An Unfinished Story(11)

And then.

There were no more words.

Halfway through the third book, the story stopped midsentence.

Claire flipped through the blank pages, hoping to find more words. Nothing.

Leaving Willy back inside, Claire ran to her car and, under the glow of the moon, sped across St. Pete. She so hoped this wasn’t a sad story. Was that why he wouldn’t let her read it? When she reached their home, she ran up the stairs and raced into his office. She spent the next two hours searching for more words. Where were the other drafts? Had he tossed them? Had he hidden them somewhere?

She moved around his office like a madwoman, desperately pulling books off the shelf, opening drawers. She even knocked on the walls and floors, looking for hollow spots. It was soon evident that he had not finished his story. He died with words left to give, a story still to tell.

No one would ever know how it ended.

Lying on the floor amid the boxes of his books, Claire cried herself to sleep.

She woke puffy eyed in the middle of the night, not quite aware of her location. Whitaker Grant’s book—the one inscribed to David—lay next to her head, lit up in the moonlight. She stared at it for a long while as her eyes and mind adjusted.

The realization of what she needed to do wrapped around her like David’s arms when he’d last come to find her at the end of the dock. For perhaps the first time since he’d died, she felt hope, an almost impossible hope, like discovering a lost diamond ring in the waves. It was as if she’d suddenly found the answers she’d been looking for, and Claire was shocked, even saddened, that she’d waited three years to go through his office.

This book had been lying in a drawer collecting dust for three long years. His unfinished dream. As though wearing blinders, she felt a desperate need to get this book finished.

And Whitaker Grant was the one to do it. She knew that with all her heart, as if David had appeared to tell her so.





Chapter 4

DISTURBING THE PEACE

Whitaker Grant was on a Sunday-morning stakeout. Not the typical stakeout. And the absurdity had not been lost on him. He couldn’t hold on to a marriage or drop a lick of weight. He certainly couldn’t write another novel, but by God he would catch the man—or woman—responsible for not picking up dog poop in his neighborhood.

Wasting precious writing time, Whitaker hid behind tinted glass in the wayback of his aging Land Rover with his eyes glued to a pair of binoculars, watching for possible offenders in the park across the street. Since his divorce, he’d been living in a bachelorized house along Clymer Park in the tiny city of Gulfport, which bordered St. Petersburg. Lined with tall palms and oaks dripping Spanish moss, the park stretched for three blocks and featured lush gardens and local artists’ exhibits as part of an art walk.

Whitaker was still in his bathrobe, and an empty box of Cheerios lay by his side. Seeing an unfamiliar man walking a springer spaniel through the grass, Whitaker leaned in with intense scrutiny.

When the dog finally took a squat, Whitaker readied himself. What exactly he’d do once he found the culprit, he was unsure. But this had to stop. Such a grand crime cut Whitaker to his core. Three times. Not once! Not twice. Thrice, he’d gone for a stroll around the park in his efforts to shed the ten extra pounds that had sneaked up on him, only to step in the excrement of a dog with a negligent owner. That third time, as he’d hosed off the poop, he’d committed to find this person.

The action in the park slowed for a while. He noticed a cute woman Rollerblading and wondered what her story was. He hadn’t slept with a woman since his ex-wife, not that anyone would be surprised by that fact. Between his 1970s mustache and general disregard for style, he wasn’t exactly the catch he used to be. Some men weathered a divorce and then ran like wild horses toward the closest women. Whitaker’s divorce had only led him further into a lonely depression. A depression he was well aware of and disgusted by.

Whitaker glanced back at his little house, which was about all he had left after the settlement. Lisa had stayed in their mansion near the water, which was paid off courtesy of his novel. He’d asked for enough cash to buy a little house and to buy some time. Oh, and his wine. Considering he was the one who’d curated their robust collection, she hadn’t argued. She was always content with a glass of sauvignon blanc anyway. He’d moved the collection to a wine-storage facility on Fourth Street and visited every once in a while. Though sadly, since he’d lost his wife and his muse, there weren’t that many days worthy of popping corks on good bottles.

Still hungry, he pulled the bag of Cheerios out of the box and shook the crumbs into his mouth. He washed it down with the last of the lukewarm coffee in his travel mug. He always bought his beans from the same roaster in St. Pete, an establishment where the owners happened to be big fans of his writing. With the hazelnut hitting his taste buds, he tried not to think of what the owners would say about his recent habit of taking his coffee with an overly generous amount of creamer. Since the writer inside him had died, Whitaker’s love of subtlety in coffee and wine had perished as well.

A suspicious-looking man walking a mini-poodle—or at least a mini-something—strutted by Whitaker’s house. Was this the guy? The poop Whitaker had stepped in was more medium size, but Whitaker would be the first to admit he hadn’t mastered the proportions of dog size to poop size yet. Hopefully, his limited PI skills (PI standing for poop investigation) would be enough to bring the perpetrator—or poopetrator—to justice.