A Palette for Murder Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chpter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapte Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chpter Twenty-six

  VOYAGE TO MYSTERIOUS SCOTLAND!

  QUICK STUDY

  “She was a pretty young girl, in her early twenties perhaps. Her features were sensuous, large brown heavy-lidded eyes, lips full and fresh, thick auburn hair catching the sun that poured in through large windows on the studio’s north wall. Her body was firm and without blemish, breasts in proportion to her overall frame. I judged her to be slightly over five feet tall....”

  For Jessica Fletcher, this nude girl, effortlessly holding a provocative pose, represented a supreme challenge. Somehow Jessica had to capture her youth, her beauty, her aliveness on the piece of blank white paper before her.

  Little did Jessica suspect that an even greater challenge lay ahead... when Jessica no longer had to try to capture the girl on paper... but instead capture her murderer in a maze of sunlit sin and shadowy guilt, where the first wrong turn could lead to Jessica’s own dead end....

  Murder, She Wrote

  A PALETTE

  FOR MURDER

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, October 1996

  Copyright © 1996 Universal Studios Licensing LLLP. Murder, She Wrote is a trademark and copyright of Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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  eISBN : 978-1-440-67347-4

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  IN MEMORY OF

  Jack Pearl

  Jack Douglas

  Long John Nebel

  Hank Caruthers

  and

  R. H. “Red” Sutherland

  Chapter One

  “Why does it matter?”

  “It matters because good writing always matters,” I said, allowing an involuntary sigh of frustration to escape my lips. “I care about good writing because I am a professional. Readers care about good writing. They expect, and deserve it. That, sir, is why it matters.”

  My mini-sermon was met with a vacant stare from the student who’d challenged my criticism of his short story. It was mid-June, and I was teaching a group of young aspiring writers at New York University. Since starting to give these occasional workshops a few years ago, they’d become a regular part of my yearly schedule. I loved doing it—I’ve reached an age where I try to do only things I enjoy—but it could be frustrating at times. This was one of those moments.

  My stubborn student was a young man wearing a baseball hat backward. He’d been a thorn in my side for the entire three days, mostly because he talked a better game than he wrote.

  He made it obvious on the first day that he considered the writing of murder mystery novels to be a subspecies of literature, beneath his dignity. The first time he cast a disparaging remark about the genre, I asked why, if he felt that way, he was taking my seminar. His reply: “I may want to turn to writing mysteries if I ever get hard up for money.”

  I allowed this and other snide comments to slide, but must admit that by this, the third day, my patience was running thin.

  “I think it says exactly what I wanted it to say,” he said, referring to the paragraph on which I’d zeroed in.

  “Well, Richard, then allow me to read it again aloud. I shall do so very slowly in the hope that you get the point.” I picked up the page on which the paragraph in question was contained and read: “The first thing she noticed upon entering the living room was a large, circular bloodstain in the rug that was in the center.”

  I looked at him.

  He shrugged.

  “Richard, the way you structured this sentence, the reader doesn’t know whether the bloodstain was in the center of the rug, or the rug was in the center of the room. That ambiguity would be cleared up if it read, ‘The first thing she noticed upon entering the living room was a large, circular bloodstain in the center of the rug.’”

  He guffawed and looked to his fellow students for support. I was pleased to see he received none.

  “I still don’t see why—”

  I dropped his paper, picked up another, and began to read from it. I’d had enough of Richard, with his silly-looking hat and arrogant attitude.

  The rest of the morning went well, Richard the duly noted exception. Most of the students in the class had been attentive and responsive to my suggestions, and some had brought in copies of my books for me to sign, which I happily did.

  I checked the clock on the wall: twelve-thirty. Time for a quick lunch with the dean of NYU’s writing program, and then, hopefully, a quick ride on the jitney
to the Hamptons, where I planned to spend the next ten days relaxing after a demanding, frustrating spring.

  I’d run into problems with my most recent manuscript. Instead of delivering it by March to my publisher, Vaughan Buckley of Buckley House, I didn’t put the finishing touches on it until a week before coming to New York to teach. Vaughan was characteristically gracious about my lateness, but I wasn’t pleased with it. I pride myself on meeting deadlines, and have little patience with writers who don’t share that attitude.

