Swan Song by Judith K Ivie Read Free Book Online Page A

please call Village Pizza and have them deliver two of their large, thin crust house specials to my house in half an hour. No anchovies.”
    The young people sprang to do as May asked, obviously excited to be included in whatever was going on.
    “You said earlier, Mr. Schenk, that it would have been a federal offense for you to open a letter addressed to me, but we both know that isn’t technically true. The letter had no stamps on it, and it had not yet been posted or put into a mailbox. I’m fairly certain Lizzie didn’t have time to seal it before answering the door. So either you read it, then sealed it and brought it to me to see what additional information I might be able to give you, or you really did receive the letter sealed and brought it to me personally out of compassion. Which is it?” She raised an eyebrow in his direction, and her smile was nonjudgmental. “My niece’s husband is a homicide detective here in town. We can easily arrange to have a DNA analysis done on the saliva used to seal the letter.”
    Margo looked dubious about that but wisely kept quiet. Schenk returned May’s gaze, frankly amused. “A little of both, ma’am. The letter was unsealed when it was given to me. I checked the first and last pages for any clue about when it was written. That’s when I saw the time discrepancy. At the end of her letter, Ms. Mulgrew said a room service waiter was knocking on her door at 5:30 a.m.”
    “But the waiter who contacted you said he brought coffee at 6:30 a.m. as pre-ordered,” May finished his thought. They smiled at each other in complete understanding.
    Duane and Becky returned, and May checked to be sure each copy of the letter was numbered. She returned the original to her pocket and gave one copy to Margo, one to Isabelle, and one to me. We assumed the remaining two were for Duane and Becky, but May surprised us again.
    “I don’t want any more copies than absolutely necessary floating around, so I’m going to ask you to share this one between you,” she said, giving the fourth copy to Duane, “but I need as much help as I can get to crack this mystery quickly. Do not let it out of your possession.” Duane nodded solemnly, and Becky made a cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die gesture.
    The fifth copy, May held out to Schenk. “I think your instincts are absolutely correct, Mr. Schenk. My belief is that rumors of a final manuscript by a best-selling mystery author, now deceased, have already been spread. Someone else was at Lizzie’s door at dawn this morning, someone who was looking for a manuscript he might have wanted badly enough to kill for, but he didn’t find it. You see, he would have been looking for a big old box of typewritten pages, since Trague was widely rumored to be techno-phobic, but the manuscript was actually produced on a computer and saved to a USB drive, which is safely concealed somewhere for the moment. Lizzie implies in this letter that at least one person is already looking for it. I know you have to get back to your duties at the hotel, but I do hope you’ll help me find it as Liz wanted.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Schenk said as he pocketed the letter and prepared to leave. At the door he paused. “By the way, I sealed the envelope with water,” he threw over his shoulder—and left.

 
     
     
Chapter Five
     
     
    May’s cozy Cape Cod house sat toward the end of a charming cul-de-sac, surrounded by equally well-maintained homes of various styles. The neighborhood population was also diverse and included young couples, a single mom, retirees, kids and dogs. It was exactly the sort of mix May had been seeking when she relocated to Wethersfield from Atlanta after being widowed, and Mack Realty had helped her find it.
    Following a rocky period of adjustment, attributable to a local juvenile delinquent and his buddies, she had befriended all her neighbors and endeared herself especially to the children with weekly sessions. Most Wednesday afternoons, the