Written Off (10 page)

Bess clearly had no new information on Sunny, but she did suggest I call Mary Alice Monroe, whose real name is Connie Bailey. Before I could call Connie, Paula walked into my office with a puzzled look on her face.

“There’s no such person as Duffy Madison,” she said.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“No, you don’t understand. This is the age of no privacy at all. The Internet has everything that ever happened to anybody ever. You want to know what Napoleon ate for lunch the day he got back from Elba? I can find that. But so far, I can’t tell you anything about this guy who thinks he’s Duffy.”

If Paula couldn’t find anything, there was nothing to find. That sent an unintentional chill up my spine. I gawked at her for a moment. “You’re scaring me.”

That just made Paula look more determined. “I said ‘so far.’ Just give me some more time.” And she marched back to her office with a look I wouldn’t want pointed at me. Whoever Duffy really was, he’d have to contend with Paula now. I almost felt sorry for him.

I gave Connie Bailey a call and got just about the same story as I had from Bess Adelstein, but she directed me to Margaret Teasdale (Susan Oswego), who had seen Sunny just two days before she had been reported missing.

“She was in a really good mood,” Susan said. “She’d started seeing some new guy, and she thought it was going to be something for real.”

Klieg lights went off in my head. Sirens sounded in my ears. For a mystery writer, this was the equivalent of saying that someone had been standing behind Sunny with a six-inch kitchen knife, a .38 revolver, a bottle with a skull and crossbones, and a large noose in his hands.

I tried not to sound breathless. “Did she mention the guy’s name?” I asked.

Susan didn’t respond right away; I got the impression she was thinking. “Bart, maybe? Bill? No. Brad. She said the guy’s name was Brad.”

“Did you tell this to the police?” I said.

“The police? I never got a call from the police,” Susan answered. “Do you think it’s important?” The woman writes
about a sleuth who gets clues from a talking horse—and outsells the Duffy books by a very wide margin.

Susan went on about Brad, how she didn’t know his last name but was pretty sure Sunny had met him at her gym, if I thought he had something to do with Sunny being missing now, and if she (Susan) had been wrong not to think it was an important piece of information.

Two Edgar Award nominations. I ask you.

The second I disconnected with Susan, I texted Duffy and asked where he was. Turned out he was driving through Mendham, not far from where I was, so we arranged to meet at Caffeinated. Even though I’d be seeing Ben Preston tonight on what Paula had now officially decreed a date, I thought this kind of information couldn’t wait. And I did feel the tiniest bit guilty about going behind Duffy’s back to Preston. I wasn’t sorry I’d done it, but it did feel a trifle devious.

*   *   *

Duffy does not drink coffee in the books, and he was not drinking coffee now. He had a Diet Coke from the cooler Ruthie keeps next to the counter and ate nothing. I was going to get a chocolate chip muffin, but with Duffy eating nothing and a date later in the day, I decided to abstain, cursing both myself and Duffy mentally.

I told him what Susan had said, and when I mentioned the name “Brad,” I hoped that he’d immediately scream, “Aha!” and hop into his car to go rescue Sunny. That’s not what happened.

“This is the first time I’m hearing about Ms. Bledsoe having a suitor,” Duffy said thoughtfully.
A suitor
. That’s the way the guy talks, even when I’m not writing his dialogue for him. “This is very interesting.”

“Interesting? I’d think it would be enormous.”

“It’s significant, certainly,” Duffy said. “But it will take some research to find out who Brad might be.”

“How many Brads can there be in Upper Saddle River?” I asked. I was getting a little disappointed that I hadn’t solved the case all by myself with a few phone calls to the other writers.

“First, we don’t know that his name really is Brad or Bradley,” Duffy said, taking on a professorial tone. He sipped his drink and didn’t even burp, which was not at all fair of him. “Second, just because Ms. Bledsoe lives in Upper Saddle River, there is no reason to think that the man is a resident of the same town. And third, even if there is such a man, it is by no means certain that he is the perpetrator of this crime.”

