Fiction Can Be Murder

by Becky Clark

  Nine

  I was more than happy to leave Henry’s house and hurried to my car parked in the driveway. I’d hoped to get a feel for his alibi while I returned those keys, but a “lovely normal weekend” wasn’t much to go on. I hadn’t bargained on any bombshells about my career or financial straits, either.

  My hands trembled as I pulled forward in the circular drive. As I passed the house, I saw Henry watching me from a window. He didn’t even pretend that he wasn’t. Just stared as I rolled past.

  Stopping at the street to check for oncoming traffic, it occurred to me that this might be exactly what Melinda did Monday morning. I shuddered.

  I pulled out and drove slowly down the street. After several houses I saw an area where the grassy planting strip had been churned up. Dark soil with tufts of dry, dormant grass; a fifty-year-old cottonwood tree with a gouge, about bumper high—none of which I’d seen earlier when searching for Melinda’s address. I pulled to the curb and stared at the tree.

  “I’ll figure this out. I promise.”

  As I drove away, I remembered what Henry said about Melinda being depressed and on meds. Suicide had been one of my theories as well, except I seemed to know something Henry did not—mercury poisoning was an excessively brutal and complicated way to kill yourself.

  I had to stop at the gated community’s guardhouse again on the way out. The guard wore a brown quasi-military uniform with an Elite Protection patch on the pocket. No weapon that I saw, but a walkie-talkie clipped at his shoulder. Tufts of gray hair poked from his cap. He came to my window, smiling as I rolled it down. “Have a nice visit, Ms. Russo? I think poor ol’ Henry needed it. Just between you and me, this isn’t the kind of neighborhood where women bring casseroles. And I don’t think I’ve seen him leave since he got the news. Maybe I’ll stop by after my relief guy gets here.”

  The sun was brighter now and I squinted up at him. “Are you here every day?”

  “Most of ’em.”

  “What about at night?”

  “Never work nights. They want the young bucks for that. Daytime all’s we do is let pretty girls in and out.” He winked at me.

  I put my elbow on the window frame. “Who worked Sunday night?”

  He placed his hands on my roof and leaned in. I leaned away. “I know what you’re getting at, but you’re barking up the wrong tree, Missy. Nobody but residents went in or out that night. Ms. Walter’s accident was just that—an accident. The police made similar insinuations and I don’t ’preciate it.” He banged his hands on the roof and stepped back before tipping his cap. “You have a nice day now.” He opened the gate and waved as I drove through.

  So Elite Protection didn’t know about the mercury either.

  All the way to Melinda’s office, I thought about those expensive enameled lava countertops completely devoid of signs of condolence. The contrast with our kitchen after Dad died was stark. But our house was small. Maybe flower arrangements were overflowing in Henry’s formal living room. Maybe, despite what the guard said, casseroles were all tucked away in hidden freezers.

  As I pulled into a parking place at the agency’s tony office building in Cherry Creek, I thought about the uncomplimentary things Bob Dunphy and Henry had said about Q. I turned off the car and pulled the yellow pad from my bag. Across from Henry’s name, in the Alibi space, I wrote, “‘Lovely normal weekend,’ but how to prove?”

  I looked at the notes I’d made for Q. Last night, under Motive, I’d written, “So much bullying/resentment.” And with Henry’s mistrust of Q, and her insistence that the garage keep a set of Melinda’s car keys, my head was spinning.

  I stared through the windshield toward the office building but my eyes were unfocused. Of everyone on my suspect list, Queue Quaid had the only tangible motive, what with being verbally abused by Melinda for ten hours a day for several years. Anybody would snap. Opportunity? Definitely. She had keys to Melinda’s house, cars, and office, and she kept her schedule, so she always knew where she was. The mercury could have been put in her car any time after Melinda parked it.

