A Fatal Fiction

Book 3: Deadly Edits

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Freelance book editor Mikki Lincoln knows the makings of a well-written story. But she'll need to choose her words wisely when a new assignment introduces a deadly plot twist . . .

Forgotten on the outskirts of quaint Lenape Hollow, Feldman's Catskill Resort Hotel has outlasted its heyday as a popular tourist destination and now awaits demolition. But once Mikki is hired to edit a revealing memoir by Sunny Feldman, the last living relative of its original owners, the doomed resort quickly ends up back in the spotlight . . .

Unfortunately, everyone's attention shifts to Mikki when a body is discovered at the demolition site. Seen arguing with deceptive entrepreneur Greg Onslow right before his shocking death, the editor has no choice but to spell out exactly why she isn't guilty of murdering him . . .

Mikki's dash for answers brings Greg's shady dealings into focus, along with an unsettling list of potential culprits. As false leads and dead ends force her to revise theories on who really did it, can Mikki judge fact from fiction before the investigation reaches a terrifying conclusion?

Release date: June 30, 2020

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 249

Sample

Most people wouldn’t consider successfully filling the gas tank in their own car an accomplishment, but I’m not most people. For the bulk of the last half century I lived in Maine, where “full service” still means someone else will handle the pumping and clean your windshield while they’re at it. Only since moving back to New York State have I had to deal with this task on my own. The fact that paying for the gas generally involves inserting a credit card into the slot by the pump just complicates matters. Those machines hate me.

For more than a year after my return to Lenape Hollow, I took advantage of the friendly staff at Joe Ramirez’s gas station, waiting patiently in my Ford Taurus at one of the self-service pumps until someone noticed me and came out to give me a hand. On one nippy morning in mid-April, however, when dark clouds hung low over the town and a snowflake or two had been mixed in with a scattering of raindrops earlier in the day, the combination gas station and convenience store was busier than usual. I may be getting older, and I’m not above letting others do the dirty work whenever possible, but neither am I helpless. After a brief hesitation, I decided to give waiting on myself a try.

I knew the routine, of course. I’d watched other people do it often enough and had fumbled through the process myself on a few occasions. Unscrew the gas cap. Stick the nozzle in. Try not to inhale the stinky fumes. The only tricky part is persuading the electronic brain behind the machine to do what it’s supposed to do. Even the simplest computers have high opinions of themselves. They think they’re smarter than the seventy-year-old woman pushing their buttons. Hah! I inserted my credit card the right way up on the first try and got the gasoline flowing without staining my gloves.

Three other drivers were doing the same thing I was, and two more cars were waiting their turn. I recognized several of my fellow gas customers. The village of Lenape Hollow is a relatively small place with a population of under 4,500. Add in the hamlets that make up the town of Lenape Hollow and there are still under ten thousand people.

“Hey, Mikki,” Frank Uberman called out. “You need a hand with that?”

“I’m all set, but thanks.”

Frank has known me since we were both in diapers and he’s married to one of my closest friends, so he was well aware that I didn’t usually wait on myself. After I replaced the hose, I sent him a jubilant grin. Amazing as it seemed, I’d not only filled my tank and convinced the credit card doohickey to give me a receipt, I’d also avoided spilling a single drop on the ground. For an additional minor miracle, my gloves, coat, and slacks were still as clean as when I started.

My sense of triumph was short-lived. A car door slammed. One of the people waiting in line for a pump had left his vehicle. He stalked toward me, one hand clamped down on his hat to keep erratic wind gusts from blowing it away. The only way to describe his body language was “aggressive.”

“I want to talk to you, Ms. Lincoln.”

If there had been a single word in that sentence with a guttural sound in it, I’d have said that Greg Onslow, CEO of Mongaup Valley Ventures, growled it at me. I took a step back, all the distance I could manage to put between us without tripping over the concrete base for the gas pumps.

“This is hardly the place.” In my head, the words sounded firm and businesslike. In reality, they came out faint and squeaky.

I’m not a small person. I’ve shrunk a bit with age but still measure nearly five-foot-seven and my build is almost substantial enough to qualify as what my late husband used to call a BMW—a big Maine woman.

Let’s go with “sturdy” and call it good.

Onslow was younger, taller, and broader in the shoulders, and for some reason he was furious with me. I’d always thought his green eyes cold and calculating, but on that particular morning they blazed. I had no idea what I’d done to tick him off, but clearly something had pushed his hot button.

I had seen him lose his temper once before. At the time, I’d been told it was a rare occurrence. Whether that was true or not, I didn’t like being the object of so much hostility.

Maybe, I thought, the gas station is as good a location as any for a confrontation.

