A cherry red Alfa Romeo Guilia roared into the sandy parking area.
Olivia Sands breezed in and Jessica introduced her to everyone. Her man-style glasses held back an unruly nest of auburn hair. Her outfit was like every other successful career woman in D.C. except that Olivia was beautiful, about thirty-five, and trim. Jessica thought, Works out at the gym every day. Trey padded over and nudged Olivia’s leg with his nose—his way of telling her to face Jessica when she talked. “I’m so happy to be here,” Olivia said, “and out of that Washington traffic. This is like a whole ’nother world.”
Jessica noticed that the esteemed writer had said, “a whole ’nother,” so she decided it was now acceptable to use this nonsense expression. She led Olivia to the buffet, the calamari now nothing but a memory in the minds of the others. She moved her own belongings to make room for Olivia on the sofa. The guest of honor dropped her purse on the floor by the buffet table. Ashley moved in quickly to scoop up the scattered contents and return them to the purse. Jessica collected finished plates and took them to the kitchen, aware that she was still acting as if she was in charge. When Olivia finished eating, Jessica opened the session.
“I was so happy when Olivia emailed me that she would be able to join us. We are all still learning. That’s what this retreat is about. I don’t know what you can learn from us, Olivia, but I know there is a lot I can learn from you.”
“We could start with learning how to make this heavenly tzatziki,” Olivia said and everyone laughed. Sophie smiled.
All the members had brought samples of their work to read. Sophie sat nearest the door to the kitchen, still wearing her apron that said “I Don’t Need a Recipe. I’m Italian.” Alex and Ashley sat on pillows next to her. Philip Carr sprawled in a leather recliner with Atlas on his left and Jessica’s Trey and Kim on his right. Jessica patted a space on the sofa beside her and nodded to Olivia. With their ten-minute limit, most of them wouldn’t have time to read more than five pages.
“We will be hearing from everyone, but we’d like you to go first, Olivia. What have you brought for us?”
Betraying the fact that Jessica had already asked her to read first, Olivia calmly reached into her tote bag and drew out a thin sheaf of papers. “My next novel, Peril on the Potomac, is at the publishers right now, getting a final polish from their editors. It’s about a group of college kids working as pages at the Capitol and I hope you’ll check it out when it’s published. But tonight, I’d like to read an excerpt from my current work in progress. No title yet.”
For the next few minutes, she read from chapter one of the still-unnamed work, and her listeners shifted to more comfortable positions, the better to absorb what they were hearing. The words flowed smoothly. It sounded professional. When she finished, no one said anything. The silence felt awkward, but Jessica thought it meant that none of them felt qualified to comment.
Except Alex, who broke the silence. “I’m curious about how your main character can afford to live in a townhouse in Georgetown when she’s only a cub reporter. Do you know how much those houses cost?”
Olivia stiffened. “You should read The Pub on the Corner. In it, you learn that she rents this house with ten other girls and besides that, her fiancé is filthy rich.”
“So, this is a part of a series?” Alex asked.
“Not really. It’s just another book with this same main character.”
It was clear that Alex wanted an argument. He was like that, Jessica knew, and she had no intention of letting him run their retreat off the rails. She said, “I noticed that you are using the third person. Why did you choose third rather than first person?” This would move the discussion into less contentious territory, Jessica hoped. But Alex was capable of starting an argument about first versus third person as well. He could start an argument about anything.
Philip wanted to know how true her story was to the actual streets and buildings in Washington, D.C., the setting for the book. “If you read an old Sherlock Holmes story, you can follow the action on a map of London, you know.”
Alex muttered something about how London never changes.
“And you can follow the action in this book as well,” Olivia said. “But the actual houses, I have to change—house numbers and such—because I’d get sued if I put a murder in someone’s actual house.”
Several listeners jotted something on their own paper.
Jessica looked at Ashley. She looked like she had seen a ghost.
