“He knows what he’s talking about,” came the sullen reply.
“Have you read Devil, Rise?”
“No.” He seemed genuine. This put a stop to Cassy’s next line of questioning. “I’ve only really read Frowd’s books.” The subject clearly enthused him, but he wasn’t knowledgeable enough to recognize that she was talking of the same author. “He sees through the noise and speaks the truth. He’s lived it and—you know he says things that I’ve only thought about, that I couldn’t even say because I don’t have the words. But he does. He knows. The phoneys and the liars. They’re all around us.”
“Is Caroline Cuthbert one of them?” Both turned to Deputy Jones who had spoken up from his corner of the room.
“You bet she is!” said an animated Dwayne then shrunk back down.
“And how about Leonard Lightner? Was he a phony too?” Jones was getting agitated, so Cassy stood to get between him and the detainee.
“James, I don’t think he’s the one.” She turned back to Dwayne. The boy looked so young, so full of anger, but incapable of murder.
“How did you get the manuscript, Dwayne?”
“Who says I took it?”
“I found it under your pillow, Dwayne.”
The kid blanched. He drummed his fingers against the table then spoke in a soft voice. “You think I killed her, don’t you? But I didn’t. I was just helping out with the festival. They got a whole bunch of people, kids I guess who would work for free, like me to be part of the Havenholm Weekend of Words.”
Cassy thought of Patty who’d been an odd choice to chair the panel of distinguished guests.
“Cheap labor, huh?” she said.
“Slave labor! They had me doing everything and for what? Just so I could put it on my resume? Well screw that. They had me shifting Cuthbert’s luggage all over town and guess what I found when I was looking through it?”
“The manuscript.”
“I was going to give it back, I swear. It’s not like I was gonna sell it or something. More like burn it perhaps—” He stopped himself from saying anymore. But Jones didn’t need to hear anything else. He stormed out of the room, the door hitting against the wall.
“Am I free to go?” said Dwayne.
“I don’t know, Dwayne, but you just admitted to stealing something from someone who turned up dead today, so I wouldn’t make any plans.”
When she found Jones fuming outside in the hallway, Cassy went to comfort him.
“You okay?”
“I thought we had him, but that kid’s an imbecile.”
It was a bit harsh, but Cassy didn’t want to say anything. “We’ll find out who did this.”
“Or he could be playing dumb,” added Deputy Jones. “I mean, after all, Cuthbert was killed in his house. That’s a fact. He had a way in and he admits stealing from her so…”
From somewhere near the front desk there came a shout. Both Cassy and Jones turned to see Wolinski jogging toward them.
“There’s been another murder,” he said. “Back at the festival.”
The door of the interrogation room slowly closed and through the diminishing gap Cassy saw Dwayne looking back at her, straining to hear their conversation. The door clicked shut underlining his alibi.
“Who is it?” said Cassy, dreamily.
“A guy named Tate,” said Wolinski, looking down at his notepad. “Killed with a blade of some kind. Single thrust to the heart.”
At that moment, everything slid into place. Every element came together in her head. She clicked her fingers.
“What is it?” said Jones.
“We weren’t wrong about looking for someone obsessed with Frowd’s books,” she said. “There’s someone in town who knows his books better than anyone else. His number one fan.”
Brahms—or it may have been Mahler, Cassy wasn’t a classical connoisseur—was playing when she arrived at the apartment. When she’d come here earlier Cassy had been hesitant to even knock on the door. Now she boldly rapped her fist against the wooden surface.
From inside, there was a shout: “Go away!”
“It’s me, Cassy. They caught the kid who killed Caroline.”
She put her ear to the door and heard a chair scrape over the bare floorboards followed by the slow but rhythmic beat of footsteps.
With a jolt, the door opened and Cassy stepped back so that when Frowd appeared, she wasn’t so close to his fuming face.
“Cassandra Dean,” he intoned, “why are you bothering me?” The smell of scotch was strong from inside.
“I thought you’d like to know the latest developments in the case.”
“Well, I don’t,” he said but left the door open as he walked back inside. It was, Cassy presumed, an invitation of sorts. She closed the door behind her and crossed the room to the fireplace. In the absence of any other place to sit besides the high-backed chair where Frowd now sat once more, she felt the mantelpiece was the best place for her. She leaned against it and waited for Frowd to talk.
“So what do you want?” he mumbled.
