Chapter 4

Chapter

Four

C at was the first one in the living room that night for the orientation and write-ins. She always told people this session was voluntary, but she’d yet to have no one show up. Maybe this week would be different. She nibbled on the brownie she’d snagged from the treats Shauna had set up in the dining room before she’d left for her meeting.

She should have been scanning her notes for the orientation, but instead, she was thinking about Dante and the missing money. If Allen Johnson had been the one taking the money, his being killed at Dante’s house was problematic. It could look to her uncle that Dante had set Allen up to take the fall. Or Dante had found out Allen had set him up and killed him in a fit of rage. The problem with that scenario was Dante didn’t have to kill someone directly. The family had people for that. Besides, no one in their right mind would kill someone in Dante’s house.

Cat thought about the first rule of investigation, at least in her mind. Find out more about the victim. She started researching Allen Johnson but before she could search through his Facebook page or his college bio page, the writers arrived all at the same time—even Maggie and Alicia.

They’d been chatting when they entered the room, but when they saw Cat sitting and waiting, everyone quieted and found a seat. Earlier, she’d pulled the furniture into a large circle and added a whiteboard with flip chart paper and markers on a stand next to her.

“You guys have a little time before we get started to grab a cup of coffee or a drink and snacks from the dining room. Shauna went all out for tonight’s writing session.” Cat stood and stretched, sending a visual clue that she wasn’t ready to start. Writers for the most part were rule followers. Tell them to write ten reasons they wanted to attend the retreat; they’ll give you twelve or fifteen. And when class started, they were ready with their pen and paper or laptop to take notes. Or at least look like they were.

“Okay if I run up and get my laptop?” Nan Berry asked, standing up. “I thought we were a little early.”

“Go ahead. We’ll start in ten minutes. In general, feel free to take a break anytime you need. We’re informal this week,” Cat paused as she thought about what she’d just said. “Except for the library session and Tuesday and Friday’s session. I don’t teach or run those sessions so I can’t speak for those sessions. But anything I do here, we’re casual. I need a volunteer to run the write-ins at night. I find I get more work done that way. If no one wants to take that on, Shauna or Seth will step in.”

“You’ll be writing this week with us?” Patrick Bradley asked. He wrote thrillers and lived in the Washington DC area according to what Cat had read on his retreat application.

Cat nodded. “First and foremost, I’m an author. I have deadlines to meet. If I’m on deadline during a retreat, you’ll see me on my laptop more often than not. Besides, I get a lot of work done during the sprints. I’m not sure what the power of writing for twenty-five minutes at a time is, but it works. Does anyone do these sprints at home?”

A few people raised their hands. Cat could tell some were waiting to run out of the room for her to stop talking. They didn’t want to miss anything. She beat them to it. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, I need coffee.”

She headed to the kitchen and texted her uncle asking if there were any updates to Allen’s death. She set the phone on the table and poured her a cup of coffee, mixing a packet of hot chocolate inside to make a cheap mocha. Then she added whipped cream.

Chocolate and sugar would get her through the week. At least they’d help.

When her uncle didn’t respond, she dialed Dante’s number. He picked up on the first ring.

“What’s wrong?” He sounded concerned.

“Nothing’s wrong. I was just wondering if you’ve heard anything about Allen’s death. I’m on my way to a writers' session tonight so I don’t have a lot of time to chat, but I haven’t heard anything since my uncle came for brunch today.”

“I didn’t talk to him all day. Did you get an invite for coffee from Grace Evans? She said she was going to reach out. Her husband is, I mean, was friends with Allen. Maybe she has some information?”

“Hold on,” Cat looked at her phone. She did have an invite for coffee tomorrow afternoon at one. She could do that. The writers would be done with the library session and in an independent working period. Or still at lunch. It depended on the group. She answered the text and then went back to the call with Dante. “I’m seeing her tomorrow at one. Anything you want me to ask?”

“If somehow you could find out if he made any recent large purchases? And how his widow is set up? Without asking?”

“I’ll be discreet, but Seth said they hired him to do a remodel last year that was over the top expensive. I wonder if Uncle Pete talked to him?”

Dante chuckled, “That’s up to you to find out. Your uncle doesn’t disclose anything about Seth to me. And Seth doesn’t talk to me, not even when I run into him in town.”

Cat went back to the living room, putting her phone on silent mode. She held it up. “Just a reminder, please be thoughtful about phone calls. When we’re in sessions or write-ins, please silence your phone. Especially when you’re in the library. Ms. Applebome will confiscate it tomorrow morning if you don’t and it rings during her session.”

A chuckle went through the group.