Gradually, the discussion veered off the subject to how to get published. Jessica steered them back to the nuts and bolts of writing. This was supposed to be about writing. Not the business of writing. There was something about the excerpt Olivia had read that bothered her. It was something like, “It was lucky you called me when you did. Fentanyl is nothing to mess with.” Unless Jessica had missed it, the story had nothing to do with Fentanyl—or any sort of drugs. This was about political dirty tricks between factions at the White House. Olivia was trying to expand her view. Jessica decided that she must have misunderstood the word Fentanyl. When lip-reading, this was easy to do.
“Who wants to go next?” Jessica asked. No one spoke up. “Okay, I’ll go next myself. I’m brave.” Jessica was glad she still retained the “ear” of a hearing person. To her listeners, she did not sound like she was deaf. She read a passage from her current work in progress, a murder mystery about yachtsmen on the Chesapeake Bay. When finished, she had to field a slew of questions. Her fellow Sand Fiddlers were not the least bit shy about picking her story apart.
Somewhat bruised by the criticisms, Jessica, nevertheless, was glad to note that the ice was now broken and things were getting lively. Sophie read the prologue from Seafood, Eastern Shore Style, “Because,” she said, “there’s not much literary skill involved in writing a recipe.”
Philip read a passage from his latest police procedural, set in Atlanta. Atlas, hearing his master’s voice, clomped across the room from his pillow to Philip’s side, knocking over an end table and a glass of sangria in the process.
Jessica called on Ashley Fagan next.
“I...I’m not quite ready... not yet—”
Everyone looked at her. They didn’t understand. She was sitting there with several pages of printed text on her lap. In what way was she not quite ready? She turned, red-faced, to her husband, as if for help. Jessica sat forward, her head on a tilt. Alex looked at his wife quizzically. Confused. What did Ashley think she would do this weekend? Why was she here?
Jessica said, “This isn’t a test, you know. We are not here to judge you, Ashley. You know that. We’re here to help each other. That’s how we improve.”
Olivia’s right eyebrow shot up. She looked at Ashley like an owl eyeing a mouse.
The others all looked confused and a bit embarrassed. Embarrassed for Ashley.
Alex asked, “Is it that headache again?” He stood and walked across to his wife. To the group he said, “It’s a migraine. She’s been fighting it for three days. Come on, Ashley. Time for bed.”
Ashley left with her manuscript rolled up in her hand. The couple disappeared down the stairs that led to their room. Alex reappeared a minute later and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator in the kitchen. “We’ll have to save my wife’s deathless prose for tomorrow. She’s taken a pill.”
Philip and Alex read from their own works and Olivia brought up a couple of issues about the accuracy of Alex’s descriptions of Italy. Several listeners yawned. Jessica, reminding herself she was not the leader, suggested they call it a night. She helped Sophie carry plates and glasses to the kitchen. Straightening up the living room, she sopped up as much sangria as she could with a kitchen towel and checked to make sure the exterior doors were locked. If and when the two people that hadn’t arrived yet came in, she hoped they would be able to find the doorbell. Sophie’s window was close to it. She reminded herself, again, that she was not in charge.
Jessica retreated to her own room, picked her toiletrie
s from her suitcase, and went to the shower. Letting the water wash over her tense shoulders, she resolved to ignore personality clashes and get on with her writing. Writers were artists and artists were temperamental. Returning to her bedroom, she dropped the dogs’ beds beside her own and pulled her laptop out. She would try to get some writing done before she went to sleep. She crawled in between the fresh sheets and stuffed pillows behind her back, setting the laptop on her thighs.
Jessica noticed that Trey was pacing the small room. He never did that. She opened the sliding glass door to the fenced patio, but Trey headed for the door to the stairway that led up to the living room. “What’s up, boy? Don’t you want to go out?”
Kim bounced and yipped as if she was trying to say something. Jessica had long ago learned not to ignore Trey or Kim when they were acting strangely. They might simply be smelling the calamari everyone else got to eat, but maybe not. Trey nudged the interior door with his nose again and Jessica opened it.
