by David Bell
“Don’t bullshit me, Connor. I won’t be lied to. Not again.”
“I haven’t lied to you. And I’m not lying now. If I had the money, I’d give it to you. It’s rightly yours. I didn’t publish the book to get money. I told you why I did it.”
Madeline’s jaw sets hard. Muscles twitch in her neck, and short, sharp breaths come out of her nostrils. She remains silent. She may not have anticipated this obstacle.
“Madeline,” I say, “there might be royalties. Later. And it’s a two-book deal, so there’s more money when . . . if I write another book. And you can have all of that. They’re hoping there might be movie or TV interest. Or the book could get translated into another language. If any of those things happen, you can have it all. I promise.”
She turns to the bourbon. It looks like she’s going to pour more for herself, but she doesn’t. She makes a fist and knocks against the countertop once and then twice. A gentle knock while she thinks, and then turns back to face me.
“Or,” she says, “I could go up to campus tomorrow. I could meet with the dean or the provost or whoever cares about things like this. And if I tell them you plagiarized this book and used it to get tenure, what will they think? What would your publisher do?”
“I’d lose my job,” I say. “I’d have to give back the money. It would all be over.”
CHAPTER TEN
“Look, Madeline,” I say. “It’s hard to put my hands on that much money. How much are you asking for exactly?”
“Whatever I’m owed.”
Her response makes me sigh. “Okay. I can try, but you’re acting like I have a pile of cash sitting around. Like the publisher just sent me a bag of gold coins. I can try to get my hands on some money for you, but it’s going to take a little time.”
“How much time? Tomorrow?”
I sigh again. “I’m going to have to go to the bank. Maybe I can get a loan against the house. There’s a little equity there. Or maybe I can get some kind of home improvement loan. I can tell them I want to renovate the bathroom.”
“I like the way you’re thinking now, Connor. How soon?”
“I have to teach tomorrow. Then I have to get to the bank—”
“You could get a cash advance on your credit card. My mom used to do that when she was strapped. They kill you with the interest rates, of course. But it’s fast.”
“I’m not going to do that. I’ll ruin myself.”
“Ruin is definitely on the table, one way or the other,” she says. “If you don’t get the money, things could get very, very bad for you. In a number of ways.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“Whatever you want it to mean.”
I hold my hands out, asking for calm. “I said I’ll try. How do I get in touch with you?”
Madeline laughs, like I’m the biggest fool she’s ever met. “Sure, Connor, I’ll tell you exactly where I’m staying so you can call the police. I’ll find you. I know where you live and work. I know the places you like to go. I can watch for you. Maybe follow you. Maybe I’ll even find you in the gutter outside of Dubliners. Or maybe at the cemetery. Okay? I’ll track you down.”
“You can’t follow me.”
“Oh, I can. And I will if I want to. I’m a ghost, remember?”
“Are you safe where you’re staying?” I ask.
“As safe as anyone.”
“What do you need the money for?” I ask. “Are you mixed up in something? I mean . . . is someone forcing you to do this?”
“I need it because it’s mine. Because I earned it.” She looks and sounds younger than she has since I found her in the house. “I think you have more to lose if I expose you.”
“Maybe,” I say. “I’d lose a lot if you went and told on me.”
I let my words hang in the air between us for a moment. The sweetly smoky taste of the bourbon lingers in my mouth. Her face changes. The set of her jaw relaxes. She almost smiles.
“Madeline, how would you prove you wrote the book?” The thought pops into my head as the words come out of my mouth. I hadn’t thought of it before this moment, and I feel gross saying it. But I’m trying to survive and buy time. “You turned in a handwritten manuscript to me. Remember? And I have the only copy now.”
Her mouth opens, but she doesn’t speak.
“Actually, I don’t have that copy. I’m not an idiot. After I typed it, I burned it.”
“That’s fucking bullshit—”
She takes a lunging step toward me, but Grendel starts to bark in the living room.
Is he barking to protect me? Or for another reason?
I don’t care. Madeline stops when she hears him.
I move over to the entrance to the living room. Grendel is standing on the couch, looking out. Headlights glow against the front of the house.
“Someone’s here,” I say.
I go to the window and look out, Grendel at my side. I see a couple of my colleagues coming up to the porch. Preston White and Lance Hoffman. At the library, they said I needed to break open a bottle of champagne, and when I said I didn’t have any, they threatened to buy one and come over. I figured they were joking, but here they are. I unlock the door.
The two of them are better friends with each other than they are with me. But when Emily and Jake died, they kind of adopted me, making me a special project as I lifted myself out of the depths of grief.
I go back to the kitchen, and Madeline already has the back door open.
“Don’t you want to stay?” I ask. “Weren’t they both professors of yours? Maybe you can say hello. Tell them how you faked your disappearance—”
“I’m not letting this go,” Madeline says. “Don’t try to give me the shaft on this. I mean it.”
She slips out the door and into the night.
Behind me, Preston and Lance come inside, talking loudly like a couple of students themselves. And that’s how they frequently act when they’re together and when they’ve been drinking.
