Page 10 of Broken Bird (The Last Picks #4)

At the ungodly hour of ten-thirty, I hauled my sorry keister out of bed. By noon, I was on my way to the Wyndmere.

It was one of those rare days that came during winter on the coast: the sky an immaculate blue so pale it could have been ice, the sun high and bright, and the ocean’s gray green looking like it went on forever. It was also freezing (for the coast, anyway), and I turned all the vents in the Jeep toward me as I drove south.

When I’d gotten up that morning, Bobby had already left for work (big surprise), and there was no sign of his impromptu campout in the hall. I wasn’t sure if he’d ended up spending the night there or not, but knowing Bobby, I thought the odds were good. Indira had gone out, but she’d been kind enough to leave me johnnycakes, which I ate until I thought I might be close to breaking a world record.

This was my first time going to the Wyndmere. I’d heard about it, but it wasn’t the kind of place I’d ever had a reason to visit. It was, technically, a hotel, although that’s a little like saying that the White House is a house. I mean, yes, people came to the Wyndmere for vacations, but the people who came to the Wyndmere weren’t the same people who got excited when they found discounted Halloween candy at the Keel Haul General Store. (Indira had to hide it from me after I made myself sick two days in a row.)

My first impression of it was a narrow private drive screened by hedges, where I left the state highway and slowly made my way in the direction of the water. After a hundred yards of weaving back and forth, I cleared the hedges and found myself staring up at what looked like a castle: a sprawling affair of granite, with towers and turrets and buttresses and so much stained glass. It was located on a bluff, with a perfect view of the ocean, and it looked like it could have eaten Hemlock House for dinner.

Everything about the Wyndmere was perfect. Perfect landscaping (admittedly, easier in winter). Perfect holiday decorations (leaning toward Christmas, yes, although still safely ecumenical). Even a perfect driveway and parking lot. If you ever find yourself the owner of a Class V haunted mansion located at the end of a long driveway, you’ll find that you suddenly have a new interest in—nay, passion for—blacktop.

I parked and went inside, and it was more of the same: thick rugs, fresh flowers, crystal chandeliers that hung from high, echoing ceilings. Christmas trees and garlands and what appeared to be a throne in red and gold where I figured Santa might hold court. A gas fire burned in a fireplace, and the light danced along polished brass and dark wood. The front desk looked like it was about a mile long, with several happy clerks waiting, presumably, to check you in. Maybe rich people came to the coast for vacation even in the winter. Maybe Christmas at Wyndmere was a tradition. Whatever the reason, the lobby seemed busier than anything in Hastings Rock.

The young woman who helped me was Native American, with an easy, practiced smile. Her nametag said SANDRA.

“I was wondering,” I said, “if it’s not too much trouble, if you could tell me which room Ophelia Crowe is staying in. She texted me her info, but my phone died on the drive over.”

(Note: There’s a fine tradition of detectives tricking unwary hotel clerks into revealing a suspect’s room number, but this never works in more modern mystery novels. Hotels have privacy policies, there’s the threat of lawsuits, etc. But hey, it was worth a shot, right?)

Just in case, I added my best smile.

“You’re here to see Mrs. Crowe?” Sandra asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Wonderful! Mrs. Crowe asked us to tell you that she’ll be out walking the bluffs. She likes the south trail. As long as you stay on the trail, you shouldn’t have any problem finding her.”

Okay, so that definitely never worked in mystery novels. But I wasn’t going to look a gift, er, suspect location in the mouth. I settled on “Thank you so much.” And I gave her a dose of the smile again. Maybe that was what Will Gower needed—a boyish charm.

Or maybe not, because she looked more closely at me and added, “And if you need something for your headache, I can offer you Tylenol or Advil.”

I found the trails without any problem—clear signage led me from the hotel’s front door to the sea cliffs, past the winter-dead gardens, a reflecting pool ruffled by the wind, and a gazebo where, I was sure, many a wedding had been performed (probably at sunset). I turned south. At the base of the cliffs, waves crashed, churned, and drew back again, filling the air with the sound of their restlessness. The wind didn’t let up either; it made a constantly shifting high-pitched note as it blew against me, and after about three minutes of the cold and the noise, I was ready to take Sandra up on some Tylenol. The sun stood high enough to banish shadows, and the world looked like an oversaturated photograph. Maybe a quarter mile along the trail, a lone figure dressed in black stood on an outcropping of stone, staring out at the water.

