“Why? He’s the perfect killer. Crazed fan gone berserk. It’s like Misery, only the fan lives and the writer dies.”

  “Yeah, she hates it.”

  Melody shook her head. She didn’t like Piers as a killer either, but it made perfect sense that he would do such a horrible thing. What little she’d seen of the creep told her all she needed to know. And that he would rather torch a book Marty had slaved away at for a decade than allow others to read it made her hate him with all the fervor of her being.

  She wasn’t a spiteful person, but Piers Schumer deserved to die for what he did.

  There was a banging on the door and Zita groaned in despair. Upstairs, Bobbi yelled, “Is someone gonna open that? And if it’s another reporter tell them to go to hell!”

  Melody jumped up from the couch and padded over to the door. She opened it a crack, ready to tell whatever reporter was on the doorstep to move right along, even Texas Telegraph’s Jack Parker, cute little dimples and even cuter cowlick or not, when she found herself gazing at the hardened and stern features of none other than Detective Mulligan.

  “Detective?” she said, opening the door wider. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  Behind Mulligan, the bearded features of Mullet loomed up.

  “Can we come in?” asked Mulligan.

  He was looking tired, Melody thought. His lined face was even more lined than usual, and his pallor was a sickly gray. It was as if the man had aged half a decade since the arrest of Marty’s killer.

  “Sure. Come on in,” she said, stepping aside. She nodded to Mullet, who merely stared at her, then stomped inside in his colleague’s wake.

  “I’m sorry for the intrusion,” said Mulligan, glancing around. “Is Miss Boulder in?”

  “Bobbi!” Zita bellowed. “You got visitors!”

  “Tell them to take a hike!” Bobbi yelled back.

  “It’s the cops!” Zita returned. “They want you!”

  Melody smiled at Mulligan and Mullet. “Bobbi’s busy with our next book.”

  “Right,” said Mulligan, nodding.

  A face appeared at the landing balustrade. It was Bobbi, and she was looking flushed and annoyed. “What do you want?” she demanded when she caught sight of the two cops.

  “I need you ladies to look at something and give me your honest opinion,” said Mulligan.

  Intrigued, Melody shared a quick glance with Zita. First Mulligan was on their case about butting into his investigation and now he needed their help? It was one of those plot twists Bobbi was aces at, and it was clear from the latter’s expression she was hooked.

  Stomping down the stairs, making the cabin shake, the great plotter finally arrived in their midst. Like the rest of them she was dressed in jogging pants, a colorful fleece sweater and not a single trace of makeup. Her hair was a mess, where she’d dug her fingers in and pulled, and if Melody wasn’t mistaken she’d been plucking at her eyebrows again as well. Whenever Bobbi was stuck in an outline she started pulling her eyebrows. The left one was almost completely gone, and the right one looked like a devastated area.

  “Mulligan,” she said by way of greeting.

  “Boulder,” the cop returned.

  “So whaddya got?” Bobbi grunted.

  Mulligan took out his phone. “Take a look at this and tell me what you see.”

  Bobbi took over the phone and the three of them gathered round.

  On Mulligan’s phone a website had been called up. It looked like an eBay page only it wasn’t called eBay but dBay. On it, a book was up for sale. And when Melody saw the title of the book she froze. Game of Bones Volume Seven. Starting bid: ten million dollars.

  Chapter 34

  “What’s dBay?” asked Bobbi, after recovering from the shock of seeing Marty’s book on display.

  “It’s the dark web counterpart of eBay. One of many auction sites where you can buy anything from guns to drugs to hiring contract killers to take out your significant other.” Mulligan dragged a hand through his scraggly mane, his face resembling the dark side of the moon, pits and crevices and all. He looked like he’d been to hell and back.

  “Dark web?” asked Melody. “What’s the dark web?”

  “A part of the internet that’s hidden,” Zita explained. “Only accessible with a special browser and not indexed by the usual search engines like Google or Yahoo.”

  “So… what is Marty’s book doing on this dark web?” asked Melody. “Seeing as it’s been destroyed by Piers Schumer?”

