Almost True Confessions: Closet Sleuth Spills All

274 Pages·2013·1.35 MB·English

by  O'Connor Jane

Dedication
To Jim again, always
Acknowledgments
I
’d like to thank my very talented editor, Carrie Feron, for having the
patience of a saint.
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
P.S.
About the Author
About the Book
Read On
Also by Jane O’Connor
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
P
en name for Josette? The answer was ten letters long.
Staring at all the maddening blank squares in the puzzle, Rannie Bookman
faced the fact that she needed a more meaningful goal in life than completing the
Saturday New York Times crossword. The realization did not, however, compel
her to put down the newspaper and take action, not even to the point of getting
out of bed or casting off the flannel nightgown with a peanut butter and jelly
stain on the sleeve that she’d been wearing for the past forty hours. It was almost
three in the afternoon of what should have been a pleasurable tail-end-of-
November day, weak sunlight filtering through the closed shutters of her
bedroom windows. Yet all she wanted to do was pull the covers up over her head
and hibernate. She swallowed hard a few times, testing to see if her throat hurt,
just as she used to do eons ago as an excuse to miss school and stay in bed. And
actually, now after the fourth try, her throat did feel a little scratchy.
Was she, she wondered absently, the only person in the world who after
coming within a hairsbreadth of dying wasn’t filled to the overflowing brim with
renewed purpose, boundless energy, as well as a humbling sense of life’s
beauty? Oh sure, for a while she’d felt like a walking, talking smiley-face
emoticon. A heady—or maybe just wrongheaded—feeling of invincibility had
lasted the entire time she remained the darling of the New York tabloids and
morning news shows. Sitting with a camera trained on her, Rannie (“Just think
Annie with an ‘R,’ ” she’d explain to interviewers butchering her name) would
modestly recount foiling her attacker, a psychotic murderer, with nothing more
than her Col-Erase blue pencil, the stock-in-trade of every copy editor. The TV
hosts would look at all 102 pounds, five feet, two inches of her; shake their
heads in wonderment; and pronounce, “It’s a miracle you’re here.”
But now the media hoopla was over and her life was back to normal, no
better or worse than it had been before. On the plus side: she had two almost-
grown kids whom she adored—a daughter at Yale, a son in his senior year of
high school; a really attractive man seemed to be falling in love with her; all the
TV makeup people had said she looked thirty-three, not forty-three; and her
three-bedroom apartment was rent controlled. On the minus side: she had two
almost-grown kids who drove her crazy; the man in question was a recovering
alcoholic with more old issues than National Geographic; she often felt she
acted thirteen, not forty-three; and she still had no job.
Ironically, the person who best understood her anomie was her ex-husband,
an amiable underachiever whose life purpose was simply to play tennis every
day under a clear California sky. “You’re still looking for meaning, Rannie?” he
asked, incredulous. “Just live.” When Peter Lorimer started sounding deep, you
knew you were in trouble.
Simple truth: Rannie needed work to distract herself.
It was now more than four months since she’d gotten pink-slipped at Simon
& Schuster, all because of a mistake made by a junior copy editor and blamed on
Rannie, his supervisor. Oh, it had been a beaut all right—an “L” missing from
the last word in the title of the first Nancy Drew mystery, a title that was
supposed to be The Secret of the Old Clock. All fifty thousand copies of the
special gold-embossed “pleather” anniversary edition were destroyed, although
some managed to pop up on eBay, selling for outrageous amounts.
By now the freelance copyediting assignments that had been keeping her
mind occupied and her wallet marginally full had dried up. And her part-time
work as a tour guide at the private school her son attended had ended once the
deadline for applications had passed. She had too much time on her hands;
everyone was unanimous on that score—her kids, her boyfriend, her mother, her
ex-husband’s mother. And since she was hardly sleeping, she actually had even
more time to fill, especially those joyous hours between two and four A.M. when
there are only two adjectives to describe life—bleak and pointless.
Each night she’d awaken, bolt upright in bed, her scalp tingling, her heart
galloping, after another ghastly replay of the rooftop attack that had nearly ended
her life. But instead of relief that she was safe in bed, she’d be swamped by
guilt. She was still alive only because she’d ended someone else’s life. She’d
listen to her own heart beating and the fact that she’d stopped someone’s from
doing that very same elemental act seemed impossible, horrifying, and wrong.
“You are way overthinking this. Self-defense, Rannie. It was you or him. End
of discussion.” This was what Tim Butler, who had once been a cop, kept
reminding her, lately with an undertone of impatience. “Look, call me if you
can’t sleep. I don’t care what time it is. I’ll come over and take your mind off
crazy stuff.”
Indeed he could. If not for all those wonderful sex-released endorphins,
Rannie figured she’d probably be on an intravenous drip of antidepressants. And
sex with Tim was fun, unpredictable, loaded with raw animal satisfaction.
They’d meet, and all through dinner or a movie or some sports event at Chapel
School, where Tim’s son also was a senior, she’d sit counting down the minutes
until they were alone and she could grab him. Yet never once had she picked up
the phone when the night terrors came stalking. She deserved the guilt; it was
right to suffer over killing someone.
“You say you’re Jewish. But in another life you definitely were wearing a
parochial school uniform,” was Tim’s assessment.
Chapter 2
T
he ringing of the phone on her bedside table startled Rannie. Her hand
emerged from the covers and groped for the receiver. Tim, probably, about plans
for tonight.
“Rannie? It’s Ellen.” Ellen Donahoe, a senior editor at Simon & Schuster,
always threw whatever freelance copyediting she needed Rannie’s way. “I have
a job for you. A biggie. We’re on a crazy tight deadline. Can you do it?”
“Yes! I’m sharpening blue pencils as we speak! I don’t care if it’s a tax code
manual.” Rannie leaped from bed and shuddered as she caught sight of herself in
the mirror. Raging bedhead.
“Oh, I guarantee it’s a lot juicier than that.”
“You have the disk? I’ll come right now and pick it up.” With her free hand,
Rannie brushed her dark baby-fine hair into its Louise Brooks–ish bob.
Ellen didn’t. “You have to pick up a hard copy and the disk at the author’s
apartment. She specifically asked for you, and she’ll send her limo to get you.”
Limo? This was getting better and better. She sprinted toward the bathroom.
“Who’s the writer?” The one author Rannie had dated, a guy whose depressing
novels never ranked higher than a zillion on Amazon, was always so strapped for
cash that he’d mooch MetroCard rides off her.
“Before I tell you,” Ellen went on, “you have to agree to a few ground rules.