I didn’t have any objection to people dressing all in black, but after last night, it did raise some unpleasant considerations. I thought about calling Bobby. And then I thought about how weirdly horrible last night had been. That strange mixture of concern—the blanket, the hot chocolate—juxtaposed with the detached questions, the impersonal tone. Like I was one more victim for Deputy Bobby to take care of.

When I got closer, I saw that my first impression had been right. She was dressed all in black (she even had a veil), and when the wind blew, her long, blond hair floated behind her. She made me think of a Hitchcock character. The sound of the waves covered my steps as I approached; the ocean was choppy today, stirred by wind and tide to froth at the base of the cliffs. Farther out, the ridges of water moved like teeth.

“Mrs. Crowe?”

Ophelia Crowe glanced over her shoulder at me. Younger than I expected, but not young. Pretty in a put-together way: the hair, like I said, and the neat, dark lipstick. But what held me were her eyes. They were so dark, and the day was so bright, I could see myself in them like they were glass.

“Dash Dane,” I said. “Jonny and Patricia’s son. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Something changed in her expression—a hint of a frown that only touched her forehead—and then she said, “You’ve got your mother’s eyes.” The wind ripped the words away, but when she spoke again, it was in that same quiet tone. “I’d forgotten you lived around here. Marshall said something, but…”

It was hard to tell if she trailed off or if the words were carried away.

“Mrs. Crowe, I know this must be a difficult time for you, but I need your help. I was wondering if you have a few minutes to talk.”

Her eyes still held my tiny reflection, and it made me think of the old term for a mirror: a looking glass. She gathered her hair, but when she released it a moment later, the wind spun it out into the air again. With a nod, she started inland.

As we moved away from the bluff, the crash and shriek of water and air faded, as did the salty tang of the sea. A whiff of something else reached me—a musky scent that seemed more like a man’s cologne than something I’d expect a woman to wear. When Ophelia pulled her hair over her shoulder, I caught the fragrance again.

“I hope you won’t think I’m out of line,” I said. “I’m sure the sheriff has talked to you about Marshall’s death. Maybe you’ve heard they have a suspect.”

“The woman,” Ophelia said. “The author. Marshall had her in his sights, didn’t he? And instead, the hunter becomes the hunted.”

It was such a strange thing to say that, for a while, I said nothing.

“That was unkind,” Ophelia said. “I never thought of myself as an unkind person, but love can turn you into someone you never thought you’d be, don’t you think? It feels like love right up until the moment you realize it’s hate. Maybe it’s been hate all along. Maybe that’s been the real you all along. Do you know what I mean?”

Again, I had to think. And I found myself thinking again of Bobby, of the night before. Of how angry I’d gotten with him over—what? A look? A half-glimpsed expression on his face, which, if I were being totally honest with myself, might have been nothing more than shadow—and, of course, my imagination.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not particularly good at relationships, so I probably don’t qualify as an expert opinion. But I think there’s some truth to that. Love is a powerful emotion. Desire. Even friendship. And when we don’t feel like those feelings are returned, well, I think we all swing the other direction. At least for a little while.”

“Exactly,” Ophelia said, the word brisk with excitement. “Because those emotions are tied up with our sense of self. Because when we desire someone, when we extend friendship, when we offer love, we’re really offering ourselves. And being rejected, having your self be rejected—that’s true pain.” In a strange voice, she added, “It’s so much easier to be angry than to be in pain.”

When we reached the Wyndmere’s manicured grounds, Ophelia turned down a cobblestone path that led to a trellised walkway. Winter-brown vegetation climbed the trellises. Roses, I thought. In the summer, with a night breeze stirring up the perfume of the flowers, it would probably be magical. It was slightly less magical when I felt like my eyebrows were about to freeze off. Ophelia led me under the arched trellises, where the shadows felt twice as cold. When a particularly violent gust blew at our backs, the dead roses rattled overhead, and they sounded like pieces of bone shaken in a leather cup.

We emerged into a rectangle of pale winter sunlight, where a bench was sheltered from the wind. Ophelia sat and gestured for me to join her. In the lee of the trellises, the absence of noise created a silence that was still and smooth and profound, like a lake about to freeze.

“Is that what happened with you and Marshall?” I asked.

She studied me with those polished-glass eyes. And then she laughed—not loudly, and not too much. Amusement more than hilarity. A keen-edged amusement that made me shift in my seat until, suddenly, the thought came that maybe she was laughing at herself.

“You’re investigating,” she said, and that brisk excitement was back. “And let me guess: you think I killed him.”

Maybe it was that…enthusiasm that left me off balance, because I said, “Did you?”

“No. But I can see why you might think that.”

“Why would I think that?”