Both dogs ran across the living room and to the stairs leading up to the top floor. Jessica started to follow them but she saw headlights sweeping past the north windows. She figured it had to be the Harlows, mother and son. Jessica remembered they had said they lived in Alexandria, about four hours to the north. She stood at the window and watched as a mature woman and a young-looking man grabbed luggage and climbed the exterior stairs. When they came in, they talked briefly, introducing themselves as Ruth Harlow and her son, Daniel. Quickly, Jessica showed them to their rooms downstairs, the last ones available. The rooms were adjacent to the furnace and AC unit, which came on at odd times and sounded like trains passing through. Jessica didn’t mention that this was the reason the two rooms had not been taken already. They thanked her and began unpacking. Jessica left them and returned to the living room where she found the dogs pawing at the baby gate stretched across the bottom of the stairs that went to the top floor.
At the top of the stairs, she stepped into a small sitting area. Beyond it, stood an open door. This, she remembered, was what the brochure called the master bedroom. Beside it, another door led to a large bathroom. Trey was pacing and his face showed clear signs of distress. Something was wrong. She approached the bedroom and applied a hesitant knock to the open door. The room was almost completely dark. Jessica closed her eyes for a second to let her pupils adjust. She saw Olivia’s bed, the covers pulled up to a tousled head. A dark lump lay on the floor next to the headboard.
“Olivia?” No answer. Jessica realized she would have to risk pissing the writer off. “Olivia?”
She slipped softly to the head of the bed and touched a shoulder beneath the mass of curly hair. Nothing. Taking a deep breath, she shook the shoulders firmly. The head rocked side to side. Jessica’s hands shook as she pushed the hair away from the face and saw the wide-open eyes of a woman whose expression left no doubt that she had died in terror.
CHAPTER TWO
Jessica stepped back, unsure of what to do next. The room was in darkness except for a shaft of moonlight slanting through an east-facing window. She moved cautiously to the wall near the door, found a switch, and flipped it, turning on an overhead light. The lump she had seen on the floor was a pillow. It was a mate to another one that still lay on the bed except that the one on the floor had no pillowcase. She picked it up, and then steeled herself for another look at that wide-eyed stare. Was this the look of someone waking up to the pain of a coronary? A stroke? A frightening sight? She had no way of knowing.
She felt anxious feet pawing at her legs. Kim begged to be picked up. Trey pressed his front paws on the corner of the bed. He was staring at Olivia’s inert form, as if he was confused. Jessica patted both dogs, hoping her touch would calm them. Get help. Pulling the dogs by their collars out of the room, she shut the door, ran down two flights of stairs, and into Philip’s room. His light was still on, she could see by the yellow line along the bottom of his door, so she knocked and barged in simultaneously. Philip was still up and standing at the glass door that led to his side of the patio. “Something’s wrong with Olivia,” was all she had to say. Together, they returned to Olivia’s room.
As a former policeman, Philip knew what to do. He placed a finger under Olivia’s nose, listened, and soon determined that she was not breathing. He pulled her off the bed, knelt beside her on the floor, and started CPR. But it was no use. “She’s gone, I think.”
“What now?” Jessica asked.
“Phone. Where’s my phone?”
Jessica fetched Philip’s phone for him and, a few minutes later, they both watched as EMTs bundled Olivia Sands onto a gurney and carried her down the stairs to a waiting ambulance. By this time, everyone in the house was up. They all stood watching out the windows, confused and quietly waiting for the flashing lights of the ambulance to leave.
Philip, with his police experience, knew what was likely happening in the ambulance and what would happen at the hospital. “They will know, before they even get to the hospital, that she’s dead. Trust me. She’s dead.” He turned to his housemates, now sitting quietly in the same seats they had recently vacated. No one seemed to notice the two new people now sitting on the sofa. “Did they take her purse?” he asked no one in particular. “Good. They will notify next of kin. They will have to do an autopsy, which will probably tell them why she died, but they won’t tell us. We’re not family.”
