Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology Read online

  She bit her lip. “I never liked him, but it was because he always bragged and acted like he was big stuff. Even if he wanted the cabin, I can’t see him killing for it.”

  “Abby, I don’t like having you here alone.”

  “I’ll be okay. We don’t know for sure he was killed, and I really don’t want to believe it, to tell the truth.” Her voice trembled. “Besides, only you and the Gilberts know I’m here.”

  “I’m putting my number in your cell phone. If you hear anything, or even feel nervous and afraid of being alone call me.”

  She nodded and looked away.

  “I mean it. If I think you won’t, I’ll sleep on your porch.”

  She gave him a weak smile. “I will. I promise, but you may be sorry.”

  He smiled reassured. “Never. Someday I’ll tell you about the crush I had on you when we were both twelve years old.”

  “Really?” She looked at him in disbelief.

  “Really. I liked what a tomboy you were, not afraid to bait a hook, and you did a mean cast with a fly rod.”

  “Didn’t I manage to hook you once when I did a wild cast?”

  He nodded. “I still have the scar, too.”

  Suddenly she felt exhausted. “I’m getting tired.”

  “I’ll be on my way. Make sure you lock up and keep your phone handy.”

  Abby made sure both doors were locked after he left. She was afraid she’d lie awake for hours but in spite of everything, she fell into a deep sleep and didn’t wake until dawn. Lying in bed she thought of what Greg said. Who’d want to kill her father? Maybe they were both imagining things. If he was murdered, could it be Uncle George? Maybe he wasn’t as rich as he pretended.

  After her first cup of coffee, Abby decided to go fly fishing in memory of all those times she’d fished with her father. She got together her dad’s fly fishing gear: the tackle box with his hand-tied flies, his rod and fish net. She added an apple, a leftover piece of cold pizza and a bottle of water. She carried everything down to the boat, and then rowed into the morning mist toward where the water lilies grew.

  Soon she got into the groove of casting and felt at peace as if her dad was with her. Abby felt a fish grab her fly and held on as it took off. When it leaped into the air, sparkling in the first rays of sun, she knew it was a rainbow trout. Even without seeing it, she’d have known by the fight it put up. The battle went on and on until her arms felt they couldn’t hold on much longer. Finally, she could feel the fish tiring. When she brought it closer to the boat, it made a final run before becoming too exhausted to fight any longer. Slowly she reeled it in and carefully lowered the net. She sat breathing hard, looking at the beautiful fish in the bottom of the boat. It had black spots on its back and dorsal fins and a reddish pink stripe down its silvery side. She reached to remove her fly before releasing it, and noticed another fly hooked in its mouth, too. Someone had caught it recently since any flies not removed eventually come loose on their own. Carefully she removed both lures and released the fish over the side and watched as it lay quietly for a few moments before swimming away.

  Abby picked up the old fly, and a shock went through her. She examined it closely, noticing the metallic gold thread tied just so and the yellow parakeet feathers, not the chicken feathers usually used. Tears of anger filled her eyes. She now knew who killed her dad. But could she prove it? She rowed slowly back towards the dock, her arms tired from the fight with the rainbow trout.

  Halfway to the dock, she saw a man walking in the sunshine. Him. She stopped rowing, not sure what to do, then punched in a number on her cell phone

  When she saw a car pulling in, she continued rowing until she reached the dock.

  He held out a hand to help her. “I thought I should be with you. Nice place here.”

  She didn’t take his hand.”You killed my Dad. Why?” She stared angrily at him from the boat.

  “What are you talking about? You’re crazy.”

  “It was your gambling debts, wasn’t it? Were you hoping to get the money from what my dad would leave me?” Tears streamed down her face.

  “He killed my father,” she said to Greg, who walked up. “I found this fly in the mouth of

  a rainbow I caught. It’s a special fly only my husband makes. He wanted me to believe he’s never been here, but he has, and recently.”

  * * * *

  A week later Abby returned to the cabin. She was on the deck when Greg came around the corner bringing sub sandwiches.

