Read Online A Romantic Way to Die by Bill Crider - Free Book Online Page B

What he saw was the title page of a manuscript. Rhodes picked it up to read it, then put it back down. If he left it in the box, he could just about read it without having to put on his glasses.
    The title page said:
     
A ROMANTIC WAY TO DIE
A Mystery Novel
 
BY
Henrietta Bayam
     
    Ivy must have been right, Rhodes thought. Everyone who wasn’t writing a romance novel was writing a mystery, and Henrietta was writing both.
    He got his reading glasses out of his pocket and took out a few pages of the manuscript to read. The very first sentence grabbed his attention.
    Bernell Kidsey was a bitch, it said.
    Uh-oh, Rhodes thought. Then he read the next two sentences:
    She was also a thief. That’s why I had to kill her.
    Rhodes forgot about going to the woods to look for clues. He took the manuscript into the other room, turned on a light, and sat on the couch, which was a lot more comfortable than it looked.
    Then he started to read.

10
    A FTER READING AS FAST AS HE COULD FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS, Rhodes put the manuscript aside. It had become clear to him after only a few pages that the book was based mostly on people in and around Clearview, and a few from out of town, with the character of Bernell Kidsey being only the first of many examples.
    The plot was simple: an aspiring romance novelist writes a book that all her friends tell her is a cinch to be published just as soon as the manuscript is polished and ready, but an envious friend steals the plot idea and pitches a much inferior version of the book to a sleazy agent named “Jane Arnold,” who isn’t above sleeping with editors (either men or women; Jane wasn’t particular) to increase her sales records.
    The book’s narrator, the practically saintly (except for her murderous tendencies) was “Loretta Seaham,” and she managed to kill the treacherous Bernell and get the crime blamed on Arnold, who conveniently committed suicide, thus convincing the slightly stupid redneck county sheriff (“Don Street”) of her guilt and allowing Loretta to get on with her life and her interrupted writing career with no one the wiser.
    Rhodes folded his glasses and put them back in his pocket. His only consolation was that Henrietta had made him somewhat younger, trimmer, and better-looking than he actually was. Well, younger anyway. Ivy had been keeping him pretty much on a healthy diet since their marriage, and he’d shed a few pounds. Maybe he’d gotten more handsome, too, though that seemed a bit more doubtful. But he was sure he hadn’t gotten any younger. In fact, after reading Henrietta’s manuscript, he felt about ten years older.
    He wondered how many other people in Clearview had read the manuscript, or had heard Henrietta read it at one time or another. He wondered why Mildred Cramer hadn’t mentioned it.
    He didn’t think that the manuscript could ever be published, but he wasn’t absolutely certain. It had held his interest, all right, but would it interest a publisher in New York, someone who didn’t know the characters involved? Rhodes wasn’t sure.
    And was there a motive for a real-life murder in the book? Rhodes wasn’t sure about that, either, but if Vernell had read it, there certainly might be. The character of Bernell Kidsey, revealed in numerous flashbacks, was entirely reprehensible, without a single redeeming feature. She was a low, scheming liar, who wouldn’t hesitate to destroy lifelong friends if doing so would help her get a book published.
    And then there was Jeanne Arnot. Rhodes was pretty sure she hadn’t seen the manuscript, but someone might have told her about it. The agent in the book, Jane Arnold, was even worse than Bernell, if that was possible. She used writers and editors like puppets and cut their strings when she was through with them, either that or left them to dangle helplessly without their puppet master to manipulate them. And she was having a passionate secret affair with Jerry Dan Gosling, a famous male cover model who