Since I wasn’t having any success with my inside sources at the sheriff’s office, I decided I might have better luck talking to Graeme. I wanted to ask him about this other author, Whitney Smith—as the conference organizer, he was bound to know something about her.

  But Graeme, it turned out, was being mobbed by a separate group of authors. These ones, unlike the group that had gathered near the creek, were less pleased with a second death at the conference, and they wanted refunds. And apologies. And perhaps additional compensation. Graeme, flushed and running a hand through his thinning hair, kept trying to answer individuals as more people pressed in and shouted additional questions.

  So, that was strike two.

  I decided my best option would be to stay on campus, attending panels and sessions at the conference, occasionally checking on Bobby and the sheriff to see if I could: a) learn something by osmosis; b) spot someone doing something sneaky; c) track down Whitney; and possibly d) figure out if there was a connection to this previous murder.

  Here’s one of the nice things about conferences: nobody pays attention to you if you sit in the back and play on your phone.

  I spent the day shuffling from one multipurpose room to another. The panels themselves weren’t particularly illuminating—Whitney Smith wasn’t speaking at any of the events on the program today, so I picked sessions that looked like they might be interesting, or at least less boring than others. The results were…mixed. At the first panel I went to, two women argued about the future of YA fiction, specifically with regard to their own stellar careers. (Great job, ladies.) In another, one of the panelists did a sudoku while the other panelists tried to conduct a “solve-your-own-murder” game, but they’d forgotten their handouts—and, apparently, the rules to their own game. In one panel, the authors speaking decided to abandon their topic in favor of proposing theories about who had killed Vivienne. They only came up with one, Matrika Nightingale, and they spent a lot of time patting themselves on the back for this brilliant deduction.

  Another way of saying it might be this: I had a lot of time to play on my phone.

  I found a website for Whitney Smith. The woman in the picture looked like she’d been Photoshopped into the Ethereal Plane (some sort of filter or lens or something had been applied, and while she didn’t have any wrinkles, she did have an unearthly glow). Long, dark hair. An upturned nose. Something about her was vaguely familiar, which I attributed to the fact that if she was at the conference, I’d probably passed her in the hall a few times. According to her website, she had three standalone books out—psychological thrillers. They were the usual fare: Please Look at Me, and Mommy’s Dearest is Lying, and The Housekeeper’s Mistress. (That’s not a jab; my mom writes a lot of psychological thrillers, but they’re not my cup of tea.) It didn’t look like any of them had been breakouts, which was probably why I’d never heard of her before.

  Big surprise: there was nothing on her website about being involved in a murder in the past, or about having murderous intentions toward anyone in the present. She didn’t have a blog post about her plans to kill Vivienne and Steven, for example, which would have been super helpful.

  Once I’d exhausted Whitney’s website, I went back to the Wikipedia article on the Robert Kessler case. This time, I used my phone so that I could follow the hyperlinks.

  Unfortunately, the full article didn’t add much to what the summary had already told me. Robert Kessler had been murdered in his hotel room by Simona Wolf. The cause of death had been blunt-force trauma to the head. (Gee, that was starting to sound familiar.) According to the article, Robert had not only been Simona’s editor—he had been her lover. There was mention again of Simona’s literary promise, with a quote from Robert about what a coup it had been to get the rights to Simona’s debut novel. A mention of Simona’s struggle with mental illness.

  In the section labeled INVESTIGATION, the article walked me through how Vivienne had solved the case. It was fairly simple. First, she’d established that Simona didn’t have an alibi for the time of Robert’s death. And then she’d unearthed a motive: someone had been trying to tank Simona’s debut before it even came out by leaving dozens of one-star reviews on sites like Goodreads. I’d come across this before—there are a lot of crazy people in the publishing ecosystem—and I’d heard it called review bombing. The idea was that by flooding a book with one-star reviews before it even released, the book would flop. (Because, you know, people are petty like that.) Sometimes readers and reviewers did it, often without even having read the book, because they got caught up in a mob of internet trolls. Maybe a friend of a friend of a friend (or someone on social media) had revealed that the author was a Bad Person with Bad Opinions, and the book was a Bad Book, and so in a frenzy of moral outrage, everybody piled on the bandwagon and tried to destroy the book before it even came out.

