The Name of the Game Was Murder (16 page)

So far, so good
, I thought. I removed Augustus’s manuscript from the pillowcase and propped myself against the headboard, the blanket around me, the covers pulled up high. Then—so excited that my breath came in bursts and gulps—I removed the rubber bands that kept the manuscript rolled, spread it out on my lap, and trained the flashlight on the title page.

“
T
arnished Gold
, by Augustus Trevor,” I whispered aloud to myself, then began to skim through the pages.

There was some fascinating stuff in that manuscript, a lot of it about famous people I’d heard of. I would have loved to read the whole thing, because right away I saw that this was full of secret behind-the-scenes stories I couldn’t wait to tell Darlene; but there were four hundred and eighty-two pages in this manuscript, and I didn’t have enough time. According to my watch, it was close to one in the morning.

I searched each page for the names of the people Augustus had invited to play his horrible game, but it wasn’t until I reached page 105 that I found the first name: Laura Reed. Augustus wrote well, and that was the problem. He drew me right into Laura’s story, and I could see this young Hollywood actress who had made a good start and had a promising career to look forward to. But she had a problem that could cause all her dreams to vanish: an
equally young husband named Larry, who was jealous of his wife and her new life that excluded him. After an argument in which Larry had insisted she forget Hollywood, Laura had tried to patch things up. The use of a sailboat, offered by a director friend … a day on the ocean … It should have been idyllic, but late that afternoon a hysterical Laura had brought the boat back alone. According to her story, as they’d turned the boat toward shore Larry had been hit by the swinging boom and knocked overboard. Laura claimed to have searched for him until finally, in desperation, she gave up and returned to the dock. Two days later, Larry’s body washed ashore at Emerald Bay.

His death was ruled an accident, but many years later Augustus discovered that the boat had
not
been offered by that director friend. Laura had asked for its use. And it wasn’t until later that the owner had noticed that a mallet, which was part of the ship’s equipment, was missing. He’d thought nothing of it, deciding it had been misplaced, but Augustus had drawn a different conclusion.

I put down the manuscript, shocked by what I’d read. Augustus had practically called Laura a murderer! Maybe she’d been telling the truth. Then again, maybe she hadn’t. If she’d murdered one person who had got in her way, she could have murdered Augustus, as well.

This was heavy stuff to think about, and it scared me, but I thumbed through a few more pages and came to Alex Chambers’s name.

I already knew that Alex was a stinker, but I didn’t know how truly rotten he was until I read what Augustus had to say about him. Alex Chambers, the famous dress designer, had made investments under a fake corporation
name, and these investments consisted of New York sweatshops, staffed by recent immigrants, many of them children, most of them people from Vietnam who couldn’t speak English.

I’d seen a television exposé of sweatshops, so I knew exactly what Augustus was writing about: guards and padlocked gates at the doors while people bent over sewing machines ten to twelve hours a day for very low pay. Alex Chambers, who publicly gave generous amounts to charity at balls where the women wore his expensive creations—just how wonderful would they think he was if they knew how much of his income came from badly mistreating workers, many of them children?

Would Alex have killed Augustus to keep his secret from being exposed? It was possible.

Fifty pages on I found Augustus’s story about Buck Thompson. In 1979, the last year Buck had played pro ball, he’d fumbled the ball at a crucial time in a big game, and his team had won by a close two points. Buck had claimed a back injury, even spending two weeks in the hospital, but Augustus had come up with an informant, a bookie named Willie Peeples, who’d sworn that Buck had secretly bet on the point spread for this game and other games, and in his manuscript Augustus accused Buck of faking his injury in order to control the score.

I winced, thinking about Buck’s commercials and work with kids. What would happen to this well-known role model if Augustus’s information was printed? To keep the story from being made public, could Buck have killed Augustus? Buck was strong, and he had quite a temper.

Groaning, hating what I had to do, I kept turning pages until I got to Senator Arthur Maggio. A number of years
ago his son had been an attorney for one of the organized crime families—Bonino. So that’s where I had heard the name! But the senator’s son had gone into corporate law, breaking any ties with the Boninos, and the Maggios claimed to be free from that taint.

