Manuscript for Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

  “She mentioned you wanted to see me, insisted that I squeeze you in today—between a pair of prime ministers as it turns out.”

  “Well, I’ve never run a country.”

  “Just as they have never written a book, at least a mystery.”

  “I believe history’s more to your liking, isn’t it, sir?”

  The president nodded. “In large part because history holds the greatest mysteries of all. Why men took the actions they did and the chain of circumstances that led to those actions. I find real life, human nature itself, fascinating. Mysteries offer a glimpse into the dark side of that nature. I guess that’s why I’ve come to avoid them. Sitting behind that desk,” he said, aiming his gaze toward it, “I see all the darkness I want to see.”

  I let my eyes linger on that desk and the credenza behind it. When you spot something that grabs your attention, it’s like opening a mental catalogue where you store it for future consideration. Here in the Oval Office, though, I was struck just as I’d been in Zara’s apartment, not so much by what I was seeing as by what I wasn’t. And you can’t put your finger on what you can’t see, other than to label it something amiss, awry.

  “I should read more history,” I told the president, meaning it. “I wish I’d read more history dating all the way back to my college days in Victorian England.”

  He chuckled. “The past provides a much deeper appreciation of the present.”

  “Because it’s not dead; it’s not even past.”

  “Faulkner?”

  “Faulkner.” I nodded.

  He stretched a hand over his desk and grasped an oblong glass-encased paperweight and began passing it from one hand to the other. I recognized it as the one John F. Kennedy had fashioned from a coconut shell in the wake of PT-109 being cut in half by a Japanese destroyer and the crew being marooned in the Solomon Islands during World War II.

  “Is that the original?” I asked President Robert Albright.

  He held it up for me to get a better look. “Absolutely. On loan from his presidential library up your way in Boston. Kennedy used the coconut shell to get a message to the nearest PT base on Rendova and that led directly to his rescue. He later had the shell preserved as a keepsake. I’ve idolized him for as long as I can remember.”

  He laid the heavy paperweight back on his desk.

  “So, Mrs. Fletcher,” the president said, crossing his legs casually, “what is it you wanted to see me about?”

  “Research,” I blurted out, before I could ponder the question further.

  “Okay,” he prodded me on.

  “Are there really escape tunnels beneath the White House?”

  The president laughed, Harlan Babb and Sharon Lerner joining in as if following his cue. “You’d be amazed how often I get asked that.”

  “Is it true?”

  “They may have existed once, but if that’s the case, the rising water table swallowed them long ago. So when you hear rumors of JFK sneaking in mistresses through those underground passageways, it would be wise to dismiss them.”

  “I guess he was looking for a different kind of escape,” I said, cringing at my lame attempt at humor.

  But the president smiled politely. “Are you thinking of including a romp through those legendary tunnels in your next mystery?”

  I took my lead from him, just as Harlan Babb and Sharon Lerner had. “Actually, I came across them in someone else’s manuscript.”

  “Political thriller?” the president asked, expression crinkling in distaste.

  “How’d you know?”

  “What other book would include a scene like that? Don’t tell me, the president turns out to be an impostor.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “The president learns he has only a week to live and decides to change the world in those seven days.”

  “Wow, I only wish. Can I steal that from you?”

  “Another one I’ve heard is out there somewhere: The president is kidnapped and held for ransom.”

  “How about the president’s daughter runs away because she’s been targeted for assassination?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

  That was the problem with not having better prepared myself; I’d gotten to the point but had no idea what to do with it. And my statement rendered without forethought felt insensitive, given the tragic loss of his daughter well before he took office.

  But the president seemed unperturbed, leaning in closer to me. “Keep going.”

  “She’s rescued by a young man about her age.”

  “How old?”

  “Early twenties.”

  “Sounds more like a movie.”

  “I imagine that would be music to the author’s ears,” I said.

  “But you didn’t come to discuss his book, Mrs. Fletcher,” the president noted. “You came to discuss yours.”

  If only he knew, I thought.

  “Well, sir, Victor Hugo wrote that good writers borrow but great writers steal.”

  “I thought that was Picasso.”

  “He appropriated the quote for art.”

  “In other words, he stole.”

  “Or borrowed. Semantics,” I added.

  “Don’t tell me,” the president said, grinning as he traced the air with a hand. “Murder in the White House. Has anyone used that title before?”

  “I believe Margaret Truman did, not that it matters. Titles are like bottles, Mr. President: They keep getting recycled.”

  “So in this book you read by somebody else, the president’s daughter . . .”

  “Needs to find the truth to save her own life.”

  “Classic,” he complimented.

  I frowned a bit. “I was thinking a bit clichéd.”

  “Same thing sometimes, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  I could feel Harlan Babb and Sharon Lerner shifting about on the facing sofas behind me, cognizant of the need to manage the president’s time with someone else, likely one of those prime ministers, almost surely settled in the visitors’ room, waiting for their audience.

