Authors: Meg Cabot
To: Tony Salerno
From: Mel Fuller
Subject: Saturday
Hi! Just a quick note to tell you not to worry—I’ll be there Saturday.
Yes, the dog guy actually showed up!
See you then.
Proud to be your future wife’s maid of honor,
Mel
To: John Trent
From: Jason Trent
Subject: How’d it go?
She’s a redhead? That’s IT? You’re just going to leave me hanging here?
WHAT HAPPENED???
Jason
P.S.: Stacy wants to know, too.
To: Jason Trent
From: John Trent
Subject: How it went
Sorry. I got hung up on a story, and then I had to go back to friedlander’s aunt’s place to walk the dog. Max failed to mention that the misleadingly named Paco is a GREAT DANE. The dog weighs more than Mim.
So what do you want to know?
Did she believe I was Max Friedlander? I am sorry to say that she did.
Did I play the part of Max Friedlander to perfection? I guess I must have, or she wouldn’t have believed I was he.
Do I feel like a grade-A heel for doing it? Yes. Self-flagellation for me.
The worst part is…well, I already told you the worst part.
She thinks I’m Max Friedlander
. Max Friedlander, the ingrate who doesn’t even seem to care that someone coldcocked his eighty-year-old aunt.
Melissa cares, though.
That’s her name. The redhead. Melissa. People call her Mel. That’s what she told me. “People call me Mel.” She moved to the city right after college, which makes her about twenty-seven years old, since she’s lived here for five years. Originally, she’s from Lansing, Illinois. Have you ever heard of Lansing, Illinois? I’ve heard of Lansing, Michigan, but not Lansing, Illinois. She says it’s a small town where you can walk down Main Street and everyone goes, “Oh, hi, Mel.”
Just like that. “Oh, hi, Mel.”
On her bookshelves are, among a great many other books, copies of every single thing ever written by Stephen King. Melissa has a theory that for every century there’s a writer who sums up the popular culture of the time, and for the nineteenth century it was Dickens, and for the twentieth it was Stephen King.
She says it has yet to be determined who is going to be the voice of the twenty-first century.
You know what my ex, Heather (you remember Heather, don’t you, Jason? The one you and Stacy referred to as the mouth breather?), had on her bookshelves, Jason?
The complete works of Kierkegaard. She’d never read Kierkegaard, of course, but the book covers matched the color of her sofa cushions.
That’s what she saw me as. Heather, I mean. A six-foot-two checkbook that could pay off her decorating bill.
Remind me again why Mim was so upset when Heather and I broke it off?
Oh, and when I got there, she offered me beer. Melissa, not Heather.
Not seltzer. Not wine. Not Glenfiddich on the rocks, or a Cosmo. Beer. She said she had two kinds: Light and root. I had root. So did she.
She showed me where Max’s aunt keeps the dog and cat food. She told me where to buy more, in case I ran out. She told me what Paco’s favorite walks were. She showed me how to lure a cat named, and I kid you not, Mr. Peepers, out from underneath the bed.
She asked me about my work for the Save the Children fund. She asked me about my trip to Ethiopia. She asked me if I’d been to visit my aunt in the hospital, and if it had upset me very much, seeing her with all those tubes coming out of her. She patted me on the arm and told me not to worry, that if anyone could come out of a coma, it was my aunt Helen.
And I stood there and grinned like an idiot and pretended I was Max Friedlander.
Anyway, I’m moving in. To Helen Friedlander’s apartment. So, if you need to call me, the number’s 212-555-8972. Only don’t call. Loud ringing noises, I’ve discovered, upset Mr. Peepers.
Gotta go.
John
To: John Trent
From: Jason Trent
Subject: Who are you?
And what have you done with my brother?
He used to be a rational human being until he started pretending to be Max Friedlander and met this Melissa person.
ARE YOU INSANE??? You can’t move into that woman’s apartment. What is wrong with you? GET OUT NOW WHILE YOU STILL CAN.