  “Sorry for the delay,” I’d said after delivering the manuscript four days ago, and after one of his secretaries had served me tea in Vaughan’s spacious, handsomely appointed office. “I had to rewrite the final third to make it work.”

  “No problem,” he said. “I’m sure the delay has resulted in an even better book. So, you’re about to teach another seminar.”

  “Yes. And then off to your beloved Hamptons.”

  “It’s going to be wonderful having you out there with us, Jess. I apologize again for the timing. If Olga and I had known you planned to take some vacation time after teaching, we wouldn’t have started a major renovation on the house.”

  “Don’t give it another thought.”

  Vaughan and Olga Buckley, two of my favorite people in the world, have a summer home in the Hamptons. I’d never seen it, but they’d shown me photographs. It was lovely, situated right on the water, with graceful porches affording magnificent views in every direction.

  I had mixed emotions, in a sense, about not being able to stay with these dear friends. On the one hand, I always enjoy their company and revel in their fawning over me. Vaughan and Olga Buckley are the perfect host and hostess.

  On the other hand, there is something appealing to me about being on my own. Being a houseguest carries with it certain obligations and restrictions.

  Actually, the situation in the Hamptons represented the best of both worlds. I would be staying at a lovely inn, chosen by the Buckleys, but would be within minutes of their home. Having it both ways.

  Vaughan escorted me to the elevator. “Teach good, Jess,” he said. “Don’t let those kids put anything over on you.”

  “You bet I won’t.”

  “And be on the lookout for the next Agatha Chris-tie—or J. D. Fletcher.”

  “I’ll do that. Thanks again, Vaughan, for understanding the late delivery of the manuscript. See you in the Hamptons in a few days.”

  “Right you are, Jess. And don’t worry about your luggage. I’ll have it picked up at your hotel the last day of your stay. It’ll be at the inn when you arrive.”

  My classroom cleared out. The last student to leave was Richard, who approached me as I was packing my briefcase. “If I decide to write a murder mystery, Mrs. Fletcher, can I send it to you to read?”

  The gall, I thought. I smiled. “Of course, Richard. It was a pleasure having you in class.”

  Lunch in the faculty dining room was low-calorie and pleasant. The dean, a bear of a man with white hair, thick, unruly black eyebrows, and a Santa Clause twinkle in his eye, said, “The feedback on your seminar every year, Jessica, is always top-notch. We’re truly grateful to have you share your experience and talent with us.”

  “The pleasure is all mine, Dean Carlisle. My fondest wish is that one of my students will go on to write the Great American Novel, and win all sorts of awards for it.”

  “And be paid handsomely as well.”

  “Yes. That, too.”

  “So you’re off to the Hamptons,” he said as he walked me from the building to the street.

  “Yes. I’ve never been there.”

  “I thought every writer ended up in the Hamptons—much to the chagrin of some.”

  “Well, I don’t intend to rub elbows with other writers. I’ve had enough of writing to last me a few months. This is strictly relaxation, Dean Carlisle. A needed case of R and R.”

  “Well, you enjoy it. Say hello to Vaughan Buckley for me. See you in six months?”

  “You can count on it.”

  Now alone—alone in the sense that no one was with me, the West Village was teeming with tourists, students, and other assorted New Yorkers—I looked across the street to the famed Washington Arch, which marks the beginning of Fifth Avenue, and stands as a landmark to Washington Square, the busy park surrounding it. I waited for a break in the traffic, then crossed and entered the square. Two statues of George Washington defined the east and west boundaries. Washington as President is on the west pier of the arch, Washington as Commander-in-Chief anchors the east pier.

  I checked my watch. I had time to kill before catching the Hampton Jitney at Eighty-sixth Street,. on the Upper East Side, one of many stops it makes along Lexington Avenue. A short stroll through Washington Square was in order. It was a lovely day, spring warmth in the air, sun shining brightly, the blue sky a scrim for puffs of fast-moving white clouds. Because Vaughan had my luggage picked up at the hotel that morning, I only had to carry my shoulder bag, and a large black leather portfolio that didn’t weigh much.

