The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer: A gripping new thriller with a killer twist, Joël Dicker [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

January 1, 1994

Happy New Year to me. Yesterday we went to the New Year’s gala at the Northern Rose Hotel in Bridgehampton. I met someone there. A man from outside the region. I’ve never felt anything like this before. Since yesterday, I’ve had a tingling sensation in my belly.

February 25, 1994

Today I made an anonymous call to the town hall. I spoke to the deputy mayor, Alan Brown. I think he’s a good man. I told him what I knew about Gordon. Let’s see what happens.

I told Felicity what I’d done. She flew into a temper. She said it was going to backfire on her. Well, she shouldn’t have told me about it. Mayor Gordon is a son of a bitch, everybody has to know it.

March 8, 1994

I saw him again. We’re going to meet every week from now on. He makes me so happy.

April 1, 1994

I saw Mayor Gordon today. He came to the bookstore. We were alone in the store. I told him everything: that I knew the whole story, and that he was a criminal. It came out all in one go. I’ve been brooding about this for two months. Obviously, he denied it. He needs to know what happened because of him. I’d like to tell the newspapers, but Felicity stopped me.

April 2, 1994

Since yesterday, I’ve been feeling better. Felicity yelled at me over the phone, but I know I did the right thing.

April 3, 1994

Yesterday, while jogging, I went as far as Penfield Crescent. I ran into the mayor, who was on his way home. I said to him, “Shame on you for what you did.” I wasn’t scared. For his part he seemed strangely uncomfortable. I feel like the eye pursuing Cain. Every day, I’ll go there and wait for him until he gets back from work and remind him of his guilt.

April 7, 1994

Wonderful day with him in the Springs. He fascinates me. I’m in love. Samuel doesn’t suspect a thing. Everything’s fine.

May 2, 1994

Had coffee with Kate. She’s the only person who knows about him. She says I shouldn’t risk my marriage if it’s just a fling. Or else I should make up my mind and leave Samuel. I don’t know if I’m brave enough to make up my mind. The situation suits me fine.

June 25, 1994

Not much to tell. The bookstore is doing well. A new restaurant will be opening soon on Main Street. Café Athena. It looks nice. Ted Tennenbaum is opening it. He’s a customer in the bookstore. I like him.

July 1, 1994

Mayor Gordon, who has not set foot in the bookstore since he found out that I know, came in for a long time today. He put on a strange act for me. He wanted a book by a local writer, and spent quite a while in the room we reserve for local writers. I’m not too sure what he was doing. There were customers and I couldn’t really keep an eye on him. In the end, he bought Chief Hayward’s play, “The Darkest Night”. After he left, I went and had a glance in the local writers’ room, and noticed that the pig had left a copy of Steven Bergdorf’s book about the festival all dog-eared. I’m sure he wanted to check if the stock he left us is selling so he could make sure we’re paying him his share. Is he afraid we’re robbing him? He’s the thief.

July 18, 1994

Kirk Hayward came to the bookstore to get back his play. I told him it had sold. I thought he’d be pleased, but he was very upset. He wanted to know who had bought it. I told him it was Gordon. He didn’t even want the ten dollars that were due to him.

July 20, 1994

Chief Hayward came back. He says that Gordon is claiming he wasn’t the one who bought the play. But I know it was. I told Kirk again. I’d even made a note of it. See my entry of July 1, 1994.

JESSE ROSENBERG

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Four days after opening night

That morning, by the time Derek and I got to our room at the Chronicle, Betsy had pinned photocopies of Meghan Padalin’s diary to the wall.

“Meghan was the person who made that anonymous call to Alan Brown in February 1994, telling him that Mayor Gordon was corrupt,” she said. “From what I gather, she found it out from someone called Felicity. I don’t know what exactly this Felicity woman told her, but Meghan was very angry with Mayor Gordon. About a month or so after her anonymous call, on April 1, when she was alone in the bookstore, she finally confronted Gordon, who’d come in to buy a book. She told him she knew everything, and called him a criminal.”

“Can we be sure she is referring to his corrupt business deals?” Derek said.

“That’s what I wondered,” Betsy said, going to the next page. “Because two days later, while she was out jogging, Meghan confronted Gordon in front of his house and hurled abuse at him. She writes in her diary: I’m like the eye pursuing Cain.”

“The eye pursued Cain because he’d killed,” I said. “Did the mayor kill someone?”

“That’s what I’m wondering,” Betsy said. “In the months that followed, and up until her death, Meghan ran as far as Mayor Gordon’s house every evening. She’d wait in in the park for him to get home and when she saw him, she would waylay him and remind him of his guilt.”

“So the mayor would have had a reason to kill Meghan,” Derek said.

“The perfect culprit,” Betsy said, “if he hadn’t died in the same shooting.”

“Do we know any more about this Felicity?” I asked.

“Felicity Daniels,” Betsy said with a smug little smile. “It took one call to Samuel Padalin to trace her. She lives in Coram now and she’s waiting for us. Let’s go.”

Felicity Daniels was sixty years old and worked in a