Page 6 of Always Murder (The Last Picks #9)

In the end, Millie dropped me off at Hemlock House, and then she went to look for Paul.

I offered to go with her, but Millie insisted it would be better if she looked for him on her own. I thought part of that might have been because I hadn’t been thrilled with the spectacle at Clatsop Parcel and Freight, so I apologized for getting upset, and I insisted I wanted to help. No matter what I said, though, Millie stayed firm: she wanted to look for Paul alone.

So, I ended up in the den.

Over the last year and a half, the den had become my unofficial—and, by now, my official—workspace. It was a beautiful room, with built-in bookshelves and wingback chairs and a window that looked out on Hemlock House’s front lawn. I’d done some nesting: cozy blankets, notepads, a million pens, and a lot of half-finished and abandoned mugs of cocoa and coffee. Sometimes, Bobby didn’t understand that nesting was an integral part of the writing process. Nesting was as important as brainstorming or outlining or—yes, even drafting. Nesting was essential. I’d tried to explain this to Bobby once, and he’d nodded, and then he’d made me take all the mugs to the kitchen and pick up the candy wrappers.

To my credit, I was making surprisingly good progress on my novel. Surprising in the sense that—well, okay, in a lot of senses. And despite the fact that it didn’t exactly have a title yet. Or an ending. And it only sometimes had a middle.

But it was good. I could tell it was good. At least, on the days when I wasn’t riddled with self-doubt, I could tell it was good. That’s one of the weird things about authors—at least, about me, and I think it’s true for some others. There are times when we’re working—writing or revising or whatever—and that little voice, the one that says everything we’ve ever written has as much value as the jumble on the back of a cereal box, quiets down, and we can feel that something we’re working on is good. It’s not all the time. And it’s not everything—I mean, I write my fair share of absolute trash. And this isn’t taking into account all the days when I am riddled with self-doubt.

But the book was good. It was going to be good, I could tell. And that was the most exciting feeling in the world. (Not counting when Bobby gives me that certain smile and rolls over in bed.) It was also, frankly, terrifying.

Because if it was good—and if I finished it—eventually, I’d have to send it to an agent.

That thought made me want to do some more nesting.

Instead, I snuggled up with my favorite blanket, grabbed my laptop, and set to work.

The problem I was currently struggling with was plot. Specifically, when in the story Will Gower (my intrepid detective) would find his first dead body. See, one of the staples in PI stories—and Will Gower was the most intrepidest of private investigators—was for the PI to get hired to do something (like take pictures of a cheating spouse, for example, or do a background check on an applicant) and, along the way, stumble onto a murder.

Sometimes, that’s intentional. For example, the client might be trying to frame the private investigator, to make him take the fall. And sometimes, it’s bad luck—the PI has gotten caught up in something larger than himself. Cozy mysteries do it too, or anything with an amateur sleuth. Pippi Parker—one of Hastings Rock’s local mystery writers—had a whole series of laundromat mysteries where the hapless laundress (is that the right word?) inevitably got caught up in murders she had no business solving. In Laundry List Murders , I think she was in charge of cleaning table linens for an American Legion banquet and when she showed up, she found a dead body stuffed in the bingo cage. (It must have been a huge bingo cage, but that wasn’t my biggest problem with the story. And yes, I still read the whole book.) Sometimes the sleuth is happily going about their normal life, doing their regular job, and they find a body. Or sometimes a friend asks for a favor, and they find a body. But it always ended up being a body. It was always murder.

A little voice at the back of my head said, For example, maybe your friend asks you to help prove that her brother didn’t steal some packages.

Except this wasn’t like that at all, I told myself. This was just me helping Millie. This was real life, not some plotty little mystery novel. And anyway—proof!—we’d gone to the shipping warehouse, and we’d talked to Luz, and there hadn’t been a single dead body.

There.

That was it.

The end.

I wiggled around some more, trying to get comfortable so I could focus on my manuscript.

Except—

No, I told that little voice in my head. Shut up.

Except now Paul was missing.

And let me tell you: I’m about as dedicated and committed and focused as they come, but if there’s one thing that can really ruin a writing session, it’s the possibility that the brother of one of your best friends has been murdered.

With a tremendous amount of regret, I decided I would have to stop writing for the day. There were more important things demanding my attention. Paul might be in danger. A fellow human being’s life was at stake. Besides, I’d made some pretty good, uh, progress today. I mean, not that you could see it on the page, but it was there in the conceptual work, plus the mental effort I’d exerted, and the prewriting, etc., etc.

I checked the time on my phone.

If I left now, I could still take Christine up on her invitation to go to the Christmas tree farm with the rest of the Naught family.

Yay.