Manuscript for Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

  I led Artie to Lane’s office, where whatever answers I was looking for might be found. Lane went through assistants quickly, not because he was difficult to work for, but because he prided himself on grooming them for sales or editorial jobs as quickly as possible, with an eye to giving them a leg up on their careers. He screened them carefully and seldom chose wrong. I’d sat in on one of his typical “job interviews” once, amazed to hear almost all of it consist of a discussion about books. He wanted no one manning the desk directly outside his spacious office who didn’t love reading, love books, and thus find passion in a job that even at the highest editorial levels paid barely enough to make ends meet in Manhattan.

  His latest assistant was named Zara, hired fresh out of NYU’s creating writing MFA program. He’d told me a few months back she was the best one he’d ever had, to the point where he was giving serious consideration to giving her a raise instead of a reassignment when her typical twelve-month window closed. Lane, after all, had been getting older and had started to dislike continually training new assistants to act as both his shepherd and his sentinel.

  Zara wasn’t at her desk when we arrived, but the muffled sobs Artie and I detected led us into Lane’s office, where she sat on the couch beneath the side window. She dabbed her eyes with what looked like a napkin and cleared her throat upon spotting us.

  “I’m sorry,” Zara said, straightening her jeans as she stood up. “I was just . . .” Her voice cracked, her eyes filling with puddles of tears. “Oh, Mrs. Fletcher . . .”

  I took her in my arms and let her cry it out; I felt she was doing it for both of us. So much passed through my mind during those moments, how much time I’d spent in this and Lane’s original office uptown. How we’d toasted my first New York Times bestseller with apple cider, since I was no more of a drinker then than I am now. How many times I’d met him here to listen to him rave about some new author he’d discovered. “The next J. B. Fletcher,” he’d proudly proclaim, knowing it got under my skin.

  As we separated, I felt a profound sadness over the fact that there would be no more lunches, no more future J. B. Fletchers, that Benjamin Tally and The Affair marked the last boasting Lane would ever do with me. Sniffling, I turned my gaze on Artie Gelber, who looked a bit uncomfortable standing there alone, as if he’d stumbled into the wrong office.

  “Sorry, Artie,” I said, wiping my eyes.

  “For what?” came his reply, which sounded comforting for some reason.

  It drew a smile to my face and I left things there. Having lost my husband, Frank, so many years ago and having precious little family myself exaggerated the impact friends and colleagues had on my life, meaning their loss produced an even more pronounced effect on me. Lane Barfield was both of those and more, a true pillar who’d overseen the growth of my career with the care and concern now almost entirely missing from the publishing industry. He had slaved over every order, every review, whether bad or good, every stop on every book tour. For a time, I thought I was getting special treatment before realizing, several books in, that every author Lane published got the same or similar.

  That must’ve been what was so special to him about The Affair. It left him excited again, eager for what he’d been able to do on the book’s behalf—before the prospects of that very notion might have terrified him. Benjamin Tally was his latest, and now last, Jessica Fletcher, and that made me realize as well why my approval of the book was so important to him. I found myself wanting to meet this author very much, to see in him the hopes and dreams I’d once seen in the mirror as a beginning writer myself.

  Zara had sat back down on the couch, knees pressed together to still their shaking. I sat down next to her.

  “Zara, this is Lieutenant Artie Gelber from the Major Case Squad, out of NYPD headquarters. He’s looking into Lane’s death.”

  Her expression moved from pained to confused. “I heard it was suicide.”

  “Artie’s also a very good friend of mine,” I told the young woman, “and he’s here out of respect for that as well. Everything certainly points to suicide, yes, but the lieutenant has agreed to help me sort through whatever led up to this.”

  Zara nodded as if she understood, even though she clearly didn’t.

  “Would you mind if I asked you some questions?”

  She turned to blow her nose weakly into some balled-up Kleenex. “Anything I can do to help.”

  “Did Lane appear agitated or depressed lately?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nothing that stood out, made you take notice?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fletcher, no.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Zara. I know the high regard Lane held you in, how much he wanted to delay your moving on for as long as possible.”

  She swallowed hard. “He wrote me a letter of recommendation.”

  “When?”

  “Just last week.” She tried to swallow again but didn’t quite complete it. “He said he wanted to keep me on the desk but understood if I wanted to move on—or move up; I think he said move up. Either way, he wanted me to have the letter so I wouldn’t have to ask him for it.”

  “That’s Lane,” I said through the lump forming in my own throat. “And I’m glad you stayed, Zara, because there’s nobody better equipped to help find what led up to this.” I stole a glance at Artie before continuing. “I need to ask you about a book Lane had recently acquired entitled The Affair by an author named Benjamin Tally. Does that sound familiar?”

  She started to shake her head, then simply froze. “He told me to keep it a secret. Not to tell anyone the book existed . . . That was the only conversation we had about the book.”

  “Had Lane ever done anything like that before?”

