“It’s not fair,” I whispered back. “If I chimed in like that, Mrs. Shufflebottom would have eviscerated me.”
Maybe Mrs. Shufflebottom heard me, because she gave me a steely-eyed look like she was considering some eviscerating right then. After a brief summary of Pippi’s own performance on the bestseller charts—which, Mrs. Shufflebottom was too polite to point out, had dropped off significantly in the last few years—Mrs. Shufflebottom announced, “And, of course, it comes as no surprise to anyone in Hastings Rock to hear that Pippi will be reading from her latest entry in the Aunt Lulu’s Laundromat series, Spin Cycle Secrets.”
“It comes as a surprise to me,” I whispered to Fox, who was trying to ignore me. “I thought that got canceled after everyone found out she’d hired Vivienne to do some ghost-writing on her teahouse series.”
“You mean after you revealed it to everyone,” Fox corrected—unnecessarily, in my opinion.
“Dash.” It was a Millie-whisper. “Dash. DASH!”
My “What?” sounded, admittedly, a bit strangled.
“Why didn’t they invite you to be in the reading?”
“Without further ado,” Mrs. Shufflebottom said, “let’s give a warm welcome to Mr. Crowe.”
I sank back into my seat—grateful for a chance to avoid Millie’s question—as Marshall approached the podium. Even though it was only a short distance, his steps were so unsteady that it looked more like a semi-controlled lurch, and he clutched the podium to steady himself. He bent too close to the microphone and spoke too loudly, and the slight scrape of feedback raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
“It’s a pleasure to be here,” he said, and the words had the blurred edges of someone losing his grip. “Wonderful town. Charming town. You know, most places you go, they’re grateful to have a celebrity visit them. They feel lucky. They don’t try to shoehorn in a housewife with an overactive imagination.”
It was like an old sci-fi show when someone depressurized the airlock: I could almost hear the hiss of oxygen being sucked out of the room. Pippi’s face went pale, and then bright spots of color rose in her cheeks.
“I’m joking, I’m joking,” Marshall said. “It’s a real privilege to spend twelve hours traveling and end up sitting next to someone whose last book didn’t sell enough copies to pay for a cup of coffee. Have you read—” He reached for the mic, and when it touched it, feedback screeched. He fumbled with the mic for a moment, and when the feedback stopped, he said, “Have you read her stuff? It’s great. It’s really inspiring. You don’t see people like that anymore—people who don’t let zero talent and even less common sense stop them.”
Around me, the audience seemed to have gotten over their shock and was beginning to react. I remembered, when I’d first arrived in Hastings Rock, how many people had come to Pippi’s reading. People had turned out in droves, and they’d come with bags of books for her to sign—and tonight was no exception. Althea and Bliss Wilson, off to one side of the room, shifted in their seats, murmuring their disapproval. Cyd Wofford was clutching a well-read copy of Tumble Trouble, his jaw set. A little farther down our row, Mr. Cheek, in a zebra-stripe blazer and patent leather heels, bared his teeth at Marshall and hissed his displeasure. Mrs. Shufflebottom, for her part, stood at the edge of the stage, clutching her cardigan at her throat, her face so white I thought she might faint.
“He’s going to start a riot,” Indira murmured.
“Why is he being so mean?” Millie asked.
Pippi, for her part, wore a rigid, meaningless smile. I remembered, the last time I’d been at one of her readings, how quick she’d been on her feet. She certainly hadn’t been at a loss for things to say, and so it seemed strange for her to sit there, weathering Marshall’s abuse. My only guess was that she still thought—hoped—he was joking, and if she played along, a good relationship with Marshall might outweigh the humiliation. Her husband, on the other hand, looked furious—from my interactions with Stephen, I’d always thought he had as much personality as sofa stuffing, which was probably a good balance to Pippi’s more over-the-top persona. Right then, though, his face was red, his hands were curled into fists, and he seemed to be having trouble breathing.
“Have ever read one of her books?” Marshall asked again with that leaden delivery. “You know what happens when you’re a middle-aged housewife with no life experience trying to write a book? You write book after book about middle-aged housewives with no life experience. It doesn’t matter how you dress them up; they’re all the same. You know what I mean. She’s got all these twenty-year-old cupcake bakers and booksellers and teahouse owners, but they don’t talk like twenty-year-olds, they don’t act like twenty-year-olds. They say things like ‘Oh my,’ and ‘Golly.’ They don’t message each other—they don’t even text. They call. When was the last time someone under thirty voluntarily made a phone call?”
Fox made a strange sound that it took me an instant to recognize as a laugh. I mean, I was under thirty and I did still make phone calls, but I definitely preferred to text—and that’s pretty much all Keme and Millie did. Fox and Indira, on the other hand, who were both at least twenty years older than me, did seem to call more frequently, so maybe there was something to Marshall’s point.
“Mr. Crowe,” Mrs. Shufflebottom began in a quavering voice. “I’m going to have to insist—”
“And when they do call, do you know what they do?” Marshall swayed and caught the podium again to keep from going over. “They use a landline.” He stopped like he might laugh, but he only blinked owlishly out at the audience. “The one I read, it was set in 2015, and every other chapter they’re running home to check their voicemail.”
A boo erupted from the crowd. I twisted and spotted the lumberjack—I didn’t know his name, but I thought of him as Fox’s lumberjack, since they had an ongoing, and apparently messy, quasi-relationship. Then I caught a glimpse of Marshall’s assistant, Elodie. She must have realized that her boss had gone too far—she was pale, and I thought, for a moment, she looked like she might pass out. Then Mrs. Knight stood and booed as well, shaking a paperback of Death by Dryer at Marshall.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Althea called from her seat.
Mr. Cheek hissed again and held up his hands like claws.
“A riot might have been underselling it,” I said. “He’s going to get himself killed. Keme, let’s get everybody out of here—”
But before I could finish, the guy who had arrived with Marshall—I thought Marshall had introduced him as Hayes—jogged down the center aisle. His face was fixed in what looked like polite goodwill, and he seemed to be trying not to make eye contact with any of the angry townspeople. As he approached the stage, he said in a low voice, “Hey, Marshall, why don’t we take a break? You look like you’re not feeling so hot.”
Marshall didn’t answer, but he did look worse than ever. His skin looked gray, his lips were tinged with blue, and his eyes looked bruised and sunken. His head bobbed, as though he were listening to music the rest of us couldn’t hear.
Hayes hopped up onto the stage and, as he rose, caught Marshall’s arm. “Why don’t we get some fresh air?”
Marshall twisted away, breaking Hayes’s hold, and then planted a hand on his chest and shoved. Hayes fell backward off the stage and hit the floor hard enough that the thud carried over the audience’s angry shouts.
“Come on,” I said, touching Fox’s shoulder. “This is getting out of control—”
But before I could finish, Marshall’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed.
Silence dropped over the crowd. Everyone froze.
Hayes picked himself up at the same time that I started toward Marshall.
“We need a doctor,” I called. I caught Mrs. Shufflebottom’s eye and said, “Call 911.”
I reached Marshall at the same time as Hayes. Marshall wasn’t breathing, and when I tried to find a pulse, his skin was clammy.
Dr. Xu dropped onto her knees next to me a moment later. “Move back,” she said as she leaned over Marshall.
But a part of me knew that, no matter what she tried, it wouldn’t be enough. Because even I could tell that Marshall was already dead.
Acknowledgements
My deepest thanks go out to the following people (in alphabetical order):
Jolanta Benal, for her help proofing this manuscript, in the process teaching me that “comprised of” is not actually correct (I had no idea!), and for her excellent question about the blackmail files.
