Manuscript for Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

  That notion should’ve made me smile, ordinarily would have.

  But not tonight.

  My cell phone rang and I grabbed it off the coffee table, noticing a 202 area code for Washington, DC.

  “Jessica Fletcher,” I answered, glad the offices of the IRS had already closed.

  “Mrs. Fletcher, this is Sharon Lerner, director of White House communications. Can you hold for the first lady?”

  “Of course.”

  A few moments passed before I heard the voice of Stephanie Albright. “Jessica, so sorry to be calling so late.”

  “You can call me anytime, Madam First Lady. You know that.”

  “Stephanie, please. We’re friends, after all.”

  We were indeed, thanks in large part to my helping her champion the cause of literacy by getting big-name authors to appear at the fund-raising events she sponsored all over the country.

  “I just wanted to let you know I’ve got that updated list of events for you,” the first lady continued. “Sharon’s sending it over now.”

  “I’ll check it against my calendar and get back to you right away.”

  “Perfect. And I also wanted to thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything, Jessica. You put this program on your back and have carried it the whole way.”

  “I believe in the cause, Stephanie,” I said, still having a difficult time calling the first lady by her first name. “I believe in everything you’re doing.”

  “I can’t tell you how much that means to me. So, what are you up to? Working on a new book?”

  “Something like that,” I told her.

  * * *

  • • •

  As had become my routine when staying at my Manhattan apartment, I turned the television on as soon as I woke up the next morning, tuned to NY1. My night’s sleep could be generously described as fitful, given that I’m not sure I ever was out all the way. Every time I started to feel myself drifting, thoughts of my looming confrontation with Lane Barfield intruded. How exactly was I going to broach with him the subject of the apparent malfeasance Herb Mason had identified? There was a very good chance that Herb’s suspicions, and thus Thomas Rudd’s allegations, were well-founded. But there was also a chance that they would turn out not to be credible after all, in which case I would be risking irreparable harm to a relationship thirty years in the making.

  I know so many families that have been shattered by squabbles over money, the legitimacy of which often paled in comparison with the effects of an accusation lodged by one relative against another. It was truly tragic, made all the more so by the fact that, with few exceptions, the whole situation had been avoidable. Sometimes the closer people are, the more likely things are to get blown out of proportion. It never ceases to amaze me how reasonable, rational people can act so rashly and without forethought. I’ve always thought the drafts folder was one of the great things about e-mail, since it allowed you to hold off sending words written in anger and thus tainted by emotion and vitriol.

  There was no such folder when it came to the spoken word, though. Once the message was out, it couldn’t be delayed or withdrawn. You lived with what you had said because there was no way to take the words back.

  I had briefly considered contacting Lane Barfield by e-mail, quickly rejecting the idea since I wasn’t sure I could even put these particular thoughts and feelings into type. I owed him the dignity of expressing my concerns in person, open and up front, while affording him every opportunity to respond to and refute Rudd’s claims, as well as Herb’s preliminary findings.

  I lay in bed for a time, putting off starting the day as long as I could—maybe up to a week, given that none of my ruminations had produced anything even approaching a script to use once I reached Lane’s office. I wanted to take a soft line with him, maybe even keeping it to Thomas Rudd’s accusations and not raising what Herb Mason believed he had uncovered. I thought I might be able to couch my words in that form, from more a theoretical standpoint than a practical one, maybe suggest the potential methodology had come from someone else or through some research I was doing for a book. Anything to keep Lane from getting overly defensive.

  It’s funny, but back home in Cabot Cove I never turned the television on upon awaking. A sign, I supposed, of the relative comfort of my surroundings. My favorite ritual at my house there was yanking open all the blinds in the house to let the sunlight spill inside. And, except during the winter months, I loved opening all the windows, the sounds of birds singing and the occasional car passing by on my street replacing the sounds of the television.

  Putting off the inevitable any longer made no sense, so I decided to try Lane Barfield at home, where he’d still be at this hour, given that he was known for both starting and ending his workday late. I muted the sound on the television and was jogging through the contacts on my phone for Lane’s name when something on the television claimed my attention. I wasn’t sure what it was until I focused on the screen, where a picture of Lane Barfield was displayed above the banner NOTED PUBLISHER FOUND DEAD OF SUSPECTED SUICIDE.

  * * *

  • • •

  I had to remind myself to breathe. Lane Barfield was dead, had killed himself by all accounts. The report was not specific as to how, and I didn’t particularly care at this point. Instead I looked down at my phone, where my contact page for Lane Barfield was displayed, phone numbers I’d never be dialing again, an e-mail address I’d used for the last time.

  All thoughts of the financial malfeasance he might have been guilty of vanished. We’d known each other so long, had experienced so much together, celebrated so many momentous benchmarks. We’d shared time at weddings as well as funerals, shared tables at various industry functions, and shared thoughts over any number of late-night phone calls. We’d enjoyed the kind of relationship that extended far beyond red-penciling pages during a nine-to-five workday. Because we were also friends, comfortable calling each other anytime about anything.

