The Missing Chapter

Ott stared at the pencil in his hand. He seemed to be wondering how it got there. “Can’t say for sure,” he replied unconvincingly. “Agents are always gaining and losing clients, and we don’t always know the reason. Hell, I got two new ones just last week — one of them a young woman you’re going to hear plenty about in the next few years, believe me. Sorry I can’t tell you what she’s working on, but she’s a winner, and just three months out of college.”

“Uh-huh. How good a writer was Childress?”

“Not as good as he liked to think. Oh, he was what I would call workmanlike, and he did a decent job — not perfect, but decent — of adopting Sawyer’s characters and style. His dialogue was actually quite good, very lively, but his plots occasionally were a problem, although I always felt Keith Billings made too big a deal out of that. He — Keith — is full of himself.”

“Childress blasted Billings in that article, too, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, not by name, but like with me, everybody knew exactly who he was crucifying.”

“Do you think Childress killed himself?”

Ott pitched forward abruptly and rested his elbows on the desk, cupping his chin in his hands. “It wouldn’t surprise me. In the few years I’d known him, he must have had at least three or four really bad depressions that I was aware of. He broke down and bawled once right here in this office — for no apparent reason. It would have broken your heart to see it. He was telling me about an idea he had for a new detective, a character he wanted to develop, and in the middle of a sentence, he just covered his face with his hands and started sobbing.”

“Did he ever do anything with that new detective?”

“Not that I know of, but that was only a few months ago.”

“Had he been in one of his depressions lately?”

Ott threw up his hands and shook his head. “I hadn’t seen him since we had our set-to and he fired me or I quit, however you want to term it. That was over a month ago. But as I said earlier, he was really upset about the money he’d been offered for the two new Barnstable books, the one giving him the fifteen-percent increase. I understand that he accepted it, though, sans agent.

“Also, he was terribly thin-skinned about criticism. All in all, he’d gotten some fairly decent reviews on all three of his Barnstable mysteries, although as you probably know, the stuff Wilbur Hobbs had written in the Gazette bedeviled him. Then there were the Barnstable faithful — the people who’d been religiously reading the books since Sawyer started the series more than forty years ago. A lot of them are ferocious about detail. In fact, there are clubs of Barnstable fans in cities all over the country. They call themselves PROBE, but I forget exactly what the acronym stands for. Something with ‘Barnstable Enthusiasts’ in the title, I think. By and large, they applauded him and were glad that Barnstable was back. But they also caught him in all sorts of minor errors, things like the color of the pickup truck Barnstable drove or the kind of rug he had in his living room. Charles got a number of those letters, and this irked him when it should have pleased him that these folks, all of whom were polite, took the time to write.”

“Hardly worth shooting yourself over,” I observed.

“Agreed. But Charles was wound tight. I warned him before his first Barnstable book came out that every word he wrote would be scrutinized with a magnifying glass. I also said I thought it was a small price to pay for getting to continue a character so many people loved. But you know, I don’t think he ever fully appreciated the opportunity he was getting. To Charles, it was basically a way to raise his visibility fast — and to make money. I don’t think he ever looked beyond the next hill.”

“Did he have many close friends?”

“Not that I knew of,” Ott replied. “I’m sure you’re aware he was engaged — to a young woman at one of the TV networks. In public relations, I think. I never met her. Then there was a writer he was friendly with, named Patricia Royce.”

“I’ve heard of her,” I said. “What was their relationship?”

“I have no idea. Mr. Goodwin, I rarely if ever socialize with my writers. No particular reason, except that my wife and I aren’t big for the cocktail-party circuit or the Hamptons. Oh, I do go to some literary functions, but only because it’s de rigueur in this business. And in fact, I did meet Patricia Royce once, at some book party, I forget where. She recognized my name, said she knew I was Charles’s agent.”

“But you’ve never worked for her?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t ask me to when we met. And I’ve never taken on anyone in that genre — the romantic historical novel — although I did read one of her books sometime back, and I was impressed; her characters are nicely drawn and her plots are particularly solid and well-constructed. But I don’t even know who represents her.”

“Can you suggest anyone who might want to kill Childress?”