By Robert R. Veith (1726 words)

Margaux returned to her brother’s room to find him sitting in the folding chair which faced a piece of furniture part writing desk, part vanity, but fully inadequate for neither function. Jasper stared into the mirror, but his eyes met Margaux’s in reflection. Dark rings could be seen under his eyes. 

“I should have worn the jacket with the patches on the elbows, like a professor,” Jasper said, his voice a monotone. “The smoking jacket was stupid.” 

She sighed. “Jimmy, you can wear whatever you want, just come out and spend some time with the participants,” she tried not so sound exasperated. “You can’t keep running away from them. They paid good money to be here. And if we ever want to do this again, we have to give them some value.” 

“Value? There was a murder here last night. Did you forget?” He ran fingers through his still-wet hair.

“Was there?” Margaux said. “Think about it Jimmy. I’m replaying what I remember from last night and I’m… I’m not so sure. It was dark in the dining room, right? I couldn’t see anything clearly. I found what I thought—what we both thought—was blood on the floor. Was it? I mean, I think I know what blood looks like, what it feels like…” She felt the bile rising in her throat as she recalled the feel of the sticky substance on her hands the night before. “Could it have been something else?”

“It wasn’t wine, that’s for sure,” Jasper said. 

“No, it wasn’t wine. But there were people preparing food in there not long before I went in. Maybe they had some raw meat and spilled some juices on the floor. And they were too lazy to mop it up. Isn’t that more likely than they left a dead body in there?”  She waited for him to nod. He looked skeptical, but at least he was listening to her. “And we found what appeared to be a corpse wrapped up in a rug. But we never saw a face… or an arm… or anything that would identify it as a human being, did we? And then in the morning, we saw the beverage cart we’d used to move the body—the alleged body, mind—in room 28, but the rug unrolled, right? And no body. And Sicard Ficino.” 

“So, what are you suggesting? That this Sicard fellow wrapped himself in a rug to make a grand entrance?” 

Margaux sighed. “It does sound ridiculous to say it out loud. But what else can it be? You’re the mystery writer, not me. Put your brain on it. All of our retreat participants are here. If there was a body… who was it? Who would murder someone and roll them into a rug in the dining room of this motel? The staff set up that room not an hour before I went in looking for more wine. Surely they would have noticed if something was off. Then, I went back to Sicard’s room later. The cart was gone. The Rug was gone.”

“So?”

“So, you’re freaking out over nothing!”

“I’m not freaking out.”

“Really? You’re acting like you or I killed someone. But we didn’t. And we probably didn’t find a dead body either. As of now, as far as anyone out there is concerned, you have a captive audience and you haven’t done anything except drink and pout.”

“But I saw…”

“You aren’t sure what you saw,” she told him. “And no one else besides you and me have any idea that something untoward might even have happened.”

“Okay,” he smiled for the first time in several days. “Maybe I am freaking out about nothing. But even… even putting the best possible spin on this weekend, it’s awful. The weather, the venue. Plastic cups. Awful food.”

“You’re the value,” she told him. “You’re the draw. They’ll forgive everything else if you give them a retreat to remember.”

“I’ve got nothing to tell them,” he said. “Haven’t written a worthwhile word in years. Literal years.”

“Do you know what they’re doing now?” She said. “I told them to spend an hour writing on the influence of media on the perception of pigs.”

“That’s awful,” he said. 

“Yeah. So anything you do will be better. I’ll tell you what to do,” she said. “And it’s easy. You don’t have to write. You just have to pretend to listen. This is a writer’s group. Get them talking and they won’t want to stop. I’ll sit everyone in a circle. You ask them each to give you a story idea in one minute or less. Then we’ll have the person on their left offer a positive encouragement and the person on their right offer a constructive criticism. You won’t have to do anything except nod and act engaged. And they’ll love it.”

“I can do that,” he said. He stood up.

Margaux relaxed. She had not realized how tense she’d been until the tension suddenly left her body. This retreat was about to get right back on track. Everything was going to be fine. 

