Not the Real Jupiter by Barbara Wilson

Author:Barbara Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: lesbian, woman sleuth, women mystery, comic mystery, literary mystery, publishing mystery, oregon mystery, lgbtq literary, translator character
Publisher: Cedar Street Editions via Indie Author Project

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16.

I woke up around midnight, when the downstairs lamps automatically turned themselves off. All the pillows were on the floor, along with pages from the copyedited text of On Jupiter, and the blinds were still open. I had a crick in my neck. I got up and closed the blinds and pulled the drapes, but not before glancing out. Yes, there were two large ceramic pots on the porch, with some kind of gigantic bronze plants in them. Their sword-like leaves gleamed eerily. How could I have missed them? In the harsh white porch light they looked like they came from another planet.

I went upstairs to the guest room, took off my clothes and tossed them on a chair, and jumped between the sheets, intending to take up my dreams where I’d left off.

But now, of course, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t decide what to believe about Giselle. Was she simply an idealist, like so many small publishers, the gradual victim of her own optimism that eventually there would be a bestseller to make up for all the titles that had bombed or languished on an ever-lengthening backlist? Was it her idealism that had caused her to put most of the proceeds from the Portland house sale into Entre Editions and persuade Jane to work for free for two years and to drain her savings to get the press off the ground? Or was there something more calculating about Giselle?

Had she persuaded her depressed and aging mother to make a will in which she got the house and cottage, and her sister Jacqui nothing? Had Giselle simply been using Jane for a few years to launch Entre Editions and, now that Jane’s resources were depleted, had Giselle been looking elsewhere for investors? Had Jane gotten wind of the relationship with Karen being both sexual and economic? But if it was economic, wouldn’t Jane be glad to have an investor like Karen or even to have been bought out so she didn’t slide deeper into debt? Furthermore, from a financial point of view, it wouldn’t have served Jane to push her partner over the bluff because Giselle’s death left Jane worse off. After all, Giselle was going to sell the cottage in Newport and use the money to pay off the remodeling loan on the Portland house, or so Giselle had said. The motive then—if Jane had had anything to do with Giselle’s death—must have been jealousy. Anger at Karen and Giselle, loss of trust, and jealousy powerful enough to want to murder.

I could only hope that Haakonssen would move quickly on the information I’d given him by at least finding out who the beneficiary of the trust was. He could draw his own conclusions about the Giselle-Jane-Karen triangle. I didn’t want to get into discussing the intricacies of lesbian relationships with him, that I knew.

For my own part, I still found myself wondering about Pauline, the beautiful big Other in the story, the mysterious mother planet around whom her daughters circled, drawing them to her with unbearable gravity.

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