Chapter Thirty-Six
Thirty-six
“Ms. Randall, I need to talk to you,” Evan Woodrow said.
“You can just call me Sunny,” I said. “It’s one less syllable, so this will go faster.”
“I get it,” he said. “You hate me.”
I winced. “Hate’s a strong word,” I said.
The fact was, I felt kind of sorry for Evan Woodrow at the moment.
He looked more of a mess than he usually did.
His comb-over was mussed, his thick glasses scuffed and foggy.
He wore a different suit than he’d worn the last time I’d seen him, and somehow this one looked even more frayed.
Could it have been he was so upset about what was happening to Melanie Joan that he’d done away with what little attention he paid to his appearance?
At any rate, I felt bad enough for him that I closed the door and offered him a seat. But not bad enough to ask Blake to bring in coffee.
“What brings you here, Evan?” I said.
“Melanie Joan.”
“I figured,” I said.
“I’m worried about her.”
“We all are.”
“No, Sunny,” he said. “What I’m saying is, I’ve been worried about her for a while.”
“What do you mean?”
He cleared his throat. “When was the last time you were around Melanie Joan for an extended period of time?”
I thought about it. “She hired me when she had that stalker situation,” I said.
“Which stalker?”
“Well, both, actually,” I said. “But I was talking about the most recent one.”
“That was around the same time they were shooting Girl and Not a God for Netflix,” he said.
“Right.”
“She hadn’t started writing her memoir.”
“If she had, she didn’t mention it.”
“No, she hadn’t,” he said. “I know this. She didn’t start writing it until two years ago. She wrote it in three sleepless months. It was an agonizing process, for her and for me.”
“Okay,” I said. I was starting to get a little frustrated. “Is there a point here?”
Evan grasped his hands together. Two clenched fists in his lap, the knuckles pressing against his skin. “Writing that memoir…Reliving the abuse she suffered with John Melvin in such a concentrated way,” he said. “I think it loosened something in her brain.”
I squinted at him. “What?”
“I think it made her…emotional.”
I staved off the inevitable eye roll. “You don’t think Melanie Joan Hall was emotional before? Seriously?”
“Not like this,” he said. “She’s become reckless lately. Drinking more. Flying off the handle all the time. She harangued the copyeditor on Stronger Alone to the point where the poor woman had to take a weeklong mental health break.”
The eye roll could be contained no longer. “The book meant a lot to her,” I said. “If she were a man, you’d probably be calling her a tortured genius.”
Evan leaned forward in his chair. “I’ve been Melanie Joan’s editor for going on twenty-five years, Sunny,” he said.
“I’ve always been her biggest supporter.
But I have to tell you…She’s become more and more erratic since writing that book.
You saw that comment she posted on Book Babe’s review.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined her even thinking those things. ”
I grimaced. He had me there. “It was the water pill talking,” I said. “It doesn’t mix with alcohol and she had a few too many tequilas.”
Evan sighed. “Come on,” he said. “I’ve seen her drunk plenty of times.
And when I first heard that a nasty comment she posted and deleted was making the rounds and that Greg was furious about it, I was sure he was overreacting.
He didn’t know her the way I did. It was just Melanie Joan being Melanie Joan. ”
I nodded. “Right. That’s what it—”
“But then I saw it in its entirety,” he said. “The way it was worded. I almost thought that it was some kind of joke. That someone had…had hacked her or something, because the Melanie Joan I know would not say those things about another woman.”
“She wouldn’t,” I said. “It was the pill and booze. She doesn’t even remember writing it.”
“Well,” he said, “what does that say about her?”
“What are you getting at, Evan?”
“Look, nobody wants Melanie Joan to go to jail,” he said. “I don’t want her to have killed Leila Donnelly. But at this point, I honestly don’t know what she’s capable of. Especially if, as you just said, she’s been experiencing blackouts.”
I stared at him. This was what he’d come here to tell me?
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I did understand. I considered telling him that Leila Donnelly had been Book Babe—and had been far crueler online to Melanie Joan than she’d been in response. But then I realized that 1) he probably knew that by now and 2) even if he didn’t, it would only bolster the case he was trying to make.
“I don’t want to believe Melanie Joan committed murder,” Evan said. “I don’t want you to believe it, either. But from what I’ve seen of her, it’s possible. And I’m just asking you to keep your eyes open.”
I stood up. “They are open,” I said. “Thanks for dropping by.”
He stood up, too. He had terrible posture. “This isn’t something I enjoy.”
“When we find out who really killed Leila Donnelly,” I said, “I’ll make sure and let you know. In the most humiliating way possible.”
I showed him to the front door. When we passed Blake’s desk, he started to apologize for not bringing in coffee, but I held a hand up.
“Mr. Woodrow is in a hurry to leave,” I said.
“Okay, bye!” Blake said.
“You hate me more than ever now, don’t you?” Evan said, once I’d walked him into the hallway.
“You’re perceptive about some things,” I said. I stepped back into my office space and closed the door.
“What was that about?” Blake said.
“Nothing worth discussing.”
I returned to my desk, thinking about what Evan Woodrow had said—how quickly he could believe the worst of a woman whom he’d known for a quarter of a century, and who had made his entire career.
If Evan believed Melanie Joan was capable of murdering someone, I didn’t even want to imagine what was running through Greg Scepter’s mind. Or, for that matter, Gleason’s…
“Sunny, did you see this?” Blake said.
I got up and walked to his desk.
“This came up on my Google Alerts,” he said.
He had a article pulled up on his screen.
The title was: Rom-Crime: Did Melanie Joan Hall Kill Leila Donnelly?
After a brief paragraph detailing what I already knew, the article consisted of a series of captioned pictures—author photos of Melanie Joan and Leila, a press conference pic of Greg Scepter, a Getty image of mourning Leila fans taken in front of the Connecticut State Police barracks, separate, side-by-side shots of Tony and me, taken in nearly the same spot, with a caption that read Team Melanie Joan beneath them, along with our names and job descriptions.
To my horror, they’d also included a screenshot of Melanie Joan’s infamous comment, with all the offensive words blacked out.
It hit me that even if the world had found out that Book Babe had been a fake account created by Leila Donnelly, it probably wouldn’t have mattered much.
The comment had that type of staying power.
And if Melanie Joan was eventually tried for Leila’s murder, it would be shown to the jury.
Even with Rita Fiore on her side, she didn’t stand a chance.
Another photo captured Leila Donnelly’s house, the front door bound with crime scene tape.
I stared at it. A couple cops stood on the front porch, their backs to the camera.
In the driveway, I could make out part of a medical examiner’s van.
The picture had been taken at sunrise, just after Leila’s body had been found.
I’d been to a lot of crime scenes. They evolved very rapidly.
By now, I imagined, the tape was still there, but Leila’s body had been removed, along with the murder weapon, Melanie Joan’s highlighted book, and other items the police thought were relevant to the case, including furniture.
But there might still be something there worth looking at, or maybe a cop more amenable than Gleason.
Union was only an hour away. I handed Blake the key to my loft and asked if he could feed and walk Rosie on his way home.
Then I grabbed my purse, made sure I had my gun, wallet, and car keys, and hurried out of the office. I hoped there wasn’t too much traffic heading toward the Connecticut border.