Edit to Death

Chapter One

Chapter One

“Did you bring the stuff?” asked Myrtle briskly as she answered her front door.

Miles followed her inside. “You’re making it sound like a drug deal. But yes, I brought them.”

He laid down a page of cat food coupons on her coffee table. “I think you’ll find they’re all in order.”

“Excellent. I tell you Miles, Pasha is eating me out of house and home,” said Myrtle. Pasha was a beautiful, feral, black cat who enjoyed spending time, on a limited basis, with Myrtle.

Miles, always one to keep a careful eye on Pasha’s whereabouts asked, “Speaking of, is she around?” He sat down on Myrtle’s sofa and she sat in her favorite armchair.

“Currently? No. But by my estimate, she should be jumping through the kitchen window in the next fifteen minutes,” said Myrtle.

Miles nodded as if indicating that he now understood the parameters of his visit length. “Shouldn’t you be taking the cat to the vet? Aren’t owners supposed to report unusual changes in activity and appetite?”

Myrtle said, “Pasha couldn’t be healthier. Her coat and eyes shine. Her teeth are tartar-free. The problem is that Pasha is too good at hunting. She has been out there, outside, relentlessly subduing nature for quite some time and now has eliminated her prey. There’s very little for the poor dear to catch now.”

Miles, who had seen evidence of Pasha’s successful hunting expeditions, shifted uneasily on the sofa. “There was certainly a fairly regular display of Pasha’s trophies. Bats, snakes, chipmunks, birds, lizards, shrews, and other assorted small creatures.”

“She’s a brilliant hunter,” said Myrtle proudly. “It’s just that her exceptional prowess is now creating issues. Anyway, that’s why she’s been hungrier than usual. I haven’t seen any little corpses scattered around and she’s been asking for canned food. That seems a direct connection to me. Thus, the coupons from the newspaper. And I’ve already procured Red and Elaine’s coupons, too.”

Miles nodded. “I foresee the next step is a trip to the grocery store to stock up.”

“Well, if I time the coupons with an upcoming sale, Pasha will be sitting pretty for a while,” said Myrtle. “And the sale starts tomorrow.”

Miles raised his eyebrows. “That is a remarkable thing to know. The flyers for the sales don’t distribute until Wednesday morning. How do you know not to stock up now?”

Myrtle gave him a smug look. “I taught the manager of the store. Sometimes he gives me tips. He has to know what’s going to be on sale so that he can arrange for the staff to put sale items on the end caps.”

Miles nodded. This was no real surprise to him. Myrtle had taught English to nearly everyone in town over a certain age.

His eye lingered on a stack of papers on Myrtle’s table. “Speaking of teaching, why does it look like you’re grading papers? You have a red pen out. I’m having some horrible flashbacks.”

Myrtle shot the papers a look of disgust. “That’s because I’m basically grading papers. Sloan has gone off the deep end and the paper’s editing was non-existent. You must have noticed.”

“No matter how much I’d have noticed, it wouldn’t have been on the scale of how much you noticed,” said Miles. “Why has Sloan gone off the deep end?”

Sloan Jones was the editor of the Bradley Bugle and another former student of Myrtle’s. He was also her editor since she wrote a helpful hints column . . . and, when circumstances allowed, covered crime.

“I thought you’d have heard. Sally broke up with him. He’s devastated and completely preoccupied with moping around over Sally—to the extent that the paper has ‘there, their, and they’re’ errors, among other grievous problems,” clucked Myrtle.

Miles nodded. “And you persuaded Sloan to send the stories your way before he ran them in the paper.”

“Naturally! I couldn’t have my name associated with the paper in its current iteration. I have a position to uphold in town. He emails them to me, and then I print them out so that I can pull out my red pen. I don’t seem to edit as well with a digital copy. After I input the changes digitally, then I send them back to him. He’s incredibly grateful,” said Myrtle firmly.

Miles was less certain.

“Don’t you want a break? Those papers are fairly bleeding red ink.”

“And they should be! Take a look,” said Myrtle, motioning to the pile of papers as if it needed to be handled with gloves.

Miles carefully picked them up and sifted through them to keep them in order. “You’ve gotten carried away.”