  Abby gave him a weak smile. “The bearer of food.”

  “Someone has to look after you. I don’t think you’ve been eating much lately.” His eyes showed sympathy and still a touch of a twelve year old kid’s love and admiration.

  “Thanks for coming so quickly after I punched in your number.”

  “I wasn’t far away.”

  They sat quietly on the deck looking at the lake, drinking coffee and thinking their separate thoughts.

  COVER STORY, by Elaine Will Sparber

  The toe bugged me.

  Not that it was an unusual toe. Well, aside from being a dead toe. Attached to a dead body. Rather, what bothered me was the fuchsia-polished nail poking through the gaping hole in the white fishnet stocking, and the way the toe peeked out from under the azalea bush with the purple blossoms. I almost missed it because of the purple blossoms.

  I had pulled into the Beakman-Bryce Publishing parking lot just after nine, the way I always did on Monday morning, and headed straight for my usual spot in the last row by the back fence. As I nosed into the space, the purple azalea blossoms caught my attention, as they did every May. But today, something else did, too. Something glinted, and when I investigated, I found the toe. And the body. I never did see what glinted.

  “You really think you dropped part of the manuscript when you screamed?” asked Rina Valencia, a publicist and my best friend. We were standing at my office window, watching the police activity outside.

  “I’m afraid to check,” I answered, “but the thing does feel a tad lighter now than it did when I left my house. I dropped the box when I screamed, and I think some pages may have fallen out and blown away. After I called 911, I picked up the box and fixed the lid without looking inside. I was really shaky.”

  “You had good reason,” Rina said.

  I just looked at her. I was an acquisitions editor and I had spent the weekend editing the manuscript. It was a good manuscript, but the author was new and I had done quite a bit of slashing, moving, and shoving.

  “You can print the missing part out again and try to reconstruct,” Rina suggested. When I didn’t answer, she finally turned toward me. “Harley Amelia Rose, at least you’re not dead like her.”

  She had me there.

  * * *

  The last thing I expected to see was another pair of fishnet stockings. These were black, however, though the legs they encased were as pale as a dead body’s, and the polish on the toenails was black, too, instead of fuchsia. Fiona Sullivan, who had the perky disposition usually associated with her natural red roots and freckles, sported dyed black hair, black-lined eyes, and a black-on-black ensemble straight out of The Vampire Diaries. Her black-polished, black-fishnetted right toe bobbed up and down as she finished her telephone call.

  “I am so sorry,” she said, dropping the telephone receiver into its cradle and hopping up to grab the manuscript I was hugging to my chest. I may have lost part of one project today, but I finished preparing another and was delivering it to Fiona, the production editor who would shepherd it through copyediting, typesetting, and proofreading. She eased it out of my stranglehold, apparently mistaking my gawking at her fishnets for a post-traumatic stress reaction to this morning.

  “Sit,” Fiona ordered, guiding me into her visitor’s chair. She stepped around to her own chair and plopped down, thankfully removing her fishnets and toenails from my sight. “Excellent,” she commented, sliding the thick rubber band from around the package and flipping through
the forms. “And three weeks early!” She glanced up at me and smiled. “We’ll probably have to wait for a copyeditor, though. They’re usually booked weeks in advance.”

  I just nodded.

  “I can’t believe what happened in the parking lot,” Fiona said, now riffling through the manuscript. “A dead body. And first thing in the morning. A Monday morning, no less!” She shivered. “You poor thing.” She slipped the rubber band back around the package and dropped the bundle into her letter tray.

  “It definitely wasn’t something I expected to see,” I said, “but I’m fine. I just keep feeling like I’ve seen it before. Déjà vu, you know?”

  “On TV maybe? The eleven o’clock news? Or in the newspaper? Or online?”

  I shook my head after each suggestion.

  “A book cover, then?”

  I started to say no, but stopped, mentally turning what I had seen into cover art. Something niggled at me.

