Write By Your Side

Chapter Three

Chapter ThreeEllie found her exorbitantly expensive parking space in a dungeonlike garage two blocks from Max's office downtown. Yet another reason why she would never move back to Chicago or any other big city. You got used to being able to find a spot right in front of Vander Zee's Bakery whenever you needed a cruller fix.

She hoisted her purse, double-checking to make sure the car was locked. Something else she never had to do in Golden Grove.

The walk to Max's office building was so familiar that she could name the shops. Perdita's, Wolf & Sons Chocolatiers, and—oh my, the scent from Garfield's Popcorn Shop was pulling at her like those smell waves in cartoons that looked like coaxing fingers. She scrunched her mouth. Maybe on the way back. She didn't want to be late. Max had sounded agitated enough as it was.

She reached the building where Max's office was located and scanned the tiny white letters stuck on a blackboard inside a brass-framed glass case on the stone wall outside the front door. Franklin Enterprises, whatever that was; some five-name lawyer group; The Garman Group; the Horton Agency.

She was early, so she took a few steps down the sidewalk to the next store. Pershing's Bookstore had been around for probably a hundred years. She peered in the window, shading her eyes.

Oh, wow.

The display was tasteful and elegant if a little prissy. Purple lilacs spilled from a wicker basket next to gardening gloves and delicate, round wire-rimmed glasses, all surrounding a book propped up on its wooden stand. A book whose title was graced with curly purple letters.

The Poison Poppy. And under it, the author: Adelaide Brooks.

It was Max who had told her about Sam's alter ego, quickly adding that Sam said it was okay. It was a fact that she'd accepted with a mix of feelings. Pride that Sam had a full-time writing gig, a little sadness that he wasn't getting any of the credit. She was sure he wouldn't much like being known as the towering literary force behind Lottie Long, but she also knew it was a living. And, deeper still, a twinge of…something…that he'd knowingly let Max tell her his secret.

She straightened, checked her watch, and took another glance at the bookstore window. She didn't think she'd ever had a front window display. Well, except at Copperfield's in Golden Grove, but that was to be expected, local girl and all.

She sighed and shook her head. She might have found it funny that she'd driven all the way to Chicago, her hometown, three hundred miles away from Sam, only to see his book featured here in this window. She might have found it funny except it was her, and it was him.

Him and his devilish brown eyes, almost black, the same eyes she'd seen smiling at her through the stacks of the library back in college. She couldn't see his mouth, but she could still tell he was smiling, just by his eyes.

“Hi,” a smooth voice had said through the musty bound periodicals. “Call me Ishmael. When can I call you?”

And that's how it had started. The worst, most hilariously bad pickup line she'd ever heard.

And she'd almost missed it all. She'd only come to Cartwright her sophomore year after transferring from Northwestern, the family alma mater, the expected matriculation route for every Chambers of the past sixty years. Her parents had mapped it out: undergrad English degree, law school, internship with Uncle Frank (lawyer), summers working at Mom's office (lawyer), eventual partner along with Ellie's brother, William (also lawyer) at Dad's firm (and…lawyer). Law was as much the family business as having guys shot was for Michael Corleone. If only it were that exciting.

She was no more interested in legal opinions than she was in reading a bunch of stuffy, dead, boring writers. I mean, really, Moby d**k? You had to slog through a bunch of chapters of how to gut a whale before you even got to the whale. Just get to the good stuff, already! And don't get her started on James Joyce. Ulysses took about as long to read as it took Odysseus to get back home to Ithaca. Or was it Athens? Who cared? Not her. She'd realized that by the end of her first lit course at Northwestern.

Still, from that first day in the Cartwright library, she and Sam had been inseparable. Study buddies, writing buddies, and soon enough (two weeks!), kissing buddies. They'd discovered the third-floor stacks in the library behind the poetry journals were the best place to, um, “study.” (That ratty royal-blue couch with the coffee stains.) There was even a little ledge they could sit on and watch the campus below. Fall, turning leaves. Winter, falling snow and the just iced-over pond. Spring, the tulips poking up through their newly trimmed and mulched beds. It was the perfect college romance.

And Sam was such a great writer, the star of Cartwright's Creative Writing program.

When she'd eventually brought him home with her for a visit, he'd told her parents amusing stories about accidentally dropping hammers on cats while working summers in construction with his dad, and they'd laughed. He'd told them about how his mom died from cancer when he was only ten, and they'd nodded and gotten appropriately misty. He'd told them about how he was helping their daughter work on her first mystery novel, and they'd nodded again, looked at each other, and gotten worried. He'd told them he liked Faulkner, and they'd relaxed. A little.