“Well, the divorce. The pre-nuptial agreement. The fact that I’m staying at another hotel, instead of with him. We argued the night he died. I was the last person to see him in private. I had access to his room, his medication, his scotch. He trusted me.” Her face had a strangely animated quality that seemed almost childlike. “What am I missing?”

“You are dressed rather dramatically as a widow.”

That made her laugh again.

My brain raced as I tried to take it all in. I’d meant what I’d said: the widow’s weeds were a little…over the top, especially for someone who had, presumably, followed her husband out here to get a divorce. And on top of that, she’d told me several key pieces of information that I hadn’t known. I might have guessed that, under normal circumstances, Ophelia would have access to his medication. But access to his room at the Rock On Inn? And even more interesting, her statement that she had access to his scotch. The sheriff had told me Marshall had been drinking, and they suspected the combination of alcohol and an overdose of diazepam had caused his death, but until now, nobody had mentioned scotch.

“The Wyndmere,” she said when she’d stopped laughing. “They put this whole outfit together for me when they heard what happened. Do you know, I think they found it a little fun? Almost like a challenge. And when I saw the veil…” Her mouth twitched. “I imagine you already know this, but I still find myself surprised every once in a while: money makes anything possible. It’s a little like magic in that way.”

I nodded. There was some truth to that. Another of my parents’ friends—a writer who will not be named—loved to do a trick when we went out to eat. He’d write something down on a piece of paper before dinner, and then, when we got to the restaurant, he’d order it. Even if they didn’t have it. He’d order salmon. He’d order king crab. He’d order a wagyu ribeye. He liked the server’s stammering attempts to explain that no, I’m sorry, it’s not possible. And he liked offering more money. And more. Until finally, the manager or the chef or somebody agreed that, yes, for that much money, they’d send someone to the store, and would the table like hors d’oeuvres while they waited? (Needless to say, I hated going out to eat with this guy.)

But I wondered if the Wyndmere’s staff had been happy—and excited—by another challenge. Like, maybe Ophelia had asked for an all-black outfit the night before. Maybe she’d asked, not so long ago, for a particular bottle of scotch.

“You mentioned an argument,” I said. “Before Marshall died.”

She nodded. “I don’t have an alibi; the sheriff knows, of course. I was in his room just before the reading. We said terrible things to each other. Screamed them, I suppose. And then I left.”

“That’s it?”

“Should I say, ‘You had to be there’?”

“What were you arguing about?”

“The divorce. Marshall had been dragging it out for years. He didn’t want to get divorced. He wanted to fight all the time. He wanted us to make each other miserable. But he didn’t want a divorce. Because women don’t leave Chase Thunder. Women get left by Chase Thunder.”

Which was true, from what I knew of Marshall’s books. But I also knew that Chase Thunder went for tall, athletic brunettes, and Ophelia didn’t fit any of those criteria.

“You were the one who wanted the divorce.”

“I was unhappy. I am unhappy, I guess I should say. Clinically, if you ask my legion of therapists and psychiatrists.” She shifted on the bench, hugging herself and chafing her arms, and for the first time I realized she wasn’t wearing a coat. The temperature on a thermometer probably hovered in the low fifties, and the sun helped, but it’s hard to explain that fifty degrees on the coast is very different from fifty degrees in, say, Arizona. I slipped out of my canvas jacket and draped it around her shoulders.

One blond eyebrow arched delicately. “Such a gentleman.”

“I regretted it immediately.”

A smile warmed her face. “I understand why it looks like I might have killed Marshall. I imagine that most people have trouble believing the same thing that Marshall couldn’t quite bring himself to believe: that I simply don’t care about the money. I grew up without money. I lived a happy life without money before I met Marshall—working as a secretary in an art gallery, working in an art supply shop, scraping by. For heaven’s sake, I even swept floors in a glassblower’s studio. It seemed natural to believe that I would be happy again once I was away from Marshall and his money, but my therapists tell me that this is a fallacy.”

As someone who currently did not have any money (although I knew I had a lot of privilege in the form of my parents), I was tempted to agree with the therapists. All I said, though, was “Is that why you came out here? To tell Marshall you’d accepted the terms of the divorce?”

“It took me a long time to realize that if I wanted to leave, all I had to do was leave.”

“And what did he say?”

“He was furious. I told you: women didn’t leave Chase Thunder, and Marshall never could separate himself from Chase. Did you know many authors have that problem? Their characters tend to be…unintentionally autobiographical might be a polite way to say it. Or maybe, better said, an idealized self.”

That made a little buzzer go off at the back of my head, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what, exactly, had raised the alarm. After a moment, I said, “Did he sign the divorce papers?”