  (You can probably guess how I feel about those people.)

  But sometimes—sometimes—other authors did it. Under fake accounts, yes. And not as often. But when it did happen, it was usually because the authors were somehow in competition: they were writing in the same genre, or their books had similar premises, or worse, they had books coming out on the same day.

  According to the Wikipedia article, Whitney Smith, a friend of Simona’s, had discovered who was behind the fake reviews: Robert Kessler. Whitney had revealed this to Vivienne, and with this key piece of information, Vivienne had established beyond a reasonable doubt that Simona had killed Robert Kessler after discovering his treachery.

  Boy, did that raise a little red flag at the back of my head. At the time, it had all probably seemed dramatic and explosive and compelling. But ten years later, I had questions.

  First and foremost: why would Robert Kessler try to sink a book that he had worked so hard to acquire?

  As it turned out, it ended up being a moot point. With Simona in prison, the contract was canceled. The book was never released. Simona might have found another publisher for it—as Steven had pointed out, murder never stopped anyone from being a successful author—but she died by suicide while she was still in prison.

  And that, as far as Wikipedia was concerned, was that.

  I did a quick search on Simona Wolf, but I didn’t find much, and most of what I did see was connected to the murder. There was a guest blog from Simona about what she called “writing deep,” which apparently meant digging into your trauma and your secrets to tell a powerful story. I wondered if maybe there was something to that idea that would shed some light on what had happened, but nothing came immediately to mind. There was a little note about Simona selling the rights to her book, Wolf Woman, to Doorstopper. And there was a photo of Simona and Whitney.

  This was before Whitney had been filtered into a human lightbulb. Her dark hair had highlights, and she was wearing a bow and a velvet choker. She was beaming at the camera as she hugged Simona. Next to her, Simona held herself stiffly, arms folded around her waist. She was tall, blond, her hair severely swept straight back, her gaze frank, almost cold. I didn’t know her. I’d never seen her before. And I had that impossible question people always had when they saw someone who had been accused of killing: did she look like someone who could commit murder? Not really. But then, that was true for a lot of killers.

  The next bit was a leap, but a small one. If the Robert Kessler murder was the one that Vivienne had believed—at some point—she had gotten wrong, then had she figured out her mistake when she’d been writing Dropped Stitches? It seemed likely. Heck, it seemed probable. Something had shaken Vivienne’s faith in herself to the point that, in a moment of bad judgment, she’d expressed her fears to Steven.

  And for another—and this was the part that felt true to me, even if I couldn’t prove it—writing the book was when Vivienne would be most likely to have discovered it because writing was a form of thinking. It required crystallizing thoughts into words. Arranging those words into a coherent order. And, if you were Vivienne, whose prose was sharp and clear, there couldn’t be any fogginess in the thinking either. Add to that the difficulty of telling a complicated mess of events like a real-life murder in a streamlined narrative that the average reader would enjoy, and you have a process that demands rigorous re-analysis of everything. In other words, an ideal opportunity to realize you’d slipped up.

  I opened the browser on my phone to find a copy of Dropped Stitches. Big surprise, the book—which was almost ten years old now—was out of print. (It had 4.3 stars on Goodreads. One reviewer said, I thought it was about knitting, which goes to show you can’t please everyone.) And while there were plenty of used copies floating around, shipping said three to five business days everywhere I checked.

  In three to five business days, the conference would be over, and everyone would have gone home—including the killer. The Hastings Rock Public Library might have a copy; Vivienne had been a resident celebrity, and on top of that, Mrs. Shufflebottom, the librarian, was a particular fan. But Mrs. Shufflebottom preferred Vivienne’s fiction, and she also was ruthless about weeding old books from the collection—

  And then I almost laughed. (Thank God I didn’t, though, because I was in another panel, and one of the writers was sobbing into a handkerchief about the time in her childhood when her mom hadn’t let her play on the Burger King playground.) (The panel was about Writing Real Characters.) (No, I have no idea what was going on.) (Do I suspect it was related to those Burger King commercials with the King who had that giant plastic head? Yes.)

