For as long as I’d known her, Lenora had turned down requests to give talks or do signings. She wouldn’t even attend any of the conventions organized by fans of the genre. Phone interviews, blogs, and other social media advertising, things she could do from the comfort of her own home and without revealing what she looked like, had been the only exception to her publicity blackout. She’d never Skyped or used Zoom.
Her choice had made sense to me. Between her teaching career and the long hours she devoted to researching and writing her novels, she hadn’t had a lot of time for that sort of promotion. Besides, she’d always said she wasn’t convinced that personal appearances helped sell books. After all, her novels regularly topped the charts without them.
Then, too, keeping a low profile had avoided potential backlash from parents and school board members, who might have objected to having someone who wrote graphic love scenes in a position to influence the minds of young children. At a guess, it had been Lenora’s retirement from teaching that prompted her to create this new persona and go public.
It was obvious she was enjoying herself, and she’d certainly made her self-styled “biggest fan” happy. When the evening came to an end, Bella was grinning from ear to ear as she watched “Illyria” depart in a chauffeur-driven limo.
“Lenora will meet us back at your house in an hour,” Luke whispered in my ear. “She’s just going to the motel to remove her disguise and collect her luggage.”
Chapter Forty-eight
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I asked Lenora when she’d stored her belongings in my guest room and rejoined me in the living room.
Luke and Ellen were in the kitchen, fixing drinks and fetching the tray of snacks they’d managed to sneak into my refrigerator while I was changing my clothes to go to the library. I scooped Calpurnia up off the loveseat and plunked myself down with the cat on my lap. Lenora sank into the nearest armchair, grinning almost as broadly as Bella had been.
“Surprised you didn’t I?” she asked. “You never know about the quiet ones.”
“I know you. A tour.” I barely refrained from adding, “Are you crazy?”
“It will be an adventure,” she insisted, “and if I decide I don’t like it, I can always fake a nervous breakdown and go back into hiding.”
“Are you so certain you’d be faking?”
“O ye of little faith! So far, I’m enjoying myself immensely.”
I couldn’t help but smile back at her. If she truly enjoyed getting out and meeting her public, then more power to her. At least she no longer had to worry about what the local board of education might think of her double life. Retirement definitely has its benefits.
“Did you see how happy that one woman was just to have met me?” she asked. “I had no idea a reader could be so enthusiastic.”
“That’s one word for it.” The wry twist to my lips must have given my feelings away. Or perhaps it was the note of sarcasm in my voice.
“What?”
“Obviously my dear cousin didn’t tell you the whole story when he asked if you’d make an appearance in Lenape Hollow.” I started with my first meeting with Bella and by the time Luke and Ellen arrived with our modest repast I’d brought Lenora up to date on what her biggest fan was really like.
“Poor Mikki. You’ve had a time of it, haven’t you?” Her amusement spilled over into outright laughter. No sympathy there!
“You don’t know the half of it,” Luke muttered.
“Hush,” I told him.
“I think I’ll write Bella a note,” Lenora said. “I’ll make it clear to her that you were not responsible for those errors in my text, and that she’s not to bother you in the future. I’ll send her an advance reading copy of the new one to sweeten the pot. Autographed, of course.” She took a sip of the drink Luke handed her before sending a questioning look in his direction. “I don’t know the half of it, you said? Who’s going to fill me in on the other fifty percent?”
“It’s a long story,” I warned her.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“It starts way back in the nineteen fifties.”
An hour later, I’d finished recounting all the events connected to Tessa’s house. By then we’d made serious inroads into the food and I’d finished one rum and cola and half of a second.
Ellen had excused herself to take a phone call halfway through the recitation. She returned in time to add her two cents. “There’s been a development. Leland Featherstone made a deathbed confession. You were right about everything, Mikki. He did kill Rosanna Swarthout.”
“He’s dead?”
“Actually, no, but he thought he was dying. That’s why he wanted to clear his conscience. As soon as he finished giving Detective Brightwell all the details, his condition began to improve.”
“It really is a shame that I don’t write thrillers,” Lenora said. “That’s such a nice, twisty plot.”
“Too twisty,” I complained.
Lenora wasn’t listening. “I wonder . . . with a little tweaking, it might just work as romantic suspense. Set in the more distant past, of course. Perhaps during the Regency period.”
