Written Off (12 page)

There just wasn’t any point in continuing that evening. Ben drove me back to where I’d left my car—you meet in a public place on a first date, even with a law enforcement official with dark hair and blue eyes—and I went home, with plenty of thoughts in my head and none of them pleasant.

I breathed a sigh of relief when my front door was actually locked, and I managed to make it all the way into my office without scaring the living crap out of myself. One must be grateful for small favors.

There was a sticky note on my computer screen from Paula, who had still been there when I’d left for my wildly romantic evening of suspects and threatening e-mails. It read, “More info on ‘Duffy.’ See you AM.” Paula goes to sleep early and generally does not have madmen chasing her unless she wants them to, which she rarely does.

So I revised exactly two pages of my manuscript and was immediately ready for bed. I took off my makeup, washed up, and went to bed. I believed that it had been a full day.

My first order of business the next morning was indeed to call Paula for the latest on my character wannabe. Duffy said he’d be coming at ten; I got up at eight thirty because . . . well, because Paula was at my door at eight thirty. She’d probably been up since five; going to bed early means getting up early, like Ben Franklin said.

“I assume you’re here to tell me more,” I began.

“Are you okay?” Paula asked. “You look gravelly.”

She wasn’t used to dealing with me before a more sociable hour. And I remembered that I hadn’t told her about the nut who was cyberstalking me now. So I told her, and once she recovered, I said, “So this is what I sound like when I spent much of the night thinking about a crazy person who likes to send me e-mails,” I said. “Especially when I have another crazy person trying to protect me from him. What can you tell me to alleviate my fears?”

“Not much.”

“That’s not helpful.”

“Well, maybe this is: I can’t tell you anything that’s going to make you more fearful, either.”

“It’s a start,” I said. “What’d you find out?” If I kept asking, there was a distinct possibility she might actually tell me.

“Nobody ever seems to have heard of Duffy Madison before four years ago,” Paula reported. “People from his high school—teachers who must have had him in class at some point—don’t have any memories of him. I can’t find a record of who his parents were or even whether they’re still alive. This is a man who truly sprang from your imagination onto the streets of Hackensack.”

“You didn’t come here this early just so you could say that,” I suggested. “You’re holding back for effect, aren’t you?”

“Maybe a little,” she said guiltily. “There are two interesting leads. One is his college yearbook; he went to Oberlin in Ohio. And in his yearbook, he’s listed as having been a director for a section of Model UN.”

Try as I might, I couldn’t really make a significant connection there. “Model UN?”

“Model United Nations.” Like that helped.

“I didn’t think it was Model Unwanted Nitwits. How does that help us find out something about this guy?” When I was talking to Paula, I stopped thinking of him as “Duffy” and went back to “unnamed maniac.”

“Think about it,” she urged. “He was helping high school kids get through a mock session of the United Nations. He was in charge of some of them. It’s not something that can be done alone in a room from far away.
Somebody had to see him
.”

“You appear to be taking this really personally,” I pointed out.

“I have the scent of blood,” she said.

“You said there were two things. What’s the other one?”

Paula was grinning when she said, “There’s some indication that he might have gone to the senior prom.”

This was getting a little scary. “Remind me never to get on your bad side,” I told Paula.

“It’s not pretty.”

I thanked Paula, and seeing that I was a work in need of much progress, she left. I was showered and dressed by the time Duffy showed up in the driveway. I had decided to be
outside waiting for him. He’d been in the house before, but I wasn’t comfortable with him coming back just now. Not until Paula found out who his prom date had been.

“Do you really think this trip is necessary?” I asked him as I buckled in.

“We still have no strong leads to the location where Ms. Bledsoe might have been taken,” he said. “We have to follow every possible idea until something suggests itself.”

I studied him as he drove. He was intense without being tense. He was all concentration without seeming like he was obsessed. He was all business without being emotionless. He was a perfect model for the character I write regularly. Observing him would be a terrific tool for future books. It’s not always easy to come up with new things for Duffy. And yet, here was Duffy in front of me, flesh and blood. I could ask him anything.

