December 14, 2024
Diary entry
TOMAS TERPSTRA, THE older detective, surprised me with his first question.
“I’ve read all your books. When will your new novel come out?”
I didn’t expect a cold-case detective to have a literary bent, and especially not this detective with his sallow, sagging face and baggy suit.
“Not until next year,” I said. The book was guaranteed to be a bestseller now that Louisa’s remains had been found, but I was getting cold feet. The parallels between real life and fiction were too close for comfort. Maybe if I paid back the advance from my publisher, I could wriggle out from under the contract. It had been a mistake to write something semi-autobiographical, no matter how much I disguised identities and events, but the story practically wrote itself, and in my defense, I thought the past had been buried.
The new novel isn’t a mystery, but it contains a mystery, that of a beautiful actress who goes missing. The woman is talented, rich, adored by her fans. She has a husband who worships her and three beautiful young daughters. But her career comes first. She neglects her family, and she’s abusive as well. She’s kidnapped by a psychopathic stalker and held captive on an uninhabited island. After twenty years, she escapes, but she has lost everything. Her public has forgotten her. Her talent and her looks are gone. Her husband has remarried, and her children are strangers. She has nothing left to live for. But with the help of a psychotherapist, she learns the restorative power of love.
It didn’t happen that way in real life, but by definition a novel is fiction.
The detective asked me to tell him everything I remembered about the day Louisa disappeared, no matter how irrelevant it might seem. He said if there were gaps in my memory, not to worry.
I stuck to the script.
When I finished, he said, “How would you describe your relationship with your stepsister?”
“Louisa was seventeen years older. My mother died in childbirth, and my father married Louisa’s mother, a divorcée, a year later. They were killed in a car crash when I was in middle school. Louisa had her hands full with her career and her young family, so she sent me to a boarding school for children whose parents worked abroad. I stayed with her and Hendrik sometimes during the school holidays. She paid my school fees after my inheritance ran out. I’ll always be grateful to Louisa.”
Terpstra’s last question was one I was expecting because finding a motive must be a priority. Find the motive, find the killer.
“Were you and Hendrik lovers before Louisa died?” Although his tone was matter-of-fact, the young detective stopped typing and leaned forward, awaiting my answer.
“No, not until several years later. He encouraged my writing. He was my first reader. I wouldn’t have enjoyed the career I’ve had if not for Hendrik. He is … was … brilliant. No, Brigadier Terpstra. He was devoted to Louisa while she lived.”
It was true almost to the end.