Chapter 7
Dear Ms. Richmond:
It's people like you who give book publishing a bad name. The careless manner with which you treat unpublished writers is inexcusable. You had my manuscript, The Corpse Found a Home, for close to a year and then refused it. Just what were you doing with it? Learning how to read?
Too subtle. Jennifer wadded up the sheet of personalized stationery and tossed it at the wastepaper basket next to her desk.
Muffy leaped from a curled position on the floor and batted the paper wad in midair. After knocking it to the floor, she collapsed onto the rug.
Jennifer sighed and stared out the open window that faced the grassy common area of the apartment building. Tulips and jonquils splashed color around the budding trees.
A couple spread out a blanket and settled beneath the shade of a blooming, pink dogwood. A pleasant way to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon. And a pleasant place for a grave site. Would you like to be buried there, Penney?
Dear Ms. Richmond:
I hate your guts. I wish you were dead.
Not subtle enough. She scrunched the page into a tight ball and sent it off to join its brothers in the growing paper pile.
Muffy yawned widely, whined, and watched the paper as it flew past.
Dear Ms. Richmond:
A disease exists in the literary community, a disease that attacks and cripples the creative forces of young writers. It sucks the life from them, draining them of their talent, their hopes, and their dreams. And you—Penney Richmond—are the virus that causes that disease.
Not too bad. Fairly poetic. And it wouldn't look bad in print. Even if the press didn't quote the entire letter, they couldn't butcher it beyond recognition—or so she hoped.
Jennifer scrawled her name across the bottom and folded the stationery. She slipped it into an envelope, licked the flap, and sealed it. It would go out Monday morning. She'd need another one for Tuesday and a third, maybe even a fourth. Yes, a fourth. One letter meant irritated; two angry; three irate; but crazy didn't start until at least four.
She pulled out another sheet of paper.
Dear Ms. Richmond:
The sins we commit are tallied.
She squished the sheet into a tiny ball. It was better not to mention sin. Murder, after all, was a biggie.
How was she ever going to create three more convincing letters? She tapped her pen impatiently against the desktop. She hated writing letters… but her serial killer in Poisoned Pen, Poisoned Heart tormented his victims with vicious notes for weeks before he murdered them.
She went to the hall closet and rummaged through the manuscripts, extracted one, and carried it back to her desk, Muffy close at her heels. Leafing through the printed pages, she stopped at page thirty-seven. There it was, Marcus' first threatening letter. All she had to do was substitute the word bullet for the word knife.
I'm sitting in the dark thinking about how I'm going to kill you. The bullet will pierce your heart and stop it suddenly in mid-beat. I will hear that little gulp of air rushing to fill your chest cavity and deflate your lungs like useless, overstretched balloons. And I will silently watch your astonished face as your life gently ebbs from your irreparably damaged body.
Yuck. What kind of demented mind had she been suppressing? No matter. The letter would do just fine. No sane person would write something like that.
She copied it in pen onto a blank sheet of paper. She didn't need to sign this one. The first letter would provide a sample of her handwriting.
All she had to do was find two more letters. That would be a cinch. Her villain, nasty creature that he was, had written at least eight. She was on her way. Once all the letters had been sent, they'd lay the perfect trail for the police to follow when Penney Richmond turned up dead.
Dying to Get Published Page 7
