A Nice Place to Visit
There was something vaguely familiar about the quaint little New England town when Weston Avery looked down at it from the higher elevation of the interstate. Even the name, Quiet Valley, tugged at his memory. Of course, it was not uncommon for him to experience these feelings of déjà vu. For the past twenty years, he had traveled through so many small towns that he could hardly be expected to have firm memories of them all.
At the end of the exit ramp, he turned east onto Main Street. WELCOME TO QUIET VALLEY, the sign read. POPULATION 392.
"Ah, this is just the kind of place I'm looking for," he declared as he drove past the picturesque town common. "This will be a perfect setting for my next book."
Weston continued along Main Street for several blocks until he came upon the Maple Tree Inn, a three-hundred-year-old building that served as both a restaurant and a hostelry. The beautifully restored inn looked warm and inviting and much more appealing than a Marriott or a Sheraton.
"I hope there's a vacancy," he said as he parked his car in the adjacent lot.
The interior of the Maple Tree Inn was every bit as charming and inviting as the exterior. The décor was early American, and the lobby was dominated by a large stone fireplace. Behind the front desk stood a woman whose beauty made Weston's heartbeat quicken.
"Welcome to the Maple Tree Inn," she said. "I'm Bianca Devlin. How may I help you?"
"I'd like a room for a few days or perhaps even a couple of weeks."
"You're in luck then," the woman announced with a warm, captivating smile. "There's a room on the second floor I can let you have for as long as you'd like."
Bianca handed Weston the guest register, and when she saw the name he had signed in the book, a look of surprise registered on her face.
"Are you the Weston Avery?"
"The one and possibly the only."
"I've read several of your books."
"I hope you enjoyed them."
"Oh, yes. I'm quite a fan of your work," she admitted.
Weston quickly glanced at the woman's left hand to see if she was wearing a wedding ring. He smiled when he saw that he wasn't.
"Then perhaps you and your husband will do me the honor of dining with me this evening," he suggested—another clever ruse to confirm that she was single.
"I'm not married," she said, her eyes twinkling with merriment. "And I'd love to have dinner with you."
* * *
After Weston finished unpacking, he decided to walk into town and buy a few personal items at the general store. Upon returning to the inn, he found an elderly woman behind the front desk.
"Are you that writer fella?" she asked. "The one who asked Bianca out to dinner?"
"Yes, I am."
"Bianca went home to get changed. She told me to tell you she would meet you here in the lobby at seven."
"Thank you."
Weston looked at his watch. It was only 6:30, so he sat down in one of the eighteenth-century period chairs beside the fireplace to wait.
On the coffee table was the latest edition of the local newspaper. The headlines proclaimed that a prominent businessman had been arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder his wife. Evidently, even in a bucolic utopia like Quiet Valley men had extramarital affairs with exotic dancers and hired thugs to murder their spouses.
As the author of seventeen bestselling mystery novels, Weston Avery had more than a passing interest in murder. He had just finished reading the article when he saw Bianca walking across the lobby toward him. His eyes widened appreciatively.
What a knockout! he thought.
"Since I've only just arrived in your lovely little town," the writer said, "I'll leave it to you to select the restaurant."
"I must admit I'm biased," Bianca replied. "I think our food here in the Maple Tree Inn is the best in town."
"Sounds good to me. I was driving most of the day, and I'm not anxious to get back behind the wheel so soon."
Since Bianca owned the inn, they had no difficulty getting a table, even though there were several people waiting in the bar.
"So, what brings you to Quiet Valley?" Bianca asked while they waited for the server to bring them their meal.
"It was pure chance. Whenever I begin a new book, I just get in my car and drive until I find a town that looks like a perfect setting for a murder."
Bianca's laughter was intoxicating.
"Quiet Valley isn't exactly the murder capital of the world."
"I hope not. If it were, I wouldn't be here. I prefer to find some nice Norman Rockwell village, far from the crime and violence that plague the more urban areas. I think it's much more interesting to have a wolf living among the sheep than among a pack of other wolves."
"How long do you plan on staying here?"
"Normally, I spend two or three weeks in a place—just until I get a good 'feel' for it, and then I go back to Boston and finish the book." He looked deep into her sapphire eyes and added, "But something tells me I may stay in Quiet Valley a little longer than usual."
* * *
The more Weston saw of the sleepy New England town, the more he thought it a paradise on earth. There wasn't a poorly kept property or a resident without a smile and friendly word. Even the dogs wagged their tails whenever he encountered them on the street. Of all the wonderful things and people in Quiet Valley, Bianca Devlin ranked at the top of the list. Weston had known the beautiful innkeeper for less than a week when he realized he'd fallen hopelessly in love with her.
