"It wasn't difficult to trace the dealer from whom Simon Hallett bought the manuscript," Meyer continued. "Not for me, at any rate."
"For your graduate assistants, you mean," Karen retorted. "I suppose you had them reading the obituary columns."
For a moment he looked disconcerted, but he recovered quickly. "Among other things. I started with the assumption that the former owner was an elderly eccentric and that he had died within the past few months."
The whistle of a boiling kettle told Karen her unwilling hostess would soon be back. "Never mind telling me how clever you are," she said. "You're wasting your time, Bill. You won't get the manuscript."
"Hallett warned me my chances were slight to non-existent," Meyer said coolly. "I don't know where the hell you're planning to get the money, but that's none of my business, is it?"
"No. I assume you're going to run the price up, out of spite."
Meyer leaned back and brushed the damp hair away from his forehead. No one would have mistaken him for a bagman (if that was the right term), but neither did he resemble the elegant academician she had seen before. His jacket had to be Harris tweed, but his shirt collar was open and his well-tended hands were streaked with mud. The green, heart-shaped lilac leaves caught in his tumbled dark hair looked like the remains of a wreath crowning a sylvan deity.
"No," he said.
"Why not?"
"I suppose you wouldn't believe me if I told you I'm a swell guy who respects your expertise and acknowledges that in moral terms you are entitled—"
Karen laughed.
"I didn't think you would," Meyer said with a faint cynical smile. "However, I admit you have a certain claim on Ismene. I'd be perfectly willing to collaborate."
Karen gasped. "You are ... You have the most . . . Words fail me, Bill, they honestly do! My vocabulary is inadequate to describe the sublimity of your conceit. What could you possibly bring to a collaboration that I can't supply myself?"
The insult didn't bother him a bit. His smile stretched wider. "Let's be kind, and say, 'A fresh viewpoint.' Two heads are better than one. And," he continued, over Karen's wordless sputter of outrage, "I have connections in the publishing world and in the media that might be very useful. If it were properly promoted, this book could be a best-seller."
"You would think of that."
"There's another thing." His smile vanished. In repose, his long lean face was as forbidding as that of an inquisitor. "You need a keeper, my girl, or a bodyguard. Are you out of your mind, coming here alone? Aside from the danger of running into some evil-minded trespasser, you could have fallen—as you did—broken a leg instead of spraining an ankle—"
"Your tender concern touches me," Karen snapped. "My ankle isn't sprained."
"Are you sure?" Lisa had returned carrying a tray. Meyer, bland and smiling, rose to take it from her. She thanked him with a sweet smile and went to Karen. "Do you mind if I look at it? I took a first-aid course ..."
I'll bet you did, Karen thought. And courses in flower arrangement, yoga, and how to fold napkins into pretty shapes. Trying to emulate Meyer's sangfroid—though her cheeks were still hot with fury—she said, "Please don't bother. You've been more than kind, considering . . . considering the circumstances. I did speak to Mr. Cameron Hayes last week. I was under the impression that he was the present owner."
"He didn't mention me?" Lisa smiled and shook her head. "That's just like Cameron. A mean old male chauvinist at heart. The property was left to both of us, jointly. Naturally I agreed to let Cameron handle the business arrangements, but I didn't think he'd be rude enough to ignore my very existence."
"Lisa is Mr. Hayes's first cousin," Meyer said smoothly. "And he can't act without her consent. Right, Lisa?"
"I wouldn't want to cast the slightest doubt on Cameron's integrity," Lisa said with equal smoothness. "But I'd sure have to be a stupid little thing to give up my rights, wouldn't I?"
Her eyes weren't blue, as Karen had thought. They had a distinct greenish cast.
"Well, we can talk about business another time," Lisa went on cheerfully. "I hope you won't think me inhospitable, Dr. Holloway, if I suggest you get back to your hotel as soon as possible. It's starting to rain again and that ankle is going to swell up if you don't get some ice on it. Would you like me or William to drive you?"
"I can manage," Karen said, thinking she had never been dismissed with such courteous finality. "It's the left ankle."
They left as they had entered, via the side door.
Lisa insisted that she lean on "William," who obliged with a particularly infuriating show of gallantry. The last thing Karen heard, before she closed her car door, was his voice: "Take good care of yourself, my dear. I'll be in touch soon."
Chapter Four
To say in print what she thinks is the last thing the woman novelist or journalist is so rash as to attempt . . . Her publishers are not women.
Elizabeth Robins,
first president of the Women Writers'
Suffrage League, 1908
On a bright spring morning, with a chorus of birdsong filling the air and wildflowers blossoming among the coarse grass, the house didn't look menacing or sinister. It was just plain ugly.
Karen stopped behind the other vehicle and sat staring out the window, gripped by a feeling of flat anticlimax. The one positive feature of her disastrous visit the day before had been her conviction that she had found Ismene's house, the one described in the novel. Without the
