A Romantic Way to Die by Bill Crider Page A

Ms. Thayer get her story on the record first?”
    Vernell thought it over. If she’d considered keeping quiet, she changed her mind. She couldn’t afford to have Serena giving an account that might make Serena look completely innocent.
    “There’s not really much of a story to tell,” she said. “We were just talking.”
    “Not when I saw you,” Rhodes said.
    Vernell didn’t say anything.
    “Something started that fight,” Rhodes said after a while. “I want to know what it was.”
    Vernell still didn’t say anything. Rhodes decided to wait her out this time. He wouldn’t talk if she didn’t.
    “It was about Terry Don,” she said at last.
    “What about him?”
    “About what she was trying to do. You said you read Henrietta’s book. Well, that part was true.”
    “Serena was really trying to get Terry Don to be on the covers of all her books?”
    “Not just that. She wanted him on her covers and nobody else’s.”
    Rhodes said he wasn’t sure what was wrong with that.
    “It was her methods,” Vernell said. “It wasn’t like people didn’t know. Henrietta was just repeating what everybody else had already said.”
    “That Serena was sleeping with him,” Rhodes said.
    “Of course. And she was getting possessive. That didn’t sit well with Terry Don. He wasn’t a one-woman man.”
    “So I gathered from what I read.”
    “Writers are terrible gossips,” Vernell said. “Even someone like Henrietta, who wasn’t exactly an insider, knew about Terry Don.”
    “Did Serena know about Henrietta’s manuscript?”
    Vernell looked at the floor.
    “Well?” Rhodes said.
    “I might have mentioned it to her.”
    “Before the fight?”
    “I guess you could say that.”
    “Do you want to be a little more specific about what you said and when you said it?”
    “Not really.”
    “Try it anyway.”
    Vernell sighed, then said, “I told Serena she was a character in a book that Henrietta had written. It didn’t seem to surprise her. I remember wondering if she’d heard about it from someone else. Anyway, I told her that I thought the character in the book was just like her. Only nicer.”
    “And then the fight started,” Rhodes guessed.
    “No. I should’ve let it go, but Serena smiled a smug little smile, and that made me mad. So I said that I thought Terry Don was too good for her.”
    “And that started things,” Rhodes said.
    “No. She just kept on smiling. So I said that I thought the book was right about her temper and that maybe she killed Henrietta because Terry Don still loved her. You know. From high school.”
    Rhodes waited.
    “And that’s when the fight started,” Vernell said. “She said I was a lying witch, except she didn’t say witch , and then maybe I slapped her.”
    “Maybe?”
    “Okay, so there’s no maybe. I slapped her. But she shouldn’t have called me that. She slapped me back, and then things got a little out of hand.”
    “And that’s the whole story.”
    “That’s it. I’m totally embarrassed by the whole thing. I wouldn’t blame anybody who wanted to get a refund and leave the conference. I’m sorry I ever tried to put it on in the first place. I should’ve known something bad would happen if Terry Don came back here. Henrietta never got over him, even if he did sleep with half the romance writers in America.”
    “That would be a lot,” Rhodes said.
    “Yes, but look at him. Can you blame women for being crazy about him?”
    Rhodes just didn’t get it. Maybe it was the hair. Or maybe it was those pecs. Or both.
    “So there was nothing more to the fight than that,” he said.
    “That’s all. You know what Serena’s temper is like. You read the book.”
    “But you’re the one who did the slapping,” Rhodes pointed out.
    Vernell was clearly insulted.
    “What difference does that make? She’s the one who started things.”
    Rhodes thought about it. Vernell had been the one to initiate the conversation. She was the one who hadn’t stopped