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  Now she started to turn away. “Hold it,” I said, and she stopped. “What do you mean, ‘run into problems’? What’s happened with other cases Duffy’s worked?”

  “I don’t work for the prosecutor’s office,” Rafferty answered. “I wasn’t there, but I heard about it.”

  “Heard about what?” I got out through my gnashed teeth.

  “Twice he’s had people he was looking for turn up dead. The guy’s bad luck. Just stay away, is all I’m saying.”

  Chapter 17

  “Duffy’s had some bad luck once in a while, but for the most part he’s been a real boon to the department,” Ben Preston told me. We were getting out of Ben’s car at my house, where he’d taken me after the inevitable hordes of people had vacated Sunny’s place and he had enough time to drive me home. “Nobody bats a thousand.”

  “I’m not saying who, but I was warned to stay away from him,” I said. “That’s why I asked. I’m told that if I am in fact next on the list for this guy, Duffy Madison is exactly the man I want to avoid.” Okay, so Rafferty hadn’t said those words exactly, but the message had been clear.

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” Ben said as I unlocked the door and we walked inside. “Eunice Rafferty was doing her voodoo scare thing again. She has some bug up her ass about Duffy, and I have no idea why.”

  We went into the kitchen, where I started a pot of coffee. I’d just turned the air conditioning back on, so it was going to be iced coffee, but there was no sense getting the ice out until there was something to pour over it. “There were two cases—and we don’t get tons of missing persons cases just in Bergen County—that Duffy worked on, and they didn’t turn out the way we wanted them to. It wasn’t Duffy’s fault, and he wasn’t the black cat walking in anyone’s path.”

  “The first three abductions took place in three states that weren’t New Jersey,” I pointed out. “Don’t you have to look for someone who could have been in all those places at the time of the crime? Doesn’t that sort of narrow things down?”

  I have a counter between the kitchen and the dining room. I never actually dine in the dining room, so there were a number of boxes in there from when I had moved in that had never been completely unpacked. Kind of makes me wonder if I needed that stuff in the first place. Ben sat down on a barstool I had set up next to the counter.

  He rubbed his chin as he thought. “Of course that would help identify a suspect,” he said. “But we don’t even have a pool of people to choose from yet. This guy has been really discreet, except when he’s killing people.”

  “Well, what about motive?” I filled the coffeemaker with enough water and started it going, then I walked out to his side of the pass-through and stood looking at him while the coffee brewed. “No two of these women seem to have anything in common other than writing crime fiction. Why does someone want to kill women crime fiction authors?”

  I realized then how tired Ben looked. There were creases under his eyes, which were not entirely white in their whites, and his smile was crooked, favoring the left side. “Has it ever occurred to you that this guy might just be crazy?” he asked.

  I shook my head, probably too dismissively. “That’s the easiest dodge in the mystery writing business,” I told him. “You don’t give your killer a motivation; you just say he’s crazy. Even crazy people have motivations, whether they make sense or not. In the criminal’s mind, what he’s doing is perfectly logical and necessary. Just saying ‘he’s crazy’ means that you don’t know why he’s doing this.”

  Ben looked at me blankly for a few moments. “I don’t know why he’s doing this,” he said.

  “Doesn’t it make you feel better to tell the truth?” I asked.

  “Not really, no.”

  I should have been more shaken up than I was; I should have been sad and terrified and angry and did I mention terrified? Sunny Maugham, everybody’s favorite in the mystery world, was dead, and I had discovered her body. It was possible that, by pissing off the abductor, I had played a role in her death. And then there was the small matter of the very broad hints being dropped that I was next on the agenda. Yes, I definitely should have been a quivering mass of frightened gelatin lying in the fetal position on my bedroom floor.

  But I wasn’t. Maybe it just hadn’t sunk in yet. Maybe I was in major denial. But maybe, just maybe, the training in concocting plots, figuring motives, designing clues, and most of all creating Duffy Madison was kicking into gear now, and I was taking a defensive stance, attempting as best I could to take control of the situation and protect myself from the oncoming threat.