“A young man by the name of Dwayne Bradley is currently at the Havenholm Sheriff’s station.”
Frowd sipped from his tumbler which he then replaced on a low table to his right.
“And I suppose he’s confessed, has he?”
“He had the manuscript for Cuthbert’s latest book, but it’s not that which incriminated him. He’s obsessed with your work; it drives him. Did you know you had that kind of an effect on people?”
“I just write the things. Can I be blamed for what they do afterward? People have free will to do as they please. If this falls outside of our laws, then they can expect appropriate repercussions as decided by society.”
“What about Bella?”
Frowd reached for his glass once more but paused, his hand hanging over the rim like a mechanical crane at a fairground waiting limply over a stuffed toy. His testimony had allowed Bella to walk free. Had he said anything other than that he had witnessed a man fleeing the scene of her mother’s murder, the young girl would most likely be behind bars.
They both know the truth, and also knew that the other was complicit in the deception. It was neither here nor there that Bella might have been justified in her actions. But it had set a precedent, and it was this that finally allowed Cassy to link Frowd to the latest spate of deaths. The case with Bella Donnington had been a test for Frowd. It had been his way of testing the boundaries of what he found acceptable when it came to the law. Cassy was betting on that he wouldn’t let another innocent be locked up.
“I think you and I both agree that Bella got the justice she deserved.”
Cassy nodded. “Some might say that Cuthbert received the same.”
“How so?” said Frowd, shifting uncomfortably.
“Such a frivolous writer, don’t you think? Faeries and goblins and, heaven forbid, magic. Not worthy of the adoration and success she had.”
“She can do what she wants.”
“Except she’s dead.”
“What’s your point, Dean?” He was getting irritable now, more so than usual. At any point he could have asked her to leave. But he didn’t.
“She was killed in the same way as one of your characters. Then so was Lightner. This established a pattern. Clearly some kook in a town obsessed with your work. This kind of literary festival brings an influx of thousands of people. Anyone of them could have done it. It’s not like the police could interview them all. One lone nut job in a sea of hundreds. The proverbial needle in a haystack.”
“Once again, Dean, I ask you, what’s your point?”
Feeling confident now, Cassy relaxed. She stretched up her hand falling on the twin swords that decorated the pillar of the chimney. “A single blow through the heart with a bladed weapon.” She retracted her hand and walked to the record player. The needle had come to the end of the vinyl disk and swam lazily about the tail of the groove. She flipped the record, noting the title Piano Sonata #
3 in F Minor. The needle dropped back with a crackle, and soon the music swelled into the room.
“I’ve been reading your books ever since Brian pointed out the connection. I guess he played into your plan to send the investigation into the ‘lone crazy’ path. But it was all a setup wasn’t it, like one of your favorite composers teasing us with a prelude to the main event.” She turned her back to the record player and leaned against it. The needle skittered across the ridged surface with a cacophonous screech. Frowd winced but remained seated.
“I’m a quick reader and in addition to the ones I read at school, I’ve read quite a few now. The early ones were the easiest. Short little things. Zesty. Quick. Lurid. A body arranged like a swastika? Really, Mr. Frowd…? But that kind of scene just wasn’t right for the real intended victim, was it? Cuthbert and her henchman were just there to muddy the waters. It was Tate who was the real target.”
Frowd held her gaze for a long time, unflinching. Eventually he smiled, but there was no mirth. It was more of a grimace, there to hide the pain underneath.
“He ruined my life.”
“He made you rich and famous.”
“He cost me my life!” Frowd hurled his glass across the room. It impacted against the wall to Cassy’s left. The scotch stained long amber streaks as it dripped to the floor. “Do you think I fester in this place out of choice?” he said with a sweep of his arm. “This is my prison, Cassandra. I’ve been locked up here for decades because I can’t cope with the world outside and it's all down to him: Tate. The man was like a vulture only he fed on the living. I was young when I published my first work and I was caught up in his bravado and bluster, promises of worldwide recognition, of money and most if all he promised respectability. I thought then that’s what I wanted. Every writer wants that, don’t they? It’s what makes a writer an author!”
There was something about the way Frowd was moving, a nervous kind of energy coiled just beneath the surface that had Cassy concerned. This was after all the man who had managed to spike Cassandra Cuthbert to a metal fridge door. She backed away to the apartment’s only door.
