Fairest of All

Alternate Part 2 of "Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall"

Author's Note: A fellow fan suggested this hypothetical question - what if instead of Seth eating the poisoned apple at the end of part 1, it had been Jessica instead? What would have changed, and what would have remained the same in part 2? This is an alternate part 2 that tries to answer that question. Thanks, Erin!

Jessica woke reluctantly, consciousness bringing with it enough disorientation and discomfort that she soon wished herself asleep again. When this proved impossible, she started taking inventory of her situation in an attempt to figure out where she was.

Bright fluorescent lights ... that could be a lot of places.

Uncomfortable bed ... not much help there either.

But the IV line taped into her arm, which her eyes followed back to a bag of clear fluids hanging from a metal pole ... that narrowed the possibilities down considerably. She must be in the hospital, and if that was the case, then somewhere nearby must be ...

"Seth," she said hoarsely.

Seth, who was sitting next to her bed, smiled, reached out and took her hand. "Hullo, Jess," he said. "How are you feeling?"

With an effort Jessica turned her head to look at him. "Horrid," she said. "And before you start in on me - I surrender. You were right. Clearly I've been working too hard, and I finally succumbed to the stress."

Seth felt a pang at that. "No, Jess," he told her gently, "that's not how you ended up here."

Jessica looked at him in confusion. "It's not?"

"No." Seth's voice sank to a whisper: "It was poison. Jessica - someone tried to kill you. And they very nearly succeeded."

Jessica groaned. "Poison - are you sure?"

"'Fraid so. Do you remember what you were eating or drinking before you collapsed?" he asked.

Passing a hand over her eyes, Jessica tried to think back, but it was difficult - she was so tired, and what little she could remember was hazy and uncertain. Finally she managed to catch hold of one memory and focus on it: "The apple."

"What?"

"Eudora brought me a basket of apples. I think I was eating one ... that's the last thing I remember."

Seth looked grim.

"There's something else you should know," Jessica said, but not without reluctance. "The night she arrived in Cabot Cove, Eudora stole the notes for my new book while I was sleeping."

"Are you sure?"

She nodded. "The notes were out of order when I went to look at them the next day. But I don't believe she tried to kill me," she added hastily, correctly guessing what Seth was thinking.

"No?" Seth was quickly ramping up from 'upset' to 'apoplectic.' "Seems pretty obvious to me that she did."

"But if she intended to kill me, why not wait until I was dead to steal my notes?"

"Maybe she wasn't thinking clearly," Seth said.

"No, she was thinking all too clearly," Jessica countered. "She drugged my coffee, which proves her theft was pre-meditated."

"She what?"

Jessica winced. "Please, Seth - not so loud."

"Sorry," Seth said, dropping his voice again. "If she drugged you once, why not twice?"

"Because I think her plan was to drop in, copy my notes while I was in a drug-induced sleep, and then make a quick getaway the next day," she explained. "The only thing that kept her in Cabot Cove was the discovery of Capaletti's body."

"Maybe she killed him too."

"I doubt it. Seth - just ask Mort to try and keep an open mind, would you? Please?"

How could he deny her anything when she looked at him like that? "All right," Seth grumbled.

After leaving Jessica at the hospital Seth returned to her house with Mort.

"She says that the last thing she remembers is eating an apple," Seth told the Sheriff. "But I don't remember seeing one when I found her."

"Well, maybe it's on the floor somewhere."

They hunted around the kitchen, until Seth discovered it lying in a corner.

"Found it," he announced, holding it up. "Must've rolled over here when she dropped it."

"I'll take it in to be analyzed."

"While you're at it," Seth said, crossing to the table, "have them take a look at these." He handed Mort the basket with the rest of the apples.

Mort took them and read the note: "'To dear Jessica from Eudora.'"

"Jessica doesn't think she's responsible," Seth said, "but if you ask me, that lady has quite a bit of explaining to do."

Mort knocked sharply at the door of Eudora's room at the Hill House Inn.

"Mrs. Shipton, open the door! This is Sheriff Metzger!"

After a long pause the door was opened. "I don't wish to be rude," Eudora said, "but this is not a good time. Please come back tomorrow."

"Sorry, ma'am, but this won't wait. You're going to have to come with me."

"Why?"

Without waiting for an answer, Mort pushed past her into the room.

"You can't just barge in here!" Eudora protested.