I certainly wouldn’t want to be alone with someone this volatile. In this very public place, I’d have plenty of witnesses if Onslow went so far as to issue threats or attempt to throttle me. From behind me I heard the reassuring sound of approaching footsteps. I didn’t need to turn around to know that Frank had my back.

Another car door slammed shut, momentarily diverting my attention by drawing my gaze to Onslow’s Porsche. Ariadne Toothaker, Mongaup Valley Ventures’s head of personnel, had braved the brisk breeze to step out of the passenger side of the vehicle. She watched her boss with a guarded expression on her carefully made-up face.

My voice was steadier when I focused on Onslow again. “You want to talk? Talk.”

“Call off your dogs.”

I glanced over my shoulder. Frank was there, as I’d expected, but so was Joe Ramirez. He’d come out of the store as soon as he realized someone was hassling one of his customers. If his scowl was anything to go by, he’d have welcomed an excuse to go a couple of rounds with Greg Onslow.

That didn’t surprise me. Onslow called himself an entrepreneur and claimed he had the best interests of Lenape Hollow at heart every time he launched a new project, but somehow his investors, including Frank and Darlene Uberman, ended up losing money while he managed, time and time again, to land on his feet. He’d skated close to breaking the law on several occasions, even if he hadn’t yet crossed over that line.

“I want to hear what he has to say,” I told the two men.

Violence wouldn’t solve anything, and might well end with one of my friends getting hurt. Frank is tall and trim. He keeps in shape by playing endless holes of golf, but he’s no spring chicken. He was a year ahead of me in school. As for Joe, a man with his wiry build could probably defeat Onslow in a fair fight, but not without damaging his standing in the community. I wasn’t willing to take the chance that he’d be kicked off Lenape Hollow’s board of trustees for brawling. Besides, I hoped that if I gave Onslow the chance to vent his spleen now, he’d be less inclined to try to talk to me later, when I was at home alone and considerably more vulnerable.

Nobody within hearing distance made any move to leave. Every ear was stretched in our direction. Inside the gas station /convenience store, noses were all but pressed to the windows as customers and sales clerks alike tried to see what was going on.

Onslow didn’t appear to notice. His attention was fixed on me and he was getting angrier by the minute. “You’d better stop her,” he said. “I won’t stand for this kind of sabotage.”

I took a deep breath. “Could you be a little more specific? I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

“Sunny Feldman.” He spat out the name.

Well, finally! His state of mind now made some sense. Not a whole lot, you understand, but at least I had an inkling of what had set him off.

Greg Onslow was the current owner of what remained of Feldman’s, once a giant among Borscht Belt resort hotels. The property had been neglected for decades, until only a jumble of ruins remained. He planned to raze the condemned buildings and erect something new. Speculation favored a call center, which would provide much needed jobs for local people, but no one knew for certain what he intended.

Roberta “Sunny” Feldman was the last member of the hotel’s founding family to own the resort. She sold out just before the tourism boom turned to bust in the Sullivan County Catskills back in the 1970s. She walked away with enough money to see her comfortably through a lengthy retirement. At eighty-six, she’s still going strong. A month ago, she hired me to edit her memoirs.

That’s what I do to make ends meet in my retirement. As “Michelle Lincoln, the Write Right Wright” I offer editorial services to writers. Most of my clients send me their manuscripts as attachments to emails and I never meet them in person. There have been a few exceptions. One is Sunny. Another was Greg Onslow’s first wife. After her death, he wanted me to revise a novel she’d written—ghostwrite it, really, since it needed a lot of work. I turned him down.

Now, apparently, he expected me to stop Sunny from finishing her book. I had no intention of agreeing to that plan, either.

“I don’t know what you think I can do—” I began.

“Tell her it’s crap. Convince her she’ll be a laughingstock if her tall tales get into print.”

“I would if that were true, but it isn’t. Besides, she already has a publishing contract.”

He snorted. “She’s going to publish it herself. Vanity—”

“No. Not that there’s anything wrong with self-publishing these days, but the truth of the matter is that she signed a contract with a traditional publisher. She’s already been paid an advance against royalties.” Celebrity memoirs do very well, and although Sunny Feldman isn’t a household name, back in the day she knew a lot of people who were.

“Lies. She’s making it up. She’s trying to ruin me.”

Onslow grew more agitated by the minute and I didn’t like the way he kept clenching and unclenching his fists. A surreptitious glance reassured me that we still had an audience. No one was going to stand idly by if he decided to do more than spew verbal abuse. That it had so far been directed more at Sunny than at me was probably the only thing keeping Frank and Joe in check.

The situation changed in the next instant.

“You always were a hack,” Onslow said with a sneer. “How much is she paying you? I’ll double it if you’ll quit the project.”

