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TWENTY-TWO

The poets at the slam were more entertaining than I could have ever imagined. While there were a few serious ones among the crowd, several of them offered up funny poems or limericks that were apropos for a pub crowd. Throughout the night, I kept a close eye on the mayor.

When he was on his fourth pint, I decided to make my move.

Lizzie’s twin instinct must have kicked in when I stood. She grabbed my hand and shook her head.

“I’ll only be a minute,” I said as I pulled away. First, I went to the bar and asked Matt what the mayor was drinking. Then I ordered a pint and took it to him. There was a twenty-minute intermission before the next poet went on the small stage in the corner that Matt had set up.

The mayor sat with his friend Patrick, the caterer. And there were some women sitting with them that I didn’t recognize from the village.

“Evening, Mayor,” I said. “I was headed this way, and Matt asked if I’d bring this over to you, his treat.”

He had that glassy-eyed look of someone who was already two pints past his limit.

“Well, this is a first,” he said. “I’ve never had a famous author wait on me.” He said it in the creepiest of ways, as if I might have been interested in him.

Ugh .

“It’s crowded, and I’m just helping a friend,” I said. “Did you hear someone tried to kill Professor Hughes earlier today?” I almost snorted. Not the best conversational segue.

“What?” The mayor stared at me like I was crazy.

“Wasn’t he a part of your high school crew, along with Patrick here?”

The mayor blinked.

Patrick opened his mouth and then shut it. His eyes narrowed. “What are you saying exactly?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just that you guys might want to be careful until the killer is caught.”

“You think the same person who knocked off James and his agent are after us?” the mayor asked. Then he laughed hard. “You really do have a writer’s imagination.”

He was an annoying jerk.

“What about the professor? Someone tried to knock him off the cliff.”

“And yet, he survived,” the mayor said. “The detective said it was an accident. They are trying to find the motorbike. You’re seeing some kind of conspiracy where there is none.”

“So, you don’t think the person who killed James and his agent might also be after the rest of you?”

They laughed again as if that was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.

Then they glanced at each other and guffawed even harder.

Why couldn’t they see what was happening?

Probably because they were drunk.

“This is why you should stick to writing fiction and leave the real crime investigations to the proper authorities. I assure you our good detective inspector has it all well in hand.”

It was all I could do not to call them on their ignorance. I forced a smile on my face. “I’m sure you’re right. Kieran is very good at what he does.”

“Are you using all of this to write a book?” Patrick asked. “Is that why you have so many questions?”

I shrugged. “I don’t normally use true crime stories,” I said. “But yes, there are elements here that I may use in a future book. Like a mysterious manuscript that no one seems to be able to place. At first, Kieran thought it was an old one of James’s. And there is a rumor that he may have illegally borrowed some manuscripts, and it might be one of those. The problem is, there is no name. Do you guys know anything about that?

“You know, to help me flesh out my story.”

“You should be careful in throwing out accusations about the dead,” the mayor said, anger in his voice. “James didn’t need to steal other people’s work. He was quite a talented author and well-regarded in these parts.”

“That he was,” Patrick added. “And my friend here is right. You better not be spreading these rumors about theft around. James was one of Ireland’s greatest talents.”

It was all I could do not to say that C.S. Lewis, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde, and Maeve Binchy, to name a few, were far better. And much more famous.

The two men clinked glasses. The women from the table joined them.

Feeling foolish, I just walked away. I’m not sure what I thought I might accomplish by tackling the pair of them head-on.

They’d certainly closed ranks.

But they’d also threatened me, and I hadn’t missed that.

They were still at the top of my list.

By the time I woke up the next morning, Lizzie had already gone to work at the bookstore. She’d been angry with me for drawing the attention of the mayor and the chef.

“If they are the murderers, you just put a big target on your back,” she’d said as we walked home. Then, she refused to speak to me.

She wasn’t wrong.

I had the day off from the festival, as today was dedicated to those who wrote children’s books. Several students from schools in the many towns surrounding Shamrock Cove would be visiting the festival free of charge.

I planned to stay away from those crowds. It wasn’t that I didn’t like children, I did. I just wasn’t fond of too many people in small spaces. And just for today the festival attendance, thanks to those school children, would quadruple.

I much preferred the coziness of my office with a fire going as a soft rain fell outside.

I read through the notes of my manuscript to remember where I’d left off and where I was headed next with my mystery.

I forced the thoughts whirling in my brain about the professor, the chef, and the mayor out of my head. My gut swore that even if they hadn’t committed the crime, they had something to do with it.

“Stop it,” I said out loud. “You have to finish your book.”

But my brain refused to cooperate.

Then it hit me, for once, I could use AI in my favor. While I wasn’t a fan of AI companies using our published books to further their database capabilities, there was a way to use it.

Even though the copy had been stolen out of my office, I had taken photos of it in Kieran’s office. I had enough to type in several sentences and to do a search. My hope was that the words might signify a specific author. While I was well-read, I hadn’t read all the books in the world.

After typing in some of the sentences from the early pages of the manuscript, I hit search. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t thought of doing this earlier—except it had been a busy few days.

The search left me with several links. When I clicked the first one, I gasped. The link led to a book written by a Keeley Boyle-Henley, the same name as the member of James’s gang in high school who had run away to America.

“Could it be the same person?” It had to be.

After ordering the digital version of the book, I clicked on her website. She’d written several thrillers, and the one I’d found in the search had been the last one she’d written.

The message on her website read: It is with a heavy heart that we let you know our dear Keeley has gone to write with the angels.

She was dead.

I did another search for her obituary. She’d only passed away a few months ago, but there was no reference to how she’d died.

Keeley was survived by her three grown children, a husband, and a few grandchildren. She’d been living in the small town of Mountain View, Arkansas. I’d been there once for a book signing. It was a conclave of artists surrounded by beautiful mountains and trees. And not at all the backwater town I’d expected.

I searched for newspaper articles surrounding her death, but there weren’t any—only the obit.

There was nothing about her death being investigated, but I still wondered. Was it a coincidence that her death came so close to James and Sebrena’s?

Could someone have killed her? Did the authorities even know to look? While Mountain View was fairly progressive in the arts, they might not have had the medical resources to check for poisons.

I checked to see who her publisher and agent were. I had an idea but my editor, Carrie, wasn’t going to like it very much.

“Here goes nothing.” I dialed her number.