Mystery Writer's Mysteries Box Set 1-3

by Becky Clark

  “Hair-pulling contest! You make it sound like it was a girl fight at a slumber party.” Ozzi pulled me close, subconsciously trying to protect me.

  I shook him off, not wanting him to think I was worried about the Braid. “I told you. I gave as good as I got. I’ve got the height and weight advantage over that weasel. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I do worry about you.”

  “I know. But don’t.”

  “Just be careful.”

  “Ozzi, my love, I’m not going to go looking for trouble. I am trying my best to stay away from him. But I can’t hide in my apartment and I’ve got to find Peter. I’ve learned that hiding doesn’t actually help anything anyway. Not when most of my friends were murder suspects, not when my dad was killed”—the oven timer went off—“not when people put nuts in my brownies.”

  He knew that meant it was time to change the subject and check on the brownies.

  I followed him into the kitchen, inhaling deeply the chocolate aroma floating from the oven, and watched while he poked the middle of the brownies with a toothpick to see if they were done. “I’m all over the place with theories. Lapaglia fell off the train, or Martina is holding him hostage, or the mob whacked him, or his wife did, or his wife’s boyfriend did.” I shook my head. “But the more I think about it, the more I think he disappeared himself, Oz. For some reason he didn’t feel he could just get a divorce.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know his wife has a boyfriend. Maybe he thinks he and his wife are happy.” He made quick cuts to create nine perfectly symmetrical brownies.

  “I suppose that’s possible. But when I talked to her it seemed very clear they were not.”

  “Well,” Ozzi said, sliding a brownie on a small plate. “You know how stupid men can be.” He handed me the plate.

  “These smell fantastic.” I kissed him. “Clearly, he hadn’t made her enough brownies during their time together.”

  “That makes him stupid.”

  Fourteen

  I spent the night at Ozzi’s, only half aware that he’d received a call in the middle of the night and left, mumbling something about a glitch in his software. I assumed it had literal meaning.

  He returned, coming up behind me just as I locking his front door.

  “Ugh, I was hoping you’d still be here,” he said.

  “Technically I am.”

  He rubbed a hand over his bleary face. “What?”

  “Never mind.” I unlocked his door and ushered him into his apartment. “Straight to bed with you, mister. You’ve got about four hundred hours of sleep to catch up on. You’ve been working too many hours on this project.” I pushed him down the hall toward the bedroom. “Are you hungry?”

  “No. Ate all night.”

  “Anything healthy?”

  “Nope.” He kicked off his shoes, then dropped his pants. His phone bounced out of his pocket and I picked it up.

  “Can I turn it off so you can sleep?” I closed the drapes. “Expecting any more emergencies?”

  “Is that an oxymoron?”

  “I’m turning off your phone.”

  “But—”

  I moved to his nightstand. “I’m setting your alarm clock for eight hours. Then you can wake up and check your phone for any emergencies. I’ll leave it on the coffee table.”

  “I’d argue with you, but I’m too tired.”

  I kissed him, tucked him in, and left the room, closing the door behind me. I turned the ringer off on his phone and set it on the table before making my way to critique group.

  I hadn’t planned on going today, since I didn’t have any pages to submit. Plus, I felt scattered enough that I probably wouldn’t give any constructive feedback to anyone who was diligent enough to submit pages today. But it occurred to me that my critique group could help me think through this real-life plot twist I found myself in. After all, I asked them for brainstorming help all the time. The only difference here was that it wasn’t for one of my fictional mysteries.

  As I drove to the exit of my apartment complex parking lot and waited for traffic to clear, I looked to my left and saw Nova sitting in front of Espresso Yourself like she was the doorman. Doorperson. Doordog. She was so cute I had to fight the urge to turn the steering wheel that direction in order to go visit her. However, I knew that Kell would have breakfast and delicious hot coffee waiting when I got to his house. Visiting Nova would be a balm to my soul, but would make me late.