  “Have you ever encountered such a book, Mr. President?”

  “You mean, like the one you’re planning to write?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of that manuscript someone else wrote.”

  “What’s the title?”

  “The Affair.”

  I thought maybe that got a rise out of him, but he rolled right along casually before I could be sure.

  “Catchy,” the president said, then shook his head. “But I’ve never heard of it.”

  I knew my time with the president was drawing to a close. “One of the plot points is a book within the book, and everyone who reads it is killed.”

  “Sounds supernatural.”

  “Unfortunately, murder is very natural.”

  The president reached out and squeezed my arm, taking an unspoken signal from his keepers that my time was up. Just then, the main door to the Oval Office opened and the first lady glided in, elegant and fashionable as always.

  “Jessica.” She beamed. “I’m so glad I caught you.”

  “Madam First Lady,” I said after she hugged me lightly.

  “Stephanie,” she corrected again, then stole a glance at her husband. “You’re among friends here.”

  “You never told me Mrs. Fletcher here was so interesting,” the president noted, as Harlan Babb and Sharon Lerner positioned themselves to usher me out. “You’ve been holding back.”

  “Why should you get to have all the fun, my dear?” Stephanie Albright quipped. “Come, Jessica—I’ll walk you out.”

  It felt strange to hear the first lady of the United States say she’d walk me out. Could she even do that? I wondered, still in awe of my surroundings.

  I accepted the president’s hand, his grasp str
ong and sure. “I can’t wait to see how that book ends.”

  “The one I’m reading or the one I’m writing?”

  “The one where the president’s daughter hears something she’s not supposed to and goes on the run. The one with the nonexistent tunnels.”

  I considered his polite, temperate, and casual response as I met the first lady halfway to the Oval Office doors, which had been closed again. Clearly, my overt mention of the manuscript’s contents hadn’t riled him at all. Politicians may all be expert liars—it kind of comes with the job description. Nonetheless, I had the very clear sense that the president honestly had little or no interest, and even less of a stake, in what I was saying.

  “Jessica, would you mind waiting just outside?” Stephanie said. “I’ll be along shortly.”

  “Of course.”

  Harlan Babb held the door open for me as I approached and closed it again when I had exited. I waited just as the first lady had directed, thinking for a moment I heard raised voices coming from inside the Oval Office, one followed by another and then silence. Moments later, the door opened and Stephanie emerged.

  She brushed free some hair that had strayed onto her face and eased a hand around my shoulder. “I hate Washington,” she said, as if embarrassed that I might have heard the brief commotion.

  “You’ve said that before, Stephanie.”

  “And I’ll keep saying it until we’re living somewhere else. But it provides an incredible platform to accomplish things that, thanks to people like you, we’re accomplishing.”

  “You give me far more credit than I deserve.”

  “Really? Do you need me to recite all the big-time authors you’ve enlisted in the cause of literacy?”

  I shrugged. “It gives me something to discuss with them at writers’ conferences. We’re a benevolent lot, always looking to serve a noble cause.”

  I could see the genuine warmth in her expression. “You were the first celebrity to sign on.”

  “I’m no celebrity, Stephanie.”

  “Do you remember how I contacted you?”

  I nodded. “My Web site. You e-mailed me. I thought it was a hoax.”

  “Being the first lady of the United States seems to have that effect on people. But I’m blessed you actually replied.”

  “I’m glad I did. It’s nice to make a difference,” I told her, “even nicer to be doing it with you.”

  She reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “Did you get the list of upcoming events I e-mailed you?”

  “Oh, that’s right. Sorry I never responded. I already have them on my calendar.”

  “And your talk with my husband, it went well?”

  “It did. I can’t thank you enough for making it happen, especially on such short notice.”

  Something changed in the first lady’s expression. It took on a tautness I’d never seen before, producing an effect kind of like that of seeing a woman without makeup for the first time. “You never told me what you wanted to see the president about.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “I’m asking now.”

  I weighed my options, the seconds feeling like minutes, and opted for the approach I was most comfortable with. “I needed his opinion on something.” The truth.

  “Something you didn’t ask for my opinion on.”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You needed to see the president of the United States for a case you’re working on?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to. You wouldn’t have asked for the meeting if something serious wasn’t going on. I know you, Jessica. Discretion might as well be your middle name, and you don’t ask for favors lightly.”

  “Stephanie—”

  She squeezed my arm tighter; I’d forgotten her hand was still clamped on my shoulder. “Just remember one thing, Jessica. This isn’t Cabot Cove; it’s not even New York City. It’s Washington, an entirely different kind of arena.”

  “This isn’t a game,” I told her.

  “Figure of speech.”