  “See, this happened to me about two months ago.” Fiona leaned forward on her elbows. “I didn’t find a body, but I saw a news photo of one, and it looked just like the cover of one of our books. And it was here. On Long Island. Near Jones Beach.”

  I shook my head.

  “It was a woman’s body, naked and wrapped in a fishing net. You know, the kind fishermen use?”

  I groaned.

  “I didn’t really work on the book, so I don’t know the plot—all I did was make some corrections to the proofs—but I did get the printer’s shipment and passed around the copies. That’s why I got to know the cover. I inherited the book after Mitchell Turner left. You know, next door?” She pointed at the wall behind her.

  I smiled. Mitchell and I had produced several successful books together.

  “Hold on.” She jumped up, spun around, and reached up to a high shelf. Pulling down a paperback, she gave the cover a quick brush and held the book out to me. Murder on the Beach was the latest entry in one of our popular mystery series. Other books in the series were Murder in the Desert and Murder in the Valley. I wondered what would happen when the author ran out of terrain.

  “Here’s the news photo.” Fiona rummaged around her desk and found it under a four-inch pile of paper. She unfolded it, then held it next to the book cover.

  “Oh my goodness!” I sputtered. “They are identical!” The photo was a long shot while the book cover was a close-up, but the similarities were clear: the fishing net wrapped around each body; the bodies’ distance from the water; the bodies’ angle against the shoreline. I skimmed the article, which said the real body was that of a woman, naked, age not yet determined. The body on the book cover was also a naked woman, but clearly young, with flawless skin, impeccable makeup, and shiny blond hair blowing in the breeze. The artist obviously had never seen a real dead body. Or even a real dead toe. I thought of the white fishnet stocking, the fuchsia nail polish, and the purple azalea blossoms, and I wished I hadn’t, either.

  * * * *

  “I can’t believe she told you that!” Rina sat back in her desk chair and shook her head. “That was just so—”

  “So nothing,” I cut in. “There’s nothing wrong with what she told me. It’s not like the body I found was someone I knew. I didn’t know her.”

  “It was still a shock for you,” Rina said. “But since we no longer have to tiptoe around you…Have you heard anything? Who the woman might be? What the police think?”

  “No, I just know that the detective told me to ‘stay available,’ whatever that means. He did interview me twice, though. He can’t suspect me, can he?”

  I had stopped by Rina’s office to give her a copy of the manuscript I had just delivered to Fiona so Rina could begin preparing publicity materials. She flipped through the manuscript without removing the rubber band, then placed it on top of a pile tottering next to her desk. “I wonder if those murders are connected,” she said.

  “I don’t know. Why would they be?”

  “Oh!” Rina gulped. “You didn’t hear, of course.” She looked like a guppy about to be scooped up in a little fish net. Eyes wide, she stared at me for a few seconds. Then, eyes returning to normal, shoulders relaxing, she opened a desk drawer and pulled out a book. She studied the cover before slowly turning it toward me. “Recognize this?”

  I took the book from her. A paperback, its cover featured a young woman sitting in a swing, raven hair falling in waves around her shoulders. She was leaning to one side, eyes closed, cheeks shiny.

  “Is she dead?” I asked. I looked closer. “No, she can’t be. She’s crying.” A garland of white lilies and pink roses floated above her, ends dangling, with the book’s title, Por un Beso, in red script above the garland.

  “For a Kiss,” I translated. “One of Natalia’s books?”

  Natalia Lopez had been the executive editor of the Spanish-language romance line until last fall, when Beakman-Bryce had suddenly killed the imprint and laid Natalia off. She had not been happy.

  “Yes, one of Natalia’s. It’s been making the rounds in Publicity today. It seems that a month ago, a body was found posed just like this in a playground not far from here.”

  I looked at the cover again. The woman was in a swing, but that was it. She was alive. I cocked an eyebrow at Rina.

  “From what I’m told, a police detective talked to our esteemed publisher a few days after the body was found. A garland of fake white lilies and pink roses was wound around the top of the swing set, with the ends hanging down and framing the body.”

