Elizabeth Cosin handed in her pages a couple of weeks ago, and that might have been the end of it.

She’d concocted an original, stop-and-go car chase on La Brea, a police shakedown of the mayor, and the abduction of the mayor’s close friend. There was a lot of guilt flying around, and some of it stuck to Elizabeth herself.

“While I was glad to give you something you could use,” she said, “I was feeling slightly bad about leaving future writers hanging -- that in coming up with the kidnapping of Celeste, I gave you a major headache.”

She knew that other writers would take up our story where she left it, and in fact, contributor Paul Smolarski did just that the following week, sending the mayor on a productive reconnaissance mission to Celeste’s house before launching him toward a late rendezvous in Santa Monica with her abductor.

But Elizabeth, a television writer and mystery novelist, still couldn’t get “Right of Way” out of her head.

“I'm writing something now that's putting my mystery skills to the test,” she said, “and whenever I put it down for a bit, I realized I was starting to think about our mayor and his predicament. I started ruminating about the midnight meeting under the pier and how it might play out.”

How it played out -- so far -- can be found in our newly posted pages, 42-46. The writer: Elizabeth herself, making her our project’s first repeat winner.

One tight spot she had to address was how Celeste’s kidnapper could escape the heat after the mayor tipped off two L.A. detectives in advance of their meeting.

“The boat was the first thing I thought of,” she said, “only because in all the years I lived 10 blocks from that pier, I hardly ever saw a motorboat near there. So I thought why not throw that in as the getaway?

“We'll probably catch some flack from people who know better about the surf, but that's the beauty of the movies -- anything can happen if you want it to. So there.”

Works for me. And now Elizabeth can finally get back to her novel without “Right of Way” intruding on her thoughts.

Unless, of course, that guilt starts to creep up again.

We can only hope.