Swan Song (22 page)

I thought about it. “Well, we know she represented Wilhelm Trague in the Random House deals. Now we’re pretty sure that Wilhelm was really Lizabeth, so Renata had to be aware of that. She also had to be incensed when Lizabeth held back the final novel from her.”

There was a long silence. “Wait a minute, Sugar. Backtrack a ways. There’s a big flaw in this theory.”

I sighed heavily. “What now?”

“Think about it. Armando thinks Wilhelm and Lizabeth were the same person, and the anagrammed name seems to point in that direction, but it can’t be so.”

“Why not?”

“Because Wilhelm died,” Margo hissed into the phone. “Don’t you remember? There was a death noticed published on line by some professional organization.”

I refused to abandon my theory so easily. “Mmm, I remember Duane mentioning that, but as I recall, the notice quoted Renata Parsons as the source. Plus nobody could find an official obituary, not in newspaper archives or on Legacy.com or anywhere. All we have is the word of some writers association that probably publishes any notice it receives. Nobody checks facts anymore. If a press release comes in from someone they know, especially a member, they print it verbatim. Lizabeth could have done it herself to pave the way for a big reveal about the final manuscript. Renata could have done it for revenge when she found out Lizabeth wasn’t going to let her represent it. We haven’t been able to reach that attorney—Henley, is it?—to confirm or deny anything.”

We fell silent, wrestling once more with conflicting scenarios. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve had it for one day,” I said after a while. “Maybe something will occur to one of us during the night. I sometimes do my best thinking when I’m asleep. At any rate, it seems to be sharper than when I’m awake these days.”

Margo chuckled sympathetically. “I hear that. Sleep well, Sugar. I’ll let May in on Armando’s theory, and we’ll dive back into this tomorrow with Isabelle, Strutter, Duane and Becky. With all of us puttin’ our heads together, we’re bound to come up with somethin’.”

Monday, being the first of March, was blessedly slow at Mack Realty, the end-of-month transactions having been accomplished, mostly by Strutter, the previous week. Our group took advantage of the lull and gathered in the lobby at mid-morning to take another run at the Trague situation over mugs of fresh coffee and sticky buns from the Village Diner. Despite their hectic weekend, Duane and Becky seemed bright eyed and bushy tailed, eager to be updated on the happenings of the past two days. Each of us in turn summarized our findings for Isabelle and Strutter, who had been minding the store while we gathered them.

As had already happened more than once in this odd investigation, fresh eyes and ears might point us in the right direction. Not surprisingly, it was our perceptive friend Strutter who offered the first opinion. “I know it still sounds crazily confused to you, but this thing is beginning to come together in my mind, at least.”

“Well, that makes one of us,” I told her. “Enlighten us, please.”

Strutter licked sticky bun icing off her fingers and fortified herself with another swig of coffee. “You’re really a lot further along than you think you are,” she reassured us. “In fact, I think you’ve almost got a solution. Taken separately, each incidence of Renata’s supposed involvement is a little shaky, but taken all together … well, like Mama always said, there can’t be that much smoke without fire. Renata was Trague’s literary agent, so she was
de facto
Lizabeth Mulgrew’s literary agent and knew about the double identity. We know she posted the death notice to MWA because it says so right in it. It makes sense that she did it to get even with Lizabeth for holding back the final manuscript. She was seen by the Hilton maid trying to enter Lizabeth’s hotel room. You’ve glimpsed her several times since. If it was Renata who trashed May’s house, clearly she’s becoming desperate and dangerous. She believes she deserves the manuscript, and she’s going to do whatever it takes to get it. My only question is, where does Martin Schenk fit into all of this? If he’s in it with Renata, why did the two of them give that letter to May at all?”

“Because they believe someone else may already have a copy of it, like Attorney Henley, for example, and they want to appear above board?” Isabelle ventured.

“Or maybe they simply thought it would be easier to follow us around until we found the flash drive and then take it from us,” Margo offered.

