“I think we should talk to Teodora George again,” said Zita.

  “But why?” asked Melody, as always naivety personified. “She didn’t do it.”

  “Like hell she didn’t,” Zita growled. “She had a million reasons to kill Marty.” She frowned at her iPad. “Or, rather, a hundred million. Holy moly. Did you know Marty was worth a hundred million smackeroos? Maybe I should quit writing horror and write some fantasy instead.”

  “So?” said Melody. “Didn’t you hear what Lois said? They made a deal. She was going to get half of Marty’s fortune, she only had to play nice until his next book was done.”

  “At the rate Marty was going that could have taken another ten years,” said Zita. “I don’t think she was prepared to wait that long. Especially if she could double her money by getting rid of him right now.” She shrugged. “If you want to know, my money is on Teodora.”

  “She seemed so nice,” said Melody, shaking her head. “Though I couldn’t help noticing she had some work done to her face. No one looks like that at sixty-seven.”

  “Like Lois said, all the work of her plastic surgeon lover,” Zita scoffed.

  “I find it very hard to believe Marty had a girlfriend,” said Melody. “So sad to see your heroes fall from their pedestal. I really thought their love was going to last forever.”

  From the choking noise Zita produced at this, it was obvious she didn’t share this sentiment.

  “Look, are we taking down Marty’s killer or not?” Bobbi said, quickly tiring of all this talk about Teo and her demon lover. She was pounding her fist with her hand. “We need to move now and we need to do it with brute force, employing the element of surprise.”

  “This is not a war campaign, Bobbi,” said Zita critically. “We’re just going to have a chat. From writer to writer. And hopefully we’ll learn something new about the case.”

  “Fine,” said Bobbi. “Just… let me do the talking, all right?” She made for the door, and when she saw that her partners in crime weren’t following in her footsteps, turned. “Chop, chop. On the double.”

  Dragging their feet, Zita and Melody joined her. “I’m not so sure about this, Bobbi,” said Melody.

  “Duly noted. Now get your head in the right place, Mel. This is happening. We’re doing this. This is going down.” And so, no doubt, was Carl ‘Gaunt Man’ Dennison.

  As they navigated the pathway that led from cabin to cabin, Bobbi was flicking her flashlight to and fro like an experienced troop leader. Zita didn’t have the heart to tell her that they were three writers, not the advance troops of some invading army. She was pretty sure that Bobbi would have made a great general, but this was not a war.

  “Shock and awe,” Bobbi was saying as she stealthily moved down the path.

  There were probably about a dozen cabins out there, most of them rented to writers and other creatives who needed the relative isolation to allow their creative minds to come up with their next brilliant novel or movie or piece of music. Kanye had been spotted in the vicinity one year, and so had Randy Newman. It was rumored Bill Clinton had written his autobiography in one of these cabins, and Quentin Tarantino was a regular as well. Joel and Ethan Coen even brought their wives and kids along, and ended up writing in a broom closet while their families took over the rest of the cabin to socialize and have fun, which more or less defeated the purpose of going on this getaway in the first place.

  Not that they’d ever met these famous people. The whole point of a writing retreat was not to be disturbed. To be away from the world for as long as it took to put down all that brilliance. So basically all this traipsing around, barging in first on Stan Thurber and now Carl Dennison, was the absolute antithesis of what coming down to Upswing was all about.

  It was with a heavy heart, therefore, and a lot of reservations, that Zita trudged behind General Bobbi, who was on a rampage and could only be stopped with an elephant gun. To avoid disaster it was probably better to join her and not let her wander off unsupervised.

  They finally arrived at Cabin 6C, home of the notorious Gaunt Man.

  Stan Lee would have found inspiration to invent a new superhero, but to Zita it just indicated that Dennison had been out there slaving away on his next masterpiece and not taking his vitamins like a good writer should.

  “This is it, you guys,” said Bobbi, determination making her look fierce and, frankly, a little scary. “Shock and awe. Follow my lead.” Without waiting for a response, she pounded the door with her fist. “Carl Dennison, open up. We know you’re in there!”

