Murder, She Edited

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  “Your guess is as good as mine. None of the stories said. Take the printouts with you. You can read the articles for yourself. It’s a pity the case wasn’t sensational enough to attract the scandal sheets of the day.” She grinned at me as she snagged the last cookie on the plate. “The Daily News didn’t give it so much as a paragraph.”

  I smiled back. When we were growing up, most households relied on magazines and Huntley and Brinkley to keep them informed and only subscribed to the local biweekly newspaper—one of the ones Darlene had consulted online—and the slightly more far-reaching Middletown Times Herald-Record. For reports from the City, a few people probably read the New York Times, but the majority preferred the racier, much more interestingly written and illustrated Daily News.

  To be honest, I still do.

  Chapter Six

  When Frank returned from his golf game and Darlene started preparations for their evening meal, I remembered that I hadn’t done any food shopping for a while. My pantry wasn’t exactly bare, but if I wanted something more appetizing for supper than plain pasta or an omelet containing nothing but eggs, I needed to restock.

  Sitting in the car in the parking lot at the grocery store, I fished a notebook and pen out of my tote and started a list. Spaghetti sauce and grated cheese were the top two items, but I quickly added more. Cat food, of course. Soup. Nuts. Chocolate. Milk. Coffee. Apples—I’ve eaten an apple a day for years. It may not “keep the doctor away,” as the old adage claims, but to borrow another oft-used phrase, “it couldn’t hurt.”

  When I couldn’t think of anything else to include, I stopped writing and reached into the back seat for the reusable grocery bags I keep there. I took all four into the store with me. I was going to need them. I might even have to buy a fifth one.

  I really should get better organized, I thought as I moved from aisle to aisle. If I could only remember to pick up a few items every time I went out, I wouldn’t end up with an overflowing cart when I did get around to visiting the grocery store. I didn’t even want to think about what a massive unloading job I’d have when I finally got home.

  In the checkout line, I braced myself for sticker shock. I haven’t yet reached the point where I shop for the cheapest brands and clip every coupon in sight, and I’m certainly not reduced to sharing the cat’s dinner, but I am very aware of how much food prices have risen since my retirement from teaching. It was while the checker was running the last few items through the scanner that I heard a loud, sibilant whisper behind me.

  “Is that she?” a woman asked.

  I smiled to myself. “Is that her?” is the far more common way to phrase that question, even if it is grammatically incorrect.

  If someone answered her query, I missed it. I was too busy writing out a check for the absurdly high total cost of my purchases. Yes, I still write checks. I keep my financial records on paper, too, and I don’t bank online. That may be old-fashioned, but the axiom “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” has always made a lot of sense to me.

  I wheeled my cart out to the parking lot and off-loaded my grocery bags into the trunk of my bright green Ford Taurus. When that task was complete, I shoved the empty cart into the nearest carrel. I’d just turned to head back to the car when I once again heard the whispering woman’s voice. This time it came from directly in front of me and she didn’t trouble to lower it.

  “Two typos.”

  I blinked. Caught off guard, I was at a loss as to what she meant.

  I didn’t think I’d ever seen her before, although I’m not always good at recognizing faces, especially when they’re out of context. She stood a little shorter than I do. Once I was five foot seven, but I’ve shrunk a bit with age, so make that five foot five or so. Although I wasn’t quite eye to eye with the woman, there was no way I could miss the glare she was sending my way.

  It had been a long day. The best response I could manage was a befuddled “Excuse me?”

  “You let two typos get past you in the new Illyria Dubonnet novel.”

  I continued to stare at her. My mind was no longer blank, but I honestly didn’t know how to reply to her accusation.

  “Well?” The belligerence in her voice was reflected in her stance. She went up on the balls of her feet like a boxer ready to throw the first punch—a boxer dressed in off-white cotton slacks and a sleeveless red-and-blue-striped blouse.

  I said the first thing that popped into my mind: “What typos?”

