Written Off

by E. J. Copperman

  “They’re all murdered authors,” Dad tried.

  But it was starting to come together for me. “They were all sloppy writers,” I said. “Every one of them wrote copy that needed to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb before they could even consider submitting them to professional publishing companies.” I realized suddenly that I was on my feet as well, pacing by the dining room table and wondering if what was left of Dad’s sub was available to just anybody.

  “So what?” Dad asked. He at least had kept his seat, but he still wasn’t paying any attention to that sandwich. What had he ordered, again? “So they wrote books and they weren’t great at all the p’s and q’s. So they had to get somebody to read their first drafts. Where does that get us?”

  “There’s only one kind of person who would be connected to all four of them in a professional capacity,” Paula said. “It could be someone who didn’t have to live near any of them; who didn’t necessarily have connections to one publishing house, so all the authors could be in touch; and who would be passionately enough involved in the business to go off the deep end about something and finally snap. Someone who would actually think of all those ways to kill authors symbolically and then do it for real.”

  “A vindictive mailman?” Dad suggested, but I knew he was more baffled than serious.

  I shook my head. “A freelance copy editor,” I said.

  Chapter 24

  The first thing I did was to text Duffy (well, the first thing I did was hug Paula, but after that), but he didn’t answer immediately, so I called Ben Preston.

  He listened with what I took for awe at our deductive skills, then paused before answering. “You think somebody killed four women because he got tired of their bad punctuation?” It wasn’t exactly the response I’d been looking for.

  With my expectations damped down, I answered, “Well, it’s at least worth checking out, don’t you think? To see if they all needed a copy editor and hired one outside the publishing house. I mean, it would have to be a freelancer to cross over to all the authors.”

  “Well, that’s the thing. Does it make sense that women like Julia Bledsoe, who had a long-standing publishing contract with a major house, would share a copy editor with someone like Missy Hardaway, who didn’t have a contract at all? I mean, when you send in your manuscript, don’t they have someone at your publisher who goes through it for all that stuff?” If this guy ever wanted to actually kiss me, he was going to have to be considerably more supportive of my wild theories.

  “It’s not likely they’d farm it out, but it’s possible.” I could lord my knowledge of publishing over him, if nothing else.

  “Answer the question.” That was it; next time, he didn’t even get a handshake.

  I rolled my eyes and huffed audibly (on purpose). “Yes. My editor reads it first for story issues and major changes. Then I revise it. Then my editor reads it again. Then it goes to a copy editor, who looks for typos and the like.”

  “So you see? Why would all four of them—I mean, we think this thing in Connecticut that Duffy’s working on might pan out, and there’s no copy editor involved. I’ll keep you posted. I promise.” But he didn’t hang up.

  What was Ben waiting for? A thank-you for completely ignoring the collective brilliance of Dad, Paula, and me (mostly Paula)? “So you’re not even going to look into it?” I sounded like a five-year-old who’d just been informed that a dragon did not live under her bed. And I would know because I almost got a photograph of it when I was that age, but the thing was cagey, my flash misfired, and my father was in a grumpy mood.

  “I’ll get someone on it, okay? But sit tight. I’ll get back to you when I hear from Duffy.” And this time, he did hang up.

  I made a low noise in my throat. “I’m definitely not going out with that guy.”

  “What’s that?” Dad asked. Oops. Did I actually say that out loud?

  “Nothing. I don’t think he’s going to look into it. They think this Connecticut lead might be the one.”

  Paula, who usually questions authority as often as she flaps her arms and flies to Cincinnati, scrunched up her face in a skeptical expression. “Well, just because the cops aren’t following this lead doesn’t mean we can’t,” she said.

  “I like the way you think, but I don’t want to call Carole Pembroke back,” I told her. “She sounded like she wanted to forget I’d called, and I wouldn’t mind if she did.”

  Paula shifted from one leg to the other, which meant she was thinking. “If you were going to look for a freelance copy editor, where would you look?” she asked.

