Page 73 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
Kate leaned in closer, peering at his bloodshot eyes. “Spencer, are youhigh?”
“Shhhh!” Spencer said, looking around the hall again.
“Oh my god, your mom is going to kill you,” Kate said in a jubilant whisper.
“I know that,” Spencer said, exaggerated. “That’s why I’m hiding in here. Do you have anything to eat? I could murder a charcuterie board right now.”
“How high are you?” Kate asked on a half laugh.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s been a stressful couple of days for me,” Spencer muttered. “I took some gummies from Richie. I thought it would help me relax, but I can’t feel my face and I have no idea how to get around this fucking house. And now Rebecca’s dead, and Ken and her cousins are fighting, and Ken ate some bad shellfish last night, apparently? I didn’t even know because I was too busy being a selfish asshole asking Ian how to get out of my prenup. Ken deserves better than this. Better than me.”
He groaned and slumped down onto a nearby ottoman, burying his face in his hands. Kate had to wrestle the giant comforter loose from the bed and wrap it around her nakedness as she dragged it across the room and sank down to the floor at his feet, patting his knee.
“There are some… issues to sort out, sure.”
“Issues.” Spencer snorted. “That’s the understatement of the year. She works so hard, and she cares so much, and she just… she deserves the best. Better than any of us are giving her.”
Kate had been so focused on Rebecca’s murder, so sure that Kennedy’s poisoning had been a distraction, but what if she was wrong? Loretta would tell her not to go jumping to conclusions and assume Kennedy wasn’t the target all along. If someone had a grudge against Kennedy, Spencer might know something about it. “Spencer, do you know if anybody has been… I don’t know, upset lately? With Kennedy, I mean. I know about the fight with Rebecca over the wedding, but what about anyone else in her family? Or the board of trustees? Or at work?” A thought occurred to Kate. “Maybe even someone who might be upset with me, too?”
Someone who might want to frame Kate for their crimes.
Spencer gave her a look. “You mean besides Serena Archer and her mighty lion’s roar picket line out there?”
“WhyisSerena so upset with Kennedy?” Kate asked. “At the rehearsaldinner, she was going on about Kennedy poisoning you and Simon against her, and people having their contracts withheld. And I know you said Simon might be looking to sell the company, but that doesn’t explain why he’d hold back on all contracts. And what does any of that have to do with Kennedy? She’s head of marketing, sure, but she doesn’t run the place.”
Spencer side-eyed her. “Unofficially and off the record?”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Seriously? At this point?”
“Kennedy isn’t quite the silent partner I said she was,” Spencer said. “I think she meant to start out that way, but once she was involved with the finances, she realized how much better Simon is at reading books than he was at keeping them, if you know what I mean.”
“Simon Says wasn’t profitable,” Kate guessed.
“It wasn’t just not profitable. It was hemorrhaging money. Simon was paying out these big advances for local authors who would sell maybe a thousand copies, if we were lucky. I mean, he shelled out a hundred grand for Marla’s first book. And, yeah, it got some decent coverage, won a few local awards, got reviewed inThe New York Times. But a hundred grand for an esoteric feminist fairy-tale retelling?” Spencer shook his head. “And she wasn’t the only one. Serena hasn’t earned out on her last seven books, but Simon kept buying them for the same money. Renewing her contract even as her sales dropped. Simon kept saying we needed to invest in local talent, but those investments weren’t paying us back. We’re a small publisher, we don’t have the protection of big-name bestsellers to make up for our losses. The Loretta books have been the only thing keeping us afloat the past three years, basically.”
“Oh,” Kate said. She knew they were profitable, considering her royalty checks, but she hadn’t considered how much they might mean to everyone else working at Simon Says. “So, what did Kennedy do after she gave Simon Says her cash infusion?”
“Look, Kennedy might seem like the cheerleader sorority type, but she’s not the future Hempstead heir for nothing.” Spencer made a ghastly face. “I guess she’s the actual Hempstead heir now. God. Am I going to have to live here?”
“Spencer?” Kate prompted. “The money?”
Spencer shook his head. “Right. Ken knows her way around a checkbook, and a family like the Hempsteads doesn’t stay as wealthy as they are without learning how to balance the budget. Once she saw the trajectory Simon Says was on, she knew she had to right the ship. So she started holding budget meetings with Simon, looking at where they could cut expenses to keep the doors open. And one of the first places, the most obvious, was book advances.”
“So Kennedy was the one who decided to cut contracts?” That was a prime motive for Serena to want revenge on Kennedy, indeed.
Spencer shrugged uncomfortably. “Sort of? I mean, yes, technically. But it’s not like anyone else knew. Or they shouldn’t have, if it weren’t for…”
“For what?” Kate asked. She held up a finger. “Don’t tell me you’re not supposed to say, Spencer, I will end you.”
“Somebody’s been… leaking privileged information,” Spencer said begrudgingly.
“The mole!” Kate gasped, remembering her conversation with Juliette.
“That sounds like an Ian Fleming novel, but yes, sure. The mole. That’s how Serena and the others found out about Kennedy becoming a partner in the business, and how they found out that she was the reason their advances were so much smaller, or why their options weren’t picked up on their newest books. It’s been a huge mess, and we haven’t been able to figure out who’s been doing it. For all I know, it’s Serena herself.”
Juliette certainly seemed to think so, considering the fact that she was snooping in Serena’s room last night. Still, it didn’t explain who killed Rebecca Hempstead, or why.
Spencer sighed, rubbing at his already bloodshot eyes. “I can’t even get married without everything blowing up in my face.”