  I hadn’t gone very far when I was stopped by a scraggly young man. He pulled his hand from the pocket of his ragged jacket and held it out to me. In his palm were two small glassine packets. “The best stuff, lady. Top of the line.”

  My first reaction was to yell for the police. He was obviously offering me illegal drugs. But I decided it would be fruitless. I turned and walked with purpose in another direction. Frankly, I was surprised at being offered drugs in Washington Square. New York City’s government had taken aggressive steps to clean up the park, and had been largely successful, as far as I knew. The last time I was there—six months ago when I taught a previous seminar at NYU—a friend had met me for lunch. As we walked through the square she had said, “It’s so nice to have the park reclaimed from the drug dealers. Sort of like going back to when Henry James was writing about it.”

  “It can be done if people put their minds to it,” I said.

  “This used to be a hanging gallows,” she said, pointing to a giant elm tree, the oldest in the city. “And this was the original potter’s field.”

  “I almost wish you hadn’t mentioned it,” I said. “The contemplation of people hanging from that tree isn’t very pretty.”

  “There are some people I wouldn’t mind seeing swinging from its branches,” she said. “I’m sure you have a few, too.”

  “None I can think of at the moment,” I replied, and changed the subject.

  The image of people being hanged in Washington Square has been with me ever since that conversation. But I dismissed it from my mind this day, hailed a passing cab, and headed uptown, instructing the driver to let me off at Second Avenue at Eighty-fourth Street. There’s a shop there, Oldies, Goldies, and Moldies, that I was told carried a wonderful variety of clocks. My friend back home in Cabot Cove, Dr. Seth Hazlitt, had mentioned to me before I left that he was looking for a certain type of clock. If this shop had it, I wanted to buy it for him.

  I’d no sooner paid the driver—a rough, grizzled sort of fellow—and stepped out of his cab when a car bumped into the back of it. It was the mildest of collisions; I didn’t see any damage. But both drivers leaped out and started screaming at each other. This led to a fistfight. And then, to my horror, my cabdriver pulled a lead pipe from beneath his seat and hit the other driver in the head with it.

  I turned away just before the moment of bloody impact and walked quickly down the street. Two uniformed policemen who’d witnessed it ran past me in the direction of the confrontation. What senseless brutality over something so minor, I thought as I kept walking until reaching Third Avenue. The heck with looking for a clock. I wasn’t about to go back to the scene of the violence.

  As I waited for the light to change, I noticed a folding table to my right on which books were displayed. I went to it and scanned the many titles for sale. Most were children’s books. But on one end was a pile of paperback books without their covers. I looked closer. On the pil
e were a few copies of one of my novels, published in paperback a year ago. The man was selling them for fifty cents.

  Well, I’ll be, I thought as I picked up one of the books and thumbed through it. I’d heard of the illegal practice by some bookstores and distributors of tearing covers from paperback books, then sending the covers back to the publisher for a refund and selling the stripped books themselves. Book publishing is one of the last industries in America in which the product is sold on consignment. A bookstore - might order twenty paperback copies of a certain book. If it sells five, it need only tear off the fifteen covers of the remaining ones and send them back for full credit. The expectation, of course, is that the books themselves will be destroyed.

  But there is an obvious black market in coverless paperbacks, and here was the first example I’d personally experienced.

  “You want?” the man behind the table asked.

  I dropped my book on the pile and shook my head. “No, no thank you. Have a nice day.”

  By the time I settled in a window seat on the large, comfortable and modem touring bus—calling it a jitney is misleading—and had accepted the attendant’s offer of orange juice and a bag of peanuts, I was more than ready to leave what is affectionately called The Big Apple.

  My pompous student, Richard, had annoyed me with his arrogant views on writing.

  I’d been offered illicit drugs in Washington Square.

  I’d seen a man attempt to beat another man’s brains out with a lead pipe, all because their respective automobiles touched.

  And now copies of one of my books were being illegally sold on the streets of Manhattan.

  I couldn’t wait to get to the idyllic Hamptons. I’d had enough crime to last me a good long time.

  Chapter Two

  The Hampton Jitney was full, and I was glad I’d made my reservation well in advance. Because I had a window seat, I had to excuse myself to the young man seated on the aisle. He, too, had a large portfolio similar to mine.