  “I’m not looking for one,” I said. “I’m trying to keep one from looking for me.”

  “But you’re an author like them, and they found a copy editor, maybe the same one,” Dad said, picking up on Paula’s train of thought. “If we can trace how you’d search for him, we might figure out how they did.” He turned to Paula. “Right?” She rewarded him with a thumbs-up.

  “I’d tell you to find me a copy editor,” I said to Paula.

  She looked sheepish. “Actually, that’s true. You would. So I’d run some simple searches first, and one of the things I’d look for would be previous clients. A freelancer’s website would list people who have worked with him so other authors would be impressed with some of the names and consider his services.” She sat down and started banging away on the keyboard.

  I was circling the table to look over her left shoulder (Dad had the right covered) when my cell phone rang. The caller ID was unfamiliar, but I picked up anyway. If it was the lunatic who’d been e-mailing me and killing off other authors, I might be able to ask questions that would corner him into pitching me on his proofreading service. It’s a funny business, publishing.

  But a cold feeling did grip my stomach; I won’t deny that.

  No such luck, depending on your definition of “luck.” The voice on the other end was female and perky. “This is Marcie from Beverly Hills Productions,” she said. “I’m looking for a Ms. Goldman?” People from California have a way of taking declarative sentences and making them sound like questions?

  (Now who was obsessed with punctuation?)

  “This is she,” I said, syntax perfect as ever.

  “Mr. Waterman is hoping to meet with you tomorrow,” Marcie said. “Is nine AM possible for you?”

  Adam had said Waterman wouldn’t let him go to the meeting, but it was still odd. I had to make sure he knew what was going on. “Have you called my agent?” I asked.

  “I have, but Mr. Waterman likes to contact writers directly. After I spoke to Mr. Resnick, he wanted to make sure you were available, so I’m calling directly,” Marcie said. “I’ll get back to Mr. Resnick and let him know the details.”

  To get into New York City by nine in the morning on a Monday requires the stamina of a bull, the courage of a lion, and the bus of a Greyhound. “Of course,” I said, possessing none of those things. “Where in the city does he want to meet?”

  “Oh no,” Marcie said, a light chuckle in her tone. “Mr. Waterman would like to come to you. He feels that the atmosphere in your novels is so strong, he’d like to see you in your natural habitat. Can he pick you up for breakfast at your home?” California people also think you have to drive everywhere. Come to think of it, that’s one trait they share with New Jerseyans.

  Even in my state of excitement over my novel being turned into a movie, I was not going to give out my address to a stranger. “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “There’s a lovely place for breakfast right in my town, the English Muffin. I’ll give you the address, and I can meet him there. We can sit outside in the morning.” Before the heat and humidity make you want to donate your skin to science.

  “Fine,” Marcie said pleasantly. I gave her the address, and we confirmed the time and place. She thanked me very efficiently, and we disconnected.

  I went back to looking over Paula’s shoulder, but now I was a little distracted. A movie deal! This was the kind of thing
that took a midlist author like me and turned her into a great big New York Times Best Sellers list favorite. It could be the end of worrying about the mortgage. It could mean that I’d be set for life. It could mean that I could write Duffy when I wanted and do something else when that appealed to me. It was a life changer.

  Assuming I still had a life. That was something to consider. We did have that little matter of finding out who was killing mystery authors and whether or not I was the girl most likely to be poisoned with printer’s ink.

  “Got anything?” I asked Paula. The truth was I could see the screen in front of her, but I didn’t recognize it and didn’t want to get so close I had to literally breathe down her neck.

  “Maybe,” she answered. “I’ve found a couple of freelance copy editors, none of them around here or in New York, which doesn’t mean that much because the killer clearly travels around. A few websites for copy editors. And I’m checking to see if there are any previous clients listed who have since turned up dead.”

