“He didn’t! The only thing I ever came up with was the title. The rest was all Marty.”

  That seemed to stymie them as they exchanged looks of confusion and were silent for a blessed moment. Soon the one who called herself Bobbi resumed speech, though, still holding her phone under his nose. “But you were jealous. That much you have to admit.”

  “Of course I was jealous. We started out together, two kids from the sticks and he went on to become a superstar of the genre while I…” He gestured at the underwear the large one had carelessly thrown on top of a lamp. “My career never really took off.”

  “But…” The blonde was eyeing him uncertainly. “You still killed him, right? He killed Marty, didn’t he, Bobbi?”

  “Of course he killed Marty,” said Bobbi. “Didn’t you, Stan?”

  Stan shook his head sadly. “Why do you think I’ve been drinking all afternoon? We weren’t the best of friends—not these last couple of years—but I’m still sad he’s gone.”

  “You’ve been drinking all afternoon because you’re scared the police will put you in jail for murder,” Bobbi insisted.

  He gave her a doleful look. “By the way, why do you keep saying he was murdered? Mrs. Pozdzik told me he died of a heart attack.”

  “Oh, aren’t you the clever one?” said the blonde. “Confusing us with facts. You know very well he didn’t die of a heart attack because you bashed his brains in, didn’t you?”

  “Bashed his brains…” He shook his head, trying to clear out the cobwebs. “Wait, are you three for real? I thought you were figments of my imagination—goddesses of wrath.”

  “Goddesses? That’s nice. I like that,” said the blonde. “He called us goddesses, you guys. Maybe he’s not a killer after all.”

  “We’re your neighbors,” said the one they called Zita. “We’re right next door.”

  He groaned. “I remember you. Didn’t I see you this afternoon?”

  “Yes, and you gave us a very dirty look,” said the blonde. “A real killer’s look.”

  “Hey, I’m not in a great mood, all right? My last book was a flop, my publisher dropped me, my new agent is a kid fresh out of college who keeps telling me to clean up my act and write reverse harem books, whatever the hell that is, and the last woman who looked at me twice was a sixty-year-old hooker named Earl. So cut me some slack, will you?”

  The blonde snorted. “Reverse harem? Really?”

  He rolled his eyes. “He tells me I have to write to market and reverse harem is what the market wants so reverse harem is what I should write.”

  “Maybe you should just write what you want, Stan,” the one called Bobbi said, suddenly looking less hostile. For one thing she wasn’t pointing a finger at him and yelling ‘Killer!’ “Writing to market is like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. It’s almost impossible to accomplish. And you can get burned pretty bad.”

  He stared at her. “That’s the first intelligent thing anyone has said to me in a very long time. Do you want to be my agent?”

  She snorted. “You wish. I’m not an agent. I’m a writer. And so are Zita and Melody.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “So you guys are real.”

  “Of course we’re real,” said Zita. She produced a weary sigh. “So I guess you didn’t kill Marty, huh?”

  “No, ma’am, I did not,” he declared solemnly. “But if you’re interested I can tell you who did. But first I need a drink. I’m parched.”

  Chapter 15

  “I guess we struck out,” Bobbi declared as they closed the door of Stan Thurber’s cabin behind them.

  “Yeah, I don’t think he’s the killer,” said Zita.

  “Unless he’s the best liar I ever met, I don’t think he’s our killer,” Melody agreed. She looked thoughtful. “I really figured we had him, you know? I mean, he was under the influence of all of that beer and stuff, so that was almost like a truth serum, right?”

  “Right,” muttered Bobbi as she erased the recording from her phone. So much for being an amateur sleuth. She’d followed a hunch and her hunch had proved wrong. Very wrong. And in the process they’d knocked an innocent man from his porch and invaded his privacy. “What do you think about his theory that Marty committed suicide?”

  “I call bullshit on that one,” said Zita. “The man we met this morning didn’t strike me as suicidal.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Melody. “No way Marty knocked himself over the head.”