Duane threw Becky a questioning look, and she nodded. He cleared his throat. “Umm, it seems to us that the best thing to do would be to locate that flash drive as soon as possible. Assuming Trague and Mulgrew were the same person, and there was no flash drive over Trague’s titles at the library, we think the thing to do would be to search for it over Mulgrew’s titles in
her
hometown, which was Lenox, Massachusetts.”

The clarity of the youngsters’ thinking was stunning, cutting right to the chase. Of course, that would be the logical thing to do, but …

“I don’t think Lizabeth published anything under her own name,” I protested. “Or did she?” I had a feeling our accomplished computer sleuths would have that information for us, too.

Becky grinned at me as if she’d read my mind. “As a matter of fact, she did. You can look her up right on Amazon for yourselves. In the late ‘90s she published two nonfiction books on the subject of becoming a literary agent and how to work successfully with publishers. They were very popular with college students for a while, according to the reference librarian in the main branch of the Lenox library. Her name is Patricia LaChance. I spoke to her this morning and asked if the library has any copies of the nonfiction books written by the late Lizabeth Mulgrew, and she told me the library has kept one copy of each book on its shelves all these years out of loyalty to Mulgrew as a local author.”

The rest of us looked at each other in disbelief before breaking into delighted laughter. Strutter shook her head, looking as proud of the two young people as if they were her own. In a way, as her son Charlie’s best friend and practically a member of her household, Duane was.

“Of course you spoke to her,” May beamed at Becky. “I would have expected nothing less. Did you ask her to go check for the flash drive?”

“No, Becky didn’t mention that. Actually, we think we might have another idea,” Duane said with surprising diffidence. “Do you have the message on you, Beck?”

“I do.” She slipped a hand into the pocket of her jeans and produced a pink telephone message slip. “This was on the answering machine when I got in. It’s from Marian, the librarian who helped you out in Hubbard. She said she got to fooling around with the letters in Trague’s name and Lizabeth Mulgrew’s name, and she wondered if maybe one was the pen name of the other.”

I clapped both hands to my forehead in frustration. “Did everybody except us figure that one out?” I wondered.

“Yeah, we were feeling a little stupid about that one, too,” Duane agreed, oblivious to the insult he’d just delivered indirectly. He helped himself to another sticky bun.

I glared at him. “Nicely put.”

Becky continued hastily. “Anyway, I called Marian back and introduced myself and asked if she was acquainted with Patty LaChance in Lenox, and she said she was, because they’re both members of the Massachusetts Association of Professional Librarians. So I asked her to do you a favor and ask Patty to locate the flash drive. It wouldn’t seem so weird coming from another librarian. If it is in the Lenox library, Patty can keep it safe for you until you can get there. I mean, if we figured it out, Renata must have figured it out by now, right?” She looked around at the rest of us, staring at her. “And since neither Marian nor Patty has any reason to trust me, a completely unknown person, I told Marian that May or Kate would call her and Patty later this morning to vouch for me. That was okay, wasn’t it?” she said, her confidence wavering just a bit. She looked at Duane for reassurance as we all remained silent.

May finally found her voice. “Very okay,” she told Becky as the rest of us over thirty years of age beamed at the two young people.

“As God is my witness, I will never make another derogatory remark about millenials again,” Isabelle deadpanned.

“Hear, hear,” I murmured and hurried down to the Mack Realty office to make my phone calls, the rest of the crew on my heels.

When the pieces came together, it was almost anticlimactic. After giving Marian our thanks, which was becoming a habit, and asking her to contact Patty LaChance in Lenox, I waited ten minutes to allow her to accomplish that favor. Then I telephoned Ms. LaChance myself. May, Margo, Isabelle, Strutter, Duane and Becky all clustered around me, and I put the phone on speaker. “Hi, there. I’ve been expecting your call,” she greeted me. “I think I have some good news for you.”

I gasped. “Was the flash drive taped to the shelf over the Mulgrew titles?”

“It was,” she said, sounding distracted. “I’m going to put the phone down for a minute. I need both hands to operate my computer, and I want to boot up the USB device and see if there’s anything on it before you drive all the way up here again.” Patty put the receiver down with a clatter, and we heard the familiar clicking of fingers on a computer keyboard. She hummed tunelessly to herself and tapped nervously on her desktop while I held my breath. I had a feeling that everyone else in our office was doing the same thing. As the seconds passed, I was seized by the fear that after everything we’d been through, the drive would be empty or filled with bogus text or something else incredibly disappointing, which made Patty’s next words all the more difficult to take in.

