With the exception of a few new faces, she’d met all these ladies before. She was well acquainted with them, and she knew they were a real mix of serious writers and dabblers. Their personalities ranged from down-to-earth normal to truly bizarre, but they all had one thing in common: They loved mystery novels. They knew the genre inside and out and had great fun talking about every aspect of it.
For an hour, Lucy spoke about the importance of weaving a good, believable plot, then she opened the rest of the time up for questions. In the front row, a woman she didn’t recognize raised her hand. Lucy took a drink of her coffee and pointed to the lady.
She stood, consulted her notes, then asked, “Where do you get your ideas?”
Lucy groaned silently and lowered her cup. It was the question she was asked most often, and the one she could never truly answer. “I don’t know,” she answered as best she could. “A snippet of conversation enters my head, or I’ll get a flash of a scene, and I know that’s the next book. I have to figure out what it means, but I never know where it comes from. I just thank God it keeps coming. The day it doesn’t, I’m in trouble.”
Next she pointed to an older woman whom she recognized from past meetings. “Yes,” the older woman began as she stood. “Do you have an agent? And do you recommend getting one?”
Okay. That one is easy. “Yes I do, and yes I would.”
A third woman stood. “In your talk, you mentioned the use of red herrings or false clues as important in order to keep the reader guessing. In the book I’m writing, I have one of the townspeople kill a dog. Everyone in town then thinks he must be the killer, and that’s what readers are led to believe also. But he isn’t. Would you say that’s a good red herring?”
Lucy swallowed. The woman was serious and expected a serious answer. “Well, without reading your story and knowing the context in which the dog was killed, nor the mind-set of the townspeople, I’m not sure I can answer that for you. But I would say that you’re the writer, and if you feel it works, then I’m sure it does.” That answer seemed to satisfy the woman, and she sat down.
The next woman to stand was Jan Bright, president of the Women of Mystery and also a Barnes and Noble employee. “When you talked to us last year, you mentioned that the next idea you had for a book involved erotic asphyxiation and Internet dating. Is that what you’re working on now?”
Lucy hadn’t recalled talking about the book at a writers meeting, but she obviously had at some point. “Yes, that’s the book I’m working on right now.”
“Can you tell us how it’s going?”
Hmm. How did one describe bouts of muse-induced euphoria sandwiched between thoughts of ramming your head through the wall? “Great.” She smiled and raised her coffee. “I’ve killed off three men, and I’m about to kill a fourth.”
The ladies laughed, and Lucy glanced up from the group seated in front of her to the store beyond. Like a magnet, her gaze was immediately drawn to a tall man leaning one hip into the “local interest” book rack a few feet beyond the last row of chairs. He had dark hair, and, like the first time she’d met him, he pinned her with his intense brown eyes. He wore a black long-sleeved Moosejaw T-shirt tucked into a pair of jeans. One corner of his mouth slid up, and her heart pinched and swelled at the same time. Quinn was the last person she’d expected to see at the Women of Mystery meeting-although technically he wasn’t standing close enough to be considered in the meeting.
Lucy bit her lip to keep from smiling and answered the next question.
“How much money do you make?” someone she didn’t recognize asked.
“Enough to live on, but not as much as I deserve.” She didn’t want to read anything into Quinn’s appearance. The night before last, when she’d told him she wasn’t a nurse, he’d seemed to take the news really well, but during pizza he’d become distant. It hadn’t been anything tangible. Nothing that he’d said or done, but she’d felt him withdraw. She’d wondered if bringing up his dead wife had been a mistake. She’d wondered if, while he’d been in the bathroom, he’d rethought his involvement with her.
“When’s your murder-on-the-Internet book going to be out?”
“May of next year.”
Next question. “Can you give us four examples of books in which red herrings or false clues kept readers guessing right until the very last page?”
What? Was she back in college? Get real. Even if she hadn’t been distracted by a mad, bad, and handsome-as-hell man staring at her, she’d have had a hard time with that question. She shrugged and named four of her books.
“We have time for one more question,” Jan announced.
A woman with white hair and big brown glasses stood, and Lucy groaned inwardly. The woman’s name was Betty, and, seeing her stand, the group as a whole gave a collective moan of agony.
“I’m writing a book that takes place in a nursing home,” Betty began, although Lucy knew all about Betty’s book. Betty had been writing and talking about the same scene in the same book for years. “If I wanted to kill off an old man, like my ninety-year-old father, how best should I go about doing that? I called Ask A Nurse, but they were no help at all.”
She’d called Ask A Nurse for research help? Like they had nothing better to do? “I’m not sure. Perhaps if he’s on heart medication, you could overdose him.” Lucy straightened her papers, then shoved them into the collapsible folder in which Maddie had returned Lucy’s six chapters when they’d met for lunch earlier. She was looking forward to reading Maddie’s notes. Lucy placed the folder beside her briefcase and hoped Betty would get the hint.
She didn’t. “I thought smothering him with a pillow might work better.”
“Suffocation would be good if you want to use something that is hard to detect. There’s no specific autopsy findings that can prove suffocation,” she explained. “There might be bruising or abrasions if the victim struggles, but with airway constriction deaths, a coroner has to rely on physical evidence from the scene to support a diagnosis.”
“Huh?”
“If you want the killer to get caught, have him or her leave something behind at the scene.” She smiled. “Thank you, ladies, for inviting me here today. As always, it was my pleasure to speak to you again.”
She grabbed her briefcase and shook a few hands. As she slowly made her way toward Quinn, she chatted briefly with some of the ladies who were always kind enough to attend her signings.
After Quinn had left her house the other night, a part of her had wondered if she’d see him again. When he’d left, instead of grabbing her and locking lips as he had the few times they’d been together, he’d kissed her forehead. Something had been wrong, but he’d called yesterday afternoon and asked her over to his house for dinner. She was embarrassed to admit, even to herself, how happy she’d been to hear his voice. Of course she’d agreed, but the dinner wasn’t for several more hours.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as she came to stand in front of him.
He pushed away from the book rack. “You told me you were talking to these ladies today, and I wanted to hear you.”
She looked down at her briefcase so he wouldn’t see her smile. “That’s sweet.”
He chuckled, and she looked back up. “No one’s ever called me sweet.”
“What have they called you?”
He gazed beyond her for several seconds, then put his arm around her shoulder. “Things I can’t repeat in public.” Together they walked past a group of The Peacock Society lined up at the checkout. “I thought you might come over early.”