“If he’s not, how come you never heard about him before this?” I said. Challenge the man. If a guy isn’t going to act the way you want him to act, what’s the point of creating him? I started to rethink the chocolate chip muffin.

“Suppose he’s a married man and doesn’t want his wife to know about the relationship with Ms. Bledsoe,” Duffy suggested. “It wouldn’t do much for a man like that to present himself to investigators and make that relationship a matter of public record.”

Well, if he was going to insist on being logical about it . . .

“Well, what else is going on in the investigation?” I asked. “Did Sunny’s cell phone tell you anything helpful?”

“There are no calls to a man named Brad,” Duffy said. Okay, so get off the “Brad” thing; I feel stupid enough already. “Beyond that, all we know for a fact is that the phone was used right up to a few hours before you and I entered that bungalow in Ocean Grove.”

“So that means Sunny was alive at least as late as yesterday,” I said.

Duffy let a little air out through his lips and looked uncomfortable. “Not necessarily,” he answered. “Just because the phone was used, there is no evidence that Ms. Bledsoe was the one who was using it.”

Way to bring down the room, Duffy.

“So where does that leave . . . you?” I’d almost said “us” and then reminded myself that I was a writer of fiction and not an actual investigator. I wasn’t part of this process. I should, in fact, shut up and leave the real cops to handle it.

Except there had been a threatening e-mail on my screen that was not addressed to Duffy Madison or Ben Preston. I had, as they say, flesh in the game.

And I was not crazy for
that
expression as soon as it suggested itself to me.

“How terrified should I be about being next on this maniac’s agenda?” I asked Duffy.

He made a show of taking a long drink from the soda bottle and responded after a moment’s thought. “I don’t think there’s any immediate cause for alarm. Keep in mind that the previous . . . incidents happened months apart. This is a
person who likes to plan his moves meticulously. And we are still holding out hope that Ms. Bledsoe will be found alive and well, which would mean you are not yet the top priority for our kidnapper.”

Why wasn’t that more reassuring? “Thanks a heap, Duffy. I’ll sleep so much more soundly tonight,” I said.

“You’re quite welcome,” he answered with no hint of irony. “Would it be possible for you to take a trip to Ms. Bledsoe’s home with me? I’d still very much like to get your perspective on her writing office, especially. There might be something there that could help.”

“I can’t tonight,” I told him. “The fact is, I have a date.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t tell whether that was disappointment about my not being available to him when he had summoned me or he was displeased with the idea of me having a date with someone. I chose not to ponder that for long. “Perhaps tomorrow, then.”

On a Saturday? Well, Sunny did need rescuing. “I’ll be glad to go tomorrow,” I told Duffy. Maybe
glad
was overstating it.

“All right, then,” he said, so I thought the conversation was at an end. But Duffy apparently hadn’t caught the sign he’d actually sent himself. We’d both driven here; a five-minute conversation didn’t seem sufficient, somehow. “You haven’t really reacted to what I told you, now that you’ve gotten to talk to me.”

What was he talking about?
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What do you mean, ‘what you told me’?”

“About my being your fictional character,” he said, his voice suddenly much lower in volume. “About you creating me.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” I said, because I’ve never had much experience dealing with seriously crazy people. I mean, my mother is a little off, but . . .

“And yet, here I am,” Duffy answered.

I’m sure I stared at him. “Don’t you think it’s more likely,” I said, voice in what I hoped was a soothing mode, “that you took on the personality in the books a few years ago?”

“I’ve never read your books,” he insisted. “I didn’t know they existed until early this week.”

“Maybe you did and you’ve forgotten,” I said. I’d decided that Duffy, in whatever former existence he’d had, must have suffered some awful trauma that had caused amnesia, and he’d picked up this persona as a way of coping. If I’d been around during their heyday, I might have had a nice career writing for soap operas.

“I don’t think I’m the one in denial here,” he said.

*   *   *

That pretty much ended the meeting. I bought a chocolate chip muffin to go. (I swore I’d eat it the next day and then devoured the whole thing in the car on the way home, a six-minute drive.) Once I got back there was no respite: Paula walked into the office, and her expression indicated not much more joy in Mudville than when we’d spoken last.