  “On page twenty-five, then should have been them.”

  Can you say “nit-picking”? I bit back the sarcastic comment and waited for her to tell me what else she’d found to complain about.

  “And on page three hundred and twelve, the name of the heroine was misspelled. It’s Eliza all the way through the book and then, suddenly, it’s Elissa.”

  I had an explanation for that error, but it was not one I was prepared to share with a total stranger. Elissa was the name my friend and fellow teacher, Lenora Barton, originally chose for her protagonist. I was a little surprised that the “find and replace” function on Lenora’s computer hadn’t dealt with the problem, but it was entirely possible that the old name had slipped back into the four-hundred-page manuscript during one of Lenora’s many revisions. It might even have been inserted, accidentally, of course, at the copyediting stage.

  I would not have been in a position to catch the mistake, or the typo, or any other errors that everyone had so far missed. Lenora, better known to readers by her romance-writing pseudonym, is published by one of the big New York conglomerates. I don’t even do a final proofread of her manuscript before it goes to her editor. I’m what’s called a beta reader. I give her feedback at a much earlier stage in the writing process.

  After I hung out my shingle as a professional freelance editor, Lenora offered to pay me for my time. I refused to charge her so much as a penny. Together with my decades as a junior high school language arts teacher, it had been the experience I gained from reading her early drafts that persuaded me I was qualified to pursue my present career in the first place.

  “Well?” the irate Illyria Dubonnet fan in front of me repeated. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  If I’d wanted to deliver a lecture, I could have said plenty. I doubted she had any idea of the process a book goes through on its way to publication. Most readers don’t. After all the revisions the author makes before submitting a manuscript, there’s a line edit. That’s done by Lenora’s primary editor, the one who bought the book in the first place. Sometimes that editor asks for revisions, but once the manuscript has been officially accepted, it’s sent on to a copy editor. After that it goes back to Lenora. If she disagrees with something the copy editor changed, she can change it back. Later, she gets one more chance to catch typos, continuity errors, repetitious words, and the like when she receives her page proofs.

  Unfortunately, the author of a work is the absolute worst person to proofread her own writing. She knows what it’s supposed to say. That means she has a tendency to skim right over a wrong word because she’s mentally substituted what ought to be there. Despite other eyes searching for them, one or two errors always seem to slip through and appear in the published book. There, inevitably, some sharp reader immediately spots them, but at that point it’s far too late to make any corrections.

  I was not inclined to explain any of that to an irritated, argumentative stranger in a steamy parking lot while my ice cream melted in the overheated trunk of my car. I cut to the chase: “You’re complaining to the wrong person.”

  “You’re Michelle Lincoln, aren’t you? The one who calls herself the Write Right Wright? Illyria thanked you on her acknowledgments page.”

  I sighed. I’d forgotten about that. “Illyria” had meant to do me a favor by plugging my fledgling post-retirement business.

  “I take it you’re a fan?” My question was meant to be rhetorical.

  “I love her.”

  Her. Not her writing. Not her book
s. Her. Oh, boy! It’s no coincidence that the word fan derives from fanatic.

  “I’m fond of her, too,” I said. “She’s a friend, and because we’re friends, she lets me read early drafts of her work. I sometimes point out places where she needs to add more detail, or explain something better, but I’m not the one who checks the final copy.”

  “You would it you were a real friend.”

  “I would if she asked me to. She doesn’t.”

  When I tried to get past the woman, she shifted position to block the path to my car. Eyes narrowed in suspicion, she got right in my face.

  “I think you’re lying. And I think you’re a fraud. She paid you to find mistakes and you failed.” She jabbed an accusatory finger into my chest every time she used the word you.

  I was hot, I was tired, and I don’t have a lot of patience with fools in the best of times. “Listen, lady,” I said with my best snarl. “There’s not a book out there that doesn’t have at least one typo in it. Get over yourself.”

  With that, I pushed past her, got into my car, and started the engine.

