favorite mystery novels from the previous year, and I wrote the entire thing in about an hour. I also figured out how to link the titles of the books to our online store, and, for that, John was extremely grateful. “We’re just trying to sell books here, Mal,” he’d said. “Not trying to start arguments.”
CHAPTER 3
Agent Mulvey was holding a printed-out sheet of paper. I took it from her, glanced down at the list I’d written, then said, “I remember this, but it was a long time ago.”
“Do you remember the books you picked?”
I glanced down at the printout again, my eyes going immediately to Double Indemnity, and suddenly I knew why she was here. “Oh,” I said. “The man on the train tracks. You think that’s based on Double Indemnity?”
“I think it could be, sure. He was a regular commuter. Even though he’d been killed elsewhere, it was made to look like he’d jumped off the train. When I heard about it, it made me immediately think of Double Indemnity. The movie, anyway. I haven’t read the book.”
“And you’re coming to me because I’ve read the book?” I said.
She blinked rapidly, then shook her head. “No, I’m coming to you because when I realized that maybe this crime was mimicking a movie, or a book, I did a Google search that included Double Indemnity and The A.B.C. Murders together. And that’s how I found your list.”
She was watching me expectantly, making eye contact, and I felt my own eyes skidding away from hers, taking in the large expanse of her forehead, her nearly invisible eyebrows. “Am I a suspect?” I said, then laughed.
She leaned back a little in her chair. “You’re not an official suspect, no. If that were the case, then it wouldn’t just be me here questioning you. But I am investigating the possibility that all these crimes were committed by the same perpetrator, and that that perpetrator is purposefully mimicking crimes from your list.”
“Mine can’t be the only list that includes both Double Indemnity and The A.B.C. Murders?”
“To tell the truth, it pretty much is. Well, yours is the shortest list that contains them both. Both books were on other lists together, but those lists were all much longer, like there was one called ‘a hundred mysteries you need to read before you die,’ that sort of thing, but yours jumped out. It’s about committing the perfect murder. Eight books are mentioned. You work at a mystery bookstore in Boston. All the crimes have happened in New England. Look, I know it’s probably all a coincidence, but I thought it was worth following up.”
“I get that it’s somewhat clear someone is copycatting The A.B.C. Murders, but a body found near the train tracks? That seems a stretch to say that’s from Double Indemnity.”
“Do you remember the book well?”
“I do. It’s one of my favorites.” This was true. I’d read Double Indemnity around the age of thirteen and was so thrilled by it that I sought out the film version with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck that was made in 1944. That film led me down a rabbit hole of film noirs, my teenage years spent seeking out video stores that stocked classic film. Of all the noirs I saw because of Double Indemnity, none of them topped that first viewing experience. Sometimes I think the Miklós Rózsa score to that movie is permanently embedded in my brain.
“On the day that Bill Manso’s body was found on the tracks, one of the emergency windows on the train had been busted open, near to where the body was found.”
“So, is it possible he really did jump?”
“Not a chance. The scene-of-crime officers could tell that he’d been killed in a separate location and driven to the tracks. And the coroner confirmed that he’d died from blunt force trauma to the head, probably from some kind of weapon.”
“Okay,” I said.
“That means that someone, probably the person who killed him, or an accomplice, was on the train, and smashed the emergency window to make it look like he’d jumped.”
For the first time since we’d started talking, I felt a little jolt of alarm. In the book, and the movie as well, an insurance agent falls for the wife of an oil executive and, together, they plot to murder him. They do it for each other, but also for the money. The insurance agent, Walter Huff, fakes an accident policy on Nirdlinger, the man they plan to murder. Included in the policy