A Deadly Cliche (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

do you find sleep when you are troubled?”
    Kamila flushed. She hadn’t expected the king to ask her such an intimate question, but she answered truthfully. “I sing to myself, Great One. Always the same tune. It was my mother’s favorite song. My voice is not as lovely as hers, but as I grow older I sound more and more like her.”
    Ramses turned from her and stretched out on the sleeping couch. Folding his arms over his chest, he closed his eyes and commanded, “Sing it for me.”
    For a moment, Kamila didn’t move. This was not what she had expected, but a command was a command. Softly, she began to sing.
    “The lotus petals come floating past/ carried in the river’s arms/ the reeds whisper a tale to me/ and the ibis flies where I cannot go/ but I have fields to tend and oxen to lead/ the soil is more precious than lapis stones . . .” Kamila trailed off, her mind skipping to the next stanza in which the farmer touches the freshly turned earth and knows he is blessed to be an Egyptian. Omitting the words, she softly hummed the melody instead, seeing that the king had fallen asleep.
    She hummed until the candle burned low. Silently, the eunuch reappeared and beckoned for her to exit the chamber. He led her to her own pallet in a room filled with the sighs and stirrings of sleeping women and then left, noiseless as a breath of air.
    Kamila’s friend, Mery, was a very light sleeper. The moment Kamila curled up on her pallet, Mery sat up on an elbow and whispered, “Well? Did you please him?”
    Kamila closed her heavy eyes. “I do not know.”
    Mery reached over and touched Kamila’s hand. “There will be another time. You’re one of the most beautiful women in the entire palace.”
    “I need to be more than that. The king is surrounded by beauty. I must offer him something he does not have in excess, but what do I give that would please one who owns everything?” Kamila asked miserably and then, hearing no reply from her perplexed friend, fell into a troubled sleep.

    Olivia’s fingers moved swiftly over the keyboard. Ramses sent for Kamila twice more and each night she sang him to sleep, acting the part of nursemaid instead of lover. One day, the king and his retinue abruptly left the palace to meet with a team of architects and stonemasons at Karnak. Unsure of what Kamila would do in the pharaoh’s absence, Olivia saved what she’d written and closed the file.
    Stretching her arms over her head, she wondered if there was enough time to read the chief’s chapter before heading out to her lunch date. She had requested a meeting with an agent from Coastal Realty. The Realtor, a polished, seventy-year-old matron named Millicent Banks, promised to bring Olivia a file folder stuffed with documents pertaining to the crumbling warehouse on the waterfront.
    “I could probably critique two pages before I have to go,” Olivia said, removing the stapled packet Rawlings had distributed to the Bayside Book Writers last Saturday. The chief had already confessed that his book was yet untitled so she searched for the beginning of chapter one. However, the first two pages were stuck together and as Olivia peeled them apart, she realized they were identical. Flipping through the packet, she noted that every page was a copy of page one.
    Pulling up her online address book, she called Harris at work.
    “You got fifteen copies of the same page too, huh?” Harris laughed. “I guess we’re all busted for putting off our critique homework ’til this late in the week. Millay called me at two in the morning to tell me about the duplicate pages. I figured she’d get a hold of Rawlings and set him straight. Personally, I don’t have the guts to dial the chief of police’s number just to point out that he screwed up.”
    “Not phoning a policeman in the middle of the night sounds less like courage and more like self-preservation to me,” Olivia remarked.
    “I think Millay likes to talk a big game, but I bet she’d do it if someone dared her.” Harris was quick to defend the attractive bartender.
    Olivia decided to change the subject. “Did Millay happen to mention whether she’d heard about any missing persons? The chief still hasn’t been able to identify the body I found on the Point.”
    Harris yawned loudly. “Sorry. I’m trying to remember what else she said. I was in the middle of this crazy dream where trolls were tearing apart my high school when she called. That’s what happens when you