  “We’ve been interviewing Schumer and we now believe that he didn’t kill Marty or steal his book,” said Mulligan.

  Melody gasped, Zita gawped and Bobbi snorted incredulously. “What?” she asked.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Zita. “He did it. He confessed. And he burned the book.”

  “That wasn’t Marty’s manuscript,” said Mulligan. “We had the ashes examined and the book Schumer burned was a hardcover edition of one of Marty’s first books. It’s called Sun of Flowers and was published in 1972. Furthermore, when Marty was being killed Schumer was five hundred miles away in Carmel, Indiana, where he lives in his parents’ basement and runs his website. His folks said the minute he read about Marty passing away he borrowed his brother’s Ford Focus and drove all the way to Upswing, where he arrived the next morning to begin his vigil outside the cabin. They also told us he probably went through his brother’s stash of weed on the drive over, which explains the town hall incident.”

  “So… who’s the killer?” asked Bobbi.

  Mulligan shook his head. “Beats me.” He pointed at the phone. “You’re the writer. Tell me what you see.”

  Bobbi studied the auction. “Is this for real?” She flicked down. The seller, who called himself GameOfBones2018, had listed several screenshots of what appeared to be a typed out manuscript. She enlarged one of the screenshots. It was the title page of Book of Bones Volume Seven: Hearth of Home. The next screenshot showed page one of the book, neatly typed on an old-fashioned typewriter. There were several more, showing parts of the book.

  “We talked to Teodora. She said it looks like stuff her husband would have written. And one screenshot in particular matches the sample Marty posted in his Facebook group a while back. We had the screenshots analyzed by an expert and he confirmed the letters were produced with a Corona Four typewriter. And not just any Corona Four. Marty’s Corona Four.” He pointed at the screenshot. “See the way the Bs are dropped? That’s a distinguishing feature. So yeah. We think this manuscript is for real. And the only way it could have ended up on the dark web is if the person who stole it put it there.”

  Bobbi couldn’t stop staring at the letters. Marty had written those. His final words. Then she noticed something. The last screenshot. She pinched out on the image and was surprised to see what looked like a computer-written page. “This looks different,” she said.

  “It does,” Mulligan confirmed. “It’s written on a word processor and printed on a regular commercial printer.”

  Bobbi frowned as she read the words. “This is the final chapter. The end of the book.” An idea occurred to her. “Marty didn’t write this. Someone else did.” She looked up at the cop, whose eyes were shining. “Marty’s book wasn’t finished. So the killer finished it.”

  “It would appear so.” He took back his phone. “I’m going to send you this and I want you to study it carefully. And then I want you to tell me who could have written this.”

  “But… anyone could have written that,” said Zita. “There are literally millions of writers out there.”

  “I know,” said Mulligan. “Which is why I’m pretty much desperate at this point. You see, our thinking is that the killer killed Marty over this manuscript. Only he didn’t know Marty hadn’t finished yet. So now he needed to create an ending. I’m guessing either he typed it up himself or had someone else type it up and then he posted this listing.”

  “So what we’re looking for is a killer writer,” said Melody. “Or a writer killer.”

  “I’m also sending this out to publishing houses in the hope that they recognize the style. We’ve also contacted a stylometrist. That’s an expert who studies linguistic style as a way of attributing ownership to anonymous texts.” He gave them a hopeful look. “Anything you find, you tell me. Anything at all. And I do appreciate your cooperation, ladies.”

  Mullet grunted something, indicating that he, too, was most appreciative.

  Both cops moved towards the door and Bobbi joined them. “I thought you hated us lowly civilians trampling all over your investigation, Mulligan?”

  “Oh, I do, I do,” he assured her with a tiny smile. “But you’re not merely a lowly civilian, are you? You’re an expert, and I’m relying on your expertise to save the day.”

  “Save the day,” she repeated, returning his smile. “I’ll certainly give it my best shot.”

  “I know you will.” His smile fell away. “This auction won’t be online very long. The moment the book is sold, Marty’s final work will disappear into the collection of a wealthy collector, never to be seen again. And we’ll have lost our one chance to catch this killer.”

  “Can’t you… contact this dBay site owner or something?”

