The Last Cheerleader. Meg O'Brien

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СКАЧАТЬ in the bedroom. I ran in there when I heard my friend scream.”

      The cop who was asking questions looked at the other one. “Fits what we found at the scene,” he said. Turning to me, he added, “You were lucky.”

      I felt a chill, remembering the displaced air as the bullets whizzed by my ear.

      “We’ve checked the road and the beach,” he continued, “and we couldn’t find anyone. At least, anyone who shouldn’t be here. We’ll walk you back to your house, though, and look inside once more before we go.”

      “Thanks,” I said, turning to Lindy. “Ready?”

      She stood and came close to me, as if afraid to get too far away. I turned to Patrick and handed him the throw cover. Half smiling, I said, “Well, good night, then…not that it hasn’t been lovely.”

      “I’ll call you,” he said, walking us to the door with an arm around my shoulders.

      It took me a moment. “Oh, you mean dinner. Sure. Call me. It’ll be fun.”

      The deputies left my house and I got Lindy settled in bed just in time to see the sky lighten up over the ocean. I checked to be sure the front door and windows were locked, then took a shower. After that I made some dark Sumatran coffee and took a cup out onto the deck, along with an old newspaper. My Adirondack chair was dripping with sweat, as usual, from a light mist, and I put the newspaper on it to keep my jeans dry. Over my clean tee, I’d pulled on a sweatshirt with a hood because the air was chilly. It was June, though, and by the time ten o’clock arrived the sun would be high and warm.

      Living at the beach was something I’d always dreamed of. I didn’t kid myself, though. With Tony gone, and with Craig’s new contract a question mark, I might not be able to afford a house in Malibu and an office in a Century City high-rise. Oh, I’d do okay, because I’d made investments and saved, getting out of the worst stocks before they crashed. And there would still be commissions from Tony’s royalties. Maybe more than ever, now that he’d been murdered.

      Funny how dead writers and artists sell better after they’ve passed on. It’s as if the readers want to get into their heads, to figure out who they were and why they died. In the case of fiction writers, though, that’s a misconception. Fiction usually contains bits and pieces of the writer, the writer’s mother and father, the writer’s neighbor, some guy the writer met while walking his dog, and umpteen characters he or she may have seen on television and in the movies. It would be difficult for an author to write about him or herself every time, as it’s said that there are only thirty-six plots that exist in the entire world. The trick is to tell them differently and more originally each time. For that, you need a lot of people in your head.

      Sometimes I wonder how they do it. Especially the ones who write about serial killers. How do they keep all that horror in their minds for the length of a manuscript, and not become affected by it?

      As for Tony and my commissions on his royalties, I figured that those, along with my other authors commissions, would hold me for a while. Real estate around L.A., however, especially here at the beach, was out of sight. The mortgage payments on this house and the office in Century City would quickly eat up whatever monies the near future would bring in.

      Well, that was the life of an agent, as well as just about everyone else in the entertainment and literary business in L.A. Up, down. Up, down. It was like riding a pogo stick.

      That, or wearing a little pendant with cocaine in it. I know several who do that, and inevitably, they end up cheating their clients and keeping their money. They cash authors’ royalty checks from overseas without telling their clients that they’ve come, and with this they pay for their drugs and their high-flying lives. Until someone catches them out and sues. Then they lose all their clients, several of whom have come to me with stories of having been betrayed that way. It takes a while for them to trust anyone after that, but some of the best authors around have come from that kind of situation and have stuck with me now for years.

      There must be someone in that group, I thought. Someone with a potential best-seller sitting on his or her desk right now. I’d have to go over my list of authors and their books in progress, see what I could turn up, and what project might be worth putting my own personal energy into. It might not be so bad, working with an author again to pull a book into shape…page by inept page.

      Oh, God. Save me.

      I sighed and drank the fast-cooling coffee, turning my thoughts to Lindy and the night before. Had the intruder been Roger? The main reason I’d taken Lindy in was because I knew something about Roger that she didn’t, and I’d felt sorry for her. But now what did I do with her?

      Lindy answered that question herself, standing at the door with a coffee cup in her hand. “I’ll be leaving soon,” she said. “I just wanted to talk to you first.”

      “Come, sit down,” I said, patting the seat of the chair next to me. “Here, it’s wet. Let me put some of this newspaper on it.”

      I spread out a few dry pages, and Lindy plunked down on the chair with a tired sigh. Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes. “I feel so helpless. I don’t know why I came here, Mary Beth. I just didn’t know where else to go, and I felt like I was losing it. For good, I mean. I guess I’ve really been losing it for years.”

      “Do you want to tell me why Roger threw you out?” I asked.

      She looked at me briefly, then glanced away. “It’s not a pretty story.”

      “Something you did that angered him?” I asked. “Another man?”

      “Oh, God, no. I’ve got enough to handle at home without another man in my life.”

      She appeared to be thinking over whether to tell me about it. Finally she said, “I found out something about Roger. Something really bad.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Some marriage, huh? The homecoming queen and king, the perfect match. Most likely to succeed.”

      I didn’t respond, but wondered how much I should say. I thought I knew what Lindy had found out about Roger. Not the details, of course, but in general. If I turned out to be wrong, though, I’d only be opening a hornet’s nest.

      Roger Van Court was someone I had loved from afar in high school. He was the rich kid in class—not that I was impressed by that, or the fact that he was captain of the football team. If anything, I saw those aspects of Roger as a cliché. His good looks were something else, though. He had the cutest dimple in his left cheek, and when he smiled it seemed like the sun came out. Who wouldn’t want him, at the age of sixteen when flaws are never seen or even believed in?

      I was horribly shy, however, and I always had my nose in a book. As for Roger, even before Lindy there was usually some gorgeous girl with him. When Lindy started going steady with him, I felt envious, of course. But I also lived vicariously through her. She would tell me all about their dates, and how wonderful he was, and how well he treated her. I could only hope that someday I’d have someone like that.

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