"Actually, this search warrant says I can," Mort replied, briefly showing her the paper Judge Baldwin had given him just an hour before. Immediately his eyes went to the open attache case on the desk, and the papers inside it. "I'll need to take this with me too, if you don't mind. Now, are you going to come with me, or do I have to place you under arrest?"

Seth was waiting for them when they returned to the Sheriff's office.

"Did the report come back on the apples?" Mort asked him.

"Ay-yuh," Seth said. "Poisoned - all of them."

Eudora had a sinking feeling at the mention of the apples. "What is this all about?" she demanded.

Seth rounded on her; it was one of the few times Mort had ever seen him really angry. "A woman I care about very much almost died today, poisoned by the apples you brought her as a gift."

Eudora paled as the significance of what he had said sank in. "Jessica? She was poisoned? Is she all right?"

Her reaction took Seth aback - she seemed genuinely shocked by the news, and concerned for Jessica's welfare. Try to keep an open mind, Jessica had told him. Maybe she had been right.

"So you're saying that you didn't try to kill her," Mort said.

"Kill Jessica? For God's sake, I'm not a monster!" Eudora protested. "I swear to you, I bought those apples at a little stand just a few miles out of town. I put the basket on the front seat of my car, and I never touched them again until I handed them to her. I'm telling you the truth!"

"About everything?" Seth asked. "What about the book?"

Eudora sighed. "All right. Last night, after Jessica went to sleep, after I ... drugged her coffee, I found her notes, drove up to the interstate - there's an all night drug store that has a copying machine."

"Sounds like a pretty good motive for murder to me," Mort said. "C'mon, Floyd, let's take her out back and read her her rights."

Seth lingered in the lobby until Mort and Floyd re-emerged.

"Did you ever have one of those days when it feels like someone's been banging away at your head with a crowbar?" Mort asked him. "She refuses to call a lawyer - she refuses to talk to anyone! All I can say is thank God I've got this one wrapped up, so I can send Cutie Face over to Portland as well as the rest of those creepo reporters out there."

"You probably don't want to hear this," Seth said, "but Jessica was adamant that Eudora was not the one who landed her in the hospital."

"What? I got her dead bang," Mort said. "Her prints all over the apples, which were juiced with poison by way of a disposable syringe. We found it tossed in the garbage as well as a half-empty bottle of rat poison."

"There is one problem with that," Seth reminded him. "What's all this got to do with the murder of the private detective?"

"Come on, Doc, do I have to draw you a road map?" Mort asked. "The PI follows the lady to Cabot Cove. The lady goes out in the dead of night to copy Mrs. F's book. The PI continues to follow her. She spots him. If she's going to get away with this thievery, he's got to go! Mrs. F she's already got taken care of with the fruit basket. And oh, by the way, please don't mention those apples to anybody? That's all those vulture reporters out there would have to hear."

They were interrupted by the arrival of Liza Caspar, who had fought her way through the crowd of reporters and burst into the office. "Sheriff - is it true you've arrested Eudora McVeigh?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well, I want to see her."

"I can't let you see her. She doesn't want to talk to anyone. In fact, right now she won't even talk to a lawyer."

"I see," said Liza. "I understand you've confiscated her latest book."

"A book, yes. Hers, no," Mort said. "The pages were copied from one of Mrs. Fletcher's manuscripts."

"No!"

"Doctor Hazlitt has already identified them."

Liza turned and seemed to notice Seth for the first time. "Then that's what she's been charged with?" she said to Mort. "Theft?"

"Yes, ma'am. For the moment. And now if you'll excuse me, I really am very busy."

Liza turned on her heel, stalked out of the office, and waded back into the swarm of reporters.

Mort rubbed his temples wearily. "You wouldn't happen to have an aspirin, would you, Doc?"

"Ayuh," Seth said, and hunted around his pockets to find one.

Seth was at the hospital early the next morning, and checked in on Jessica first. He found her awake and alert, contemplating her breakfast with consternation.

"Mornin', Jess," he said. "Feeling better?"

"Better enough to recognize that beef consomme and a couple of wheat thins isn't much of a breakfast."

"Says the woman who often starts her day on little more than a cup of tea and some toast," he said. "Sorry, but it's liquids for you until I'm confident you can handle more."

Jessica stirred the thin brown liquid in her cup with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. She managed to look unhappy enough that finally Seth relented.