She picked up the receiver. “It’s here,” she announced cheerfully, “a full-length manuscript by Wilhelm Z.B. Trague. It’s over three hundred pages long. The title is
Swan Song
. Huh, fitting, isn’t it? I wonder if he knew it would be his last book?”

From this question I inferred that Marian had not confided to Patty that Trague was a pen name for Lizabeth Mulgrew and gave our favorite librarian added points for discretion.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” was my noncommittal answer.

“Would you like me to Fed Ex this to you? Just give me the account number, and I can have it out the door by early afternoon.” A quick glance around at my colleagues confirmed my own inclination not to have Patty do that. The way our luck had been running on this thing, it would be the one package Federal Express lost this year.

“Thanks, but no. I’m going to ask Marian to run over to Lenox on her lunch hour and pick it up from you. Would that be all right?”

“Sure thing. I’m going into a meeting right now, but tell her I’ll be back at the reference desk by noon, okay? In the meantime, I’ll lock the drive up in my top drawer and carry the key with me.”

I agreed with her plan and added our heartfelt thanks for her generosity of time and spirit. “I can’t tell you at this minute how much this means to us, but I hope to be able to give you the full story and express our appreciation to you in a more concrete fashion very soon. I’m sure this has been very confusing for you.”

“Oh, think nothing of it. You wouldn’t believe what we reference librarians are asked to do in the course of a week, and we rarely know the whys and wherefores. We learn to squelch our curiosity and be satisfied with coming up with the answers that folks need. Glad to have helped. ‘Bye now!”

I replaced the receiver and looked around at the assembled crew, most of whom were wearing goofy grins. The relief was almost palpable after I called Marian and she agreed to help once again by running over to Lenox and picking up the flash drive from Patty.

“I should have it locked up in our safe in Hubbard by two o’clock at the latest,” she assured me. “Will you be driving up today to get it?”

“Absolutely,” I assured her, “although I can’t imagine you’re eager to see us again after our sleepover last Friday night. We wouldn’t impose on you again, but since our mysterious stalker knows we’ve already been to the Hubbard library once and come away empty handed, he or she will be less likely to be interested in visiting you again. As a matter of fact, we’re sending out a decoy car. May and Margo—you remember, my friend who sprained her ankle so badly?—are driving up to the library in Lee as if they’re checking other local libraries and think the flash drive might be there. They’ll start out at four o’clock. Margo’s husband John will take them. After they leave, I’ll head to Hubbard with my posse, two young people who work in our office and have been extremely helpful in solving this mystery. We should get there right around closing time, which is six o’clock on Mondays, if I remember correctly.”

“Okey dokey,” Marian agreed cheerfully. “I’ll lock the front doors after I shoo the last patrons out, so just ring the night bell. It’s to the left of the book drop at the side of the main entrance. See you soon.”

As planned, John, Margo and May made an ostentatious departure from the Harknesses’ home. Just in case May’s house was still being watched, they made a big deal about driving there first and pulling mail out of the box before heading for the highway entrance. About half an hour later, Duane, Becky and I bid goodnight to Isabelle and Strutter and piled into the Jetta to drive north ourselves. Because of the commuter traffic, which was just thickening up on the highway, our progress was slow at first, but as soon as we got through Hartford, we were able to pick up some speed.

To quell my jitters, I made small talk about their weekend at the Hilton. “I know Duane ran into a former catering colleague, so that must have been fun.”

“Beyond fun,” he enthused. “At first I had my mind mostly on getting information about Lizabeth Mulgrew, but after the first night, I couldn’t help but get into what Brad was doing and how good he was at it.”

“That’s the chief wine steward,” Becky reminded me. “He actually caught my eye at first, because he’s so good looking, but it didn’t take long for me to realize he was never going to be interested in me.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me in the rearview mirror. “So I introduced him to Duane.”