Written Off (19 page)

“You said you might have a breakthrough on Duffy,” I reminded her. “I need to know what it is.”

She grinned a cat-post-canary grin and shook her head. “I told you,” she said. “Not until I’m sure.”

But I wasn’t playing that game now; I needed reassurance that I wasn’t actually inviting a homicidal maniac into my house just because his route went past No SUBstitutes. “I
can’t wait that long; I need something to hang onto. Please. Who is this guy, best guess?”

Paula studied my face, and her smile faded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is really getting to you, isn’t it?”

I decided, consciously, to look away. “Having my life threatened puts a general crimp in my week,” I said. It came out way more woe-is-me and way less snarky than I had intended. The sniffle right afterward probably didn’t help. “What can you tell me about Duffy?”

Paula nodded, mostly to herself, I think. “There’s a guy from Poughkeepsie, New York, named Damien Mosley,” she said. “Average kid, nobody ever really noticed him. Went to the high school, got mostly Bs and didn’t really make much of a splash. Father was an IBM executive, a minor one, in the data storage department. Mother was a homemaker, joined the PTA, that was about it. They kept to themselves and they never did anything to get people talking about them.”

So far, I didn’t see a reason to get excited. “So the guy has the same initials as Duffy Madison. So what?” I didn’t exactly doubt Paula, but I honestly couldn’t follow her reasoning.

“So Damien went to Oberlin College. Just like Duffy. And after that, beyond a driver’s license and some credit scores, which are just about perfect, there isn’t much in the public record about him. Until . . .”

I waited what seemed like an eternity but was probably just three seconds. “You’re being coy. I’m having a nervous breakdown and you’re being coy, Paula! Tell me what’s going on!” I leaned hard on the edge of her desk. “I need to know
if this guy is a serial killer or a real-life incarnation of my imaginary friend!”

Paula punched a few keys on her keyboard and frowned. “Well, I can’t tell you that definitively,” she said. “Like I told you, I need more time. But there’s something very strange about Damien Mosley.”

She was going to make me say it. “What?”

“He vanished just about four years ago. Right around the time—”

I closed my eyes. “Right around the time I started writing books and Duffy Madison made his first appearance at the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office.”

Dad got back before Duffy could fill our sandwich order and make his appearance, so Paula and I brought him up to speed on her research about the guy who had presented himself as my character. Dad listened with full attention and did not ask questions as the story was being told to him. He is a careful thinker, which was why his business career was successful, and he prides himself in taking a sober, reasoned approach to every problem that comes his way. He steepled his fingers and held them up to his lips as he listened, blinking very rarely, looking more serene with each passing second.

“The guy’s a nut,” he finally pronounced.

I waited, but there was no more from my father. “That’s it?” I asked. “He’s a nut? That’s the best you can do?”

Dad had the nerve to look surprised. “What did you want me to say, Rachel? A guy shows up on your door and claims to be the character you’ve been writing for four years, come to life magically through your word processor? He takes a job doing what your character does and presents himself as the
character in the flesh? His life closely parallels one of another guy, with his initials, who went missing at exactly the same time that you started writing your books, and you want me to say yes, he’s your hero, the guy who’s going to get you through this? The man’s a nut. I don’t know what he did or what made him decide he was someone else, but it couldn’t be good.”

That was the sum total of everything I didn’t want to hear, and I didn’t have an immediate response. I turned toward Paula. “Damien just vanishes and Duffy appears?” I asked. “Did his family file a missing person report? Why wasn’t anyone looking for him?”

“His father died two years before, and Damien had been living in his own apartment in New Rochelle, New York, at the time he vanished. He wasn’t married, didn’t seem to have any friends, wasn’t seeing anyone. Damien worked as a bartender, sometimes in two places at a time so he could get enough hours to pay his rent. His mother didn’t report him missing because she had gotten used to not hearing from him.” Paula was scrolling down the file of notes she’d taken.

