bad a deal, I thought. Until I saw the Lazy Sands. It was several blocks up from the beach, on a lot that looked like a junkyard. Rusted-out, abandoned cars were everywhere, and there was even a junkyard dog—a mix that looked like part Lab and part wolf. I parked as close to the lobby as I could get, but Wolf still managed to get between me and the door, his fangs bared and a warning growl deep in his throat.

  I use the word lobby loosely, because the windows were covered in graffiti and dirt that looked as if it hadn’t been washed off since the seventies. The room had the shape of a lobby, and the usual kind of entrance to one, but I couldn’t even see through those windows enough to tell if there was anyone in there.

  I don’t have a dog, but I love watching shows about them. So I smiled at Wolf and spoke in a high, soft voice, just like Uncle Mattie, the dog trainer to the stars, had said to do on PBS.

  “Good boy, good boy!” I said cautiously, moving a foot forward. But Wolf came toward me and bared his fangs as if he really meant business this time.

  It was then, fortunately, that the lobby door opened. An old man with gray stubble stood there, looking at me. “Tinkerbell!” he cried.

  “Uh, no…it’s not Tinkerbell,” I said, bemused. “Just me. Mary Beth Conahan.”

  “Damn you, Tinkerbell!” he yelled. “Get away from the lady!”

  Wolf—or Tinkerbell, as I now realized—backed off. She didn’t go far, though, standing her ground about ten feet away. I calculated whether I’d be able to make a run for the inside before she could reach me.

  “Don’t worry, she’s harmless,” the old man said. “She just likes to let people know she’s on the job. As long as you don’t look her in the eye, she won’t hurt you. If you look her in the eye she’ll see it as a challenge.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, then, God knows what she’ll do,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s not mine, she’s just been here forever. Some bum left her behind one day.”

  I carefully kept my gaze on the man. “I’m looking for a friend,” I said. “Craig Dinsmore. Can you tell me what room he’s
in?”

  “You mean that writer fella? Crazy as a loon, he is. In there all hours of the day and night, typing away. Have to charge him extra for lights if he stays here much longer.” He peered at me. “You say he’s a friend of yours?”

  “Yes. I’m just checking up, making sure he’s all right.”

  The old man didn’t look impressed.

  “He asked me to,” I added.

  “Well…it’s no skin off my back. Paid his room through the next week, after all. Number twenty-six.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Can I get there without Tinkerbell here biting my leg off?”

  “Like I said…” The man replied with a shrug.

  “Yeah. Don’t look her in the eye.”

  Relieved to get back in my car, I drove to Craig’s room, parking in the space in front of it. Stepping out, I looked for Tinkerbell but didn’t see her anywhere. As I stepped out of the car, though, I heard a growl. Startled, I looked around and saw that she was right behind my car, and had probably followed me from the office.

  With more fear than I wanted to admit, I looked away and crossed over to Craig’s room. I love dogs in general, but I don’t like being around big dogs who take eye-to-eye contact as a challenge to ravage my neck.

  I knocked several times on the green, peeling door of number twenty-six, and when Craig didn’t answer I went to the window. It had six square-foot panes, and one of them was broken. It had been covered from inside with see-through plastic wrap, something I hadn’t noticed when I’d parked. Curtains were closed across the entire window.

  I wondered if the place had a repairman, then realized that repairs were probably done by the old man. He’d looked besieged by arthritis and possibly osteoporosis, as his back was badly stooped. Add to that the dirty lobby windows, and I doubted that he kept up with anything here. He probably got free rent for acting as “manager” for a slum landlord who never came around and didn’t care. That would leave the tenants to make their own repairs. A sort of DIY motel.