Page 108 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

“You’ve read Shek?”

“You haven’t?”

“I mean…” I check the timeline. “So he was everywhere he needed to be. And he was on the balcony last night. Everyone was…”

“And today? How could he know about the jellyfish?”

I take my phone back and google “Mediterranean jellyfish.” Pelagia noctiluca comes up as the first hit, the most venomous jellyfish in the Mediterranean. “The Med is full of them, apparently. I bet there are maps of places to avoid, even.”

“Are they deadly?”

“I’m sure the worst ones can be in large doses. But maybe he’s just trying to keep us off balance?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“More importantly, why would Shek want to kill you? Because Connor, I get…”

“I got his marketing budget.”

“People don’t kill people because their books aren’t selling.”

I cock my head to the side. “I don’t know about that. Does logic apply to killers?”133

Capri itself is a trip of dualities. The beautiful boat ride was ended by the stinging jellyfish. The island was picturesque from the water but choked with people and noise when we get to shore. The views were breathtaking at the top, but the bus ride was scary.

And then there’s the whole someone’s-trying-to-kill-me thing.

No, not someone, Shek.

That’s a hard one to wrap my head around. Thinking some unnamed person is trying to kill you is one thing, but settling on a perpetrator is something else. Even if it’s someone I don’t much like, I know him.

It wasn’t always like this between Shek and me.

I remember when I met him for the first time nine years ago. It was at Killer Nashville, which is not a conference for murderers, but for those that write about them.

I was a newbie, one book out, nervous about my first author talk, and sitting at the bar nursing a glass of something when he told me I was in his seat. He was wearing a three-piece suit and a black felt fedora, and didn’t I know this was Noir at the Bar? 134 Didn’t I know that he always sat at this very corner of every Noir at the Bar, whether it was at ThrillerFest, or Bouchercon, or Left Coast Crime?135 Who did I think I was just sitting there not waiting my turn, not standing in a line I didn’t know existed?

He didn’t say all of these things out loud.

Some of them were subtext, but I could read it loud and clear.

If a murder had happened that night, he would’ve been the victim, because he was the one barreling through the crowd, full of bravado, creating antipathy wherever he went.

I know this because I didn’t challenge him for my seat. Instead, I moved to a corner spot, right next to the wall, and watched the other participants, my new colleagues, mostly men, regale one another with stories. One man with a thick Irish accent even stood on the bar and recited Keats.

It was a lot.

And to be honest,136 I felt like I should be taking notes the whole time because who’d believe me if I didn’t have some kind of evidence?

Eventually, I went to bed and woke up with a hangover, wondering if the hotel was going to be clogged with police and wannabe detectives who thought they could be helpful.

But Shek didn’t die that night. Instead, he showed up for our panel with shades on and a better attitude and spent a patient ten minutes beforehand explaining to me how to answer questions. And then he gave me a compliment. He’d read When in Rome, and I was a fresh voice, he said. I was going places. I was going to be a star. Wait, I already was.

I went to bed that night feeling like I’d made a friend, and he had been friendly for a while. We’d trade emails sometimes or have lunch when our paths crossed at conferences. He felt like an ally in a business where it’s sometimes hard to make friends when you start out on top.137 And that’s how it was between us right up until he hired Connor to work on a screenplay.

I never got the full story of what happened; I only know it ended badly and Shek somehow blamed me. And because I was used to that by now, people blaming me for bringing Connor into their lives, I didn’t push to get the full story.