The shock of seeing her wasn’t as bad as if it had really been Max, but was still unpleasant. Claudia’s face had dropped its professional perkiness. The flesh had curdled, sagging and hardening. Claudia stared at Temple and her high-spirited shoes as if they embodied everything that she saw slipping from her own life.
The insight was fleeting. Then Claudia’s face and voice sweetened. She stepped into the room and might never have posed unhappily on the threshold.
“Breaking news on the Royal death,” she announced.
“They haven’t found... somebody?”
Claudia measured Temple’s surprise, her ebbing vulnerability, and loosed her most impervious smile. “Oh, they’ve found somebody—not the killer. More like one of Royal’s victims. A wife, ex variety. Right here at the ABA. That Lieutenant Molina did some biographical backtracking. It leaves us PR people looking like horses’ derrieres—or like we’ve got something to hide. Here’s an addendum to the group press release. A postmortem statement from the ex-Mrs. Royal.”
Temple slipped the twice-folded Yellow Page into the tote’s side pocket. Some instinct told her to keep Claudia from seeing it. She took the sheet of scanty double-spaced type Claudia offered and skimmed the contents.
“An editor at Cockerel-Tuppence-Trine? Why didn’t she come forward immediately?”
“I imagine that’s what Lieutenant Molina wanted to know. She also wanted to know why Lorna and I didn’t tell her.”
“And?”
“We don’t keep track of everyone’s exes. With the musical chairs at publishing houses today, it’s tough enough to keep tabs on who’s in whose job, much less who’s in whose bed.”
“Or out of it. So when Molina asked you about this Rowena Novak, you cleverly scurried over to CTT and got a statement. Great thinking. The ex-wife wasn’t too shook up, I suppose?”
“About the death—hard to tell. About Molina’s interrogation, probably. That lieutenant means to find the murderer before we all pack up on Tuesday.”
Temple nodded. “Thanks, Claudia. I doubt I’ll be involved in any more PR on the case, but it’s good to be up-to-date. Now, I’ve got an urgent errand to run—” Temple left the release on her desk and headed for the door.
“Oh,” Claudia called after her, “got to change some kitty litter?”
Temple whirled in the doorway and studied Claudia, noting the same bitter expression she’d observed earlier. Then Temple blithely shook her head.
“Nothing so important—just a shoe sale at Pay Less. ’Bye.”
In five minutes Temple was at the Cockerel-Tuppence-Trine booths on the crowded exhibit floor, eyeing name tags.
“Miss Novak?”
The woman nodded. She was plainer than dry toast, a spare, Persian-lamb-haired woman of forty-something with eyeglass frames that echoed her jaundiced skin tones. Trendy shades of chartreuse and rust underlined her enduring homeliness.
“Can we... talk? I’m Temple Barr. I’m assisting with public relations for the convention and also helping Lieutenant Molina with orientation.”
“I’ve talked to Lieutenant Molina, and Claudia Esterbrook.”
“I know, but I hoped you might spare a few more moments. The police don’t understand how an ABA works. They need a translator, and it’s my job to get the information out and the facts right.”
Rowena Novak’s big-boned face screwed tighter, then she sighed. “All right. The refreshment area should be quieter with the lunch rush done. I could use a soft drink.”
“Fine. I’ll buy.”
They threaded through the crowds, Temple making sure that her catch remained in tow. As the woman had said, seats were available in the vast eating area. They shuffled through the cafeteria setup, Temple suddenly ravenous after her nonlunch. She splurged on a sweet roll and gaped when Rowena Novak ordered an honest-to-God Coke, no diet version.
As they hunched over their trays at a round white table, people came and sat and left all around them. In one way it was the worst site for a probing interview, in another the best. The casual atmosphere and crowds made it seem that nothing serious could be said here, so of course it would be.
“What do you need to know?” Rowena Novak took a quick sip of her Coke.
“It’s still hard to explain to Lieutenant Molina what an imprint is, how someone gets started in the business. You were married to Chester Royal for—?”
“Seven years, an appropriate number, like a plague of Egypt.”
“Was that before—or after—the formation of Pennyroyal Press?”
“Oh, before. Chester was writing nonfiction then.”
“Really?”
“That’s how I met him. An agent was enthusiastic about a proposal of his. Of course in nonfiction the author’s salability is as important as the book’s.”
“You mean, whether the author’s good-looking, articulate, will do well on media tours, that kind of thing?”
“Exactly.”
Nothing more was forthcoming except another of those tiny, birdlike sips. Temple munched a mouthful of sinfully sugared pastry. How to keep the interview going before Rowena Novak suddenly finished her Coke and walked away?
“So Mr. Royal, Chester, went from author to editor. That must have been after you’d married.”
“Yes. He became interested in the other end of the business after we’d met and begun—I suppose you’d call it dating.”
A flicker of disgust in those ocher eyes told Temple that despite the woman’s enviable composure, much that was unpleasant lurked beneath.
“I understand Chester Royal was the marrying kind.”
“If you’re asking which wife I was—it was number three. And Chester was not so much the marrying kind as the exploiting kind. If a woman came along he could use, he married her. At least he did when he was younger.”
“He didn’t marry Mavis Davis.” Temple issued a frank glance.
Rowena’s mouth quirked. “No. He’d figured out how to use women without marrying them by then. He owed it all to me.”
“Did you tell this to Lieutenant Molina?”
“No.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because you’re asking the right questions. I have nothing to hide about our lives together, about what he was. I don’t even hate him anymore, I just understand him. I probably understand—understood—Chester better than anybody. I taught him all he knew.”
When Temple stared at her incredulously, she added, “accidentally, of course,” and went on. “I’d never been married before, but I was no kid. I might have resisted Chester, but he was so fascinated, so enthralled by my work. At the time it seemed to mean that he took me seriously. What he took seriously was my work; he took my work.”
“Took your... work? How?”
“He absorbed it. He became what I was.”
Temple, still confused, searched for the right next question.
“Have you ever been betrayed in love, Miss Barr?”
It was a no more personal question than Temple had been asking. “Yes,” she answered with fierce honesty. “I think.”
Rowena laughed, a pleasant sound and an expression that did pleasant things to her plain face. “I can’t say I was disappointed in love, but I was betrayed in my judgment. I failed to see that it wasn’t I to whom Chester was so earnestly attracted, it was something I had.”
“What?”
“Power.”
Temple didn’t know what to say. Claudia’s press release had described Rowena Novak as a senior editor at Trine Books, not a bad position, but certainly not one that would put her into a corner office in Manhattan.
Rowena’s fingers, sallow and ringless, moved up and down the sides of the oversize Styrofoam cup as if they were caressing Baccarat crystal. Her face softened with rueful recollection, reflected a sadness at the ways of the world, at what she had been and Chester had done.
“He saw me edit, that’s all. He saw how careful I was in phrasing revision letters to my authors; he saw me worry when I couldn’t offer them the money, and support I thought their work deserved; he saw them trust me and depend on me. He saw how a good editor—and I was, am, a good editor—nourishes the literary ego, encourages it to stretch to produce the book it hopes to. He was fascinated by how my authors confessed their troubles—money, marriage. Writing books is a long, lonely business. Authors hope to find an editor who will listen through it all, though they seldom do today. Editors are itinerant midwives now, sometimes leaving a house in mid-contraction, unable to invest their own ego in an author or a work they may never see through to the end.”