Our day-to-day work life.
Trader Joe’s chicken salad you like in fridge read one note. Picking up David’s dry cleaning. Will stop by bank and pharmacy read another.
All those colored pieces of paper with smiley faces and xoxos reminded me of things I’d chosen to forget. How much I’d relied on him, for one. How much I’d trusted him. How much non-writing-related running around for me he’d done. Unwillingly, I recalled how much I’d liked him and what a good PA he’d been.
I thought you were my friend. I smoothed out a crumpled orange square.
But that was childish. Dicky had been my employee and eventually my romantic rival. Not even my rival really, because I’d put up no fight for David. And I probably had been a pain in the ass to work for. Exacting and opinionated and a complete workaholic who, unrealistically, expected of him the same dedication to my interests that I had.
I picked up a manila folder and found the notes and initial chapters of the Butterwith novel I’d been working on when my life had fallen apart—and by my life falling apart, I don’t mean when David left me. I mean when Wheaton & Woodhouse dumped the series.
I thumbed through the initial pages of Miss Butterwith’s Seeds of Doubt and read the final paragraphs.
Miss Butterwith gathered up her bag, pulled on her gloves, and nodded to Mr. Pinkerton, who was lazily watching butterflies from the window seat overlooking the rose garden.
“Unless Mr. Fothergill is a good deal more ruthless—and clever—than I believe, I shall be back in time for tea.”
Mr. Pinkerton meowed, showing all his sharp, white teeth.
“I’m always careful,” Miss Butterwith assured him.
The cheerful pipping of a car horn outside the gate informed her that Inspector Appleby had arrived at last.
She turned toward the door, then glanced back in afterthought. “Mind you leave those songbirds alone,” she warned.
Mr. Pinkerton yawned a wide and delicate yawn.
Miss Butterwith bestowed a reluctant smile upon him, and locking the door behind her, bustled off, a diminutive Athena in sensible shoes and a brown tweed suit.
I realized I, like Miss Butterwith, was smiling, and I wondered why I hadn’t finished the book.
No, I knew why I hadn’t finished it. Being dropped by my publisher had certainly played a role, but there were other publishers out there. In fact, Rachel had lined up a new publisher within a month after we’d returned from the writing retreat.
It was more about feeling that nobody cared if I finished the book or not. Publishing had changed a lot since I’d written the first of Miss B.’s adventures: Miss Butterwith Closes the Case. Reader tastes had changed. Now the heroines of cozy mysteries were all young, sexually active professional women (though, seriously, some of those jobs! Sudoku champs, wedding planners, NASCAR drivers, genealogists!), all with large, tiresome extended families and troublesome comic-relief pals—or, occasionally, a completely stereotypical gay best friend. It was depressing how few readers still seemed to care about elderly, retired Englishwomen with zero sexual experience and yet an uncanny understanding of the human heart—oh, and also a helpful feline companion.
I removed my glasses, wiped them on the tail of my T-shirt, and slid them back on.
Sure, I had always written for myself, but nobody publishes for themselves. I had published for others. I had published for my imagined audience. Now that audience seemed truly imaginary. In fact, it seemed to have disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Or had it? Maybe I was the one who had disappeared, disheartened by the lack of enthusiasm I perceived in everyone from Rachel to J.X.
It was hard to know, because I had never been exactly…engaged in promotion and publicity. I had been writing professionally long before there was anything like social media, and the marketing department at Wheaton & Woodhouse had taken care of the reader interaction end of things. I had simply written the books and occasionally shown up for signings.
I had loved writing the books.
Was I ever going to love writing anything again?
It seemed less and less likely, and yet I longed to rediscover that old excitement, the old passion for storytelling.
I gazed down again at the printed page.
Miss Butterwith bestowed a reluctant smile upon him, and locking the door behind her, bustled off, a diminutive Athena in sensible shoes and a brown tweed suit.
Were those really going to be the final words of fiction I wrote?
I mean, Miss B. had never even had a chance to solve that final case—or change out of that uncomfortable suit.
I laid the manuscript aside and picked up the phone to call Rachel before I could change my mind.
Although it was after seven in New York, I knew Rachel would still be working, and sure enough, Jordan Lombard, her latest assistant, picked up the phone at once. When I asked to speak to Rachel, Jordan put me straight through—so some things had not changed. I still carried some clout.
Rachel came on the line, demanding, “Christopher! Have they caught the clown who attacked you?”
“Not so far. At least, not as far as I know.”
“How is the investigation coming?”
“I don’t think they have a lot to go on. It’s not like the description I gave is going to be of much use once he takes his costume and makeup off.”
“Not that investigation! Your investigation.”
“Oh, right. I’m still sorting through boxes, seeing if I can find any contact info for Dicky. That’s not why I’m calling, though.”
“No? Why are you calling?”
“Rachel…”
For the first time in our relationship, I didn’t know what to say to her. It was hard to ask. It felt like begging. Like begging her to go begging for me. And the last time we’d tried that, it hadn’t gone so well. We’d both ended up as murder suspects.