Low blow! And so insulting! I think I can be forgiven for getting hot under the collar in response.

“A,” I said, holding up one finger, “I won’t accept money from you, no matter how much you offer. And B, taking myself out of the equation won’t stop Sunny’s book from being published.” With two fingers already in the air, I added a third and jabbed all of them in his direction to emphasize my point. “I don’t see what concern it is of yours anyway.”

“Her lies are sabotaging my demolition project.”

Sabotage seemed a rather strong word and this was the second time he’d used it. “How?”

“Stories about the hotel. She’s making it sound as if it’s some kind of historical landmark that needs to be preserved. If she was so concerned about those buildings I want to tear down, she shouldn’t have sold them in the first place. There’s no possibility of renovation. They’re too far gone.”

I hated to agree with Greg Onslow about anything, but he was right when it came to the ruins of the once grand resort. Better to raze what was left than try to preserve an eyesore.

I tried to sound reasonable as I pointed out another obvious truth. “Sunny’s stories about the good old days can’t possibly have any effect on your plans.”

“She’s telling lies. Whoppers. Doesn’t that frost you? Your reputation will suffer, too, when the truth comes out.” His voice got louder with every word.

I didn’t believe Sunny was playing particularly fast and loose with the facts, or that she was doing so as part of some desperate, last-ditch effort to stop Onslow’s project. She wouldn’t benefit in any way that I could see if demolition came to a grinding halt.

“What you’re saying makes no sense.” Given what I knew of Onslow’s past schemes, he was far more likely to be the one who was lying. I started to turn away.

He grabbed my arm, jerked me around until we were nearly nose-to-nose, and shouted into my face. “Stupid, delusional old woman! Can’t you see what she’s up to?”

I’ve read the words purpling with rage in novels and always thought it an exaggeration. Onslow proved me wrong. If I hadn’t been on the verge of losing my own temper, I might have been worried that he was about to pop a blood vessel or have an apoplectic fit. As it was, I was preoccupied with trying to hold on to the remnants of my self-control.

“Old woman?” I repeated in ice-cold tones.

I smacked him sharply on the hand. The moment he released me, I should have walked away, but by then I was too angry to be sensible. I held my ground.

“Lying bitches!” he bellowed. “Both of you. You’re trying to ruin me.”

“Oh, please!” My voice had risen to match his. “I want nothing to do with you or your schemes.”

“Then you’ve let her dupe you.” His eyes abruptly narrowed. His sneer intensified. “Wouldn’t surprise me,” he said in a tone of voice that conveyed his disgust. “You’re nothing but a jumped-up, crazy cat lady.”

That was the final straw.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have totally lost my temper in public. Every one of them was memorable... and every one embarrassed the heck out of me afterward.

The first was in high school. The second time was in college. The other two were later in life. One was at a club meeting, after a totally irrational person made unfounded accusations against a friend of mine. But the angriest I’ve ever been was when, shortly before my father died, a clueless nurse informed me that, during the time I’d taken a short break from sitting by his bedside, I’d once again “just missed” an opportunity to communicate with her comatose patient. To my mind, it was unnecessarily cruel to tell me that, and quite possibly untrue, since he never gave any sign of regaining consciousness in all the hours I was there. I let her have it with both barrels.

When I lose control, I really lose control. I don’t care who’s listening. I yell. I tell the object of my ire exactly what I think of whatever it was that set me off. I’m not proud of this. It’s a character flaw, but that’s not to say that the tirade is undeserved.

This fifth occasion followed the same pattern. By the time I was once more calm enough to take in my surroundings, Onslow had retreated. He drove off without bothering to get gas. Most of the other cars left quickly, too, although Frank Uberman stayed. So did the Lenape Hollow librarian, Pam Ingram.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath.

Nothing like making a fool of myself in public.

“You okay?” Frank looked as if he’d rather be anywhere else, but old friendship held strong. He wasn’t going to abandon me until he was sure I was fit to drive myself home.

“I’ll live.”

I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d said to send Onslow scurrying away with his tail between his legs, but I felt fairly certain he wouldn’t bother me again.

Joe Ramirez had gone back inside the store. Now he popped out again with a bottle of water in hand. “Next time we’re in someplace that serves alcohol, I’ll buy you a real drink,” he said as he offered it to me.

Pam finished filling her gas tank. “I’ll pay for the second round,” she said with a grin. “That was the finest moment of justified payback I’ve seen since Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis blew up that guy’s truck in Thelma and Louise.”

Is it very bad of me that I was flattered by the comparison?

After I left the gas station, I had a few errands to run. My original plan had been to return home as soon as they were completed and get back to work on the manuscript of a romance novel I was editing for a client. That wasn’t going to fly. Even though nearly an hour had passed by the time I crossed everything off my to-do list, I was still too wired to settle. The level of concentration I’d need to catch typos and continuity errors was far out of reach.

