Dying to Get Published (8 page)

"I'm sorry, no, of course not. I never pack the trays to the edge for just that reason." She'd pack them any way he liked. She'd stack them up or down, dance around him with a biscuit in each hand, feed them to him personally. Those wonderful chiseled features—the guy had to have great genes. Jaimie could use a few of those genes.

"What's the calorie count?" he asked, a deep furrow forming between his generous eyebrows. "Are they worth it?" he asked seriously.

Jennifer blinked. She'd hoped for something more personal. "I don't know about the ham—I don't eat meat—but the biscuits are the best in Georgia, and the ham is almost fat free."

He offered a mocking half smile. "You one of those nature freaks?" he asked as he bit off a third of the biscuit and then grabbed up a second.

He was considerably more appealing when he didn't talk, but then she found men frequently were, especially those who had trouble understanding her aversion to animal flesh. They did, after all, seem to
crave
it.

"No," she smiled sweetly. "I just have other preferences."

"Yeah." He turned back to his companion. "You ought to try these biscuits, Lily." Lily, his wife and the first runner-up for Miss Georgia.
She
looked better from a distance.

Lily wrestled the second biscuit from his hand and dropped it back onto the tray. "I don't know how you can eat like that. The worst thing that could happen would be for you to pork up to three hundred pounds again. And be careful of the gristle. You could loosen one of your caps."

Okay, so maybe his genes weren't so great. On closer inspection that chiseled nose looked a tad too chiseled. But whatever his surgeon had to work with originally, he sure turned out one beautiful product.

"People are standing in line for your job. If you lose some hair, I can take care of it, but gain some weight… All someone needs is an excuse. Look at what happened to Kyle Browning."

"That's not why they let him go," John insisted. "People died, and Steve says since Kyle survived, he had to be held responsible. Kyle was just doing his job. And Steve says Kyle's job was to move on when the time was right."

Lily's eyes grew dangerously narrow. "I wasn't talking about his weight, you nitwit. I knew Kyle Browning as well as anyone in Macon so don't go telling me what Steve said. And I don't think Kyle was finished with national TV. He was lying low, biding his time, but he had a plan. You, on the other hand, can't seem to see past your next Twinkie. You'll never make it into the big leagues if you don't stop stuffing your mouth."

"Hell, Lily, I hate it when you start in on me like this."

"
You
hate it…"

Suddenly, as though in tandem, Lily's and John's eyes turned to Jennifer.

Her cloak of invisibility had suddenly dissolved. She put on her best I'm-dumb-as-a-post-and-didn't-follow-a-word-you-said look. "Another ham biscuit?" she offered.

Lily gave her a drop-dead look, threaded her arm through John's, and pulled him into the crowd.

So Sam was right. Kyle Browning wasn't despondent, at least not according to Lily Dawber, and
there
was a woman who could make any man despondent.

But she would have to consider Kyle's state of mind later. Right now she had a ham biscuit to dispose of. She plucked it from the tray and wrapped it in a napkin. She'd put it in her pocket, but she still had grease stains where she'd once stashed a stuffed mushroom that had fallen on the floor.

She scanned the room. Typical party. Not a trash can to be seen. Sam would have one behind the bar.She swept in that direction, serving over half of the tray as she made her way across the room.

Sam was practically drooling over a gorgeous brunette as he handed the woman a glass of white wine. Jennifer came up behind him and let the biscuit thunk loudly into the metal can. She set the tray on the counter.

"Find out anything interesting?" Sam asked under his breath.

That Penney Richmond had corporeal form, but then Sam wouldn't be interested in that.

"Yeah, a little. It seems Lily Dawber had more than a passing acquaintance with Kyle Browning—and he wasn't depressed."

"Anything else?"

Jennifer shook her head. "I was doing great until they noticed I was alive. How about you?"

He wiped his hand on a towel and turned to her. "Bits and pieces. I just wish I knew what any of it meant. New York pretty much dissed the party, but most of Macon's media showed. The consensus seems to be that Moore is exploiting Browning's death to push his book—no big revelation. But I did hear something else that could turn out to be nothing or something big. See that woman over there?"

Even in that crowd, Penney Richmond stood out, and Sam was pointing straight at her. "Someone is threatening to kill her."

Chapter 13

For a moment the room spun. Jennifer grabbed hold of the bar and steadied herself.

"Are you all right?" Sam asked.

"Just fine," she lied.

Sam looked at her keenly. "You didn't threaten that woman, did you?"

She had, but she hadn't meant it. Really she hadn't. Still, she felt branded by her own malicious thoughts. S
he could almost feel the words
murderer-in-training
glowing in neon across her forehead. Could people just look at her and tell what evil plans she harbored? Surely not. If it were that easy, the world wouldn't need Perry Mason or Sherlock Holmes. But this man Sam—what was it he'd said to her the first time she'd met him?—reading people was his business.

"I mean, I could tell she was getting on your nerves," Sam continued. "She's loud enough she could be heard in Atlanta, but I never saw your teeth move through that sardonic grin of yours."

Thank goodness! He wasn't as good at reading people as he thought. He'd been wrong about her wanting to go out on a date with him—business meeting or whatever the heck it was—and he was wrong about her threatening Penney Richmond. That is, wrong about it being t
onight, verbally, in this room.

"I didn't utter a word," Jennifer insisted. "I don't threaten guests—at least, not as a rule—and I certainly didn't say anything to her." Nevertheless, sweat was beginning to drip down the back of her neck. She'd done it now, sending out threatening letters without once realizing they'd connect up with a living human being. And now she'd have to pay for it. The whole world would know because Penney was going to tell them.