  She was clacking away as I turned to look at my father. He had never looked quite so worn and old to me; his face was tired and a little wrinkled. The light that usually shown in his eyes was dim. He stared at the screen on the dining room table and looked very worried until he must have sensed that I was watching him. He turned, met my eyes, and smiled a reassuring and unconvincing smile that just about broke my heart.

  My predicament was killing him, and he was compensating by being a tough, gruff man doing all he could to protect his little girl. That was why he was so difficult with Duffy and why he hadn’t been hungry. He was too scared.

  And that made me even more terrified than I had been before. If the rock of my life, the guy who could always make everything okay, looked that tense, things must be really bad. I started to wonder seriously what it was like to be dead and caught myself gasping just a little.

  “You okay?” Dad asked gently.

  I nodded, because speaking would have belied the message of the nod. Sure. I was fine. What was there to worry about? I reached over and took his hand. He squeezed mine and nodded.

  “It’ll be okay, Rache,” he said. “I’m here.”

  “Here,” Paula said. She can gain the power of tunnel vision when she’s intent on a task and either hadn’t noticed the exchange between Dad and me or had decided not to say anything as a way of preserving our privacy. Paula is a good and moral person. “This might very well be our guy.”

  I looked at the screen, which showed the website for Shana Kineally, a freelance proofreader/copy editor based in Racine, Wisconsin. The home page, as plain and cheap as could be imagined, was bathed in a rather nauseating green with large pink lettering.

  “That’s not a guy,” I pointed out.

  “Nonetheless. Take a look here.” Paula moved the cursor toward a paragraph—and all the copy was immaculate, for the record—near the bottom of the page and circled it. “List of satisfied clients.”

  I scanned the list. “Sunny Maugham,” I said. “But that’s not—”

  “And J. B. Randolph,” Dad said, pointing. “That’s two of the four.”

  “It’s only two.” I don’t know why I was so desperate for Shana Kineally not to be the killer. It’s possible I was still trying very hard to believe that there was no killer, that this was all some strange nightmare from which I was sure to wake at any minute, or that Sunny Maugham was exercising a truly macabre sense of humor and would be walking in the door momentarily, doubled over in laughter.

  “Well, Missy Hardaway was a pretty new author, not very well known at all, with only two books from Ballmer Press, a company not exactly rivaling the big New York houses,” Paula pointed out. “And Marion Benedict was unpublished. Those are not names that are going to be especially helpful in attracting new clients.”

  “It makes sense,” Dad said. My father, rational businessman and doting dad that he is, was taking the opposite approach to mine. Instead of denying the whole situation, he was taking great pains to be sure this Shana Kineally really was the maniac on the trail of crime fiction writers so the police could catch her and this whole business could be over quickly. He could go back to his barn, and I could keep breathing. Win-win.

  “We need more than this to go to Ben Preston and demand this Kineally person be arrested,” I pointed out. “We need some evidence tying her to the crimes, not just the victims. Maybe the killer is someone with a real grudge against poor Shana, taking out his revenge on her by bumping off her best clients and smearing her name.”

  “You really have been writing mysteries too long, haven’t you?” Dad asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. Four books—five, really, once I finished the revisions—wasn’t too long. What was he implying?

  “There are no pictures of Shana Kineally on the web,” Paula, who had clearly not been listening, said. “That’s weird.”

  I shrugged one shoulder. “A copy editor doesn’t need to have a portrait on her website,” I said. “Authors always have official pictures because we’re supposed to look like people our readers would like to hang around with, but copy editors aren’t trafficking in personality; it’s results that matter with them.”

  “You don’t understand,” Paula insisted. “It’s not just that there’s no photograph on her official website—there are no pictures of Shana Kineally on the web anywhere. It’s as if she really doesn’t want anyone to know what she looks like.”

  “Is that even possible?” I asked. “I mean, hasn’t somebody posted a picture of old Aunt Shana somewhere?”