"If I ask the nurse to go fetch you something more substantial, will you stop pouting at me?"

"Yes."

"Fine," he grumbled, and went out to the nurses' station to see what could be arranged.

"Now," he said when he returned, "let's get down to cases. I thought you'd like to know that it was the apple Eudora brought you that did the dirty deed. But for now that information is to be kept strictly among ourselves - you, me and Metzger."

"Makes sense," Jessica said, nodding.

"Mort picked Eudora up last night - with a copy of your book in her possession, I might add. He's waiting for the county attorney to take her to Portland. That should keep you out of harm's way."

Jessica looked doubtful. "Maybe."

"Maybe? Woman, it's obvious she was after you!"

"I know it looks that way," she said, "but Seth, if indeed Eudora had intended to poison me, don't you think it would be stupid of her to buy the murder weapon at LaGruda's fruit stand down on county route 130?"

"Jessica, she tried to steal your book!" Seth sputtered. "She's a desperate, irrational woman!"

"No, I'm sorry. She's too good a criminologist to attempt a murder that clumsy," said Jessica firmly. "No - the more I think about it, the more something seems terribly wrong. For one thing, we're not even sure the private detective was following Eudora. All the slip of paper in his pocket said was 'Shipton.' For all we know, he could have been following her husband Hank."

Seth started to say something, then changed his mind. "All right, all right. I'll try to keep our Sheriff open to other possibilities," he said, "and I'll let you know if he finds anything."

A nurse knocked lightly on the door frame and came into the room with a plate of scrambled eggs and toast.

"Here we are, Mrs. Fletcher," she said cheerfully as she set the plate on Jessica's tray.

"About time, too," Seth said. "What d'you do, go to Burt Kendall's chicken farm for these?"

"Oh, no," the nurse answered. "Cook found a box of powdered eggs on the top shelf of the pantry."

Jessica and Seth exchanged a horrified look. As soon as the nurse left, Jessica pushed the plate of questionable eggs aside.

"Does she have psychic powers or something?" Mort asked when Seth related Jessica's concerns to him later that morning. "I just got off the phone with Capaletti's partner. He got back to the Big Apple about an hour ago. You know what he tells me? Capaletti wasn't following Eudora, he was following her husband."

"The next question, I suppose, is why."

"Well, that's what I intend to find out as soon as I talk to the client," said Mort. "A guy by the name of Victor Caspar. Married to that cute little number, the lady's agent."

"Yes, I hired Tony Capaletti," Victor Caspar said Mort when he tracked him down to a harborside restaurant. "Is that by chance a crime here in Cabot Cove? It certainly isn't in New York City."

"Sir," said Mort, "if you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a few questions."

"Yes, I do mind," said Victor nastily. "I'm trying to digest my lunch."

Mort was not in a mood to be put off. "Now look, sir," he said, his voice low and dangerous, "let me tell you how it is: you can either talk to me here now, or you can do it in my office - also now. Up to you."

Victor reconsidered, and then grudgingly motioned for the Sheriff to take a seat at the table.

"Did you know that he followed Shipton up here to Cabot Cove the other night?" Mort asked.

"No, but the day after when the news of the murder reached New York, I knew from the description on the television that Capaletti had been the victim," Victor told him. "After consulting with my attorney, I drove here to Cabot Cove to find out first hand what was going on."

"Can I ask you where you were the night Capaletti was murdered?"

"As it so happens, I spent the entire evening at the black jack tables of an Atlantic City casino. I can provide you with the names of at least a dozen witnesses if you wish."

Mort left the restaurant considering what Victor Caspar had told him. He knew from hard experience that it took exactly eight hours and ten minutes to drive from the Triborough Bridge to Cabot Cove, which seemed to eliminate Caspar as a suspect ... unless he'd flown in? He made a mental note to check the Portland airport's manifests for flights coming in from New York.

A disturbance caught his attention, and he spotted Bobby Shipton in a fight with one of the local fishermen.

"Okay, knock it off, knock it off!" he shouted as he pushed the two men apart. "What's going on here?"

"This punk lost a couple hundred to me playing pool," the fisherman said, glaring at Bobby, "and now he won't pay up!"

Mort took a look at Bobby, whose face was a palette of bruises. "Looks like he paid up plenty," he said. He grabbed Bobby by the elbow and hustled him toward his cruiser. "Come on, I'm taking you to the hospital to get cleaned up."

