Chapter 20. Does Misery Love Company?
Does Misery Love Company?
“So, what do you think?” Cathy asks eagerly an hour later. It’s the middle of the afternoon, the air-conditioning fighting against the building heat. After the mental scorching by the pool, it feels nice to be inside this hermetically sealed environment, even if it’s seen better days.
We’re in one of the conference rooms, where the faculty are holding individual meetings with the conference participants who decided to submit pages for their small group leader to review.
It looks like most conference rooms do—thick carpet on the floor made of some multicolored fabric meant to hide stains, mottled beige walls, and air that seems to have had the life sucked out of it.
We received the pages from the conference participants weeks ago, anonymized with only a number to identify them.
The idea is to read them, provide feedback when they show up for their appointment and you learn who they are, and avoid making the participant cry.
Saying things like Don’t quit your day job and They aren’t publishing anyone these days unless they’re a celebrity are discouraged.
This is harder than you might think.
I’d already met with Harold, who, it might not surprise you to learn, is writing a book about a former FBI agent who discovers that his old boss has been murdered and he’s been framed for it.
He’s called Damien in the book, and Damien/Harold finds this information out on a helicopter for reasons that aren’t clear, other than I think Harold wanted to take a helicopter ride and expense it.
After I get the basic plot details out of him—some convoluted story about international espionage, because of course it is—he tells me he writes his books with his wife, but I notice that her name isn’t on the pages, or on the multiple books he self-published in the last three years.
She’s also not in our meeting, and when I point that out, he raises his shoulders, and I can see the thought bubble about women forming above his head before he deflates it.
That doesn’t stop Harold from telling me that he has a problem with publishing.
64 He’s an “old white man,” and publishing doesn’t care about them anymore, according to Harold.
When I try to point out that plenty of men are doing very well in the industry, he gives me the hand.
An actual hand. But I let it go. Why interfere with his reality?
I give him back his pages with their seventeen typos corrected, and he shuffles off.
I make eye contact with Elizabeth at the table nearest to me, who has a bemused smile on her face.
How many of these has she had to suffer through?
So many hopes, dreams, and aspirations in her hands.
Harold’s dream is to live in a time when people who look like him are still in charge of everything, i.e.
, now, but he doesn’t recognize it. And there’s nothing I can or want to do about that because when you had 100 percent of something and now you only have 99 percent, it feels like you lost something, even though you never should’ve had all of it in the first place.
Elizabeth gets it. She’s being talked at by a different man in a black blazer and blue slacks, like he’s at a corporate retreat.
He has the square shoulders of a former soldier and a look in his eyes like he might’ve killed someone in combat.
He reminds me of Guy, which isn’t something I want to be thinking about right now, but is also impossible not to think about.
Because that’s what I should be doing, not critiquing pages that will never make it out of the slush pile.
Sigh.
By process of deduction, my next appointment was supposed to be with Stefano, but he never showed, too butthurt from our earlier conversation, I assume. Ironically, his pages weren’t bad. He said before that he hadn’t started writing his book yet, but that wasn’t true.
Everyone’s a liar.
That’s not a clue; that’s just life.
I’m pretty sure I guessed the killer in the first chapter, but that’s easy enough to adjust. He just has to cut the part where he tells the story from the killer’s perspective because it’s a) tired and b) has too many clues to the real killer in it.
But he doesn’t want my advice. He spends his career tearing down people who do what he wants to do.
And in the tearing down, he’s convinced himself that anyone can do it.
It’s sad because so many in his community just love books and talking about them in a positive light.
But Stefano gets up every day and chooses violence.
Which brings me back to Cathy.
“Did you like my pages?” she asks again. She’s pulled her chair too close to me, and I can see the fingerprint smudges on the glasses she’s put on to read. They magnify her watery eyes in a way that reminds me of a bug.
“They were … um … interesting.”
They were scary, and weird, and harmless all at the same time. Just like Cathy.
She frowns. “I don’t think there are enough books from the psychopath’s perspective.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t you think it’s original to see an entire book through the eyes of the killer?”
“There are books like that already.”
She sits back and crosses her arms. “Like what?”
“The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, for one. Others come to mind.”