“You guys think Cat’s kidding,” Alicia shook her head. “My roommate Freshman year had hers set to play a rock song in the library and when Applebome heard it, she took the phone for a week. She only had it on because she was waiting for a call to see if this guy she’d met was going to ask her out. She thought he’d ghosted her.”

“And going to administration to complain won’t help your cause,” Maggie Martin added. “My husband has at least twenty complaints a year on her tactics. But she’s an amazing librarian.”

“And with that cautionary tale, let’s talk about the structure of the retreat,” Cat pointed to a schedule on the whiteboard and walked everyone through the sessions that were already set. Then they brainstormed on what the writers wanted out of the retreat. Cat put these ideas on a sheet of flip chart paper.

Then she handed out the retreat contracts. “This is an agreement with your future self. Where do you want to be on Saturday morning when we get together for the last time? Well besides when I take the group to dinner that night to end the retreat. There’s a place for word count and page count for edits. But if you have another goal, like querying 100 agents by Friday, you can write that too. Just make sure your goal is SMART. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.”

“Can you give us an example,” Jon asked as he was furiously writing on a legal pad.

“Of course, but this is on your goal sheet too” Cat explained the five criteria of a SMART writing goal and then gave a few examples. “Please turn the contract in tomorrow before we go to the library. Then I’ll review and make sure we’re supporting you with what you need to make your goals this week a reality.”

Everyone was looking at the sheet.

“So, you’ve seen what we’ve planned for the retreat. What else do you want to know before you leave? We can use your list for topics for my session on Wednesday on Ask an Author Anything, or Quad-A for short.” She paused for a minute. “Or, if you want to spend time at the library researching, just let me know. We might be able to find a subject matter expert if you want a specific session. I can’t promise I can deliver everything, but several of the faculty have published several books.”

Alicia held up her hand. “Do you know anyone who knows about self-publishing? I’m writing genre fiction and my professors say no agent will pick me up.”

“Well, one, he’s wrong. And two, yes, we have several authors in town who successfully self-published and some who have traditional contracts. I can set up a panel for anyone interested. Maybe Thursday if I can pull it together?”

Maggie was frowning and nodding at the same time. Cat wasn’t sure what was going through her head. But then she raised a hand, “I’d be interested in attending that panel as well.”

Several others added support so Cat wrote it down on the flipchart. “This is more for me so I don’t forget to do something.”

They spent another thirty minutes doing that, then Cat called a break. “I’ll be glad to run tonight’s writing sessions – for an hour, but after that, you’re on your own. I need my beauty sleep.”

Maggie stopped on her way to the dining room. “If no one else wants to run these, I’ll do it. I’m used to bossing people around. Not really, but I’m reliable and can use a timer.”

“You’re hired unless someone desperately wants the job. Then we’ll set up a mud wrestling match to the death,” Cat laughed as Maggie stared at her. “This is why I can’t run nightly events. I’m already rummy and it’s only Sunday.”

“You were out late last night. I was so sorry to hear about Allen’s death. I hope Dante’s not blaming himself.” Maggie glanced at her watch. “I need to go call Martin before we start. He’s so needy.”

Cat followed Maggie out of the room and went to the kitchen. Shauna was still gone. They had implemented an in-and-out whiteboard in the kitchen so if someone was looking for someone else, they didn’t have to go searching through the three-story, two-wings of the Victorian to find out that the person was out shopping or at the library. There was a black dot that you moved on the board to show your goings from home to out and back. Both Shauna’s and Seth’s dots were in the out column. But only Shauna’s had a note saying where she was at.

Seth was still mad at her. It was going to be a long week.

The next morning, Cat was up before anyone. Except Shauna. Cat didn’t know how much sleep her friend got during retreat weeks, but she did know she’d never beat her downstairs. She’d changed into yoga pants and a large sweatshirt with a tank underneath. Not too much different than the pajamas she’d taken off, but these didn’t have red hearts all over them. She poured coffee, then went to sit by Shauna at the table who was writing in her planner. “Good morning, I didn’t hear you come in last night.”

“A bunch of us went out for a drink after the meeting,” she sighed and looked up. “Having another murder has messed with my retreat mojo. I needed a bit of calm.”

“So you went to a college bar? That’s the opposite of calm, isn’t it?” Cat sipped her coffee. Shauna had lost someone close and was still dealing with his death.

“We went to the wine bar. It was filled with professors and their wives, talking about Allen Johnson’s death. I probably would have been better off going to one of the college bars,” Shauna admitted. “There’s a rumor going around that Dante found Allen’s hand in the cookie jar.”

“And killed him in his own house? That’s just stupid.” Cat sipped her coffee.

Shauna stood after the oven timer went off. She opened the door and took out two pans of what appeared to be banana nut muffins. She set the muffins on a rack to cool and put two waiting pans into the oven, setting another timer. “Most rumors are stupid. I’m just telling you what I heard.”