“Christopher?” she said sharply. “Christopher, are you there?”
“Yes.” I drew a long, shaky breath. “It’s just…in three years Miss Butterwith turns twenty. Twenty. That’s a milestone in any series, and the Butterwith books made a lot of money and won a lot of awards in their time.”
“That’s true.” Her tone was neutral. “What’s your point?”
“It just seems like…”
She was silent. She had to know what I was asking. Couldn’t she say something?
“I still love the Butterwith books. That’s all. I enjoyed writing them, and I wish the series could have ended properly instead of being dropped.”
After a moment she said, “Have you been working on a new Butterwith book?”
“No.”
“Do you have a proposal for a new Butterwith ready to go?”
“No,” I had to admit again.
“Millbrook Prime Crime is ready to contract another Butterwith book when you’re ready to write the proposal.”
“Yes.”
She prompted, “But?”
“Rachel, I know perfectly well Millbrook doesn’t care if I send them a book or not. I know you twisted arms to get that deal, and I know you did it as a favor to me. And I know this phone call is a waste of your time. It’s not that I don’t want to write anything new. I do. I just would have liked…more for Miss B. That’s all.”
Okay, this was truly ridiculous. And embarrassing. I wasn’t quite sure what I was trying to ask of her. But the idea of Miss Butterwith’s inevitable fade from the halls of publishing was getting me even more choked up than the idea of my own.
“I see.” After a moment Rachel said briskly, “Thank you for calling, Christopher. Touching base with the client is never a waste of time.”
I said feebly, “Okay. Well. Great.”
“Keep me informed of your progress into the investigation of that little rat Dicky’s death.”
Rachel had taken Dicky’s defection nearly as badly as I had.
“Uh, yes. I’ll do that.”
“Toodle-oo. Talk to you soon.” She
disconnected with a clean, clear click.
I stared at the handset. That was it? No lemme see what I can do? No lemme think about it? No put together a proposal and then we’ll talk?
Maybe J.X. was right. Maybe I did need to change agents. Rachel was getting even more eccentric than me. Except, what would be the point of a new agent when I wasn’t currently writing?
I put the phone to rest in the cradle and picked up the manuscript to stick it back in its manila folder. A lime-green Post-it square fluttered down to my desktop like a torn butterfly wing. I picked it up, turned it over.
In Dicky’s neat writing read the message: Going to movies with Joe E. Call if any problems, followed by a phone number I did not recognize.
Chapter Ten
“What can I do for you, Mr. Holmes?” Detective Dean was brisk as a winter’s morning in Iceland when she returned my phone call later that evening.
J.X. had joined me for dinner but was now back in his office, racing to hit the deadline on his current book. I returned to my own office and continued sifting through boxes and boxes.
I said, “I haven’t been able to find Dicky’s original job application or his résumé, but I did come across a phone number for one of his friends. I don’t know if the number is still good or how close a friend this person was, but—”
“Not necessary,” Dean cut me off. “The victim in your former backyard is not Dicky Dickison.”
“What?” Despite telling David there was a chance the body did not belong to Dicky, in my heart I had been pretty sure Dicky was buried beneath the pergola. The fact that he’d been MIA for over a year seemed like too much of a coincidence.
Dean said, “The ME’s preliminary findings indicate the skeleton belongs to a well-nourished, middle-aged Caucasian male.”
“Middle-aged?”
“Correct. It looks like our victim was six feet tall and somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age. Does that sound like Mr. Dickison to you?”
“No. Dicky was twenty-three, slim, and about my height.”
“Furthermore, our vic predates Mr. Dickison going missing.”
“Predates him? How could he? The pergola was built less than a year ago.”
“Actually, I wanted to discuss that with you,” Dean said. “According to the ME—again, these are only preliminary findings—our vic has been dead and buried for nearly two decades.”
“I-I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“Well, in fact, there are a couple of possibilities. One, the victim was already buried in your backyard when you bought the house. Two, the victim was originally buried elsewhere but was moved to your backyard when you began construction on the pergola.”
Into my silence, Dean added, “Three, you killed someone who was not Mr. Dickison and buried him in your garden.”
That woke me up. “Are you kidding?” I demanded.
“Yes,” Dean said without any hint of humor. “It’s highly improbable you murdered someone twenty years ago and brought the body with you to the Hiawatha property—although it has been known to happen. Previously you rented an apartment in Northridge, so it would have taken effort to safely store the body in the interim before moving to Chatsworth. We can’t find any record that you ever rented a storage facility.”
They had actually explored that scenario!
I spluttered, “Then where’s Dicky? Who’s buried in my old garden?”
“Mr. Dickison’s whereabouts remain unknown. That’s a case for Missing Persons. As to the identity of the body in your backyard, we’ve not yet been able to identify him. We’re hoping you might be able to help us with that.”
“Of course I can’t help you! I tell you I had nothing to do with it!”
She sighed. “Mr. Holmes, by help, I mean we’re looking for information on the history of the house. According to the property records, you purchased the home from a Mr. Zachary Samuels.”
