Page 41 of Fish and Chip

“I wouldn’t call it blackmail exactly,” Felicity says. “More like strategic information sharing. She’d hint that she knew things. Make comments that let you know she had ammunition if she ever decided to use it.”

“That sounds exactly like blackmail,” Georgie says.

“With a thesaurus,” I add.

“It probably was,” Felicity concedes. “I just prefer not to speak too ill of the dead. Though I suppose at this point, honesty might be more helpful than politeness.”

“What kind of secrets was she harboring?” Ree asks, leaning forward with her notebook.

Felicity sighs, looking forlorn. “Well, there’s Eulla Bell, for instance. Everyone thinks she’s this genuine Southern peach with the perfect life and the charming tea room cozy series. And maybe she is, in a lot of ways. But Belladonna told me once, after too much wine at a publishing dinner, that Eulla Bell’s breakthrough novel wasn’t entirely her own work.”

I sit up straighter. “What do you mean?”

“According to Belladonna, Eulla Bell had a friend in college. Another writer, very talented, who died young. Tragically young. And supposedly, Eulla Bell took one of her friend’s unpublished manuscripts and reworked it as her debut novel. The one that got her agent, her book deal, her entire career. Rumor has it the woman’s family tried to dispute it, but that never went anywhere.”

“Holy plagiarism, Batman,” Georgie breathes.

Plagiarism. In the cozy community. Where the most dangerous thing in the room is supposed to be the bundt cake.

“I don’t know if it’s true,” Felicity adds. “Belladonna could be creative with her information. She liked to stir the pot. But she claimed she had proof. Emails, early drafts, something. I never saw any of it myself, so I can’t say for certain.”

“Did she ever confront Eulla Bell about it?” I ask.

“Oh, constantly. Little digs here and there. Comments about ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ and ‘borrowed inspiration.’ Nothing direct enough to be actionable, but enough to keep Eulla Bell on edge.” Felicity shakes her head. “It was cruel, really. Even if it was true, what good did it do to hold it over her head for years?”

Ree’s scribbling furiously in her notebook. “That’s awful. Poor Eulla Bell.”

“Poor Eulla Bell might have killed Belladonna to shut her up,” Georgie points out.

“Maybe,” Felicity says. “I honestly don’t know. But Eulla Bell wasn’t the only one Belladonna had ammunition against.”

“Gertie Gloomwood?” I guess, remembering the woman standing at the crime scene with what looked suspiciously like a smile. And in my admittedly limited experience, people smile at crime scenes for exactly two reasons. Nerves or satisfaction. One of those is forgivable.

Henrietta’s eye picks that exact second to blink.

I glance down at the plastic menace hanging from my neck, then decide, firmly and for the sake of my own sanity, that she is indeed on some sort of haunted timer.

Felicity nods, looking unsurprised that I’d figured it out. “Gertie used to be a publishing executive. Big house, corner office, the works. She left under—let’s call them questionable circumstances. The official story was that she wanted to pursue writing full-time. The unofficial story, according to Belladonna, was that Gertie was caught embezzling.”

“How much?” Georgie asks, her eyes gleaming with dollar signs of their own.

“Seventy-five thousand dollars, supposedly.” Felicity shrugs. “Enough to ruin her career but not quite enough to press criminal charges if she left quietly and paid it back. Which she did. And then she reinvented herself as a cozy mystery author writing about corporate crime, which is either brilliantly ironic or deeply suspicious depending on how you look at it.”

Or excellent research, Fish notes. Write what you know.

I nearly choke. She’s not wrong.

Somebody check my math, Chip mewls, solemn as an accountant. Seventy-five thousand dollars is roughly a million salmon treats. I’m not saying I’d embezzle. I’m saying I’d need a very good reason not to.

“And Belladonna knew about this?” I ask once I’ve recovered.

“Belladonna knew about everything,” Felicity says with a touch of weariness. “She had connections everywhere. People told her things. Or she’d dig until she found what she was looking for. She used to joke that she should have been an investigative journalist instead of a novelist.”

“She sounds delightful,” Georgie says. “It’s really making me sad she’s cooling her heels in a morgue drawer downtown.”

“Georgie!” Ree hisses.

“What? We’re all thinking it!”