“Sorry, I’m killing the messenger,” Cat sank deeper into her chair. “I knew rumors were going to start flying about Dante’s involvement. That scenario is just not realistic.”

“So what do you think happened?” Shauna sat down at the table.

“Dante thought someone was misappropriating money for their personal use. And then pointing the finger at him. He’s been fielding calls from donors for months now wondering why the promises that were made to them haven’t been followed up on. So he talked to Allen Johnson, the head of fundraising. He assured Dante that he would look into the issue. He only has two fundraiser positions under him. If anyone was draining money, he was the most likely candidate.” Cat filled Shauna in on what Dante had told her over coffee over a week ago now. “So he wanted me to go to that stupid party and see what I thought about Allen.”

“What did you think?”

“He mentioned trouble with whale donors,” Cat sighed as she sipped her coffee. “Other than that, he was a total jerk. He called me sweetheart and said the men were talking, or something like that. I wanted to punch him, but I was talking to Maggie then. She just blew it off. I can’t believe she has to deal with such patriarchal attitudes all the time.”

“Have you talked to Maggie since she’s been here? She might be able to give you some insight into the way the college world is. The way it works.” Shauna pulled out her planner and started making notes about the retreat. “I found that the biggest blowhards when I was a bartender tended to be the least likely to cause real problems. It was the silent guys in the corner you had to watch.”

Cat thought about Shauna’s advice as she made her way upstairs to her office, fortified with coffee and a couple of muffins for later. She had a busy day scheduled. Words first, then she’d go with the group and drop the writers off at the library. She could stop by the fundraising office and see how they were dealing with Allen’s death. It would be polite. Then she had a coffee date with Grace Evans. Hopefully, she’d drop some juicy gossip that Cat could give to Dante and her part of the investigation would be over. Maggie was the only one to volunteer to run the evening writing sprints so Cat could write. She knew something else might happen, but at least she had a framework for the day.

And with that done, she started writing.

Her phone buzzed at nine-thirty. It was time to get ready for the trip to the library. Cat wrote down her word count, and then saved her document. She sent it in an email to herself. The laptop she’d use tonight had access to the same cloud files, but Cat just felt easier when she also sent herself a copy after a good writing session. She deleted the old emails at the end of the week so she wouldn’t use up all her storage, but she’d never have to recreate scenes again. Not like she had that time her computer had gone down in the middle of a manuscript.

The more she wrote, the more paranoid about losing documents she got.

When she finally made her way downstairs, most of the group was already waiting by the front door. They had a few minutes before they had to leave to be able to walk to the library. Cat could have asked Seth to drive them, but she liked adding a bit of exercise to the retreat where she could.

“Who has their phone on them?” She looked around the group.

Everyone pulled it out and she watched as they silenced the ringers. “Good job.”

“Alicia scared us into complying,” Jon Booth said as he poked the young woman’s shoulder. “My wife would kill me if I didn’t check in at night. She’s dealing with our teenage daughter who thinks she should be treated like an adult at fourteen.”

“Give her a bill for the rent, lights, and food,” Nan Berry suggested. “She’ll change her tune quickly.”

“Knowing Penelope, she’d just say she was getting a job,” Jon groaned as the others laughed.

“Find out what McDonald’s pays and then take out taxes and all the other deductions. She’ll find out she can’t afford to live in your house with a minimum-wage job,” Debra added. “I worked one summer making plastic milk bottles. That job sent me screaming back to college. I never missed a class after freshman year.”

Cat studied Debra as she joked around with the group. She didn’t seem affected by finding Allen’s body. But some people dealt with death easier than others. She would have hated to have Debra’s retreat ruined by the event. And now she sounded cold and unfeeling. She was so glad she hadn’t said any of that aloud.

Cat glanced at her watch, “Okay if we’re going to be on time, which means ten minutes early, we need to leave now. Everyone ready?”

“Maggie’s not down yet,” Alicia looked over at the stairs but they were empty. “I talked to her at breakfast and she was planning on coming with us. She just needed to call her husband first.”

“Text her that we’re leaving, and I’ll let Shauna know that she may need to drive Maggie over to the library. I don’t want the rest of you to be late,” Cat smiled like she was kidding, but she didn’t want to deal with the librarian’s wrath if she brought the group to the library late. Even after giving the library a large portion of Michael’s estate that Cat felt was a little too sketchy for her to accept, the librarian still hadn’t forgotten the fact that Cat had snuck a non-circulating reference book out of the library. She’d even returned it, but that didn’t wipe away the stain.

The writers were afraid of Ms. Applebome only taking their phones. Cat was afraid the woman would ban her, and her retreat guests, from the library entirely.