Page 25 of Killer on the First Page
And again he cut her off. Did he ever let a single woman finish a single sentence?
“Better youse talk to that toffee-nosed tosspot yourself,” he said, with a snide nod to the corner of the room where Fairfax was now cowering behind a fern.
Changing tack, Scoop said, “I noticed your latest Mick Hardy novel, uh”—she checked her notes for the title—“Me, the Judgment, is quite a bit shorter than the previous seventy-five books in the series.”
“Is it?”
“Oh yes. The first one you wrote”—back to her notes—“I, the Vengeance,was almost four hundred pages long. The latest one is barely two hundred, and the plot is not as complicated, so I was wondering if this is because Mick Hardy has suffered marked cognitive decline over time due to TBI.”
“TBI?”
“Traumatic brain injury. I’ve noticed he’s always getting hit on the head and knocked unconscious. Once or twice a novel, in fact. The ability to withstand repeated head injuries without suffering any apparent ill effects seems to—”
“Interview is over, Snoop.”
“Uh, it’s Scoop.”
“Right, a skirt named Scoop...” He patted his pockets absentmindedly. “I really should write that down.”
“Also, he seems to get shot in the shoulder an awful lot. By my count, he has at least fourteen bullets in his left shoulder alone. Does he have really broad shoulders, or are the villains just really bad shots?”
But by that point Kane Hamady, toughest writer in the room, had stomped off in a pouty snit. A hard-boiled hissy fit.
Chapter Seven
The Penny Drops! (In for a Visit)
As Miranda watched Kane leave the room in full snit, a voice behind her cried out joyfully, “Miranda!”
She turned with one of her patented pivots and a breathy “Yes! It is I.”
A statuesque woman in bright floral patterns was pushing through the crowd like the prow of a ship. For a second, Miranda didn’t recognize her. When she’d known her, Penny Fenland had been a socially awkward girl with aesthetically awkward glasses who’d been brought on toPastor Fran Investigatesas a “lady reader,” to give a much-needed female perspective on the scripts the all-male writing staff were churning out. None of Penny Fenland’s suggestions had made it to air, though, and she soon left TV entirely, moving to Canada to pursue a career in writing fiction. Her novelsOver the FootlightsandBehind the BacklightsandCast Up by the Sea!were international bestsellers. The gawky string bean of yesteryear was gone. The Penny of today radiated confidence. Acclaim, plus shoulder pads and laser eye surgery, will do that. Even her stride was confident. Success became her!
“Penny, it’s been too long.”
“It has!”
She embraced Miranda, not in that fake mustn’t-smudge-one’s-makeup cocktail manner of Hollywood, but in a full bear hug. So tall, so strong, she almost lifted Miranda off her feet.
“So tell me,” said Penny Fenland. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m the co-owner. We’re hosting the reception.”
“I don’t mean the bookstore, I mean this town. It’s so quaint, it could be the setting of one of my novels.”
Miranda laughed. “I can’t imagine anyone setting a mystery series in Happy Rock.”
Smiling warmly, Penny said, “I never thought I’d see the day! The great Miranda Abbott, retiring from acting.”
“I haven’t. Not exactly. I’m taking a sabbatical, as it were, away from the hubbub.”
A gleam came to Penny’s eye. “So you could be tempted back?”
“I can resist anything,” said Miranda, quoting Wilde, “except temptation.”
Penny glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “These other authors. What a circus of posers! I skipped out on the manure tour, and from the sounds of it, I made the right call. There was manure aplenty, in every sense.” She didn’t have patience for pretense. “I took Edgar’s advice to heart: never take yourself too seriously. Your work, yes, and your craft, certainly—but not yourself. We make up fairy tales for a living. Hardly out there saving lives or making the world a measurably better place. We’re scribblers, Miranda, even the best of us.”
Penny Fenland was royalty among other authors, yet she seemed refreshingly down-to-earth.