“But somebody must have noticed. The bars he was working in knew when he didn’t show up for a shift. The landlord figured out he wasn’t paying his rent. Maybe his power company noticed he was leaving the lights off a lot.” I was trying to poke holes in Paula’s logic, but I was poking with a butter knife and what I needed was something on the order of an awl.

Paula shrugged. “The landlord filed an eviction notice after the rent checks stopped coming. That’s when they contacted Damien’s mom, who didn’t know anything. After
another two months, when it was clear he wasn’t coming back, the landlord got to go into the place, send some possessions back to Mrs. Mosley, and sell the rest. By then, there was no trail to follow.”

“So maybe he is the guy we know as Duffy, and maybe he’s not,” I said.

“This is why I didn’t tell you sooner,” Paula said. “I’m waiting to get a telephone number for the mother and to check with the state police on whether they’ve ever had a record of anyone using the driver’s license, a credit card, or anything. I don’t know what we’re talking about yet.”

Dad shook his head in disbelief and looked at me. “You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?” he asked. “I’m telling you this guy you’ve been trusting is deranged and might be dangerous. You’re just ignoring what I said.”

“Yes, I am,” I admitted. “I don’t want to believe that, and I don’t have a real hard piece of evidence to prove otherwise. This is how I work, Dad. You have to let me get through the process.”

“Is this how you write books? By diving in and seeing what happens?”

“Actually, yeah.”

Cue the doorbell: Duffy was here. I got up to answer the door and my father, usually a very calm and understanding man, grabbed my forearm. “Don’t let him in,” he said with great force in his voice.

“I have to. He has my lunch.” Dad let go, and I let Duffy in, wondering if being sassy to my father was worth the
admission of a possible lunatic to my home. It had felt like a good impulse at the time.

Duffy, unaware that his sanity was even more in question than usual, greeted me with a charming, “I believe Ms. Bledsoe was murdered in a basement or an attic.”

“Did you get napkins?” I asked.

“Of course. Fibers in the closet in which the body was found indicate a good deal of dust at the scene of the murder, and the metal-tipped pen that had punctured her carotid artery bore traces of dichlorobenzene.” We were already walking toward the dining room, where there was a table large enough for four people. I heard Dad and Paula heading in that direction as well.

“Oh, dichlorobenzene,” I parroted back. “That seals it.”

Duffy gave me a slightly irritated look. “It is the common ingredient in most modern mothballs,” he sniffed.

“How could I have forgotten that?” I wondered aloud.

Introductions were made, with Dad eyeing Duffy the way one would glare at . . . a possible murder suspect. We set out the food on the dining room table. Paula had gotten glasses and utensils from the kitchen, and everyone except my father grabbed a sandwich with gusto. Well, Duffy’s version of gusto, which was to actually reach across me to get his sub rather than wait to have it handed to him. He unwrapped it slowly, which normally wouldn’t bother me, but it was the very height of suspense now. I saw Paula watching like a hawk as he revealed his chosen lunch.

A cheese sub.

We exchanged a look that couldn’t decide if it was relieved or annoyed. But I know we were both wondering the same thing: Did he pick up that detail in one of the books, or is that an actual incarnation of Duffy Madison sitting across the table? Should I call him “Damien” and see what happens? Wasn’t Damien the evil devil kid in some seventies horror movie? (I’m pretty sure I was the only one thinking about that last question.)

Dad, picking absently at his sandwich as if he was afraid it might bite back, did not look at our fictional guest but idly asked, “So Duffy, how do you intend to find the man who you think is now focusing on my daughter?”

Duffy, of course, didn’t skip a beat. “The key is to provide security for Rachel while continuing to research the criminal’s methods and possible psychology. I don’t believe in profilers, but I do think that a person’s communication can be very telling, and the e-mails he sent to your daughter are extremely valuable.”

He then went into a detailed description and analysis of syntax, grammar patterns, and font choices, and I blanked out somewhere around the complete lack of alliteration in the threatening notes. Duffy was trying to show off how thorough he was, but he wasn’t getting anywhere with Dad.

Once he took his first extended breath, my father leapt upon his opportunity. “How do we know you’re not the killer?” he asked.