“But how will we know?” Sophie said, voicing the concern in everyone’s head.
Philip stood and looked up the stairs. “I’m going back up there, but I don’t want any company.” He looked around, making deliberate eye contact with every person. “Sometime tomorrow, that room will be taped off. Crime scene. I’ll bet my pension on it.”
Seven heads snapped around sharply.
“What about me, Philip?” Jessica said, acknowledging the idea that was probably in everyone else’s head—that this looked like foul play. “I was up there before you were, so if you’re thinking about preserving the crime scene, my fingerprints are already there. I helped you put her on the floor.”
Philip scowled, then heaved a sigh. “If you insist. Come on, but leave your dogs here.”
Jessica did as he said, leaving Trey and Kim in her bedroom with the door to the stairway closed.
The bed covers were so tangled it seemed obvious to Jessica, now that Philip had called it a crime scene, that there had been a tussle. Auburn hairs were scattered about. The fitted bottom sheet had been pulled loose from beneath the mattress. Jessica picked up the pillow that was still lying on the floor. “What happened to the pillowcase?” she said.
Philip picked up the other pillow, still bearing a couple of long auburn curls. It’s cover was a pale yellow. The pillow on the floor was white. “Maybe it had no pillowcase to start with.”
“No way,” Jessica said. “I inspected this room before Olivia got here. It was in perfect shape. If one of the pillows had had no cover, I would have noticed.”
They searched the room thoroughly and agreed. Only one pillowcase.
Jessica resisted the temptation to fold Olivia’s scattered clothes and put them away. She wondered if Olivia would be embarrassed at the mess she had left, then chided herself for the thought. How stupid! She had left a huge body of work—more than two dozen books—many friends and people to remember her, and no one would care in the least whether she had left her room neat. Where is her phone? Her phone would have her contact list and that would be essential for notifying her—did she have a significant other? Children? Parents? It occurred to Jessica that she knew almost nothing about the woman. Who was her agent? All these people needed to be told. But not yet. She returned to the living room downstairs and found everyone else already there, sitting in stunned silence.
“The doors were all locked except for the one by the kitchen.” Philip stepped over to the door that led to a porch and to a stairway down to the ground.
Alex Archer spoke up. “You’re forgetting about the doors to the patio in your room
and Jessie’s room. Were they locked?”
“They were locked and, for the last hour, Jessie and I were both in our rooms. I can promise you no one walked through my room while I was there.”
Jessica started to make the same promise, then remembered the long shower she had taken. “My patio door was locked. I’m sure.”
Sophie shivered. She drew her bathrobe tightly around her chubby waistline. “He—if it was a he, would have walked right past my room if he came in that way.” She nodded toward the door that led to the stairs and down to the parking area.
The group hung around in the big room, muttering comments that did nothing to calm their fears or help them figure out what had happened. Nothing made sense.
“It had to be after we went to bed. We would have noticed a man walking in when we were all right here.”
“Why do we keep saying ‘he?’ ”
“He could have come in when we were all eating. We might not have noticed.”
“But the dogs would have noticed. They’d have raised Cain.”
“How did he get here? Did anyone hear a car after Olivia drove in?” No one answered.
“It must have been one of us.”
“Oooh! Don’t say that!”
Philip stood and asked, “Has anyone seen a flashlight around here?”
“In the kitchen. On top of the fridge,” said Sophie.
“Why?” Jessica asked.
“Going out,” Philip said. “Walkabout.”
“Need company?” Alex asked.
“No.”
Jessica thought Philip’s curt answer seemed rude, but didn’t feel inclined to worry about it. These two had a power struggle between them—one that no one else cared about. She figured that Philip, the old detective, wanted to explore the area for clues before the local law enforcement descended. He would love to beat the Sheriff to the punch in solving this crime. Alex, on the other hand, knew all about living an adventurous life and gallivanting around Europe, but very little about the finer points of detection. This could be his chance to learn something he could use in his stories.
To Fetch a Killer Page 2