“What I have to tell you isn’t going to make the situation a whole lot clearer,” she said. Paula sat on the lumpy sofa. This
whole room needed a makeover. Adam had better sell
Little Boy Lost
to television. TV is where the money is.

“You’ve been looking into Mr. Madison’s past?” I asked.

Paula nodded. “And I have a little more. There is actually a picture of him in the Poughkeepsie, New York, high school yearbook from 1998. I printed out a copy.”

She handed me the picture, which wasn’t especially clear, but was definitely a younger a version of the man who’d been claiming he had come full blown from my brain. Under the picture, which I noticed included some blemishes the airbrush had not been able to hide (and somehow made him look more endearing) was the name “Duffy Madison,” followed by the quote, “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” That’s what he
would
choose.

“So he was using the name in 1998, but he doesn’t remember it?” I thought aloud.

Paula took the picture back and answered, “It gets stranger.”

“How is that possible?”

She fixed me with a look. “I tracked down three people also listed in his class. Said I was writing an article about a notable classmate of theirs and wanted to get their memories of him.”

Paula was clearly playing up the drama. She could have been
in
a soap opera. “What did they say?” I asked.

“That they don’t have any memories of him. Nobody remembers anything about a guy named Duffy Madison in that class.”

Okay, that could be explained. “How many people graduated from that school in 1998?” I asked.

“I don’t have an exact count, but it’s probably less than two hundred,” Paula said. “Of course, it’s possible that these three people didn’t know Duffy, but one of them said she was a member of the Classics Society. Said she thought at the time that it would help get her into an Ivy League college.”

“So?”

“So look again.” Paula handed the picture back. “Under his name.”

“There’s an oddly irritating quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” I said.

“And under that?” The teacher was easing me through the difficult part of the lesson.

“Okay, fine. Duffy is listed as being in the Classics Society. So how many people were in that?”

“Six.”

That wasn’t good. “You’d think she’d remember him, wouldn’t you?” I wheezed.

“I’ll make some more phone calls, but that’s what I’ve found out so far.” Paula stood up. “This guy is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.”

I let out a long breath. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. You’re a gem. Don’t ever think I don’t know that.”

Paula smiled as she turned back toward the door. I started to swivel toward my screen, then stopped and looked back at her.

“Hey.” Paula stopped, ready in case I had something else to ask her. And I did. “Where’d that woman end up going to college?”

“She got an associate’s degree at a local community college and now works as a hostess at an Outback Steakhouse.”

So much for the Classics Society.

“Have you heard from our friend yet?” Ben Preston sat across the table from me and looked concerned. The air was scented with garlic and tomato, and his serious tone seemed somehow incongruous.

“Which friend?” I asked.

“The one with the interesting ‘handwriting’ in e-mails,” he noted with a wry expression.

“Nope, haven’t heard from him,” I answered.

“Good. I never much cared for that plan.” Ben took a sip of wine and did not do that thing that the oenophiles think make them look superior where they swirl it around in the glass and then stick their noses in. That’s just silly. Do I carefully examine the label of a Snickers, hold it up to my nostrils, inhale its deep fragrance, and then take a tiny taste before letting the cashier at the Rite Aid know if I’m willing to buy it? I do not.

“You disagreed with Duffy about that?” I asked. “I’m surprised. I thought you listened to every word he said.”

“I listen, but I don’t always agree. I’m the investigator; he’s the consultant.”

Ben had met me at the restaurant bearing one tiny tulip, an orange one he gave me before we walked inside. The waiter had already placed the little flower in a glass of water, making it look like a toddler swimming with water wings on his arms. So Paula had been right: this was indeed a date.

“I thought I understood how you guys operate,” I said.

“There’s always more to learn, and besides, you didn’t call me when you were creating your first book.”
Creating
.
Is that not adorable?

I felt like taking notes for my next book, but the scoop-neck top and pants Paula had approved for me tonight didn’t have ample pocket room for a reporter’s notebook, and my purse was on the floor next to my chair. It would have been showy for me to reach over to get it. In any number of ways. “So why did you go along with the e-mail plan if you didn’t think it was a good idea?”

