Free Randall #02 - Ghost Writers in the Sky by Anne R. Allen

yelled at Plant? They were fighting?” Plantagenet was the most non-violent man I knew, but everybody has a breaking point. I suppose something awful could have made him snap.
    “ No. They were arguing about Toby. Smith calmed Ernesto down and the kid took off in that Ferrari. I went up to my room and edited for about a half hour, and when I came back down to join Gaby for a drink, Smith was gone. Nobody knows what he and the boy did after that.”
     “ I do. Plant walked down to his cabin, trying to decide if he was being ethical sleeping with a fan who obviously hero-worshiped him. Ernesto had time to get undressed and tune in an erotic movie on the television. He left the Ferrari unlocked, so he may have been in a hurry about it. But if you’re planning to be dead in a few minutes, I guess you don’t worry about car thieves.”
    “ The car was unlocked when you went to drive it up the hill?”
    “ Yes. That’s why I was especially careful to lock it when I got up to the parking lot. But I guess I left my scarf in there. It must have fallen off.”
    I touched my hair where the scarf had been. It felt sticky with road dust. “I’ll die if I don’t get a shower. Now. I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I was desperate for some time to collect my thoughts. 
    Just as I managed to get Rick out the door, the phone on the desk rang. It was Gabriella.
    “ Sorry to bother you hon, but I’m wondering if you’d mind giving your presentation tonight for the paying customers instead of this afternoon. I need somebody to fill Plantagenet’s slot.”
    I tried to focus.
    “ Plant’s slot? He’s still in jail? They really think he had something to do with Ernesto’s death? That’s so stupid. Don’t they know it was suicide?”
    “ Nope. At least the Sheriff doesn’t think so. The studio’s sending up their lawyers, but it looks like they’re charging your old friend Plantagenet with first degree murder.”
    All I could do was grunt my agreement.
    First degree murder. Were these people all insane?
     

Chapter 8—THE HOLE IN THE WALL
     
    After a long shower, I managed to sleep a bit. Probably because I tried to read Rick’s snoozerific novel. He might have a big name New York agent, but Blue Rage by M. J. Zukowski was not going to make any best seller lists that I knew of. I wondered what this Luci Silverberg person saw in it that I didn’t.
    The bedside clock said five fifteen when I woke up, feeling a little sick as the memory of the horrors of last night came back: the terrible image of Ernesto’s body. How could it have not been a suicide? There had to be another explanation for the gun stuff people kept talking about.
    I turned on the television. Flipping through channels, I caught a clip of Plantagenet accepting his Academy Award last February. Then an awful one of him getting out of a black and white Sheriff’s car. I felt a familiar constriction in my neck. It felt like watching the weepy court-house step footage of my own divorce hearing they played over and over last fall.
    The reporter’s voice confirmed Gaby’s dire pronouncement. “Oscar-winning writer Plantagenet Smith is being held for questioning in the death of his protégé, nineteen-year old Ernesto Cervantes, who was found shot to death in Mr. Smith’s bedroom at Gabriella Moore’s resort in Santa Ynez last night.” The screen showed a still shot of a tough-looking dark-haired Hispanic boy. “Mr. Smith, an openly homosexual writer, denies that the death was the result of a lovers’ quarrel.” 
    The picture changed to a sunny sidewalk outside a Spanish-style public building, where Silas Ryder, looking large and rumpled, blinked nervously at the camera.
     “ Silas Ryder, the Central Coast businessman who employed the deceased at one of his bookstores, stated that Ernesto Cervantes had no relatives except an uncle in the state of Sinaloa in Mexico. Mr. Ryder said Cervantes was a promising writer and a popular student at Cuesta