Page 47 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

“Hi, Kit. Give me a second, I’m heading outside. Or do you want me to call you back?”

“I’ll wait.”

From sounds coming through the phone, she filled in the time by doing things in her kitchen. I thought cleanup. Until I was getting into my SUV and heard ice cubes clanking into one glass, then a second.

“You have plans, Kit?”

Impervious to teasing, she said, “A little later. My friend likes his drink well cooled. This way we don’t waste time after he gets here.”

By my calculations, it was nearly eleven o’clock where she was. Not absolute proof, but suggestive of what plans she and her friend had.

“Okay. I won’t waste time, either,” I said. “Tell me you have something brilliant that will answer all my questions.”

She snorted and asked a question, rather than answering. “You said this manuscript’s writer is dead?”

“Yes. Last fall.”

“Natural causes?”

Unexpectedly I had to bite the inside of my cheeks. Not the question most people would ask. On the other hand, I had told her I’d pursued investigations of a number of murders. Plus, the question fit Kit perfectly.

“Yes, natural causes.”

“Too bad. Not the natural causes. That she died. This manuscript has promise. It’s not complete, of course, but the characters draw you in. You have questions?”

“What about these sections where she’s written notes. Or sections with pieces of dialogue and little else? What’s that about?”

“Part of her process, clearly.”

“Her process was to write sections of dialogue where I had no idea who said what—?”

“Neither did she. Yet. They weren’t said by main characters, so she could wait to sort out who said what later.”

“Okay, but what about the sudden reference to Maggie writing a note that saved the soldiers — from what? When?”

“She didn’t know that yet, either.”

“But . . . but Irene was the writer. How could she not know?”

“Process,” she repeated.

“But what was in the note had to come earlier in the story, before the part where Maggie’s listening to them talk about her, the part that leads up to Ransom saying he’d marry her.”

“She’s writing out of order.”

“Out of order? How can—?”

She snorted. “Can tell you’re not a creative type.”

Perhaps with a hint of defensiveness, I said, “Hey, I’ve figured out a number of murders along with colleagues here. That’s creative.” After a beat, I acknowledged, “In its way.”

“Completely different.” Kit was not one to soften her opinion. But she did expand. “Solving murders involves following clues to learn the secrets behind what’s already happened. Writing a novel is making up what happens, with infinite choices.”

“I thought novelists outline.”

“Some do.” Didn’t sound like she was one. “They still have to make things up to create the outline, but your writer, Irene Jardos, wasn’t an outliner.”

“We didn’t find one, true, but maybe it burned in the fire, or—”

“Irene Jardos was writing her way into her book. That part about the note? Might’ve ended up in the finished book, maybe a major point.

Or it could disappear. You don’t know until other pieces of the story gel.

I imagine it’s like raising a kid. You don’t know what a child needs the moment it pops out.

You have to get to know the individual kid.

And before you get to know them, they have to become somebody.

“That’s why some of us don’t name characters right away. Count yourself lucky — you could be reading a manuscript with XX or YY or TT standing in for every character’s name.”

“Yikes. Is that what you do, Kit?”

She snorted a chuckle. “More often than not. A few characters come with their names, so to speak. A lot of them I have to go searching, accidentally or deliberately.”

“How does that work?”

“I’m looking for associations, sounds, rhythm to help convey the character. Egbert Ebelfingler’s going to be a completely different person from Todd Trent. Once in a while you might go for what a name means, but you don’t want to drive that into the ground.”

“And when the name’s accidental?”

“Same elements, but unconsciously. A name on the news or an overheard conversation or someone you remembered or — a thousand ways.”

Was that how Thomas came into Irene’s manuscript for Peter’s doomed brother?

“So, authors search for names after they know a character—”

“You’re not listening. Some do. Others have to have names pinned down before they can start, with a spectrum in between. Plus, sometimes the same author approaches different books different ways.”

I toggled a pen between two fingers.

“That would mean limitless combinations of possibilities.”

“Now, you’re getting the idea.”

“So having you read this manuscript and my reading it doesn’t get us anywhere.” I wasn’t asking her, but telling myself.

“Don’t know until you know, right?”

I snorted. “Now you’re making me sound like a writer.”

“You should be so lucky.” After half a beat, she added. “Or so crazy. Mind if I show the manuscript to Sheila?”

The request mildly surprised me, though I didn’t know why. Sheila had also been part of the untangling we did in London. And I’d never doubted that she and Kit remained close, even though they no longer lived together.

“Don’t mind at all.”

Thoughts of Sheila reading the manuscript reminded me of Connie’s comments.

“What about the characters?” I asked abruptly. Could Irene’s great insight into people in real life have been infused into characters in ways she might not even have been aware of . . .?

“You’re asking where characters came from? If they’re modeled after people in real life? That’s one of the questions we get asked all the time, along with Where do you get your ideas?”

Good thing I hadn’t asked that one, too.

“The answer to both is pretty much from everywhere,” she said.

“Like I said before, it depends on the author and the book.

Some authors chart them out with precision.

Some write their way into the characters as they draft, then go back and smooth out the edges after they know what needs to be there.

“As for coming from real life, I don’t know anyone who plucks them whole — it wouldn’t work well, since the character needs to fit the story.

“Oh, sure readers say that character is exactly like so-and-so from your own real life or this character is exactly like a public figure. But they never are — not in my experience or that of authors I know. Like when you meet a new person, even if they remind you of someone else, they’re not that other person.

They’re separate individuals. They’re people.

“We — authors — might pick up bits and pieces from real life, but then we slice them up, mix them with other things, strain them through our imaginations, let them get knocked around by plot events and the other characters, and finally they stand on their own two feet.”

I respected what she said and understood it in theory, yet had a hard time imagining how someone did that.

“You were hoping Irene plunked someone from real life into her manuscript that would help you with your possible murder,” Kit said with far less sympathy than I deserved.

Of course I did. Fat lot of good hoping did me.

Instead of confessing, I told her what Connie said about Irene’s change of attitude about writing her story when she received a fatal diagnosis.

Kit clicked her tongue. “That’s what it takes sometimes to let go of thinking it’s got to be perfect. Too bad. We could’ve had more stories from her. What do you think of it, Elizabeth?”

“Like I told you, the notes and skipping chunks and all that boggles my mind—”

“Journalist,” she said. “Linear.”

Neither word was a compliment, but they did include tolerance, maybe even a level of affection.

Then she added, “Question is what you think of the story.”

“It’s not what I ordinarily read . . .” I considered for a moment. “I’ll keep reading. I want to know more.”

“From what I know of you, you always want to know more, but what you said about reading more, that is what a writer wants to hear. That’s the only true test to pass, that the reader wants to keep reading.”