The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer: A gripping new thriller with a killer twist Joël Dicker (booksvooks TXT) 📖

We left Derek and Betsy and set off in the car. We drove to Queens, then to Rego Park. When I parked in that side street, Darla understood. She got out of the car and looked at the single-story building.

“Did you rent it?” she said

“Yes. It was a dry goods store and wasn’t doing well. I got it for a good price. I’m about to start work.”

She looked up at the sign, which was covered with a sheet. “Don’t tell me . . .”

“Yes,” I said. “Wait here a minute.”

I went inside to light the sign and find a ladder, then came back out, climbed up, and lifted off the sheet. The letters shone in the dark.

LITTLE RUSSIA

Darla didn’t say anything. I felt ill at ease.

“Look, I still have the red book with all your recipes,” I said, showing her the treasured collection, which I had brought out with the ladder.

Darla still said not a word. Trying to get a reaction, I continued:

“True, I’m a lousy cook. I’ll make hamburgers. That’s all I can do. Hamburgers in Natasha’s Sauce. Unless you want to help me, Darla. Set this thing up with me. I know it’s a little bit crazy, but—”

“A little bit crazy!” she cried out at last. “Totally insane, you mean! You’ve lost your mind, Jesse! Why did you do something like this?”

“For redemption,” I said quietly.

“But Jesse,” she shouted, “none of it is redeemable! Do you hear me? What happened can never be redeemed!”

She burst into tears and ran off into the darkness.

-3

Auditions

MONDAY, JULY 14 – WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2014

JESSE ROSENBERG

Monday, July 14, 2014

Twelve days to opening night

That morning the three of us began looking into the records to see what we could learn about Jeremiah Fold. It turned out that he had died in a road accident on July 16, 1994, in other words, two weeks before the death of Mayor Gordon.

Much to our surprise, Fold did not have a criminal record. The only thing in his file was an investigation opened by the A.T.F.—the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—that had apparently led nowhere. We contacted the police in Ridgesport to try to learn more, but the officer we spoke with was no help. “There’s nothing on Jeremiah Fold here,” he assured us. That meant that Fold’s death had not been considered worth recording or suspicious.

“If Fold died before the Gordon murders,” Derek said, “it rules out his involvement in them.”

“I checked the F.B.I. files,” I said. “There’s no criminal organization called ‘The Darkest Night’. It wasn’t some kind of premature claiming of responsibility on the part of organized crime.”

So we could rule out Fold. But we had another lead we needed to look into. Who had commissioned Stephanie’s book?

Derek had brought cardboard boxes filled with newspapers. “The small ad that attracted Stephanie Mailer’s attention must have appeared in a newspaper,” he said. “In the conversation she reports, the man says he’s been advertising for twenty years.”

He read from Stephanie’s first chapter again:

The ad was in between one for a shoe repairer and another for a Chinese restaurant offering an all-you-can-eat buffet for less than $20.

DO YOU WANT TO WRITE A BESTSELLER?

MAN OF LETTERS SEEKS AMBITIOUS WRITER

FOR SERIOUS WORK. REFERENCES ESSENTIAL.

“It must be a regular publication. Apparently, Stephanie only had one subscription, and that was for the magazine of the literature faculty of Notre Dame, where she studied. So we got hold of all the issues from the past year.”

“She could have read the ad in any magazine she came across,” Betsy said. “In a coffee shop, on a subway seat, in a doctor’s waiting room.”

“Maybe,” Derek said, “maybe not. If we find the ad, it might lead us to the man who commissioned the book and we’ll finally find out who was at the wheel of Tennenbaum’s van on the evening of the murders.”

* * *

At the Lake Palace, in the sitting room of Suite 308, Carolina sprawled on the couch while her father opened his laptop on the desk.

“We should go to this audition,” he said. “It’ll give us something to do together.”

“The theater’s a drag!” Carolina said.

“How can you say such a thing? What about that wonderful play you wrote that was supposed to be performed in your school?”

“But it never was. I don’t give a damn about the theater anymore.”

“When I think how curious you were about this when you were younger!” Eden said. “What a curse it is, this generation’s obsession with cell phones and social networks! You don’t read anymore, any of you, you’re not interested in anything except taking photographs of your lunch. What a time we live in!”

“Where do you get off lecturing me?” Carolina complained. “It’s your lousy T.V. shows that turn people into dickheads!”

“Don’t be vulgar, Carolina, please.”

“I’m just saying, forget about those auditions. If they take us, we’ll be stuck here till August.”

“What do you want to do, then?”

Carolina pouted. “Nothing.”

“Shall we go to the beach?”

“No. When are we going back to the city?”

“I don’t know, Carolina,” Eden said wearily. “I’m prepared to be patient, but can you at least make a small effort? I have other things to do than be here. Channel 14 doesn’t have a flagship show for the fall and—”

“Then let’s get out of here, and you can do what you have to do.”

“No. I made arrangements to run everything from here. In fact, I have a video conference call starting now.”

“Obviously, there’s always a call, always work! That’s the only thing that interests you.”

“Carolina, it’ll only take ten minutes! I’m giving you all the time I can, you could at least acknowledge that. Just give me ten minutes and then we’ll do whatever you want.”

“I don’t want to do anything,” Carolina muttered, and went and locked herself in her room.

Eden sighed and switched on the camera of his laptop to start the conference call with his team. Ten minutes in, eyes fixed to