The Last Word (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

whatever Rawlings had started to say.
    Olivia raced to the front door and grabbed the handle, but the door was locked. She ran to the back door, adrenaline surging through her, but experienced the same result.
    Sensing her agitation, Haviland began to bark.
    “He could still be alive!” Olivia yelled, searching the ground for a large rock. There was nothing but gravel.
    Desperate, she grabbed one of the patio chairs, dumped the cushion on the ground, and raised it waist high into the air. Made entirely of metal, it was cumbersome, but Olivia smashed it into the glass door with all the force she could muster.
    The glass splintered but didn’t break. She heaved the chair against the fractured door again and again until it crashed inward, chunks of ragged glass scattering across the floorboards, shards lethal as icicles raining everywhere.
    “STAY!” Olivia shouted at Haviland and, only after being certain that he would obey, darted inside and fell to her knees alongside the prone writer.
    Gently, she rolled him over and then cried out in shock. Covering her mouth with a trembling hand, she retreated.
    “Too late,” she whispered, her voice echoing in the light-riddled room.

Chapter 7
    Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
    —EDGAR ALLEN POE

    N ick Plumley’s glassy eyes were fixed on the ceiling. His mouth was misshapen, stretched unnaturally like a python expanding its jaw in order to swallow a fat rabbit. His lips were blue. A wad of paper filled the entire cavity of his mouth.
    Olivia knew she should go back outside. There was nothing she could do to help the dead man, and though every fiber of her being longed to remove the papers crammed into his mouth, she knew that an influx of fresh air would provide him no relief. His lungs would never again expand or contract. They would no longer be invigorated by the sea breeze or by the sharp wind that raced ahead of a thunderstorm. The smoke from wood fires wouldn’t irritate the sensitive bronchioles. They’d never feel the keen ache of being outside on a frigid February morning or tingle as they were infused by the magic of the season’s first snow.
    Exhaling slowly, as though she feared her own body might be affected by the writer’s immobility, Olivia tore her gaze from Nick Plumley’s frozen expression of agony. As her eyes traveled down the length of his body, she noticed an angry red welt encircling his neck, just above the larynx.
    Plumley was clad in a cotton robe of blue and white checks and matching boxer shorts. He was barefoot and smelled of soap. Olivia noticed that he’d yet to put on his watch and that his hair was still wet. As her eyes returned to his face, she noticed a bead of dried blood on his chin, indicating that he’d cut himself shaving.
    Olivia stared at the bright red drop. It was too vivid on a face that had already taken on the waxy pallor of death. She imagined him at the mirror, a handsome man in his midfifties, wiping away the fog with the corner of a towel. After squirting a cone-shaped measure of shaving cream into his palm, he’d have spread the foam over his face, noting the contrast between its whiteness and his tanned skin. Pivoting from side to side, he would have performed the daily ritual he’d begun many years ago as a shrill-voiced, lanky teenager. He would have winced at the cut, briefly, more irritated than injured, and stuck a shred of toilet paper on the wound to soak up the initial rush of blood.
    “And then someone came to the door,” Olivia mused aloud. “And you let them in dressed like this. Did you recognize the killer?”
    Knowing her proximity to the body could contaminate the crime scene, she tarried only long enough to examine the hardcover resting near Nick’s right arm. The book had been opened toward the middle and a handful of pages had been roughly torn from the binding. The header on an intact page identified the book as The Barbed Wire Flower . Nick Plumley’s mouth had been stuffed with pages from his own bestseller.
    “Jesus,” Olivia whispered and stood up. Carefully maneuvering around the shards of glass, she returned to the patio. The force of the sunshine burned her eyes, but she was grateful for its heat. The wash of light made her acutely aware of her vitality, and she threw her arms around her agitated poodle.
    “It’s all right,” she murmured as he bathed her face with kisses. “The chief’s on his way.”
    Olivia and