Manuscript for Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

  “I’m in the middle of it now,” I responded, then veered to another subject to avoid having to elaborate. “What about the author, Benjamin Tally? Have you been able to turn up anything more on him?”

  “Nothing,” she said, and I could sense her shaking her head. “All trace of him has been wiped from the system, too. I went down to the contracts department myself this morning, Mrs. Fletcher. I figured you could erase an author’s existence from our databases but not from people’s memories. So I asked around.”

  “You did what?”

  “Nobody in Contracts knew what I was talking about. They looked at me like I was crazy. They’d never heard of Benjamin Tally or The Affair. At least, that’s what they claimed.”

  “Listen to me, Zara,” I said in the sternest voice I could muster. “You’re to do no such thing again. Is that clear? You’re to do nothing else besides look up the contact information for Alicia Bond, until you speak with me first. Is that clear?” I repeated.

  “Yes. Should I go home and call in sick?”

  “No, absolutely not. If there really is someone behind all this, you don’t want to do anything that draws attention. Just keep coming to work and holding down the fort. It’s what Lane would’ve wanted and, I suspect, will go a long way toward solidifying your position in the company. We need to do this for him, Zara.”

  “I’ve got the information you asked for on Alicia Bond, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The information Zara had just provided scribbled on a pad before me, I dialed Cabot Cove sheriff Mort Metzger’s cell phone number.

  “I just left Mara’s. Already had breakfast.”

  “I wasn’t calling about breakfast, Mort. Something’s happening and I need your help. Call me back when you’re behind your desk.”

  “Does this mean somebody’s dead?”

  Obviously, he hadn’t spoken with Seth yet about what I’d shared with him on the ride from the train station last night. “Several somebodies. But I’m calling about another somebody who might be next.”

  “I’m just walking into my office now. Hold on.”

  I did, feeling my stomach twisting into knots, while I waited for Mort to come back on. Over the line I heard a door close, the rattle and squeak as he settled himself in the chair behind his desk.

  “Okay, I’m ready.”

  “Ever hear of an author named Alicia Bond?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “Her books were the basis for a crazily successful show on one of the pay cable stations.”

  “When’s that going to happen to you, by the way?”

  “Stick to the subject, Mort. We need to find Alicia Bond.”

  “I assume you tried calling her.”

  “No response,” I said, shaking my head, even though Mort obviously couldn’t see me.

  “She’s famous; what do you expect? And you have reason to believe she’s in danger.”

  “Yes.”

  “Care to tell me why?”

  “Because of a book.”

  He hesitated. “I’m going to leave things there.”

  “I’ve got phone numbers for her, her agent, her manager,” I told Mort. “I’ve got addresses, too. I thought a call from you to the local authorities might enlist their help as well.”

  “One step at a time, Jessica. I have pen in hand. Give me everything and let me see what I can do.”

  I began reciting all the information from Zara that I’d jotted down.

  * * *

  • • •

  Alicia Bond’s real name was Margaret Bellucci. She’d eked out a career writing paperback romance bestsellers, until that market pretty much tanked. She became “Alicia Bond” when the first book of her wildly successful fantasy series was published, and she now owned four homes, including her first one, in Santa Fe, which I’d learned about from her bio.

  But her primary residence was still located in Marblehead, Massachusetts, so I clung to the hope that she was reasonably close by, which would facilitate a meeting once Mort reached her. I took comfort in the fact that, at the very least, no report had surfaced of any harm having befallen her the way it had A. J. Falcone. Given the level of her celebrity, rare for an author until Hollywood comes calling, the gossip sites and traditional news channels would be all over a story pertaining to any major twist in her life. So no news, in this case, was definitely good news.

  I’d never read any of the books in the series or watched the adaptations on cable. They weren’t for me. Then again, neither was The Affair, and here I was seated on the couch next to a jumble of pages I’d read well more than half of and couldn’t wait to get back to. The writing itself might not have been very good, but the story, for all its outlandishness, was utterly intoxicating. So maybe I needed to broaden my horizons, even try my hand at something capable of doing for readers what The Affair had done for me.

  If only it were that simple. The fact was, laying the absurdities of the manuscript aside, there was something about The Affair I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Occasionally, the New York Times Book Review asked me to pen a review of a book by a fellow mystery writer, and I always found myself wondering where a particular story originated. Something about The Affair had me wondering the same thing. I can’t say why exactly, and there was no way to find out at this stage, but I felt the answer to that question was another piece of the puzzle that needed to be found.

  My phone rang, Mort calling me back just under an hour after our conversation.

  “Tell me you found Alicia Bond,” I said as soon as I answered.

  “Yes and no. Maggie—short for Margaret, as she’s still known to her friends and associates—has been spending almost all her time at her home in Marblehead.”

  “Is she there now?”

  “No.”

  “Damn!”

  “You didn’t let me finish, Jessica. She’s not there, because she’s here.”

  “Here where?”

