“You’re nuts,” was Zita’s swift diagnosis.

  “You’re crazy,” was Melody’s prompt deduction.

  “No, I’m not. We’re crime writers. This is what we do.”

  “We’re writers—writing is what we do—not catch killers,” said Zita.

  “I write romance,” Melody added. “There’s no romance in murder.”

  “So we just let the killer get away with murder?” asked Bobbi. “How is that fair to Marty and to Marty’s family? Not to mention his fans?”

  “If Marty was murdered, Mullet and Mulligan will catch the killer,” said Zita.

  This time Bobbi couldn’t hold back and a loud guffaw escaped her lips. “Mullet and Mulligan couldn’t catch a pig in a ditch! Did you see those two knuckleheads?”

  “I think Detective Mulligan looked very competent,” said Melody. “I’m not sure about Detective Mullet, but that’s probably because he didn’t speak. I’m sure he’s also very competent and I’m equally sure that if Marty was killed they’ll catch his killer very quickly.”

  “No, they won’t!” Bobbi was tapping the table with a stubby finger now. “Look, we’re writers—Marty was a writer—his manuscript is missing. Don’t you see? We have to do this!”

  “I’m not following,” said Melody. “What does his manuscript have to do with us?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “No, it’s not?” Melody ventured.

  “I think what Bobbi is trying to say is that Marty was killed over his manuscript,” said Zita. “Which would indicate that the reason he was killed has to do with his writing. And since we’re writers and this is pretty much our field we stand a good chance of finding out what happened.”

  “Oh,” said Melody, sitting up a little straighter, like a dog sniffing a bone. “You mean, we’re writers and Marty was a writer and the killer is a writer so… this is, like, an inside job?”

  Bobbi grinned. “Exactly. And I’ll bet you a bowl of tater tots that the guy we’re looking for is Stanley Thurber.”

  “The unpleasant fantasy writer?”

  “Yep.” She tapped her phone. “I’ve been doing some digging on Mr. Thurber and it turns out he and Marty started out together back in the early seventies, writing for some obscure fantasy fanzines. Only Marty turned his hobby into a career and a multi-million-dollar business while Thurber never amounted to a hill of beans.”

  “Beans? Why would he want to be a hill of beans?” asked Melody, puzzled.

  “It means he’s a loser,” said Zita. She’d walked over to the kitchen and returned with a bag of Tostitos Oven Baked Scoops. “You mentioned tater tots,” she said when Bobbi quirked an eyebrow. “So you think Stan Thurber is our guy, huh?”

  “Yup. According to a thread on bonesgamesforum.com Thurber hated his former friend and colleague. They had a falling-out in the eighties when Marty married Thurber’s girlfriend and ever since then he’s never missed a chance to diss Marty and his work, claiming Game of Bones was created by him and Marty stole the idea.” She grabbed a handful of chips and dunked them into her mouth. “And now, to add insult to injury, Marty takes the cabin right next to his.” She spoke around the chips. “He watches Marty pound away at his next masterpiece, a book from which he’ll probably make millions while Thurber can’t even get an advance on his next book—his publisher having recently dropped him.”

  “So the rage builds and one day he decides to exact his revenge,” Zita finished, nodding. “I think you may be onto something there, Bobbi. I like Thurber as a suspect.”

  “How can you like a killer?” asked Melody, aghast.

  “We need to have us a chat with the guy,” said Bobbi, eyes narrowing. “We talk to him—we get him to confess and bam!” She pounded the table with her fist. “Case closed.”

  Chapter 12

  Stanley Thurber was staring stoically before him, his mind a whirlwind of thoughts. He was a stringy man with a lined face and what hair still remained on his head had turned white and wispy a long time ago. Known as the author of such well-renowned titles as The Woeful Wind & The Titillating Tree or even The Lair Of The Laywoman’s Worm, it was perhaps too much to say that his literary output inspired the fervor usually reserved for writers of the kind of thick tomes that litter the world of Sword and Sorcery but he did have fans, and they were fervent, if not fanatic.