I almost dropped my sandwich. “Dad!”

“It’s a reasonable question,” Duffy responded. Not a bead of sweat, not a blink. Nothing. “You have the evidence that,
in the three days I have known your daughter, I have done absolutely nothing the least bit threatening and have been endeavoring to keep her safe. We have been alone at least three times, once in her home, and no harm has come to her. And you have my sincerest declaration that anything at all harmful would have to get through me first before Rachel could be hurt.” He took another bite, and some mustard squirted onto the corner of his mouth. Duffy dabbed at it with an inadequate paper napkin from the sub restaurant.

“So you’re asking me to take your word for it,” Dad responded. He took a forkful of macaroni salad and chewed it suspiciously, if such a thing is possible.

“I’m suggesting you exercise logic and
then
take my word for it,” Duffy answered, his lip now mustard free.

Before my father could snarl at him some more, Duffy’s cell phone buzzed, and he registered a slight look of surprise when he checked the incoming caller. He stood and tapped the phone. “Special Agent Rafferty,” he said with a hint of superiority in his voice. So she’d come crawling back for his help, had she? Well, he’d be happy to pitch in now that she was acknowledging his skills and dedication, but only because he wanted to help save lives.

It was a lot to infer from a 5 percent change in his tone, but I’m an author, and we observe, then exaggerate. Saves millions in lawsuits.

Duffy listened for a few seconds. “Indeed. How soon?” He looked at me perplexed. “Tomorrow? Well, certainly, if you feel it could make that large a difference.” He walked out
of the room, and his conversation with the FBI agent—sorry;
special
agent—became unintelligible.

“Sounds like something’s happening in the case,” Paula attempted as a way of breaking the silence.

“Good,” Dad grumped. “This needs to end soon.”

“What is it with you?” I asked. “You’re usually so nonjudgmental, and now you’re practically jumping down Duffy’s throat every time he makes a sound.”

He gave me a very stern fatherly look and said, “I take offense when someone threatens my daughter’s life. No matter how much he resembles a guy you made up.”

“Well one thing Duffy’s right about, we have no evidence at all that he’s anything other than what he appears to be, at least professionally. He is trying to help, and you’re jumping to the conclusion that he is the serial killer.”

Duffy walked back in, pocketing his cell phone. “I’m afraid I’m off,” he said.

“No kidding,” Dad mumbled, but Duffy didn’t appear to hear it. Hey, some jokes are inherited father to daughter.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Special Agent Rafferty believes there’s a strong possibility the next abduction has taken place. There’s a crime writer in Connecticut named Rosemary Cleland who apparently is not in touch with friends or relatives.”

I knew Rosemary from some meetings I’d attended of a nascent writer’s union in Manhattan. Her writing name was Lisbeth Pastel, and she wrote what I’d consider to be something more akin to romance novels that occasionally had
crimes in them. And the union hadn’t gone anywhere, either. I told all that to Duffy.

He shrugged. “She’s a writer, and she’s missing. The special agent wants me in Stamford as soon as possible. Apparently, I’m not quite the charlatan she’d assumed.”

I suddenly felt a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. “What if she’s wrong?” I asked. “What if Rosemary isn’t the next victim? I’ll be here without anyone to help.” I realized what that sounded like and added, “No one official.” I looked at Paula, who waved a hand to tell me not to worry, and Dad, whose expression was not as severe as before. He caught Duffy’s eye.

“You sure you can’t stay?” my father asked. “I’m concerned about Rachel.” There is no greater hypocrite than the frightened parent.

“Ben Preston will be here.” Duffy turned toward me. “Call him if you need him. Ben texted me and said he wasn’t going to Connecticut but would continue working the case from here.” And then, saying this time that he had to rush out, Duffy left, leaving the three of us with the better part of four sub sandwiches and a lot of trepidation.

I’d had enough, I decided, of sitting around and waiting for something to happen. The hell with the publishing industry and its odd rules about not working on weekends (except writers, who work all the time). There were unprofessional ways of getting answers, and I was just pushed far enough to use them.

