Devil's Food Cake

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “Okay,” she said, looking thoughtful for a moment. “Devilish Details is going out of print. The publisher filed a notice, but it hasn’t been made public yet.”

  Sadie lifted her eyebrows. “Wow. That must be hard for Thom.”

  Jane shrugged and waited expectantly.

  “I found the original letter requesting the full manuscript for Thom’s book. It was dated a few months before Damon died.” She didn’t really know why that detail might be important, but it was a discovery she could take credit for.

  Jane, however, looked rather skeptical. “Really?” she said, her tone doubtful.

  “Yeah,” Sadie said. She kept to herself the fact that she had the actual letter in her pocket at that very moment. “Your turn.”

  Jane paused and then took a breath. “Thom Mortenson didn’t write Devilish Details.”

  Chapter 35

  It was a good thing Sadie was already stopped. “What?” she breathed, staring at Jane, who, despite her shivering, seemed rather pleased with Sadie’s reaction. “What do you mean Thom Mortenson didn’t write it?”

  “Trade,” Jane said, then continued before Sadie had a chance to respond. “What’s this guy’s name? The photographing-former-best-friend of the deceased Damon Mortenson.”

  “Josh Hender,” Sadie said.

  Jane dug a pen from her pocket and quickly scribbled the information in her notebook.

  Sadie didn’t wait for Jane to finish writing before she fired her next question. “If Thom didn’t write it, who did?”

  “I don’t know,” Jane said, frowning slightly and tapping her pen against her notebook. “That’s what I planned to find out from Mr. Ogreski tonight. But that letter you found is part of the fraud, I guarantee it. They’ve worked very hard to keep it a secret.”

  “If you’re right, and they worked so hard to hide the truth, why would Mr. Ogreski suddenly decide to talk to you?” Sadie asked. If Thom didn’t write Devilish Details, it was big news. Very big. Too big to just hand over to some advice columnist at a regional paper.

  Jane smiled, looking very pleased as she turned to face Sadie. “Because I asked. And he knew I’d find the answer sooner or later.”

  “Wait,” Sadie said, putting up a hand. “This isn’t working. We’re both getting jumbled answers. Just details, not the full picture. Let’s cut to the chase. You said you’ve been researching this for weeks—why? What triggered it? What started the search?”

  “Come on, Sadie,” Jane said, shaking her head slightly. “You’re asking me to give up my story. Journalists don’t do that.”

  “What if I made it worth your while?” Sadie said, not taking her eyes off the other woman. It was time to pull out the big guns.

  “And how would you do that?”

  “Give you another story,” Sadie said. “And maybe, with your journalistic wiles, you can help fill in some of the blanks that are making me crazy.” She wriggled forward in her seat, suddenly eager to impart what she knew to someone as interested as she was. “While you’ve been in the hotel poking around and finding nothing, I’ve been all over the city. I tracked down Josh Hender, got attacked by his psycho mother, and made nachos for Thom Mortenson. Then there’s a guy, Eric . . . something or other, who’s trying to figure out the lock that this key I found will fit in, and my son is holding Josh Hender until I can figure out what’s going on.” It sounded pretty impressive when she said it all at once like that.

  “Holy cow, woman,” Jane breathed, looking at Sadie with surprise and perhaps a little admiration too. “You did all that tonight?”

  Sadie nodded, trying not to come across as too proud. In truth, proud wasn’t the right word anyway. She was rather embarrassed by all she’d been a part of, and terribly worried about what was going to happen to everyone involved. But still, it was nice that someone seemed to appreciate what she’d done.

  “What makes you think Thom Mortenson didn’t write Devilish Details?” she asked.

  “Because Diane Veeter said so.”

  For the second time in three minutes Sadie was completely stunned.

  “Diane Veeter?” Sadie said, certain she’d missed something. “That’s impossible. Diane Veeter is dead.”