  Just that morning an ardent fan had written him a letter decrying the lack of recognition Stan’s output had garnered over the years amongst the genre’s critics and Stan couldn’t have agreed more. The fact that this particular fan wrote letters not emails didn’t trouble him, nor the fact that the man was incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc—at least according to the letterhead. What did trouble Stan was that the convict fan was right. In spite of his prolific career—eighty books to his name so far and still going strong—he had little to show for it when it came to his bank account.

  He lived in a dilapidated RV in Vegas, where he’d moved after being fired from the set of Sahraya, Magic Woman, the show he’d been working on as a screenwriter a decade before. He had a decrepit Volkswagen Van, bought secondhand. And he had a bar tab at the Titty Twister, the strip club he considered his home away from home. But apart from that he was pretty much broke, in spite of having launched his career alongside Marty George.

  He tipped a can of Bud to his lips and took a swig, settling deeper in the rocking chair that was the main feature of his cabin’s back porch. It was freezing cold, but he didn’t mind. He’d draped a plaid across his legs and vowed to stay rooted to the spot until it was too dark to see a damn thing. And until he had to take a leak, of course—courtesy of the Bud.

  He favored the purer liquor but since his new agent had insisted he write another book in his most popular series—HearthSlayer-Six-Oh-Nine—he’d have to wait until his first draft was finished to go on a more serious bender.

  He was somewhat annoyed, therefore, when a trio of women suddenly showed up on his porch and approached him in a decidedly menacing manner. At least the more sizable one of the trio did, her stern features fixing him with a no-nonsense glare.

  “Mr. Thurber?” she asked, and already he found her presence grating. “Mr. Stanley Thurber?”

  “Who’s asking?” he asked, hoping she wasn’t a fan who’d traveled out here to complain about some detail in some book he probably wouldn’t be able to remember writing. Fans were always doing stuff like that. At least the very few he still retained.

  “My name is Bobbi Boulder and this is Melody Pen and Zita Guerra. We were close friends of Mr. George—Mr. Marty George—and we would like to ask you a few questions.”

  “I don’t do questions—and I definitely don’t do questions about Marty George,” he said defiantly, and made to throw off the plaid and return indoors. Unfortunately having sat there for the better part of the past two hours and having imbibed half a dozen Buds he wasn’t feeling very limber. The moment he got up, he felt woozy and dropped down again.

  The three ladies seemed undeterred and took a seat on the wooden bench that was also a fixture of every cabin out there in the Upswing forest’s writer’s retreat.

  “Mr. Thurber,” said Bobbi Boulder, who seemed to consider herself the spokeswoman of this minor conglomerate of scary women. “We know what you did.”

  “Huh?” he said, suddenly wondering if he was hallucinating. It had happened before.

  She scooted a little closer. “We know you killed your good friend Marty George.”

  “Huh!” he cried. He now was absolutely sure he was having a nightmare. And a bad one at that. He stared at the empty can in his hand. He hadn’t even done acid—just beer. Could one have that powerful a reaction to boring old beer? It would appear so.

  “We know you hated Marty, Stan,” the woman coaxed, her voice suddenly low and soothing. “We know what he did to you—stole Game of Bones and sold it as his own. We don’t blame you for wanting to get back at him. He was a lousy friend. He betrayed you.”

  “Marty… Marty didn’t betray me,” he stammered, staring at the horrible mirage. She was a large woman, with a prominent forehead and a wild mane of flaming red hair. But was she real? Or was she a figment of his imagination? A manifestation of his guilty conscience?

  “Oh, yes, he did. He stole your life’s work and turned it into a million-dollar business, of which you didn’t see a single penny. You hated him for it and then you killed him, didn’t you? Just tell us the truth, Stan. Unburden your soul. It’ll feel so good you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I-I didn’t kill anyone!” he cried, holding up an arm to ward off this terrible chimera.

  “The police know, you know,” said the blond one. A small pixie with a little pink mouth, she looked like his ex-girlfriend. The one who’d told him he was a loser and to go screw himself. This before she’d shacked up with Marty and had become his wife for life.