  “Shouldn’t we announce ourselves? Tell him who we are?” whispered Melody.

  “Open up!” Bobbi bellowed, applying her fist to the door once more. “This is the writers’ police! If you don’t open this door right this minute we’re coming in!”

  ‘Writers’ police?’ Zita mouthed to Melody, who shrugged helplessly.

  “That’s it!” Bobbi snapped. “We’re coming in!”

  Just then, the door opened a crack, and Gaunt Man peered out. He was looking a little trepidatious, as one would when subjected to an intervention by the ‘writers police.’

  “Who are you?” he asked, looking even more gaunt and pale than the day before.

  Lack of fresh air, Zita concluded. Writers will get like that when left to their own devices.

  Bobbi was pointing a finger in the man’s face and waggling it menacingly. “My name is Bobbi Boulder and I’m here to tell you that you killed one of our own and you’re busted.”

  The man blinked. “Killed one of our own? What are you talking about?”

  Bobbi, never one to wait for an invitation, pushed herself inside, past the surprised writer and rounded on the man. “You killed Martin SS George! Now confess!”

  For a moment, Carl Dennison simply stood there, gawking. Then he said, his voice rising about an octave. “Are you nuts? I didn’t kill Marty! He was my best friend!”

  “Oh, dear,” Zita muttered. “Here we go again.”

  Chapter 24

  Melody and Zita had entered the small cabin on Bobbi’s heels and Melody actually felt sorry for the guy. His hair was disheveled, there was a suspicious red spot on his nose that could be cancer, and his eyes were bloodshot and bleary. He was dressed in the customary writer’s uniform: jogging pants, grandpa slippers and a ratty fleece sweater.

  “I didn’t do it!” the man was exclaiming, clearly in the throes of extreme emotion.

  Bobbi wasn’t convinced. That was the thing about Bobbi, though: once she got an idea into her head it was very difficult to dislodge it. Impossible, actually. Better just to let her take it to the finish line and allow her to realize in her own time that it was another dud.

  Melody would have told Carl Dennison all of this and more but that would simply have added fuel to her co-writer’s fire. As it was, the only thing she could do was give the poor man aid and comfort in this, his hour of need. She tripped into the kitchen, therefore, while Bobbi continued her bulldozer approach trying to wrangle a confession out of Dennison, she went in search of something bracing. Like coffee. Or whiskey. Or both.

  What she found was an unholy mess. In spite of Lois’s words that Carl Dennison was a model inmate, he’d made quite a disaster of his kitchen. Empty cups and plates were piled up high in the sink, coffee grounds were liberally sprinkled across every available surface, a frying pan containing the remnants of a fried egg stood on the burner, which was smeared with grease, macaroni and other remnants of a meal prepared in haste and left to burn.

  Melody shook her head. Writers. They’re a strange breed. When engrossed in the creative process it was hard for them to focus on anything else but their sainted storyline.

  She opened a few cupboards and finally found what she was looking for: a bottle of Jack Daniels, half empty. She also found a few copies of a book that looked familiar: Hard Target, by Llewellyn Bolt. The cover featured a tough-looking male, a muscular arm protectively wrapped around a buxom, half-clad female. She flipped the book to the first page and saw that the copy was signed by the author: ‘To Carl. Stay Hard. Lew Bolt.’

  She read a few paragraphs and immediately was intrigued by how badly the book was written. Pulp fiction had never held a strong appeal to her, especially the thriller kind. So she put down the book, poured a finger of Jack Daniels into the only clean mug available—dedicated to The World’s Greatest Mom—and took it into the living room, where things were hotting up.

  “Who are you to come barging in here, accusing me of all kinds of terrible things?!” Carl Dennison was demanding. He was still gaunt, but the pale pallor of his skin had been replaced by a crimson flush. Veins were throbbing in his neck and temples, and his eyes were bulging. If he kept this up they’d soon have another dead writer on their hands.

  “We saw you!” Bobbi cried, having saved her most powerful argument for last.

  The writer was close to an apoplectic attack. “What are you talking about?!”