"Take it easy, Doc, okay?" Bobby complained as Seth daubed iodine on his cuts and bruises.

"You're lucky," Seth told him. "A little deeper, and this would have required stitches."

Bobby sighed.

"Mr. Shipton," Mort said, "when you and your father drove up here, were you aware of anyone following you?"

"Followed? By whom?"

"That detective, Tony Capaletti."

"The stiff they found on the rocks?" Bobby said. "No way. The way I hear it, he was following Eudora."

"Are you saying you think she killed him?" Seth asked, trying to sound off-handed.

"Well, you've got to understand about Eudora," said Bobby. "Her books, that was her whole world. To hell with everything else. She would've done anything to stay on top. I mean, she tried to kill Jessica Fletcher, didn't she? Steal her book? Pop told me last night. I mean, that's crazy!" Seth applied more iodine, and Bobby yelped in protest. "Ow, ow! Doc - please."

"It wouldn't sting so much if you'd just keep still," Seth retorted.

Hank Shipton burst in. "Bobby," he said. "What happened? You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Bobby said. "You should've seen the other guy. Scared out of his shorts - thought he'd killed me." He laughed.

Seth finished working on Bobby's face and stepped back, stripping off his latex gloves as he did so. "You're all set," he told him. "Now if you'll excuse us, we have a sick friend to see."

Hank stopped him as he turned to leave the treatment room. "If you're going to see Jessica, tell her I'm sorry," he said awkwardly. "Liza told me about the manuscript. That was a terrible thing to do, but Eudora hasn't been herself. I tried to see her in jail, but she won't talk to anyone, not even me."

"You should know that I had a talk with Liza Caspar's husband," Mort asked. "Turns out he was the guy who hired Capaletti, to follow you."

"Look, Sheriff, I didn't kill that PI," said Hank. "I didn't even know he was following us. Me and Bobby, we rolled in here about two in the morning, checked in, and sacked out. I was asleep when my head hit the pillow, I swear." He sighed, then added, "Victor froze out Liza the same way Eudora froze me out. I don't know how it happened. It just did, but that's that. We intend to live happily ever after. Maybe not on as rich a scale, but what the hell."

"Well, I should think the two of you will do quite well, once you get your settlement from Eudora," Seth said.

Hank laughed softly. "My settlement! Oh, that's funny. No - before we got married, Eudora mad me sign a dozen different papers. When we split, I get zilch. I may even owe her money."

"So that's what he said," Mort told Jessica as he finished recapping his interview with Victor Caspar. "Capaletti followed Shipton Cabot Cove because he knew he was seeing Caspar's wife."

"But Hank Shipton didn't come up with Liza," Jessica said as Seth checked her IV. "He came up with his son Bobby."

"Yeah, I know. So where was Liza at the time?" Mort asked.

"Well, didn't she tell Victor that she was working late? Maybe she was."

"Yeah," said Mort. "And Mr. Charm School spent the entire time playing black jack in Atlantic City - or so he says. You know, this is crazy. A guy gets killed in Cabot Cove and here we are worrying about a couple of people who had to be in New York at the time!"

Jessica paused, a thoughtful look on her face.

Mort sighed. "Now what did I say?" he asked.

"Mort ... if Capaletti was following Hank Shipton, obviously he went where Hank went. And where Hank went the night of the killing was the Hill House."

Seth finished swapping out the empty bag of fluids for a new one. "You think that's where the killing took place?" he asked her.

"There, or nearby," Jessica answered.

"I'll check it out." He got up and strode out of the room, dialing his cell phone as he went.

Once Mort was gone Seth sat down and took Jessica's hand. "Can I get you anything, Jess?"

Jessica stretched out her other arm. "You take out this IV," she said hopefully. "I really don't think I need it anymore."

"I'd like to keep it in just a little bit longer," he told her, "so you can get one more liter of saline. After that I promise you I'll take it out, and then you can go home."

"Home," Jessica sighed, her head falling back against her pillow. "I'm looking forward to getting home."

"I'm sure you are. Oh - I ran into Eudora's husband Hank downstairs while I was patching up his son after a fight. He sends his regards."

"Has he spoken to Eudora?"

"No - he said he tried, but she's still refusing all visitors. But he'd heard about the business with the book, and felt he should apologize on his wife's behalf. She hasn't been herself, he said."

