“Sure, I’ll tell her,” he said, laying the receiver back upon its cradle. “That was Mort Metzger, Jessica. He just heard from the Somerville PD. They’ve captured the man they believe killed Tommy Halperin.”
Chapter Twenty-two
“Is he talking?” I said, leaning forward in my chair.
“Mort didn’t say.”
“Did he say to call him?”
Artie shook his head. “I guess it’s my turn today. Share and share alike. Let’s see—so far we know a young woman is missing who helped you and, thanks to the hack here working on your behalf, you’ve ruined the entire life of a key witness to multiple murders. Am I forgetting anything?”
“Do you believe me, Artie?” I asked, feeling uncharacteristically insecure about my conclusions, probably because of the damage I’d done to two lives. So far.
“If you include this Halperin character, six deaths are directly associated with your claims, to go with the attempt on your own life. That said, we have no hard evidence whatsoever that those deaths are linked to a manuscript that, for all intents and purposes, no longer exists. And all we know about that manuscript is what you can tell us, and, by your own admission, you never even finished it.”
I nodded, unable to refute a single one of the points Artie was making. I glanced over at Harry, whose jowls were starting their slide again.
“I want to go back to something you said before,” Artie said, rising from his chair and walking around his desk. “That Thomas Rudd believed Lane Barfield was stealing from him and that your own accountant confirmed oddities in your royalty statements as well. So what if these two other authors felt the same way? Maybe Rudd also managed to contact them. Maybe this isn’t about a missing manuscript at all, and maybe the financial malfeasance stretches much deeper than you think.”
“Deep enough to account for hiring men like Tommy Halperin?”
Artie stood over us, making me look up when he responded. “Maybe Thomas Rudd wasn’t the first. Maybe he found out about what was going on from one of these other authors.”
“Neither would have given him the time of day, Artie.”
“You did.”
“We went back a long way. He gave me one of my first blurbs.”
“Well then,” Artie said, scoffing, “I’d better stop smearing his character.”
“What about my character?” Harry asked him.
“You don’t have any character to smear.”
“Which of my ex-wives are you dating, Artie?”
I rose from the chair, pushing up on the arms. “I’m sorry about Alejandro Chacón. I truly am.”
Artie didn’t look to be in an apology-accepting mood. “A little late for that, Jessica.”
“But hopefully not for Zara Larson. Can you get a warrant to search her apartment?” I asked, not wanting to give away the fact that Harry had already given it the once-over.
“Don’t need one if there’s a reasonable suspicion foul play might be involved.”
“At the very least.”
Artie checked his watch. “I just happen to have a few minutes.”
* * *
• • •
Harry and I accompanied Artie over to Zara’s apartment on the West Side, just beyond the fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, saving us the bother of hailing a cab or getting another Uber car.
“There’s something that’s bothering me,” I said, breaking the silence that had swiftly settled inside Artie’s department-issued sedan.
“Something else, you mean.”
“It goes back to Thomas Rudd. If I’m right, and all this really is about the manuscript, then somebody killed him because they knew he’d swiped that flash drive.”
“Okay.”
“So who could have known that besides Lane and Zara? Since at least one of them is a victim, too, there must’ve been another way whoever killed Rudd got wind of what he’d inadvertently stolen.”
“What’s your point?”
I hesitated. “Mort wanted to check the hotel room where I’m staying for bugs.”
“You think Lane Barfield’s office might have been bugged?”
I should’ve nodded but shrugged instead. “Something sophisticated, capable of recording both audio and video, planted by whoever’s wiping out anyone with a connection to the manuscript.”
“That’s not so sophisticated these days, Jessica.”
“It used to be.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Artie said. “It would take some pretty impressive logistics to manage the task.”
“Can you sweep his office to check?”
Artie snickered behind the wheel, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “Only if you promise to go back to Mort. It’s his turn with you tomorrow.”
“Hey, how about we grab some coffee?” Harry McGraw piped in, leaning forward in the back seat.
“You buying?” Artie asked him.
Harry gestured toward me. “I’ll just add it to her bill.”
* * *
• • •
I exited the car with Harry but stopped short of following him inside the coffee shop. Instead I moved beneath the shop’s overhang and called Mort.
“Tell me something good,” I greeted him.
“How about you not being here?”
“I heard that, Mort.”
“Good. Has Artie arrested you yet?”
“On what charge?”
“Being a pain in the ass. New York has a lower tolerance for such things than Cabot Cove.”
“Tell me about the suspect in the Tommy Halperin murder,” I requested.
“Pretty much just like we figured: owner of the house Halperin parked his Charger with red nail polish stains on a rear tire in front of. Also, just like we figured, the suspect’s background is a virtual twin of Tommy’s, right down to the dishonorable discharge and last known whereabouts being overseas.”
“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, Mort?”