  I thought about all the other people in the world who’d been verbally abused by Melinda posting on the Dear Horrible Writer website. Twenty years as an agent. I opened the calculator app on my phone and punched some numbers. Roughly 250 working days per year. Twenty rejections per day? Fifty? I had no idea. I calculated somewhere between 5,000 and 12,500 rejections times twenty years. Anywhere from 100,000 to 250,000 sarcastic, demeaning rejections.

  Melinda told me once, quite gleefully, that one of the best parts of her day was sending rejections to the inappropriate queries she received from writers. Most agents, or their assistants, simply deleted the queries that had misspellings or pitched a story not in a genre they represented or were poorly written.

  Melinda wasn’t most agents, however. Her letters always began, “Dear Horrible Writer … please don’t ever send me anything again … ”

  But I knew many people who submitted queries to her over and over. Out loud I always questioned why they would subject themselves to that, but deep down I knew. Every writer, me included, thought their books were, if not remarkable, at least publishable. And Melinda anointed enough bestsellers every year to make the gamble of humiliation and heartbreak worth it.

  Writers could choose to keep their pain private, or diffuse it by kvetching about it publicly. Perhaps on an anonymous website.

  I wished I’d logged on to the Dear Horrible Writer forum last night. Maybe I would have gotten lucky and somebody would’ve been on there bragging about killing Melinda. I’d solve the case and be a hero to the police. Ozzi and my critique group would apologize to me in a generous and overwrought manner—maybe with a lavish all-expense paid trip to Fiji—but I would remain gracious, blushing, waving it off with a sublime twist of my wrist and a modest “Pshaw.”

  Could happen.

  The one time I was on there, I scrolled through the postings, mostly images of letters and emails from Melinda but cropped in such a way as to keep the recipient anonymous. And to illustrate that a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, I still remembered one under a steaming pile of poo. Pages and pages, each more horrifying than the last. They all began and ended the same way: “Dear Horrible Writer … Very truly yours, Melinda B. Walter. PS—Seriously, quit writing. You’re bad at it.”

  Occasionally, one of the commenters copped to being the recipient, but most often there was a stream of comments “deleted by the webmaster.” The nondeleted comments fell into two categories: maudlin or wildly funny and over-the-top, often in the form of imagined responses to Melinda. The deleted comments I assumed were of a more threatening and graphic nature.

  I sat up straight. Suddenly I had a zillion more suspects. Someone with a vendetta killed her and is trying to frame me. Someone on that forum.

  I hurried into the building and took the elevator to Melinda’s office on the third floor. I’d been there so many times, but I wondered how many more I would come in the future, especially after it became the Henry Walter Agency. I pulled open the door to find Q, with her hands on her hips, staring at the copy machine behind the reception desk.

  She turned when I walked in. “Know anything about copiers?”

  “Can’t say that I do.” I dropped my bag on her desk and stood next to her. The doors to every compartment on the copier hung open. “What have you done?”

  “Nothing. I pressed the button to print and it didn’t. So I started to ask it why.”

  “Did it answer?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Maybe it’s a computer problem and not the printer. Did they have a fight?”

  “It would’ve been in the last half hour because it printed that stuff for you.” Q gestured toward a packet of stapled papers.

  I saw the cover letter from Penn & Powell Publishing. “Is it bad news?”

  “Only if it w
on’t start working again.”

  “Not the copier. The papers.” I waved them at her.

  “Oh. Yeah. We’re not getting paid anytime soon. You’re not getting royalties and the agency isn’t giving me my paycheck. That bitch is hassling me from the grave. All the assets are frozen.”

  Just like Henry said. “So why are you here?”

  “Why not? What else do I have to do?”

  “Um … anything?”

  She shrugged and continued staring at the copier as if she could repair it with a scorching scowl.

  I shoved the papers in my bag to be dealt with later. It wasn’t ten o’clock yet and I was already out of energy. Certainly didn’t have enough to tell Q that Henry was taking over the agency.

  “You know that Dear Horrible Writer website?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you think my manuscript could have been leaked on there?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why?”