  “Maine. Hiking the woods of Acadia National Park, where she reserved one of those cabins in the middle of nowhere. According to her agent, who I was able to get on the phone, it helps clear her head. Kind of a ritual before she plunges into her next book. She left Marblehead yesterday and she planned on going dark the whole time.”

  “Explains why she never returned my calls.”

  “You ever consider doing something like that, retreating to the woods before you start your next book?”

  “Since when did you figure me for channeling my inner Henry David Thoreau?”

  “I was only asking, Jessica.”

  “Anyway, I have my own ritual. Almost the same thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I ride my bike to the ocean and back.”

  “Well,” Mort said, after chuckling, “you don’t want to ride your bike all the way to Acadia National Park and we won’t get there fast enough by car.”

  “You install a transporter device in your office since the last time I was there, Mort?”

  “No,” he told me, “but I’ve got the next best thing standing by.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The next best thing turned out to be a state police helicopter. Mort picked me up twenty minutes later and we drove to a small airport a half hour away, getting there just after the chopper had landed to pick us up.

  Mort was right. The drive to Acadia would’ve taken four hours; the helicopter ride took barely forty minutes. And there was a landing pad used occasionally by the park service within walking distance of the cabin Alicia Bond had reserved for her retreat. Had we driven, we would’ve had to hike a considerably greater distance to reach her, which, I suspected, was the whole point in the woman’s mind.

  I’ve never understood the notion of clearing one’s head. For me, that
’s what happens when I write, so I have no need to seek it out before I write. I find my inspiration in the process itself, not in some remote cabin where I’d sit staring at the walls, accomplishing nothing more than wanting to leave.

  As Mort and I walked across the tarmac toward the chopper, I tried not to think about how much I hated riding in helicopters. Anyone who tells you it’s no different from driving or flying, even in a small airplane, is lying. It’s pretty much a bumpy, jumpy, jarring trip, full of bounces up and down that make your stomach feel as if it somehow got left behind. I got nauseous every time I rode in one and had taken to swallowing Dramamine just to manage the worst of the symptoms. But I’d forgotten to take one today and didn’t want to be left groggy in any event, given the task before us.

  Climbing aboard, though, made me instantly regret my decision. I felt myself getting queasy as I buckled myself into the seat. Mort climbed in after me, regarding me with a wry look across the seats facing each other in the back of the cabin.

  “I thought you were over that.”

  “Getting sick? Since when does anyone get over airsickness? At my age, I’ve outgrown everything I ever will, Mort.”

  “Our age, you mean.”

  “Except you don’t turn yellow on helicopter rides.”

  “Which reminds me,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his uniform jacket, complete with a sheriff’s badge, “here you go.”

  And he handed me one of those airline barf bags.

  Chapter Twelve

  Acadia National Park was beautiful from any angle, but especially from above. The forty-seven-thousand-acre marvel of the Atlantic coastline was marked by deep forests, rock-strewn beaches, and ice-crusted granite peaks like that of Cadillac Mountain, the highest peak within twenty-five miles of the entire East Coast, stretching well above the nearest contenders. Locals and tourists who frequented Acadia to mix with the abundant wildlife often stayed over at the seaside town of Bar Harbor, its trendy restaurants and shops forming an odd juxtaposition to the pristine national park. Call it the spoils of nature versus the spoils of shopping.

  The chopper’s cruise over all that natural beauty almost relieved the nausea that had left me closing my eyes and taking regular deep breaths to avoid having to use Mort’s barf bag. It didn’t help that Mort wouldn’t leave me alone.

  “None of this makes sense, Jessica. I think you’ve finally cracked up and are living out one of your books.”

  “So I killed Thomas Rudd and then arranged for a horse to trample A. J. Falcone.”

  “Well.” Mort frowned. “You did have a motive for killing Falcone.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He sells more books than you.”

  I readied the barf bag. “I think I’m going to be sick. . . .”

  “Your sales aren’t down that much, are they? Also, there’s nothing in the official police report that mentions murder in the Rudd investigation.”

  “Not yet,” I countered, finding it odd that Artie Gelber had opted to have that wrinkle in the case omitted.

  “And I spoke to the police who investigated the scene at Falcone’s ranch. Unless somebody turned a horse into a hit man, it was an accident.”

  “You’re so gullible, Mort.”

  “You mean somebody did turn a horse into a hit man? That’s a neat trick, even for your books. Are they getting that stale?”

  I let him see me feign a near heave. “Keep at it, Mort. Keep at it.”

  “I’m sorry about your publisher. Seth told me,” he said instead.

  “Ever heard of the book The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco?”

  “I think I saw the movie. Sean Connery, right? Set during the Inquisition.”

  “That’s the one. Both centered on a book that by all indications kills everyone who reads it.”

  “I don’t remember that part.”

  “Anyway, it turned out the pages were poisoned to protect a secret the book contained.”

  Mort nodded, either understanding or pretending that he did. “And you think this book your publisher purchased for a ton of money kills anyone who reads it?”

