Dead by Midnight - Beverly Barton [73]
Freedom of the press could be a double-edged sword, cutting down the guilty and the innocent alike. And in Lorie’s case, the guilty who had already paid for her past sins.
Maleah and Derek had flown out of Laredo late yesterday and arrived in Fayetteville, Arkansas, last night. On their assignment to question all the possible suspects on their short list, they were zigzagging across the United States and had detoured into Mexico yesterday. Today, they would question Casey Lloyd, who had coauthored the script for Midnight Masquerade. The Powell report on the guy read like a soap opera. Boy genius pens first novel at eighteen, hits the New York Times bestseller list, and is hired to coauthor the script when his novel is optioned for the big screen. Lloyd became the toast of New York and LA. By the age of twenty-four, unable to repeat the phenomenal success of his first novel, he was a has-been wonder boy with an expensive cocaine habit. After a series of dismal failures—a novel and several movie scripts—Lloyd gladly accepted Travis Dillard’s offer to work with the semifamous pornography writer Laura Lou Roberts, who had starred in numerous “stag” films in the seventies.
A knock on her hotel room door snapped Maleah from her thoughts.
“Perdue, let me in,” Derek said. “I’ve got coffee and Danish.”
Overcoming the urge to check her appearance in the mirror, Maleah tromped barefooted across the room, unlocked and unlatched the door, and looked from Derek’s smiling face to the sack he held in his hand.
How the hell could he look so fresh and chipper this early in the morning? It was barely eight o’clock. Obviously, he had already showered, shaved, ironed his slacks and shirt, and gone downstairs to pick up their breakfast.
As he entered the room, he glanced at her casually. She cringed, knowing full well what she must look like in her baggy pajamas and with her hair uncombed. So, why should she care how she looked? It wasn’t as if she wanted to impress the man. God forbid.
He set the sack down on the corner desk, opened it and pulled out two Styrofoam cups. “This one is yours.” She accepted the cup from him. “I’ve got bear claws and apple and cherry Danish.”
She snapped open the spout on the coffee cup’s plastic lid, took a sip of the hot brew, and sighed. “I’ll take the cherry Danish.”
After placing his cup on the desk, he pulled a stack of napkins from the sack and laid them on the desk; then he tore open the sack and spread out the selection of goodies.
“Griff called.” Derek pulled out the desk chair and sat.
“When?” Maleah picked up a napkin and the cherry Danish and took the armchair to the left of the desk.
“On my way downstairs to get breakfast for us.”
“And?”
“And the FBI is now officially involved. Special Agent Hicks Wainwright is heading the task force. He made an announcement to the press this morning outside the Birmingham field office.”
“What does this mean for our private investigation? Did Griff change our orders?”
Derek shook his head. “Nope. Griff said to stick to the plan, send in a daily report, and if anything comes up he thinks we should share with the Bureau, he’ll notify them.”
“So we’re still going to talk to Casey Lloyd today?”
“If he shows up for his weekly SAA meeting,” Derek said. “Otherwise, we’ll have to track him down since we haven’t been able to find a home address for him.”
Maleah took a big bite out of her Danish, savored the sweet taste, and then hurriedly washed it down with several sips of the sweet coffee. It really irked her that Derek remembered how she liked her coffee.
“How does a guy go from being a teenage literary genius to a thirty-five-year-old recovering drug and sex addict?” Maleah wondered aloud.
“Bad luck. Poor choices. Fate.