World's Greatest Detective
When Gabe Donegan's pea green '42 Nash "600" coupe pulled into the Prousts' driveway, silence fell over the crowd of law enforcement officers gathered at the crime scene. Awed by the police detective's reputation, the uniformed cops deferentially made way for him.
"Where's the body?" Donegan barked at the officer at the door.
"In the bedroom, sir. Up the stairs, the first door on your right."
The rookie policeman did not warn the seasoned detective about the gruesome sight that awaited him. There was no need. Gabe had long grown used to seeing bloody bodies, bloated corpses, burned cadavers and all sorts of dismembered human body parts. It did not faze him in the least to see the blood spatter and brain matter in the Prousts' master bedroom.
With his usual display of moxie, Donegan picked up the blood-drenched sheet someone had placed over the victim and quickly examined the corpse. There was no need to hear the official word from the coroner; any idiot could see it was a clear-cut case of murder. The man had been shot. The bullet entered his cheek just below the right eye and exited the back of his head.
"Who found the body?"
"The wife," a technician dusting for fingerprints answered. "She's downstairs in the kitchen if you want to talk to her."
"Oh, you know I do," the detective laughed. "She's probably the one who blew his brains out."
Gabe walked into the kitchen and saw Blythe Proust seated at the table, calmly drinking a cup of coffee. He liked what he saw, from the blond hair swept up into a Betty Grable-like victory roll to the voluptuous torso and down to the long, shapely legs encased in nylon stockings.
What a dame! he thought.
The detective considered himself a connoisseur of women. Strongly resembling film star Robert Mitchum, he had an excellent track record in pursuing them. Like the sailor who had a girl in every port, Donegan fell for a new woman during each murder investigation. He had a sneaking suspicion that the sexy blonde in the kitchen would be the next notch in his belt.
"Are you the wife?" he asked.
"No, I'm the widow," Blythe replied, reaching for a cigarette. "Got a light, gumshoe?"
Sassy. That's a good sign that she's not the killer. If she had bumped off her old man, she'd turn on the waterworks and start making a scene.
Gabe reached into his pocket for a book of matches. Then, after lighting Blythe's Lucky Strike, he pulled out a chair and sat down across from her.
"Wanna tell me what you know about your husband's murder?"
"Here? Aren't you going to take me down to the police station and give me the third degree?"
The detective was about to answer the blonde's question when he felt a sharp, piercing pain in the center of his back. A moment later, his head fell forward onto the table.
* * *
The woman's face was the first thing Gabe Donegan saw when he opened his eyes. In fact, she was the only thing he could see. Everything around her was blurred.
I better go to an eye doctor, the detective thought. I've got a bad case of tunnel vision.
As the image of the face crystallized, he realized it was not the same woman he had been looking at only moments earlier. He was not immediately certain it was a woman at all. It could be the face of a man. This shapeless, androgynous being was no sexy, curvaceous blonde. The brunette, with hair only slightly longer than his own, was decidedly more masculine in appearance than Blythe Proust. It was the outline of the bra straps visible through the fitted shirt that gave the only clue to her gender.
Even with his impaired vision, he knew he was no longer in the Prousts' kitchen.
It feels as though .... Yes, I'm in a police station.
Slowly, more of his peripheral vision returned. He saw that the somewhat overweight, mannish woman was seated at a desk, on the corner of which there was a framed photograph of two women: one of them was the woman herself, and the other was a stunning beauty who was holding a baby in her lap.
Those two are sitting awfully close, he thought, and then he accurately deduced their relationship. My God, they're ....
While blood and guts did not offend the detective's middle-class sensibilities, he was not accustomed to homosexuality being so out in the open. He was, after all, a product of the 1940s.
There was a knock on the door, and moments later a man entered and handed the woman a package.
"Morning, Sgt. Stanwyck," he said cheerfully.
This was another shock to Gabe. Not only was the woman on the police force, but she also held the rank of sergeant!
The young man glanced at the open file folder on the desk and chuckled.
"I should have known," he laughed. "Your first day heading up the cold case unit and you want to tackle the city's longest unsolved mystery. You must really like a challenge. Are you hoping that if you solve the Donegan murder, you'll be on the fast track to make captain?"
The police officer's question sent shockwaves down Gabe's spine. He leaned over and looked at the crime scene photographs on Sgt. Stanwyck's desk. One was of a man's body sitting with his face down on the Prousts' kitchen table. A second photo, taken from the side view, clearly showed the man's face; it was Gabe Donegan's.