“I’m not sure,” Ophelia said, her gaze moving away from me. “I left them with him.”

It was the first time I was sure she was lying to me.

“Mrs. Crowe, someone told me that Marshall kept a tight hold on his manuscripts before they were published. Only a few people had access to them. Is that true?”

“It is.”

“And were you one of them?”

A hint of a smile. “I was.”

“So, you read the manuscript of the first Titus Brooks novel?”

“ Shadow Cargo ,” she said. “I told him it’s a terrible title. Although I’m not sure what you’re supposed to call it when the plot is nothing more than a pretext for Titus to have sex as many times as he can with the wife of the captain. Marshall never shied away from a sex scene, but Shadow Cargo is closer to romantic suspense than an honest-to-God thriller. I told Marshall his readers were going to crucify him if he put it out.”

Maybe, I thought, but that kind of thing rarely fazed a publisher—because whether Marshall’s fans loved it or hated it, they’d still buy it, and that was what mattered.

“Do you know why someone would want a copy of that manuscript?”

She frowned. “There are always readers who want early access; honestly, there’s probably even a market for that kind of thing. And, of course, the manuscript would be even more valuable now that Marshall is dead.”

“But not that valuable,” I said. “I mean, someone wouldn’t be able to sell it to a publisher, pass it off as their own work, that kind of thing. It might be valuable to a collector for a few thousand dollars, but eventually, Marshall’s estate—you, I guess—will move forward with publication.”

“I’m not sure that I will, actually. As I told you, I don’t think it’s a particularly good book.”

I hesitated, trying to decide if I wanted to play my next card—what I hoped would be an ace.

“What if someone else had a reason to want that manuscript to disappear? Not forever—that’s not possible, because Elodie has a copy of the file. But what if someone wanted to keep the manuscript out of the investigation?”

That little forehead frown came back. “My first thought is that if you want something to remain unnoticed, then stealing it is a poor choice—it only draws attention to the object in question. But it’s also the kind of thing that might go unnoticed for a time, and someone might assume that, in the chaos, the manuscript was lost, or picked up by a fan, or thrown away by an overzealous custodian. If it were simply a matter of buying time…”

“But why? That’s the real question, isn’t it? Why would someone care so much about that manuscript?” I waited. The wind rustled the dead roses. “You can’t think of any reason why someone might want to make that manuscript disappear, if only temporarily?”

Ophelia opened her mouth. Then she paused, and when she spoke, that excitement came back into her voice. “But you know, don’t you? You already have an idea, and that’s why you’re asking me—to see if I’ll confess. Am I right?”

“I think there’s at least one possible reason.”

“Let me guess. There’s something particular about this manuscript—maybe it has fingerprints on it, or there’s biological evidence. No?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Because if that were true, I thought, someone wouldn’t have bothered stealing the copy I’d printed out at home.

“Perhaps it has an encoded message. Microdot technology, like they used in World War II. All that information packed into the dot of an i.” She paused like she expected me to laugh. When I didn’t, she said, “I’m getting closer.”

“Maybe.”

“The obvious answer is that it somehow incriminates someone. That narrows the range of suspects considerably, doesn’t it? Because only the people who have read the manuscript would know that it was incriminating, and as you said, that is a small pool of people. Elodie, of course. Hayes. Whichever editor acquired the book. A few writer friends who workshop stories with Marshall. And, of course, me. And since you’re here, talking to me, I assume that you believe it somehow incriminates me.”

When the breeze died, the smell of winterkill filled the air—the brittle climbers, the brown grass, a hint of vegetable matter wet and decomposing.

“Well,” she said. That briskness was still in her voice, but now there was a trace of something else. “What is it?”

“In the Titus Brooks story, do you remember who killed the captain?”

“Ah. The wife. Well, that does seem like a bit of a stretch.”

I shrugged. “Not just the wife. She has an accomplice. He’s a shipping broker, or something like that. Kind of a…business acquaintance, I suppose you could say.”

“Good God.” That amused little laugh. “You think Hayes and I planned to kill him. And he knew what we were planning, and he put it in that book, like a trail of breadcrumbs in case something happened to him. But you’ve made at least one assumption that’s wrong, you know. You assumed Marshall’s manuscript would stay the same. But they never did—he was always changing things, right up until the end. The wife might have become another victim. The shipping broker might have turned into a reluctant ally. He was notorious for changing the stories drastically—that’s why there’s a market for manuscripts of his novels.”

“All of that may be true,” I said. “But someone wants that manuscript, Mrs. Crowe. And they’re willing to hurt other people to get it.”