  “Not to that degree. Sometimes he had titles he wanted to keep under wraps—you know, to avoid questions or challenges from Sales or Corporate.”

  “Makes sense,” I acknowledged, rising from the couch. “Could you check for us? Could you check his personal records to see if he logged The Affair in under a different title?”

  Zara rose from the couch nodding, looking happy to have the opportunity to help us. As she moved behind Lane’s big L-shaped desk, and stood as she logged into his computer because she didn’t want to take his chair, I considered the logic of what she had suggested. Lane might have indeed been keeping his acquisition of The Affair a secret for as long as he could, at least until the initial edits under his direction were complete. As I had suspected earlier, he probably had the manuscript out with several authors in addition to me, hoping their feedback would validate the risky decision he had made. Endorsements would help him make the case that this book was going to be something big, against the conventional belief that he wasn’t that kind of publisher anymore. I wondered if The Affair represented a last gasp for Lane Barfield, which made the possibility of suicide all the more plausible.

  “You said the title was The Affair?” Zara asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “And the author’s name?”

  “Benjamin Tally.”

  It was clear from her expression that Zara wasn’t having any luck finding either of those on Lane’s computer.

  “Any idea when Lane might have received it? Normally, I’m responsible for logging in all the manuscripts that get as far as his desk.”

  I didn’t want to hurt Zara’s feelings by mentioning that the importance of this book might’ve led Lane to cut her out of the loop. Still, the fact that there was no mention of it even on his computer seemed strange. A potential mega-bestseller or not, The Affair was still just a book, a manuscript, that even Lane wouldn’t have gone through such lengths to hide. A thought struck me.

  “Do you keep a list of authors’ manuscripts that have gone out for blurbs?”

  “I redid the entire system myself,” Zara said, beaming slightly before reality encroached again.

>   “Could you check to see if there’s a listing somewhere? Look for the kind of names Lane held back for his most important books.”

  “He called that the Favor Bank,” Zara said, stopping just short of a smile. “He said you could only go to it so often.”

  “Any withdrawals you see on his computer?” I asked, not bothering to mention that my own name would’ve been among them.

  Zara scrolled through the screen for one minute and then another, before she responded. “No. Nothing like that I can find reference to here.”

  Again, Lane could have been using extreme measures to keep the existence of The Affair secret. But he was a man who lived by regimen, routine. He’d been late adapting to a computer, and I can recall index cards lined up all over his desk doing the job he’d finally turned over to the machines.

  I looked toward Artie, who took that as his cue to close the door. Then I fixed my gaze back on Zara.

  “I’m about to share something with you that Lane must’ve had good reason to withhold. You shouldn’t take any offense at that because I can tell you he’d been secretive, even paranoid, about books he held the greatest hope for. I believe The Affair was one of those and that he’d offered a very large amount to purchase it. I’m not sure if the deal had closed yet, but there must be some record, also secret, in the contracts department toward that end. Do you know how to access such records, Zara? And be assured this will remain strictly between us.”

  She looked toward Artie, who nodded his ascent on the subject; then she turned back to me. “He taught me how to access the system. He wasn’t supposed to, but he did.”

  “Then that’s it. That will give us a starting point. He may have logged the book in as untitled with a fake author name. Look for a significant advance, paid out over a protracted period of time, or perhaps even a multibook contract.”

  Zara went back to work behind Lane’s computer, and spent a longer stretch tapping the keys this time.

  “There’s nothing.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Nothing matching that description, not even close. If Lane had a deal in place for this book, Contracts didn’t know it.”

  Which made no sense at all, utterly confounding. If I hadn’t started reading the vaunted manuscript myself, I’d be questioning Lane’s sanity right now.

  I realized Zara was fresh at work again behind his computer, her expression suddenly resolute. “What are you doing?” I asked her, resisting the temptation to check the screen myself.

  “You said Lane sent this manuscript, The Affair, out for blurbs?”

  “Yes,” I said, again not bothering to mention that I was one of those he’d passed a copy to. “I’m quite sure of that.”

  “Then he would have either mailed a manuscript or e-mailed it as an attachment, using either his work or private e-mail address. His private one most likely, because that can be accessed only from his computer and not mine.”

  “Then . . . ,” I started.

  “I know his password,” Zara said, leaving it there.

  She returned all of her attention to the screen, clearly mystified at what she was seeing. “This would have all happened recently, right?”

  “Within the last month anyway.”

  She looked up at me across Lane’s desk, her face aglow in the light spraying off the monitor. “There’s nothing, Mrs. Fletcher. No e-mails or shipping receipt confirmations. Nothing.”

  I couldn’t make any sense of that at all, glancing toward Artie, who looked equally befuddled even though he was hardly privy to the inner workings of the book business.

  “It’s like,” Zara was saying from behind Lane’s desk, “this book never existed.”