  “I know,” Jane said. “That’s what made this story so irresistible.” There was a longing tone to her voice that spoke of her surrender to the fact that things were not going to work out as well as she’d hoped they would. She paused and took a breath before continuing. “Before I tell you this, you have to swear you won’t talk to any other reporters about it. There’s a chance I can still salvage what I’ve learned into a story that will at least have something different than everyone else’s. I need your word.”

  “I don’t even know any other reporters,” Sadie said. “Well, except for Linda Knight. She writes up the Garrison pieces for the Logan County Journal, but she mostly focuses on quilting groups and motocross, so I don’t think she’d even know what to do with this kind of thing. But I promise not to tell her anyway.”

  Jane nodded and began speaking. “About two months ago, I threw a tantrum about wanting a new office. I’d been sharing one with a couple sportswriters who were continually predicting the imminent end of life as we knew it if LeBron didn’t make his foul shots. I simply couldn’t take it anymore. I got the new office, but it had no windows and had been used for storage—mostly personal stuff previous employees hadn’t taken with them when their tantrums didn’t end up as profitable as mine did. I didn’t care—I had my own space and I was happy.

  “For a few weeks I just let the boxes sit there, but then I decided I’d rather have a LoveSac than these stupid boxes full of junk. So I got permission to go through them. Mostly I threw things away—although I found a sweet Montblanc pen that’s the bomb.” She paused, realizing she was off track, and then picked back up again.

  “Anyway, about halfway through these boxes I found a stack of mail for a reporter who hadn’t been with the Post for years. Apparently, the mail had come after the reporter left and was thrown in the box, waiting for her to come back and get it—which obviously she never did. Most of the mail was bills and ads, but there was this hand-addressed envelope marked confidential.” Jane chuckled. “Well, if there is one way to get a reporter obsessed, it’s to write confidential on an envelope. So, I, of course, open it up and find a letter from a woman named Diane Veeter who is telling this reporter that she knows Thom Mortenson didn’t write Devilish Details and that she can prove it and she wants a face-to-face meeting to discuss it.”

  “When was the letter written?” Sadie asked, barely able to breathe as she hung onto Jane’s every word.

  “Like I said, years ago,” Jane said. She didn’t seem to like being interrupted. “So I go look up this Veeter woman and find out she’s dead—like days after she’d mailed the letter.”

  “Oh, my gosh,” Sadie said, leaning against the door, her thoughts spinning. Just as she opened her mouth to say something, she caught the flash of headlights coming up behind her. She straightened and looked in her rearview mirror, nearly swallowing her tongue when she saw it was a police car. She quickly looked both ways and drove through the intersection while chanting Not yet, not yet, not yet, in her head.

  When the police car turned left instead of following her, she could breathe again. There was a church ahead on the right, and Sadie pulled into the parking lot and around the back. She killed the lights and turned back to Jane. “Are you implying Diane’s death wasn’t an accident?” Sadie asked, picking up where she’d left off.

  Jane shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve gone through the original accident report and there’s no evidence that it was anything but an accident—too much wine, bad weather, and unfamiliar roads is the official report. She was visiting her sister in California and on her way back to the hotel after they’d met for dinner, she apparently drove right off the canyon road.”

  Sadie nodded. She remembered all those details, every one of them part of the tragedy.
/>   Jane kept talking. “I dug as deep as I possibly could into the stuff the police knew, but nothing turned up. So I turned to her husband, but he wouldn’t talk to me. So then I shifted my focus to Thom Mortenson instead. Diane had said she could prove he didn’t write the book, which meant there had to be some evidence out there that supported her claim. I learned that Thom had entered a couple writing contests before his book was published. I was able to get copies of those entries, which I compared to Devilish Details. They sounded like two completely different writers.”

  “But writers have different styles for different types of books,” Sadie said, disappointed Jane didn’t have more conclusive evidence that Thom hadn’t written the book. Besides, Sadie had a letter in her pocket from Mark Ogreski asking for an exclusive on the book. “Ray Bradbury, for instance. He sounded completely different in his science fiction than he did in Dandelion Wine.”

