Chapter Thirty

I hugged the manuscript tighter, shaking my head. This might very well be the only copy of Avi's last book. He'd saved his work online, but cloud storage options had been very different ten years ago. Who knew if his accounts were accessible anymore?

Besides, this one had Oren's notes in it, which I suspected would be far more important to Avi now.

"Forget it, Carson. This doesn't belong to you."

"Oh, for the love of—" Carson rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to publish it, if that's what you're worried about. I'm going to destroy it."

"What?" I croaked. "Why?"

"Because it's unnecessary. The brand has moved on." He glanced over his shoulder at the family room fireplace. "If it makes you feel better to witness it, we can burn it right here."

I backed up until the counter pressed into my lower back. "Absolutely not. It's got Oren's notes in it."

Avi's gaze snapped to me, and the rage on his face morphed into desperate hope. "Really?"

I nodded. "On the cover and in the text."

"So what?" Carson said. "His scribblings can't be important to you. You'd never even met the man. You said so yourself."

Avi flashed away from Carson's side and appeared next to me. "Show me?"

I tipped the manuscript forward enough that he could see the Post-it on the cover, and he raised trembling hands to his mouth.

"It doesn't matter that I'd never met him, Carson. He was still part of my family, and I intend to respect his wishes."

Carson's eyes narrowed. "Well, I'm Avi's family. What about his wishes?"

"Pretty sure those were laid out in his will," I said dryly. "He leave anything to you? Anything at all?"

"Obviously, Avi would have wanted things to go to Oren when he was alive. I can grant that they were devoted to one another. But Oren's dead." Next to me, Avi twitched at Carson's dismissive tone. "I'm sure Avi would want anything that was his personal property to go to his family, not some random stranger."

"Is that right?" I drawled.

"In a pig's eye," Avi muttered.

"Of course." Carson's breathing had evened out, and he'd recaptured the self-assurance he wore like his two-hundred dollar shirt. "And clearly, as the last of his family, I'm the best curator of his legacy."

Avi scoffed. "I wouldn't trust him to curate the contents of my refrigerator."

I couldn't help it. I laughed, which brought a thundering scowl to Carson's face, as though I'd actually offended him. "What are you laughing about?"

"I'm pretty sure the job description of a literary curator doesn't include burning an author's final manuscript."

"I told you. The brand has moved on. Readers wouldn't want an obviously inferior product."

Okay, call me oblivious, but it wasn't until that moment that the shoe finally dropped. From the audible intake of Avi's breath, he got it, too.

"It was you," we both said.

"What was me?" Carson said.

"You published Borderline ."

Carson huffed an irritated sigh. "No. Jake Fields published Borderline ."

"You know perfectly well that Jake Fields is Avi's pen name. The Harcourt series is his intellectual property. You had no right to pretend to be him."

"I didn't pretend to be anybody. Jake Fields isn't a real person. It's a brand . Borderline is my fresh Jake Fields rebrand."

"You can't do that. While author names aren't always unique, their story worlds coupled with their names are protected."

Carson waved a hand in front of his face as though swatting away an insect. "That's why I waited to publish until the full seven was up, even though it only took me five to write the book."

"That dreck took him five years?" Avi said, at the same time that I said, "Full seven what?"

"Years, you moron. Years . You know, the length of time you have to wait before somebody is declared dead?"

I rubbed my eyes with one hand while not easing my hold on All In with the other. "Carson, there was no question over whether Avi was alive. He died in full view of most of the town. There was a body. A funeral."

"I'm not talking about Avi . I'm talking about Jake Fields ."

"Yes, so am I. You understand how copyright works, don't you?"

Carson's face resembled Gil's when I tried to foist a healthier cat food option on him—an equal mix of confusion, mistrust, and outrage. "What are you talking about?"

"Copyright protection lasts for the author's lifetime plus seventy years, or, for pseudonymous works, the earlier of ninety-five years from first publication or 120 years from creation. Avi wrote those first few chapters of Borderline , and the only way you could have included them is if you stole them out of his wastebasket."

"I didn't steal them. He'd thrown them away."

"Pretty sure removing something from a house without his permission counts as stealing, regardless of where the item is located. In any case, a writer's work is copyrighted as soon as it's on the page, whether that page is physical or electronic, published or not." I jerked my chin at him. "Since you have your own key, I'm guessing you walked in on Avi when he was working, didn't you?"

"I knocked. He didn't answer."

"I was wearing noise-canceling headphones," Avi said. "Trying to focus."

"So you barged in anyway?" I couldn't keep the edge out of my voice. I really hoped Ricky was still on the line, but I didn't want to risk checking behind me to make sure. "And then you coshed him on the head with a freaking literary award ?"

"It's not like he deserved that award." Carson matched my rising volume. "He was a hack . His books weren't real literature."

"Yet people bought his books. Loved them. Begged for more."

"All the more reason for him to help me educate readers on what real literature truly is. I gave him everything he needed. The character names. The setting. The plot. I did all the work for him. He didn't have to do anything but use my creativity and inspiration to write the book."

"Oh, my god." Avi slapped his forehead. "Is he still on about that? Nobody wants to read about a self-righteous house flipper spouting pop philosophy between tedious descriptions of dry rot."

I glanced at him sidelong. "Hate to tell you, but…"

He stared at me, clearly aghast. "You don't mean— Harcourt?" When I nodded, he said, "If I wasn't already dead, I'd ask you to just kill me now."

