Free Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries) by B.B. Cantwell Page B

to win. So they showed him
the door.”
    Hester sat in stunned silence.
Karen sipped at her coffee, her hand shaking slightly from nerves and caffeine,
then continued, broodingly.
    “And his own firm is just as big
a disaster. To tell you the truth, Hester, the only thing he’s working on right
now is our own house, and that’s turning into a financial nightmare you
wouldn’t believe. Without Teri June, we’d have been living out of that old
Dodge Dart I used to drive.”
    Hester, still dazed by her
friend’s subterfuge, bit her lip as Karen rummaged through her purse and then
lit another cigarette. Karen blew smoke rings for a moment and gazed out the
window at passing couples, some all in black, some in business suits, of widely
varied social strata and mixed and matched genders, hurrying to get somewhere
out of the cold.
    “And frankly things haven’t been
going so well lately for Teri June, either,” Karen spoke again, almost to
herself. Turning back to her present company, her eyes focused again.
    “Hester, you know what’s really
gotten under my skin with those old biddies of WWCAC? I’ll tell you. I got a
call from my agent about a month ago, regarding the roughs of my latest
manuscript. And you know what? She says I have to ‘tone it down.’ There’s a storyline
dealing with self-gratification in early-maturing preteens – tastefully
handled, mind you, but the unvarnished truth, as it should be.”
    Hester pinkened as she glanced
around them. A few tables away, a pair of high-school boys with chemistry texts
spread across a table had stopped munching biscotti and were unabashedly
eavesdropping.
    Karen paused just long enough to
peer out the window, where a fine mist had started falling a few minutes
earlier. As she watched, it mixed with an occasional drifting ice pellet.
    “Anyway, my agent tells me, the
big bookstores have been getting pressure from morality groups across the
country – a big letter-writing campaign,” Karen said bitterly. “All started by
Sara Duffy and her jackbooted book burners here in Oregon, this supposed
bastion of progressive thinking!”
    Hester’s embarrassment turned to
anger.
    “You’re joking! Karen, I had no
idea they had that kind of influence. I thought – well, they were just some
local kooks.”
    “Yeah, well, people thought that
of a weird Austrian with a wimpy little mustache under his nose, at first,
until huge crowds started shouting ‘Heil’ at him,” Karen said, absently
fingering her cameo. The tip of her cigarette glowed brightly as she sucked in
a lungful of the acrid smoke, sifting it out through clenched teeth before she
spoke again.
    “I’m fighting the changes. I’m
not giving in. And I’ll win that battle, you just watch me. But this is the
absolute worst time this could be happening.”
    She frowned, waving the
cigarette. “The last book, actually, didn’t do as well as it should have. I’m
not sure the book banners weren’t making themselves felt already. And now
there’s some sort of balloon payment coming due on the house construction loan –
I made the mistake of letting Steve handle the financing. And what with the
likely delays on the book advance because of this nonsense, I just don’t know
what’s going to happen. I admit, we’ve been living pretty fat. The private
school for the girls doesn’t come cheap, and – ” She cast a glance outside to the
big BMW parked at the curb. “Well, I haven’t exactly been denying myself. I’m
afraid we don’t have much of what you might call a safety net if the checks
stop rolling in.”
    Hester swallowed a gulp of the
strong coffee, then cleared her throat. “Well, not to pry, but I have no idea
how it works when you’re self-employed. How have you handled investments for
retirement and that sort of thing? Do you have some sort of mutual fund or
something?”
    Karen snorted. “Ha! That’s a good
one. Let me put it this way, Hest. If I hocked this cheap wig I’m wearing