  “Maybe on a personal website with protection or just through e-mail, but there’s nothing I can find in the public areas,” Paula said, frowning.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m suspicious,” Dad said to no one in particular.

  “First thing’s first,” I said. “Duffy would say we have to confirm our facts. We have to confirm with Marion Benedict’s boyfriend, Thad Claypool, that she was working with the copy editor and see if he can confirm the name Shana Kineally.”

  “Why Thad?” Dad asked. “Why not Marion Benedict’s brother?”

  Paula and I exchanged a glance. “Two reasons,” she told Dad. “First, because Thad was annoyed at Nancy for spending all the money on her books, so he’d remember the expense if it happened.”

  “What’s the second reason?”

  Paula looked a little weary. “Because I was the one who got in touch, and Rachel knows she can get me to make the call.” I nodded with empathy. The poor woman. So glad it wasn’t me.

  Paula called Thad Claypool while I stretched my legs and daydreamed about a Hollywood premiere of Little Boy Lost with maybe Paul Rudd as Duffy. Or Ryan Reynolds. As Duffy. Not Paul Rudd as Ryan Reynolds. That’d be weird.

  Dad went into the kitchen to get himself a bottle of spring water. Dad is getting back to nature, only in plastic bottles that need to be recycled filled with water from a spring apparently so large, fifty thousand quarts of it can be bottled each and every hour. Dad believes in doing what he can, as long as it’s convenient.

  I decided not to be in the room while Paula called because she’d just want to tell me everything that was said anyway, so I took a tour around my downstairs (upstairs was mostly storage space) and tried not to think that some nut job was out there, possibly watching my house as I tried not to think about him. Her. If we were right, her.

  Wandering back into the dining room after a few minutes, it was clear Paula was wrapping up the call. I could hear her thanking Thad two or three times as I approached, and she was already typing with both hands, phone on the table, when I reached the entrance to the room.

  “Thad asked how I knew about Shana Kineally,” she said. “He even got out the bank statement with the cancelled check from seven months ago. Marion was definitely a client.”

  “Do you think we can tie in Missy Hardaway?” I asked.

  “Give Harrison a call,” she said, grinning. So it was my turn.

  Or
not. “He’s her publisher. If she were using a freelance editor, she might not want him to know.”

  “You’re stalling,” Paula said, teasing. “You don’t want to know, do you?”

  “Of course I want to know.” I’d show her. I got out my phone and called Harrison Belechik. And he sounded surprised.

  “No, Missy didn’t call Shana Kineally,” he said flat out.

  She didn’t? What could that mean?

  But Harrison wasn’t finished. “I called Shana Kineally,” he said. “Ballmer Press is too small to have its own editors, and Missy’s books were very imaginative and well written, but . . .”

  “But she couldn’t spell to save her life, so you got her a freelance editor.”

  “Something like that,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

  I gave him a nonsensical excuse, something about wanting to clean up my next book, and hustled him off the phone. I looked at my father and my assistant, who I knew had been a philosophy major in college. This was the crack investigative team that had busted the serial killer case wide open? We probably needed a little help.

  “Who can we call?” I asked.

  Dad and Paula looked at me. “Duffy.” In unison.

  I tried his cell, but it went straight to voice mail, so I left a message. “Duffy, we think we might have found something. The person’s name is Shana Kineally.” I spelled it for him. “She’s a copy editor and proofreader who works freelance and appears to have a connection to at least two of the four authors. Give me a call back.”

  Disconnecting the call, I looked at Dad. “Okay, maybe I’m crazy . . .”

  “Maybe?” The man’s a laugh riot.

  I went on. “But I know Duffy Madison. He has his cell phone on vibrate, and he’s not taking anything but urgent calls because he’s on a case. I’m not going to hear back from him soon if he’s on his way to Connecticut, especially if he’s driving. He’d have to pull over, and he thinks that his mission is absolutely a matter of life and death, which it probably is.”