  Bobbi saw she’d missed a call from her husband so she put the phone to her ear. “Hey, Beau. Did you call me?”

  “Yeah, I saw a story on the news just now about this Game of Bones guy dying out in some deserted cabin in the middle of nowhere. Isn’t that where you guys are holed up?”

  “He was our neighbor. He even visited us this morning to bum a cigarette. Hours later he was dead. And you wanna know something else? We think he was murdered.”

  Beau produced a soft chuckle. “You mean you think he was murdered.”

  “Yeah, pretty much. But he was. I’m almost a hundred percent sure.”

  “Like you were a hundred percent sure that Mrs. Brummel killed her son last year? Only for him to turn up three days later with a bad hangover? Or that time you were a hundred percent sure the housekeeper was dipping into your stash of Reese’s Pieces?”

  “Hey, she was stealing my Reese’s Pieces, only you never told me you said she could.”

  “You told her she could!”

  “All I said was that she could take a snack whenever she wanted to—not eat my entire stash.”

  “Point is, honey that you get these hunches and then they get you into trouble.”

  She smiled. That was Beau for you. Always looking out for her. Twenty-four years of marriage and he still looked out for her. If that wasn’t a romance story she didn’t know what was. “This time I’m pretty sure I’m right. Marty was killed and I want to find out who did it.”

  “Just be careful, honey. If this man is still out there, and he knows you’re looking for him, he just might turn his homicidal tendencies on a group of three desirable young writers.”

  She grinned. “You’re calling me young and desirable?”

  “Well, maybe not young, exactly, but definitely desirable.”

  “Oh, honey. I miss you, you know.”

  “How far along in your book are you?”

  “We’re getting there,” she lied, wincing slightly.

  “Good. I can’t wait to get you back home safe and sound.”

  She disconnected and tapped the phone against her teeth. Zita and Melody had already returned indoors while she was on the phone. She looked around at the deserted stretch of forest surrounding their cabin. If you didn’t know any better, it was almost as if they were all alone out here, not a soul in sight. The cabins were well hidden, which was the point of a writer’s retreat. She wondered once again about Marty, and then Beau’s words rang in her ears again: the killer is still out there—and he might strike again at any time.

  In the distance, an owl hooted, and a twig snapped. She shivered and hurried up the porch to the cabin. Beau was right. Hunting for a killer might be fine and dandy in a story, but in real life it was dangerous. Killers don’t like to be chased. They just might strike back.

  She opened the door and went inside. But just before she closed the door, she thought she saw something moving in the shrubbery, just beyond the circle of light created by the porch light. Something or someone was out there. Moving in the shadows. Watching.

  She almost let out a yelp of distress and when she closed the door she discovered her throat had gone dry and her breathing had turned fast and shallow.

  Maybe catching Marty’s killer wasn’t such a great idea after all…

  Chapter 16

  That night, Zita slept but fitfully. Tossing and turning, at first sleep wouldn’t come, her head churning through the events of the day like a computer processing piles of data. At one point she thought she heard someone moving about on the landing, but she quickly dismissed the sounds as belonging to Bobbi, who always took a nocturnal bathroom break.

  It hadn’t occurred to her when they were going along with Bobbi’s harebrained scheme of ‘catching Marty’s killer’ that there could be danger involved in such a proposition. Undoubtedly there was, though. Killers were very shy creatures, who shunned the limelight and abhorred detection. Whoever killed Marty might not take kindly to the idea of a trio of amateur sleuths knocking on doors and searching around for clues just because they couldn’t get a handle on the book they were supposed to be writing.

  And so writer’s block—at least Bobbi’s writer’s block—had led to this sleuthfest and now they were all potential threats to Marty’s killer.

  If Marty was killed. It was still possible he’d simply died of natural causes. The police were refusing to speculate on the topic, and every news article Zita had scanned before turning in assumed that Marty’s weak heart was the culprit, not some unknown killer.

  So round and round it went in Zita’s head before finally, when daybreak was on the horizon, she finally fell into a merciful and deep sleep. Before being awakened by Melody’s phone alarm blasting Justin Timberlake’s Can’t Stop the Feeling through the cabin.

