The Thriller Writers
SIENNA CHOKES ON HER DRINK.
Malcolm and Priscilla scowl.
Cate and Millie are aghast.
Jaxon barks a nervous laugh and says, “Bullshit.”
“Oh, come on,” says Kenzo, looking around. “You had to be thinking it.”
“I certainly was not,” Malcolm says, glowering. Judging by the faces, neither was anyone else.
“You’re just saying that because you’re the horror guy,” says Millie.
Kenzo shrugs. “Maybe. But you have to wonder, right? I mean, sure, he could be dead. But what if . . .”
What if.
The two words that fuel and plague every creative mind.
Sienna and Malcolm share a look. A reminder that there was a time they didn’t fight, didn’t even need to talk to know what the other was thinking. Which, at that very moment, is about the man on the cliff. The one they saw from the boat. The one Malcolm was so sure was Fletch.
“We saw someone,” she says. “Up on the cliff, just before we docked.” She nods toward Malcolm. “You thought it was Fletch.”
“I did,” says Malcolm slowly. “It certainly looked like him, from a distance. He had that famous hat on. But it must have been someone else.”
“But Eleanor said—” squeaks Cate. “She said everyone else had left the island. She said we were alone.”
Kenzo shrugs. “Maybe she lied. People have been known to do that.”
“But if he’s not dead,” says Millie, “why would they invite us here?”
“My guess?” Kenzo leans forward, crossing his arms on the table. “Writer’s block.” He looks around. “Think about it. The pressure on Fletch to deliver the ending to beat all endings? Let’s say he starts writing the book—and gets stuck.”
Jaxon’s nodding now. “The pressure’s too much,” he adds.
“He’s starting to panic, and his agent’s breathing down his neck, calling every day to check on his progress.
So what does he do? He concocts a plan for someone else to come up with an ending—several someones, in fact, so he can choose his favorite. Art is theft, remember?”
“Good writers borrow, great writers steal,” echoes Cate. “Isn’t that how the quote goes?”
“Bollocks,” says Malcolm this time.
“What about the money?” asks Millie. “The book deal?”
“A buy-off,” says Kenzo. “Why else would they make us sign the NDAs?”
Sienna is suddenly very, very glad she didn’t use her real name.
“I’m sure there’s another explanation.” Priscilla raps her nails on the table.
“A ghost?” says Jaxon, wagging his fingers.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” announces Millie a little too loudly.
“Occam’s razor,” says Malcolm. “The simplest answer is usually right. So Arthur’s either dead, God rest him, or alive, God damn him, but he’s probably not a specter, haunting us.”
“He’s dead,” declares Priscilla.
Six heads turn.
“How do you know?” asks Sienna.
Priscilla sighs, and smooths the napkin in her lap. “I saw it in Eleanor’s face, when she and Rufus were here. You can’t fake that.”
She’s probably right, but there are six other writers at the table, their imaginations shoved into motion and picking up speed, like stones rolling down a hill.
“Even if he is dead,” says Jaxon, “how do we know he drowned? I was out there today. That surf isn’t exactly brutal.”
“The North Sea can be fickle,” counters Malcolm.
Millie shakes her head. “It’s so cold, though. Who in their right mind would go swimming in it?”
“Plenty of people,” says Malcolm. “Wild swimming is a proud British pastime.”
“You hurled three times on the boat,” mutters Sienna.
“I said swimming, not bobbing about like a cork.”
“Maybe he was murdered,” says Jaxon brightly, as if that’s somehow better.
“By who?” yelps Cate, but Kenzo is actually nodding.
“Could have been anyone,” he says. “It’s not a secret that he lives here. Alone. Unprotected.”
Priscilla and Malcolm are both shaking their heads.
“But why?” asks Malcolm. “Why would anyone want to kill Arty?” And maybe it’s the wine, or the way her soon-to-be-ex-husband says the author’s name, as if he knew a damned thing about the late Mr. Fletch, but Sienna finds herself chiming in.
“Why does anyone kill anyone?” she says. “Money. Envy. Revenge.”
Millie turns to Malcolm and Priscilla. “Did he have any enemies?”
“He was famous,” says Kenzo, as if that’s reason enough.
“And rich,” adds Cate, shifting in her seat as if the whole subject makes her deeply uncomfortable.
“In that case, wouldn’t the authorities suspect foul play?” asks Sienna, cogs turning in her mind.
“Assuming they were notified,” says Kenzo. “And even then, only if they knew he’d been robbed. But look around. This house is packed with stuff.”
Jaxon snaps his fingers. “Oh, oh, what if they killed him for the golden book?”
“The what?” asks Kenzo.
“You know,” says Jaxon, “the golden book.”
“Saying it more than once won’t make me know what you’re talking about.”
Sienna probes her memory, thinking it rings a bell, but there have been so many stories about Arthur Fletch over the years that it’s hard to keep up.
Jaxon huffs, exasperated. “The one made of gold and encrusted with jewels. Worth serious dough.”
“I read about that,” says Millie.
“Me too,” echoes Cate.