  “When we went to visit Marty we passed you,” Melody explained, purposely keeping her voice chipper and bright, hoping to inject some common sense into the conversation. She handed the man the mug, and he stared at it as if it was a beaker of poison. “Drink up,” she said. “We saw you traipsing around outside. You didn’t look happy to see us.”

  Carl was frowning now, still staring down at the mug. Finally he took a tentative sip, quickly followed by another one, and then he was gulping down the whiskey in one go. “I’m sorry. I don’t follow. What does my walking around outside have to do with Marty’s death?”

  “Marty’s murder,” Bobbi stressed. “Your so-called friend was murdered, Carl.”

  Carl’s frown deepened. “Murdered? What are you talking about? He had a bad heart. He died from a coronary. At least that’s what I heard.”

  “Marty was murdered,” said Melody. “Someone knocked him over the head with a blunt object and then he died. Are you sure you didn’t do it, Carl?”

  But Carl had collapsed onto a cluttered sofa. “My God. Poor Marty.” He looked dazed now, and Melody, who’d had the good sense to bring the bottle of JD along, now poured the writer another finger, which he swallowed down without delay. He was starting to look less like an overheated corpse and more like a human being. Even that dazed look was waning.

  “I don’t get it,” he said, looking up. “Who would want to kill good old Marty? The guy was sweetness personified. Kindest, dearest soul ever to roam this earth.”

  Bobbi, whose fire seemed to have been spent, also sank down onto a couch. She was like a general organizing a blitzkrieg who encounters a sudden resistance in the enemy line and whose campaign as a consequence bogs down and finally stalls completely.

  “But you were walking around out there,” she said, desperately reiterating her most powerful argument. “We saw you. Or at least Zita and Melody saw you. You were there.”

  “Of course I was there. I’d just come back from Marty’s. I’d gotten stuck again in the middle of my new Jim Preacher novel, and I was hoping he could get me unstuck. When I knocked on the door and he didn’t answer it I just figured he was out so I returned to my cabin. And the reason I wasn’t looking too sunny is probably that I was in a lousy mood.”

  “You write the Jim Preacher novels?” asked Bobbi with a frown. “I didn’t know.”

  “I write as Jack Young. Carl Dennison is my real name. When I started out my agent figured Carl wasn’t a good name for a thriller writer so he changed it to Jack Young.”

  Bobbi’s eyebrows had shot up into her fringe. “Omigod, Mr. Young. I’m your biggest fan!”

  Carl grimaced. “You have a funny way of showing it, Miss Boulder.”

  Chapter 25

  Now wasn’t this awkward? Bobbi stared at Carl, suddenly seeing him in an entirely different light. Jack Young was her favorite writer bar none. And he looked so different from his author picture. In the picture featured on his website, on the back cover of his books, and on his author profile, he was a butch, buff man with a killer smile and a shock of raven hair. The man who sat next to her could have fit twice in Jack Young’s frame.

  “You lost weight,” she said therefore, unable to focus on anything else but his altered appearance. “You look a lot bigger in your author picture. Bigger and buffer, in fact.”

  Carl grimaced again, as if in pain. “My doctor told me if I didn’t lose weight I was a coronary waiting to happen. So I took up running. And walking. I walk for miles these days. In fact I started dictating all my books. While I walk. And then I edit them when I get home. In fact I told Marty to do the same. His doctor gave him the same diagnosis mine did. So I invited him to come out walking with me. He could dictate his doorstoppers while I dictated mine. He refused. Said he hated walking. Or any other form of physical activity.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Dennison,” said Bobbi. “I guess I got a little carried away.”

  “You can say that again,” he scoffed.

  Bobbi saw that she’d made a bloomer. “It’s just that… you’re the only suspect we’ve got left. So naturally I assumed…”

  “What I don’t get is why you would go around investigating Marty’s death. Who are you people? Private detectives hired by Teodora? What?”

  Bobbi directed a look of apology at her two co-writers. She’d dragged them in here and now Carl had every reason to call the police and complain about being targeted like this.