  “Aargh!” Zita cried, and buried her head beneath her pillow. Which, of course, did little to muffle the noise of Justin’s cheerful vocals shouting out to all and sundry that he had that sunshine in his pocket. As far as she was concerned he could stuff his sunshine where the sun didn’t shine—which didn’t seem to make one lick of sense.

  “Rise and shine, sleepyhead!” Melody caroled from the door.

  “Shut up—I’m trying to sleep,” she groaned.

  She could hear Melody’s melodious voice deliver the same message two doors down to Bobbi, who groaned, “Leave me alone—I’m sleeping!”

  The music festival continued unabated and was soon accompanied by the smell of freshly brewed coffee and… waffles.

  Now who could resist such a feast?

  With a tired groan, and rubbing at her eyes, Zita dragged her weary body from the bed and shuffled into the bathroom—or at least she would have shuffled into the bathroom if the door hadn’t been locked, sounds of someone showering coming from the other side.

  “Aaargh!” she groaned again, and returned to her room, dropped down on the bed, and soon was fast asleep again.

  When she awoke—seemingly three hours later but in actual fact mere minutes—she thought she had a great idea. One of those ideas she felt she needed to share with another human being immediately if not sooner.

  “Hey, you guys,” she said, yawning as she descended the stairs and shuffled into the kitchen, where Melody was already chewing on a waffle and Bobbi sat staring into her mug of coffee as if expecting it to reveal her future to her. “I just had a great idea.”

  “Me, too!” said Melody excitedly.

  Zita took a seat and pushed her black tresses from her face. “Why don’t we go and talk to Marty’s wife? We know she’s staying at a place called the Ocean Crest Resort & Diner. We can introduce ourselves and tell her we probably were the last persons to see her husband alive. And, most importantly…” She held up a finger for effect. “We can ask her if the police think her husband was murdered. Which, admit it, we still don’t know for sure.”

  “Hey!” said Melody. “You’re not gonna believe this but I had the exact same idea!”

  “I actually had a different idea,” said Bobbi, finally dragging her eyes away from the dregs of coffee. “I thought about that gaunt man you guys saw yesterday. And the more I think about him the more convinced I am that he’s Marty’s killer.” She spread her hands. “I mean, why else would he have been there? It just stands to reason that you and the killer almost bumped into one another.”

  “Like ships in the night,” said Melody, nodding.

  “Something like that. So you probably did bump into each other and Mr. Gaunt is the killer we’re looking for.”

  “So why don’t we do both?” Zita suggested. “Visit Marty’s wife, pay our respects, find out what the cops know, and if Marty really was killed, like we think, find Mr. Gaunt?”

  “High five, you guys!” said Melody, whose joie-de-vivre was both infectious and extremely irritating, especially this early in the morning and even more so since Zita still hadn’t taken a shower. And like most people she wasn’t fully awake before she had.

  Still, she made a half-hearted attempt to hold up her paw, Bobbi did the same, and the three of them high-fived their plan for the day.

  Oddly enough none of them had suggested doing what they’d come out to Georgia for in the first place: write the next installment in the ongoing adventures of Janet Lee Parker and her hunkish billionaire boyfriend Jack Black. Janet Lee and Jack would have to take a backseat while their intrepid creators hunted down a real-life killer for a change.

  Life sometimes really did trump art.

  Chapter 17

  Mrs. Pozdzik was a careful driver. She piloted her Toyota Highlander with remarkable ease, her attention never wavering from her surroundings. She leaned into the wheel a little, peering through the windscreen, like Melody had done when she first learned how to drive. Mrs. Pozdzik was an expert driver, but the Highlander was her husband’s car, and it was obvious she felt a little nervous taking it out on the road.