"How's your book coming?" Bianca asked when he came down to breakfast one morning.
"I haven't actually started it yet," the author admitted. "I've been far too busy exploring your town to think about murder."
Bianca knew he had also spent a good deal of time with her. Since he had arrived in Quiet Valley, the two of them had spent every evening together. As much as she enjoyed his company, though, she didn't want to keep him from writing.
"It has been years since I've had a vacation, so I don't feel the least bit guilty about taking a few days off to enjoy myself."
It wasn't long before the author became so enamored of the town and the beautiful owner of the Maple Tree Inn that he began to entertain serious thoughts of moving out of Boston and permanently settling in Quiet Valley.
"Why would you want to do such a thing?" Bianca asked with surprise.
"I would imagine the answer is obvious," he replied, kissing her on the back of her neck.
She stiffened involuntarily.
"What's wrong? I thought you cared for me as much as I cared for you."
"I do," she readily assured him. "But I don't think we should rush things. After all, I have this inn to run, and you have a successful writing career."
Weston laughed and took her in his arms.
"I promise not to monopolize your time, so you don't have to worry about not being able to run the inn properly. And as for my career, I can write here just as well as I can in Boston."
Yet even as the words passed his lips, he knew they were untrue. Since he had arrived in Quiet Valley, he hadn't written a single word.
* * *
With the home-cooked meals Weston was eating three times a day, he became concerned about his expanding waistline and decided to do some walking for exercise. His daily constitutionals took him from one end of Main Street to the other. Quiet Valley, he discovered, was completely surrounded by mountains. The interstate was the only way in and out of town, except for a few winding dirt roads that led up into the hills.
During his walks, Weston invariably bought the local newspaper, sat on a bench in the town common and followed the latest events in the case of the businessman who hired an unemployed bartender to rid him of his wife so he could marry his girlfriend, a former stripper. The case had all the ingredients of a good crime novel: money, murder and sex.
Perhaps I'll base my next book on this case, Weston thought as he folded up the paper and tucked it under his arm.
Unfortunately, he still could not concentrate on writing. He had never before experienced writer's block, for he was never at a shortage of either words or ideas. It was simply a question of—as athletes said—getting into "the zone." Weston, despite his higher-than-average vocabulary, couldn't adequately define what "the zone" was, but if pressed to explain, he would call it a mental niche, a place where he could shut out the world around him and concentrate solely on his novel.
In a way, Quiet Valley was like "the zone," cut off as it was from the neighboring communities. Weston chuckled at the analogy. He supposed in order to write, he would have to get into "the zone" within "the zone." On that thought, he got up from the bench and continued his walk.
When he neared the entrance to the interstate on the westernmost end of Main Street, he made a U-turn and walked back toward town in an easterly direction. He looked at the familiar sign: WELCOME TO QUIET VALLEY — POPULATION 304.
Weston wrinkled his brow in consternation. When he had first seen that sign, he made a quick estimate of four hundred people. Yet clearly, three hundred and four was much closer to three hundred than to four hundred. Had he misread the sign? What did it matter anyway, three hundred or four hundred people? There was one very special person in Quiet Valley, and he preferred to concentrate on her as he walked back to the Maple Tree Inn.
Continuing east, he passed people he had come to know by name. He waved to Mr. Barnes, the elderly barber, and to Miss Carson, the middle-aged kindergarten teacher. Mrs. Jeffries was walking her dog, a dachshund-beagle mix named Rusty; and twelve-year-old Bobby Davis was riding his scooter on the shoulder of the road.
The easternmost point of Weston's daily route was the last house on Main Street before the road veered to the left and became Brinley Drive. Yet as he approached the end of the road, the writer was surprised to see the lovely old Victorian house he noticed on his previous walks was no longer standing on the corner. It had not burned down, for there was no charred rubble on the lot. Nor had it been torn down, for there was grass growing on the spot where the house had stood the day before.
Bianca was doing routine paperwork behind the front desk when Weston returned to the inn later that afternoon.
"Is something the matter?" she asked with concern when she saw the perplexed look on the writer's handsome face.
"You know that old Victorian house on the corner of Main Street and Brinley Drive, the pink one with the elaborate gingerbread trim?"
"Yes. That's the Garners' old place. Why? Were you thinking of buying it?"
"No. It's gone."
