Olivia’s fingers moved swiftly over the keyboard. Ramses sent for Kamila twice more and each night she sang him to sleep, acting the part of nursemaid instead of lover. One day, the king and his retinue abruptly left the palace to meet with a team of architects and stonemasons at Karnak. Unsure of what Kamila would do in the pharaoh’s absence, Olivia saved what she’d written and closed the file.
Stretching her arms over her head, she wondered if there was enough time to read the chief’s chapter before heading out to her lunch date. She had requested a meeting with an agent from Coastal Realty. The Realtor, a polished, seventy-year-old matron named Millicent Banks, promised to bring Olivia a file folder stuffed with documents pertaining to the crumbling warehouse on the waterfront.
“I could probably critique two pages before I have to go,” Olivia said, removing the stapled packet Rawlings had distributed to the Bayside Book Writers last Saturday. The chief had already confessed that his book was yet untitled so she searched for the beginning of chapter one. However, the first two pages were stuck together and as Olivia peeled them apart, she realized they were identical. Flipping through the packet, she noted that every page was a copy of page one.
Pulling up her online address book, she called Harris at work.
“You got fifteen copies of the same page too, huh?” Harris laughed. “I guess we’re all busted for putting off our critique homework ’til this late in the week. Millay called me at two in the morning to tell me about the duplicate pages. I figured she’d get a hold of Rawlings and set him straight. Personally, I don’t have the guts to dial the chief of police’s number just to point out that he screwed up.”
“Not phoning a policeman in the middle of the night sounds less like courage and more like self-preservation to me,” Olivia remarked.
“I think Millay likes to talk a big game, but I bet she’d do it if someone dared her.” Harris was quick to defend the attractive bartender.
Olivia decided to change the subject. “Did Millay happen to mention whether she’d heard about any missing persons? The chief still hasn’t been able to identify the body I found on the Point.”
Harris yawned loudly. “Sorry. I’m trying to remember what else she said. I was in the middle of this crazy dream where trolls were tearing apart my high school when she called. That’s what happens when you create fantasy settings all day long. You start seeing the images in your sleep.” He paused. “But no, she hasn’t had word from her regulars about anyone having gone AWOL. There’s been plenty of talk about the murder though. Even here at work, where most of us are total ostriches and have no idea what’s going on in the outside world, people are coming up with all kinds of crazy theories.”
“At least the story didn’t break until Monday. Most of the tourists were packing up by the time they saw the headlines in the Gazette,” Olivia said, recalling the media coverage of the past week. The local news channels had done their best to spin the story into as many segments as they could, but by Thursday night, it was clear there was no fresh information to convey.
There was also a hotter news topic to cover, being that Tropical Storm Ophelia was now speeding northeast toward the North Carolina coast. The meteorologists called for rain beginning on Saturday with high wind gusts due in by Sunday morning. A team of experts, all of whom had come up with a bevy of scientific-sounding excuses as to why they’d called for the storm to move northwest into the Atlantic, was now falling all over themselves to predict the height of the storm surge and total amount of rainfall Ophelia would produce.
Despite her own interest in the storm, as she’d have to determine whether to close The Boot Top and plan what she and Havilland would eat once they lost power, Olivia had been wondering if the police department’s appeal for help had garnered anything useful. Now, Rawlings’ incomplete chapter gave her the perfect excuse to contact the chief.
Olivia realized she hadn’t been paying attention to Harris, who was prattling on about his latest software development. She tuned in just in time to hear his description of how the trees he created could come to life and grab video game warriors in their clawlike branches. “Oh! Oh crap!” He sounded alarmed. “I’ve gotta run! There’s a major bug in this code! My tree just ripped an elf in half. Elves are supposed to be immune to nature attacks!”
“Sounds serious,” Olivia sympathized and, after wishing Harris good luck, tried to reach the chief. Unfortunately, Rawlings was unavailable and Olivia didn’t feel like leaving a message. She sent him a quick e-mail instead, requesting that he send an attachment containing his chapter in its entirety. Otherwise, tomorrow’s meeting will be extremely brief, she added. She cc’d the rest of the Bayside Book Writers so no one else harassed Rawlings over his missing pages.