  “I drive a Yaris myself,” she explained as she pushed her glasses up her noses then quickly returned her hand to the wheel, replacing it at the two o’clock position. “I’m not used to driving a big rig like this. Even though Hackman—that’s my husband—tells me the Highlander isn’t even a big car.” She laughed her tinkling laugh. “I can’t imagine driving anything bigger than this, though. I’d probably pass out before I even hit the road. Oh, I’m a nervous driver all right. Hackman tells me all the time to relax. But I guess that’s just the way I’m built. So you gals gonna spend the day on the town? Get some much-needed R&R?”

  “Yeah, we figured we might as well see the sights before we get back to work,” Bobbi confirmed.

  The three of them were ensconced on the backseat, and grateful for the ride. But that didn’t mean they were going to tell Lois all about their secret mission. That’s why secret missions were called secret, after all: because you weren’t supposed to blab about them to your notoriously chatty and gossipy housekeeper.

  “The writing going well, then?” asked Lois, casting a curious look in the rearview mirror. “Y’all write detective novels, right? I love detective novels. Hackman doesn’t. He tells me detective novels are all well and good when you’re a kid but once you grow out of your pigtails and your bibs you need to read grown-up books.”

  “So what books does your husband read?” Melody asked, curious.

  “Oh, Hackman is a real thriller buff. Can’t get too bloody or scary for Hackman.”

  “He should probably read Bobbi’s books,” said Melody. “She’s great.”

  “I’ll tell him,” said Lois vaguely. “So do y’all write funny detective novels or sad detective novels? I like my detective novels funny but that’s just me.”

  “We write romantic suspense,” said Melody. “Equal parts romance and suspense.”

  This seemed to take Lois by surprise. “I don’t get it. You mean your detectives get it on?”

  “You might say that,” said Bobbi, giving a giggling Melody a prod in the ribs.

  “So let me get this straight. Your detective is chasing the bad ‘uns, right? And while he’s chasing the bad ‘uns suddenly he gets this powerful urge for some nookie so he takes care of this urge and then goes right back to chasing the bad ‘uns? Is that how it works?”

  “Um, not exactly,” said Bobbi, who had a hard time keeping a straight face.

  “If I were to read one of your ‘romantic suspense’ books I’d be worried the detective allows the bad ‘uns to get away on account of the fact he’s too busy taking care of his carnal urges if you see what I mean. That’s just my opinion, of course. Y’all write what y’all want.”

  “Right,” said Bobbi. “And you read what you want, Mrs. Pozdzik.”

  “How many times have I told you to call me Lois? The only person who calls me Mrs. Pozdzik is my mother-in-law, and she hates my guts. That’s the way it’s been since I hooked up with her son and that’s the way it’ll stay. Now where do you want me to drop you off?”

  “Do you know where the Ocean Crest Resort & Diner is?” asked Melody. The moment she said it she knew she’d made a mistake. Bobbi and Zita now both gave her prods in the ribs, and Mrs. Pozdzik—Lois—was giving her a curious look over her shoulder before returning her eyes to the road.

  “That’s where Marty’s wife is staying. Teodora. Teo to friends. Do y’all know her?”

  “Did Marty have a wife? I didn’t even know,” said Melody quickly, trying to rectify her mistake.

  Lois took her right hand from the two o’clock position and wagged a finger. “You don’t fool me, little missy. I told you all about Marty’s wife yesterday, remember? Y’all are doing some of that detecting, aren’t you? Trying to figure out what happened to Marty.”

  “Marty had a heart attack,” said Zita. “That’s what the police said.”

  “Have you heard different, Lois?” asked Bobbi.

  “As a matter of fact I have,” said Lois surprisingly. “Hackman is friends with Dwight Woolsack, who was the first responder? Dwight’s our local sheriff. Of course this was before the state police came in and took over. Dwight’s tight with one of the detectives, though. Guy called Mike Mulligan? Now Mulligan says Marty didn’t die of natural causes. In fact he was murdered. Hit over the head with a blunt object, apparently.” She shivered audibly. “Can you imagine? Murdered in his cabin? Let me tell you, Norris isn’t too well pleased. Norris being the owner of the cabins,” she added for clarity’s sake. “So who do y’all think done it?”