Bianca's face suddenly lost all its color.
"Gone?"
"Yes. Gone! And what's even more bizarre, there's no sign that it was ever there."
Bianca's reaction to the missing house was much stronger than Weston's, perhaps because Quiet Valley was her home, while he was just a visitor.
* * *
The morning brought a new day. Weston followed his usual course, again stopping at the common to read the paper. The murder trial of the businessman accused of hiring someone to kill his wife was to begin later that morning.
"Wow!" Weston exclaimed to himself. "Justice sure moves swiftly in Quiet Valley. In Boston, it normally takes months and sometimes years for lawyers to prepare a case and go to trial, but then there's s a lot more crime in Beantown."
After finishing the paper, he headed west toward the interstate. As he made his U-turn at the end of the street, he looked up at the sign again. It read WELCOME TO QUIET VALLEY — POPULATION 257.
"What's going on here?"
Naturally, he had no answer.
As he headed east, he carefully examined his surroundings. The beauty parlor and a two-story colonial were gone, as was one of the side roads that headed north. As fantastic as it sounded, Quiet Valley was disappearing!
* * *
Bianca lay in Weston's arms, breathing softly. To her surprise, in less than two weeks, she had fallen in love with the writer.
"I don't have the slightest idea what's happening in this town," he confessed, "nor do I want to stay here and find out. I'll wait and hear about it on CNN or read about it in The National Tattler: REAL LIFE BRIGADOON VANISHES INTO THE MISTS OF THE BERKSHIRES."
"That's not very funny," Bianca chastised him.
"You're right. There's nothing funny about any of this. That's why I'm leaving in the morning. I want you to come with me."
"I can't leave here. This is my home. I worked hard to make the Maple Tree Inn a success, and I don't want to abandon it now."
"How do you know the inn will still be here tomorrow? Nearly half the buildings in town are already gone, and the population is down to under a hundred. Why stay here and wait for your turn to disappear?"
"I'm not leaving, and that's final."
"All right. But I can't stay."
Bianca did not try to dissuade him. She had known from the beginning that Weston would not remain in Quiet Valley. He belonged in Boston at the keyboard of his computer, writing.
Neither of them slept that night. Instead, they clung to each other, knowing they might never see one another again, despite the feelings that had grown between them. Contrary to what the starry-eyed romantics claimed, love couldn't conquer all.
After breakfast the next morning, Weston went to his room and packed his bags. Then he carried his luggage downstairs and placed it in the trunk of his Mercedes. When he went back inside to check out and pay his bill, he made one last attempt to convince Bianca to leave with him.
"I love you," he cried. "We don't have to live in Boston. There are lots of nice small towns where we could go. We can get married and ...."
"Stop it!" she cried, pain clouding her beautiful face. "There's nothing more in the world I'd rather do than marry you, but I can't leave Quiet Valley. It's impossible."
Realizing the futility of any further arguing, Weston said goodbye and turned to leave. Behind him, he heard Bianca sob, but he looked straight ahead as he walked out the door.
When he turned the key in his car's ignition, he momentarily held his breath. Since arriving in Quiet Valley, he'd done all his traveling on foot. He wasn't sure if, after sitting idle all that time, the car would start. But the engine turned over on the first attempt, and with a last look at the Maple Tree Inn, Weston pulled out of the parking lot and headed west on Main Street.
As he drove toward the entrance to the interstate, he kept his eyes on the road. Yet in his peripheral vision, he noticed several more buildings were gone. He put the thought out of his mind, preferring to leave supernatural matters to the horror writers.
Weston got as far as the common before he realized that despite the fear of vanishing into thin air, he had no wish to leave Quiet Valley—and Bianca, in particular. True, he might disappear if he stayed there, but what would he have if he left? Nothing but an empty apartment in Boston. Heeding his heart and ignoring his head, he turned around in the middle of Main Street and drove back to the Maple Tree Inn.
"What are you doing here?" Bianca cried when she saw him enter the lobby.
"I just couldn't leave. I love you too much."
"You can't stay here."
"Why not?"
Bianca fought to hold back her tears.
"Please don't ask; just go!"
"You know what's happening here, don't you? In fact, you've known all along. You're frightened by it, but you're not surprised."
"Please go. Can't you see you're torturing me?"
"I'm not leaving until you tell me what you know," he adamantly declared, feeling the sting of betrayal.
Bianca walked out from behind the desk and poured herself a glass of brandy from the decanter that stood on a lowboy near the fireplace.
"You can't stay here because you don't belong here," she explained. "You have to return to Boston and finish your book."