Ben considered, then tilted his head a bit to indicate it was a compromise. “I didn’t have a better idea,” he admitted.

“Have you given some thought to what I told you this afternoon?” I asked him. “About Duffy being a little too much like the character in my novels?”

I tried to remember Paula’s advice about the date: “Make sure he asks about you and doesn’t just talk about himself. Make sure he doesn’t call the waitress ‘honey.’” (We had a male server. That would have been a real mood killer.) “And above all, see if he’s a generous tipper. That’s key.”

Ben leaned forward, now being both interested and serious. “Yes, I have. And it’s weird. It’s weird that you chose a name for your character that just happens to be the same as the guy who has that specific job for us. It’s weird that you started writing the books at the exact moment he appeared at our door looking for the job. And it’s weird that he never mentioned any of that to us in the office.”

That was lovely summing up, but it didn’t really create much of what you’d call “progress.” I looked Ben Preston over. He wasn’t a classically handsome man in the “male model” sort of mode. He was more the guy-next-door type, heavy on the “guy.” But his movements, his expressions, his words all seemed just a little rehearsed, like he was used to having women (and some men) admire his good looks as he walked by and he was trying not to disappoint them. It was the first date I’d been on in a while (damn you, Phillip!), and we were talking business, but that was mostly my doing. I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to see how well Ben tipped the waiter. That didn’t seem especially vital just at the moment. Except, I imagine, to the waiter.

I wasn’t swooning for Ben, but I could be persuaded to under the right circumstances. For reasons I didn’t understand, though, I seemed subconsciously intent on sabotaging any hint of romance: I kept talking shop. Ben’s shop, which, after considerable revisions to fit my twisted imagination, would become my shop.

“So what do you think it means?” I asked him. If Duffy Madison was the reason Ben and I had met, he was also the reason we had something to talk about. And the perspective
on Duffy from someone who worked with him would be invaluable in dealing with the flesh-and-blood model as well as the Duffy who lived in my tortured mind.

“Damned if I know,” Ben said.

“Thanks. That’s a huge help.”

“I’m serious; I have no idea what to make of it. I’ve done all the checks on Duffy the department does with all new employees, and he came up clean every time. He’s not living under an alias. The ID records he has are not forgeries, and even his fingerprints check out.”

Wait. “Why would Duffy have been fingerprinted before he came to work for you?” I said. “What do you have to compare them to?”

“He taught an afterschool class in forensic criminology at a middle school in Hackensack,” Ben said. “You teach in a middle school, you have to have fingerprints on file.”

What?
“When?”

“About seven years ago. Before you were writing him by a wide margin.”

My head swam just a bit, and it wasn’t because I had drained my wine glass in record time. “None of this makes any sense. If Duffy—”

Ben held up a hand. “Are we going to spend the whole night talking about Duffy Madison?” he asked. “Would you rather be out with him tonight?”

Hell no!
“Of course not,” I answered. I can be genteel when necessary. And the thought of being out on a date with Duffy had certainly sobered me up in a hurry. “Tell me how you got to be an investigator. Were you a police officer before?” That’s
the way most of the prosecutors’ investigators start, although Ben was younger than most of them.

He nodded. “I was a cop in Metuchen, down in Middlesex County,” he said. “But I had to quit due to a disability and took on the job here when it was offered. The physical demands weren’t quite as stringent.”

A disability? “Were you wounded in the line of duty?” I asked.

He sniffed a little in amusement. “I fell down the stairs carrying a box of Christmas decorations.”

“Must have been quite a staircase.”

“I just hit it the right way. Compressed two vertebrae and broke my left arm. Luckily, after I healed, physical therapy and a lot of time got me to the point where I don’t really feel it that much anymore.”

Our dinners came, and there was less talking because the pasta primavera (mine) and chicken marsala (Ben’s) were intoxicating. I did take time to notice that Ben was delicate in his movements, favoring his right arm, and drank water, not wine, with the dinner.

