Free The Ghost and the Mystery Writer by Anna J. McIntyre Page A

for an early morning walk, stopped by the pier, saw all the commotion, and then came back here and wrote down everything she had overheard and seen.”
    â€œIf that’s true, why didn’t she tell you she’d been to the pier this morning and seen the crime scene? I was there when Joanne told her about the murder. She pretended she knew nothing about it. In fact, she hasn’t left the house since she got up this morning.”
    â€œShe did say she doesn’t like discussing what she’s working on. Ian suggested she writes about real-life murders, but never admits her ideas come from real life. You have to be wrong about her leaving the house.”
    â€œDanielle, did Joanne arrive before you left this morning or after?”
    â€œBefore, you know that. She prepared breakfast. You sat there and watched us eat.”
    â€œDidn’t you tell me you discovered Jolene’s rings—the ones tossed off the pier—after Jolene’s spirit showed you were to find them?”
    â€œYes, but technically, she showed MacDonald. But he couldn’t see her.”
    â€œAnd until then, what did everyone think had happened to the rings?”
    â€œThat the killer had them. So?”
    â€œDanielle, I may sometimes get confused about time, but I know I read Hillary’s notes before Joanne arrived this morning—before you ever found those rings. Before anyone knew the killer had tossed them off the pier. As I said, Hillary was wearing her nightgown. She wasn’t wearing a nightgown when she came down for breakfast this morning, was she?”
    Danielle opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again. She sat quietly on the sofa, considering all that Walt was telling her. “You’re saying Hillary wrote about the murder before it happened?”
    â€œOr minutes after. Do you know when Jolene was killed?”
    â€œI’m not sure. I know Jolene stopped in the Pier Café about an hour before it closed. I’m pretty sure it closes at midnight. If so, she was killed sometime after eleven. Exactly what time, I don’t know.”
    â€œI know it was around midnight when Hillary came home last night.”
    â€œCame home? She went out last night? When I went to bed, she was watching television in the living room. She didn’t say anything about going out.”
    â€œAfter you went to bed last night, Hillary left the house. She was gone for a couple hours. I was watching television in here when she got back. I know it was a little before midnight because I was watching a movie—it was almost over. It ended at midnight. I still don’t know the killer’s identity.”
    â€œI thought you just said it was Hillary?”
    Walt shook his head. “I was talking about the movie I was watching. I was just about to find out who the killer was when Hillary came home. When she finally went upstairs—after making me miss the end of the movie—I stayed down here for a while flipping through the channels. When I went upstairs an hour or so later, I noticed the light on in her room, and that’s when I went in and read some of what she wrote.”
    â€œThat’s just a creepy coincidence.”
    â€œI hardly think it’s a coincidence.”
    â€œIt has to be,” Danielle insisted. “I can’t imagine that nice little old lady killed Jolene in cold blood.”
    â€œPerhaps she just witnessed the murder and wrote about it. According to what she wrote, the killer was a man.”
    â€œAnd not report the murder? Just come back here and start using it as—what is it Ian calls it? Oh—story fodder.”
    Walt shrugged. “I just know what I read.”
    They sat in silence for a few minutes, each lost in his or her private thoughts. Finally, Danielle looked up at Walt and asked, “When I mentioned the rings being tossed over the pier, why did you say the killer didn’t keep the tenth