  I bumped into the driveway of Kell’s McMansion a little bit early. I thought back to all the times I got here late for our meeting. For many years I detoured a few miles out of my way so I could drive past the parking lot where my dad had been gunned down when I was a teenager. I rarely stopped, just wanted that connection and maybe some answers. I got those answers recently so I’d been able to drive straight to Kell’s without the detour. I also didn’t have much of the tremor that had developed after Dad’s murder. That meant I didn’t have to change clothes after spilling something on myself, which so often had made me late.

  A light tap on my window made me jump. Kell’s twenty-something valet. Before I opened the car door, I flicked my dad’s old locker key hanging from my rearview mirror. Miss you, Dad.

  “Hello, Miss Russo. Looking lovely as always.” He held his hand to help me out, which I took.

  “Thank you, Tyler. How are you today?”

  “Just fine, ma’am.”

  Ma’am. Ouch. He was probably only five years younger than me. “Stay in the air conditioning today. It’s gonna be a hot one.”

  “Will do, ma’am.” He slid into my seat and drove it off to Kell’s garage, which I imagined to be as big as an auto showroom, and just as pristine. I never had to go looking for my car after our meeting because all our cars were lined up waiting for us, like we were VIPs in some obscure Literary Parade.

  Everything at Kell Mooney’s house was fancy. Except Kell. He opened the door wearing wrinkled khakis that were a size too big. The side of his round balding head still had traces of what appeared to be sheet marks. He was just finishing buttoning his shirt.

  “You’re here early!” Kell stepped aside to let me in.

  “I know. It’s like I’m a grown-up or something.”

  “How’s that working out for you?”

  I thought about all the turmoil in my life lately. “Not that great, actually. But at least I have that time management thing whipped.”

  He placed a comforting hand in the middle of my back and steered me toward the solarium, even though I could get there blindfolded, I’d been here so often.

  The side table was groaning with food, as it always did for our meetings. Kell’s staff had learned to put out everyone’s favorite breakfast foods: yogurt and pastries for me; one soft-boiled egg and half a piece of whole wheat toast for Cordelia; AmyJo’s cheesy bacon and eggs; doctor-recommended oatmeal with berries for Heinrich; Thaddeus “Einstein” Eichhorn’s assortment of individual boxes of sugared cereal; Jenica’s new-found obsession with chicken and waffles; and of course, Kell’s cottage cheese.

  I couldn’t picture Kell ever eating anything other than bland cottage cheese. Not that his personality was bland, but his thrillers—all unpublished—certainly were. I thought of them as milders.

  I’ve often wondered what would happen if I chose someone else’s favorite food. I mean, it was all served buffet-style for anyone to take. Nothing was labeled with anyone’s name, but would it create some scary Mad Max-type dystopian domino effect? Would we devolve into a demented Lord of the Flies alternate universe? It might be a fun social experiment, but I suspect Cordelia would be polite and simply say she’d already eaten. Jenica would roll her eyes then stare unblinking until whoever had her chicken and waffles relinquished them back to her. Nobody would choose Einstein’s cereal or Kell’s cottage cheese. AmyJo would surprise everyone by using her fork to stab anyone who came close to her bacon and eggs and Heinrich would revert to his native German, spewing a scary phlegm-laced diatribe.
And then he’d scrape half his food onto the plate of the offender because maybe they really wanted it.

  Yes, someday I must attempt this, but today is not that day.

  I dropped my bag on the floor by the empty seat next to Cordelia and greeted her. She stopped delicately tapping the shell of her egg long enough to smile up at me. “Good morning, dear.” When she went back to her task, her two-inch diamond studded cuff bracelet slid, allowing me a glimpse of the small but shocking red tattoo of the devil playing bass guitar on the inside of her wrist. She didn’t try to hide it, but didn’t flaunt it either and it always took me a bit by surprise. To see her walking into a high-end shop or spa, you’d never know she was a Led Zeppelin fan or wrote the filthiest erotica known to mankind.

  I loved that about her and wished I had anything enigmatic about me.

  As I carefully held a porcelain cup under the spigot of the coffee urn that probably cost as much as my car, Einstein and Heinrich walked in together.

  Einstein made no eye contact, as was his custom, but Heinrich bellowed, “Good morning, liebling” at me.