  I looked at the first lady more closely, wondering if she already suspected the purpose of my visit, if she knew far more than she was intimating. If she somehow knew about the manuscript. Maybe I should have told her everything then and there. About the murders, the manuscript, and how it might be a roman à clef, indicting the current first family. I couldn’t bring myself to do that, though. I wasn’t ready. There was too much I still didn’t know.

  “Jessica?” she said, after I’d started to walk away in the company of one of the members of her Secret Service detail.

  I turned back around, met her gaze.

  She waited a moment. “Be careful.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I’d taken a cab to the White House, but I felt like walking for a while with no particular place I had to be. I find walking to be the second-best way to relax, after riding my bicycle. How much I enjoy taking a break from writing in the middle of the day to enjoy Cabot Cove’s pristine beauty, especially outside of the cluttered summer season. I’d ride the same streets I’d ridden hundreds, even thousands of times, always noticing something I’d never noticed before. Sometimes I biked for blocks, other times for miles, secure in the notion that I could spend the rest of my life never leaving those ten or so square miles. Everything I wanted, needed, and loved was a bike ride away, except in winter when the streets grew icy and snow piled.

  Cabot Cove might be a coastal resort town, the self-proclaimed Hamptons of New England, but it was still Maine. That’s why I hated winter, for the blissful bike rides it denied me.

  From the White House, I walked through the National Mall, along the Reflecting Pool, around the Tidal Basin, before finding myself between the US Capitol Building and Supreme Court, working out the facts of this case the same way I worked out the plot points of my books while biking. Along the way, I’d similarly passed through any number of eras in the history of the United States, including the Revolutionary War, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and World War II, and walked by the memorials to Presidents Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Jefferson, making me appreciate all the more the scope and gravity of what I’d become embroiled in.

  My visit with the president had yielded nothing—not that I should’ve expected otherwise. Maybe I’d entered the Oval Office expecting to see a copy of The Affair on his desk, establishing some elusive connection that would’ve explained everything. The truth was that I had come to Washington mostly out of desperation, because I had nowhere else to look for the truth.

  Instead of clearing my head, walking among the tourists, school groups, and families that perpetually roamed these streets confronted me hard and fast with the fact that I was still in danger. I was the last person alive intimately familiar with the contents of The Affair. And I couldn’t expect that whoever was behind the murders was going to stop just because Tommy Halperin and Francis Malloy had failed to finish the job.

  I felt my phone vibrating in my bag and nearly jumped out of my shoes, startling a family snapping pictures on the majestic grounds of the Capitol, and I suddenly felt everyone staring at me. Fighting back against the sense of paranoia, I eased my phone out in a trembling hand and saw it wasn’t a call, but a text message that had made my heart jump.

  She didn’t die of a drug overdose

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The text had come from a blocked number. It had to be from someone who knew I’d been at the White House, someone who knew about my conversation with the president.

  Harlan Babb? Sharon Lerner? The first lady? The president’s personal assistant? The president himself?

  There weren’t a lot of options.

  She didn’t die of a drug overdose

  The text could be referring only to the president’s teenage daughter, who’d passed tragically several
months before he declared his intention to run for the highest office in the land. Most pundits didn’t give him much of a chance, but that had all changed when America saw a man on a stage otherwise filled with politicians. It wasn’t so much a matter of sympathy as of empathy. He wore the pain of loss on his sleeve and made no attempt to hide it. He gave the country permission to feel.

  But if his daughter hadn’t died of a drug overdose . . .

  In shock, I finally slipped the phone back into my bag. I didn’t feel like completing that thought right now. If the first family’s daughter hadn’t died of a drug overdose, was it possible that . . .

  I just couldn’t help myself.

  . . . she’d been murdered? Had that been what had set off this spiral of murder that grew out of the existence of a future surefire bestseller that would ultimately reveal that truth to anyone who could read between the lines?

  Or maybe they didn’t have to read between the lines. Maybe that final portion of the manuscript I’d never gotten the chance to read saw Abby murdered, too. A stand-in for the very real daughter of the president suffering the same fate in fiction her real-life counterpart had in fact. Perhaps the manuscript even made clear who her killer had been through a thinly veiled suggestion.

  A secret that couldn’t be revealed in any form . . .

  That would explain the murders. That would explain why Halperin and Malloy needed to burn my house down in order to effectively kill the manuscript, along with me. Two victims for the price of a single match—three, if you included the truth.

  She didn’t die of a drug overdose

  I stood in the shade beneath a tree on the Capitol Building lawn to compose myself. Collected my thoughts before I eased the phone back out of my bag. Didn’t realize I’d pressed the proper contact or even heard the phone ringing until a familiar voice answered.

  “Do you have any friends in Washington?” I asked Artie Gelber.

  * * *

  • • •

  It turned out he did, a whole bunch of them.

  “You saw the president?” he said, as if not believing what I’d just said. “You’re not kidding?”