Carson shrugged. Meanwhile, Lionel said, “My murder. That’s what case.”
Natalie was grateful she was the only living person in the room who could hear him.
“I knew getting a new cadaver was going to cause trouble. I warned you,” Gabe grumbled.
An I told you so was not what Natalie needed from her friends, ghost or living, at this moment in time.
Thank goodness Gabe had at least let go of Millie’s hand before talking so the livings couldn’t hear him too.
She’d explain her gift to the New Haven police department only if absolutely necessary. The fear of being tossed into a psych hold still haunted her. Even after her brush with fame on the reality show that exposed her.
The panic gripped her by the throat making it hard to swallow, as if her fear had actual hands that were strangling her. By some miracle, she forced her focus off the doom of possibilities and back to the two officers staring at her through narrowed eyes.
Carson stepped farther into the room. “Natalie, this is officers Garland and Pataki.” He gestured to the female and the male cops in turn. “They’d just like to ask you a few questions.”
Natalie rallied confidence she didn’t quite feel and said, “I’m happy to answer any questions. Of course.”
She didn’t murder Lionel, if indeed he had been murdered at all.
The truth was on her side. She had to remember that.
She had nothing to hide…
The male officer, Pataki, nodded. “Good. Tell us about this publishing contract in your name for a dead man’s book.”
…except perhaps that. The web of lies she and Lionel had concocted to get his book published.
There might not be publishing jail, as Harper had joked, but there sure as hell was real jail. And she hadn’t thought to research if stealing someone’s intellectual property could put her there.
Natalie felt the blood drain from her face.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Just a little white lie. Telling the publisher they’d partnered before his death rather than after it.
Just a stretching of the truth, really, that would get Lionel’s work out in the world as well as the new information about Mudville’s history.
There was good reason. The truth, that she and his ghost were working on the book together, would have branded her as a loon in the eyes of his editor. Forget about giving her a publishing contract. More likely they would have issued a restraining order.
“Uh, um.” Natalie stumbled to find the words.
Where was Harper, the queen of words, when she needed her?
“Don’t try to deny it.” The female officer, Garland, rested her hand on her gun holster and looked very proud of herself. “A simple internet search revealed the deal announcement. A very nice deal, specifically, according to the wording in Publishers Marketplace. We called the publisher. You got a fifty-thousand-dollar advance. That’s a tidy sum you’ll be getting for someone else’s book. Lionel Graves’s book. How’d that come about, exactly?”
This was where she really needed Harper and her publishing industry knowledge.
They announced deals? Publicly? Natalie hadn’t known that. But she did know it looked very bad for her.
Offense or defense. Those were the two options here.
As her anger grew over this ridiculous situation, the choice became more clear. She refused to go down for something she didn’t do. For a murder that likely wasn’t even a murder but rather some wild imagining born of Lionel’s hubris.
Chin up, spine ramrod straight, she took a single step forward. “Did any of your sources also tell you the money is to be donated directly to Yale University? It’s a bequest in Professor Lionel Graves’s name to be used as the History Department sees fit. I’m not getting a single penny.”
Now it was the two officers who were taken by surprise.
Ha! Take that.
But thank goodness she, Harper, Lionel and the publisher had come up with that solution to deal with Lionel’s posthumous earnings. And, more importantly, that they had put it in the contract Natalie had signed.