“I thought it was a joke,” says Malcolm. “Something Arty made up, to pad the coffers of his ego, just because he could.”
“Right,” says Priscilla, “because no one in their right mind would believe it’s real.”
Kenzo raises his hand. “Can someone who’s not Jaxon please explain?”
Priscilla sighs. “The rumor was that back when the first Petrarch book took off—”
“Like stratospheric,” chimes in Jaxon, “as in, sold in a hundred countries, got optioned for an eye-watering sum, sat on the Times list for a year—”
“Right,” Priscilla cuts back in. “The rumor was, Arthur wanted to commemorate his success.”
Sienna waves her hand at their surroundings. “The House That Petrarch Built wasn’t enough?”
“The name’s apocryphal,” says Priscilla. “Arthur had already bought the house by then—and the island—with money from Ashbolt, and Creststone, and Bellamy. So—and again, this was a rumor—he was looking for a way to celebrate, something truly outlandish, and he decided to commission a book—”
“The most expensive book ever made,” blurts Jaxon, who clearly can’t keep it to himself.
“I heard it was cast in solid gold,” whispers Millie. “And the title was written in rubies, and the spine was lined with diamonds.”
Sienna rolls her eyes. “That sounds ridiculous,” she says, and the same time Malcolm murmurs, “Phenomenal.”
Kenzo’s mouth quirks in amusement. “Sounds like a MacGuffin.”
“You’re a MacGuffin,” mutters Jaxon.
“What’s a MacGuffin?” asks Cate.
“It’s an object that propels the story,” explains Kenzo.
“The book is a myth.” Priscilla slides her palm across the table as if smoothing it, a small but evocative gesture Sienna wants to capture for future use.
She wishes she hadn’t left her notebook up in the room.
She used to tell herself that if the thought was good enough, it would stick around, but that was before forty came up with a sharpened stick and started jabbing holes in her memory.
“It isn’t real,” Priscilla says calmly.
“How can you be sure?” asks Millie.
“If it were, someone would have seen it.”
“Unless,” says Jaxon, pointing down at the table, “it’s here.” He throws himself back in his chair and spreads his arms. “They’ve got us here, doing all this work, when we could just find the treasure.”
“You go right ahead,” says Kenzo.
Jaxon studies him, squinting in a way he probably thinks makes him seem intimidating, but really just makes him look like he needs better glasses. “Yeah,” he says, “you’d like that, wouldn’t you? One less person to compete with.”
“That would be true,” says Kenzo blandly, “if I saw you as competition.”
Sienna snorts. Jaxon scowls.
“Besides,” says Kenzo, “according to your story, the killers came here to steal the golden book and murdered Fletch in the process.”
Jaxon deflates a little, then rebounds, twice as bright. “Unless they couldn’t find it! It could still be here . . . hidden somewhere.”
Sienna rolls her eyes. “I’m with Priscilla. It sounds like the kind of thing a man would make up.” At least, Malcolm would.
Her husband is currently leaning back in his chair, eyes glassy and unfocused.
No doubt dreaming of a world in which Penn Stonely’s name is written in precious gems. A hush has fallen over the table, and she wonders how many of them are thinking of the golden book.
Or just the one they have to finish. The wind seems to have gone out of everyone’s sails. Probably a combo of jet lag and liquor.
“Well . . .” says Jaxon with an exaggerated yawn. But he doesn’t get up. No one does. As if they’re caught in a game of chicken, each waiting to see who will go first. Surely none of them actually plan to write tonight, Sienna thinks—or rather, hopes.
She looks to Kenzo, who’s slumped in his chair, making a slow migration to a horizontal state.
Millie’s rubbing her eyes, and Cate yawns, covering her mouth behind an oversize sleeve, and Sienna has started thinking of the tartan bed, the soft down pillows, and it’s silly, isn’t it, this odd little contest, she knows it’s silly, and yet she doesn’t stand.
In the end, it’s Priscilla who breaks the stalemate.
“I don’t know about you all,” she announces, pushing back her chair. “But I am beat.”
With that, everyone else seems to come unstuck.
A murmur of yeses, and yawns, and then chairs scrape across the hardwood floor, and dishes are ferried into the kitchen sink, a problem for another day as they trudge toward the stairs.
They pass a suit of armor in the hall—a prop, Malcolm informs them all, from the latest TV adaptation.
“Good night, knight,” says Millie, patting its metal head.
They drift past the office, and Sienna glances at the numbers on the front of the safe.
61:34:12.
The group climbs the stairs, hits the landing, and splits, half to one wing, and half to the other.
When they reach their room, Malcolm doesn’t even get undressed. He goes down like a felled tree, arms and legs stiff as he topples into bed.
Sienna briefly considers soldiering on alone, but when she looks at the pages, the words seem to blur. Better to start fresh, she decides, first thing in the morning.
Brains are funny little engines, always turning. She doesn’t have a solve for the ending, not yet, but who knows, maybe a good idea will come to her in her sleep.
That happens sometimes, doesn’t it?
Of course, it’s never happened to her. Not yet.
But it could, she thinks, sliding beneath the duvet.
It could.