I felt a twinge of guilt. Zag. God. I hadn’t thought of him in years. “That’s correct.”
“Samuels lived in the house for seven years, which places him on scene within the time frame we’re looking at.”
“There’s no way,” I said. “I knew Zag. We were friends. He was not a killer. And I know everyone says that, but I mean it. He was not a killer. He was one of the sweetest guys you could ever hope to meet. He wrote cupcake mysteries, for God’s sake.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Just…you have to take my word for it. Zag is not who you’re looking for. Assuming he’s even still alive, which, sadly, probably not. Is it possible the body could have been buried more than twenty years?”
“It’s possible,” Dean acknowledged. “It could have been buried less than twenty years too. As I said, these are preliminary findings, and it’s sometimes difficult to pinpoint exact dates, particularly in residential situations where the environment is relatively controlled. The question, of course, is if the body was already buried in your backyard by Mr. Samuels—or, for the sake of argument, someone else—why was it not discovered when the pergola was built?”
I said, “I think I mentioned this before. Originally there was a garden shed in that spot. It was kind of a weird place for it. Inconvenient, for one thing. For another, why take up that nice view—”
There was a tinge of exasperation in her, “Mr. Holmes, what does the view have to do with anything?”
There was probably equal exasperation in my, “I’m getting to that.”
“Go on.”
“It was a weird place to put a garden shed. That might be a clue.”
She said with dangerous restraint, “Really? I’ll make a note.”
“Anyway, the shed had a cement floor. I don’t know for a fact that the floor was broken up and removed. It’s possible the contractor knocked down the building but retained the original foundation and built the pergola over it. It was just a small pergola. I used to have my coffee out there on sunny mornings.”
“Are you telling me now that you believe the foundation to the pergola was part of the earlier, older structure?”
“I have no idea.”
“How is that possible?”
“I had a lot on my mind at the time. I wasn’t out there supervising. I hired a company with good ratings, told them what I wanted, and left it to them. I had a book to write.” And a broken marriage to grieve. Mostly I had a book to write.
Dean’s voice rose ever so slightly. “You didn’t think to mention this earlier?”
“No.”
“It didn’t occur to you that might be significant?”
“It didn’t occur to me at all.”
“Why wouldn’t it occur to you?” she cried.
I was rather taken aback by her vehemence. “Because you already seemed certain of the time frame and the victim’s probable identity. I wasn’t thinking about the history of the property. I did mention there had been a previous structure. And for all I know, the contractor did break up the old foundation and replace it. You’d have to ask him.”
Dean had regained control of her voice as she answered, “I don’t suppose you have the company’s contact information?”
“No, but I remember their name. The Metal Petal. They did hardscape and softscape.”
“Thank you for your help,” she said as though slicing each word off a frozen loaf. She disconnected before I could share with her Zag’s horror stories about the house’s previous owners. Tip and Etta Coopersmith. He’d even used them as the killers in one of his books, A Deadly Dozen.
In my humble opinion, if anybody had committed murder and buried their victim in the backyard, the Coopersmiths were the most likely villains. But hey, if Detective Dean didn’t want to hear my theories, fine.
I picked up the green Post-it with Joe E.’s phone number.
The good news was Dicky was not dead. At least, probably not dead. That was an enormous relief. In fact, I hadn’t realized how distressed I was about his supposed murder until now when it turned out to be
a false alarm.
But then where the hell was he?
I picked up the phone, but hesitated.
It had been one thing when I believed Dicky had been murdered and dumped in my backyard. I had felt guilty about that, even though I’d had nothing to do with it and he’d no longer been my responsibility. But now that things were back to status quo—i.e., Dicky was the little rat who had betrayed my trust and run off with my husband—his situation, whatever it was, was no longer my concern. Whether he’d had a change of heart or mind or had simply been thrown down a well was David’s problem, not mine.
So instead of phoning the number on the green Post-it, I phoned David.
“I have good news and less good news,” I said.
“I could use some good news,” David replied. He sounded uncharacteristically down.
“The person buried in my old backyard is not Dicky.”
He gasped. “Are you sure? How do you know that?”
“I just spoke with Detective Dean. She said the ME’s preliminary indicates the victim was middle-aged.”
“Middle-aged?”
“Yes. And that whoever he is, he’s been dead for about twenty years.”
“Thank God.”
“Yes.”
He was silent for a moment. “So, this is a creepy thought, but that body was in our backyard the whole time we lived there?”
“It sounds that way.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yes. Well, on its way, at least.”
“Do they have any idea who the victim is?”
“No. Right now their main suspect seems to be Zag Samuels.”
“Why do I know that name?” he mused. “Wait. Was he the cupcake guy?”
“Yes.”
“I remember him. He wrote about the ex-cop who gave it all up to become a baker who specialized in cupcakes and solving crimes.”
“The Sweetie MacFarland series,” I agreed.
“Right. Right. He always brought cupcakes everywhere he went. You used to drive together to conferences and signings.”
In Other Words...Murder Page 9