“Fire up your laptop, Paula,” I said. “We’re making some calls to people who are probably enjoying their weekend.”

It took some doing. Most of the websites for publishing companies, editors, agents, and even publicists directed the visitor to make contact either through e-mail or by calling the office switchboard, which would inevitably lead to a voice mail cul-de-sac on the weekend. So my initial attempts to start calling people who had known the murdered authors were a little slow.

But Paula being the amiable model of efficiency was the key to the matter. She got out the actual paper phone books I’d forgotten I had for Manhattan and started looking up the home numbers of those who might still have a landline. Matching names to authors and then eliminating those who probably weren’t agents (“Dr. Lance K. Galbraith, Gastroenterology”) was a tedious business, but in the end and with the help of universal 411 to find some out-of-towners, we had a working list of six people from the four victims, which was a pretty good ratio. I live in fear that Paula will someday find a real job.

We split up the list three ways only because Dad would not be denied. Paula and Dad used their cell phones while I reserved the right to stick to my corded landline, the only phone that never drops a call and has sound fidelity I can actually count on being clear enough to take accurate notes.

I drew Sunny Maugham’s editor Carole Pembroke at Arlington House and the brother of Marion Benedict, the unpublished author from Farmingdale, because he was the only person who might have some idea of her work habits. I think Dad and Paula wanted to keep their own lists exclusive to professional contacts because personal ones would tend to be more emotional and therefore the conversations might be more unpleasant. In other words, they were taking the easier ones for themselves.

I called Bob Benedict first, not because I was anxious about grilling someone who had recently lost a close relative to an unthinkable crime, but because he was more likely to be answering his phone on the weekend. And my luck, he answered almost immediately. I had to explain who I was, and since I really didn’t want to lie, that took some doing.

“I’m the author of some crime novels, and I heard about the awful loss of your sister,” I began. “I’m so sorry to hear about it.”

“Why are you calling?” Bob had the tone of someone whose dinner was being interrupted by a caller asking whether he was satisfied with his current cell phone service provider.

Again, not lying was the priority, but not sounding like a nut was pretty high on the list as well. “I read about your sister in the newspaper, and as a fellow writer, I felt the loss.
I was so shaken by the news that I felt I had to call and find out about her.” I hadn’t actually mentioned that
A Confederacy of Dunces
was published only because the author’s suicide sent his mother to publishers on a mission. So what I
did
say wasn’t all that loony. But then, my standards for crazy had been considerably shaken in the past week.

There was a considerable gap in the conversation, and I got the strong impression that Bob was staring at the receiver and wondering who this dizzy, impolite woman calling him while he was still in mourning might be. “Why are you
calling
?” he repeated.

It was clear my first answer had been insufficient. “Look,” I said, cards on the table, “I never knew your sister. I don’t know if she was a terrific writer or a lousy one. But I know that this killer is someone who is targeting female crime authors, and I have reason to believe I’m next on his list. So anything you can tell me about Marion would be a real help to me.”

I held my breath for a moment while Bob considered. “Okay,” he said, but his voice had a tone that indicated he was weary of the whole thing and wished his sister would just stop being murdered so lunatics like me would stop calling him on a Sunday asking how they could avoid being next. “What do you want to know?”

“How far had your sister gotten with her work?” I asked. If she had been in contact with an editor or agent coinciding with the ones Dad and Paula were calling or calling about, it was possible there was a connection and therefore a suspect would emerge. If not, I had a grand total of nothing.

“She wrote some mystery books,” Bob said, as if Marion had been trying to jump to Mars from a standing position. “I read the first one, and it wasn’t all that great. She couldn’t spell, for one thing. I’m no expert, and I was finding typos all over the place.”

Typos? Those can be fixed. “But was the story good?” I asked. “The characters?”

“What am I, a book critic? It was one of those things where somebody who doesn’t really do that for a living runs around asking people about a murder and they just tell her anything she wants to know. Not my thing, but some people really love them, I guess.”

I had to be more specific in my questioning. “Had she gotten any encouragement from people in the publishing business? Did she hear from editors, agents, that kind of thing?”