  “Like on this cover.” I took a deep breath and started to return the book, but then pulled it back. “Has anyone told the detective about this?”

  “I don’t think so,” Rina answered. “I guess we should,” she added sheepishly.

  “Yeah. I’ll take this to him,” I said, thinking I should also double back to Fiona’s office and get a copy of Murder on the Beach.

  I studied the Por un Beso cover as I left Rina’s office. At least the woman wasn’t wearing fishnets.

  * * * *

  My grandfather had been a book editor. In fact, he was an editor with Beakman-Bryce when it was just Beakman, “publisher of fine fiction for the modern reader.” His discoveries included some of the most esteemed authors of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, and a few of the books he edited grace every “100 Best Books of the Twentieth Century” list published. He cared about his authors, and he rolled up his sleeves and worked elbow to elbow with them on their manuscripts. Quentin Zarek wasn’t like that.

  Quentin was our premier editor. As executive editor, he helmed all the mystery and thriller imprints. Quentin was also one of the new breed of editors—a businessman first, a wordsmith second. Therefore, when I rapped on his doorframe, I wasn’t surprised to find him with his nose in a spreadsheet instead of a manuscript.

  “Just dropping off some reading matter,” I said when he looked up. Every week, journals and magazines with noteworthy articles and reviews of Beakman-Bryce books were circulated among the staff. I slipped the pile into his letter tray. “Do you have a minute?”

  Quentin dropped his pen, pulled off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “Yes, please.” He pointed at his visitor’s chair. “These numbers are painful—financially and physically. I could use a break.”

  “You heard I was the lucky one to find the body this morning?” When Quentin nodded, I said, “I’ve had this feeling all day that I saw that scene before. The azalea bush with the purple blossoms, foot sticking out from under it, white fishnet stocking, fuchsia nail polish—”

  “Like this?” Quentin dug to the bottom of his letter tray and pulled out a file folder. Inside was a cover flat, which he tossed across the desk to me. When it came to a rest, I gasped.

  Earlier this year, I had been called in to the monthly art meeting to discuss several of my covers. I hated those meetings. The artists were there, plus the publisher, the two editors-in-chief, all the executive editors, and the interested department heads. As a result, the discussions were often
long and loud. When I entered the conference room that particular morning, I hit the jackpot. It seemed as if everyone was yelling—about the cover that now sat before me and featured an azalea bush, in full purple bloom, with a white fishnetted foot with fuchsia-polished toenails peeking out from underneath. The only thing missing was me, standing in front of the bush, eyes closed, screaming, manuscript pages floating away on the wind.

  Quentin scowled. “We had to scrap this cover. The manuscript was in proofs when the author discovered a major plot problem and had to cut this victim. The nitwit production editor used a freelance copyeditor who obviously didn’t know what she was doing. Thank goodness Fiona took over. She quickly got a handle on the problem and kept the damage to a minimum.”

  “Fiona is good,” I said, cringing at the slam of the original production editor, “but I wonder why she didn’t mention this when she told me about the Murder on the Beach cover.”

  “I’ve heard some babble about that cover. Interesting.”

  “You didn’t, by any chance, tell the cops about any of this, did you?”

  “No, why would I? It’s bad enough a dead body was found in our parking lot. This company could use publicity, but not that kind.” He picked up the cover flat and dropped it back into the file folder, then started to slip the folder back into his letter tray, but stopped. Holding the folder mid-air, he mused, “I wonder if we can turn this into good publicity.” He began tapping the folder on his desk, in sync with the gears that seemed to be grinding in his brain. “We could turn this into a book. The Book Cover Killings. And I know just the writer.”

  I closed my eyes and prayed: Please don’t assign it to me.

  “But for now, I have to get back to my numbers,” Quentin said, eyes gleaming.

  “And I to my manuscripts,” I responded, scurrying from his office. And to my phone, where I probably should put the detective on speed dial.

  * * * *

  Pam Reynolds sipped her cappuccino, rolling her eyes heavenward. “My, this is good. They make these so well here.”