What I finally decided on was, “How can you remember nothing before four years ago?”

“Do you remember before you were born?” he asked.

“Of course not.”

“It’s like that.”

“How can you explain your existence? It’s not like every character every author ever wrote is now walking around living a slightly different life that author imagined for him.”

“How do you know? Maybe we’re all characters that were imagined by an immense author and everything we do is fiction.” Duffy never moved his gaze from the road, never referred to notes, had no GPS on.

“Very metaphysical . . .”

“Duffy. Duffy Madison. Nice to meet you.” So he did have a sense of humor. My Duffy always had.

“Surely you can understand how weird this is for me,” I said.

“Imagine how I feel. Last Friday, I had no idea you existed. I thought, like you do, that I must have undergone some hideous trauma that my mind insisted on blocking out. I spent a year with a therapist trying to uncover that lost memory. But it wasn’t there. Now I know why.”

This was going to be a long ride, and the distance wasn’t even very far. “How can you make that leap?” I asked. “There are a million other explanations ahead of the idea that you just came into being because I typed some words on an iMac.”

“Like what?”

“Like maybe that wasn’t a great therapist. Like maybe it wasn’t some emotional experience you were trying to block out. Maybe you got hit really hard on the head.”

“Where’s the scar?”

“Under your hair; what do I know?”

There was silence for a while. “If you were writing this scene, what would happen now?” Duffy asked.

“You and me in the car? I don’t write science fiction.”

He was agitated enough to steal a half-second glance at me before he stared once again into the distance. “You write stories in which a character with my name—” He stopped himself. “—in which
I
investigate cases of abduction. Ms. Bledsoe has been missing more than four days. We have no substantial leads. What should I do now?”

I closed my eyes. It was typical of Duffy, in either incarnation, to foist the responsibility onto me. “You’re asking me how to find Sunny?”

He nodded without turning. “What we know is that she was home five nights ago. We know that because her sister saw her there that night. We know she was in her Ocean Grove bungalow within the last three days, because her phone was found there and it was still holding a charge. We know she had received a series of threatening e-mails and had failed to report them to any authorities.”

“And we know that she was seeing a guy named Brad that she was really excited about,” I added.

Duffy shook his head. “We don’t know that. We know that another author, someone who knows Ms. Bledsoe, said that was the case. Until we can substantiate the suggestion, we don’t actually know that to be the fact.”

“Fine. Any progress on finding this Brad guy?” I had opened my eyes a while back; had I forgotten to mention that? Duffy was calm, but small, dark circles under his eyes and dryness in his lips indicated it had been a while since he’d slept well. He always did get emotionally involved in his investigations.

“We don’t have much to go on,” he answered. “Ms. Bledsoe’s sister has never heard of the man, and neither has her ex-husband.”

“Sunny is divorced?”

“Yes. I’ve told you that before.”

“But before I knew Julia Bledsoe was Sunny Maugham.”

Duffy did not address that directly. “She was married to a man named Zachary Wharton for seven years. They’ve been divorced for four. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.” Duffy’s tone was not accusatory; it was more in the area of perplexed. “I thought the two of you were friends.”

“Well, we were professional friends. Not even. Acquaintances, really. You know how it is: There are friends, and there are
friends
.”

There was no irony in Duffy’s voice. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. I resolved to write some friends for him as soon as possible. I might be able to shoehorn in at least one when I got back to my revisions.

“I’m guessing Zachary is not a suspect in the abduction,” I said.

“It would be odd if he’d kidnapped and murdered three other women just to warm up for this one,” Duffy agreed. “But we haven’t eliminated any suspects yet, since we have so little to go on. Still, I have met Mr. Wharton, and he is considerably taller than the man in the convenience store video.”

“You met him? What’s he like?” Duffy reads things by observing people; he can tell you more about yourself than your spouse. There are times that can be incredibly valuable.

