“Of course you did, choad. You told the press you’ve got three more of her books. But the truth is, AI could write a hundred of them, and the bots could go nuts for them all. You could say you discovered a secret cache of Leila Donnelly content and you wouldn’t have to worry about the real Lee getting all squeamish about it.”
“Teddy,” Scepter said. “She was the mother of my child!”
I actually gasped.
“Go fuck yourself,” Teddy Piro said.
“Shewas.”
“No more talking, Greg. Do it, and we’ll be even. Clean slate. I’ll help you with the body.”
The door opened. Greg Scepter stumbled into the room, and then the door slammed shut behind him. He was wearing a white linen suit with a white T-shirt underneath, bloodspatter across the front. He had on the same chunky necklace he’d worn for the press conference. It was even cheesier in person. And he was carrying my gun. “I’m sorry about this, but Teddy’s such a dickhead,” Scepter said. “He won’t let me out of here until I kill you.”
Fifty-four
“You don’t want to do this,” I said.
“You’re right. I don’t.” Greg Scepter said it loudly, as though he wanted Teddy to hear. “But my friend out there is insane. There’s no reasoning with him.”
I yanked at the zip-ties. They bit into my wrists. I closed my eyes. Made myself think. “You’re not a killer. I can tell.”
“I know I’m not. But as you can see, I’m in a tough situation.”
I took a breath. Let it out slowly. “Did your mom ever meet Tommy?” I asked.
“What?” he said.
“Gloria died two years ago. Did she know that she was a grandmother?”
He shook his head.
“That’s sad, don’t you think?”
“Sort of,” he said. “You know, I’ve only seen the boy once myself. I went to Lee’s house so she could sign the contract and there he was. He didn’t know me. He hid from me.”
“How about making things right?” I said. “For Tommy and for your mom? And for Leila.”
Greg crouched down beside me and gazed at my face. His eyes were cold and beady, but I saw something behind them. The hint of tears. “I offered her a nice buyout,” he said quietly. “This never had to happen.”
“Leila?”
He shook his head. “Melanie Joan.”
“Oh…”
“I knew my mom loved her, but the fact was, she was a money drain. Never made back her advances. Didn’t even come close.”
“Isn’t that true of most bestselling authors?”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t make it any less of a shit business model,” he said. “And that memoir…”
“What about it?”
“It was going to tank even worse than her romances. I wanted a much smaller print run, but Tony Gault and my mother had it engraved into her contract. No print run smaller than five hundred K. It was ridiculous. She was about to bankrupt my company.”
“She put your company on the map,” I said.
“That’s ancient history.”
