Pompomberry House (29 page)

Enid looked impressed too, but probably not in the way that I
did. My way was the ‘Oh lover-boy, please take me right here on the table’ kind
of way. I tried to calm my libido. There were murders to investigate. I fanned
myself with a napkin, pretending to be angry about the writers’ invasion.

“Indies,” scoffed Enid.

“Excuse me! I’m an indie!”

“It’s just the latest fad — a bubble. My sister-in-law is in
publishing. She said this Kindle malarkey is just a gimmick that will wear off,
like tamagotchis.”

“Tamagotchis?”

“Yes. Except tamagotchis required less feeding. I’m waiting
for the fad to pass, and then I’m going to release my novel.”

“Oh, I didn’t realise you’d written a novel.”

“I haven’t, but I will do soon. My sister-in-law is very
excited about reading it. It’s just as Peter Pearson says — the problem with
indies ...”

“Who’s Peter Pearson? The name sounds familiar.”

“He runs one of the big publishing houses in London.”

“Oh yes, that’s right. Which one?”

“I can’t remember. Anyway, he wrote a very apt article this
week about indie writers and the lack of a net to catch the bad ones.”

“Unlike having friends in publishing,” I muttered. I was
beginning to understand Enid Kibbler. She wasn’t a literary traditionalist, she
was just run-of-the-mill jealous.

“So, Enid,” began Gareth. “What can you tell us about Amanda
Kenwood’s death?”

Personally, I’d have been more subtle, but Gareth’s method
was already in play, so I’d have to see where it took us. Besides, how could I
object when he had been so masterful?

“One of
you
did it,” she said, being unexpectedly
direct.

“One of us?” I asked, pointing to me and my husband.

“No, not him. You, or one of the other writers.”

“So you saw the connection between the stories?”

“The whole Kindle community has seen the connection between
the stories.”

“What do you mean?”

“Haven’t you heard? Your anthology is at number fifty-seven
in the Kindle book chart.”

“Are you serious?”

Goodness gracious me! A book that I had contributed to, was
in the Amazon top one hundred! Wow! This was the moment I had lived for. One of
my life’s ambitions had been achieved. Woohoo! And here I was, finding out
about it, with the man I loved by my side! Could the moment be any better?

Well, I guess the murders, animal cruelty, impending
cannibalism and imminent divorce put a dampener on things, but heinous crimes
aside, this was very pleasing.

I realised that I was sitting there with a massive grin on
my face and I tried to readjust it. Instead, I ended up with a weird forced
frown. I decided the best thing to do, would be allow a little smile to prosper
— get the happy out of my system. So, I let my muscles stop straining to hold down
the corners of my mouth. However, it wasn’t a small smile that escaped but a
massive grin. Suddenly, I found myself laughing, and not just giggling either, but
a deep, belly laugh.

I was painfully aware that I was sitting in a café, talking
about murder and laughing like a maniac. Gareth grabbed my thigh to try and
calm me, but it just made me even more excited and I hiccupped.

What had come over me? Nervous energy must have built up
over the past few weeks. Now suddenly the dam had burst and the stress was
escaping in the form of this insane laughter.

Enid stared at me, looking concerned.

“It wasn’t me,” I said, defensively.

“Please ignore my wife. She’s been through a lot lately.”

“So it would seem.”

“Why are you so sure that it was one of the writers?” he
asked.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? The book is at number
fifty-seven.”

“And you really think that’s because of the copycat?”

“Of course it is! The book was terrible.”

Finally, I found my tongue. “She’s right, the book is
terrible.”

Then the reality of the situation hit me. I might have a
story in the top one hundred, but it was dire. It was an unfinished first draft
that had been named by somebody else, and what’s more, it was filed amongst
some of the worst stories ever written. I was going to be a laughing stock.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel like smiling anymore.

“I’m sorry Enid, I don’t know what came over me.”

“Do you really think any of the writers could have known
that Amanda’s murder would lead to sales?” Gareth asked Enid. I remembered his
earlier assertion that publicity could not have been the motive.

