Page 58 of Postmarked December

She hadn’t considered that if she didn’t answer all those calls, people might try to take matters into their own hands. She’d need to try to stop them. “What kind of piece is it—an article, television news spot? Do you know anything about it?”

“We have reason to believe that an anonymous donor paid fifty thousand dollars to commission a biography of Toby Hart’s rise to fame and his life behind the spotlight, including his battle with cancer, and the book is releasing soon.”

Her pulse rose in her ears. “Fifty thousand dollars?” That was a lot of money. The donor had to be a pretty big organization, right? “Where did you get this information?”

“I can’t reveal a whole lot on that. A source that shall remain nameless overheard a phone call between the donor and the author of the biography, and we’ve been digging ever since. The publisher is tight-lipped and won’t give us any information, and the author isn’t returning our calls, so it would be incredibly helpful to hear the truth from you.”

She set the bag of pretzels on the counter, her hunger pains long gone. Instead, she felt sick. Toby would never have wanted a biography chronicling his illness to be on the market, and he surely wouldn’t want his personal life on display.

“Who’s the publisher?”

“Iron Pen Creative.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“They’re small. Independent. And the author is relatively unknown. He’s never written in this genre that we can find.”

This news slowly began to take hold in her mind. So some large entity was commissioning this biography and using a small publisher and a nobody author? Why? Because they were spreading lies that no larger publisher or seasoned biographer would write? How ruthless.

“Can you disclose the name of the author?” Perhaps they’d tried to call her for an interview and she’d recognize the name. At the very least, if she had a name, she could find them and try to stop them from publishing the book.

“His name is Nicholas Monroe.”

Her heart stopped. She didn’t hear a word of what came next, her every moment with Nick flashing before her eyes.

He’d said he worked in research. “I’ve dabbled in fiction and a few nonfiction projects, but I haven’t published anything... Lately, I haven’t been able to do as much writing as I want to. Maybe I will when I get home.”

Toby’s life was the project he’d been working on? Had Nick been following her and somehow found out she’d be on that plane to Greenville? Was that why he’d been a perfect gentleman, because he’d been creating scenarios so he could talk to her?

She immediately went into panic mode, trying to recall every detail of the conversations she’d had with him, seeing them all in a new light. His voice had sounded familiar, and now she was getting a squirming feeling that he’d spoken to her on the phone before they’d met. And that same voice had called another time.

“Hi. Don’t hang up. I’m writing about Toby⁠—”

Definitely not. She cut him off. “Toby made it clear that he didn’t want the attention to be on anything but his music.”

This whole time, he’d been writing about Toby?

Surely this wasn’t true…

But slowly, the events that had her walking on cloud nine now had her free falling. He hadn’t asked her last name at the pizza restaurant in Greenville. She’d thought he was being considerate. But it was because he already knew it. Those moments when it looked like he wanted to tell her something—had the words on his lips been guilty confessions? And that meeting he’d had—was that to discuss what he’d found out with the donor?

Now she understood why he hadn’t called her. Because he’d clearly gotten whatever it was he’d needed from her. She felt sick.

“Hello?” Alex Branson’s voice slid down the line and back into her consciousness.

“Sorry,” she said, breathless, tears clouding her vision. She swallowed, trying but failing to muster all her strength. “Do you know where I can find this Nicholas Monroe?” Her voice shook.

“I do, actually. We looked him up.”

“You have his address?” She swallowed against her dry mouth and wiped a runaway tear from her cheek.

“Yep.”

She scrambled around the other side of the kitchen bar and frantically dug through her junk drawer for a pad of paper and a pen. When she’d managed to find both through the blindness of her tears, she scratched down the address and read it back to him.

“Could we get a statement from you at least?” Alex asked.

“Yeah. The people involved in this are crooks.”