  Anyway.

  I hesitated a moment, trying to decide if I should stay—but this was the last session of the day, and once the conference officially ended for the day, the attendees would disperse. My chance of finding Whitney, already low, would drop even further.

  So, I slid out of my seat and headed to the door, because I knew where there was a copy of Dropped Stitches, and I had exclusive access to it.

  It was in Vivienne’s study, with all the rest of her books.

  Chapter 13

  When I pulled up to Hemlock House, the sun had slipped below the horizon, and the last light of day hammered coppery divots into the water. The windows of the old house glowed against the coming darkness, which was good—it meant someone was home. It was disorienting to realize I’d lost most of the day at the conference, but as I got out of the Jeep, my stomach rumbled; I’d also missed at least one meal (or three hobbit meals), a matter I was determined to rectify as soon as I had a copy of Dropped Stitches in my hand.

  I crossed the vestibule, stepped into the hall, and called out, “I’m home,” as I made my way to the stairs. The doors to the billiard room were open, and the lights were on. Indira stood there, facing the billiard room, hugging herself. She glanced over at me. And I know I make a big deal out of the whole witch thing, but I swear to God, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  One foot on the stairs. “Everything okay?”

  No response. But she was still looking at me, and I sensed a bad case of frog coming on if I didn’t do something, and fast.

  Changing course, I made my way to the billiard room. Keme sat on the chesterfield, his long, dark hair stringy with saltwater. I knew it was saltwater because the faint tang of it ran like iron under the usual smells of leather and old books and the fireplace. He was dressed in sweats, with a blanket around his shoulders, and his face was blank. Millie was snuggled up against him, her expression tight. And Fox, who had apparently found time to change clothes since the farmers market, was now dressed somewhere between merfolk and Knott’s Berry Farm employee. (The emphasis was on shiny red-and-white scales.) They examined me with what a writer prone to cliché might have called a murderous disposition.

  “Uh, hey.” I glanced around again. Millie wouldn’t look at me. Keme wouldn’t look at anyone. Fox wouldn’t look at anyone but me. And I wouldn’t look at Indira. “What happened?”

  “You—” Fox began.

  Red-eyed, Millie raised her head from Keme’s shoulder. “YOU MISSED KEME’S SURF COMPETITION! AND IT WAS IMPORTANT TO HIM!”

  “What?”

  Okay, that was definitely the wrong thing to say, because I could feel static electricity gathering behind me like Indira was going to blast me.

  “Oh my God,” I said. And then I said a word that I knew you weren’t allowed to say at Knott’s Berry Farm. “Keme, I’m so sorry. I got distracted—”

  With surprising gentleness, Keme slipped out from Millie’s embrace and padded toward the door. He was barefoot, and a fresh scrape showed where he’d caught up on a rock.

  “No, wait, please—” I reached out, but I didn’t touch him; my hand floated there, doing nothing.

  And then he was gone, heading down the hall. A moment later, the sound of bare feet on wood came from the stairs.

  “I didn’t mean to forget—” I explained to the other three, who were currently competing for the roles of judge, jury, and executioner.

  Fox hissed at me.

  “WHERE WERE YOU?”

  “I was trying to solve a murder! Two murders, actually! Someone else got killed today. And in case it matters to anyone, yes, I’m still the lead suspect.” That bit of steam ran out pretty quickly, though, and in a more subdued voice, I added, “I didn’t mean to forget.”

  “Well,” Fox said with their usual aplomb, “you did.”

  “Yes, I’m aware—”

  “AND IT HURT KEME’S FEELINGS! AND HE’S A BOY SO HE DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO TELL YOU!”

  “Yes—”

  “SO I’M TELLING YOU!”

  “I got that part.”