  “I’m reading it and I’m still alive, although not for much longer if we don’t land soon.”

  “Any good?”

  “I can’t put it down.”

  “Anybody say that about your books anymore, Jessica?”

  “When’s your term up as sheriff again?”

  “I’m appointed, not elected. Talk to the mayor and board of selectmen, as soon as we get home after finding this Alicia Bond, Margaret Bellucci, or whatever her real name is.”

  “It’s Margaret Bellucci,” I told him, still holding the barf bag at the ready.

  “Bet she sells better than you, too, doesn’t she? I do believe we have a pattern emerging here.”

  “Thomas Rudd didn’t sell better than I.”

  “Thomas Rudd blew himself up.”

  “No, somebody made it look like Thomas Rudd blew himself up.”

  Mort stopped to ponder what I’d just said. “Or maybe somebody left those clues behind on purpose to get you to believe exactly what you’re spouting off now.”

  “Got a theory as to why they’d do such a thing?”

  “I’m still working on that.”

  “Right, convincing.”

  “More convincing than a book that kills, Jessica, whether because of what’s on the pages or what’s in them.”

  The state police helicopter angled its descent for the landing pad on Mount Cadillac in the forestlands of Acadia National Park. I took the opportunity to dramatically toss the empty barf bag into Mort’s lap. “Looks like you need that more than I.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because me proving you wrong is going to make you sick.”

  I turned out to be only half-right.

  * * *

  • • •

  The landing pad turned out to be a good mile’s walk from the nest of isolated cabins where Alicia Bond, aka Margaret Bellucci, was staying. No easy trek through woods as deep as the ones in which we found ourselves, especially climbing a steep uphill grade. I had dressed properly in slacks and the lace-up Timberland boots I wore in winter. But nothing could prepare me for the bite of the stiff wind and, worse, the effects of the altitude on the breathing of someone not used to being above sea level. The beauty of the natural landscape we were trudging through diminished in the face of the toll the exertion was taking on me.

  I’d read on the Internet that even before she became publishing superstar Alicia Bond, Margaret Bellucci had been an accomplished outdoors woman, having scaled some of the tallest peaks in the world and spent time in the farthest reaches the globe had to offer. I’d read that’s how she’d come up with the concept for the fantastical land portrayed in her mega-selling series of books. She’d become the rare recognizable literary star, and the rugged nature of her hobbies only added to her mystique.

  “You need to stop?” Mort asked, not bothering to cloak the concern in his voice.

  “If we stop now,” I said, heaving for breath a bit, “we might as well stop every ten feet.”

  “In which case we should reach Alicia Bond’s cabin sometime tomorrow.”

  “So let’s keep going.”

  We hadn’t brought canteens, leaving us with only the bottled water we’d packed, three bottles between us. I stopped checking my watch after twenty minutes that saw us cover half the ground to the cabin the writer who now called herself Alicia Bond had rented. But the forest floor leveled off a bit after that and we began to make better time and I found myself no longer needing to pull myself along by grabbing tree branches for support.

  Finally, Mort and I caught our first glimpse of the cabin his GPS had led us to. If Alicia Bond’s people had been right about her precise whereabouts, our quest was almost ov
er, with a less taxing, but more precarious, trek downhill back to the helicopter still ahead. I cringed at the thought of something keeping us here after nightfall, unable to imagine managing that effort in the dark, absent flashlights.

  But the plan was to collect Alicia Bond straightaway and bring her back with us to civilization. It may sound strange, but I was really looking forward to discussing The Affair with her. Had she come away from her read the same way I was coming away from mine? Had she been similarly enraptured and entranced by the plight of young characters on the run, and the concept behind that even higher than this mountain upon which we were about to find her?

  Mort eased an arm to keep me behind him as we mounted the cabin steps. For the first time in all the years I’d known him I think, I saw him hitch back his police jacket to free his pistol to draw more readily should he need to. Channeling his inner John Wayne again, no doubt, just as he had when he rose from his chair to keep a drunken Thomas Rudd at bay three days ago.

  Had it been only three days? The intensity was unrivaled by anything I’d ever experienced. Three deaths, a manuscript I might well have the last copy of in existence, a writer known only by his pen name, and that mysterious bald-headed man I remained certain had been watching me on the train from New York to Boston. That was enough story to fill any three of my books, never mind one. Which in the last moment before Mort knocked on the cabin door brought me around to a notion I hadn’t sufficiently considered before now:

  What if somebody didn’t want The Affair to be published?

  I’d avoided that question because it led to a hundred more. Like some vast infinity mirror where there was no end, only a continuous repetition of the beginning.

  “Mrs. Bond,” Mort called, rapping on the polished plank door. “It’s the police, Mrs. Bond. Please open the door.”

  “Wasn’t a park ranger supposed to meet us here?”

  “I thought so,” Mort said, giving Alicia Bond a few more moments to respond and then sweeping his gaze about as if he expected it to capture the park ranger miraculously appearing out of the woods.