“You’re welcome to recycle any of the details you like.” I knew I didn’t have to worry that she’d write me into the story. There couldn’t possibly be a market for septuagenarian heroines in the historical romance genre. “I’m just happy to be able to go back to my normal, humdrum existence, with nothing more complicated to deal with than putting together the next library newsletter.”
I don’t understand why they all thought that statement was funny.
“What are you going to do with the farm?” Lenora asked when she stopped chuckling.
“Sell it. If I can. There’s certainly no point in hanging on to it.”
Luke cleared his throat.
I glanced at him. Ellen was perched on the arm of his chair and they were holding hands. For the first time, I noticed that one of her fingers, normally bare of jewelry, sported a ring of the diamond variety.
“When did that happen?” Embarrassed to have blurted out such a thing, I quickly added, “Congratulations, you two. I’m delighted.”
“Now that we’ve decided to get married,” Luke said, “we want to buy the Swarthout farm from you. We plan to fix it up and live there after the wedding.”
I guess I’m just an old softie. I was so choked up with happiness that for a moment I couldn’t manage a single word. Instead I unceremoniously dumped Calpurnia onto the floor and went to engulf the two lovebirds in a bear hug.
“Of course I’ll sell it to you,” I assured them.
Cal, affronted by such cavalier treatment, took her time about settling into my lap again after I returned to the loveseat. Eventually, when I’d been stroking her long enough, she began to purr.
With that steady vibration under my palm, the sound underscoring congenial conversation with some of my nearest and dearest, I felt quite content myself. I had no pressing deadlines hanging over my head and no mysteries left to solve. The closest thing to an obligation in my immediate future was writing the ad for the library’s annual used book sale, an event that always went off without a hitch.
I had no reason to think that this year would be any different.
A Random Selection from “The Write Right Wright’s Language and Grammar Tips” by Mikki Lincoln
What’s wrong with this sentence from a review? Marla Coburg sets her Corrie Blankenship series in the rural Maine village of Hyssop Falls, where she owns a yarn shop. Answer: The pronoun she refers to the author, since the Corrie Blankenship series would be it. Since it’s the character, not the author, who owns the yarn shop, this isn’t only incorrect, it’s needlessly confusing.
Here’s another sentence that doesn’t say what the reviewer meant it to: In the Corrie Blankenship series by Marla Coburg, the heroine is busy running her yarn shop while not solving murders. This means the opposite of what it was meant to say. Apparently Corrie is not sol
ving murders. If the sentence had been the heroine runs a yarn shop when she’s not busy solving murders, the meaning would have been clear.
Did you notice that man across the street painting—with the beard? Apparently he prefers using his beard to a paintbrush. Messy!
A one-man show, by definition, cannot be in concert.
Be careful not to confuse the adjectives ascetic and aesthetic. Ascetic means “austere.” Aesthetic means “artistic” or “having a sense of the beautiful.”
Discrete and discreet are not the same. Discrete means “distinct.” Discreet means “prudent” or “modest.”
You may be given permission to fly a friend’s airplane, but can you? If you don’t have a pilot’s license, I’d advise against it.
You lay your gloves on the table but you lie in your bed. We won’t get into the old joke about laying linoleum.
You pay someone a compliment, but send them a present with your complements.
Although some dictionaries now allow it (see “Is Irregardless a Real Word? at www.Merriam-Webster.com), many purists insist that it’s just plain wrong, as well as unnecessary, to add that ir to regardless. You go to the baseball game, regardless of the weather.
Refer to a person as who, not that. She’s the one who went to the game, not She’s the one that went.
The abbreviation i.e. means “in other words” and should be followed by further explanation. The abbreviation e.g. means “for example” and should be followed by one or more examples.
When you say you mean something literally, it means you are not exaggerating. You say it figuratively if you are using similes or metaphors.
A recent television ad touting a dealership’s contributions to a charity claimed it was “donating a portion of every car sold.” This makes one wonder what the charity will do with a hubcap or a hood ornament.
A breath is what you take. Breathe is what you do.
Pronunciation of place names can vary greatly. The correct pronunciation is the one used by the people who live there. If you are in Vienna, Maine, for example, that i is long. Similarly, Maine people pronounce Madrid with the accent on the first syllable and Avon with the accent on the second. Calais is pronounced callus. Residents of Lenape Hollow, New York, named after the Native American tribe that populated the area in pre-Revolutionary War days, also go their own way. They put the accent on the first syllable of Lenape rather than the second.
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