  Jane shook her head. “No, he didn’t,” she said, leaning forward. “If you analyze the syntax of his sentences in his science fiction against his more literary works, you’ll see they’re almost identical. And even though his semantics may differ because of the genres he’s writing in, there’s enough of a parallel through the use of modifiers and iambic to make it obvious even to the casual observer that the same person authored both types of works, despite those works using different formulas indicative of the genre models. That’s not to say growth isn’t identifiable in a writer’s subsequent works, but increased skill at the craft doesn’t override style to that degree.”

  Sadie called Uncle. Jane was using words Sadie had never heard before in her life.

  “But Diane Veeter said she had proof,” Sadie said, returning to more stable ground. “How would she, of all people, know that Thom hadn’t written the book?” As soon as Sadie asked the question, though, her brain made a connection as a completely new thought spun into center stage in her mind.

  Jane didn’t miss Sadie’s sudden reaction and she narrowed her eyes. “What?”

  Sadie locked her gaze with Jane’s. “Diane Veeter was Damon Mortenson’s English teacher.”

  “She was?” Jane nearly yelled.

  Sadie pulled the letter out of her pocket and opened it up. Jane leaned in and Sadie turned the paper so they could read it together. It was addressed to “Mr. Mortenson” and had been sent a couple of months before Damon’s death. Sadie had assumed Mr. Mortenson was Thom Mortenson. But what if it wasn’t? Could Damon have written Devilish Details? That question led to another one—Did Sadie believe what Jane had told her? Did she believe that Thom hadn’t written the book? Apparently, she did. That was somewhat disturbing in and of itself, but not as disturbing as considering the possibility that Thom had published his son’s book as his own. The very idea raised yet another set of questions that dangled in front of Sadie like cobwebs in the attic.

  “No way,” Jane said, as if reading Sadie’s thoughts. She sat back in her seat and shook her hair-plastered head. “No way a kid wrote that book,” she said. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Sadie didn’t bother answering as she scanned the letter again. There was nothing in the letter that proved it wasn’t written to Thom, but Diane had been Damon’s teacher—his writing teacher. If Diane had proof, it wasn’t a far stretch to assume she had some of Damon’s writing—or even part of the original manuscript if, in fact, Damon had written the book. She’d have had to have held onto it even after Damon had died, though, since Diane wrote the letter to the Post almost two years after Damon’s death, which was shortly after Devilish Details had come out. The big question was, had Diane’s husband kept this proof after Diane died?

  After some thought, Sadie folded up the letter and put it back in her pocket. Then she leaned forward and wrestled the phone book from under the driver’s seat of Eric’s car—uh, Jeep. She put it on her lap so she could use her good hand to flip the pages. There was only one Veeter listed in the phone book, and she read through the address twice—thank goodness she wasn’t dealing with any Smiths or Johnsons tonight.

  She handed the phone book to Jane while glancing at the dashboard clock—it was nearing midnight. Too late to be knocking on anyone’s door, but with Josh Hender hog-tied at Eric’s house, the police trying to find her, and potential answers just out of reach, Sadie was willing to abandon yet more social protocol. She put the car back into drive and pulled out from behind the church. At the road she turned on her left blinker. Brian Veeter didn’t live very far away, which she appreciated as the roads were becoming more treacherous by the minute.

  “He won’t talk to you,” Jane said emphatically, after glancing down at the phone book that was still open to the Vs. She held onto the dashboard throughout the next turn as the Jeep’s back tires slid despite being in four-wheel drive. “I tried every angle,” Jane continued. “And left literally dozens of messages. He finally answered one and said he’d sue me for harassment if I ever contacted him again.”

  “That’s just it,” Sadie said, glancing at the younger woman, who still looked like a drowned rat. “You don’t need an angle. You simply need a reason to talk about something that hurts.”

  “If it’s not news, then it’s a waste of my time,” Jane said, shaking her head. “And this crazy idea you’ve got is a total waste of time. I’m telling you that a kid did not write the book.”

  “You don’t know that,” Sadie said, shaking her head at Jane’s stubbornness.

