Free A Romantic Way to Die by Bill Crider Page A

signs that someone had been there, and he found them: crushed leaves, a broken twig. But no clearly defined footprints, and no other clues.
    Rhodes had brought a couple of paper bags in his back pocket. He got one out and dropped the sock in it. He didn’t know what value it might have, but he was pretty sure it was somehow connected to everything that had happened. He’d take it back to the jail and put it in the evidence locker until he figured it out.
    If he ever did.
    Billy Quentin still wasn’t at home, so Rhodes couldn’t ask him if he’d lost any socks. Claude and Clyde were at work, but Mrs. Appleby was sitting in her living room watching Sally Jessie Raphael’s audience taunt a young man who had apparently been sleeping with his much older stepmother.
    “The world is full of trash,” Mrs. Applebly observed, shaking her head.
    Rhodes didn’t comment. He just asked if either Claude or Clyde might be missing a sock.
    “A sock?”
    “A black one,” Rhodes said. “Thick cotton.”
    “They don’t like thick socks,” Mrs. Appleby said. “They like those thin ones that have a lot of elastic in them and stay up good. They don’t even own any thick ones. Why?”
    “Somebody lost one back in the trees,” Rhodes said.
    “You think it was that naked woman?”
    Rhodes said that he doubted it.
    Mrs. Appleby did, too. “She wasn’t wearing any socks that I could see. Just those panties.”
    Rhodes thanked her for her help and left.
     
     
    There was a session in progress when Rhodes stopped at the college, so he sat out on the porch of the main building and talked to Chatterton.
    “What are they talking about?” Rhodes asked.
    “How to write a synopsis,” Chatterton said. “It’s very important to be able to write a good synopsis, they tell me. They even have contests to see who can write the best one. They charge a fee to enter and get some writer to be the judge. That’s how they help pay for conferences like this one.”
    Rhodes didn’t quite understand why anyone would want to write a synopsis.
    “Why not just write the whole book?” he asked.
    Chatterton explained that professionals never wrote a book unless they were certain that it would sell. Only beginners wrote the whole book.
    “You seem to know a lot about it,” Rhodes said. “Why aren’t you attending any of the sessions?”
    “Because I don’t want to write a book. I might be the only person here who doesn’t, though.”
    “What about Terry Don Coslin?”
    “Oh, he’s going to all the sessions. I believe he has a contract to write a historical romance. It’s supposed to be a very lucrative deal.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Oh, no. It was in all the papers. ‘Model Turns Author.’ That sort of thing.”
    “He’s actually going to write a book?”
    Chatterton laughed. “Of course not. You don’t really believe that celebrities write their own books, do you?”
    Rhodes said that he’d never thought about it.
    “Well, they don’t. Or maybe some of them do, but most of them don’t. They don’t have time. They’re too busy being celebrities. So someone else writes the book, and the celebrity’s name goes on the cover. It’s supposed to help sales. And some celebrities like to keep up the illusion that they’re the real authors. Mr. Coslin’s doing that by attending the sessions.”
    “Does the big name on the cover help sales?”
    “I have no idea. And in this case, it should be especially interesting. Women who read romance novels don’t generally buy books written by men.”
    “Why not?”
    “I suppose they think men don’t know anything about romance.”
    Rhodes decided it was time to change the subject.
    “How’s Terry Don as a roommate?” he asked.
    “Very quiet,” Chatterton said. “I hardly heard a peep out of him all night.”
    “Did you know he went wandering around down the hill?”
    “He said something about that at breakfast this morning. A very amusing story, except for the part about