Then just before her graduation, he'd told him them about his brand-new Penniman Award, and they 'd almost adopted him. An award? For literature? How amazing! Can we see it? They hadn't even asked what the book was about.

After congratulations all around, they'd glanced at her, eyebrows raised, with the same look they'd given her when she'd earned a B-plus in algebra, a look she interpreted as, And where's your award?

Ellie had realized then the only way to ever prove to them—to anyone—that she was a real writer, a good writer, was to make a living at it. Which she was doing now with her Christine Carver series, thank you very much.

She stared at the window of Pershing's filled with Sam's latest Lottie Long book, remembering the three detective books they had written together as a team. How everything had started out so right and ended up so wrong…

It was the fall of her senior year at college. Sam had graduated and was working on The Lady Phoenix (when he wasn't helping his dad), using the stipend he'd gotten from the Penniman. She was studying between shifts at Copperfield's, each unpacking of a new shipment a reminder that these were all someone else's books, not hers. Not the Mason Shaw detective novel she'd just finished with help from Sam, or her new idea for a thriller about a female cryptanalyst who was as good with a quip as she was a gun.

So she'd begged Pam Norton, the owner of Copperfield's, to let her go to BookMeet in Chicago as their representative. Pam eventually had relented, and Ellie had saved up her money, booked a room for two nights at a motel in Cicero (no way was she staying north at her parents' house), and driven her hand-me-down Honda with the red tape over the hole in the taillight to BookMeet at McCormick Place.

And that's where she'd met her savior, her confidante, the woman who once and for all would validate her existence as a writer. Or so she'd thought at the time.

Margo Rollings was thin—wiry, actually—as if she were so busy working for her writers she never had time to eat. Ellie found her under a vinyl banner proclaiming Mulhausen Press with a professional-looking logo of an unfolded book. It was one of the smaller booths, back near the corner. Margo explained it was because she liked the quiet so she could talk intimately with her authors. It wasn't the first lie she would tell.

Ellie had shaken her hand. Margo, never losing eye contact, always smiling, asked her to sit down.

“Your first book, you say? Well, you've come to the perfect place. We here at Mulhausen Press pride ourselves on our dedication to the young, the aspiring writer.” Margo accented her words as if she were giving a speech for political office. “I always say, a good writer is worth more than a bad book.”

Ellie had only a vague idea what that was supposed to mean, but it sounded very literary, so she'd nodded. This was the first publisher who had given her more than thirty seconds of chat time about her (and Sam's) book.”

“Now, I know we're not the biggest publisher around, but I believe that is our strength. We're mobile, we're fast, and above all, we love our authors.”

Was this it? This woman seemed to want to work with her, and after only hearing Ellie's elevator pitch for their book The Bloodied Bride. She knew Sam hated the title, but it was a murder mystery, after all. And it was good, wasn't it? I mean, a publisher was talking to her about actually signing it.

Margo chattered on. “Now, as one of our authors with Mulhausen, we can't promise huge sales immediately, of course, but we will do all we can because we love our authors.”

Ellie was so stuck on the words one of our authors that she didn't realize until much later that Margo spent a lot of the meeting repeating herself. At the time, her main thought was: How do I get her to offer us a contract?

Then she'd had a spark of a thought. “My writing partner, Samuel Price, also has a book. Quite a good one. In fact, he won the Penniman Award for Young Writers. It's called The Lady Phoenix.”

“The Penniman? I see.” Margo nodded, eyebrows up. “Very impressive. Very impressive. I'd love to meet him and hear all about it.”

“Oh. Um, well, he's not here. Today, that is. But I'm sure he'd love to talk to you about his book.” Sam hadn't specifically asked her to look for a publisher for his unfinished book, but he obviously wouldn't turn one down, would he? She knew he was getting frustrated about some parts of the manuscript. This could be the extra push he needed to keep going after floating so long on the high he'd gotten from winning the Penniman.

Margo continued, nodding sagely, like a queen about to dole out an incredibly wise decision. “I see. I don't normally do this, but then, I don't normally find two talents with such potential working together.” She leaned closer, only a foot from Ellie's face, hands clasped together as if she had just discovered the world's largest diamond. “I think your detective series has great potential. I believe, from what I've heard that, given time, you both could become very successful authors.”