Christ Almighty! I'm dead!
With this realization, what remained of the detective's tunnel vision cleared completely. His brain was bombarded by images he could not comprehend. One thing became clear to him, however. Neither of the people in the room could see or hear him.
I must be a ghost.
As the deceased detective was coming to terms with his altered state, the young police officer went about his duties, leaving Sgt. Stanwyck alone in her office. She immediately went back to studying the open murder case in front of her.
"What a shame," she mumbled in a barely audible voice. "You were possibly the greatest detective this city ever had, and yet your own murder has never been solved."
The city? I was the greatest detective in the world! I never had a case I didn't solve. Hell, Metropolitan Prison's death row is filled with murderers I helped put behind bars.
"I could sure use your help now," she laughed.
Donegan felt a strange tingling sensation in his feet, similar to what he felt when his circulation was temporarily cut off. The feeling quickly spread up his legs and torso and finally reached his head and arms.
"Holy shit!" Kendall Stanwyck cried when the detective's ghost became visible to her.
"You can see me?" Gabe asked.
Unable to speak, the sergeant nodded her head in answer.
"And you can obviously hear me, too."
Another affirmative nod.
"W-who are y-you?"
"Don't you recognize me? My photo is right in front of you. I'm the world's greatest detective. I suppose I'm here to help you solve my murder."
Kendall closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"You don't look too good, Sergeant. Why don't you have a cigarette?"
"Even if I did smoke, I wouldn't be able to light up in this building."
"Why not? It's a police station, isn't it?"
"That's right. And it's against the law to smoke in public buildings."
"Since when?"
"Do you have any idea what day it is?"
"Thursday?"
"The date, not the day of the week."
"June 13, 1948."
Kendall looked down at the file. According to the police report, Gabe Donegan was killed on June 13, 1948.
"That was seventy years ago."
"That's ridiculous! Don't you think I know ...?"
Suddenly, several objects in the small, windowless office seemed to stand out as being alien to his world.
What's that gadget on your desk?
"It's a cell phone. Technology has changed a lot since you were murdered," the sergeant declared.
Now it was Gabe's turn to silently nod his head.
"If you are here—and I haven't lost my mind—I could use your help," Kendall said.
"Sure thing. What can I do?"
"Just tell me who it was that murdered you, and I'll find the necessary evidence to close your case."
"Damn it, woman! How would I know who killed me? I was shot in the back. Sorry. I didn't mean to fly off the handle like that. Why don't you let me have a look at that file? Maybe something will come to me."
While Gabe sat in the visitor's chair reading the old police reports and witness statements, several people entered and left Kendall's office, completely unaware of the dead man's presence.
"Why can't anyone else see or hear you?" the sergeant asked.
"I don't have a clue. One minute, I'm sitting at a table across from a gorgeous dame, and the next I'm looking at you."
If there was an insult couched in his statement, Sgt. Stanwyck chose to ignore it.
Done reading, Gabe pushed the file away and announced, "Whoever shot me must have been in the house that night. It was probably the same person who killed Ainsley Proust."
"That's what the investigators thought at the time, but according to ballistics, the bullet in your back was fired from a different gun than the one that killed Ainsley."
"Blythe Proust was sitting across from me when I was shot. She must have seen or heard something. Did anyone question her?"
"Yes, but she wasn't being cooperative. She was more concerned with saving her own ass than helping police find your killer."
"What do you mean?"
"She was arrested for killing her husband," Kendall explained.
"You've got to be kidding! That was a bum rap; she was innocent."
"That's not what the jury believed."
"Don't tell me that poor woman was convicted?"
"What's the matter, Detective, don't you think good-looking dames with long, shapely legs are capable of committing murder? Take it from me, don't underestimate the opposite sex."
Gabe made a gesture of disgust.
"I don't. I know women are capable of murder. I arrested Roxie Vane, didn't I?"
Beautiful, redheaded Roxie Vane, the one-time Hollywood starlet, had killed her rich, two-timing boyfriend in a fit of jealousy back in 1944. Although he had believed he was in love with her at the time, Donegan put aside his personal feelings and did his duty. The only time in his adult life he ever shed a tear was when he heard the court sentence her to death.
"Blythe Proust was different," he said, more to himself than to Kendall. "She was innocent. She didn't deserve to get the chair."
"Don't worry. She wasn't executed. But she remained on death row for years until the state did away with capital punishment."