  Yeah, it was probably that it hadn’t sunk in yet.

  What I actually was, almost as much as tired, was pissed off. I started feeling like the heroine of one of Sunny’s cozies, an amateur who would immediately start investigating the crime and way outpace the professionals because she was spunky or knew how to embroider or something. I wanted to find the guy who killed Sunny and beat him up. Except that I was petrified that I was next and wanted to be as far away from him as possible. I was not discounting Jupiter as a place to hide.

  The coffee began to drip into the empty pot, which Paula had been kind enough to actually wash out, so I walked back around into the kitchen and got two glasses and a tray of ice out. As I prepared the glasses with ice and got soy milk out of the fridge, Ben stood and walked around, offering to help.

  “You want to help? Figure out who this maniac is and catch him,” I said. “That’s your job. Mine is making up fake ones and then getting somebody to catch those.”

  “And so you made up Duffy Madison,” Ben reminded me. He looked concerned, as if the whole Duffy-as-fictional-character thing had lost its amusement.

  “I did. And once we figure out who your pal using the name I made up really is, we can determine exactly how crazy he is.” I poured the coffee over the ice, much of which promptly melted, and got more ice to add to the drinks. “You want sugar or anything?”

  “You got chocolate syrup?” Ben Preston asked. I nodded. “That’s great in iced coffee.” He opened the fridge, found it on the door, and extracted it.

  I looked at him. “You cops really are just little kids with guns, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not a cop; I’m an investigator for the prosecutor of the county of Bergen.” He squeezed some syrup into his iced coffee and stirred it with a spoon I handed him.

  “That’s pretty much a cop. And you used to be a cop.”

  “We were talking about Duffy,” he reminded me.

  “I don’t have anything new to say about Duffy.” The fact that my assistant was trying to track down Duffy’s prom date seemed, well, perhaps an unflattering detail that was best left out of this conversation.

  Ben took a long swig of his iced . . . mocha. It must have hit the spot, because he gave a contented sigh. “Well, I do. I think you’re wrong about him. I don’t think he’s crazy.”

  “You don’t? How do you explain—”

  “I can’t. I can’t tell you why he has the same name as the character you made up. Maybe you’d heard his name and forgotten it; it’s possible. Maybe you saw it on the Internet in doing some research and thought it sounded like a fictional character; that’s possible, too. But I can tell you that Duffy Madison is the best missing persons investigator I’ve ever met, and you can’t do that job as well as he does if you are mentally incapacitated.” To punctuate his point, he drained the rest of his drink. “Is there any more coffee?”

  But I was annoyed enough, and frayed enough, not to succumb to the charms of a fairly good-looking man drinking a sweet caffeinated beverage in my kitchen. “I believe that Duffy is a good investigator,” I said defensively. “I made him that way. I created every piece of that personality; I know how he thinks, what he wants, everywhere he’s ever been. It’s the only way you can do what I do at all well.” And just to show him I meant business too, I took a long sip of my iced coffee. He was right; chocolate syrup definitely would have taken some o
f the bitterness out. But I wasn’t going to give Ben the satisfaction.

  “You’re changing your tune,” Ben said. He seemed mystified by that.

  “You’re right.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Exactly what you think it does,” I said.

  “Jesus Christ, you really think that guy is some fictional character you made up, don’t you?” Ben leaned back on the counter and seemed to be trying to take me in all at once, which at this distance couldn’t be done without a special lens.

  “It’s the only explanation that makes any sense,” I said.

  * * *

  Ben left a little while later, still shaking his head. I finally did call Brian, told him about my day, and, after all those hours, cried for a while. Scotch helped a little, but not that much. For one thing, I can’t drink more than one glass. For another, even after I felt myself relax, Sunny was still dead.