Jessica nodded. "You said Bobby Shipton was in a fight?"

"Yes - apparently a scuffle down at the waterfront. Mort rescued him and brought him in to the ER. His opinion about Eudora was a little less nuanced than his father's."

"Oh? What did he say?"

"His considered opinion," Seth said, irony coloring his tone, "is that Eudora's theft of your book and attempt to kill you proves that she's certifiable."

"Hmm." Jessica fell silent, lost in thought.

Seth could practically see the wheels turning. "Jess? What is it?"

Jessica looked up with blue eyes clouded with worry. "Seth - how did Bobby know about the attempt on my life?"

"I suppose his father told him."

"No," she said, shaking her head. "He couldn't have. Only the three of us and Eudora knew about the apples, and Hank told you Eudora wouldn't speak with him."

Seth quickly caught on to Jessica was getting at. "Then the only way Bobby could have known ..." he left the rest of the thought unspoken.

"Is Bobby still in the ER?" she asked urgently

"I'm sure he's been discharged by now," said Seth.

"Then you have to find Mort at the Hill House and tell him to track him down - and quickly."

Mort, his deputies, and a cadre of volunteers were scouring the grounds of the Hill House, finally finding what they were looking for in the woods behind the inn.

"Sheriff, over here!" Floyd called. "Could be this is where it happened!"

"Let's take a look."

"Right by this tree," said Floyd. "You see there, that rock? Appears to be blood, don't you think?"

"Yeah, could be," Mort said. "Blood on the base of this tree, too."

"And over there there's tire tracks in the mud," pointed out Floyd.

"Someone drove a car in here and maybe moved the body," Mort speculated.

"Ayuh," agreed Floyd.

Suddenly something caught Mort's eye. He walked forward a few paces and picked up a twisted pair of glasses, the shattered lenses flickering in the daylight.

"Whaddaya know?" he said softly. "A busted pair of glasses. This is where it happened, all right. Nice work, everybody!" he called to the others. "Floyd, get those forensics guys on the horn. Tell them I want a cast of those tire tracks so I can match 'em to the victim's car. Also tell them I want them all over this place like graffiti on the Battery Park Local."

Floyd looked at him blankly.

"Ticks on a hound dog," Mort amended.

"Right! Yes, sir, Sheriff!" Floyd said, and set to work.

Seth arrived at the Hill House just as Hank and Liza were coming back from having a look at the murder scene.

"Have you seen Sheriff Metzger?" he asked them.

"Yeah, he's out in the woods behind the inn," Hank said.

"They found some blood and some broken eyeglasses," Liza explained. "The Sheriff thinks that's where the private detective was killed. Well, I have a lot of packing to do. Hank, I'll ring your room as soon as I'm ready. Don't forget about your shot. You should've taken it an hour ago." And she went inside the inn.

"Shot?" Seth asked, his medical curiosity naturally piqued.

"My insulin shot," explained Hank. "I'm a diabetic."

Well, that explained where Bobby had obtained the syringes to lace the apples with poison. "Mr. Shipton," Seth said urgently, "we need to find your son. Now."

"Bobby?" asked Hank. "What's Bobby got to do with this?"

A few minutes later Mort was knocking on the door of the room Hank shared with Bobby. "Shipton, you in there?" he demanded. "This is Sheriff Metzger. Open up!"

There was no answer, but the door was unlocked, so Mort, Hank, and Seth went in. The room was a mess. They were looking around it when suddenly Seth made a sobering discovery.

"Sheriff?" he said. "You'd better have a look at this." In his hand he held the private investigator's missing shoulder holster. It was empty.

"It gets worse," Hank said. "My insulin's missing, along with some of my syringes."

Jessica shifted restlessly in her hospital bed, anxiously waiting for Seth to return. She was hoping that he would bring with him two bits of good news: that Mort had arrested Bobby Shipton, and that she could be released to go home. The tick of the clock and the slow drip of her IV marked the passage of time, which seemed to have slowed to a crawl.

Finally, the door to her room opened.

"Seth? Did Mort find Bobby?"

But it wasn't Seth who came in - it was Bobby Shipton.

"Nope," he said, a crooked grin on his face. "Not yet."

Oh, boy, Jessica thought. She could think of only one reason why Bobby would come looking for her, and knew she was in trouble. Instinctively she scooted as far away from him as she could get from him on the bed, and reached for the nurse's call button.