"You mean there's no longer any death penalty? What about all the murderers I put away?"
"Their sentences were commuted to life without parole."
Gabe did a quick mental calculation.
"Blythe was in her early twenties back then. That would make her in her nineties now. She might still be alive."
"I doubt it, but let me check the records."
Kendall opened her briefcase and took out her laptop.
"What the hell is that?" Donegan asked.
"A computer—ah, right! They didn't have them in 1948. It's kind of like a TV set. That's not much of a help to you. Television didn't become popular in America until the Fifties. I don't have time to explain how this works, and frankly, I don't understand all that much myself, but I can access the state correctional system's database on it."
"Date a what?"
"Database. It's a modern way of referring to computerized records and files. Here it is. Blythe Proust. We're in luck. She's still alive. Let's just hope she doesn't have Alzheimer's."
"Al who?"
"Never mind."
* * *
From the moment Donegan stepped outside Sgt. Stanwyck's office door, he felt like John, the "savage," in Brave New World, although the dead detective had never read Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel. He was amazed at everything he saw. Those things he was familiar with—buildings, cars, airplanes and radios—had changed drastically over the past seventy years. Furthermore, he was in awe of those things that had not yet been invented when he was murdered, such as iPods, cell phones and the sergeant's laptop computer.
As they headed west in an unmarked Chevy Caprice, Kendall tried to fill her passenger in on events that had occurred since his death, beginning with the 1969 moon landing. She briefly told him about the wars: Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq. Then she mentioned several key presidents: John F. Kennedy and his assignation, Richard M. Nixon and the Watergate scandal that led to his resignation and Barrack Obama, the first African-American president.
"Who's president now, a dame?" Gabe laughed.
Kendall, a Democrat, made a sound of disgust and replied, "America should have been so lucky!"
"What about police work? Has that computer thing in your office made the job any easier?"
"Definitely. We no longer have to manually search through and compare fingerprints to index cards. We now have AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. A computer can check nearly seventy million fingerprint records for a match. Of course, the greatest development—probably in the history of law enforcement—is the discovery of DNA."
"What's that?"
"It's a ... a ...."
Kendall had no idea how to explain to an anachronistic ghost what she herself could not fully understand.
"It's unique to each individual, like a fingerprint. It's the most reliable form of identification there is. A DNA test can determine whose bodily fluids are left at a crime scene. It can also help us determine a victim's identity. Back in 2012, bones were found in England that DNA was able to prove were those of Richard III who died in battle in 1485."
"It sounds like a handy tool to put a guilty man or woman behind bars."
"It also helped get innocent people out of prison."
"What?"
"There have been many cases where people who were wrongly convicted were later released."
"Was anyone I ever arrested let go?" Gabe asked, his face turning pale at the thought of being fallible.
"Not that I'm aware of."
"I didn't think so. When I send someone to prison, they stay there. Speaking of which, now that there are no more executions, hasn't Metropolitan Prison become dangerously overcrowded?"
"Metropolitan? They closed that old place down almost thirty years ago. The state built a modern correctional facility in Somerville. It's a coed prison that offers educational programs, conjugal visits and work release programs for nonviolent offenders. It's a far cry from the penitentiaries of your time, but at the end of the day, it's still a prison. There are locks on the doors, bars on the windows and electrified fences around the perimeter of the property."
For the remaining ten minutes of their trip, both the driver and the passenger were silent. Kendall was tired of talking, and Gabe was trying too hard to process what she had already told him to ask any further questions.
"Here we are," Sgt. Stanwyck announced when they arrived at their destination.
After being cleared by security, the cold case detective went directly to the prison office, followed by the unseen specter of Gabe Donegan.
"I'm here to see Prisoner Number 132776, Blythe Proust," she told the guard at the desk.
"I'm sorry, Sgt. Stanwyck," he said, handing her back her badge. "All police interviews must be approved in writing by the warden."
"You don't understand. The prisoner might have information vital to my solving a seventy-year-old cold case that involves the murder of a highly decorated police officer."
"I don't care if she can help you solve the Kennedy assassination. You don't talk to her unless the warden okays it."
"Then let me see the warden."
"You need to make an appointment."
"Oh, come on! Can't you pick up the phone and tell him I want to speak to him?"
The guard handed the sergeant a business card.
"There's his number. Call and make an appointment."
When she exited the prison, Kendall took her cell phone out of her pocket and called the number on the card. She was told by the warden's secretary that the earliest appointment available was in three days.