Jason
To: John Trent
From: Jason Trent
Subject: I think it’s sweet
Hi, John. It’s Stacy. Jason let me read your last e-mail. I hope you don’t mind.
I also hope you don’t listen to him. I think what you are doing is very sweet, helping out that poor girl next door with the old lady’s pets. Jason is trying to tell me that you aren’t doing it to be nice, and something about red hair, but I am not listening to him. He has a very sick mind. He told me just the other day that the music on my pregnancy exercise video sounds like the music from a porno!
When has he ever watched porn, is what I would like to know.
Anyway, I’m just saying, don’t you feel bad about pretending to be this Max person. It’s for a greater good. And why don’t you ask the little redhead over for dinner on Sunday night? I’ll make sure I tell the girls to call you Max. They’ll think it’s fun, I’m sure. Like a game!
Well, that’s all for now. Hope to see you soon. Your loving sister-in-law,
Stacy
To: Michael Everett
From: John Trent
Subject: Contact
Please note that for the next several weeks, I will be available only by cell phone. Do not leave messages for me on my home phone. I can always be reached by e-mail, either at this address or my new one, [email protected]
Thanks.
John Trent
Senior Crime Correspondent
New York Chronicle
To: Jason Trent
From: [email protected]>
Subject: For Stacy
Dear Stacy,
I’d just like to thank you for being so understanding about my current situation. You see, my brother, your husband, has a tendency to take a very cynical view of everything.
Don’t ask me how he got this way, since Jason has always been the lucky one: He’s the one who got the head for business, while all I got was, if you’ll excuse the cliché, the bod for sin.
He was also lucky enough to get you, Stacy. I guess it’s easy for a guy who’s got such a gem for a wife to sit back and criticize the rest of us poor slobs, who can’t even find a geode out there, let alone a jewel. I guess Jason doesn’t remember how hard it was for him to meet a girl who was actually attracted to him, and not the Trent family fortune.
Apparently, Jason doesn’t remember Michelle. Be sure to ask him about Michelle, Stacy. Or Fiona, for that matter. Or Monica, Karen, Louise, Cathy, or Alyson.
Go on, ask him. I’d be curious to see what he has to say about any of them.
What Jason doesn’t seem to realize is that he has already found the best girl in the world. He forgets that some of us losers are still out there looking.
So tell your husband to cut me a little slack, will you, Stacy?
And thanks for the invitation, but if it’s all right with you I’ll skip dinner this Sunday.
Love,
John
P.S.: Write back to me at my new address, listed above. I’m not sure whether it works yet.
From: Jason Trent
Subject: Your new email address
John:
Jerry lives? Are you insane? Have you lost your mind? THAT’s the address you chose as your “redhead safe” account?
You might be surprised to know that most girls don’t like Jerry
Garcia, John. They like Mariah Carey. I know this from watching VH1.
And stop writing to my wife. All I’ve heard from her all day is Who’s Alyson? Who’s Michelle?
Next time I see you, Jerry, you are a dead man.
Jason
To: Jason Trent
From:
Subject: Jerry
You’re wrong. Most girls prefer Jerry Garcia to Mariah Carey. I just took an office poll, and Jerry won over Mariah by a margin of nearly five to one—although the girl from the mailroom doesn’t like either of them, so her vote doesn’t count.
Besides, I looked at Melissa’s CDs when she was in the kitchen getting the root beer, and I didn’t see a single thing by Mariah Carey.
You know nothing about women.
John
To: Sergeant Paul Reese
From: John Trent
Subject: Helen Friedlander
Reese—
I was wondering if you could do me a favor. I need a look at anything you’ve got on Helen Friedlander, 12-17 West 82nd, Apt. 15A. She was a B & E with, I believe, an assault—a pretty serious one, since she’s been in the ICU ever since, comatose.
I appreciate it, and, no, it’s not for a story, so don’t worry about your commanding officer.