“He’s a forty-seven-year-old venture capitalist who spent six months in prison for insider trading fifteen years ago. He is meticulous in his manner of dress, scrupulous about his conversation, and emotionally distant, probably as the result of a difficult upbringing. He says he has not seen Ms. Bledsoe in almost a year, has no reason to be upset with her, no longer
pays her alimony because her income is higher than his, and has no idea who might have a grudge against her.”

That actually didn’t tell me much. It’s so much easier when you can decide what the clues will be ahead of time.

“Do you believe him?” I asked.

“I have no reason not to,” Duffy answered. “Yet.”

We pulled up to a large, single-level home at the end of a cul-de-sac. It was gloriously tasteful, a relief in this neighborhood of alternating McMansions and older homes of ostentatious overindulgence. From the look of the house, I’d say it was built in the 1970s, and that made its grace and beauty even more remarkable. Most things built in the seventies look like the architect was on drugs. Because he probably was.

It had a lovely circular drive with impeccable landscaping. A fountain, which appeared to be naturally fed, trickled quietly on the left. A scent of chlorine in the air suggested there was a swimming pool. On a day like today, that was a major plus.

Who knew Sunny Maugham had been doing
this
well?

“It’s not a bad little place,” I told Duffy, “when one is trying to be thrifty.”

He got out of the car as I did and took it in without irony. That would teach me to write a guy without irony. “It’s valued at two-point-four million dollars,” he said.

“I was joking, Duffy. Roll with it.”

He didn’t answer. He walked to the front door—natural wood and polished to a mirror shine—pulling a key from his jacket pocket. Yes. It was ninety-six degrees out, and Duffy
Madison was wearing a sports jacket. I was going sleeveless and wishing someone had invented personal air conditioning.

Duffy opened the lock and then the door. We walked inside.

There was something distinctly weird about being inside Sunny Maugham’s house without her knowledge. This was different than the bungalow in Ocean Grove, where Sunny had probably just gone to break the routine and have a swim in the Atlantic. This was her home. This was her private space. And she didn’t know I was there. I didn’t care for the vibe.

It was not, as I had half expected in a place this size, imposing and museum-like. Like Sunny, the place was unpretentious. The room did have nicely polished hardwood floors, but its decorations were simple and unassuming. There was a small stuffed puppet of Oscar the Grouch on one of the sideboards.

“What are we looking for?” I asked Duffy.

“I’m looking for anything that might be different from the last time I was here,” Duffy answered. “I expect to find nothing of the sort.
You
are looking for anything that wouldn’t be immediately noticeable to a law enforcement officer but looks wrong to a writer of crime novels.”

“I’m not going to find anything like that in the front room or the kitchen,” I noted.

“No, you won’t. The office is toward the back, on the right. I’ll show you.”

Duffy led me across the room and into a dining room that made me want to eat there every Sunday night. Homey, warm (well, hot today, but emotionally warm), and inviting, without
the egotism that money often inspires. But we weren’t there long. I followed Duffy through the dining room and into the back room of the house, where Sunny wrote her books.

It was the exact office I wanted to have when I grew up. It wasn’t perfectly neat; that would have put me off and irritated anyone else who walked in. A writer with a completely organized mind? Why not become an accountant and leave room for more of us crazy people?

The computer on the desk (which had papers stacked semi-neatly on either side) was high-end but a few years old. The desk had actual writing surface, something mine completely lacked. And there was box of fine-tipped roller pens next to the stress ball, the reading glasses, and the voice recorder.

Sunny’s workstation faced a wall. Behind and to the right were glass doors to the back deck, which was large, cedar, and friendly looking. I was starting to regret not being closer to Sunny.

File cabinets sat on either side of the room. Wooden ones that looked like actual furniture and not some Office Max steel-with-wood-veneer special. The printer sat on one of them, light still on, waiting for the next installment in one of Sunny’s three (!) best-selling series.

“What do you see?” Duffy asked quietly, as if we were in a library.