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Sheriff Bo Deane took the pillowcase Jessica had pulled from the trash bag Philip had intended to throw into the fire and sent if off for DNA analysis. The Sand Fiddlers had to wait, hoping the results would tell them who had killed Olivia Sands. And it did.
Lipstick and mascara smears proved consistent with Olivia’s brands, and the saliva was definitely from Olivia herself. The important thing was the blood. The blood must have come from the person holding the pillow over Olivia’s face. The DNA analysis of the blood answered that question.
The blood was definitely that of Ashley Fagen.
Ashley was arrested but the members of the Sand Fiddlers Writers’ group had to wait until their next meeting to fill in the blanks and make a coherent story of the night that had changed all their lives. They met in their usual room at the local library. Alex Archer, Ashley’s husband, was absent. He had left on an extended tour of the Middle East to gather material for his next book. None of the other writers blamed him for leaving.
Ruth Harlow came all the way down from Alexandria for the meeting, but it was a friend of hers, not her son Daniel, who drove her. Daniel was now seeing a psychiatrist once a week. Sophie Perone, Philip Carr, and Jessica Chastain came, as did practically every member.
“Rubber-neckers!” Sophie groused while arranging tiny pinwheel appetizers on platters in the back of the meeting room. “They just want to hear all the juicy details.”
“And so do you, Sophie. Everyone is curious.” Jessica was dropping a flyer on each seat—the evening’s agenda. “It’s perfectly natural.”
Philip called the meeting to order. “First and foremost, we need to talk about the recent tragedy at the retreat. I’ve been working with Sheriff Deane at the beach and we have—”
An old member interrupted him. “Motive, Philip! We know it was Ashley Fagen, but what was her motive?”
Everyone turned to Jessica who, they all knew, had first discovered Ashley’s plan.
“It was plagiarism of the very worst sort,” Jessica told them, turning in her chair to face the group. “Ashley was having no success with getting her own work published, so she decided to make it happen. The fact was, Ashley had never gotten past page twenty on anything because she simply didn’t have the tenacity to stick with it. On a day when Alex was visiting the office of his editor, Michael Pacifico, Ashley had seen stacks and stacks of manuscripts lying around. She figured that, in all probability, none of these would ever see print. They would be returned to their owners with recommendations for improvement. Without too much thought, she scanned the shelves, found an eighty-thousand-word work by someone named Joyce J. Bradley and took it. Who was Joyce J. Bradley, anyway? She didn’t recognize it as the legal name of Olivia Sands. She grabbed the manuscript, quickly got the whole thing copied, and returned it to Pacifico’s office. She used Olivia’s work but changed the setting, the names, and so on, and then submitted it to another editor. Both books are contemporary stories about college students living and working away from home.”
“The nerve!” someone said. “Didn’t she know she would get caught?”
“I think she probably took advantage of Alex and Michael’s being absorbed in their discussion. They didn’t notice. She probably returned it to the same spot where she had found it since other writers have said that Michael Pacifico doesn’t move things in his office very often.
“Pacifico liked the story when he got around to reading it, and he recommended it for publication. Olivia’s agent, Mark Rogowski, submitted it to a publisher with the title of Peril on the Potomac. That’s where it was on the night we all got together in the beach house. Ashley was planning to read an excerpt from the story she was calling The Ghosts of Ashton Hall, which was nothing but Olivia’s Peril on the Potomac with names, places and other details changed.”
Philip said, “Those who have now read Ashley’s work say that, in spots, it’s word for word the same.”
Sophie shook her head. “I thought there was something a bit off there. I tried to talk to Ashley about her work once, but she kept changing the subject.”
“Why,” Philip said, “when she learned that Olivia Sands was going to be with us, did she bring work she knew Olivia would recognize as her own?”
“She didn’t know it was Olivia’s work,” Jessica said. “She only found out when Olivia dropped her purse near the buffet table and out spilled the contents—including Olivia’s driver’s license in the name of Joyce J. Bradley—the name on the manuscript she had stolen and copied.”
Philip said, “How did Olivia get hold of the memory card that had Ashley’s manuscript on it?”
“She didn’t.” Jessica saw confusion on every face and could hardly wait to finish her story. “Olivia never saw that memory card.”
“Better explain that,” Philip said.
“I think Ashley probably hid it in the trunk of their car and it fell out later, but no one noticed,” Jessica said. “Ashley wasn’t stupid enough to send her manuscript to the same editor that she knew had read the story she stole. She gave it to an editor named James Atkins. Now, editors work under conditions of strict confidentiality and will never share work submitted to them without the permission of the writer. But editors are often friends, and friends often have lunch together, and Atkins had lunch one day with Michael Pacifico. Michael told him about the mystery he had edited and that was soon to be published—told him a little about the story. Atkins says, ‘This sounds familiar.’ Long story short, the two men decided this couldn’t be coincidence. Atkins couldn’t remember, at first, who had written the story that this one reminded him of, but he knew it was one that had been submitted to him for editing. He checked his invoices and found the name Ashley Fagen. The light dawned.
“Since neither man had direct quotes from either manuscript that they could share, they went to Olivia’s publisher and explained. They were eager to find out the truth and they told Olivia about their suspicions. Olivia Sands came to the beach that day knowing that she was probably going to encounter the woman who had stolen her work. She came, not for revenge, but for proof. When Ashley refused to read, Olivia had what she had come for.”
Sophie paused, as if putting all this together in her head, then asked, “So, Olivia dropped her purse on purpose?”
“Probably not. Olivia may have thought that simply reading an unrelated passage that Ashley had actually written, was what told Ashley it was all over. Olivia had no way of knowing Ashley would see the driver’s license or that she didn’t know Olivia’s real name.”
“I’m confused.” This came from a member who had not gone on the retreat. “What did the memory card have to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” Jessica said. “Nothing, except it told me who the plagiarist was.”
Now, Philip came to life. “But after Ashley killed Olivia, she realized that the memory stick must never see the light of day. Peril on the Potomac was going to be published so no one must ever read Ashley’s Ghosts of Ashton Hall. She got her manuscript back before it was too late. At the beach, Ashley was doing damage control. The memory stick may have been in the luggage in their car or in their glove box, but somehow it ended up near the spot where Olivia’s car was parked.”
“And luckily, Kim’s passion for digging stuff up brought it to light,” Jessica said.
“Do your dogs like prime rib?” Sophie asked. “I’m going to make them a meal they will never forget! Atlas included.”
THE END