I snorted and Carson scowled again. "What do you hate to tell me?"

"You realize you're describing my job, right?" Since Carson believed that I should provide my services for free for the privilege of basking in my clients' glorious words, I guessed he'd expected the same thing from Avi. "Ghostwriting requires a certain skill set and mindset. Avi didn't vet other people's manuscripts. He wrote his own."

"He could have helped . He owed me those chapters. He threw them away, but I took them from there. Borderline was the new Jake Fields. A better Jake Fields. Readers won't want an inferior retro brand when they've got the new one to look forward to. So you see"—he jammed his right hand into his pocket, and I really didn't like how that pocket seemed to bulge with more than a fist—"that manuscript is irrelevant. You might as well hand it over now."

"Do you think he has a gun in his pocket?" I murmured to Avi.

"Pretty sure," Avi replied.

"Why are you talking about me in the third person?" Carson barked. "I'm right here ."

He pulled his hand out of his pocket, and yep. Gun.

I kept very still. "Anything you can do with that?"

My question was directed at Avi, although since I kept my attention focused on Carson, he, of course, assumed I was talking about him.

"I can do plenty." He waved the gun around. From the way it was shaking, I seriously doubted his ability to aim, but who knew whether that would be a benefit or a drawback? "I practice . You can do anything if you practice . That's all Jake had to do. Help me practice, but he never took me seriously. I wrote him dozens of letters, but he never responded."

"Wait." I shot another glance at Avi, but he wasn't there. Great. No backup . I really hoped Ricky was listening. "You wrote letters to Jake Fields?"

Carson sneered at me. "Of course I did."

"You realize that you could have just talked to him, right?"

He blinked. "I can't talk to him. He isn't real."

My head was starting to ache, probably from the adrenaline buzzing through my veins because a guy who was obviously divorced from reality was aiming a gun in my general direction. "When did you write all these letters?"

"What do you mean?"

"The letters to Jake Fields. When did you write them?"

"After the lawyers made all the retailers stop selling Borderline . I had to prove it. Prove there could be no response, no permission , because Jake Fields wasn't real. Once I'd proved it, then they'd have to put the book back on sale and I could get my money."

Money . It was always about money, sex, power, or revenge, wasn't it? At least, that's what my retired detective client claimed in his book.

"Carson," I said softly but firmly, wondering where Avi had gotten to and hoping like hell that if Ricky was in Avengers-assemble mode, that he wouldn't appear and startle Carson into taking a wild shot. "Jake Fields was Avi's pen name. He couldn't have answered those letters because he was already dead."

Although I mentally tagged Since you killed him onto that sentence, I didn't say it out loud, because, you know, gun. Carson was clearly unbalanced at the moment and I didn't trust him not to take the giant step from blunt force trauma to GSW.

"Exactly. Proof, just like I said. Then I proved that anyone could be Jake Fields because he isn't real . He's a brand just like Carolyn Keene. Betty Crocker. Mark Twain. Brands , not people."

He waved the gun again. It was a revolver, I could tell that much, but the eye of the barrel looked odd. As I watched, a dribble of sawdust drifted from the gun's nose to the floor.

Avi .

Would the gun still fire if the barrel was stuffed with sawdust? Even if it did, I doubted it would do Carson's aim any favors. Maybe it would jam. Might it explode in his hand? I didn't know. But I expect Carson wouldn't know either.

In any case, I wanted to give Avi plenty of time, so despite the danger that I might set Carson off, I decided to keep him talking.

"Carolyn Keene was the work-for-hire pseudonym the Stratemeyer Syndicate used for the ghostwriters who produced the Nancy Drew books, just like they used Laura Lee Hope for the Bobbsey Twins and Victor Appleton for Tom Swift. Betty Crocker started as a fictional character created to respond to customer queries before General Mills turned her into a brand."

"See?" Carson crowed. "I told you. Not a real person. A brand ."

I inclined my head. "In that case, yes. But a trademark-protected brand. Mark Twain, on the other hand, was the pen name for the very real Samuel Clemens. Just because somebody writes pseudonymously doesn't mean that person isn't real."

The gun barrel was totally packed with sawdust by this time, and beneath the beat of my heart in my ears, I caught the telltale creak of the front door easing open. At least I hoped it was the door, although Carson didn't appear to register the sound.

"Look, I know you didn't intend to kill Avi. But if you shoot me, that's pretty intentional, don't you think?"

Carson pressed his trembling lips together, although he didn't lower the gun. In fact, he pointed it straight at me. "I didn't mean to kill him. I just wanted him to help . It's not like it would have cost him anything to help ."

"You didn't just want him to help . You wanted him to write the book for you, and that would have cost his time, and his time had a real, significant value because he used it to earn his own living." I hugged the manuscript closer, mentally crossing my fingers. "The other thing about trying to shoot me? If you try to fire that gun, things might not turn out the way you plan. When's the last time you maintained it?"

He barked a laugh. "Nice try. I cleaned it this morning."

"Yeah? What did you use? Garden mulch? Because it looks like the barrel is full of sawdust."

"What?"

He turned the gun toward himself, his mouth dropping open when he saw the blocked barrel, just as a tall, broad-shouldered woman who looked like she could be my cousin hustled into the room behind him with Ricky at her back.