Jessica Fletcher Murdered by Host

(Here is another installment from my series TV Character Obituaries.)

CABOT COVE, ME – Famed mystery writer and all-around nosy old bitty, Jessica Fletcher, was murdered this past weekend at the home of all-around eccentric, Ralph Nadir. The novelist and the town crank had been the only residents left in this quaint fishing town along the rocky coast of Maine. That was because of the phenomenon called Cabot Cove Syndrome, which had resulted in the murder of anyone who either touched or had social intercourse with Mrs. Fletcher. The logical outcome was that a town with a very small population eventually lost all its residents to some bizarre form of homicide, whether as victim or as killer now spending time in the slammer, which in Maine entails long days in the prison yard breaking the shells of giant lobsters. The only one immune to the Cabot Cove Syndrome was the human curse named Jessica Fletcher.

“It was pure self-defense,” said Nadir. “It was either that she-devil or me, and I have a dentist appointment next week that I can’t miss.”

Mr. Nadir is known around town – that is, when there were people living in town to know stuff about other people – for his morning ritual of walking an imagery elephant along the beach and carrying a duffel bag with which to clean up the imaginary elephant poop. An outside investigator has theorized that the reason Nadir was the last man standing in Cabot Cove was because he always wore a T-shirt imprinted with a big red line through an image of Fletcher, which had the desired effect of keeping the famous mystery writer far enough away as to dilute the curse to a mild annoyance.

The last Cabot Cove denizen to fall prey to the Fletcher Curse was former librarian, Dawn Bonet. She was 87-years-old with a bad heart, severe joint pain, who had grown to hate her dog, and therefore wanted to end her days. She decided to invite Jessica and a Girl Scout troop from a neighboring village over for a weekend of lawn bowling. She knew that someone would die on the first day so to give Ms. Sherlock an extra day to solve the crime; and knew also that the murders in Cabot Cove were usually light-hearted in their execution and choice of victim, which would excuse the young girls and mark Dawn as the latest sacrifice to Jessica Fletcher’s insatiable curiosity. Sure enough, one of the girl’s mothers snuck in and whacked Dawn with a toaster bought at a flea market because the old librarian had once over-charged the woman for a late return of Anna Karenina. Jessica had noted stale bread crumbs on the corpse, put two and two together, and it all ended with the woman being led away in handcuffs shouting: “The old bitch deserved it. You know how long it takes to read Anna Karenina?”

“Everyone called Jessica a genius,” bellowed Nadir.  “But what I did was pure genius. I burned my ‘no more Jessica Fletcher’ T-shirt to soften her up a bit. Then I invited her over for a weekend with the promise that a cosmetic surgery convention would be there, too. But it ended up being just the two of us. Now the script called for someone to be murdered, and since Jessica never does the actual murdering, that meant that I would live and she would die. Do you get the simple logic of it all? Brilliant,eh? And what was my murder weapon? It had to be something she would never suspect, right? Well folks, you know that elephant that only I can see? It sat on Mrs. Fletcher. Hah! And that, my friends, puts an end to the Cabot Cove Syndrome.”

(Check out my website: http://www.authorjamesfjohnson.com)

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