“I really don’t know. Marion lived in Philly over a pizzeria. I live in Delaware. We didn’t talk more than once a month, maybe. We weren’t that close. She told me once, all proud, that she’d sent out her manuscript to a bunch of agents, but she never said if she heard back from any, which made me think she didn’t. After a while, she didn’t mention the books anymore. I was surprised the cops found a new one she was working on in a file on her hard drive.”

“So she never mentioned a name, a publisher, an editor, nobody?”

There was a sigh from the phone. “I just said she never mentioned the books anymore. Then some guy comes along and makes her choke on rejection slips I didn’t even know she had. So maybe I’m not the one to ask. Look, lady, the Orioles
are in the sixth inning and it’s Sunday, all right? Nice talking to you.” He hung up, and I almost didn’t blame him or the sleeveless undershirt I pictured him wearing.

No author ever gets to be published without a quantity of persistence, and after all I was the one whose life was probably in danger, so with that motivation in mind, I dialed the home number for Carole Pembroke, Sunny’s editor, who as it turned out lived in Morristown, on the train line. I asked if I could come over and discuss Sunny, and she said she understood my grief (which I was embarrassed about because this call was more about fear) and would be happy to see me. She gave me directions, which I didn’t write down because I have GPS.

Dad wasn’t happy about me going alone but didn’t want to sit in the car in the midnineties heat while I talked to Carole, so he allowed for it. It didn’t take long to find her apartment, actually a loft in a converted school building; very trendy.

Carole said she was surprised at the call, not because it was from an author she didn’t know on a day she wasn’t working, but because she’d forgotten she even had the landline. “I had to pick it up,” she said. “I haven’t used the thing in months, maybe years.”

I started with the fact that I was the person who had discovered Sunny’s body in the closet.

“My god that was awful,” she said, as if it had been her and not me who opened the closet door. “What a shock. And such a good writer, too. She sold a lot of books for us.” That, in the publishing business, is the definition of a good writer.

“It’s a great loss,” I agreed, although my criteria might have been different. “It’s very disturbing, and I’m trying to get some closure for myself. How long were you Sunny’s editor?”

Carole made a show of thinking about it, hand to her chin. She wasn’t much of an actress—Sunny had been an asset to her, not a friend.

“Oh, Julia and I went back to her first book,
Death Gets a Pedicure
,” she said, making sure that I was aware she knew Sunny by her given name and not the one she probably took at the publisher’s request. “She wrote such lovely deaths; it was truly a privilege to read her manuscripts.”

I’d seen a piece of Sunny’s latest on her computer and thought it was extremely rough. “I imagine she went through a number of drafts,” I said. That wasn’t exactly a question, but it would elicit a response, and that was all I needed.

“Not really,” Carole (whose birth certificate probably didn’t have the “e” on the end) answered. “I mean, she certainly took some editing, just like every other writer, but she was actually so well-tuned to the series that by the end, I rarely brought up a point that required much more than a quick polish. She was a real pro.” Her voice got a little dreamy. “It’s going to be hard to replace her.” But no doubt they would. If Sunny’s books had sold well enough, it might be possible to hire another writer to continue her series with Sunny’s name in huge type on the front and the other writer’s underneath in much smaller print.

Should I ask if that was being considered? I could probably . . . No.

Wait. The sample I’d seen on Sunny’s computer was full of typos and misspellings. But of course what Carole was talking about was editing a piece for content, not form. The publisher would have copy editors to take care of grammatical mistakes and Carole (and her peers) to handle story problems, timeline issues, character incongruities, and cases where the author (in the opinion of the publisher) has gone too far and will upset some readers. One thing they absolutely hate is upset readers.

I guess that’s more than one thing. “One thing” and “readers” disagree in that sentence. Hopefully my copy editor will correct the mistake.

“Was Sun . . . Julia at all difficult to deal with?” I went on. Maybe if she’d really pissed someone off royally, I could find a motive in this mess. But then I’d have to find the same one for the other three victims.