  A moment later she was banging on my driver’s-side window.

  I refused to lower it by so much as an inch.

  “You ruined Illyria’s book!” she shouted through the glass. “You need to accept responsibility!”

  “Fine,” I muttered. “I ruined her book. Mea culpa. Now get out of my way!” I shouted the last few words and put the car in reverse, backing slowly out of the parking space and forcing her to step back or lose a few toes.

  I caught one last glimpse of her in my side mirror as I drove off. Her face was set in a ferocious scowl and she was shaking a raised fist in my direction.

  Some people need to get a life.

  Ordinarily, I’d have taken my usual shortcut, a steep semiprivate road located almost directly across Main Street from the supermarket exit. The other end comes out on Wedemeyer Terrace, just opposite my house. Someone standing in the right place in the parking lot would be able to follow my progress all the way to my home. With the image of Illyria Dubonnet’s biggest fan fresh in my mind, I decided it would be best to take an alternate route.

  The effort was probably a waste of time. Lenape Hollow is a small town. Anyone who wanted to find out where I lived would have no difficulty discovering my address. Not for the first time, I was glad I’d installed a first-rate security system soon after I bought the place.

  Chapter Seven

  A few hours later, after I’d put away the groceries, fed Calpurnia, and fixed myself a light supper, I settled in to read through the printouts Darlene had made for me. She’d been right about one thing. The date strongly suggested that Rosanna Swarthout’s murder took place not long after my childhood visit to Tessa’s house.

  That September over sixty years ago, I’d been seven. No wonder my memory of that day was so vague. I wasn’t surprised that I hadn’t heard anything about the crime at the time. At that age, I didn’t read newspapers or listen to local news on the radio and my parents, who were always a bit overprotective of their only child, would have taken care not to discuss the subject in my hearing.

  One of the printouts included a detail Darlene had failed to mention during our conversation at her house. Assuming that the reporter for the Sullivan County Record wasn’t exaggerating for effect, it sounded as if the police had entertained serious suspicions about the alibi of the young couple renting the apartment above the Swarthout garage.

  “Listen to this, Cal,” I said to my furry sounding board.

  Curled up next to me on the loveseat in the living room, she opened one eye. As soon as I reached out a hand to scratch her behind the ear, she closed it again.

  I cleared my throat and read aloud from the printout: “Charles and Nina Roth told this reporter that they went to bed early and slept soundly until they were awakened by the wail of sirens. Their garage apartment is situated only some thirty yards distant from the main house and since it was a warm autumn night, the windows in both residences were open in the hope of catching a breeze. A source in the sheriff’s office has confirmed that the Roths were taken to Monticello this afternoon for further questioning.”

  To the jail, I wondered, or just to the sheriff’s office?

  “This doesn’t say they were arrested,” I mused aloud. “Just questioned.”

  A small movement next to my hip made me glance down at Calpurnia. She wasn’t just asleep. She was actively dreaming. All four paws twitched as she chased imaginary prey.

  Smiling, I went back to reading. The official theory seemed to be that Rosanna had surprised a burglar. I assumed that meant the Roths had been cleared of suspicion. I wondered what had become of them. It seemed doubtful they remained in their apartment on the Swarthout farm.

  If no one saw or heard anything, I asked myself, then what led the police to the conclusion that Rosanna interrupted a burglar? None of the news stories listed any items that had been stolen from the house. Was that because the police had kept that information to themselves, or because nothing, in fact, had been taken?

  One headline read, MURDER AT SWAN’S CROSSING. I’ve always heard that the first paragraph of a news article is supposed to tell readers the who, what, when, where, and why of the story, but this one seemed more bent on sensationalism. Or maybe melodrama.

