Queen City Corpse by Dan Andriacco

Author:Dan Andriacco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: murder mystery, mystery, sleuth, detective, homicide, humour, humor
ISBN: 9781787051423
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2017
Published: 2017-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

17. Cranky Old Man

“The way you phrased that was a kind of blunt force trauma in itself,” Lynda said after we’d excused ourselves and moved on from Winston’s.

We sat down in one of the plush leather sofas in the lobby and spoke in low tones.

“I was deliberately being harsh just to see if anybody winced,” I explained.

“And?”

“They all did. Including you.”

“Well, let’s see what we got out of all that. O’Doul isn’t in it at all, unless he’s the least likely suspect in the best tradition of Agatha Christie. His only interest is the publicity he could get out of defending the killer. Right?”

“Right.”

“And I don’t suppose that Alexian Rowe killed Carter in revenge for A Dragon for St. George, which so dissatisfied some of his best customers.”

“I don’t find that too plausible, no.”

“What about Harry Fingerman?”

“He doesn’t profit from Carter’s death in any way that we know. For some reason, Carter doesn’t seem to have held that last book against him, and-”

“Wait a minute, darling. How do you know that?”

“He didn’t replace him with another agent, did he?”

“Maybe he couldn’t. If that book was such a drag on the market, maybe he couldn’t get another agent. Or maybe he’s locked into a multi-book contract.”

“Okay, you win that one, Lyn, but it doesn’t matter, does it? The fact remains that Fingerman was still Carter’s agent and presumably would stay so as long as Carter lived. With Carter dead, the estate may give him the old heave-ho just on general principles. He couldn’t be sure. Even if he was friendly with Alison while Carter was alive, that could change when the estate was in her hands. So I say that if Fingerman had a reason for killing Carter, it has to be something more important than what passes for job security in his business.”

“What about Hawthorne?”

“Worth another look, even though it seems that Carter would have a better reason to kill him. Maybe Carter spread the word to his author pals in need of writing help that Hawthorne would screw up the narrative on the back of a cereal box. That could be deadly to his ghostwriting business.”

Lynda looked skeptical with a capital S. “We haven’t gotten a whiff of anything like that.”

“True enough. Maybe that didn’t happen. But those two certainly had a troubled relationship.”

“Not as troubled as Van Cleef and Carter.”

“Right again. Carter must have had dozens of reasons for wanting to snuff Van Cleef - every review that stuffed shirt ever wrote of a St. George book. You know, I’m not sure that Mac would be impressed by our progress. So far we’re doing a great job of pinning murders that didn’t happen on the one person to whom it did happen.”

Lynda sat back, with a look of satisfaction on her face that I might have called smug on someone less adorable. “No, Carter didn’t kill Van Cleef, but he did a literary hatchet job on him in his last book, no doubt thinking that turnabout was fair play.

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