“But it’s not just Amanda’s murder, is it? All sorts of
peculiar things have been happening. The murder was the first thing that was
high profile enough to draw people’s attention to the pattern. People are
buying the book because they want to know what’s going to happen next.”

“Do you really think any of them would stoop that low, just
to get into the charts?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Enid, “I do. If it’s not one of the writers,
then it’s somebody who cares very deeply about one of them.”

Chapter 15

Back at home, there were things I needed to ask — things I
hadn’t been able to ask on the tube. Somebody had a lot of explaining to do.

“What were you doing there?” I asked my husband, taking a
beer can out of his hands before he could open it.

“Where?” he asked, trying to grab the can back from me.

“You know where.”

“Café Revive?”

“Yes. Café Revive!”

“Okay, don’t freak out ...”

“What have I told you about starting sentences with ‘Don’t freak
out’?”

“I’ve been following you.”

“
What
?”

“Since you started entertaining suspects.”

“You mean you’ve done this more than once?”

“Only thrice,” he said casually, as if that was a small
number of times to stalk your ex.

“
Thrice
? When were the other times?”

“Annabel.”

“You were there when I met Annabel?”

“Yes. And by the way, the Macarena was hilarious.”

“You were there when the barman danced?”

“Yes.”

“But when I described it you pretended to be surprised.”

“I had to, otherwise you’d have known that I was following
you.”

“You deceived me!” I cried. “Hang on; is that how you were
so good at remembering what Annabel looks like? It was because you’d seen her
with me?”

“Yes.”

“So it wasn’t because she’s ‘memorable’ ... because
she’s ‘fit’?”

“No.”

So perhaps he didn’t fancy Annabel after all. He hadn’t
remembered her because she was beautiful, he remembered her because he’d been
stalking me — thank goodness. I beamed at him, but then remembered that I was
angry.

“When was the other time? Were you there when I met Rafe? Were
you there when Danger and I followed Netta?”

“No, because I didn’t know you were going to do those things.”

“So you would have followed me if you had known?”

“If I had thought you were in danger, then yes!”

“When else did you follow me?”

“Emily Whistlefoot.”

“Why?”

“In case she was the killer.”

“But Emily’s just a sweet teenage girl!”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know that when I followed you, did I?”

“So did you leave, once you saw how harmless she was?”

“No, because you should never underestimate the enemy.”

I wasn’t sure how to feel. On the one hand, I felt that
Gareth following me was a horrendous breach of trust. On the other hand, it
showed deep concern for my safety. If I’m honest, my self-defence skills are a
little scant. I probably couldn’t have defended myself if one of my coffee
dates had tried to kill me. The liaisons had been unwise and Gareth had had a
good reason to be concerned.

“Why didn’t you just ask if you could come with me?”

“We’d broken up.”

He had a point. Had he offered to come with me, I would have
felt conflicted and almost certainly refused. Even so, did that justify
skulking around in secret?

“Gareth, you mustn’t follow me around anymore.”

“Okay,” he said, reaching for his beer once again.

“I’m serious. Promise me that you won’t follow me again.”

“Only if you promise not to meet any more suspects. Let the
police do their job.”

“Gareth, you know that the police
aren’t
doing their
job.”

“Well, they might now that Amanda is dead.”

“All right, I promise not to meet any more suspects.”

He smiled, and gave my knee a quick squeeze. I passed him
his beer. However, rather than open the beer he’d been craving, he suddenly
tipped his rucksack upside down and a dozen DVDs tumbled out.

“What are you doing?”

“I was planning to come here after lunch. I’ve brought back
some of the DVDs.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“Well, I’ve already re-watched these.”

“Gareth, there are at least ten films here!”

“Yeah. It’s boring at Barry’s.”

He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes, purposefully.
I supposed I could find it in myself to relieve him of the boredom of Barry’s
for one more night. After all, he would have been my saviour had one of the
suspects attacked me with a cake fork. You should never let a silly detail such
as not getting attacked with a cake fork stand in the way of a little well-deserved
sex.