  Q slammed one of the doors on the copier and it bounced open again. “Because.” She got down on her hands and knees and peered into the inner workings of the machine.

  This interrogation wasn’t working out quite like I wanted. I tried a different tack, hoping for more than a monosyllabic answer. “Hey, I picked up Melinda’s car keys from the mechanic and gave them to Henry.”

  She didn’t take her eyes from the copier, just said, “Oh.” No surprise or question in her voice.

  “Yeah. Joaquin and his boss said you threatened them to keep the keys there.” I leaned against her desk, trying to look casual.

  She did a slo-mo turn toward me and sat back on her feet. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Nothing. But it seems weird. Why were you so adamant that someone else had a set of Melinda’s car keys?”

  “Are you accusing me of something?”

  Now that I had her attention, I wasn’t sure I wanted it. But I stared, vowing not to blink first.

  She blinked first. “I made them keep the keys because the last time Melinda had to remove hers from her key ring, she broke a nail and I heard about it for a month, like it was my fault. It’s so stupid. But Melinda makes people do stupid things.”

  I kept staring. “Do you have an alibi for her murder? Like from Sunday night until the accident Monday morning?” My palms began sweating and I wondered how those detectives keep their cool.

  “I’m not sure it’s any of your business.”

  It dawned on me that after knowing Q all these years, I could be talking to a bona fide cold-blooded murderer. Up until now, it had all seemed like more of an academic exercise, like plotting my novels. Pretend, safe, a bit surreal. But it was too late now.

  “Q, nobody would really blame you if you … and I’m sure there were extenuating circumstances, but—”

  “You really think I killed Melinda?”

  Did I? Did I really think that? “Well, you had motive, means, and opportunity, which everyone knows is—”

  “I also have an alibi.”

  She paused long enough that I said, “Which is … ?”

  “I run the Dear Horrible Writer website. I’m the moderator of the forum.”

  “You? But—”

  “I’ve always felt bad for those writers. I thought I could show them it’s not because they’re horrible writers, it’s because Melinda is—was—a horrible person.” She paused, then added, “Please don’t tell. It’ll make it really hard for me to work at another agency if word gets out.”

  “The cops will find that website. They probably already have. They’ll trace it back to you and it won’t look good. Get in front of it. Tell them it was you. Ask them to keep it quiet and they might. It won’t help their investigation to make the website public knowledge. But if you make them go down some dead end, they won’t be happy.”

  She looked at me like I was twenty pounds of stupid in a ten-pound sack. “They already know about it. They questioned me. For a long time. Of course I told them my alibi. I was on the site most of Sunday night, posting, chatting, and deleting things. Thank God it was all timestamped.”

  “What about early Monday?”

  “Since when did you become a cop?” Q dropped back to her hands and knees to peer into the guts of the copier again.

  “Q, it might just be that Melinda’s killer is lurking on your forum. Even if you didn’t knowingly leak the manuscript, maybe something happened.”

  She didn’t turn around. “I didn’t leak anything, Charlee.”

  “Why didn’t you delete the site? Shut the whole thing down after she was murdered?”

  “Why would I?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “That’s what a guilty person would do,” she said.

  Or someone who wants people to believe she’s innocent. “I don’t know what to think, Q.”

  After a long pause, she said, “I will delete it. There’s no reason for it now, but the cops asked me to leave it up.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But you won’t say anything about me running the website? To anybody?”

  What good would it serve to vilify Q if she wanted to stay in the agenting business? “No, I won’t tell anyone you’re behind that website.” Unless I have to.

  “Thanks, Charlee.”

  I gathered my bag and left. Waiting for the elevator gave me a chance to absorb what she said. Very noble of Q to worry about the delicate feelings of rejected writers, but why couldn’t she have just reworded the rejections? Even if Melinda sent all the rejections herself, which I couldn’t believe based on the sheer number of submissions she got, Q could have followed up with a softer email of her own. “Dear Not-Horrible Writer … I read your submission and it wasn’t quite as bad as Ms. Walter intimated, blah, blah, blah.”