***

Mavis sat in the lobby area in a stuffed chair with an outdated floral print. The chair wasn’t comfortable, but it was better than the chair in her room. The rain had stopped for a minute and in its absence, the whole place had gotten quiet as a tomb. She had her laptop on her lap. She typed pig a few times, but found she didn’t have anything to say about the subject. She had logged into the motel wifi, but found it did not connect to the internet, so she could not ‘google’ her way to inspiration. It didn’t matter anyway. She wasn’t here to write so much as to listen, record, and evaluate. She had to write just enough to appear to be a writer. She was about to start typing a few notes about the other other participants when Ed walked into the room.

“Oh, hi, didn’t know you were in here,” he said. He held up a mug in his right hand. “I brewed a pot of coffee. Real stuff. Ethiopian. I brought it with me. Can’t ever count on a hotel to serve nice coffee. Plenty to share. You want a cup?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. She closed the laptop.

He left, heading back into the dining area, returning less than a minute later with a steaming mug of coffee. “I should have asked if you like cream or sugar.”

“Black is fine,” she said. She didn’t actually like coffee. 

“This is the only kind of coffee I can drink black,” he said, sitting down in the chair next to her. 

“You working on that writing prompt?” He asked.

She hissed noncommittally. “Stupid if you ask me. Aren’t we supposed to be writing mysteries or something.” 

He shrugged. “I’m new to this. Don’t think I’ll ever write a mystery, but would like to be able to tell a good story, you know? Just don’t know where to start. I’m sorry. I’m distracting you.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll have anything worthwhile to show for this writing prompt.”

He took a long sip from his mug, took a breath, and said, “So, that notebook.”

“What’s the matter with people?” Mavis said. “Did you really lock it up in the safe in your room?”

“Naw,” he said. He rummaged through his fanny pack and produced the notebook. “If it is yours, you should have it back. Just didn’t make sense to get into a fight about it.”

“It is mine,” she said. “Those others had no business going through it. Or writing things in it.”

“Someone wrote in it? Who?”

“How should I know? I didn’t have a chance to see it all exactly, but that former cop… what’s his name? Chuck. He was waving my journal about like whatever was written in there proved something.” 

Ed handed it back to her. She opened the journal and scanned the text. The handwriting was fluid and ornamented. It took her some effort to read. “It’s utterly bizarre. Almost nonsense. I mean, ‘Imagine a social media influencer covered in elephant hide, metamorphosing into Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre!’ Who writes like this?”

Ed shrugged. “Well, if you’re to be believed—and I have no reason to doubt you—someone at this retreat. I mean, how long was the journal out of your possession?”

Mavis nodded. “I must have left it sitting there last night, so it could be any time after dinner until I found it again earlier today.”

She thought a moment, took a sip of her own coffee, then thought another moment. “Ed, had you ever met anyone at this retreat before?”

“Nope, unless you count meeting you and Chuck at the bottom of the hill on the way here.” He paused a moment. “You?”

“Yes, sort of,” she said. She did not plan to say more, but suddenly found herself speaking. “I met Sicard Ficini three years ago. It was just after graduate school. A writing group that met online. We would read each other’s work and offer critiques. We became… are? Were? Friends of a sort. Though he could be harsh in his criticisms. I did not know he was going to be here until I saw his name on the guest list. Saw his email and recognized it. While we’ve met over Zoom many times, we’ve never met in person. I’m not sure what I expected. 

“Have you had a chance to speak with him?” Ed asked. “I don’t have a lot of experience with online relationships, I have to admit. But it seems like it would be different interacting with someone know know in person versus someone you’ve only interacted with online.” 

“That’s just it, Ed,” Mavis said. “I’ve had quite a few experiences where someone I’ve met online is different in person. You only see their face on the screen. Then you meet and they’re a lot shorter or a lot taller than you expect. Or they sound different because of whatever microphone they use online. But this guy?” She hesitated a moment. Should she say? She had to tell someone. “I know Sicard Ficini well enough to recognize him. And the guy staying in Room 28? That’s not him. It’s an entirely different person.”