  Just after the summer season drew to a close, murder and possible rape and robbery darkened the scene at Swan’s Crossing, where on Wednesday the body of a woman in her early seventies was discovered in a farmboardinghouse on Columbine Road. The woman, Mrs. George Swarthout, died of multiple stab wounds. She was found dead in a first-floor room of the summer boardinghouse the Swarthout family has operated for several decades. Clues to the murderer and the motives of the culprit are not yet clear as we go to press.

  The suspicion of rape appeared to have been unfounded. At least it was never mentioned again in the articles Darlene had found for me. Neither was there any mention of the house being ransacked. If the killer was looking for something to steal when Rosanna confronted him, it was possible he’d fled without taking any loot with him.

  Tessa and Estelle were nowhere mentioned by name, although the newspaper stories did say that the body was discovered by the victim’s stepdaughters. They’d returned from seeing a movie at the Rialto in Monticello and walked in on what must have been a truly horrific scene.

  My heart filled with compassion for the two sisters. How terrible it must have been for them to discover Rosanna’s body. It’s bad enough encountering murder when the dead person is a stranger, a situation with which, unfortunately, I’ve had personal experience. The shock of finding a loved one murdered in their own home must have been traumatic in the extreme.

  Traumatic enough to make them leave everything they owned behind? Apparently. I could certainly understand why they hadn’t wanted to live in that house anymore.

  Calpurnia, awake again, nuzzled my hand.

  “They took only the clothes on their backs,” I told her. “Where did they get the money to buy everything new? How did they survive?”

  That question and others continued to nag at me as I reread the articles Darlene had found.

  Despite the wealth of extraneous detail, there were several very large gaps in the coverage. No one had followed up on what happened to the Roths, and no further mention was made of Rosanna’s stepdaughters. In fact, when no one was arrested in a timely manner, the press seemed to lose interest in the story.

  As I skimmed through the accounts of the crime and the investigation that followed, I took notes. In particular, I wrote down every name that was mentioned. Aside from the Roths, Charles and Nina, these included the officer investigating the case, Robert L. Lenman from the Sidney office of the state police BCI, and the county sheriff, Louis Ratner. The sheriff had been the one who’d issued statements to the press. The coroner called in to examine the body at the scene was Dr. Ralph S. Breakey. He, along with Margaret Baker, the pathologist on staff at Liberty Loom
is Hospital, had done the autopsy. The district attorney, Benjamin Newberg, had been “on the scene early.” No doubt he would have prosecuted the accused killer, had the police been able to make an arrest.

  I didn’t recognize any of those names. In all probability, they’d been mature adults at the time of the murder. Until I did some quick mental calculations, I thought it extremely unlikely any of them would still be alive. After I added up the numbers, I realized I couldn’t assume they were all dead. Many people live well into their nineties. And just look at Tessa! Of course, alive doesn’t necessarily mean in command of their faculties. I still thought finding someone who’d been part of the investigation was a long shot, but I resolved to ask Darlene to undertake a search for survivors.

  More promising was the possibility of written records. Unsolved murder cases are never closed. At least, that’s what I’ve always heard. Forensic science has come a long way since the 1950s, but surely, even then, the police would have dusted for fingerprints and gathered other evidence.

  I sighed, wondering if I was right about that. The entire sum of my knowledge of police procedure at the time of Rosanna’s murder came from watching Dragnet and Perry Mason on television when I was a kid. Real life is not a TV show, I reminded myself, although Joe Friday’s catch phrase—“Just the facts, ma’am.”—still has merit.

  How thoroughly had the police searched Tessa’s house? Had they gone through all the rooms at least once to make certain their hypothetical burglar wasn’t still hiding on the premises? Had they inventoried the contents to determine if anything was missing? And had they, perhaps, taken something away with them . . . like those diaries I was supposed to edit?

  I couldn’t think why they would have. The books were probably in one of the upstairs rooms, just waiting for me to find them when I returned to the farmhouse. Maybe, I thought, it was Rosanna who had written them and Tessa had set this task for me because she thought I might be able to solve a decades-old murder.

  “More questions than answers,” I grumbled.