  Chapter Seven

  I had a copy, of course, so I knew The Affair was very real indeed. And the late Thomas Rudd had swiped a flash drive Lane Barfield told me contained the same manuscript.

  “We need to ask you to do something you may be uncomfortable doing, Zara,” I said, looking over her shoulder at Artie Gelber, who mouthed, We? “We need to ask if you’d feel comfortable calling the agents Lane dealt with most often. See if any of them got the book to him in the first place.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  I didn’t know what to tell her exactly. Something was wrong here; something was off. Lane had somehow come into possession of a book he considered a potential monster that, for all practical purposes, didn’t exist. So either he had gone through beyond-extraordinary circumstances to hide its existence, or else . . .

  Or else what?

  The fact that his experienced assistant, Zara, whom he’d proclaimed to be the best one he’d ever had, couldn’t pick up even an inkling of the manuscript’s existence was troubling to say the least. Even if Lane had realized his folly, that he’d made a terrible mistake he intended to erase before taking his own life, there would at the very least be some digital relic left someplace, in the contracts department or elsewhere, that Zara should’ve been able to find.

  I couldn’t make any sense of this, because there was no sense to make of it. I still hadn’t told Artie I actually had a copy of The Affair, because the fact hadn’t seemed pertinent until now; it still might not be. I just didn’t know.

  “I know just who to call. In what order, too,” Zara was saying.

  “And . . . ,” I started.

  “I know,” she said before I could continue. “Be discreet.”

  Zara almost smiled. The color had returned to her face and her eyes no longer brimmed with tears. Having something to do, an assignment, had clearly provided purpose, recharging her in the process. The odds were overwhelming that the manuscript had been submitted by an agent. Huge deals being the product of unsolicited manuscripts was the stuff of fiction and legend. It just didn’t happen these days, especially when the vast majority of publishers refused to even consider such submissions anymore.

  “Can I ask you a question, Mrs. Fletcher?” Zara resumed suddenly, the pain creeping back into her expression, her face currently enveloped by shadows in a patch of Lane’s office untouched by the sun.

  “Of course.”

  “Why do you think he did it?”

  “I really have no idea,” I said truthfully.

  “It wasn’t like him. He loved his work. You can tell when someone loves his work. There were nights when I couldn’t get him to leave the office, even though he kept nodding off at his desk.”

  “He was lonely, Zara. That might have played a part in it.”

  Lane had been married once, but it hadn’t lasted long and had produced no children. He spoke occasionally about a brother and sister, but I got the impression they were both deceased. He had built an insular world for himself that, at his age, came with a life expectancy that was drawing to a close. And with that end looming, Lane Barfield might’ve been forced to confront the fact that he had nothing with which to replace his fifty-year career in publishing. It happens to people sometimes when they reach that stage; the dangerous combination of fear and depression sets in over the big, dark void that’s coming next. Maybe better that it not come at all and, fearing such ruinous thoughts would become the norm, they opt to swallow a month’s supply of sleeping pills or choose another means to slip away someplace else.

  “Anything else I can do?” Zara asked me.

  “Benjamin Tally is probably a pseudonym. My thinking is that at some point he’s going to call, looking for Lane.”

  “Lane’s cell phone calls were automatically routed to his private office number. I’ll monitor both that and his regular office number. Should I call you if I hear from him?”

  “Immediately,” I said, not bothering to look at Artie this time, because I didn’t care whether he approved of my involvement or not.

  With the book apparently stricken from existence here at the publisher, our only chance to learn anything more about th
e part it might have played in Lane’s suicide would be from the author.

  “Something more?” Zara asked, reading the change in my expression.

  “As a matter of fact, I think you should make subtle calls to all the other major imprints. Ask if they’ve ever heard of an author named Benjamin Tally or a book called The Affair.”

  “You think Tally may have changed his mind and taken the book elsewhere?”

  I shrugged. “It would explain a lot of things.”

  But it would have needed to happen fast, after I’d left Lane’s office yesterday with the manuscript in hand. I pictured him receiving a call with the bad news and flushing every trace of The Affair from the company’s system in a rage, before he went home and cashed in his chips.

  “Check the call log from yesterday afternoon, both his office and personal lines,” I told Zara. “Make a list of any number without an ID or that you don’t recognize,” I added, figuring one of those numbers might have belonged to Benjamin Tally.

  “That it?”

  “One more thing, Zara: I’d like a list of all the top authors Lane called in the past two weeks.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “Why’d you ask her for that?” Artie wondered when we were alone in the elevator.

  “Because I figured one of those authors might have penned The Affair using a pseudonym.”

  It was a lie, but a fairly credible one. The truth was, I wanted to find out who else Lane might have sent the manuscript to besides me for an evaluation and potential endorsement. After all these years in publishing, he still needed that kind of affirmation, especially for a book that had so much riding on it. If the response had been negative, I’d have another potential scenario explaining why Lane had killed himself.