Maggie Shayne: Kill Me Again

“What? Grouchy? Sarcastic? Getting shot in the head will do that to a guy. Sorry I’m not pouring on the charm.”

“I understand that,” she said. “It’s just that your books are so—”

“My books?”

She bit her lip, then nodded and shifted in the chair. “Maybe I’d better start at the beginning.”

“Maybe you’d better.” He sat up in the bed, though he’d been told not to.

“Okay.” Smoothing her skirt over her nicely shaped thighs, she seemed to organize her thoughts. “Okay,” she said again. “I’m Professor Olivia Dupree. I teach English over at the State University of Vermont’s Shadow Falls campus. Shadow Falls—that’s where you are now. I’ve been here for sixteen years, and I’ve been helping to plan this year’s summer fundraiser series for—”

“Excuse me.” He held up a hand, and she stopped speaking. “I really do want to know all about you at some point, Olivia, but right now, could you get to me?”

She held his gaze, and hers went stony. “Not if you keep interrupting.”

So, she had a bit of a temper. Good. He liked that. She wasn’t as tame as she appeared. Sighing, he felt around in the covers for the remote, then pressed a button to raise the bed so he could lean back without being entirely prone. His head felt loads better than when he’d been sitting upright, and he made a mental note that the redheaded doc had been right about that.

“Where was I?”

“Summer fundraiser for something or other,” he said.

“Short-term memory is all right, then?”

He met her eyes, saw the sarcasm, figured he had it coming. “I’ll try not to interrupt again.”

She nodded. “It’s all relevant, I promise.”

He nodded at her to continue.

“I’ve been reading Aaron Westhaven for years. He’s known to be very reclusive, very private. Still, I used to write to him once a year or so at a P.O. box that was listed in his first novel.”

“And you think I’m him?” he asked.

She lowered her head and lifted her brows at the same time, sending him a look that told him he’d interrupted her again.

“Sorry,” he said. “Continue.”

“I never heard back, and the address was missing from all the future books. But I kept writing. Every time a new book came out, I would read it and send a letter. I liked to think of him—you—getting my letters personally, not along with the piles through the publisher. I liked to think of…you reading them with the same eagerness I felt whenever I got the newest novel.”

He was frowning as he watched her go on. Her eyes actually lit up as she talked about a man she’d never even met. Until now. Maybe.

“I guess I should say thank you,” he said. “And, uh, maybe apologize for never writing back.”

She shrugged. “Don’t be silly. What celebrity answers his own fan mail?”

He shrugged. “A recluse can’t, by definition, be a celebrity, can he?”

“Of course he can.”

“Well, celebrity or not, it seems rude as hell to me.”

She smiled a little. “If you are him, you can apologize to me later.”

He was beginning to hope he was, so her doubt jabbed at him a little. “You’re not sure I’m him, then?”

“I’m fairly certain,” she said. “It’s just that Westhaven is so reclusive. No public appearances, no known photographs, even—”

“Damn,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“What?”

“Aaron Westhaven is an asshole, that’s what.”

Her eyes widened, and she’d risen from her chair before he’d stopped speaking. “He is—you are not!”

“If I’m him, I am. I mean, who do I think I am? Shakespeare? Where do I get off, anyway?”

“You are not an…an asshole,” she said, stumbling a bit over a word he was certain she’d never uttered in her life. “If you’ll let me finish my story, you’ll begin to see that.”

“Fine. Finish the story.”

She smoothed her hands over the seat of her skirt, forcing his eyes to follow, and sat down the way he imagined royalty would.

“All right. So, despite…your…understandable reluctance to answer what must have seemed like fan mail, I decided to write again, asking you to come and speak at the annual summer fundraiser lecture series for the English department. To my surprise, I received a response this time. An acceptance.”

“I said yes?” Then he rolled his eyes at his own question. “I guess I must have. I’m here.” Then he thought about it a bit further, because her explanation didn’t make a lot of sense. He wondered what reason she might have to lie to him, then wondered what reason anyone would have to execute him. And then he wondered if the two things were related.

He looked her up and down slowly. No. She really wasn’t the type.

“So if I’m famous and I agreed to come to town to speak, why didn’t anyone know who I was?”

“Your terms were explicit and a little extreme,” she said, averting her eyes. “We were only allowed to advertise a secret special guest speaker and had to promise not to tell anyone it was you. We had to make the event by invitation only, and we were told to invite only the top one hundred most generous contributors among our alumni. No more. So there’s been no press announcement or publicity around this at all. With it being limited to invited guests only, advertising wasn’t necessary.”

He was watching her, and it occurred to him that he was looking for signs she was lying and not finding any. And that was an odd thing to catch himself doing, wasn’t it? As if he was accustomed to being lied to, as if he knew what it looked like. “So I’m famous enough to get away with those kinds of bullshit demands?”

She shrugged. “The university agreed to all of it.”

“So that’s a yes, then.”

“I sent you my business card, with my unlisted number and home address handwritten on the back,” she said, pulling the card from her pocket and handing it to him.

“So you have my home address?” he asked quickly, a gusher of hope rising in his chest.

“No, I sent it to the P.O. box. That was the only return address on your reply to me. Sorry.”

He felt the disappointment but tried not to let it show by focusing on the card she’d handed him, turning it over as he checked it out. “Did they find any prints on it?”

“How did you know that was fingerprint dust?”

He shrugged, handing the card back to her. “Isn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but I didn’t know that. Neither did Dr. Overton.”

“The redhead?”

“Yes, the redhead,” she said.

She sounded a little exasperated with him, and he found that mildly amusing. She was so staid and tucked in, he found he enjoyed ruffling her a little bit.

But she was staring at him, awaiting an answer. He sighed. “I don’t know how I knew. I don’t know anything. Remember?”

She nodded, taking the card from him and setting it on the table beside his bed. Then she snatched a few tissues from the box there and used them to wipe the black smudges from her fingertips.

“So you’re sure that’s the card you sent me.”

“I certainly haven’t sent anyone else that information,” she replied.

That caught his attention, because it was such an adamant reply. As if it were ludicrous to think she might have given her personal info to anyone else.

Maybe it was. There was more to this woman than had been apparent at first, he thought.

She seemed to try to pull her focus back to the matter at hand. “To get back to the subject, Mr. Westhaven was due to arrive today.”

“Arrive where?” he asked.

“My house. He—you—were going to use my guest room. But he never arrived. And my card, the one I sent to him, was on you when the boys found you.”