Bobby's smile vanished. "Nah-ah," he said, shaking his head pulling the murdered private investigator's gun halfway out of his pants pocket. "Don't touch that, or I'll shoot you and the first person to come into this room."

Jessica's hand dropped back to her side.

"Bobby," she said carefully, "things are bad enough. Don't make them worse."

"They can't get any worse!" To her surprise, the young man seemed to be almost on the verge of tears. "I had everything perfect, but you had to survive and mess it all up." While he was speaking he took a syringe out of another pocket, and filled it with his father's insulin. "And soon they're going to know that it wasn't Eudora who poisoned those apples or shot that detective, and it's going to be your fault." He stuck the needle into the IV bag and injected the syringe into what was left of the saline, which continued to course down her IV line.

Jessica didn't need him to tell her what he was doing: insulin was something she had once used as a murder weapon in one of her books. A little bit was medicine, but too much was poison. It was quick, potent, and very difficult to detect after death.

Just as he was stepping away, the door was flung open. Jessica flinched as Bobby pulled out the gun, but by a stroke of luck the first person to come in was Hank, followed by Mort and Seth. The shock of seeing his father was enough to prevent Bobby from pulling the trigger, though he didn't lower the gun.

"Whose gun is that, Bobby?" Hank asked, taking a slow step forward. "Did you take it from that private investigator after you killed him?"

"That wasn't me."

"It was you! What did you kill him for, Bobby? Why'd you do that?"

"I'm telling you, Pop, I didn't ..."

"Then where'd you get the gun?" Hank demanded.

"I had to do it, Pop," Bobby said, "'cause he knew. He was gonna fix it so Eudora dumped you. It's a lot of money, Pop! Anything we ever wanted. Maybe you didn't care, but I cared! Over twenty years, I never had nothing, until you married her. Think I was gonna let that creep take it away?"

"Give me the gun, Bobby," Hank said slowly.

"No, Pop."

"Give it to me or I'll take it ... or maybe you'd like to kill me too."

Bobby wavered as his father approached, then let him take the private investigator's gun out of his hand. Mort relieved Hank of it as Bobby broke down and cried in his father's arms.

During the stand-off Jessica had been fighting the effects of the insulin but it was a loosing battle. As her blood sugar plunged a cold sweat broke out on her forehead and blackness started to overwhelm her vision. The last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was Seth rushing to her bedside and yanking the IV line free of her arm.

It took several hours and a fair amount of dextrose to stabilize Jessica, but when all was said and done she was awake and well enough for Seth to keep his promise and let her leave the hospital. He drove her over to Mort's office first, where the sheriff was getting ready to release Eudora.

"Dory," Hank said when she came out. "I'm sorry. It was Bobby who poisoned those apples."

"Oh, Hank!"

"Crazy kid. He got it in his head that if you were convicted of murder I'd get all the money, and he'd be on easy street. So he went to Jessica's to plant the gun in the room you'd been using. When he saw the basket of apples and the car and he knew that you'd brought them ... he got a better idea."

"Oh, Hank, I'm so sorry," Eudora said.

"Yeah. Listen, can I give you a ride back to the inn? I'm going to have to call a lawyer." He looked questioningly at Mort. "Sheriff?"

Mort nodded. "Yeah, she's free to go."

As they headed for the door Eudora turned back for a moment and looked back at Jessica, who held out her hand as a gesture of forgiveness. But Eudora shook her head and quickly turned away and Jessica, disappointed, let her hand drop with a sigh.

"Well," said Seth. "There goes one grateful lady. If you hadn't figured out Bobby was responsible, she'd still be sitting in there."

"Yeah," Mort said. "Got to tell you the truth, ma'am - if I had to take that into a court of law ... All I can say is, it's a good thing we caught the guy with the PI's gun!"

"All I can say is it's past my bedtime," Seth remarked. "Jess, can I give you a lift home?"

"Oh, yes, Seth. Thank you," Jessica said. Then she turned to Mort. "Good night, Sheriff," she said, smiling.

"Good night, ma'am," he replied. "You too, Doc," he added.

"Ayuh," Seth answered.

A few minutes later they pulled up in front of Jessica's house.

"Well, how 'bout a cup of coffee, Seth?" Jessica offered.

"Uh, no thanks. You should get to bed. As for me, I've got to get an early start tomorrow. I'm going fishing over by Little Duck Island. It's just going to be me and Caleb - there'd be plenty of room if you'd like to come along."