  “We contacted the FBI. They promised to take a crack at dBay. Until then I hope to nab this killer through his sloppy grammar, his horrible spelling and his lousy plotting skills.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “He has lousy plotting skills?”

  Mulligan displayed a rare grin. “Read the excerpt and weep. The creep managed to kill Marty twice: once for real, and a second time by butchering the ending to a great saga.”

  As Bobbi closed the door, she thought there was some truth to the old adage that everyone’s a critic. Even cops.

  Chapter 35

  Zita had been studying the screenshots Mulligan had sent but so far she had nothing. The parts that Marty had written were beautiful, poetic, luminous and touching. The stuff the killer or his crony had written was horrible. Hackneyed prose, littered with typos and absolutely subpar. Marty was probably turning around in his grave right now, knowing the ending of his masterpiece had been butchered by a hack writer and turned into pure drivel.

  At least whoever wrote the ending had presumably followed Marty’s instructions, as it fit with everything that went before it. The killer must have snatched Marty’s outline as well as the manuscript, then decided to quickly write up the three remaining chapters himself—or have them written by a ghostwriter—and sell the book to the highest bidder.

  She put down her phone and rubbed her eyes. Her co-writers were both engaged in the same activity: trying to figure out who could have written this crap.

  “And?” she asked. “Any ideas?”

  “I don’t know anyone who would write this bad,” said Bobbi, shaking her head.

  “Me neither,” said Melody. “Though I love the part about the romance between the dragon lady and the hero warrior. ‘Her heaving bosom squeezed his rock-hard pecs until the nether part of his physique turned as hard as a burgeoning lava bean.’ She rolled back on the couch laughing. “Burgeoning lava bean! That’s a new one and I thought I’d heard them all!”

  Zita smiled. “Or what about ‘He squeezed her ripe bosoms until her throat convulsed and she let out a long, shuddering squeal of delight and release.’ Who wrote this stuff?”

  “Someone who should be in jail right now,” Bobbi grunted as she put down her phone with an expression of disgust. “First they killed Marty and then they destroyed his legacy. I don’t know which is worse.” She checked her watch. “We better get ready. Lois is picking us up in ten.”

  “Do we have to go?” asked Zita. “After this dark web debacle I don’t really feel like going out. I talked to Audra and she’s running the text through an algorithm she created. She’s fairly confident the software will spit out a name if she can just feed it enough comparative writing samples.”

  “And where is she going to get those samples?” asked Melody, fascinated.

  “She’s tapped into the database of all the major publishers. And don’t tell anyone about this but I have a hunch she’s hacked the Amazon store and has downloaded all of the books currently on sale.” It was a major undertaking and it would take the computer hours to churn through billions and billions of words. But if anyone could pull it off it was Audra.

  “We can’t stand Lois and Hackman up, honey,” said Bobbi. “We said we’d go.”

  “Aren’t you going to dress up?” asked Melody, who’d put on a form-hugging black dress and had applied some light mascara to her lashes. She looked absolutely gorgeous.

  Zita got up with a groan and looked down at herself. She was wearing black leggings, a black T-shirt, black socks and once she added her black combat boots she was ready. “I look fine,” she announced. “It’s just Lois and Hackman, for crying out loud, not a state dinner.”

  Bobbi seemed to concur, for she was dressed in simple blue jeans and a cable-knit sweater, her hair still the same mess as before, her eyebrows now completely plucked. In honor of their host she had applied minimal makeup, though, something Zita had neglected.

  A car horn honked outside and the three writers slipped into their shoes, their thick coats, scarves and hats, and pulled the cabin door closed behind them.

  The case of the stolen masterpiece would have to wait until after dinner.

  “I don’t believe this,” said Lois as she placed a juicy piece of chicken breast on Melody’s plate then added sautéed potatoes and a splash of gravy. “So you’re saying this kid didn’t kill Marty? He was just strung out on drugs?”

  “Yup,” said Melody as she stared at the greasy mess on her plate. She could already feel her arteries harden and her heart squeaking in despair. “Turns out the book he burned was just an old book he bought secondhand and only cost him five bucks plus shipping.”