“The truth is that I lost everything, Cassandra. I lost my mind in all the adulation and praise. That led to me losing my muse, my inspiration. I couldn’t write anymore which meant that I was no longer anything. There’s a reason Maximillian Frowd became a recluse; it’s because there is no Maximillian Frowd anymore. All that was strained out of this body. Wrung dry over thousand chat shows. Every last drop of who I was exploited and withered until it blew away in the wind. Tate—I hate even saying that name. It burns my tongue. That soul-sucking talentless vampire. The world is a better place without him.” He rose swiftly from his chair and lumbered towards Cassy. “I’m not like Joe. I can’t become the world’s own voice of decent. He sold out in a way he wasn’t even aware of. He’s a joke, a caricature of himself. He went along with Tate’s machinations and elevated him to some kind of counter-culture jester. A focus for rebellion to be easily compartmentalized. If only I had his weak soul I might have survived.”
Unwilling to look away from Frowd, Cassy made uneven progress to the door. As she approached the exit, she saw that Frowd’s anger was waning.
“I made enough money to become my own jailer,” he said feebly. “I thought I could just hide away from the world. But all these years, all I wanted was revenge. Revenge for a life denied to me. A simple life. The one I had before. The one I had with…”
He dropped to his knees and looked blearily at Cassy. She went to say something then noticed that he wasn’t looking at her but rather just past her. Cassy looked over her shoulder and saw an old black and white photo. She’d seen it the last time she’d been in this room. It was a small thing, faded around the edges but in good condition despite its apparent age. Of the three people it had captured Cassy recognized two. One was Joesph F. Farmer, to his right was Max and in his arms was a woman. She smiled right at the camera, right out at Cassy. It was a time long lost.
“You didn’t expect there to be a real obsessive fan, did you? You thought that the police would make the connection between the killings and your work and be sent off on a wild goose chase. It says a lot about your books that they still resonate with people. We had a prime suspect, but when that didn’t lead anywhere, there was only one solution.” Cassy crouched to meet Frowd’s eye level. “The biggest mistake you made was how you killed Tate.”
“How so?” mumbled Frowd, now completely drained of emotion. He sat crumpled on the floor, inert.
“The other two you didn’t care about, just like the books their deaths were based on. But for Tate, it was personal, so you took a murder from one of your later books. Less lurid, simpler, cleaner, more meaningful. That’s when I knew there was a connection to you. Even in such a horrible act, you had to make a statement.”
Frowd did not reply. There was nothing more left to say. Later that day, Sheriff Noyce, accompanied as always by Wolinski and Jones, would arrive and find Frowd sitting in the same position. He would offer no resistance, nor would he say anything to them beyond admitting to the crimes. It fell to Cassy to fill in the details.
“The cruelest prison is the human mind itself,” said Herzog, purring as Cassy stroked his fur, curled on her lap in front of lottery show. In her other hand, she held her losing ticket.
“Can we keep the amateur psychology to a minimum, Herzog? I’ve had a rough day,” said Cassy.
“You’re the one with literary ambitions; I’m but a humble house cat.”
“I’m no writer, ‘Zog. I think that proves it, don’t you think?” Cassy indicated the pile of unsold books that covered almost the entirety of one wall. The title Spicery, repeated a hundred times over, mocked her.
“Stick to what you know, I guess. Learn to temper your dreams with reality, or you might get lost in them.”
Cassy tossed the useless bit of paper. It missed the wastebasket and rolled along the floor. “That’s terrible advice, Herzog. You should never let go of your dreams.” Once more, Cassy looked at the wall of books. “The trick is to make sure the dream you’re pursuing is the right one for you.”
With a satisfied moan, Herzog stretched out his limbs then pulled them back in suddenly as if they were spring-loaded. He closed his eyes and said dreamily, “I know what my ambition is in life…”
Then, he fell asleep.
Dear Reader,
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Thanks again,
Wendy Meadows
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About the Author
Wendy Meadows is an emerging author of cozy mysteries. She lives in “The Granite State” with her husband, two sons, two cats and lovable Labradoodle.
When she isn’t working on her stories she likes to tend to her flowers, relax with her pets and play video games with her family.
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Also by Wendy Meadows
Maple Hills Cozy Mystery Series
Nether Edge Mystery Series
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Alaska Cozy Mystery Series
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Sweetfern Harbor Mystery Series
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Ink-Slinger Murder Page 9