But not according to Augustus, who insisted that no one ever leaves the mob. Augustus suggested that the generous funds raised and donated by some of the senator’s Political Action Committees had come straight from the Boninos, and wouldn’t the crime families love to have a president of the United States in their pocket!

I’d overheard my parents talking about Senator Maggio and how he’d spent most of his life working toward his goal of being elected president. Even though we weren’t that close to the presidential primaries, his campaign was already under way. The senator couldn’t afford to let Augustus publish that information. So what had he done about it?

My jaw actually dropped open, like in a cartoon, when I read what Augustus had to say about Julia. I’d been told about her good friend who destroyed all her manuscripts and killed herself, but according to what Augustus had discovered, after piecing together information from “reliable sources,” that wasn’t the way it happened. The manuscripts had been secretly carted off by Julia and her husband, Jake, who had been with her friend at the time she jumped. Jumped or was pushed—who was to say?

It wasn’t a simple matter of Julia sending the manuscripts out under her name instead of her friend’s name. Julia’s husband, as co-conspirator, got into the act first, spicing up the plots with graphic scenes, adding the
steamy “Julia Bryant” touches that had made Julia famous. Julia was nothing but a front for the novels!

No wonder Julia didn’t remember her own characters. They belonged to her once best friend who’d grown up with her in Buffalo.

Maybe it was staying up so late without sleep, maybe it was the fear that came from being trapped in a house with a killer, or maybe it was the awful feeling of being a spy in other people’s lives, but I felt terrible. I hugged the rest of the manuscript to my chest, pulled up my knees and rested my forehead against them.

Augustus must have had enough proof that the stories he wrote about took place, or he would have been sued for writing such things. The people he wrote about weren’t likely to be arrested, but they still had something to be afraid of, an urgent reason that the stories shouldn’t be published. All of them were dependent on public approval, and without it their careers were down the drain.

If Augustus’s information was right, then two of them—Julia and Laura—had already committed murder.

Well, that was that. I hadn’t learned a thing except information I really didn’t want to know. Any one of the five suspects could have murdered Augustus.

Five? Oh, oh, I’d forgotten Aunt Thea.

I searched the rest of the manuscript, and it wasn’t until page 356 that I discovered Thea’s story.

In 1962, she and Augustus had rented a private villa in Acapulco, taking with them only Mrs. Engstrom, who—as usual when they traveled—took charge of domestic matters and hired local people to staff the house.

One day Thea went alone to shop in town. Thinking she knew the way, she cut through a back alley to reach a
shop on another street. She’d been followed by someone who came up behind her, slashing at the straps of her handbag with a knife. Thea had resisted and in the struggle had fallen, dragging the robber down with her. Thea had managed to stagger to her feet, but the robber lay facedown in the dirt without moving. Thea had grabbed his shoulders, turned him over, and saw the knife protruding from his chest. She also saw he was only a boy.

Terrified, knowing that she could be arrested for murder, Thea ran from the empty alley, caught a taxi, and returned to the villa, where she made the mistake of telling her husband what had happened.

Why had Augustus threatened Thea with this story now—after all this time? Had he really intended to use it in his book? Or was he just trying to make her suffer?

Thea had killed
, I told myself, but I quickly answered back,
No! Not Aunt Thea. The death was an accident. She’d never commit murder.

At that moment the light tap at my door and the whisper of my name were more terrifying than if someone had broken down the door.

“Who’s there? Who are you?” I shouted. I threw off my blankets and leaped from the bed. The manuscript pages went flying.

“Samantha dear. It’s me—Thea. Will you open the door, please?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Right away.” I swooped up loose pages and stuffed them together, not caring about the order. Did I have them all? Yes. Thank goodness. But where to put them?

“Samantha?” Thea asked.

I quickly stuffed the manuscript under the mattress at
the head of the bed and stumbled to the door, tugging away the chair and turning the key.

As Thea entered the room she gave me a curious look and again rested a hand on my forehead. “Dear me, it
is
cold up here,” she said. “Maybe you’d be more comfortable if you shared my room tonight.”