  I vegged out for a while, just sitting there in my living room with The Return of the Pink Panther playing on my TV. Even the unrelenting silliness on the screen wasn’t helping. I wasn’t mourning Sunny, exactly; I didn’t know her well enough to feel comfortable doing that. I was feeling her loss from the world of mystery writing, which was depressing enough, but I was also just feeling drained and uninspired. It actually occurred to me to do some revisions then, but that seemed somehow disrespectful, and besides, they were revisions and I didn’t want to do them.

  So, as I often do when I’m out of sorts and have no logical reason to do so, I called my father.

  I told him about Sunny. I told him about how I’d been asked to consult on her abduction, how I’d accidentally discovered her body, how that was making me feel somehow responsible, and how I didn’t want to be responsible. I said that I wished today had never happened, but now I couldn’t make it unhappen, and I’d be stuck with it for the rest of my life—and what was that going to do to me?

  The one thing I didn’t tell him about was Duffy. He’d have me declared incompetent and take over my affairs in court, right after having me committed to the most compassionate lunatic asylum in New York State.

  My father, who has a logical and caring mind, listened without comment for a long time. When I was done ranting and just started sniffling again—which was exactly what I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do—he spoke up.

  “You know perfectly well that what happened isn’t your fault, Rache.”

  “It feels like it is. I mean, if I’d just tried harder . . .”

  “Your friend would be just as dead.”

  I stood up and started walking around the house, just because. Well, maybe because I could be sure then that I was indeed alone in the place. I hadn’t checked my e-mail pretty much all day. Duffy would see if there was something from the guy who killed Sunny. I didn’t want to know.

  “Maybe that’s the thing,” I told Dad. “Sunny wasn’t really my friend. I mean, she was a lovely person and I liked her, but we didn’t really know each other that well. If it comes out on a LISTSERV or some of the other mystery underground, it’ll look like I was just trying to climb onto her coattails, like I’m the worst kind of morbid namedropper. How do I make it not look like that?”

  “Nobody’s going to think you were doing that,” Dad said patiently. “If anyone did, it would be someone who has no idea what kind of person you are.”

  There wasn’t anyone in the dining room. I turned on the lights to be sure. There wasn’t anyone in the kitchen, either. But I put some more lights on just to prove it to myself.

  Then I made the biggest mistake I’d made in a day full of hideous events and certain errors. I told my father about the threats from the killer.

  He did not take a breath or wait one second. “I’m on my way,” he said.

  Before he could merely hang up and hop into his car (which was undoubtedly his plan), I leapt in with, “No, Dad. Please. There’s no need. I have some very good security people on me. The police are taking it seriously and helping me, I swear.”

  “So how will it hurt to add your father to the mix? I’m on my way.”

  “No,” I said more forcefully. “The last thing I need right now is to be worrying about you at the same time I’m worrying about me.”

  “So here’s the solution: don’t worry about me. Nobody’s threatening my life over the Internet. I’m on my way, Rachel.”

  “No, you’re not.” Improvise. Writers improvise all the time; it’s what we do whenever we don’t know what’s coming next. “I promise I’ll call you if things get worse, but I really can’t be distracted with you here, Dad. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  There wasn’t anyone in the office, or in Paula’s office, either. You can bet lights went on in both. I shuddered a little when I passed the door to the basement stairs. I sure as hell wasn’t going down there. That’s what a TSTL character would do. Or was not going downstairs what made me Too Stupid to Live? Either way, there was no chance I was checking my basement.

  “Of course you should say something,” Dad answered. “I’ll make a deal with you. Call me twice every day to let me know you’re all right. First time I’m ready to go to lunch or to bed and I haven’t heard from you, I’m getting in the car. No questions asked. Fair?”

  It occurred to me that he could call me twice a day, but that would surely be worse than the way he proposed; my father has the worst sense of timing on the planet. It was one of the reasons I hadn’t had sex in more than a year. He had a knack of calling whenever things were getting interesting, and yet I knew his interruption had to be completely unintentional. Dad never worked for the NSA.

