Both seemed ready to pounce with questions, so Mercer took the offensive. “What brought you to Camino Island?”

They looked at each other as if the story was long and complicated. Myra said, “We lived in the Fort Lauderdale area for many years and got tired of the traffic and crowds. The pace of life here is much slower. People are nicer. Real estate is cheaper. And you? Where’s home for you these days?”

“I’ve been in Chapel Hill for the past three years, teaching. But now I’m sort of in transition.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Myra asked.

“Means I’m basically homeless and unemployed and desperate to finish a book.”

Leigh cackled and Myra guffawed as smoke streamed from their noses. “We’ve been there,” Myra said. “We met thirty years ago when neither one of us had two pennies to rub together. I was trying to write historical fiction and Leigh was trying to write that weird literary shit she’s still trying to write and nothing was selling. We were on welfare and food stamps and working for minimum wage, and, well, things were not looking too good. One day we were walking down a mall and saw a long line of people, all middle-aged women, waiting for something. Up ahead was a bookstore, one of those Walden bookshops used to be in every mall, and sitting at a table having a grand time was Roberta Doley, back then one of the bestselling romance gals in the business. I got in line—Leigh was too much of a snob—bought the book and we made each other read it. The story was about a pirate who roamed the Caribbean raiding ships and raising hell and running from the Brits, and it just so happened that everywhere he docked there was a gorgeous young virgin just waiting to be deflowered. Total crap. So we conjured up this story about a southern belle who couldn’t stay away from her slaves and got herself pregnant. We threw everything at it.”

Leigh added, “Had to buy some dirty magazines, you know, for reference materials. A lot of that stuff we didn’t know about.”

Myra laughed and continued. “We knocked it out in three months and I reluctantly sent it to my agent in New York. A week later she called and said some idiot was offering fifty grand as an advance. We published it under the name of Myra Leigh. Isn’t that clever? Within a year we had a pile of cash and never looked back.”

“So you write together?” Mercer asked.

“She writes it,” Leigh said quickly, as if to distance herself. “We work on the story together, which takes about ten minutes, then she grinds it out. Or we used to.”

“Leigh’s too much of a snob to touch it. She’ll damned sure touch the money, though.”

“Now, Myra,” Leigh said with a smile.

Myra sucked in a lungful and blew a cloud over her shoulder. “Those were the days. We cranked out a hundred books under a dozen names and couldn’t write ’em fast enough. The dirtier the better. You should try one. Pure filth.”