“I don’t mean to take up your time,” the woman said hesitantly.
“That’s all right,” Daria said as patiently as she could manage. “You’ve written a book?”
“I . . . well, I guess so. I mean, I’m not really a writer, but I did have a few ideas, so I wrote them down. I’m sure they’re not worth anything, but then, maybe, someone might like them. Or maybe one of them, I don’t know.”
Daria had to work hard to keep the smile on her face. One of those, she thought. Some writers hyped themselves up and came at you like a tsunami released on your face, telling you that they were going to put your publishing house on the map with this magnificent opus they had wrought.
Then there were people like this woman, this . . . Daria looked at the woman’s name tag, but all she could see was the last name of Gilmore. The first name was hidden behind the blue typing-paper box that she was holding so tightly to her chest that her fingers were white.
“Ms. Gilmore,” Daria said, “may I be honest with you? I’m late for giving a speech, and—”
Instantly, as though she were obeying orders, the woman stepped back and started apologizing. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. They didn’t tell me. I thought I had an appointment for one o’clock, and—”
Daria very well knew that it was now two-thirty, so that meant the woman had been sitting outside in the hall waiting for this moment for . . . Well, based on Daria’s experience, the woman had probably been waiting all her life to hand her manuscript over to a New York editor.
Daria couldn’t take the guilt anymore. As she gathered her things, she handed the woman her card. “Here, send what you have to New York. Mark it to my personal attention and I’ll take care of it myself. How does that sound?”
“Very generous,” the woman said, looking at the card as though it were the key to heaven.
As Daria left, to ease her guilt a bit, she gave the woman a little squeeze on the shoulder; then she practically ran from the room.
Cheryl walked into Daria’s office, laughing. “You’ll never guess what I just received in the mail.”
“I can’t imagine,” Daria said absently as she searched through the pile on her desk to find the fifty pages of manuscript that she’d just edited. She had to get everything into her bag to take home. Unfortunately, she had to go to a dinner tonight with some of the bigwigs of the company, which meant that she’d be up until midnight trying to catch up on her workload. She had three—count ’em three—books that she was crashing, books that had been put in the schedule, then the authors, for one reason or another, hadn’t turned their manuscripts in on time, so it was up to Daria to do a year’s work in just weeks.
“You remember that writers’ conference last week when you had that late author appointment? You told her that she should send what she’d written to you here, to your personal
attention. Remember?”
Daria’s head came up. She was stressed-out right now, so she had to bite her tongue to keep from saying that if there was anything wrong, then it was going to be on Cheryl’s head, not hers. But Daria didn’t say that. “I remember. What about her?”
“If I remember correctly, you said, ‘Send me what you have.’”
“Yes,” Daria said impatiently. She didn’t have time to play guessing games. If she didn’t rush, she was going to be late to dinner, something that one didn’t do to the publisher and the CEO.
“She obeyed you to the letter,” Cheryl said, barely able to contain her mirth. “She’s sent you a package that is—Oh, wait, here it is. I got Bobby from the mailroom to carry it for me. You have to see this!”
To Daria’s great annoyance, a guy from the mailroom plopped what had to be a three-foot stack of paper on top of Daria’s already overcrowded desk. She had to count to five to keep from snapping that she didn’t have time for this!
“There are five novels, and they are all handwritten!” Cheryl said as though this were the greatest joke in the world.
Daria gave her assistant a tight little smile. Everything was new to Cheryl, including handwritten manuscripts. But Daria had been in publishing for a long time, and she’d seen a lot of them. “Send all of it back,” she said. “Tell her our policy on handwritten—”
But before Daria could finish the sentence, the phone on the desk outside rang and Cheryl ran to answer it. Bobby from the mailroom, obviously afraid that he was going to be told to rewrap the huge package, disappeared as though he were a genie returning to his bottle.
“One. Two. Three,” Daria counted in an attempt to calm her already jangled nerves. The papers she desperately needed for her work tonight were under this monstrosity on her desk. And, looking at the thing, she was afraid that if she touched it, it would collapse and all three feet would go everywhere. Ten years from now, she’d still be finding handwritten pages scattered about her office.
“Cheryl!” Daria called through the open door, but there was no answer. Just then Daria looked down and she thought she saw a corner of the pages she’d been looking for sticking out from under the towering mass. Maybe . . . If she was very careful . . .
Leaning over the stack of papers, Daria reached, her nose practically on the top page of the manuscript. Actually, the handwriting on the pages was quite legible.
“Max turned to me and said, ‘What’s to eat?’ so I knew that it was time to find another murder,” Daria read.
At that Daria smiled. Bored housewife turned detective, she thought; then she read the next sentence.
Ten minutes later Cheryl returned to the office, still laughing, “I’ll get Bobby to take this away. I just wanted to show you—”
“Go!” Daria said, her eyes on the tenth page of the manuscript.