“Not as much as you do.”
But I could tell he’d already considered exactly what I was getting at. “How many more Tommy Halperins are out there?”
“At least one: Francis Malloy.”
“Don’t tell me: Francis Malloy is the suspect being held in Halperin’s shooting.”
“But he isn’t talking, not even a word uttered since he was arrested at Logan Airport trying to book an overseas flight.”
“Can you run his financials, see if there’s anything that matches up with Halperin’s?”
“Already in the works. I’m thinking of recommending a new bond issue to the town selectmen, by the way.”
“What’s that?”
“A second police force you can have all to yourself, Jessica.”
“Which one are you planning to run?”
“I’m actually thinking of retiring.”
“You already did that. It’s why you came to Cabot Cove, Mort.”
“I was more retired before I came to Cabot Cove. I guess I should have retired someplace quieter, like Afghanistan.”
“Any chance of you getting Somerville to let me interview Francis Malloy?”
Mort hung up.
* * *
• • •
Zara Larson’s apartment was exactly what you’d expect for a young woman starting out on her own in New York City. A three-hundred-square-foot studio with a small breakfast nook and an alcove just big enough to fit a full-sized bed. It had the feel more of an oversized dorm room than of a starter apartment, a thought that stoked further guilt in me, given that Zara wasn’t far removed from her college years.
The size and simplicity of the studio made canvassing it in search of some clue as to the young woman’s whereabouts, or ultimate fate, a relatively simple task. Especially when you add to that the fact that Zara clea
rly lived sparsely and frugally. The mismatched furniture strongly suggested items picked up at sidewalk sales or second-, even thirdhand stores. The flat-screen television was a mongrel brand and looked tiny even on what amounted to a tiny wall. I didn’t know a lot about computers, but I knew enough to tell that Zara’s Apple laptop was several generations behind.
“Well, this tells us something,” I said to Artie and Harry while standing over a desk built into a nest of bookshelves.
“What?” Artie wondered.
“When people leave anywhere of their own free will, even when they want to make it seem otherwise, they take their computers.”
“I don’t see her phone anywhere,” Artie noted. “But there’s a charger plugged into the socket by her night table.”
“Which tells us whatever happened, happened outside this place. Otherwise, there’d also be signs of a rushed packing job.”
Zara didn’t have a lot of makeup, but what she did have tucked away in the small bathroom looked undisturbed, further indication foul play was more likely here than her going on the run. I couldn’t believe she wouldn’t have called me if the latter was the case, given that I would probably be the only person who’d believe her and could help. That made me check my phone, as if by some miracle Zara had checked in while we were standing inside her apartment.
No miracle, I saw, and returned the phone to my bag.
“Something’s missing,” I said suddenly.
“I thought you said nothing was missing,” Artie said, rubbing his hands, encased in plastic gloves, together.
“No, something is. I can’t seem to put my finger on what it is.”
“Hard to find something that’s not here, Jess,” Harry noted, clearly wanting to be anywhere but here.
“Humor me and I’ll pay your overdue parking fines.”
Harry looked toward Artie Gelber. “You’re a witness. You heard that.”
“Heard what?” Artie asked him.
I gave up. Whatever felt . . . wrong, whatever . . . anomaly my murder sense, as Mort called it, was alerting me to wasn’t coming to me. I couldn’t stand back and regard the scene objectively, professionally. Every time I tried, the realization that whatever fate Zara had suffered might well have been my fault slammed my consciousness again. I tried to detach myself, tried to see this tiny apartment in the same manner I’d survey any crime scene.
But posing the mere thought of “crime scene” left the guilt reaching for me again. In all the years I’d done my amateur sleuthing, I couldn’t remember another time when my efforts had resulted in harm to someone innocent. And if there had been one, I knew I would remember it, just as I knew that if something happened to Zara Larson it would haunt me for the rest of my days.
I felt my guilt recede in favor of determination and resolve, much more welcome feelings. This had gone far enough. Enough people had already died. And I needed a different route to get me to wherever it was I had to be—to sort through the chaos of a manuscript that had gone missing, likely for good.
The Affair was about power.
The Affair was about politics.
The Affair was about Washington.
The Affair was about the White House.
And the White House was where I needed to go.
* * *
• • •
I told Harry and Artie that I had to use the bathroom. Once inside, I eased the phone from my bag and pressed the contact on my phone that read FIRST LADY. Stephanie Albright had enlisted my help a few years back to support the cause of literacy at events all across the country. In addition to lending my own efforts to that cause, I was able to recruit a number of popular authors to join in, advancing the first lady’s personal passion project in leaps and bounds on a nationwide basis. We’d become friends in the process and she’d repeatedly reminded me that she looked forward to the opportunity to return the favor.
Much to my surprise, she answered after only a few rings, and buoyantly so.