"Just what did she say?" Jennifer asked as casually as she could manage. "Did she mention any names?"

"No names. Somebody has been sending her letters talking about how they want her dead."

Not dead, really. More like not alive.

"And this is unusual for her?" Jennifer croaked out.

"Not particularly. What is unusual is the frequency and the number. She's had nine in the past week."

Nine? The woman couldn't even count. Jennifer had sent four little letters, hardly more than notes and not
all
of them all
that
unfriendly. She'd been venting, that's all. Where was the harm in that?

A man in a dark suit came up to the bar and asked for two glasses of red wine. Sam poured them and handed them to him. As soon as he was out of earshot, Jennifer leaned across the bar and whispered, "Who does she think is sending her these letters?"

"Some no-talent, wannabe writer."

Jennifer exhaled deeply, like a steam pipe opening to relieve pressure. It was all coming back to her—why she'd decided to murder Penney Richmond in the first place. "Are those her words or yours?"

"Hers. Why?"

"Just curious." Mentally, she added,
and the difference between whether or not I ever speak to you again
.

"My, my, my." A smooth, deep, male voice spoke near her right ear. "Is my little Jennifer taking a break?" The smell of whiskey wrapped around her head like a scarf.

Jennifer turned to find herself nose-to-nose with Steve Moore.

"I've been looking for you. I know you've been around because most of my guests have been raving about the food, but somehow I managed to miss you all evening."

Miss her? She'd carefully missed him, keeping always to his back. And now she'd made the mistake of staying in one place too long. The old seducer had snared her.

Sam threw her a sly grin and an almost imperceptible nod of his chin. What did he expect her to do? Offer herself up to this lech to get a story for him? She should ram both of their heads together, but instead, she smiled. "Mr. Moore. So nice to see you again."

Moore captured her hand between his own soft, fleshy ones. "The pleasure, my dear, is all mine." He bent and brushed the back of her hand with his lips.

"You
must
be starved!" she declared, extracting her hand, grabbing up the almost empty tray off the counter and forcing it between them. "Canapé?"

Moore chuckled. "I can't decide if you're a vixen or a virgin."

"Actually—"

"Dee Dee's looking for you," Sam intervened. "I really hate to interrupt, but if Miss Marsh wants to keep her job, she'd better get back in the kitchen and load her salver with some more food. We wouldn't want her to get fired, would we?"

"Do you type?" Moore asked.

"Type?"

"Type as in keyboard. If you lose your job or if you'd like to do something more interesting with your life, I might be able to find you a place at my office. We're always looking for fresh faces."

"No, I don't type."

"Now, don't be modest, Jennifer. She's an excellent typist—over seventy words per minute," Sam declared.

"You don't say." Moore dug in his coat pocket and came up with a business card. "Give me a call early Monday morning, and we'll see what we can work out." He squeezed her upper arm. "Monday morning," he repeated and turned to join the crowd.

Jennifer shuddered—from rage or revulsion, she wasn't sure which.

"This is great!" Sam said. "Moore's offering you access to the crime scene
and
all the principals involved at the office."

"Yeah, just great." She grabbed him by the ears and drew his face down to hers. "I am
not
throwing myself out as bait to some alcoholic—"

"It's no wonder Moore is so infatuated with you."

Her next thought was to bite off his nose then and there, but instead she just sputtered unintelligibly and let go of his ears.

"Here's how we'll work it," Sam explained. "As far as anyone is concerned, I'm your boyfriend. I take you
to
work; I bring you home
from
work; and I insist on having lunch with you—every day. That way Moore shouldn't have the opportunity to put any moves on you, at least not any serious ones. It shouldn't take you more than a few days to find out what we need to know. I'll be there every step of the way. What do you say?"

She stared into those deep, dark blue eyes not more than a few inches from her own and thought for a moment. If she and Sam were ever going to find out what happened to Kyle Browning, this would be the easiest way. And surely a day or two at Moore's office couldn't be that bad.

"Oh, all right, but I have to have Wednesday off. I have an obligation that day."

"Fine, whatever you say."

Sam suddenly cocked his head, caught the back of her head in his hands and drew her mouth to his, kissing her gently. She felt an unfamiliar rush tingle through her body. It'd been a long time since anyone kissed her like that.

Sam straightened, and retreated beyond arm's reach.

She stared at him open-mouthed.

He shrugged. "If I'm going to play your boyfriend, I need to get into the part."

But did
she
need to get into the part? Somewhere deep down inside her she heard an annoying little voice calling to her, the voice of an unborn child who was getting impatient for a father.

A couple had come up to the bar and were motioning to Sam with their empty glasses. Sam turned to help them.

She should have slapped him, but he was counting on her not wanting to make a scene. Well, she didn't have any intentions of making a scene, and if he was interested in her, that was just fine. But Jaimie had better get Sam's role straight right away, and it had
nothing
to do with fatherhood.

Chapter 14

Penney Richmond's disembodied face loomed in front of Jennifer in the dark—all too human, all too
real
. Except for that teal eye shadow—that was pretty fake. And so was that platinum hair. Not to mention those eyelashes.

Jennifer sat up in bed and threw back her hair. Sweat had made her clammy. What kind of murder had she thought she'd been planning? Had she really believed she could kill someone without ever coming into contact with the victim? Penney Richmond was no fictional character to be deleted wit
h a key
stroke.