“Yes, well, one example which is old.”
“Only one of the best and most well-known books in the mystery space, but okay.”
Cathy isn’t listening. “I do think that we don’t think about it enough. What makes a murderer.”
“Right.”
“And obviously, if you kill someone, there’s something wrong with you.”
Is she asking me or confessing?
I don’t get to ask because there’s a tinkle of laughter behind me. It’s Elizabeth. The carpet must’ve muffled her steps. “My dear, there are so many reasons someone might choose to kill. Even heroes do it sometimes.”
Cathy looks at her with a mix of skepticism and awe. “They do?”
“You were talking of Agatha. Think of Curtain, Poirot’s last case. He chose to bring someone to death before his own.”
“Wasn’t that because he couldn’t catch the murderer otherwise?” I ask.
Elizabeth gives me a gentle smile. “Yes, of course. But that proves my point exactly. There are sometimes rational reasons for murder.”
“If someone’s wronged you,” Cathy says like an eager student.
“That might be one motive. This is always where you should start. With the why.”
“The why?”
“The mens rea. What propels someone to violate the ultimate norm? Once you understand that, then you can begin your story.”
Cathy cocks her head to the side. “So you’re saying everyone has a murder in them?”
“Perhaps.”
“I think that’s right. There has to be someone that everyone hates enough to kill.” Cathy points at me. “Like Eleanor. She might murder the man who killed her parents when he gets out of prison.”
A chill goes down my spine. “How do you know about that?”
Elizabeth pats me on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you to it.” She turns and walks away, her cane ticking silently against the floor.
I try to compose myself, because right now, if I was going to commit a murder, it would be Cathy. “Explain yourself, Cathy.”
“Why are you taking that tone?”
“Because you keep violating my privacy.”
“It’s public information.”
“That doesn’t explain why you know about it.”
She shrugs. “I follow his case.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s about you.”
I feel sick to my stomach. “You have to stop.”
“What?”
“Me. You have to quit me. Move on. Find another target.”
“You’re not a target. I’m a fan.”
“It’s too much, Cathy. We’ve talked about this before! Showing up every time I leave the country. Switching into my small group. Researching things about me. The recording in my house? I should’ve turned you in to the police for that. I’m too soft on you.”
Cathy takes off her glasses slowly. “Excuse me?”
“I—”
“Who are you to tell me how to behave?” Her eyes are flashing, and for the first time in a long time, I’m a bit frightened of Cathy.
Which might have you laughing. Or shaking your head in disbelief.
Because she’s been frightening this whole time, even if I’ve made her into a joke.
That’s what I do for things I’m frightened of.
I cut them down into bite-sized soundbites so they don’t scare me as much as they should.
But these are just the lies I tell myself to get through.
The truth is that Cathy should be at the top of any list I make of someone who might see getting rid of me as some kind of solace. As a solution to her illness. And maybe these pages that I’m still holding in my hands are a roadmap to what she wants to do.
Kill me. Maybe she’s using this event as the opportunity to do that. Taking advantage of an existing situation and the chaos that seems to follow me and striking when she can.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea. I mean, I assume by now that people just figure I’m going to be surrounded by murders and chaos, and they aren’t wrong about that, it turns out.
It’s why you’re here, after all, isn’t it?
So, is Cathy the killer? Did she somehow find out that the Giuseppes owned this resort or that Marta was here and manipulate the circumstances to get me here so she could strike?
But wait. No. Cathy doesn’t have that kind of power. And it doesn’t explain what Guy is doing here, or Connor, or why Brian is dead, though the crazy wall does reek of Cathy.
There has to be another explanation for that.
I’m not safe around Cathy, but that doesn’t mean she’s behind the current events.
I take a deep breath and hand Cathy her pages. “You can write, but I don’t think you should try to mine the depths of a psychopath. I think that’s been done before, like I said, and that you should try to find a more original way of telling this story.”
Cathy takes the pages and holds them against her chest. “You’re not going to give the pages to Vicki?”
“No.”
“I thought that’s what I paid for.”
“You paid for my feedback, and I’ve given it.”
She stands, her hands fluttering against the pages. “We’ll see.”
“What, Cathy? We’ll see what?”