  “The po-police?” he muttered weakly.

  “Yeah, they know everything about you, Stan,” said the third manifestation. She had raven hair, alabaster skin, a lip piercing and enough eyeliner to make a raccoon jealous.

  “What do they know?” he asked. He now knew what they were—they were all characters from his novels, come alive to haunt him. Probably to try and make him write more about them. Characters were always doing that—angry that he didn’t feature them enough. “They know nothing,” he said, deciding he wasn’t going down without a fight.

  “Oh, yes, they do,” said Bobbi. “They know you killed your friend Marty.”

  He pressed his eyes closed and both hands over his ears, dropping his can of Bud in the process. “I know nothing!” he suddenly bellowed, then finally found the strength to get out of his chair and rocketed up. But instead of swiftly disappearing inside the cabin and leaving this strange cabal of women wondering where he’d gone off to he stumbled off the deck, staggered facedown into the bushes lining his modest writing cabin and then he was eating dirt and down for the count.

  Chapter 13

  “You killed him, Bobbi,” said Melody as she stabbed a tentative finger at the inert figure. They were crouched down around the fallen writer and staring down at him.

  “He isn’t dead,” said Zita as she jabbed her own finger into the fleshy folds of his neck. In a brief span of time she’d established herself as the medic of their band of three.

  “He’s passed out,” Bobbi determined. “Passed out drunk. Drunk like a skunk.”

  “I thought something was wrong with him,” Melody said knowingly. She took a sniff at the man and winced. “I thought it was guilt making him act weird but it’s just drink.”

  “Which just goes to show he’s the one that did this,” Bobbi said. “He killed Marty and then he drank himself into a stupor out of guilt.” She pointed down at the man. “This is what a killer looks like—not a professional killer, of course—not the freaky serial killers James Patterson likes to write about or the wandering killing machine Lee Child favors. No, this is a man who killed almost by accident and now he has to live with the consequences.” She paused for breath, and Melody didn’t wonder. To deliver a speech like that without breathing even once was a tough proposition for the uninitiated. Which was probably why Bobbi was the team’s designated spokesperson for interviews and the like.

  Zita turned the man face up. It took a little effort but she finally managed. Zita was right. He was still alive, only passed out.

  Melody got up. “So what do we do now? He didn’t confess so we’ve got nothing.”

  Bobbi took out her phone and switched off the recording app. They’d hoped to nudge Thurber into a confession but that plan had clearly backfired. “I think we need to have another go at him when he’s sober,” Bobbi said, tucking away her phone.

  “We better get him into the cabin,” said Zita.

  “I’m not touching that,” Melody said with a look of disgust. “He reeks of alcohol.”

  “Of course he reeks of alcohol,” said Zita. “But we can’t leave him out here. He’ll freeze to death.”

  Melody had to admit that Zita had a point. If the man froze to death it would be on their heads. Even though he was almost certainly a killer, as long as he hadn’t confessed the police would simply think they’d killed an innocent man by leaving him to be preyed on by the elements. The nights could get pretty chilly in Georgia in November.

  “You take his feet, I’ll take his hands,” said Bobbi, always the decisive one in their little band of three.

  “What do I do?” asked Melody as Bobbi unceremoniously grabbed the fantasy writer’s hands.

  “Just… support the middle.”

  And so it went. Bobbi took the lead, Melody held up the middle part as best she could and Zita held on to the man’s feet, a look of distaste on her face.

  “He’s heavy,” Zita said after they’d managed to climb the three steps to the deck. “He looks thin but he’s really heavy.”

  “It’s all that beer. He has a beer gut. Thin as a stick with a beer gut,” said Melody, panting. She would know, of course, as she was best located to study said beer gut.

  “Less talk, more walk,” Bobbi grunted as she gave the man’s hands a goodish yank.

  They’d arrived on the deck and were moving through the sliding glass door—the same door installed in their own cabin and in Marty’s, Melody saw—and then straight into the living room.