  “AND YOU NEED TO FIX IT!”

  “Okay, jeez, I—” Millie didn’t actually screech like a banshee in rage, but something in her face suggested this was a distinct possibility, so I checked my ’tude and in a, uh, better tone said, “I know. I will.”

  A chorus of sniffs and huffs and dirty looks suggested I was not forgiven.

  “I know,” I said. “I screwed up.”

  “It’s all right, dear,” Indira said, which is proof she might be the kindest person alive. She even patted my shoulder. “You have a lot going on. I’m sure he’ll understand when you apologize.”

  I nodded, but I wasn’t sure. Because Keme didn’t extend his trust lightly, and even though he and I had been through a lot together, I also knew that his natural tendency was to draw back and protect himself.

  Well, I had nobody to blame but myself. Although weirdly, I wanted to blame that call with my parents. Because I’d been planning to go. I had. It was that there had been that call, and I’d been thinking about the show, and then there’d been Steven’s murder to deal with, and—

  And a lot of excuses.

  “I’m going to go upstairs,” I said. “See if I can apologize.”

  Indira patted my shoulder again. Millie wiped her eyes—they were angry tears, but they still made me feel about an inch tall. Fox pretended I didn’t exist or had never been born or something and busied themselves checking their merfolk boots.

  Upstairs, the hall was dark, and no light showed under Keme’s door.

  I knocked softly. “Keme? You in there?”

  No answer.

  I knocked again. “Hey, I’m sorry about missing your competition. I know it was important, and I messed up majorly by not being there. I want to apologize if you’ll let me.”

  Nothing.

  “I totally get that you need some time and you don’t want to see me right now,” I said. I pressed my fingertips to my chest and tried to follow my breathing. I kept my voice as easy as I could. “So, I’m going to try to apologize later. But if you could give me a sign, you know, that you heard me, and you’ll eventually forgive me, even if it means I have to grovel for the next hundred years, because believe it or not, this is doing some crazy stuff to my anxiety.” Pause here for an absolutely insane laugh. But still nothing. “Okay. Right. Going to go now. Leaving now. And…goodbye.”

  Yes, not my finest moment. I’m fully aware.

  (I also did this super weird little bow when I said goodbye. I wasn’t going to tell you because it was so bonkers, but I told you anyway, so now you know.)

  Ideally, this would be when I slunk into my room and disappeared forever, hopefully into some sort of enchanted wardrobe full of animals who would solve my life problems and feed me English desserts. But since I was an adult, and I actually didn’t like Turkish delight all that much, I decided to slink in a different direction, and I made my way into Vivienne’s study.

  I hardly ever went into Vivienne’s study. The same went for the massive bedroom that had once been hers. I’d lived here for over two years. The house was legally mine. But they still felt too much like Vivienne’s—like she might come back and claim them again. That wasn’t going to happen now, a part of me recognized, but it would take a while before the difference actually felt, you know, real.

  When I stepped through the door, the sound of the ocean was louder—closer. Cold air brushed my face. Even though the lights were off, the study was brighter than the hallway. Much brighter. The last bit of daylight funneled in through the doors to the sleeping porch.

  Which stood open.

  And they were never open.

  I reached for the light switch. I was on autopilot, and my brain hadn’t caught up to my body.

  The doors to the porch were open. Drawers hung free from the desk. Papers lay everywhere.

  Something dropped in front of my face, a flutter of movement.

  And then the cord snapped tight around my neck.

  Chapter 14

  The cord bit into my neck and cut off my air.

  I lunged forward, trying to break free, but the movement was only instinct. The cord—the garrote—was too strong, and whoever was holding it was strong too. They didn’t stumble. I couldn’t pull them off balance. Instead, they yanked me back toward them and kicked my feet out from under me.

  I went down, and I hit the floor hard.

  For a moment, the cord slackened around my throat. I rasped for air. My throat burned, but I tried to call out—and couldn’t. I blinked, and the room swam around me. The desk was right in front of me. I crawled toward the kneehole. The sound came of the door shutting.