“No, thank you,” I said. I took a long, slow breath, gestured toward the chair, and said, “Please sit down, Aunt Thea.” I was proud of myself. Just one day ago I would have been so nervous, I’d have given everything away, but through this weekend I’d learned a little game-playing of my own, and at the moment I was calm and cool and in charge of myself. I liked the feeling.

“When I found out what Alex was up to I sent him to his room, and I want to assure you he’ll stay there,” Thea said. “Such stupidity, sitting in the hallway, practically keeping you prisoner, just because he has the ridiculous idea that you know the location of the manuscript.”

I quickly turned away so that she couldn’t see my face and fell over the chair. So much for being in charge.

“Are you all right, dear?” Aunt Thea asked.

“I’m fine,” I squeaked, although I really wasn’t. From my hands-and-knees position I could see a page from Augustus’s manuscript lying on the floor, half under the bed, half out. It was too far away for me to reach, and it was in plain view. What if Thea saw it?

Thea bent to lend me a hand and help me to my feet, and my mind raced, trying to come up with a way to cover that page without drawing attention to it.

Zilch. Zero.
Nada.
I was all out of good ideas.

T
hea didn’t sit down, and I didn’t either. I kept myself between Thea and that sheet of paper. Surely, if she saw it she’d recognize the print and know immediately where it had come from.

“Have you been able to sleep, Samantha?” Thea asked.

“No,” I said honestly, “but I’m tired now.”

She smiled and slipped an arm around my shoulders. I kept edging sideways, trying to turn her back to the manuscript page. Thea looked a little puzzled, but she said, “I’m sorry your visit has turned out so badly, dear. I’d looked forward to it with so much pleasure.”

“So had I,” I mumbled. This was my mother’s aunt, and I was treating her like one of the suspects. How could I? She had been married to Augustus and probably had inherited everything he owned. That included his manuscript, so she had a right to know that I’d found it. “Aunt Thea,” I began.

But she ignored me, going on with what she had in mind. “Your mother told me that you were bringing some
of your stories, hoping that Augustus would critique them for you. I’m sorry that has been a disappointment to you, as well. Unfortunately, Augustus wasn’t generous with young writers, and he was not likely to have guided you, either. Your mother said that you felt unable to proceed with a writing career without guidance—”

“Aunt Thea,” I interrupted, “there’s something I want to tell you.”

“Before you do,” she said, “I’d like to point out that you must have dropped a page from one of your stories. It’s there on the floor, and I know you don’t want to lose it.”

At that moment we heard a loud thud, a thumping, and a terrible crash.

Aunt Thea and I raced out of the room, down the stairs, and into the hallway, waving our flashlights ahead of us. The beams of light flew from ceiling to wall to floor like flashes of lightning, exposing Julia, Laura, and Senator Maggio, who came flying out of their rooms.

“What is it?”

“What’s going on?”

The thumping continued, and we raced toward the source.

On the landing Buck gripped Alex by the shoulders, banging him up and down against the floor. Alex held the open burial urn in his right hand, and he bounced it with all his strength against Buck’s broad back.

“Stop it!” Thea commanded. “Stop it this minute!”

There was so much anger and authority in her voice that the two men separated. They sat and stared upward. Alex’s self-assuredness had vanished, and Buck pouted like a mad little kid.

“What’s this all about?” Thea asked.

“I caught him in my room,” Buck growled. “He ran, and I chased him.”

Alex smiled as his poise began to return. “I thought Buck was asleep. It seemed like a good opportunity to look at the first clue Augustus had given him.”

Buck muttered something, and for a moment I thought he was going to hit Alex, but Alex got to his feet and glanced in my direction. “I realized that Samantha was right. The clues we got weren’t enough. If it would help to see the first clues … well, I’d just be a step ahead of the rest of you in finding out.”

The others were all so angry they began yelling at Alex, but I kept thinking about His Royal Scariness and how furious he must be at the way his urn had been treated. Raising my voice so that it was even louder, I shouted at Alex, “What are you doing with that burial urn?”