"Seth!" Jessica exclaimed. "I just got out of a hospital!"

"And you almost didn't," Seth answered gravely. He paused, then added, "I was hoping that maybe you'd thought about tasting the wines, smelling the roses ..."

"I have, Seth, really," Jessica said, "but I've also been thinking through a tricky spot in my new book, and I have just got to write it now while it's still fresh."

"Suit yourself," said Seth. "Oh, if you change your mind, we'll be leaving about nine, thereabouts."

"Well, thanks," said Jessica, getting out. "So, good night for now, and thanks for the ride!"

"My pleasure."

Seth drove away, and Jessica stood on the dark curb and waved after him.

The "tricky spot" proved to be no less difficult the next morning, and Jessica made several unsatisfactory attempts to push through it, all of which ended up as wadded up balls of paper in the wastebasket. She was in the middle of another try when the doorbell rang, distracting her. Figuring that she needed a break anyway, she got up and went to see who was at the door - and was surprised to see Eudora standing on the threshold.

"Eudora!" Jessica exclaimed. "I thought you left last night."

"Well, I intended to, but things got a little complicated," Eudora said. "I didn't want to leave without saying good-bye, and to thank you."

"Oh, don't be silly," Jessica said. "Come inside."

"No, I really can't. I have a hundred things on my agenda," she said. Then she paused, lowered her eyes, and said softly, "I treated you shabbily. I'm ashamed, I'm embarrassed ... if there is anything I can do to make amends, I will do it. ... Please, don't say anything kind, just good day!" She turned and fled back to her car, but Jessica followed her.

"Eudora, wait, please," she said. "I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry about Hank."

"Oh, that's all right," Eudora said. "It was never right for us, even from the beginning. He and Liza are a perfect match. I wish them nothing but happiness, really."

"What'll you do?" asked Jessica. "Another book?"

"Oh, no - at least, not right away," she said. "I have a sister in Oregon, and she has three adorable children I hardly even know. So for a few months I'll be Aunt Eudora, and see if I can put some sanity back into my life."

"Good," said Jessica, and gave her a hug.

She watched Eudora drive off, then turned and went back inside to return to her writing. But when she sat back down at the typewriter she only stared at it, her thoughts wandering far away elsewhere.

Jessica shook her head, tore the paper out of the typewriter, and crumpled it up - this would never do. And then she remembered Seth's plans for the day and smiled ... she got up and called his office to see if the invitation was still on , but only got hold of his answering machine:

"This is the doctor speaking. If you're violently ill, get yourself over to the hospital. They can't do much more damage than I would."

Jessica laughed silently and hung up. She glanced at the clock - ten o'clock! And Seth had been planning to leave at nine! She raced through the house grabbing her slicker, hat, and sweater, and headed to the harbor as fast as she could on the slim hope that he hadn't left yet. Sure enough Caleb's boat was still tied up at the dock, so she dropped her bicycle against the fence, snatched her slicker and hat out of the basket, and pounded down the ramp.

"Seth!" Jessica called as she ran along the dock. "Seth, don't go!"

Seth heard her voice and smiled, having known all along that she would eventually change her mind.

"Well, now, I'd just about given up on you!" he said as he helped Jessica step aboard.

"After that gracious invitation, how could I refuse?"

"Well," said Seth, "if you want to make yourself useful, why don't you bear a hand with that bowline."

Jessica looked at him in disbelief as she caught her breath. "You mean you've been waiting here for me for an hour, and all you can tell me to do is to see to that bowline?"

"We haven't been waiting," Seth retorted. "We had ... mechanical difficulties."

"Oh," said Jessica. "Well. Fine, I'll see to the bowline."

She went up to the bow of the boat and began to haul in the lines while Caleb stood behind her, smoking his pipe.

"Oh, morning, Caleb," she said brightly.

"Morning, ma'am," he said. "Fact is, we've been waiting here for over an hour. Sure glad you showed up - the Doc was getting mighty testy."

He left for the bridge and Jessica smiled. Seth had waited for her after all.

As they moved off from the dock Jessica glanced back to Seth, waved, and shot him a wink; Seth smiled and waved back before coming forward to join her at the bow. Jessica took off her hat and shook out her golden hair in the breeze as they headed out to Sea, ready to begin a new chapter together.