  And now Lane was gone. The word “irreplaceable” is often clichéd or misused. But it was perfectly appropriate in this instance. Lane Barfield was an old-school publisher who’d maintained the old ways of doing business while mastering the new ways of conducting it.

  My grief over losing such a good friend, as well as a publisher under whose stewardship I’d sold millions and millions of books while building a sizable income that left me wanting for nothing, was palpable. And I hated the fact that the final thought of him I was left with was my intention to confront him about being a crook.

  I wanted to be wrong, started trying to convince myself that I was, so as not to soil Lane’s memory in my mind.

  I let myself consider the obvious: that I might not have been the only author of Lane’s Thomas Rudd had alerted to his suspicions. Someone else, perhaps even more than one person, might have been planning to go to the authorities and expose him. If the charges proved true, I saw no way Lane could have avoided jail time. Both his life and his reputation ruined through no one’s fault but his own. Suicide might have seemed an acceptable alternative to that, especially if there was no effective defense he could mount. People lied, but numbers didn’t. And the numbers Herb Mason had turned up even on a preliminary basis definitely indicated that something was wrong.

  Maybe Lane Barfield had bit off more than he could chew, overextended himself, and saw the scheme uncovered by Herb as a way to get back to even. Only he hadn’t stopped once he got there and had taken his life to spare himself the scandal and ruin inevitably to follow. His suicide could have been a sign of his guilt, that both Thomas Rudd’s claims and Herb Mason’s findings rang true. Thinking of that made me recall how he’d mentioned to me how he’d spent so much to buy The Affair. And now I knew where the money had likely come from.

  But I needed to know more, so I lifted my phone with my trembling hand.

 
* * *

  • • •

  “So sorry about your publisher,” Lieutenant Artie Gelber said. “I just heard the news.”

  “Me, too. What do you know?”

  “What I just told you.”

  “Nothing else, Artie?”

  “It was a suicide, Jessica. That’s hardly reason to alert the Major Case Squad at One Police Plaza.”

  I swallowed hard. “What did you hear?”

  “Pills,” Artie said simply.

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t have any more details.”

  “I understand, Artie.”

  “Do you? Or is that murder sense of yours acting up again, Jessica?”

  “No, it’s just that . . .”

  “Just what?” he asked when my voice tailed off.

  “Remember how I told you yesterday Thomas Rudd was convinced Lane Barfield was stealing from him?”

  “Stealing what? I mean, based on his current lifestyle and all the failure he’d encountered in recent years, there couldn’t have been much.”

  “I did some checking. I think the theft involves Rudd’s older titles, the ones that are still selling moderately well. I confirmed the methodology with my own accountant, who found some discrepancies in my royalty statements dating back three years.”

  “Barfield was stealing from you, too?”

  “I didn’t say that, Artie.”

  “You certainly suggested it. I’d like to hear more. I’d like to speak to this accountant.”

  I regretted even raising the issue. “I don’t have any proof.”

  “That’s what the police are for, especially if it’s connected to Barfield’s death.”

  “I thought the Major Case Squad doesn’t handle suicides.”

  “Unless it’s a special crime.”

  I could hear him breathing on the other end through the entire duration of the pause that followed that line.

  “Tell me something, Jessica. You were going to confront Barfield with your suspicions, weren’t you?”

  “What’s the difference now?”

  “The fact that you could never let this go, any more than I can. The circumstances surrounding the man’s death need to be investigated, and if criminal action was involved, the victims need to be informed so they can respond as they see fit.”

  I thought for a moment. “So you’ll need the name of my accountant.”

  “I will.”

  “The price being I want to work this case with you.”

  “Jessica—”

  “Don’t use that tone, Artie, please.”

  “What tone?”

  “The condescending one that says I’ve got no place in an active investigation.”

  “This isn’t Cabot Cove,” he said, sounding even more condescending. “We’ve got fifty thousand cops and support personnel on the NYPD force and are perfectly capable of handling an investigation without outside help.”

  “I’m not outside, in this case. My accountant’s doing a deeper dive into this. He can explain his findings, both new and old, to you once he’s finished. But not until he’s got firm proof.”

  “You want to believe he won’t find it.”

  “Lane Barfield built my career from the ground up, took a high school English teacher and turned her into a bestselling author.”

  “You sound like you’re defending him now.”

  I recalled Lane’s tone when he’d told me about The Affair the day before. He’d sounded like a kid who’d given up on the present he really wanted for Christmas, only to find one more under the tree. He talked about the book with the kind of childlike enthusiasm I recalled from years before, how much he loved talking about building a publishing company from the ground up. I don’t think he’d ever wanted to sell, merge, consolidate, or whatever they were calling it these days. His hand had been forced and he was never the same again, no matter how much control his deal allowed him to maintain. It wasn’t his company anymore. Not paying to keep the lights turned on meant somebody else could have them turned off at any time.