Okay…

“Now, as I've said, we're a small but strong company. But we do love giving our authors the wings they need to soar.” Margo fluttered her hand dramatically. “So. That being said…” She paused.

Ellie remembered how her pulse had banged in her ears. Yes?

Margo grinned. “I'd like to take a closer look at The Bloodied Bride with the intention of offering you a book deal. I'd also like to take a look at The Lady Phoenix. If your cowriter is willing, of course.”

Ellie's heart had leapt and skidded. A book deal? They'd be published?

“Now, mind you, it would be our standard deal, nothing special, you see, but you never know. With our guidance and your hard work, we might see great things from the team of Chambers and Price.” Margo nodded as if waiting for Ellie to agree with her.

And she did. Chambers and Price. It sounded like a name you'd see on the New York Times bestseller list or hear announced by a tuxedoed James Patterson holding aloft some golden award from behind a banquet podium as he pronounced them “Best New Novelist of the Year.”

And Sam. Sam would finally get his novel published, and from there, another, she was sure. He was such a good writer.

She'd beamed and said the words she would later regret. “Where do I sign?”

* * *

The outer office of the Horton Agency wasn't large, but it was neat. For all of Max's bluster, he ran a tidy ship.

Judy, Max's beleaguered but efficient receptionist, greeted Ellie and picked up the phone. “You're early. I'll let Mr. Excitement know you're here.”

“Thanks.”

Judy punched a button. “Max? Part of your two o'clock is here.” She hung up without waiting for an answer.

Part?

“Judy, you have any idea why Max wants to see me?” Ellie asked.

Judy shook her head. “None whatsoever. He's being his usual grouchy, cryptic, annoying self. Just something about 'careers at stake,' that sort of thing.” She snorted. “And he says I'm the dramatic one.”

Careers at stake? Probably just another beef with the publisher. Max had gone ballistic after her first Christine Carver book had been printed with his name misspelled on her acknowledgments page. She, meanwhile, would have been happy to change her name legally to Ellie Champers if it meant she was actually published.

Still, an editing problem wouldn't warrant a personal meeting.

She checked her watch and decided to hit the restroom before the meeting. Who knew how long it would last?

She had been with Max for almost four years now, joining him just after Mulhausen folded and before her breakup with Sam. They had met Max through a friend of a writer friend. He was as crusty and gruff now as he was then, just with less hair. But he had the proverbial heart of gold and had taken pity on the two clueless writers. He had picked her and Sam up and dusted them off, educated them, held their hands, and shown them the real world of professional publishing.

Exiting the restroom, she checked her watch again, then wandered to a bookcase highlighting the latest books by the writers Max represented. Mostly mysteries, thrillers. A few romances and some nonfiction. And there…she picked up Sam's latest Lottie Long book, flipped it to the back-cover jacket. The author photo was of a smiling, genial woman with brown eighties hair. Not Sam, of course. Just Adelaide Brooks in her younger years.

Ellie put it back on its display holder, two books away from hers. Even though it wasn't his name on the cover, Sam should be proud. She should probably have told him that herself, sometime. But they seemed to have decided via some unwritten rule that when they happened to run into each other around Golden Grove, they said a quick hi, forced a smile, and moved on. Not really friends, not really enemies. Just…there.

Their friends' not-so-subtle attempts to get them back together had stopped long ago. No more ill-fated surprise parties, no more not-so-blind dates. The wall was just too big.

She breathed in, staring at nothing. She did miss some of it, of course, on the lonelier nights. Ordering takeout together. Hanging with friends. She even missed Archie sometimes, the little goof. And there were those serene boat rides on the Lady Phoenix…

Her sigh felt bigger than it should have been.

She ambled to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the courtyard that made up the center of the building. The window was dark enough for her to catch a reflection. She smoothed her gray business skirt and adjusted the tight collar underneath her jacket. One of the perks of being a writer was the dress code, which was basically anything you happened to have just slept in. More than once she'd finished a five-thousand-word stretch at her computer while still in her pj's. Some days she never bothered to change out, although she'd never tell anyone that, not even Ginger.

She wrestled her shoulders back to loosen the jacket. Being in this outfit felt a little like being in a straitjacket, but she had to admit, it was nice to dress up for a change. A twist to check if the skirt was wrinkled…

“Hi, Ellie,” a voice said behind her.

She whirled and saw a familiar pair of crinkle-edged brown eyes studying her. The same eyes that had flash-fried her heart through the library stacks back in college.

Sam? Here? This was not good. This was very, very bad.