"I'm not writing anything at the moment."
"Yes, you are," she insisted, her hands trembling so badly she had to put down her glass. "You're currently writing a novel entitled Murder for Hire about a small-town businessman who hires an unemployed bartender with a criminal record to murder his wife, so he can marry his stripper girlfriend."
"No. That's the story I was reading in the local newspaper."
"That murder never actually happened. There is no philandering businessman, no exotic dancer girlfriend, no murdered wife and no shady bartender. Quiet Valley is slowly disappearing because it never really existed except in your imagination."
"That's ridiculous!"
Weston laughed nervously. Although he denied her claim, he sensed there was a ring of truth to it.
"And you?" he argued. "Don't tell me I dreamed you up, too."
"That's exactly what you did. That's probably why you fell in love with me so easily."
Weston reached out to take her in his arms, but this time his hands passed right through her.
"I'm not real," she repeated, with tears falling from her eyes. "If you don't return to Boston and finish your book, Quiet Valley, the Maple Tree Inn and I will all disappear forever."
As Bianca spoke, the lovely eighteenth-century furniture in the lobby slowly began to fade. Even Bianca herself became semitransparent.
Weston ran outside and got behind the wheel of his Mercedes. The tires screeched as he pulled out of the parking lot and raced up Main Street. There were no cars on the road, no pedestrians on the sidewalks and only a handful of buildings remaining in the town.
When he reached the western border, he jammed on his brakes. The entrance/exit ramp to the interstate was gone. Knowing he would never get the Mercedes up the steep incline to the highway, he got out of the car and started to run up the hill. Twice he stumbled, and once he turned his ankle, but he would not let the sharp pain deter him. He had to get back to Boston and finish the book if he wanted to save the life of the woman he loved. Finally, winded and perspiring from the effort, he crested the hill, only to discover that the interstate, too, had vanished.
"No!"
His voice echoed back as if mocking him.
Weston turned to look at the town. Only a dim outline of the Maple Tree Inn remained, standing in the middle of an empty field that was once a quaint New England town. The sign below him read WELCOME TO QUIET VALLEY — POPULATION 1. He closed his eyes and willed his mind to make the town reappear, but when he opened them again, Quiet Valley was gone.
* * *
The first thing Weston noticed was the hundred-year-old grandfather clock that had been ticking away the time in the den of his Beacon Hill brownstone since the day he moved in, not long after his first novel had been released in paperback after selling more than fifteen million hardcover copies worldwide.
By the position of the sun shining through the bay window, he knew it was afternoon. The computer was turned on, so apparently he had been writing. He leaned forward and clicked his mouse to deactivate the screensaver. A name on the screen jumped out at him: Bianca Devlin. He scrolled up to the beginning of the page and read what he had written. The paragraph described the murdered woman's sister, the owner of the Maple Tree Inn, as a highly attractive but terribly lonely woman.
Weston fought back his tears as he read the description of the inn and its proprietress. She had seemed so real. Maybe she was, he thought with hope. Maybe "the zone" was nothing more than an alternate reality, and the people and places he created while inside it would live on after the book was completed. If so, it was more important than ever that he finish writing it.
* * *
"It's bound to be another bestseller," the publisher said as he handed Weston an advance copy of Murder for Hire.
The author looked at the artwork on the cover. The rendering of the Maple Tree Inn was just as he had described it in his book, just as he had seen it when he was trapped inside "the zone."
As he looked at the drawing of the inn, he could clearly imagine Bianca Devlin just inside the lobby, standing behind the front desk. Weston missed her terribly, and he longed to return to Quiet Valley, to walk along Main Street and read a newspaper while sitting on a park bench in the town common. Yet he knew he could never return to that paradise, not even while in "the zone," for if he did, he would no doubt want to stay and by doing so, he would destroy all that he loved.
As the publisher praised his work in glowing terms, Weston flipped to the final chapter of the book, the denouement. He turned the pages and read the concluding paragraph in which the handsome private detective and the beautiful owner of the Maple Tree Inn walk hand in hand across the common, looking optimistically toward the future.
"That Boston detective was a nice touch," the publisher announced. "Maybe you should use him in your next novel, too."
Weston shook his head and rose to leave.
"I'd prefer to let Bianca Devlin and the detective live happily ever after," he said, nodding goodbye to his publisher.
To himself, he added, I owe her that much, at least, for all the happiness she brought me.
Salem would be good at making things disappear at the Maple Tree Inn, especially the food!