  I realized in that moment what had been plaguing me since I heard Lane’s name on NY1. I’d been focusing on his suspected financial malfeasance, skimming off the top of his own authors’ royalties. But even six or seven million dollars paled in comparison to what a book as big as The Affair, not to mention its inevitable sequels, could yield. So why choose this moment to kill himself? Certainly it wasn’t because Thomas Rudd alone had lashed out at him.

  “Did he leave a note, Artie?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “He was a man who spent his career in letters. I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have left something behind, some explanation.”

  “Did he have any family?”

  “Not that he was close with.”

  “Most suicide notes are addressed to those the victim was close to. That alone could explain the lack of a note.”

  I wasn’t convinced. There was too much here that didn’t seem to add up, starting with the fact that in The Affair Lane might have just acquired the biggest book of his entire career.

  “There’s something else I need to tell you, Artie,” I heard myself saying.

  Chapter Six

  Artie picked me up an hour later outside my apartment building, looking none too happy when I climbed into the passenger seat of his police-issue sedan.

  “Would you rather I sit in the back?” I asked, shooting him a look that vented some of the frustration and sadness I was feeling.

  On the phone earlier I’d told him about The Affair and my thought that the pressures surrounding its acquisition might have contributed to Lane Barfield’s taking his own life. He didn’t know Lane, had never met him, so I think what I was suggesting went right over his head.

  “I’m just trying to sort this out, Jessica. Why murder seems attracted to you like metal to a magnet.”

  “You sound like Mort Metzger.”

  He looked at me, frowning, the car still in park. “I’ve never felt worse for any man in my life. What’s it like picking up after you full-time?”

  “I guess you’re going to find out, given you’d like to apply to succeed him.”

  “I’m rethinking my retirement plans.” He stopped, glanced out the windshield as his fingers drummed the steering wheel. “I’m sorry. I know how close you were with Barfield, know he was more than just your publisher,” he said, voice ringing with compassion.

  “Thirty years will do that to you. And . . .” I stopped there, letting my voice tail off.

  “And what?”

  “I must’ve been one of the last people to see him. That leaves me thinking maybe I missed something, some sign. That there was something I could have done.”

  “You accepting the preliminary finding of suicide?”

  “I’m not accepting anything at this point. I spent most of last night reviewing our entire conversation, and I keep settling on the fact that this monster of a book he’d acquired had him more excited than I’d seen him in years. I can’t reconcile that with him swallowing a boatload of pills.”

  “Prescription sleep aids, by all accounts,” Artie elaborated. “We found the bottle in the bathroom.”

  That claimed my attention. “Where was the body found?”

  “In the living room of his apartment. Television tuned to New York One.”

  “He was a true New Yorker and it was his favorite station, except in winter, when he was obsessed with the Weather Channel,” I said, taking my turn to elaborate, before my mind shifted in midthought. “So he took the pills in the bathroom and sat down to watch the news?”

  Artie checked his mirror, ready to put the big car in gear. “That raised my eyebrows, too.”

  “With most suicides by overdose, the pill bottle is found near the body,” I said. A
statement, not a question.

  “That’s not evidence, Jessica; it’s supposition.”

  “Whatever you want to call it, it suggests we may not be seeing the whole picture here.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I wished I’d been able to read more of The Affair the night before. It had genuinely meant so much to Lane Barfield to get my opinion, as if after all these years in publishing he still needed assurance that he’d made the right call in preempting a potential auction to offer the most money he ever had for a book. He was risking everything by doing so, and I found myself starting to ponder if that had gotten to him, if it had left Lane visualizing the book tanking and his being unceremoniously replaced as head of the company he’d founded as a result of putting his imprint in the red.

  That left me wondering whom else he might have given The Affair to in order to get a read. What if they had come back with a negative report? What if he began to fear he’d made a terrible misjudgment and jumped the gun in making Benjamin Tally a ridiculous offer for a first novel? Might this have had something to do with Thomas Rudd’s theft of the thumb drive containing the manuscript?

  I guess I was trying to make sense of Lane’s death, find in all this the kind of order I employed in my mysteries. Life, though, almost never resembles art in that respect. I guess that’s why I saw murder in what was almost surely a suicide. So what if he drifted off to NY1 but swallowed the sleeping pills in his bathroom? I wanted it to be murder, because then at least I’d have the opportunity to find some sense in this amid the ultimate motive on the part of his killer. If it had been suicide, that sense might remain forever elusive.

  That’s why I was glad Artie and I were headed to Lane Barfield’s office. Somewhere in the phone and visitor logs there would hopefully be some clue to provide that sense. I guess this was how I did my grieving.

  I could feel the somber pallor enveloping the entire floor as soon as Artie and I stepped through the door. I could hear people weeping in the subdued office, ringing phones going unanswered, the company’s longtime receptionist, a burly man named Edwin, staring at the blank screen of his computer as if he was watching something only he could see.