  Heinrich walked behind Cordelia, greeting her by pressing his palms against both of her upper arms then kissing the top of her head. She smiled up at him.

  AmyJo arrived next, followed soon after by a dragging Jenica.

  AmyJo stopped to hug everyone and dispense small but heartfelt compliments in her wake. When I first saw her do this, when we were both freshmen at Drake, I thought it was an affectation. But after living in Des Moines for a few weeks, where I met more and more Iowans, I realized AmyJo was simply a very nice person. Very midwestern. Very polite. And maybe the teensiest bit needy.

  Jenica wasn’t quite awake yet and we all typically gave her a wide berth until after breakfast. This morning, however, I couldn’t help but notice the funny juxtaposition of her lacy anklets with tiny pink bows peeking over the tops of her Doc Martens. I mentioned them and was rewarded with her heavily kohl-rimmed eyes narrowing in my direction. I quirked my mouth in chagrined apology and studied my yogurt choices for today.

  As usual, AmyJo, Kell, and Heinrich chattered while everyone else responded when necessary. Heinrich and AmyJo veered into dangerous territory when she said that she didn’t particularly care for the movie he told her he watched last night. Heinrich let loose with a phlegm-soaked rebuke of her opinion, her ancestors, and her future children.

  We were all used to his German-tinged outbursts, but I, for one, breathed a bit easier after he kissed AmyJo on the head when he went to refill his coffee.

  I was grateful nobody had brought up my problems. It was pleasant to pretend none of my chaos had happened. But I knew it couldn’t last much longer.

  After AmyJo had caught up on everyone’s doings over the past week, at least those who were awake and willing to share, she turned to me. “I’m surprised you came today. Do you have pages for us, after everything that’s happened?”

  I brought them up to speed on the fiasco that was my current life. I left out everything about the Braid and Peter O’Drool, though. “So, no, I don’t have any pages ready, but maybe I could run something by you guys before we actually start the meeting?”

  Everyone seemed agreeable.

  “I’m mulling over a theory, trying to suss out this real-life story like I would a fictional one. What do you think it would be like to be really, really famous? How would you sketch out a character like that?”

  “Like Lapaglia?” Heinrich pronounced it with a respectable amount of phlegm.

  “Yes.”

  Cordelia said, “I’d want to hide. That’s why I use a pseudonym for my books. I don’t need or want fame.”

  “Remember Princess Diana? Chased by paparazzi everywhere she went. So dangerous. So sad.” AmyJo bowed her head reverentially.

  “Sucks,” Einstein said.

  “What ... Princess Diana?” AmyJo asked him.

  “Everything. Sucks to be him,” he answered.

  “It probably doesn’t all suck,” AmyJo mused. “He’s rich. I bet he never has to convince his agent or editor into publishing whatever he wants to write. I’m sure his publisher pays for his book tours—”

  “And arranges them,” I added, more than a little bit jealous.

  “But he can’t pick his nose or fart on a beach somewhere without social media going nuts. If he did, he’d create a cottage industry in meme creation,” Jenica said.

  “I wonder when was the last time he had a real vacation,” Kell said. “I know I need at least two every year, one in Europe and one someplace tropical. Gotta recharge those batteries, eh?” He glanced around the table for agreement, forgetting that only Cordelia was mega-rich like he was.

  Bless his heart, though. At least he had the decency to blush right to the top of his bald head. In his defense, he’d happily take any of us along with him if we’d ask.

  “The vacation thing is real. Ozzi and I were reading some interviews where he said pretty much the same thing. More than once.”

  Heinrich nodded. “If I were this Lapaglia I vould vant aus. Gone. Vamoose.”

  He butchered Lapaglia’s name so badly, if I didn’t already know who we were talking about, I would have been confused. But he said exactly what I’d been thinking. “So, do any of you think he disappeared himself?” I asked.

  I looked in turn at everyone as they nodded.

  “Unless he offed himself,” Jenica said.

  “Or got offed,” AmyJo added darkly, adding a slow slashing of her neck in case we didn’t understand her meaning.