  “Yes,” Jane said, her voice even stronger, “I do know that. Devilish Details is very well-written. No teenage kid writes with that kind of skill and symmetry. Especially not some high-school dropout who later whacks himself and his girlfriend. Good writing takes years to develop, and there isn’t a sixteen-year-old on the planet who can pull off anything of that caliber, never mind a kid who’s m-mentally ill.”

  The stutter reminded Sadie that Jane was still at risk of developing hypothermia. “I’ll take you to Eric’s house first,” she said, though she hated the delay. The Veeters’ street was approaching, but she switched her signal to turn right, which would take her toward Eric’s house instead. “Then I’ll come back.”

  Jane was silent, but not for long. “N-no way. If you’re going, I’m going with you. I’m just saying it’s a waste of our time.”

  “And yet you want to be in on it,” Sadie said, giving Jane a knowing look. Even if Jane didn’t believe it was possible, she couldn’t stand the idea of something happening without her. Sadie knew how that felt.

  Sadie turned left onto the Veeters’ street. She squinted at the mailboxes until she found one with the house number that matched the listing in the phone book. The brick mailbox resembled a lighthouse and the name Veeter was etched into a stone inlay on the front. She pulled into the driveway and looked up at the large, brown stucco home. The house was easily twice the size of Sadie’s, but Sadie had always preferred paid off and cozy to expensive and vaulted. She wished there were some lights on. She hated the idea of waking anyone up, and yet she didn’t feel this could wait.

  She reached for the door handle, but then turned to Jane. “When I get back, maybe you can tell me how long you’ve been working on your book.” She smiled smugly at Jane’s expression and let herself out of the car. “Now, stay here. You’ve already managed to make a pest out of yourself with them and I don’t want you undermining this, okay? Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to Eric’s?”

  Jane folded her arms over her chest and turned away like a petulant child. No matter. She likely needed a time-out anyway.

  Chapter 36

  Sadie hurried up the wide cobblestone steps, hunching over to keep the snow off her face. She was glad Jane hadn’t argued with her about staying in the car. For one thing, Jane was still freezing. In the car she could huddle around the heat vents and at least ward off hypothermia better than she could if she had returned to the cold, even for a minute or two. The other reason, however, had everything to do with the idea of “the angle” Jane had mentioned.
Jane was a reporter, a stranger stalking a story. Sadie was a friend of Diane’s, asking questions for what were very different reasons. She could only hope it would make a difference to Brian.

  Thank heaven for covered porches, Sadie thought as she reached the top of the steps, which was blissfully dry and snow-free—though freezing cold. She took a breath, wishing there was even one light on inside the house. But she didn’t dwell on it long enough to back out of it. It had to be done. She rang the doorbell and then knocked hard on the heavy oak door, hoping the double announcement of a midnight caller would spark the urgency she wanted Brian to feel.

  After counting to fifteen she knocked again, then put her ear to the door, gratified to hear footsteps. A light flipped on, and Sadie took a deep breath and a step back, straightening her back as best she could as she prepared to face Brian and ask if she could come in. But Brian didn’t answer the door. Instead, a thick yet petite woman no older than her early thirties, Sadie guessed, with shoulder-length, brown hair and tired eyes pulled open the door about six inches. She was dressed in a nightgown with a robe over the top.

  Sadie panicked. Did she have the wrong house?

  “Um, I’m sorry to bother you so late at night,” she said. “But I’m looking for Brian Veeter.”

  “Dad’s not here,” the woman said, still blinking herself awake.

  Sadie was relieved to at least be at the right house, but that did little to soothe her disappointment. “He’s really not here?” she asked. “Will he be home soon?” Maybe he’d run to the store or something. At midnight. In the snow.

  “Do you have any idea what time it is?” the woman asked.

  “I do,” Sadie said. “And I’m really sorry. If it weren’t of utmost importance, I wouldn’t be here. Do you know when your dad’s going to be back?” Maybe she could come back in the morning.

  “He’s on his honeymoon,” the woman said flatly. “He won’t be back until next Thursday.”