  “Ugh. This place is ugly,” she said, glancing around.

  “It looks exactly the same as ours,” Bobbi growled. “Now swing him!”

  And so they swung him. They’d arrived right next to a comfy-looking couch, which was littered with even more beer bottles and an interesting array of candy wrappers.

  “On three,” Bobbi ordered. “One—and two—and—crap!”

  The crap referred to the fact that Zita had suddenly let go of Stan’s feet. The upshot was that he tumbled to the floor, taking Melody and Bobbi down with him in a heap of legs and arms and other body parts. The only one not taking part in the melee was Zita who stood watching the carnage with a grin—the scene having tickled her funny bone.

  “Oops,” she said.

  Bobbi gave her a look that could kill and so did Melody. Together they managed to roll the unconscious writer onto the couch, a team effort that resembled the rolling of a pig in a blanket—an apt simile that Melody had come up with on the spot. If he was indeed the man who killed Marty—and Bobbi seemed totally convinced he was—then he was a pig.

  They finally collapsed on the floor, the production having taken a lot of effort.

  Melody looked around some more. The cabin was entirely constructed out of a light reddish wood, just like their own, but this one also had a lot of rubbish strewn around. Not only the beers and candy wrappers but also empty pizza and Chinese food boxes and dirty socks and shirts and—ugh—unwashed underwear that covered every available surface.

  “Looks like a British rock band has been camping out here,” she said disgustedly.

  “Or any rock band, for that matter,” said Zita, also cringing slightly.

  Bobbi, who was plucking a pair of oversized underpants from under her butt seemed to agree. “The guy lives like a swine.”

  “He needs a woman,” said Melody decidedly.

  “Oh, that’s such a sexist thing to say,” said Zita.

  “Why is that sexist? It’s obvious this guy has been living alone for too long.”

  “So why is it that he needs a woman? Women can live like pigs, too, you know.”

  “No, they can’t. No woman could live like this. Nah-uh.”

  “You should see Audra when I’m away for more than a week. She makes Stanley Thurber look like a neat freak.”

  Audra was Zita’s girlfriend and, admittedly, a little sloppy when it came to keeping house. Then again, Zita was a little bit of a neat freak herself and Audra probably took advantage of the fact that her girl was out of town to let her hair down and relax standards.

  A loud groan halted the heated discussion in its tracks. Three heads turned, and when Melody saw that Marty’s killer had come round and was staring at them uncertainly, she felt compelled to point an accusing finger at the man and sternly declare, “Murderer!”

  Chapter 14

  This was a nightmare, Stan knew. The same three women were back, and now they were inside his cabin and yelling at him—one was even holding up his underpants, he now saw, and sniffing at it with a disdainful expression on her face.

  “Look, I didn’t kill him, all right?!” he cried, trying to sit up and failing. “I didn’t like him but I didn’t kill him!”

  “He stole your girlfriend,” the big one said.

  “He stole your ideas,” the raccoon one said.

  “He stole your career,” the blond one said.

  “So? That doesn’t mean I killed him!”

  He now noticed the big one was holding her phone under his nose and he wondered what her deal was. “Just confess, Stan,” she was saying. “Just get it over with.”

  He buried his face into his hands and when he encountered pieces of mud stuck to the sides of his face didn’t even think it strange, so weird this experience had become. “Marty and I were best friends and colleagues. We met at Loyola when we were both still thinking of becoming doctors then both dropped out at the same time when we discovered we couldn’t stand the sight of blood—hard to be a doctor if you pass out when examining a patient—and decided to pursue our dream of being writers instead. So we launched a magazine and had a great time. We never fell out—just drifted apart, I guess. So there.”

  He tried to look defiant and knew he was failing when he saw the dubious expressions on the fearsome trio’s faces. Could they be furies? Erinyes? It was possible.

  “What about the fact that he stole your girlfriend?” asked the large one.

  “He didn’t steal Teo. She left me and then got together with Marty. Big difference.”

  “Or what about the fact that he stole your idea for Game of Bones?” demanded Lip Piercing Girl.