  Maybe there was more to it. Was it possible to fake those timestamps on her postings? How long would that have taken? Would it be a big deal, or could you do it with the push of a button? I had no idea. If Q was the administrator, it must mean she could access the code, but did she have the skill to do something like that?

  A reluctant copier had flummoxed her.

  Ten

  When I got home, the first thing I did was pull out my notepad. In the Alibi column beside Q’s name, I wrote “website admin—timestamps.”

  The second thing I did was log on to the Dear Horrible Writer site and scroll, hoping to find some kind of confirmation of what Q had told me. Five minutes later, after pages and pages of comments, my breath caught and my muscles went taut.

  I skimmed one particular comment again, the one with the reference to The Zero Boy Summer. AmyJo’s working title. I read the last paragraph four times. “I’ve seen things that would kill Melinda if she knew. Luckily, I’m a good person … or am I?” The comment was signed “AJ.”

  AmyJo? It couldn’t be. That title wasn’t particularly original for a young adult novel. But also signed AJ? It had to be her. I checked the date. Two days before the murder.

  I stared at it and finally took a screenshot. The idea that I was preserving evidence made my stomach roll. AmyJo? I continued to stare at the comment, creating scenarios where it made sense that AmyJo murdered Melinda. None made sense. It simply wasn’t possible. Was it? I picked up my phone to call her but changed my mind. I grabbed my car keys and jacket twice to go to her apartment, both times flinging them and myself on the couch instead.

  “Okay, this is ridiculous,” I finally said to my empty apartment. “There’s got to be a logical explanation for this.” I just couldn’t figure it out due to extreme lack of sleep and nutrition. I heaved myself from the couch and returned to my computer. I jiggled the mouse and the sleeping screen awakened, showing once again the confusing comment.

  I dialed the phone.

  “Hi, Cha—”

  “AmyJo, did you post a c
omment on the Dear Horrible Writer forum?”

  Pause. Then a defiant “Yes, I did.” Quieter, she added, “She’s really mean.”

  “You submitted The Zero Boy Summer to Melinda?”

  “Yes. And she rejected it. Of course. I told you guys it wasn’t ready, but you all said I should start sending it out.”

  “Not to Melinda! There are so many other agents who aren’t evil. I would have helped you make a list.”

  “I’m not a child, Charlee.”

  “No, but you are from Iowa and your glasses are perpetually rose-colored. You should have—wait.” I paused. AmyJo wasn’t stupid. Nor was she a masochist. “You just wanted to prove to us your manuscript wasn’t perfect, and a rejection from Melinda allowed you an easy I-told-you-so. But why didn’t you mention it?”

  AmyJo grunted. “Seemed impolite with her being murdered and all.”

  “Impolite? How ’bout suspicious?” I leaned into my computer screen. “What does this mean? ‘I’ve seen things that would kill Melinda if she knew.’”

  “Have you ever been to her house? Dirty clothes all over her bedroom, sink full of dirty dishes, hair clogs. So many hair clogs.” AmyJo paused. “I don’t know why, but I took pictures. I’d never post them. I wouldn’t be able to look my minister in the eye again, so I deleted them.”

  My brain turned into a Tilt-A-Whirl. “You were in her bedroom?”

  “Yeah. I’ve been cleaning her house for a few months.”

  “You’ve been … ”

  “Cleaning her house for a few months. Yes.”

  “For a few … ”

  “Yes! Months.” I heard the impatience in her voice. “I’m back working for my sister.”

  “What about your library job?”

  “I still have it. I work for DebbieJo on my days off.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t know. Embarrassed, I guess. Don’t get me wrong, I love the job. There’s something very satisfying about turning a huge mess into something beautiful and shiny. But I’m almost thirty and I can’t quite support myself.” She paused. “I didn’t think you’d understand.”