  “Fair enough,” I answered, since it was the best deal I was going to get. Calling Dad twice a day wouldn’t be that bad when it was for one purpose. I could just get him on the phone, say, “I’m fine,” and he’d let me go almost immediately.

  “I think it’s best we don’t tell your mother,” he said, and then thought over what he’d said. “That’s not a divorce thing, Rache.”

  I had saved my bedroom for last. This was a twofold decision: I thought it would make sense to end there so I could just go to sleep and try to forget the day, and also, if there were someone in my bedroom, I especially didn’t want to know.

  There wasn’t. That was not especially unusual, but tonight I was glad of it.

  “I get that it’s not a divorce thing,” I told my father, “and telling Mom is the last thing I’d want to do. She’d probably blame it on either the government or the lack of fiber in my diet, and I don’t need to hear theories about either of those.”

  “A wise choice,” Dad said.

  I kept him on the phone, talking about pretty much nothing at all, for as long as I could, just to have a comforting voice there whenever I stopped talking. But after a while, I was tired, Dad was out of things to say, and Sunny was still dead. We said good night.

  Within three seconds of my disconnecting the call, my phone rang. I had flung myself on my bed, lights still on in the room, makeup still on my face, clothes still on my body, just to rest my head against the air-conditioned pillow and try to get a moment’s rest for my mind. I checked the incoming number.

  Duffy.

  I gave serious consideration to letting him go to voice mail, but a quick look at the phone indicated that he’d already left seven messages. That told me he had news, and it undoubtedly was not the kind that would trigger another run to the Cold Cow for a celebration.

  Maybe, I decided, I didn’t have to be a cozy heroine. Maybe I could just help Duffy from afar, on the phone preferably, and give him the clues that would lead to the killer’s arrest. I made a mental note to cancel the flight to Jupiter. Help Duffy. That would do the trick.

  “What’s going on, Duffy?” I said when I hit the talk button (call it what you like; you hit it and then you talk).

  “I have been calling you for ninety minutes,” he began. “I’ve left seven messages on your voice mail. Haven’t you checked your e-mail?”

>   Oh no, not one of those, please. Not tonight. “Don’t tell me I’ve gotten another threatening message,” I said. “I couldn’t take that right now.”

  “I’m not telling you that. I’m telling you that I sent you four e-mails and you have not answered them.”

  “It’s all about you, isn’t it, Duffy?”

  “Hey, I didn’t ask to be created.” That’s the sense of humor this guy had. If I was going to buy in on this ridiculous theory, I’d start giving him more compassion in later books. Sol would tell me it was inconsistent, and I’d reply that the character has to grow.

  This would, naturally, strip Fictional Duffy of everything that readers liked about him and would no doubt result in the cancellation of the series and the bulk of my income. But then this version of Duffy wouldn’t say annoying things to me. There are trade-offs in every business.

  And now I could never kill him off. I already felt horrible about Sunny, and I couldn’t even come up with a rationale for believing her death was my fault.

  “What was it you wanted to tell me?” I asked. That pillow wasn’t getting any more air-conditioned. I wanted to be sleeping soon.

  “We might have a break, something that could help track down the murderer of Ms. Bledsoe. May I come to see you?”

  “What, at this hour?” I could barely keep my eyes open.

  Duffy’s voice sounded incredulous. “It’s eight thirty,” he said.

  It was? I looked at the clock next to my bed, and sure enough. The light through the windows was not entirely devoid of sunset just yet. How could I have so lost my bearings that I’d thought it was at least four hours later?

  “Sure, drop in,” I said. “We’re always open.”

  Chapter 18

  While Duffy was driving to my house, I decided to call Brian Coltrane and ask him to stop by, too. I decided this based on two principles: (1) I wanted Brian in the house just in case Duffy was the author abductor coming to take me away and kill me, and (2) I wanted to be sure that Duffy wasn’t a figment of my imagination. Even though he’d interacted with others, including Brian, it was still possible I’d dreamed up everything that had gone wrong since he’d called my landline that first day. Writers are open to every possibility, and that can be a real pain in the ass.