Eight Perfect Murders(3)

“You think so?” the agent said.

“I do. One of her best plots, for sure.”

“I’m planning on reading it again, but I did just Wikipedia it to remind myself of the story. There was a fourth murder in the book, as well.”

“I think so, yes,” I said. “Someone with a D name was the last person killed. And it turned out that the killer was making it look like a madman was doing it when all along he just wanted to kill one person. So the other murders are basically cover.”

“That’s what the plot summary on Wikipedia said. In the book it was the person with the double C name who was the intended victim all along.”

“Okay,” I said. I was starting to wonder why she had come to me. Was it just because I owned a mystery bookstore? Did she need a copy of the book? But if that were the case, then why did she ask for me, specifically, on the phone? If she just wanted someone who worked in a mystery bookstore, then she could have come inside and talked with anyone.

“Can you tell me anything else about the book?” she asked, then added, after a moment, “You’re the expert.”

“Am I?” I said. “Not really, but what is it you want to know?”

“I don’t know. Anything. I was hoping you’d tell me.”

“Well, besides the fact that a strange man comes into the store every day and buys a new copy of The A.B.C. Murders, I don’t know what else to tell you.” Her eyes raised for a moment before she realized I’d made a joke, or an attempt at one, then she smiled a little in acknowledgment. I asked her, “You think these murders are related to the book?”

“I do,” she said. “It’s too fantastical for it not to be.”

“Is it that you think someone’s copying the books in order to get away with a murder? That someone wanted to murder Robin Callahan, for example, but then murdered the other people to make it look like a serial killer obsessed with birds?”

“Maybe,” Agent Mulvey said, and she rubbed a finger along the edge of her nose, up near her left eye. Even her small hands were pale, the fingernails unpainted. She was quiet again. It was a strange interview, full of pauses. She was hoping I’d fill in the silence, I guess. I decided to not say anything.

Eventually, she said, “You must be wondering why I came to talk with you.”

“I am,” I said.

“Before I tell you I’d like to ask you about one other recent case.”

“Okay.”

“You probably haven’t heard of it. A man named Bill Manso. He was found near the train tracks in Norwalk, Connecticut, back in the spring. He was a regular commuter on a particular train, and initially it looked as though he’d jumped, but now it looks as though he was killed elsewhere and brought to the tracks.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I didn’t hear about it.”

“Does it remind you of anything?”

“Does what remind me of anything?”

“The nature of his death.”

“No,” I said, but that wasn’t entirely true. It did remind me of something, but I couldn’t remember exactly what it was. “I don’t think so,” I added.

She waited again, and I said, “Do you want to tell me why you’re questioning me?”

She unzipped her leather bag and removed a single sheet of paper. “Do you remember a list you wrote for this store’s blog, back in 2004? A list called ‘Eight Perfect Murders’?”





Chapter 2




I’d worked in bookstores ever since graduating from college in 1999. First briefly at a Borders in downtown Boston, then as both an assistant manager and a senior manager at one of the few remaining independents in Harvard Square. Amazon had just won its war for total domination and most of the indies were folding up like flimsy tents in a hurricane. But the Redline Bookstore was sticking it out, partly due to an older clientele not yet savvy enough to figure out online shopping, but mostly because its owner, Mort Abrams, outright owned the two-story brick building the store was housed in and didn’t have to pay rent. I was at Redline five years, two as an assistant manager, then three as senior manager and part-time book buyer. My specialty was fiction, and in particular, crime fiction.

During my time at the store I also met my future wife, Claire Mallory, who was hired as a bookseller shortly after she’d dropped out of Boston University. We got married the same year that Mort Abrams lost his wife of thirty-five years to breast cancer. Mort and Sharon, who lived two streets over from the bookstore, had become close friends, substitute parents really, and Sharon’s death was hard, especially since it robbed Mort of any remaining zest for life. A year after her death he told me that he was shutting down the store, unless, of course, I wanted to buy him out, take it over myself. I considered it, but at that point Claire had already left Redline, going to work at the local cable access station, and I didn’t necessarily want to take on the hours, or the financial risk, of running my own store. I contacted Old Devils, a mystery bookstore in Boston, and John Haley, the owner at the time, created a job for me. I would be the events manager, but also create content for the store’s burgeoning blog, a site for mystery lovers. My last day at Redline was the store’s last day in business, as well. Mort and I locked the front doors together, then I followed him back to his office, where we drank from a dusty bottle of single malt that had been given to him by Robert Parker. I remember thinking that Mort, without his wife, and now without the store, wouldn’t make it through the winter. I was wrong. He lived through the winter and spring, but he did manage to die the following summer at his lake house at Winnipesaukee, a week before Claire and I were planning to visit.