"We'll have to come back," she said with a sigh.
"You go wait in the car," Gabe told her. "I'll handle this."
"What are you going to do?"
"They can't see me, right? I can walk past the guard, and he won't even know it. Once I'm inside, I shouldn't have too much trouble finding Blythe Proust. How many ninety-some-year-old female prisoners do you think they have in there?"
"But I'm the only one who can see and hear you. Even if you find Mrs. Proust, how can you question her?"
"I don't know. Maybe there's some way I can make myself visible to her."
"Okay, but be careful," Kendall cautioned.
"Be careful of what?" he laughed. "I'm already dead."
* * *
As Donegan had suspected, he was able to walk into the women's cell block without being spotted by security. Unlike the men's section of the prison, many of the cells were empty. Gabe passed five of them before he found one that was occupied. There was something vaguely familiar about the middle-aged woman in the prison-issued jumpsuit who sat on the cot, reading a book.
I can swear I've seen her before.
Two more prisoners he passed, both much younger than the first, further enflamed his sense of déjà vu. When he peered into the fourth occupied cell, there was no question as to the woman's identity.
"Roxie Vane!" he said aloud.
The redheaded temptress lifted her head and looked him in the eye.
"What the hell are you doing here?" she asked.
That she was able to see and hear him did not surprise the detective as much as the fact that she had not aged a day since she was taken from the courtroom in 1944 to be transported to Metropolitan Prison's death row.
"There you are," a brawny prison guard called to the revenant.
He was soon joined by a second, equally beefy guard, and the two men grabbed the former detective by the arms.
"What are you doing? Let go of me," Gabe shouted.
"Keep quiet. You're coming with us," the larger of the two guards insisted.
"Where are you taking me?"
"He wants to see you."
"And who is 'he,' the warden?"
"Shut up and just keep walking."
One guard opened a door marked KEEP OUT—NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ADMITTED, and the two muscle-bound men shoved the detective over the threshold into what was a spacious home office in an East Hampton mansion. Incorrectly assuming he was still on prison property, Gabe whistled appreciatively at his surroundings.
"This is some snazzy office for a prison," he said to himself. "I'll bet the taxpayers don't know about this place."
"It's not a public building. It's my home."
Startled, Donegan turned toward the sound of the voice.
"Who's there?"
Gabe saw a man enter the room from a pair of French doors that led to a balcony with a view of the beach and the Atlantic Ocean.
"Are you the warden?"
"Hardly."
The man was definitely a product of a different era than Gabe. His hair, graying at the temples, was long and pulled back into a ponytail. He wore a $1200 pair of Gucci jeans, which the detective dismissed as "workmen's dungarees." His shirt resembled a man's undershirt, but it was navy blue in color and had a New York Yankees logo on the chest.
"If you're not the warden, who are you then?"
"My name is Clay Helfrich, but to you, I might just as well be God."
"What are you, some kind of comedian?"
"No, I'm an author. I've written sixty-seven books so far, every one of which was a bestseller."
Gabe was clearly not impressed.
"I'm not much of a reader."
"I know. Don't be surprised. I know everything there is to know about you. You see, I created you."
"You did what?"
"I dreamed you up in my imagination," Clay answered. "Agatha Christie had Hercule Poirot, Dashiell Hammett had Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler had Philip Marlowe, James Patterson has Alex Cross and I have you. That was until three years ago. After sixty-six Gabe Donegan mysteries, I decided it was time for a change. It was out with the noir and in with the new!"
The author laughed at his pun, but Gabe saw no humor in it.
"I decided to switch gears," Clay continued. "I moved my plots and settings out of the Forties and into the present. And I created a new sleuth: Sgt. Kendall Stanwyck."
"Oh, so she's not real either, huh?"
"You don't believe me?"
Clay walked over to a mahogany bookcase, selected a hardcover edition of Death's Head and handed it to Gabe.
"Remember Orson Moncrieffe? He strangled his wife with an electric cord when she threatened to divorce him. That was your first case and my first bestseller. I won an Edgar award for that one."
He took down a second book, A Slight Case of Murder.
"And Kitty McFaddon, the nurse who poisoned four elderly patients under her care?"
A third book came down, one with a familiar redhead on the cover.
"Surely you remember Roxie Vane. What you don't know was that I modeled her after my first wife. What a bitch she was! She took me for a small fortune in the divorce."
The author moved to the far end of the shelf and took off the last book.