I put Madeline’s glass in the sink.
Preston comes into the kitchen, claps me on the back. He thrusts the bottle of champagne into the space between us. “Told you we’d be here.”
“You’re a man of your word.”
“Where are the glasses? Whoa. What’s this?” He points to the bottle of Rowan’s Creek, the glass on the counter. Then he looks in the sink. “Two glasses?”
“I was thirsty,” I say.
“You’re not going to say who?” he asks. “Lance, the boy had company before us.”
“Who?” Lance asks. He whips his head toward me. He actually looks serious. “A lady?”
I can’t tell them.
“Just an old friend,” I say.
“A female friend?” Lance asks. “A girl?”
“Just a friend.”
“Well, well,” Preston says. “The plot thickens.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I’ve never liked getting out of bed. I’ve always hit snooze and buried my head under a pillow. I try to hide from the days as long as possible.
Emily was the exact opposite. She loved mornings and bounced out of bed with the energy of a kitten.
Some mornings she would turn off my alarm before it rang and then lean down and nuzzle my cheek with her nose or kiss me on the forehead. That was how I liked waking up. And I wish I still could.
But that time is gone. . . .
And I’m dragging when I walk Grendel at six forty-five the next morning. And I’m nervous, shaky. Madeline’s words play over and over in my mind, her promise—threat?—to be watching me, following me, making sure I do what she’s demanded of me. Is she out here right now, lurking in the bushes or behind a car?
My head thumps. A dull pain above my right eye. Champagne. It’s been years since I drank it, and I downed several glas
ses with Lance and Preston last night. They thought I was celebrating. I needed the drinks to calm down after seeing Madeline.
It’s cold, but Grendel takes his sweet time deciding where to shit. He seems to have become pickier in his old age. He prefers taller grass, but it’s January in Kentucky. Good luck finding anything growing.
While he sniffs and contemplates, I look around, studying my neighborhood of small, well-kept bungalows housing professors and young professionals. I expect to see Madeline lunging toward me with the book in her hand, demanding money.
I try to convince myself it was all a dream, a guilt-induced hallucination that conjured her in my living room last night. But I know it’s real. Her copy of the book still sat in the chair where she left it. Her glass remained in the sink.
For all I know, she’s already gone to someone in a position of authority at the university.
Grendel drops his load, and I pick it up with a plastic bag. We start back. Snow flurries start to fall, swirling around us. Grendel lifts his snout and sniffs as though he’s enjoying the scenery. His brown eyes are duller, the fur around his snout grayer. I tell him I’m running late. We have to hurry. And I give the leash a gentle tug, which moves him along.
I, of course, didn’t mention Madeline to Lance or Preston. For the past few years, Preston has been encouraging me to date, to “get back in the game,” as he puts it. A year and a half earlier, he and his wife, Kelly, set me up on a date with a professor in the Modern Languages Department, a woman my age who had recently divorced. I went along, more than anything else because I’d run out of plausible excuses to avoid it. The woman was pleasant enough, and our conversation about campus gossip and national politics demonstrated we had plenty in common. But that was as far as I wanted it to go. The idea of going any further, of letting my guard down and opening myself up to another person in a real way, still felt like a bridge too far. I never asked for a second date, and I’d heard the woman recently married a software engineer who works for a corporation in Lexington. “She’s over the moon,” Kelly said.
I reach the welcome warmth of my house. I feed Grendel and leave him to his messy chomping while I shower and get ready for a day of teaching, starting with a creative-writing class at nine. The hot water helps clear the cobwebs. The shaving makes me feel like a human being.
Preston didn’t let the subject of my “friend” go last night. He kept asking who she was and what my intentions were toward her. I finally lied and said she was my neighbor up the street. I told him we were just getting to know each other, but nothing physical had occurred yet.
Preston slapped me on the knee and looked at Lance. “Can you believe the way the boy’s life has picked up? New book. New ladylove. Tenure. What more could he want?”
“He smells like a rose, doesn’t he?” Lance said in his arch way. “He wrote a book and got rich. It’s better than having him moping around the cemetery late at night like a grave robber.”
And we drank more, toasting my good fortune.
I felt like a fraud, accepting their praise. And I felt afraid, knowing Madeline was out there.
I dress quickly because I’m running late. My phone chimes. A text from Preston.
Got time to swing by before class? Need to tell you something.
What could he want?
Sure.
I have classes all day, and now a meeting with Preston in the morning. I tell myself to try to squeeze in a trip to the bank. Or at least a call to see if I can get my hands on any money. If Madeline wants proof that I’m not rich, all she needs to see is me rushing off to work the day after the book came out. That’s life for most writers: squeezing a book release in between the day job.
I grab my coat and bag. I’ll get a coffee on the way. No time to brew any. Grendel is still eating in the kitchen, and I tell him to keep an eye on the house. I remind myself to get a dead bolt installed on the basement door to keep out any other unwanted visitors.