“Carried away? With good grammar in the newspaper?” said Myrtle, looking at Miles as if he’d lost his mind.

“Some of this stuff needs to be corrected. I doubt Sloan intended for the possessive its here, for sure. But you’re correcting subjunctive stuff, too. Let’s put it this way, Myrtle. If Sloan is as low as you’re saying, he might cry when he gets this. You don’t want to be responsible for that, do you?”

Myrtle flinched. If there was one thing she hated, it was tears. “Well, I suppose it’s easy for me to get on a roll. It’s hard to see the stories littered with mistakes and not do anything about them.”

“I’d recommend restraint. If we head to the diner for lunch, you might be able to overlook at least some of the more minute transgressions. I’d think it would be very dispiriting for a newspaper editor to get revisions like that. Particularly if Sloan is already as upset as you say,” said Miles.

“All right then, distract me.”

Miles knit his brows.

Myrtle sighed. “Distract me from what I’m doing. Be entertaining. Tell me what’s going on with you.”

Miles looked pleased. He reached into the pocket of his slacks and pulled out a new phone. “This is what’s going on with me.”

“A phone?” asked Myrtle. Her gaze strayed back to the red pen and paper.

“Yes, but it’s a new phone. It has all sorts of bells and whistles,” said Miles eagerly.

Myrtle sighed. “All right, I’ll bite. Why not show me one of the bells or whistles?”

Miles stooped next to her. “See this icon on the home screen? It’s a voice recorder. It’s excellent. The recordings are clear even if the person speaking isn’t talking directly into the phone.”

Myrtle lifted an eyebrow. “And what are you doing with this voice recorder? Anything nefarious? Or at least interesting?”

“I’m recording my doctor visits,” said Miles proudly.

Myrtle nodded, glancing at the red pen again.

“You see, when I’m sitting there in a gown and the doctor is giving all sorts of information and instructions, I can’t pay enough attention to take it all in. All I’m thinking about is the fact that I’m sitting in a gown and how ridiculous I appear.” He looked down gratefully at his current attire of khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt. “Now I can listen to his instructions whenever I want.” To prove it, he hit the icon and the doctor’s voice droned on the importance of eating bananas.

Myrtle perked up. “Bananas sound good right now. Actually, food in general sounds good. So we’ll go to Bo’s Diner? I hear that they have a new menu item there.”

Miles put a hand to his chest. “Careful, Myrtle. I’m not prepared for shocks like that. That menu hasn’t changed since the 1950s, has it?”

“It’s the grandson. He’s wanting to make things a little more modern up there. Apparently, he’s even putting the diner up on social media,” said Myrtle. “He’s taking some sort of poll to see if folks are willing to try something new at the diner—and then diners are supposed to vote on what their favorite new menu item is.”

“I’m scared to ask,” said Miles.

“It’s nothing healthy, so it probably won’t appeal to you. It’s a pimento cheese dog with barbeque sauce.”

Miles made a face. “I’ll plan on sticking with some tried-and true-offerings.”

“Well, let’s head on out, if we’re going to make it back in time for our soap opera,” said Myrtle, standing up.

Miles flinched a bit at the words our soap opera. “Really, Myrtle . . .” But he was cut off by the doorbell.

Myrtle frowned. “For heaven’s sake. Don’t tell me we’re doing this again. I don’t want another record day of people dropping by to say hi.” She strode toward the door, cane in hand in a somewhat aggressive posture.

Miles said mildly, “Everyone was simply being nice. Checking up on you.”

“I suspect Red planted some sort of horrid rumor that I was under the weather, just so people would come visit me and tie up my day.” Myrtle peered out the window. “Pearl Epps!”

It wasn’t clear from Myrtle’s voice whether she was happy to see Pearl at her door or not, but she did open it.

Pearl beamed at her. She was a tall, thin woman of about seventy-five. She was always carefully made-up with lots of brightly colored cosmetics and wouldn’t have left the house unless she was dressed up. Today’s outfit was a floral dress with blue ruffles covering the top. She carried a large tote bag.

“Myrtle!” she said, reaching out to give Myrtle a hug.

Myrtle hugged her briefly before pulling back and gesturing into her living room. “Please come in, Pearl. You know Miles, don’t you?”

