Voices in the Wardrobe by Marlys Millhiser Page B

kind of doctor is Grant Howard?”
    â€œNobody ever says and if you ask you get that look and don’t try again.”
    Out at the sink and paper towel dispensers, Charlie asked, “Did you get any feeling for The Rites of Winter? ”
    â€œYou know, I just read it when I saw you were on the program. It’s not for us, but you might try Uranus. They’re planning a cable series for the older folks—forty, fifty somethings. It might be a fit.”
    Now Charlie walked along beside her towering author from Iowa, bemused at the fact that someone at one production company would suggest another for something the first rejected. Could Sarah be moving? Was she being fired/downsized?
    Charlie walked. Kenny sort of minced to keep down with her. He had to be six four if he was an inch—and that boy had some inches.
    Charlie!
    Well? “So what are you doing at this conference? Are you going into screenwriting now?”
    â€œWhy should I tell you? You haven’t sold the Myrtle book yet.”
    Actually, you know I think I might have. “There’s some interest, Kenny. Have you continued with it? I mean past the proposal stage?”
    â€œI’ve finished it, Charlie.”
    Their first mistake was to stop in the middle of the hall and turn toward each other. She, looking way up, trying to stop the satisfied smile breaking her face just as a professional stole a still shot that would complicate her life for a long time to come.
    Oh, boy.

Nine
    â€œWhoa girl, you drive a Dodge Ram? Who’d a thought?” Kenny drove his rental, a bright red something-to-ruther.
    He’d been explaining to her why he was at the conference and trying to lay a guilt trip on her for not returning his calls. All the while Charlie was hurrying out to the parking lot, intent upon rushing to the Sea Spa, and postponing him, when she saw more cameras and the ferret from the Union-Tribune sniffing around her truck.
    So, planning to tell her client to shove off, midway through the sentence Charlie changed to, “Kenny? Where’s your car? I need to make a fast getaway.” Studs are suckers for that kind of talk.
    When they were nearly there she thought to mention they’d need to eat before they reached their destination. Charlie couldn’t believe it when he pulled into a Carl’s Junior for lunch. Kenny was a sometime health nut. “But this is junk food.”
    â€œI’m on vacation. So why that heart-stopping smile when I said I’d finished the Myrtle book? You know, I haven’t felt that good since my mommy told me I’d passed potty training.”
    â€œI have a nibble on the proposal.”
    â€œWho?” he said around a loaded burger.
    â€œPitman’s.” She tore her burger into ragged halves and passed one over to his side of the table, sneaking a couple of his fries in return. “I just found out Friday. You must have had a boring winter in Iowa to finish it this soon.”
    â€œThey turned down the last one after nibbles.”
    â€œNew editor. This one could be different.” Charlie met this creature last October when she and her mother traveled to Iowa on family matters. And she learned more about family than she’d ever wanted to know. Charlie had grown up thinking she’d been adopted from an agency in Boulder where she was raised and her daughter born. She and Libby had dark, almost black eyes in stark contrast to their light hair, Libby a platinum blonde and Charlie’s hair with more of a bronze shade. But when Charlie visited Myrtle, Iowa for the first and she vowed last time, she found at least a fourth of the people there had the same color eyes—including Kenny Cowper who wrote under the name of Kenneth Cooper.
    â€œNice old Iowa” had been something of a surprise. And so had Kenny Cowper.
    â€œSo tell me again why you are at this conference?”
    â€œI thought an exposé on charlatans in the