Instead, I drove to Frank and Darlene’s house. Darlene’s van was in the driveway, so I knew she was home. I didn’t hesitate to let myself in through the front door. I had an open invitation to do just that. I also had Darlene’s spare key, in case of emergencies.

As I entered the living room from the entry hall, I shrugged out of my coat. I had just opened my mouth to let my friend know I’d arrived when I spotted her lying full-length on the floor, her neck extended at an unnatural angle and a look of acute pain on her face. Her walker stood off to one side, as if it had been shoved out of the way when she lost her balance and fell.

The coat slipped from my grasp and a horrified gasp escaped me before I could stop it. Seconds later, I was on my knees beside her. I fought the instinct to run my hands over her neck and shoulders to determine how badly she was injured. I was afraid touching her might make things worse.

“Darlene! What happened? Are you hurt?”

Her eyes popped open and her expression changed to one of astonishment. She started to sit up.

“Don’t move. I’ll call an ambulance.”

When I tried to rise, she grimaced and seized my arm with surprising strength. “I’m fine.”

I sat back on my heels to stare at her, belatedly realizing that I’d completely misread the situation. Darlene’s current facial contortions were the result of trying very hard not to laugh.

“Well, this must be my day for making a fool of myself. If you didn’t take a tumble, why are you lying on the floor?”

“It’s called exercise. Stretching keeps assorted muscles and joints from stiffening up more than they already are. Give me some space, will you? I need lots of room to heave myself up.”

Once I was on my feet and had retrieved my coat, I watched without comment while Darlene maneuvered. She sat up, grabbed a throw pillow from the sofa, and used it to cushion her arthritic knees when she shifted her weight onto them. She had to place one hand flat on the carpet to get that far and pause briefly before moving on to the next part of the process. This involved sticking her left leg out to the side, taking hold of the top of a sturdy end table with both hands, and levering herself to her feet. Something made a loud popping noise as she rose.

I winced at the sound. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

Darlene shrugged. “Not really, and getting up this way is easier than the alternative methods. It doesn’t make me look nearly as silly, either.”

Both hands held up in surrender, I shook my head. “Far be it from me to—”

“What? Make fun of the cripple?” Darlene grinned at me.

I rolled my eyes. She could get away with a crack like that, but heaven help anyone else who dared joke about her disability in such a cavalier way.

Darlene suffers from osteoarthritis... in spades. As she herself says, there are worse forms of the disease, but it’s still a degenerative condition. She once held Pam Ingram’s job at the town library but had to take early retirement at the age of sixty-two. By that point, she could no longer get a good grip on a book, making it nearly impossible for her to shelve. She found it difficult to be on her feet for long periods, too, and walking was painful for her.

Darlene’s arthritis affects the joints in her hands, wrists, neck, knees, ankles, and feet. Some days pain pills and ointments keep everything under control and she only needs to use a cane or a walker to get around. At other times, especially when the weather changes abruptly or is excessively damp, she has to rely on a wheelchair or use her scooter. She refers to the latter as her “motorized transport.”

On this particular day, Darlene ignored the walker I’d noticed in the living room. She needed to rest the occasional hand against a wall or on a piece of furniture to steady herself on her way through the dining room and into the kitchen, but her balance was better than usual.

“Are you hungry?” she asked as I followed her.

“I could eat.”

Darlene is a fantastic cook and usually has something yummy already prepared. Not that either one of us needs extra treats. She’s a couple of inches shorter than I am and jokes that she’s twice the woman she was in high school. Since strenuous exercise isn’t on her agenda, she’s not likely to lose weight anytime soon. Neither, sad to say, am I, although I have started taking better care of myself. As soon as most of the winter’s snow melted, I started walking more. Unless I have purchases to bring home, I don’t need to use the car to get around. Everything is close together in Lenape Hollow and going up and down our hilly streets is better than a workout in a gym... or so I keep telling myself.

A short time after I arrived, Darlene and I were settled at her kitchen table with freshly brewed coffee and ham and cheese sandwiches in front of us. The air was scented with the comforting aroma of chocolate chip cookies not long out of the oven. They awaited our attention on a cooling rack on the counter.

Just as I took the first bite of my lunch, I heard the sound of toenails tapping rapidly on the tile floor. Darlene’s dog, Simon, trotted over to poke a very cold nose into the free hand I’d allowed to dangle at my side. I dutifully patted him on the head. In the eight months since Darlene and Frank had adopted him, he’d morphed from fluffy black puppy into grown-up dog of the mutt variety.

I should have been able to relax. I w. . .