Grendel yawns and trots off to his day bed in the front of the house. I take my key off the counter. I’m ready, just in time.
Grendel starts to bark. I assume it’s someone going by, a jogger or a biker.
But the doorbell rings.
“Crap,” I say. “Now what?”
What if it’s Madeline? Back and more insistent—
I think about ignoring it, slipping out the back while whoever stands on the porch—a religious nut, a political campaign worker, my former student back from the dead—shivers in the cold. But there’s always that doubt. . . . What if it’s something important? I still hear from Emily’s family. Her mother has been in shaky health—what if there’s a crisis? I’d never forgive myself if I missed that kind of news.
Grendel continues to bark. The bell rings again. I look like a man ready to leave, so that will help me get rid of them. I rush to the front, wearing my coat and carrying my bag. Keys jangling in my hand.
I look out Grendel’s window. It’s a woman but not Madeline. Thankfully. This woman is about my age. Tall. Bundled in a long overcoat. Vaguely familiar. Do I know her from work?
Then I see the object in her hand. A copy of My Best Friend’s Murder.
Really? Is this what it’s like for writers? Fans show up on your stoop unannounced carrying the book? Sure, I can see it happening to Stephen King or Anne Rice. But me?
I undo the lock, pull the door open. The cold air blows past like the freezing breath of an angry winter god. It stings the tips of my ears.
“Dr. Nye?” she says.
I know why she looks familiar. I know where I’ve seen her before. It’s been two years, but I can’t forget her face.
“Do you remember me?” she asks. “Alicia Bowman with the Gatewood Police Department.” She holds the book up between us. “I was wondering if we could talk about this.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Bowman comes in. She’s my height, a little taller even. She looks long and lean under her overcoat. She might have a few more streaks of gray in her hair than two years earlier, but if anything, she looks like she’s barely aged.
“I can see you’re on your way to campus,” she says. “This won’t take long.”
She bends down, scratches Grendel between the ears, which makes them friends for life.
“Yeah,” I say, “I have a meeting and then class at nine. . . .”
“Who’s a good boy, huh? Who’s a good boy?” She straightens up. “Shall we sit?”
Bowman manages to make her friendly suggestion—Shall we sit?—sound like a command. And before I can answer, she’s heading to the couch, taking off her coat, which she tosses over the recliner, and sitting down, the book in her lap. It’s my house, but I follow her lead and sit as well, my coat still on, my bag at my feet.
“I’m sorry I didn’t make it to your event last night. I had to work. But I bought the book right away. Ordered it early in fact so it would arrive yesterday. I read online that’s best for the author.”
“That’s what they say.”
“And I started reading it yesterday. On my lunch and dinner break. And before I fell asleep. It’s quite compelling.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s really impressive the way you were able to write about two female characters. Not every man could do that.”
“Well, I was married. And when I was growing up, I was close to my sister.”
Bowman studies the back cover of the book. She doesn’t seem to be in a hurry.
“Do you want me to sign that for you?”
“Would you?” She holds the book out to me.
“Sure.” I reach inside my coat and find a pen. Even after last night and the book signing, it feels strange to have someone want my signature. I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to write, with how much of a flourish I should sign my name. “To Alicia?”
“Alicia and Jenn. My wife
.”
“Sure.”
As I write, she goes on.
“Jenn makes fun of me for reading these crime thrillers. She always asks me if I want a break from the kinds of things I deal with at work. But you know how it is in Gatewood. We don’t get a lot of cases that would belong in a book. Mostly it’s smaller stuff. Robberies. Drugs. College kids getting drunk and fighting. It’s rare we get anything too exciting. Well, you know that. Your student a couple of years ago. Madeline O’Brien. That’s the kind of thing that could make a good book.”
I’m writing the date when she says Madeline’s name. My hand clenches, and the pen slips, almost sliding off the page, giving the “y” in my last name a gigantic tail. I don’t want to look up, don’t want to see if Bowman notices. But I’m sure she does. She’s a detective who probably notices every little thing.
I cap the pen and hand the book back. “There you go.”
“Thanks.”
“I appreciate you buying it. But I really have to get going—”
“Can I ask you where you got the idea for this?” Bowman asks. Her tone has shifted ever so slightly. We’re no longer casually conversing. She’s friendly but moving toward some specific point. “I’m sure writers get asked that all the time, and you probably got into it last night at the library. But it’s such a fascinating book, I wanted to ask.”
I have an answer. Even though I didn’t write the book, I prepared one because I’d heard from writer friends what I would be asked. They said that at every book signing and in every interview, someone would inevitably ask where the idea came from.
“I’ve always been fascinated by murder cases,” I say. “And I’ve read about a lot of them. But also . . .” I clear my throat. Madeline was right—I do talk about Emily’s and Jake’s deaths a lot as a way to sell books. But it never feels natural to me. “Because of my own experiences with loss, I’m interested in the way people respond when terrible things happen in their lives. When something unexpected happens, and everything gets turned upside down, how do people find a way to keep going and move on?”