“Exactly,” I said. “I think X—that’s what I’ve been calling the unknown writer—might finally have become so incensed over Godfrey’s treatment that he—or she—killed him.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. She handed the folder back to me. “If X was so unhappy about the contract, why didn’t he or she hire a lawyer and take Mr. Priest to court?”

“Not knowing what the contract stipulated,” I said, “I don’t have a solid answer for that. But reading between the lines, I figure that the contract between Godfrey and X must have bound X to complete secrecy, otherwise the deal was off.”

“That’s a possibility, I suppose,” Kanesha said. “But what’s at stake here? Mr. Priest’s reputation, of course, but what about money? How much could he make from the books?”

“While I was waiting for you to arrive, I did some research on the Internet,” I said. “I found an article published a little over a year ago that ranked the top-selling American writers by their projected annual incomes. Godfrey was in the top ten. According to the article, his annual earnings were in the neighborhood of twenty million dollars.”

Kanesha wasn’t expecting that. Her eyes popped wide open. “That’s significant money,” she said. “How could he make so much?”

“For one thing, the books are published in something like thirty languages, and they apparently sell really well all over Europe, and in Japan, too. Then there are the movie adaptations. If Godfrey had a cut of the profits, that could add up to a lot of money, too. Several of the films based on the books have been big hits, both domestically and in foreign countries.”

“Twenty million dollars a year.” Kanesha shook her head as if she still couldn’t take it in.

“X had to know the books were generating huge income,” I said. “And what if his cut was small compared to what Godfrey was raking in? Add to that the fact that he’s not getting any credit for his work, and he might have become more and more frustrated every year.”

“It’s possible,” Kanesha said. “I grant you that. And it makes as much sense as anything else I’ve been able to discover. But how the heck am I going to figure out who X is? I don’t even know where X lives.”

“I think X lives in Athena,” I said. I explained my reasoning, and Kanesha picked up the folder again and glanced through the letters.

“It makes sense,” she said when she finished. “Now all I have to do is track down some writers’ group that X belonged to.” She rolled her eyes. “Talk about looking for needles in haystacks.”