When we came up for air, he asked me how I’d gotten the idea for Duffy Madison the fictional character. I guessed that let us out of the don’t-talk-about-Duffy pact because now it wasn’t his Duffy but my Duffy. So I left out the part about being in the shower for reasons I didn’t fully understand and said that I’d wanted someone who had access to law enforcement but wasn’t a fully qualified officer. “That was so I could cover over any mistakes I made in procedure by saying that Duffy wasn’t really a cop.”

“And why’d you put him in the prosecutor’s office?” Ben asked, wiping a little marsala sauce from the corner of his mouth.

“Before I started looking into it, I didn’t know the prosecutors’ offices had their own investigators,” I said a little sheepishly. “I thought local police departments handled every crime in their jurisdiction.”

“Everybody thinks that. In New Jersey, we don’t work that way.”

“Obviously. So when I created Duffy—and I’m insisting that I did in fact create Duffy and hadn’t ever heard of your version before I did—I started talking to some cops, who told me exactly that. They sent me to the prosecutor, and luckily, I found a source there who could tell me how things really worked. It didn’t hurt that he loves mystery novels but hates it when they get procedure wrong.”

“What’s his name?” Ben asked. And there was something just a little bit off about his tone when he asked. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to put him onto Marty Dugan.

“His name’s Martin Dugan,” I said. Okay, so he had nice eyes and I caved. “Do you know him?”

Ben shook his head. “I don’t know that many guys in Morris. We talk more often to the Passaic and Essex people. We share a larger border with them.”

Eager to move the conversation, I said, “Duffy. What can we conclude about Duffy?”

Ben sighed. “Look. I just met you yesterday, and you seem like a very nice, reasonable woman. So much so that I asked you to come have dinner with me tonight in this really homey
restaurant. And I’m glad we’re here. You’re charming, you’re pretty, you’re engaging, and you’re funny. But here’s the thing: I’ve known Duffy Madison for four years. He has helped me solved cases I thought were lost causes. He’s never told me anything—
anything
—that turned out not to be true. So if you were me, who would
you
choose to think was the nut?”

He had a point, although not one I was especially well inclined to admit. “Wow,” I said. “You really don’t have any chance of getting lucky tonight.”

Ben sat back a little and smiled. “Really? None at all?”

I hadn’t intended to sleep with him anyway, so I answered, “Nope. You’re completely on your own.”

“I did say you were pretty.” That was true. I was about to rethink my position. “And I meant it. But I’ve never known an author before, and that’s really interesting. I want to know more.” So, naturally, that’s when his phone buzzed, and Ben looked at it, then straightened up as if something surprising had shown up on his screen. “It’s Duffy,” he said.

Duffy. The man was everywhere. In my head, in my life, on Ben’s phone; you couldn’t swing a dead cat and not hit Duffy Madison. If my books had made him this ubiquitous, I’d have paid off my mortgage by now.

Ben hit the button on his phone and put it to his ear. “Duffy,” he said, and then listened for a long moment. His jaw tightened, and I thought I could hear his teeth grinding, something you really shouldn’t get to hear from a man you’ve decided not to share a bed with. “Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” A moment. “No. I’ll do that. Okay. Right.”

He put the phone into his pocket and turned his attention to me while signaling the waiter for our check. “I have to go,” he said.

“Something from Duffy?” That couldn’t be good. If I were plotting this adventure, at this point, Duffy would be getting really deep into trouble and things would take a dark turn. From Ben’s face I could see that real life was essentially in the same story structure segment that I would be. I didn’t like the feeling.

Ben nodded. “Yeah.” He took the check from the waiter and handed him a credit card before he could walk away. The waiter, without a word, took the card and the check back to process. “I have to go see him right now.”

I was the mystery writer and the witness, of sorts, in this escapade; I understood the drill. “Can you drop me off, or should I call a friend for a ride?” I asked.

“You should come with me. Duffy’s intercepted an answer to your e-mail. Our mutual friend—the one with the interesting e-mail font decisions—just got back to you.”

I picked up my purse and followed him to the door as soon as the check was signed. I have no idea how much Ben tipped.