“Jessica, how nice to hear from you!”
“Madam First Lady—,” I started to say.
“Stephanie, please. And what can I do for you, Madam Queen of Mysteries?”
“Jessica, please. And I was wondering if you could get me in to see your husband.”
Chapter Twenty-three
“The president will see you now, Mrs. Fletcher.”
I rose from a chair inside the president’s Outer Oval Office, which adjoined the Oval Office, butterflies fluttering in my stomach. I’ve lived long enough, and achieved enough success, to have met more than my share of dignitaries in my time, even two former presidents. But I’d never had occasion to meet a sitting president.
Especially under the circumstances in which I was meeting this one.
In the company of three personal secretaries of the president, I’d waited my turn, gazing out through a French-style door at the Rose Garden, which looked entirely different than it did on television, bigger and even more beautiful. I’d also used the small lavatory on two separate occasions to wash my hands, for fear of passing some germ on to the most powerful man on the planet.
“Mrs. Fletcher?”
The prompt from the president’s assistant made me realize I hadn’t moved an inch after rising from my chair, and I fell into step behind him. I hadn’t even figured out what to say to the president yet, how to broach the subject that had brought me to Washington. I’d tried rehearsing any number of approaches on the train ride down here from New York, but all of them sounded lame in my own mind. How do you tell the president about a series of murders somehow connected to an unpublished, and now missing, manuscript? How do you suggest the possibility that something amid that fiction might reflect on something very, very real? Whoever Benjamin Tally really was, I had come to grips with the fact that he was likely dead now, too, that it was ludicrous to think that whoever was behind the likes of Tommy Halperin and Francis Malloy hadn’t gotten to Tally as they’d gotten to everyone else associated with this manuscript.
And now I was about to speak to the president of the United States, to ask him . . . what exactly?
I had no idea.
“Mrs. Fletcher?” the president’s assistant prompted again.
I realized my heels had ground into the carpet, bringing me to a halt. I had to push myself to get moving again, and I followed the president’s assistant through a nearby door that led into the Oval Office. You know the old cliché about finding your heart in your mouth? I had detested it for as long as I could remember. But no more, because that was an apt description of what I was feeling in that moment.
I was more anxious than I was excited, given that this was hardly a social call and I still had absolutely no idea how I was going to bring up the subject of The Affair. Winging it had always been my preferred way of doing speaking engagements and interviews; I’m always at my best when I’m being spontaneous and at my worst when I have something prepared. But today was different. Today was about making the most of my time here and leaving with something I could hopefully act upon.
Was I here to warn or advise the president? Was I here to give him a heads-up that something nefarious seemed to be afoot, or to fill my head with more information about the subtext that might be lurking beneath the story? Thomas Rudd, Lane Barfield, A. J. Falcone, and Alicia Bond had already paid a terrible price for being associated with the manuscript, not to mention potentially the missing Zara Larson. I had no idea what my visit today might yield, what I might be able to coax out of the president.
I thought I’d be meeting him alone and was a bit unnerved to find two others present in the Oval Office. The man I recognized as Harlan Babb, a longtime politico who served as chief of staff. The woman might be Sharon Lerner, head of the White House’s communications office. They both introduced themselves and we exchanged greetings, some small talk that faded from my mind almost before it
occurred, because all of my attention was focused on the president himself.
He had risen to his feet, smiling behind that famed desk. As I moved to take one of the chairs before it, he came around the desk and took my hand in both of his.
“My wife’s told me so much about you, Mrs. Fletcher. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to meet you. I always enjoy being the second-most famous person in the Oval Office.”
The president was known for his humility and good humor, a constantly upbeat personality who exuded a confidence that was infectious. The fact that he’d suffered such a devastating personal tragedy made his optimism all the more pointed. The country embraced him, not just because he had lost a child, but because he had found hope and purpose in that despair.
“I’ve just been around longer than you, Mr. President,” I told him. “That’s all. And it’s my books that are famous, not me.”
“‘Destiny represents the sum of our deeds,’” the president quoted.
“Einstein?”
“Michael Newton. Einstein said, ‘The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than rule,’” the president quoted, serving to remind me that he was a true student of history.
I took the chair he offered before his desk. Harlan Babb and Sharon Lerner took seats opposite each other on the matching couches behind me.
I watched as, instead of retaking the chair behind his desk, the president took the one next to mine. I had no idea what the first lady had told him that resulted in this meeting, since she hadn’t asked me for a specific reason. One friend doing another friend a favor . . . I guess common courtesy stretches as far as the Oval Office.
“Much more comfortable,” he noted. “I’m glad to have this opportunity, Mrs. Fletcher, to thank you for all you’ve done for my wife. This cause is so important to her and you have no idea how much your help and participation have meant.”
“It’s the least I can do, Mr. President.”
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