Carole’s eyes got to the size of Oreo cookies, she was so amazed at the suggestion. “Oh no,” she said. “She was a dream. Always polite, always helpful. She took revisions with a smile, and I never heard anyone around here say anything at all negative about her.” Then she paused. “Why?”

“I’m just asking questions,” I said. How could I say this honestly? “I’m trying to understand it for myself.”

“Are you writing about it?”

The question caught me by surprise. “No!” Perhaps that was a little too forceful. “No, I’d never do that. I’m just . . . I know you can’t make sense of it, but I guess as a crime writer, I need to understand the motive.” Not bad.

Carole’s face and voice were suddenly chillier. “Well I can’t think of one person who ever said a bad word about Julia,” she said. “Is there anything else I can tell you?”

I made a mental note to tell Adam not to submit anything to her for a while, until she forgot who I was. At least until Tuesday.

The ride back to Adamstown seemed longer than the drive to Carole’s. Sunny was dead, and so was Julia. Finding out that her copy was considerably cleaner when it reached Carole’s desktop via e-mail really didn’t feel like much of a triumph.

When I got home, the incredibly concerned crew I had at the house was nowhere to be seen, so I dragged myself into Paula’s office, but she wasn’t there. She heard me from the dining room and called over. “Rachel! Your dad and I are in here.” So I dragged myself there. Once you’re dragging already, where you drag is not as much a concern.

They were sitting side by side with Paula’s laptop, which I believe contains every piece of information known to the human race, accessible by Paula simply through thought waves, between them.

“We’re comparing notes,” she said. That seemed reasonable, so I sat down across from Paula. I didn’t need to see the screen; she would tell me anything of interest that showed up on it.

“What have you got so far?” I asked.

Dad scowled a little. “Not much,” he said.

But Paula shook her head. “We have some things. We don’t know what they are yet, but I think there’s information here that will help us.”

“It’s got to beat what I have,” I said. “All I found out was that Marion Benedict didn’t talk to her brother much and had too many typos in her work.” Oddly, that seemed to amuse Paula, but she didn’t say anything. “Sunny Maugham’s editor seems to think I’m trying to profit from her death, but at least she sent copy in that was a lot cleaner than what I saw in the file I read on her computer.”

They looked at me, apparently waiting for the tons more information they were sure I had. I looked at them in anticipation of clues that were at least clues. All three of us were sorely disappointed.

“There’s something there,” Paula said. She nudged Dad. “Tell Rachel what you found out.”

“Not a whole lot,” he repeated, sighing a bit. “I spoke to Missy Hardaway’s publisher, Harrison Belechik. Seemed like a nice enough guy, but it took him a minute to remember who Missy was, since he has so many authors. You’d think the recently murdered one would be fresh in his mind.

“Anyway, he says she queried him cold and sent him the manuscript when asked, and he just responded to it, so he published that one and one more before she died. Said she was ‘coming along’ as a novelist.”

“What else did he remember about her?” I asked.

Dad shook his head slowly. “Not that much. Said she didn’t understand punctuation too well, but she knew how to write emotion.”

Paula, I noticed, was grinning a little more broadly. That meant she was about to spring something on us that we had
overlooked and she hadn’t. Paula can be a little smug, but she earns it.

I decided to play out the string. “What about the other person you talked to, Dad?”

“Lance Galbraith. J. B. Randolph’s agent. I thought he would know maybe what Randolph’s real name was, at least. The cops obviously know, but they didn’t tell us. Maybe he’d be able to talk about her financial situation, whether anybody would kill her for money and kill the others just to make it less obvious.” Dad reads too many thrillers.

“So what did he say?” I prodded him.

“He didn’t answer. I left a message.”

Not a huge revelation there. “Paula?” I asked. She was doing everything but raising her arm, propped up by her other hand, and shaking it. Nothing Paula enjoys quite so much as being the smartest girl in the class.

“Well.” She sat up straight and glanced quickly at the laptop in front of her. “First, I got in touch with Marion Benedict’s boyfriend, a guy named Thad Claypool. He was distraught, as you might imagine.”