John Trent
Senior Crime Correspondent
New York Chronicle
To: Max Friedlander
From: John Trent
Subject: Helen Friedlander
Don’t worry. Everything went fine. I safely evaded Ms. Fuller’s queries about my work for the Save the Children fund. Nice one, by the way. I suppose by children you mean those eighteen-year-old gum-chewing sticks you spend your days photographing in fashions only fifty-year-old divorcees can afford?
You really are a bastard, you know.
John
To: John Trent
From: Max Friedlander
Subject: Lighten up
God, I forgot what a stick in the mud you could be. No wonder you haven’t had a girlfriend in so long. What was wrong with the last one? Oh, yeah, I remember: the Kierkegaard collection that matched the sofa. Dude, you need to chill. Who cares what books a woman’s got on her shelves?
It’s what she’s like between the sheets that matters, heh heh heh.
Max
To: John Trent
From: Sergeant Paul Reese
Subject: Helen Friedlander
Trent—
File’s on its way. Or should I say, some copies of the file that were accidentally made while the CO was at lunch. If any of this shows up in your paper, Trent, you can kiss that Mustang of yours goodbye. Consider it impounded.
Brief summation of incident involving Helen Friedlander:
Call came in at approximately 8:50
A.M.,
reporting unconscious female in her home. We had a unit in the park nearby. They arrived on the scene at approximately 8:55
A.M.
Found victim being given first aid by woman purporting to be neighbor. Later confirmed woman as one Melissa Fuller, living next door in apartment 15B.
Victim approximately eighty-year-old woman. When originally found, was facedown on living room carpet. Witness claims in her
statement that she turned the woman to check for heartbeat, respiratory distress, etc. Victim breathing with weak pulse when EMS arrived at 9:02
A.M.
No sign of break-in or illegal entrance to home. Outside lock not tampered with. Door unlocked, according to neighbor.
According to doctors, victim was struck on the back of the head with blunt object, possibly small-caliber pistol. Assault occurred approximately twelve hours before discovery of victim. Questions put to doormen and neighbors revealed that
a) no one called upon apartment 15A the night previous to the discovery of the victim.
b) no one heard any sort of disturbance at or around 9:00
P.M.
that evening.
One added note: There were a number of the victim’s clothing thrown across her bed, as if previous to accident, victim had been trying to decide what to wear. However, victim, when found, was in nightclothes, including hair curlers, etc.
A reporter might try to make something out of the fact that this could be construed as another attack by the transvestite killer. There is one major difference, however: The transvestite killer actually kills his victims, and tends to stick around to make sure they are really dead.
Additionally, the transvestite killer’s victims have all been in their twenties, thirties, and forties. Mrs. Friedlander, though apparently spry for her age, was unlikely to be mistaken for a younger woman.
Well, that’s it. We got nothing. Of course, if the old lady croaks, that’ll change things. But unless that happens, this is being treated as an interrupted robbery.
That’s all I can think of.
Good luck.
Paul
To: Nadine Wilcock
From: Mel Fuller
Subject: He didn’t mean it
Nadine, you know he didn’t mean it. At least not the way you think he did.
All Tony was saying is that if you’re going to sit around and complain about your weight so much, why not do something about it and join a gym. He never said you were fat. All right? I was there. HE DID NOT SAY YOU’RE FAT.
Now are you seriously going to tell me you didn’t you have fun at the party? And Tony’s uncle Giovanni is a doll. That toast he gave the two of you…it was so sweet! I swear, Nadine, sometimes I’m so jealous of you I could burst.
I would give anything to find a guy with an uncle Giovanni who’d throw me a pool party and call me a Botticelli Venus.
And you did NOT look fat in that suit. My God, it had enough Gortex in it to keep Marlon Brando’s flab in check. Your tiny belly didn’t stand a chance.
So would you snap out of it and act like an adult?
If you’re good, I’ll let you come over and spy on Max Friedlander with me…. Oooh, look, tonight he’s got on a muscle tee….
Mel