"Finally, there was Blythe Proust. Blond hair, great legs, dynamite body. My third wife was the inspiration for her character. She's now an ex-Mrs. Clay Helfrich, as well. Spoiler alert," he said as though giving Gabe privileged, confidential information. "She wasn't a natural blonde and the hourglass shape? Silicone implants, which I paid for."
"Blythe didn't kill her husband," the detective insisted.
"It doesn't matter. Ainsley Proust's death was a minor detail in the plot. My sole reason for writing that book was to kill you off. What I don't understand is your showing up again. I've never had my characters take on a life of their own before. I'll bet Conan Doyle never had that problem. I suppose it's my own fault that you've come back. I should never have left your murder go unsolved."
"Why did you then?" Gabe asked.
"Because I always thought you were a bit too cocky. All that hype about your being the world's greatest detective. I thought having your murder remain unsolved would be a way of taking you down a peg."
"You referred to yourself as God a few minutes ago, and you have the nerve to call me cocky? Well, Mr. Know-it-all with the ponytail, the undershirt and the dungarees, what are you going to do now?"
"I suppose I'll have to have Sgt. Stanwyck solve your murder. Apparently, that's the only way you and I will get any closure."
* * *
At Clay Helfrich's instructions, the two hulking prison guards led Gabe Donegan back into the prison and locked him in a cell in the men's block. He was to be kept there, under lock and key, while the author worked on a manuscript in which Sgt. Kendall Stanwyck and her young plainclothes assistant solve the oldest cold case in the city's history: the murder of the renowned "World's Greatest Detective."
Three hours passed during which Gabe paced his cell like a caged animal. There was a television hanging on the wall, but he didn't know how to use it, and he probably wouldn't be interested in watching it if he did.
If I have to stay here much longer, I'll go nuts.
He heard a key in the lock, and moments later the cell block door opened with a loud, echoing clang.
"Donegan," the guard shouted. "You got a visitor."
"I do? Who even knows I'm in here?"
"It's your wife. She's come for a conjugal visit."
The guard led Gabe to a small room with a double bed, a toilet and a sink. Sgt. Stanwyck was sitting on the bed.
"What are you doing here?" he asked when the door was shut behind him.
"I got tired of waiting in the car," she joked.
Gabe did not ask how Kendall knew he was being kept prisoner or how she managed to arrange a visit on such short notice. He assumed Clay Helfrich had simply written the scene in his novel.
"I had to tell them I was your wife," the sergeant explained. "It was the only way I could get inside the prison."
"Does that mean the conjugal part of the visit isn't going to happen?"
"Save your macho charm, Detective. I'm immune to it. Did you get to speak to Blythe Proust? Did she give you any useful information?"
"No, I didn't. But I didn't have to. I know who killed me."
"You do? Who?"
"You won't believe me."
"Try me."
He proceeded to tell her about his meeting with Clay Helfrich and everything the author had divulged.
"So, except for this writer, none of us is real? We're all just characters in his books?"
"I said you wouldn't believe me."
A smile slowly spread across the sergeant's mannish-looking face. Rather than making her look more attractive, it gave her a sinister appearance.
"Ah, but I do. I've known for some time it was Helfrich who killed you."
"You did?"
"Just like a man! You underestimated me because I'm a woman, but I'm also a pretty good detective."
Gabe frowned, not sure if he believed her or not. He had only her word that she knew about Clay Helfrich.
"He told you about Roxie Vane and Blythe Proust being modeled after two of his ex-wives, but I doubt very much he mentioned his second wife."
"Not that I recall, no."
"I didn't think so. He never does. Men just can't take the blow to their egos when their wives leave them for another woman."
"You mean you ...?"
"No. Jennifer, my partner, was the unfortunate second Mrs. Helfrich. Her picture was on my desk. She's a beautiful woman, like all of Clay's former wives. Being a vindictive person, he deliberately created me as an unflattering stereotype of a masculine lesbian just to piss her off. Hence, the short hair, the masculine attire, the mannish looks and the traditionally male job."
Uncomfortable about where the conversation was headed, Gabe changed the subject.
"Tell me, Sergeant, what do we do about this guy? You can't very well arrest him because no D.A. will present this case to a jury."
"I don't want Clay to go to trial. There's no death penalty, remember? As long as he's alive, he can kill any of us off—Blythe Proust, Roxie Vane, Jennifer, our daughter, me, you. And if he kills you again, this time you can be sure you'll stay dead."
"What are you suggesting?"
"We kill him," Kendall replied matter-of-factly.