  I sighed. “Oh, goody. I love when we have consensus. Lapaglia either skipped out, killed himself, or got murdered.”

  We got ready to move from the solarium to Kell’s library. Immediately his household staff was there to clean up after us. They were spooky in their efficiency.

  Jenica read her rhyming picture book text to us, which was surprisingly good. The topic, though, I had problems with. It didn’t seem to me that Burning Man would really speak to pre-schoolers.

  Next, we tackled chapter fifty-seven—!!—of AmyJo’s angsty young adult high fantasy romantic comedy coming-of-age. I still, even one-third of the way through, didn’t find it particularly romantic or funny. And really? Star-crossed gryphons? I chose my words very carefully to say maybe she could consolidate the action from about chapter thirty or so to this one when the “meet cute” happened. “You know, tighten up the plot a bit. The backstory of her meeting Medusa isn’t really germane to the story.” Most everyone else said something similar.

  Heinrich cleared his throat of some excess excess phlegm, which was a sign he was preparing to say too much. And probably too bluntly. I shot him a warning glance, and cut my eyes at AmyJo, who looked dazed, her rigid posture signaling she was on the verge of shellshock.

  He took my hint, seeing she might not be sturdy enough to hear his opinion and nodded imperceptibly. He smiled and said, “I’m loving your use of past participles, liebling. Soon you’ll be grammar Nazi around here!”

  I still hadn’t decided if a German “grammar Nazi” was funny or politically incorrect. Normally I feel like I’m fairly woke, politically, but these were strange times.

  Last to present was Cordelia, so we all discussed her newest erotica short story as we always did, wearing crimson blushes. Except Heinrich. Nothing embarrassed him, as evidenced once again by his cringe-inducing questions.

  I was glad when the meeting was over, because I had to concentrate extremely hard on everyone’s work. The dull throb of a burgeoning headache began to take its toll. Giving constructive and kind critiques took all my focus on a good day, but was almost impossible when I had something like Peter O’Drool and Lapaglia weighing on my mind.

  Driving home I smiled at the memory of Heinrich’s mispronunciation of Lapaglia’s name. It wasn’t that difficult and I had said it several times. My smile tightened, though, when I thought back to my interactions with Lapaglia’s girlfriends. When Lakshmi spoke of him I was almost posi
tive she called him “Rodney” and Cecilia called him “Ron,” even though his name was “Rodolfo.” Maybe I just misheard.

  I puzzled over it for a few miles. Was it possible they really didn’t know his real name? Why would that be? Mistake or by design? And whose design? Lapaglia misleading them? Them misleading me?

  I still believed it was quite plausible that Martina was hiding him, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s one of the other girlfriends. Or none of them.

  When I got home I decided to try something. If it worked, great. But if it didn’t, nothing bad would happen.

  Theoretically.

  Fifteen

  When I turned my phone back on, I saw that texts and voice mails had started to come in about Peter O’Drool, crowding out the nasty trolling ones about my debut on Archie Cruz’s news show. I was fairly certain none of them would pan out, since I didn’t think any of them were from the Braid, but I’d tackle them just in case, after I set my plan in motion.

  For once I didn’t actually want to talk to Martina, so I texted her. His train comes in at 3pm today.

  Then I texted Lakshmi to “pick up Rodney” and Cecilia to “pick up Ron” at 3pm.

  Whoever doesn’t come to pick him up is clearly the one hiding him. They might run, of course, but that was a chance I was willing to take.

  Assuming they all saw the texts.

  I had time before I needed to head down to Union Station to find an inconspicuous spot to spy on these women, so I began scrolling through the messages about Peter O’Drool.

  I returned calls and texts telling me when and where they’d seen pugs. Most people came right out and asked the amount of the reward and I told them it would depend on how quickly they led me to Peter. None of the callers seemed legit, but I dutifully marked all the sightings on a map of the area I’d downloaded and printed out.

  Map in hand, I trudged up the stairs, assuming that Don and Barb had been getting similar phone calls.

  As I reached out to knock on their door, it opened and Barb almost ran into me.