Dan and Nancy reside in the peaceful suburbs just outside of Portland, where they
are living out their golden years. And though they met later on in life,
their marriage spans over two decades and is seen as a pillar of the
community. It's a love story pulled right off the shelf. Nancy is a
struggling romance novelist. She likes to write about betrayals, sex, and even
murder. Dan is a chef and culinary instructor. He enjoys foraging through the
woods for fresh mushrooms and growing edible flowers. But when Dan is shockingly found
dead in his classroom, Nancy's once simple life is turned upside down because as
the investigation unfolds, Nancy finds herself at the center of a murder case that
could be ripped from the pages of her novels. Listen to Happily Never After
Dan and Nancy, a story about what happens when the line blurs between fix
and reality. Early and ad Frey on Wondery Plus. I'm about to play
a clip from Happily Ever After Dan and Nancy. Nicole Herman was lounging on
a beach in Croatia with a perfect view of the ocean. It looks a
lot like Oregon, with the exception that the water is like turquoise. It
was nice and sunny, exactly how Nicole pictured her honeymoon. Nicole's new husband
got up to take a swim, but she didn't join him. She was
in the middle of a novel. The man on the book cover had a
square jaw and a come hitherstare. All day, Nicole had just been waiting
to get back to him. He sat on the floor and gestured for her
to sit between his legs. He showed her how every gun worked, then
loaded and unloaded each of them. Are you showing me this so I can
kill my husband? Travis spoke slowly, choosing each word with care. Maybe
in the beginning you meant something to him, but now you're just another loose
end. You will know a hundred ways to kill you and make it look
like an accident. She pressed her forehead against his and closed your eyes.
Don't like you. I'd rather you were a knuckle dragging me under thor unless
I'm dead and this is over meeting, But I do plan to use your
body until I leave scandalous. I was probably reading anywhere from one hundred and
fifty to three hundred pages. Nicole had been laid out on the beach for
hours reading. She was already on book number two in the Wrong Never Felt
So Right series, and she was determined to get through all five books by
the end of her trip. Every book was more or less the same burly
former navy seal comes to the rescue a beautiful young woman on the run from
her dangerous husband. It was an odd choice of reading for a honeymoon,
but away from the beaches of Croatia. Back home in Portland, Oregon,
Nicole was a deputy district attorney. Those are things as a prosecutor that you
sometimes want to get ahead of and in front of. And for months she
and her team had been trying to solve a murder, but progress had been
slow. Direct evidence kept eluding them. As the pressure mounted, Nicole and
her team had turned to an unlikely lead, a series of romance novels written
by the dead man's wife. It was a little bit meta in terms of
what we were dealing with. Her books were packed with details borrowed from their
own lives as a local Portland chef and a romance novelist. Details that the
das had no other way to get their hands on. So now Nicole was
doing homework on her honeymoon. I wasn't so sure there would truly be anything,
but it was sort of in the back of my mind. What if
something similar to this has played out in one of her novels, and it's
all written right there for us to find. More shirts were going to be
unbuttoned, more dresses were going to get unzipped, and every new chapter,
every new scene, could potentially be the one to crack the murder case that
was waiting for her back home. Follow Happily Never After, Dan and Nancy
on The Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts,