The Truth Hurts

by Nancy Pickard

  I nod, without exactly committing to that opinion.

  When Deb blushes even deeper, I look out toward theIntracoastal, pretending not to notice that her complexion has turned rosy. She has a massive crush on Franklin, but it would mortify her to know that we’re aware of it. How can we not be, since the poor kid stumbles all over her feet and her words whenever he’s here? God knows, I understand her feelings. I’m pretty crazy about the man myself. Whether or not I’m in love with him is another question, and one that I’m not prepared to answer yet; whether or not I have any choice in that matter is still another conundrum that I don’t want to have to solve at this moment. So I give her a moment to collect herself, before I look at her again.

  Her non sequitur has nicely broken that other tension.

  “Deb, would you go in the house and check my E-mails again? Print out anything new that has come in. I’m expecting something from my agent.”

  That’s a lie, intended only to get her off the patio so that I can fish the damned letter out of the wastebasket.

  When she’s gone, I read:

  Dear Marie,

  What is the point of my contact with you ?

  Why have I gone to the trouble of planting a news story to get your attention, then followed that up with a second and third message to make sure you understand how well I know you, and then had the gift of a book delivered to you ?

  It is so that you will take seriously my book proposal.

  You’re tempted to laugh, aren’t you ? You think you’ve heard it all before, don’t you ? No doubt many people come up to you with book ideas. But I’ll wager that no one has ever approached you with this one.

  Marie, you are a true crime writer. I love to read about true crime. So you and I are going to combine forces, only this time you are going to be the victim in your next book.

  I am going to kill you, Marie.

  You are going to write the book about it.

  Isn’t that brilliant ? Wouldn’t any editor jump at the chance to publish a book like that ? Just think—the famous writer describes her own demise, right up to the very moment before it happens! Imagine the suspense, Marie. Imagine the television coverage, and the exciting, suspenseful movies that will be made from our story. What a “hook,” as they say in Hollywood! Just think of the diabolical inevitability of the ending. And don’t worry about that—I’ll write the epilogue.

  It will be a blockbuster best-seller, I’m sure you agree.

  But we have work to do before that time.

  So let’s get down to business.

  Here are your initial instructions, Marie:

  Fire your assistant immediately.

  Contact no law enforcement.

  Write our first chapter and E-mail it to me by 2 P.M. today. It must contain a full description of these past two days. Build suspense for our readers! Share your initial disbelief, your embarrassment or anger, your growing horror and dread, Marie.

  Are you thinking, This is absurd ? Are you thinking, This can’t be for real, and whoever he is, he doesn’t mean it, he can’t do it ? It is for real, Marie, and I do mean it. Not only that, but I can do it.

  But why should you do it ?

  I’ll tell you why. Pay very close attention now, Marie.

  If you disobey, first I will hurt Deborah Dancer, your girl with the ridiculous clothes and the hair that looks as if she stuck her finger in an electrical outlet.

  Do I have your full attention now ?

  Good, because you need to know that after I hurt her, I will turn my attention to your boyfriend and his children.

  And speaking of him, by “law enforcement” I don’t mean him.

  Do tell him everything. You have my permission to do that.

  Then, we won’t have to force him to leave you. He will abandon you in order to save himself and his family.

  Then you and I will be on our own, writing partners to The End.

  It gives a whole new meaning to those two words, doesn’t it ?

  Start now, Marie. Fire Deborah. Write the first chapter and E-mail it to me by 2 P.M. today in the addressed reply block I have thoughtfully provided for you.

  Yours truly,

  Paulie Barnes

  “Marie, you did read it!”

  She returns to the patio, catching me with the unfolded letter on my lap. “No message from your agent, sorry,” she says, and then, after a moment, tentatively, “what does it say?”

  I hold up a finger, bidding her wait a sec while I pick up my cell phone and ring Franklin’s office.

  “Is he there?” I ask his secretary, Arvida Waid.

  “Still in court, Marie,” she says.

  “Ask him to call me, will you please, Arvida?”

  “Sure thing. I could page him—?”

  Not while he’s inside a courtroom trying a case. “No, just have him call as soon as he can. Tell him—tell him I heard from our friend Paulie Barnes again.”

  “Barnes?”

  “Yes. Thanks, Arvida.”

  After I turn the phone off, I glance up at Deb again.

  “Is everything okay?” she wants to know.

  I still don’t answer her. I can’t; my mind is busy demanding its own answer of me. You have to decide now, Marie. In this moment. Will you err on the side of caution or cynicism ? If you err on the side of caution, no one can possibly get hurt and the worst that can happen is that you will look and feel like a fool for believing him. If you err on the side of cynicism, it is possible, however unlikely, that someone may suffer for it. You can’t ask Deb to make this decision; that wouldn’t be fair.

  She is standing in front of me, looking quizzical and a little worried now.

  “Marie? What’s wrong? You’re scaring me.”

  The sundress she has on today is bright yellow with a print of purple seahorses. As accessories, she has chosen bulbous yellow earrings and a matching necklace and bracelet. Franklin thinks she’s cute; he says it makes him smile just to see her.

  Decide, Marie. It’s up to you. What’s it going to be ?

  “I’m sorry, Deb. I don’t want to say this. I’d give anything not to have to say this. But it appears that I have to, because you have a right to know. This idiot”—I wave my right hand dismissively over the letter—“says in here that if I don’t do what he wants me to do he will hurt . . .”

  I swallow, feel myself frowning.

  Deb looks horrified. “He’ll hurt you?”

  “No. I’m so sorry. I hate this.” My mouth snaps shut, because it doesn’t want to utter the next words I have to say. I swat away a fly that buzzes near the lip of a glass of lemonade I have sitting beside me. But finally I have to say it. I have to tell her. It wouldn’t be right not to warn her. “He says he’ll hurt you.”

  Deb blinks, opens her own mouth, but for once nothing impulsive comes out. Finally, she squeaks, “Me?”

  I propel myself from the chaise, take hold of her right wrist, and pull her over to sit with me at the patio table. I look into her shocked blue eyes and try to sound a lot more calm than I feel inside. “That’s what he threatens, but I don’t believe it for a minute. It’s the craziest thing! You’ll never believe what this nut wants. He claims he’s going to force me to write a book with him!”

  “What? A book? What kind of book?”

  “A true crime book. Don’t even worry about that part of it, it’s nothing. It’s not important. This is all nothing, I’m sure of it. If it were just me he threatened, I’d throw the damned thing away again. But it’s not just me, it’s you. He says that I have to fire you—”

  “What? No!”

  “Of course I won’t,” I assure her quickly. “But, Deb, the problem is that we don’t know for absolutely sure that this guy can’t do what he says. He knows my E-mail address, he knows where I live, he knows just enough to make us careful. I think the thing for us to do is to fake it for a while. Apparently, he wants everyone out of the way, starting with you. So we may need to make it look as if y
ou’re packing up and getting out of here. You may need to stay away for a few days.”

  “I won’t,” she proclaims angrily, stubbornly, though there’s fear in her eyes.

  “Yes, you will,” I inform her in a tone that tells her I will brook no further argument. “Just to be on the safe side. There is plenty of work you can do from home, and I’ll keep paying you no matter what.”

  “I don’t care about that!”

  “Well, your roommates will when the rent comes due. Besides, Deb, just think how embarrassing it would be for me to have to tell your parents that I let you get killed. They’d be so annoyed at me.”

  “Yeah.” She laughs nervously. “They’re picky like that.”

  “Give me time to find this guy, Deb. Let me make sure that he is already locked away somewhere and that he won’t be getting out anytime soon.”

  “You really think he’s a convict?”

  “I don’t know. I suspect so. That probably makes the most sense, because who else has time to cook up stupid threats like this? And even convicts can arrange for packages to get delivered. Anyway, I’ll find out. Or, what’s the point of dating a prosecutor?” I squeeze her wrist, to take the edge off what I must say next. “Listen, I don’t want to frighten you unnecessarily, but I’ve got to tell you that he sounds nasty. And smart, if you can judge intelligence by the way somebody writes.” I smile, mocking myself, which makes her smile back at me instinctively. “His threat is pretty clear. I’m to follow his instructions perfectly, or he’ll hurt you in order to prove to me that he means this. He doesn’t say what he would do, just that he’d hurt you. The thing that bothers me, the thing that convinces me that we have to take this seriously for a while, is that he knows anything about you at all, Deb. He knows your name. That you work for me.”

  What I don’t tell her is that in the letter he referred to her as “your girl with the ridiculous clothes and the hair that looks as if she stuck her finger in an electrical outlet.” He knows that much about us. About her. And that’s way too much, to my way of thinking. If it’s an empty threat, it’s a frightening one. It has definitely got my attention with its convincing details, with its promise to harm Deborah, Franklin, the children.

  “Come on,” I urge Deborah, taking her hand and tugging her up out of the chair. “We’re getting you out of here.”

  “Now?”

  “I’m afraid so. We’re not messing around with this nut. He may even be watching the house.” She flinches and then stares around with wide eyes. I could bite my own tongue. I hope that she won’t think to ask, How can he be watching us if he’s in prison? Trying to reassure her, I put an arm around her in big-sister fashion. “It’s probably all a bluff. But if he’s watching to see what I’ll do, let’s make a show of looking upset—”

  “That’s easy,” Deb whispers.

  “—and of following his directions.”

  “I don’t want to!”

  “I don’t, either. But for the time being, if he says jump, we’ll hold our noses and do it.” I keep her moving, urging her off the patio, into my home. I am not about to take chances with her life. I’d much rather take the chance of looking like an idiot. “I’m sorry, but I think you’re going to have to tell your friends and your family that I’ve fired you.”

  “No!” It’s a wail. “Why? I’ll feel humiliated! And they’ll hate you!”

  “But he may check up on it, Deb, and it will be better if everyone around you thinks it’s true.”

  I usher her around my living room, picking up her belongings, stacking them in her arms, hanging her purse over her shoulder and then prodding her toward my front door. I’m in a hurry to get her out of here, because I don’t want her involved in this at all.

  Once outside, with Deb standing with her arms loaded and her eyes brimming with tears, I touch her face. “I’m so sorry about this. I hope I’m just overreacting. Tell you what—when it’s all over, and we know there’s no danger, I’ll personally apologize to everybody you had to tell you were fired, okay? Deb, I really don’t think you have a thing to worry about so long as you stay away from me.”

  In a frantic, tearful whisper, she pleads, “But how will I know what’s going on?”

  “I’ll figure out a way to let you know.”

  She nods, looking miserable. Then, obediently, she turns and starts to walk off toward her little white VW bug that’s parked on the street. But then she turns around and runs back to me.

  “This is crazy! Isn’t it, Marie?”

  “Yes, it is. But maybe he’s crazy, too.”

  “What kind of book?” she asks, looking stubborn again. “What does he want you to write a book about anyway?”

  I was hoping she’d forget that.

  I let out a breath. Dammit. “He says he’s . . . oh, this is so stupid! He claims that I’m going to write a book about . . .”

  “What? What ?”

  I say it in a rush. “About my own murder.”

  “Oh, my God!” Even with her arms full of stuff, she manages to clutch at me. Gently, I back away before things start falling out of her arms.

  “Yeah, but it’s nonsense. He claims he’s going to murder me and I’m going to write about it. But that’s not going to happen, Deb. It is not going to happen. In the first place, this is not real. He can’t do it. And even if he could, we’ll find him first. But you can see why I say he’s nasty, and why I don’t want to mess around about this. You need to go. I’ll be all right. Truly, I will. But I will worry myself to death if you don’t leave right now.”

  She looks disconsolate, young, and vulnerable as she walks away a second time. But this time she gets into her little white VW Beetle and drives away.

  “Damn you,” I whisper to a stranger named Paulie Barnes.

  8

  Marie

  There was one more page to his last communiqué, an autobiography of sorts, though it is impossible to know if any of it is true. I pull it out of the pocket of my shorts, where I stuffed it, and stand on my front stoop and read it over again.

  I’ll tell you about myself.

  Since part of what follows is fiction, it seems appropriate to speak of myself in the third person.

  Paulie Barnes (what I’m calling myself) loves to read about true crime, the deaths and rapes and burglaries that really happen. None of that made-up stuff for him, no mystery novels, no fictional detectives, or make-believe cops. Give him the truth any day over fantasy; he is tough enough to take it. Give him real blood and guts. Make him feel as if he is actually there on the scene with the victims, the killers, the cops.

  He loves it. Pour it on.

  Until recently, his favorite true crime author was Ann Rule. His favorite book of hers was The Stranger Beside Me. You remember that one, of course. It was the incredibly bizarre true story about how she was writing a book about a serial killer when she discovered he was a friend of hers. His name was Ted Bundy.

  (Don’t you love the chills that story gives you, Marie ?)

  Stranger than fiction, that’s how Paulie likes it.

  Now, however, his favorite true crime author is: you, Marie.

  And then he wrote:

  How’s that for a bang-up start ? I’m good, aren’t I ? I should be, I’ve studied your books enough to pick up your style of writing. It’s a little sensational for my taste—you can see that I possess a more elevated style—but I have seen for myself that it is fun to write your way, and it certainly is a thrill to read, I’ll be the first to admit that.

  Why, I can hardly put it down!

  One thing that is true, however, is that my new favorite book is going to be the one we will write together, Marie. I even have a working title for us. We’ll call it Last Words, with a subtitle, Best-selling Author Marie Lightfoot Tells the Horrifying, Tragic Story of Her Own Murder, Right Up to the Moment of Her Death.

  Please do believe me when I promise you that ours will not be one of those omnipresent serial killer books. Yawn. Aren’t you si
ck to death of serial killers ? Couldn’t you just line them all up and shoot them ? That’s an amusing thought, a mass murder of serial killers.

  No, I am not one of them.

  Rest assured, I am something different. I am something new.

  And you alone will have the privilege of discovering me.

  I stick it back down in my pocket.

  How could my life turn upside down so quickly? Yesterday morning I was standing in a grocery store line enjoying being anonymous, and now some anonymous creep has disturbed my peace of mind, my work, my employee. He has even managed to dredge up my past—the last thing I want to happen. But not the worst thing. This might be one of the worst things that could happen, this awful feeling of being invaded by an insidious, invisible virus. I feel as if I’ve been “hacked,” like a computer.

  Is this what victims of stalkers feel like?

  It’s ninety degrees, but I am frozen to my front stoop.

  When Deb’s Volkswagen disappeared from my view, it looked filthy brown instead of white, but that was merely proof of her good citizenship. We’re in a prolonged drought in south Florida. It’s so bad that we’d almost rather hear that dreaded word hurricane than endure much more of this. God, what we wouldn’t give for a decent tropical storm. Winds of forty, even sixty miles an hour would be fine; a little four-foot storm surge, we can live with that. Just give us rain! Here in Bahia Beach—our city of 100,000 souls in between Fort Lauderdale and Pompano—water restrictions are tight enough to squeeze tears from a shark. Our street addresses dictate the days we may dampen our seared yards, and even then we’re limited to such odd hours that only the most dedicated lawn jockeys still do it. Washing cars and boats is completely verboten, except at commercial outfits that are exempted so they won’t go out of business.

  As my cousin Nathan would say, it’s drier than a witch’s wit.

  I glance around at my neighbor’s sad brown yards, putting an anxious expression on my face. If somebody is watching, let him think I’m frightened. I was a little scared, I’ll admit that. But now, what I am increasingly feeling is—pissed. If this jerk is watching me, then let him get a damned good look at his prey.