I pulled Gareth on top of me and collapsed onto the sofa. I
wondered if the assertive man from Café Revive might put in an appearance. I
smiled to myself as I remembered lunch — my husband had sprung into action and
stood up for me. And looking at the bulge in his jeans, I’d say he was standing
up for me once again.

* * *

No more meetings with suspects, that’s what I had promised.
However, with interviewing people off the menu, I was a little lost. I sat in
front of my computer, wondering if there was any kind of research I could do
from home.

The first thing I did was check the rank of the anthology —
for research, obviously.
Wowsers!
Number thirty-five! A Dee Whittaker
book was in the top forty! Then I remembered the calibre of the book, and felt
slightly nauseated.

By now, news of the copycat must have spread further than
just Kindle reading circles. I searched for Amanda Kenwood in Google news.

Sure enough, multiple national news sources were reporting
that a killer was copying the stories from a ‘a ropey short story collection’
by a group of ‘vanity publishers’.

I felt my blood begin to boil. We were not ‘vanity
publishers’, we were indies! I had
chosen
to be an indie. I didn’t
want
a publisher. It was a conscious decision to self-publish because that was the
life I wanted for myself.

As for ‘ropey’, I was mortified, but I couldn’t entirely
disagree. Even the stories that had been finished were poor. My unfinished draft
was a catastrophe. Now, thanks to
The Book of Most Quality Writers
, I
would never sell another book! That reminded me, I hadn’t checked the sales of
The
Red River
today.

I signed into my Kindle dashboard.
Holy Moly!
I’d
sold 235 copies in the last twenty-four hours. What was going on? Surely ‘Busty
and Giving’ wasn’t attracting readers? I’d used ‘wandering’ instead of ‘wondering’
at least twice! Still, I wouldn’t complain, I could really use £235 right now.

The Red River
was now in the top 100 humour books, so
I quickly grabbed a screenshot and sent it to print.

The forum seemed like the next obvious point of call, so I
quickly signed in. The most recent post was by Danger Smith. Presumably it would
be about the copycat.

No, on closer inspection, Danger was asking for feedback on
his new cover — a brown square with a pixelated semi-colon in the centre. I was
temporarily sucked in, not because I liked the cover (how could I?) but because
I wondered what the twenty-eight replies could possibly have to say about a
brown square with a pixelated semicolon in the centre.

The first few were lies. Dawn claimed to think that it was ‘daring,
brave and progressive’. Annabel claimed to think that the colour scheme was ‘en
vogue’. Montgomery said that the cover ‘complemented the tone of the story’
(which may well have been true). Eventually, Rafe Maddocks had posted a comment,
politely informing Danger that whilst the cover was an improvement on his
blurb, it wasn’t quite captivating enough to sell a book. Danger responded with
‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Rafe, don’t I have your depth of experience? I’ll tell
you what, shall I replace it with a 3D spinning burlesque dancer instead?’

The next thread was an argument about bookshops. Should we be
supporting them more instead of ‘selling our souls’ to Amazon? The discussion had
gotten pretty heated. One user called ‘bookshop owner’ was particularly enraged.
I wondered if I should broaden my list of suspects to include bookshop staff.

Then somebody brought up Peter Pearson, the managing
director of one of the biggest publishing houses in London. He was quoted as saying
‘Vanity publishing will be the last nail in the coffin of reading. If eReaders and
the shockingly poor self-published content that they feed us are allowed to
prevail, people will become so disenchanted with reading that they will turn to
staring at the wall instead.’ Wow — that was one bitter man.

Below that was a thread about the film adaptation of Montgomery’s
I Shot
series. The general consensus was that it was great. I supposed
it might be true.
I Shot a Man
wasn’t too bad, as books by the
Pompomberry House crew went.

Finally, four threads down, the discussion turned to the
copycat. It was interesting to see how people prioritised their lives. I
skimmed through. The thread began with a post linking to all the different news
articles covering each event, from the pig through to Amanda’s death. It had
been posted by a user whom I didn’t recognise. I opened all of the articles
separately and sent them to print.