  “Actually we’re writers, just like you, Mr. Dennison,” said Melody.

  Carl was frowning again—not a good sign. “Writers? I don’t get it.”

  “We’re two cabins over” said Bobbi. “We met Marty the day he died. He paid us a visit, wanting to bum a cigarette. We took an instant liking to him, and when Mel and Z paid him a visit later, they were the ones who found his body. His sudden death made such an impression we decided to look into his death—as the police officers in charge—Detectives Mulligan and Mullet—haven’t managed to inspire a lot of confidence in a quick resolution.”

  “I see,” said Carl reflectively. “It’s ironic, isn’t it?”

  “What is?” asked Zita, who was studying the row of Jim Preacher books on Carl’s bookshelf.

  “Before Marty hopped over to your cabin he was here first. But since I gave up smoking and embraced the healthy life I couldn’t help him out. I suggested going for a long hike instead, but he respectfully declined. If only he’d said yes he wouldn’t be dead right now. If only I’d managed to convince my friend to join me he would still be alive.”

  “You can’t think like that, Carl,” said Melody.

  He smiled up at her. “Thanks. That’s very kind of you. Who are you?”

  “Melody Pen. I write romance novels.”

  “I’ll bet they’re really great.”

  It was obvious that Melody’s ministrations when she doled out that Jack Daniels in the heat of the battle had touched the spot. Carl was looking at her with stars in his eyes.

  “So who do you think did it?” asked Bobbi, whose one-track mind wouldn’t allow her to go off-topic, not even to allow Carl and Melody to have this brief romantic interlude.

  Besides, Melody had a fine able-bodied boyfriend back home, and it wouldn’t do for her to fall for a middle-aged writer who looked like death warmed over—health kick or not.

  Carl rubbed his face. “No idea. Like I said, Marty was the sweetest guy.”

  “We talked to Stanley Thurber,” said Bobbi. “Did you know he’s right next door?”

  “Sure. I know Stan. Old friend of Marty’s. No bad blood between them as far as I know.”

  “And what about Teodora? How well do you know her?”

  “Pretty well. She’s… something else, isn’t she?”

  “Rumor has it she and Marty were getting a divorce,” said Bobbi, studying Carl closely. “She’s seeing a plastic surgeon while Marty was having an affair with an actress?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I heard, too. Marty never told me about the affair, though, or about the divorce, and I didn’t ask. I figured that stuff was private, and if he wasn’t going to volunteer that information it didn’t feel right for me to pry.”

  “I thought you said you two were best friends?”

  Melody was giving Bobbi a meaningful look, indicating she was approaching Bad Cop mode again but she didn’t care. If there was information to be gleaned here she was going to glean it. Though she couldn’t imagine the writer of such classics as Heart of Ice and Stone and Tough Man MacLean to harm a hair on Marty’s head, you simply never knew, did you?

  “We were, but we rarely spoke about our private affairs. We talked about the writing, mostly, and the business of writing. He helped me out when I was stuck and I did the same when he got blocked. You talked to Teo?”

  “We did, yeah. She seemed broken up about the death of her husband.”

  “She loved him. He loved her. I’m sure about that. And to be completely honest I really didn’t see them going through with the divorce. Sure, they had affairs—both of them—but that didn’t mean a thing. I’m sure that sooner or later they would have reconsidered. Come to their senses. They’d been together for so long. They were a team. Best friends. And of course Teo is a gorgeous woman. I can’t imagine Marty walking away from her. No way.”

  His voice had turned husky and his eyes misty. Holy crap. Carl Dennison was in love with Teo George! Now if that wasn’t a motive as big as a house Bobbi didn’t know what was.

  She stared at the man—her favorite writer. More now than before she thought he was Marty’s killer. And the reason he was looking like death warmed over was simple: he’d just killed his best friend so he could sleep with the man’s wife! Had they gotten into a fight? Was Teo seeing Carl instead of that plastic surgeon Lois had mentioned? Had Marty found out and was he having second thoughts about divorcing his wife of forty-something years?

  Or were Teo and Carl in this together? Had they decided to kill off her husband?