"How can we do that?"
"We need to get his computer, the one he keeps in his office."
"Why?"
"We have to write the ending of his latest book before he does."
"Why can't you use your own computer?"
"Because he's got the file for his manuscript on his hard drive."
"His what?"
"Forget it. I don't have the time to explain. I've got to get you out of here and inside his East Hampton home."
"And how do you plan on doing that? You don't think the guards are going to let us wander around the prison, do you?"
Kendall reached into her purse and removed a hypodermic needle from her makeup bag.
"This will take care of them."
Once the two husky prison guards were decommissioned, Gabe led Kendall to the door marked KEEP OUT—NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ADMITTED.
"We're in luck," he whispered after turning the knob. "It's unlocked."
"Of course, it is. He thinks you're in your cell and I'm back at the police station trying to solve your murder."
The ghostly detective soundlessly opened the door, fearing the writer might be sitting at his desk. He was relieved to see the author lying sound asleep on a lounge chair on the balcony. Gabe quickly crossed the room, unplugged the laptop and hurried it back through the door.
"Here it is," he said, handing the computer over to his coconspirator.
"Let's go someplace where Helfrich won't find us."
They ducked into a prison supply room that gave them the privacy they needed. However, there was no power outlet there. Undeterred, Kendall plopped down on the floor, opened the laptop, found the Word file and began typing.
"That thing works without electricity?"
"It's got a battery."
"Just how are you going to kill him by ...?"
"Shh! Don't disturb me. I need to finish this, and the computer has only a two-hour battery life. Besides, Helfrich might wake up and come looking for us."
With only minutes to spare, the cold case detective finished the final chapter of the book. To prevent Clay from revising her ending, she uploaded the completed manuscript onto her personal cloud storage account and deleted the Word file from the hard drive.
"He'll never find it there," she said with self-satisfaction.
* * *
Kendall Stanwyck and Jennifer Helfrich entered the viewing room of the stately Long Island Georgian mansion that had been converted into a funeral home. After passing by the coffin, they took a seat near Clay Helfrich's other two ex-wives. Unlike the fictional detective named after her, there was nothing mannish about the living, breathing Kendall Stanwyck. A successful writer of historical romance novels, she was every bit as feminine and beautiful as the women both Clay and Gabe Donegan so admired.
"A heart attack, wasn't it?" Jennifer asked. "I didn't know the bastard had a heart."
"Honestly, I don't know why I'm here," the author's first wife declared. "Just between us, I hated him, and I'm glad he's dead."
"I can't say I'm going to miss him either," the third and last of the author's ex-wives announced.
"Let's face it," Jennifer said. "The only people who will regret Clay's passing are his fans."
"Don't be too sure about that," the first wife added. "His readers weren't happy when he killed off his most popular character."
"That was Clay, for you," Jennifer laughed. "What a fool! He created the world's greatest detective and then risked his career by killing him off, just to spite me."
Kendall did not voice her opinion of the deceased author. Instead, she suppressed a smile, knowing that somewhere in the cyber world Clay Helfrich was on Metropolitan Prison's death row, in the year 1948, awaiting his execution for the murder of Detective Gabriel Donegan.
As the ex-wives continued to denigrate the man they had married, Kendall stood up and walked toward the coffin.
"Where are you going?" Jennifer asked.
"To pay my respects."
There were no tears in her eyes as she looked down at the not-so-dearly departed's face. She hated him every bit as much as his former wives did. Feigning grief, she reached into her purse and took out a tissue that she used to dab her dry eyes. Inside the tissue was a small flash drive. Unseen by the mourners in attendance, she leaned forward and slipped it inside Clay's pocket. It contained the latest manuscript she wrote—not a historical romance novel, but a murder mystery, one in which Sgt. Stanwyck and Gabe Donegan were the heroes and Clay Helfrich was both killer and victim.
I want you to have this, she thought, buried in your grave with you for the rest of eternity.
Pleased with her act of revenge, she returned to her partner.
"You're right. He was a fool," she said, taking Jennifer's hand.
Still, she had to give him credit: he did create the world's greatest detective. However, it wasn't Gabe Donegan; it was Sgt. Kendall Stanwyck, who, with her namesake's help, not only solved the oldest cold case in the city's history but also managed to beat Clay Helfrich at his own game.
Salem auditioned for the role of Philip Marlowe in the film noir classic The Big Sleep. Unfortunately, while filming, he failed to wake up and missed his cue.
