Page 8 of The Mystery Writer

“I like to think of it as a thriller with paranormal elements—”

“And your conspiracy theorists are helping with this?”

He smiled. “In many ways.”

For the next couple of blocks, they talked about the films and television productions that had exploited the relatively recent urban legends surrounding Stull, arguing about the relative merits of the various plots and whether a thriller with paranormal elements was just a fancy way of saying horror story.

They reached the leafy street on which Dan Murdoch lived and the Craftsman house with pale yellow walls and a bright blue door that Dan declared was his. The garden was extensively and elaborately planted with box hedges clipped into Celtic knots and decorative spheres and what appeared to be a line of giant ducks.

“I didn’t realize you were a gardener,” Theo said uncertainly. She’d always associated gardening with the retired. Particularly topiary, not to mention topiary ducks. She wondered, for the first time, how old Dan Murdoch was. He was handsome, but his were not boyish good looks and the lines at the corners of his eyes were deep whenever he smiled. His hair was thick and short but graying at the temples and extensively through his beard. Could he be of ornamental-hedge-clipping age? He noticed her staring.

“All right…you got me. I have a guy come twice a week. I have no idea what he does, but this is the result.”

“Why ducks?”

Dan squinted at the hedges. “Honestly, I thought they were Jayhawks…assumed he was a fan…but now that you mention it, they do look more like ducks.” He invited her to come in while he grabbed his camera, unlocking the blue door and holding it open for her.

She stepped into a long hallway. The covers of Dan Murdoch’s books were framed and hung along an elegantly papered wall.

“That was the decorator’s idea,” he murmured, as she studied each one.

“It was a good one.” Theo gazed closely at each cover. She’d seen Dan’s covers before, but enlarged, the details of the artwork jumped from the frames.

“A bit self-indulgent, but I haven’t got round to taking them down.” He folded his arms. “You’ll have your own covers soon.”

Theo inhaled. She didn’t look at him lest her eyes give her away. She had spent hours imagining cover drafts. She’d even drawn up her own ideas…not that anyone would care what she thought, even if they were publishing her work. Dan had already warned her that covers were the publisher’s prerogative alone. Still, it was exciting enough that Dan thought she would have her own covers. She wanted to believe him.

“Would you like to see the concept sketches for these?” Dan asked, still watching her. “The publisher let me have them. Some of the covers they rejected were quite interesting.”

Theo nodded, aware of his eyes, a change in the way he looked at her, and suddenly shy.

He took her into the living room and found a folder of pages in the bookcase that surrounded the fireplace. He spread the contents of the folder out on the coffee table, challenging her to guess why each had been rejected, while he opened a bottle of wine.

“Is it because nobody in the book died this way?” she asked, holding up a drawing that showed a woman plummeting down the stairs with a sinister figure at the head.

Dan poured wine into two glasses. “Actually, it was because this guy”—he pointed to the artist’s rendering of the villain—“looked exactly like the president of the day. The publisher was sure we’d be arrested or sued or both.”

Theo saw it now—the finger-pointing postures, the distinctive coiffure. It was an uncanny likeness. “Surely you couldn’t have been arrested!”

“Presidents are powerful, and publishers can be a little paranoid.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes, the only people more paranoid than publishers are agents…but you’ll learn that.”

“I hope so.”

He laughed as he sat down and lifted his glass. “You are a very talented writer, Miss Benton.”

Theo hesitated, unsure whether she should raise her glass too. Would that seem smug? Would not raising it be impolite? Maybe she should just drink.

“Your writing is exuberant, as is it should be in someone your age,” Dan continued, “but it has the kind of deep insight it usually takes decades to achieve. You are what they call an old soul—an old soul who can write.” Theo didn’t know why she left the armchair to sit beside him on the couch. Perhaps it was because he believed in her, in her writing, or perhaps it was the wine, but suddenly she wanted to be close to him. Even so, she was surprised when he kissed her. Surprised and astounded and elated.

He pulled back a little, his eyes locked on hers. “Is this okay?”

She nodded; any reservations she may have had were defeated completely by the fact that he had asked. He kissed her again, more urgently than before, and she responded. Again, she felt untethered, but this time it was gloriously so.

“We might go to Stull another day,” he murmured moving his lips to her throat and following it down to the hollow at its base.

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