Pearl beamed at him. “I do, yes. Oh goodness, I’m not interrupting anything, am I? Lunch plans?”

Miles exchanged a look at Myrtle. “Nothing that can’t be put off.”

Pearl grinned. “You did have lunch plans until the doorbell rang. Well now I feel like a genius.”

Myrtle smiled politely.

Pearl lifted the tote bag onto the small dining room table and carefully unloaded a plastic container. “Lunch! Or supper, if you like. It’s chicken, broccoli, and rice.”

Myrtle said in a suspicious voice, “Has Red been talking about me? I swear he’s told everyone that I’m laid up in bed or something. People keep coming over . . . although you’re the first to bring food.”

Pearl gave a trilling laugh. “If he has, I haven’t heard about it. What a horrible thing for him to do.”

Myrtle said, “A typical thing for him to do. If he hasn’t, then what is all of this delicious food in aid of, Pearl?”

Pearl beamed at her. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

Myrtle nodded, unsurprised. “Which is?”

Pearl hesitated as her gaze fell on the stack of papers. “What on earth is that?”

Miles said, “Myrtle has gotten carried away with editing the local newspaper.”

“I thought maybe a red pen had leaked out,” said Pearl slowly.

Myrtle asked, “The favor, Pearl?”

Pearl sighed. “Well, now I’m feeling a little anxious about it, but the truth is that I was going to ask you to edit my memoir. I was hoping that maybe you wouldn’t be too busy to take it on, but I didn’t know that you were editing the entire newspaper. Which, actually, looks like it might be a time-consuming job.” Again, her gaze slowly tracked over the stack of papers and the angry-looking red marks covering the one on the top.

Myrtle shrugged. “I don’t have an official role in editing the newspaper, although Sloan should certainly put my name on the masthead, now that I think about it. It’s just that he’s too distracted right now to do a good job.”

Pearl raised her eyebrows. “Because of Sally dumping him.”

Miles winced. He was always surprised how everyone knew everyone else’s business in small towns.

“Exactly. But I could scale back what I’m doing. In fact, Miles inferred that it might be wise to scale it back anyway,” said Myrtle. “That I was being rather harsh.”

Pearl looked more hopeful. “That would be wonderful, Myrtle. And yes, I brought the food to butter you up. I know you’re fantastic at proofreading. I can’t really pay you very much, but I can feed you.”

“Could I see the manuscript?” asked Myrtle.

Pearl eagerly reached into the tote bag again. “I’d hoped you’d say that. I brought it along just in case.”

Myrtle took a large bundle of papers from Pearl. She had tied a ribbon around them. Myrtle warily skimmed the first twenty pages or so to estimate the time commitment it would take. The pages were fairly clear of mistakes.

“I’ll do it,” said Myrtle.

Pearl clapped her hands. “Oh, wonderful! You’ve made my day.”

Miles said, “What made you decide to write a memoir?”

Pearl turned her bright blue eyes his way. “It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I used to think that memoirs were written by people with exciting and extraordinary lives. People who traveled and moved in interesting circles and lived through historic times. But then I started reading a lot of memoirs at the library and realized that the most interesting ones of all were the ones that hit closer to home.”

Miles said politely, “I’m sure it will be very interesting. You’ll focus on your family?”

There was a shadow that passed in front of Pearl’s eyes and she gave a short laugh. “You could say that.” She paused. “I may be giving the wrong impression about this memoir, actually. Or, maybe I’m letting you make assumptions about the type of book that I’d write.”

Miles reddened a little as if he’d been caught out making exactly those sorts of assumptions about the old lady in the floral dress with the ruffles. But Myrtle gazed thoughtfully at Pearl.

“You mean that this isn’t just a sweet tale about how your grandmother worked alongside your grandfather in the fields? And how your father picked himself up by his bootstraps to make something of his life? And so on?” asked Myrtle.

Pearl smiled at her, but this time the smile didn’t seem to reach up to her blue eyes. “It’s not that kind of story. I’m not trying to be deliberately mysterious, really.”

Myrtle said, “Well, you’re certainly supplying a teaser, aren’t you?”

Pearl twinkled at her. “Just to ensure that you’ll dive right in. But I think you’ll find the story surprising. What’s that new genre they talk about? Domestic noir?”