“You know, you might be on to something? It seems so outlandishly convoluted, but…” She straightened and hugged my jacket tighter around her. “Do you know who sold the Titus Brooks manuscript?”

“You mean his agent? I assumed it was Hayes.”

“Of course. Everyone assumes Hayes sold it, because he’s Marshall’s agent. But Hayes didn’t sell it. Marshall did. He sold it to the editor himself. Cut Hayes out completely.” She sounded slightly vexed as she said, “I honestly think he did it just to hurt him; Lord knows he didn’t need the money.”

That was certainly new information. In traditional publishing, the typical route was that an author acquired an agent, and the agent pitched the manuscript to editors at publishing houses, who then acquired the book. Agents received a percentage of the advance (the money paid to the author to acquire the book), and then, if the book continued to earn royalties, the agent would receive a percentage of those as well. In other words, making deals was how agents earned their livings. And while it wasn’t unheard of for an author to make a deal with an editor, without an agent, it wasn’t the norm. It certainly wasn’t the norm to make a deal that cut your current agent out of the process. I wasn’t even sure of the legality of it—publishing contracts had all sorts of bizarre clauses—but that didn’t seem to have stopped Marshall.

It also explained something that had puzzled me ever since my conversation with Elodie: why had Hayes flown out here, and why had his arrival been unexpected? Now I knew—because Marshall had dropped him, and Hayes was trying to win him back.

“Do you know who gave Marshall that bottle of scotch?” Ophelia asked.

Her words broke my reverie. I looked up. And then I frowned.

“Precisely,” she said. “Hayes knew what Marshall liked. He often brought gifts as…tribute, I suppose.”

The bottle of scotch again.

I opened my mouth to ask about the scotch—among other things, I wanted to know when Hayes had given it to Marshall, when Marshall had opened it, and the last time Ophelia had seen it.

Before I could ask, though, the wind dropped off, and a familiar voice rang out in the silence.

“Keep the camera on me, Christian.” There was no mistaking the sound of Pippi in full production. “That’s right, like that.”

“Her good side, dummy,” Dylan ordered.

“Don’t call me dummy!” Presumably, that was Christian.

“Don’t be a dummy then.”

“Mom!”

Like a lot of moms, Pippi apparently had selective hearing. “Carter, baby, you have to angle the reflector so Mommy gets the light. We want Mommy to look her best, don’t we?”

A bleating little answer, too soft for me to make out the words, suggested that baby Carter was not pleased with the feedback.

“What’s all that?” Ophelia asked.

“Trust me,” I said. “You don’t want to know.” And then a thought hit me: “Holy heck. You didn’t invite her, did you?”

“Invite whom?”

“You left instructions at the desk for where I could find you. But you didn’t know I was coming.”

Ophelia gave me a startled look. “I left instructions for the sheriff. She said she’d be stopping by.”

I fought off a groan and twisted to peer down the trellised pathway. Pippi stood a few yards off in a pose (and outfit) that could only be described as Carmen Sandiego meets a crusty 1940s newsroom editor—with a dash, maybe, of His Girl Friday . The trench coat and hat were Carmen Sandiego. The vest, suspenders, and (I kid you not) cigar—well, you get the idea.

“Now, I’m going to say, ‘Did you or did you not steal your husband’s manuscript to cover up your plan to murder him with the assistance of his agent, Jamie Hayes?’ And then Christian, sweetheart, you pan to Ophelia. Got it? This is very important. This could be Mommy’s big break.”

“You’re going to crush it, Mom,” Dylan said with (let’s all admit it) endearingly genuine enthusiasm.

Perfect, I thought. This was perfect. Sheriff Acosta would be thrilled to discover me and the entire cast and crew of Pippi Parker Productions (a Pippi Parker Company) turning the investigation into a three-ring circus and, in the process, ruining any chance at getting Ophelia to talk.

“We should probably—” I began as I turned back to Ophelia.

And that’s when I noticed she was gone.

I jogged to the edge of the trellis and peered out. Ophelia was already halfway to the hotel, and it looked like she was trying to break the land speed record for power walking. She certainly didn’t appear to have any interest in continuing our conversation, and I figured if I tried to follow up at the hotel, I’d be met with a wall of politely stony silence.

“No, Carter. On me, on me. You have to—not in my eyes!”

I slipped around the trellis, choosing discretion as the better part of valor, and bumped into Sheriff Acosta.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

She gave me a long look, and then her gaze moved to the sound of Pippi’s voice. “That’s more or less what I was thinking.”