“Somebody did,” I said. “Yes.”
“And it’s got my handwriting on it.”
“Yes,” I said.
Melanie Joan’s phone dinged at the same time as mine did. We both looked at our screens. It was a text from Tony—a link to an article on a website calledReal Crime Daily. I clicked on the link and read it.
“Oh my God,” Melanie Joan whispered.
“What’s going on now?” Charles said.
I couldn’t say anything. Not right away. The article was about Leila’s murder. There was no mention of the highlighted book. The police were probably keeping that under wraps for now. But there was another detail—one that Gleason had never bothered to mention when he was questioning me. There had been a message scrawled on Leila Donnelly’s wall in what appeared to be her own blood.
It read:Justice for MJH
“My God,” Melanie Joan said.
“What’s going on?” Charles said again.
“We’re fucked, Charles, that’s what’s going on,” Melanie Joan said. “We are utterly, thoroughlyfucked out loud.”
Our phones pinged again. It was another text from Tony, telling us that he just heard from Evan. In twenty minutes, he said, Greg Scepter would be holding a press conference.
Thirty-four
We were about five minutes away from the scheduled start of the press conference when Charles spotted a service plaza and pulled off I-90. He parked the limo in one of the spaces. Melanie Joan took her iPad out of her Birkin and found Scepter Books’ Instagram, which was broadcasting it live.
The presser was apparently being held in the large conference room at Scepter Books’ home offices in New York. A podium had been set up at the rear of the room, and the table had been moved out to make way for the dozens of reporters milling around, but even on the small iPad screen, Melanie Joan recognized the Art Deco light fixtures. “The last time I was in that room, it was because Gloria Scepter had thrown a surprise party for me, celebrating the millionth sale ofCassandra Reborn,” she said. “They wheeled out the most beautiful cake I’ve ever seen. White buttercream, hundreds of edible flowers. You know what it said on it?”
“We love you, Melanie Joan,” Charles said.
“That’s right, Charles,” Melanie Joan said. “Different times…”
“We’ll get through this,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Sunny, but even if we do, it won’t be the same,” Melanie Joan said. “Gloria Scepter was so thoughtful, so wise. The complete opposite of her son.”
“Did he have a job before he inherited the company?” I said.
“Some tech thing,” she said. “Cryptocurrency, maybe? Something as soulless as he is.”
On-screen, Greg Scepter approached the podium. He looked to be in his early thirties, and he was tall and pale, with short, curly hair. He wore a black T-shirt under a black suit that looked expensive but purposefully ill-fitting, as though he’d gone to Murat’s in Beverly Hills and requested “extra-baggy.” He accessorized the ensemble with a chunky gold necklace that would have looked a lot better on Rosie.
“He has Mark Zuckerberg’s fashion sense,” I said.
“But not his charm,” Melanie Joan said.
As if to illustrate that statement, Greg pulled an iPhone out of his jacket pocket and read from the screen in a monotone voice. “It is with great sorrow that we announce the passing of the immensely talented Leila Donnelly, who had signed a five-book deal with Scepter Books and was scheduled to release her first book with us, titledThe Prince and the Peach, in the fall,” he said.
“The Prince and the Peach?” I said.
“The heir to the British throne falls for a Georgia farm girl,” Melanie Joan said.
“You’ve read it?” Charles said.
She shook her head. “I don’t need to. I could probably summarize the whole plot for you, too, just from that title. That’s how by-the-numbers Leila Donnelly’s books are.”
On-screen, Greg Scepter was detailing Leila’s “rags-to-riches story” for reporters. “Struggling, single, and pregnant with her little son, Leila cleaned out her life savings to self-publish her first book,The Heartbeat Chronicles,” Greg said. “It turned out to be a wise investment. Championed by a slew of online critics,The Heartbeat Chroniclesbecame a runaway hit—and changed the lives of romance readers everywhere.”