  “Amazing,” said Lois, shaking her head. For the occasion she was wearing a floral-pattern tunic dress that became her well. Her hair was a cloud of golden curls, stiff with hairspray, and she was wearing a pearl pendant around her neck that dangled dangerously each time she handled the tongs to dole out more chicken.

  Her husband Hackman was dressed for the occasion in a button-down navy blue shirt and navy corduroy trousers. He’d even shaved, the rust-colored fuzz a thing of the past.

  “What I can’t believe is how rich this dude was,” said Hackman, tucking into his dinner with relish. “A hundred million copies of his books sold? I thought only Wall Street bankers handled that kind of money.”

  “There are some seriously rich writers out there,” Bobbi confirmed. “Unfortunately we’re not at that level.”

  “Yet,” said Lois, taking a seat after one last inspection of everyone’s plates. “Those Janet Lee Parker books will be selling like hotcakes as soon as you finish the next one. Just you wait and see.”

  “Thanks, Lois,” said Melody. “That’s very kind of you.”

  “You must have hosted writers a lot more famous than the three of us, Hackman,” said Zita. “Who’s enjoyed your hospitality so far?”

  “Actually most of the writers at the cabins don’t like to be bothered,” said Hackman. “They just want to be left alone to write. In fact you guys are the first ones to join us for dinner in a long time, isn’t that right, Lois?”

  “Quite right. Not that I blame your colleagues,” Lois hastened to say. “The reason they come out here in the first place is to write books—not to accept dinner invitations from the likes of Hackman and me. We did have Marty and Teo over once, didn’t we, Hackman?”

  Hackman nodded, swallowed a potato whole then said, “Great couple. And Marty was quite the raconteur. Kept us in stitches the whole night with his stories.”

  “He was a very sweet man,” Lois confirmed, then quickly genuflected.

  “I hope they catch whoever did this to him,” Hackman growled, cutting into his chicken. “Bastard deprived the world of a great man—and a great writing talent to boot.”

  “So who is this BookOfBones2018?” Lois asked. “Do the police have any leads?”

  “None whatsoever,” said Bobbi. “The FBI is looking into this website, hoping to figure out who’s behind the posting, and Mulligan’s enlisted a so-called stylometrist, who’ll examine the writing style of those final chapters and compare it to known writers.”

  “Can’t they, I don’t know, buy the book?” said Lois. “That way they’ll have the actual manuscript and can examine it for clues. Fingerprints and DNA and whatnot.”

  “I don’t think the police are prepared to spend ten million dollars to catch a killer,” said Zita. “And anyway, even if they did, it’s an auction, remember? The price might still go up.”

  “You think so?” asked Hackman. “How high do you think it’ll go?”

  “Hard to say,” said Bobbi. “There are some really determined collectors out there. The chance to own the one and only copy of this manuscript must be awfully tempting.”

  “Last time I checked the price was up to twenty million,” Zita announced.

  Hackman, who’d been in the process of taking a sip from his wine, almost spit it out again. “Twenty million smackeroos!” he cried. “That’s insane.”

  “Marty has a lot of fans from all walks of life,” said Bobbi. “Is it so hard to imagine that some of them are billionaires or even trillionaires? I can imagine some Saudi prince offering a couple million for the chance to finish the Game of Bones series.”

  While the others chatted about the auction, Melody got up from the table. She didn’t know if it was the peppercorn sauce or the sautéed garlic potatoes, but she urgently needed the bathroom. “Where is the little girl’s room, Lois?” she asked, feeling a little embarrassed.

  “Go back the way you came, dear, then take a left,” said Lois kindly.

  Melody hurried away, hoping she hadn’t insulted their host by interrupting the meal. She did as instructed, moved back in the direction of the hallway, then opened the first door on the left. Stepping into the bathroom, she was relieved to find it as neat and clean as the rest of the house. Lois really was a marvel. A gilt-edged mirror showed Melody that her eyes were slightly puffy—probably from the salt in the potatoes—and as she gratefully applied bum to toilet seat, she found some reading material on a little table nearby.