by Amy Lillard
Through the windows she could see the reading area. Faulkner’s cage still had the cover on, but she was certain the Amazon parrot was ready to be seen and fed. On the other side of the shop, the coffee bar waited for the doors to be opened and the customers to come in. Usually Chloe was bustling around getting things ready. But not today.
“Arlo.”
“Huh?” She dragged her attention from the shop, only briefly aware that the men had switched places. Jason was now talking to Inna and Mads had somehow managed to turn Daisy away from the grisly scene.
“Are you just going to stand there?” Chloe asked. Her voice was only a stage whisper. As if she didn’t want to be heard or noticed.
Was she just going to stand there?
Arlo gathered her thoughts and what she could of her composure, then headed into her store.
Chloe held one door open, then locked it as soon as it was closed again.
“Chloe?” Arlo whirled around to look at her best friend and business partner. Chloe’s normally wild blond curls seemed even more riotous today. Or was that the light in her green eyes? She looked so completely un-Chloe-like that Arlo almost laughed. Maybe she would have if Wally Harrison wasn’t lying dead on the sidewalk in front of her store.
“What’s wrong? I mean besides…” She trailed off as she waved a hand in the general direction of the crime scene outside.
Chloe practically wrung her hands, then rushed over to the sink. She pulled the two oversize coffee mugs from the drainer and started to wash them.
“Aren’t those…clean?” Arlo asked. She barely got the words out before Chloe shook her head.
“No. I guess I forgot them last night.”
Chloe never forgot anything. She was too laid-back and too utterly Zen to forget, unlike Arlo who needed a daily reminder to remember to put on her shoes. At least that’s what Helen, Arlo’s one-time guardian, said. Helen was the reason Arlo had been able to stay in Sugar Springs when her family was ready to move on.
“Courtney closed last night.”
Chloe pushed her hair back from her face, but it sprang forward once again. “Did she?” She gave a nervous laugh.
Arlo narrowed her gaze and looked around the room. Something was up. But what? Dishes in the drainer, not actually forgotten, meant they had been used that morning. And that meant…
“He was here, wasn’t he?”
Chloe laughed again, but the sound was choked. “He? Who he?”
Arlo propped one hip against the back of the couch that faced the reading area. Behind her she heard Faulkner flap his wings. The bird gave a small reminder squawk that no one had taken the cover off his cage. “You know who he.”
“Why would who he, uh, he be here?” She grabbed a clean rag from the stack next to the sink and turned on the water.
“Maybe to relive old times?”
“What old times?”
“I don’t know. How about that time up at Pickwick…?”
Chloe closed her eyes and held up her hand to stay that memory. “Please.” Her fingers trembled.
“All right.” Arlo straightened and grabbed Chloe by one string-bracelet-covered wrist. “Let’s go.” She herded her friend past the open-faced bookshelves with their sturdy oak ladders, then up the wide plank staircase to the loft above. There was more seating there, along with café-style tables and chairs, but more important, Arlo didn’t have to see what was going on outside her store. Not for a while anyway. Hopefully long enough for Chloe to tell whatever story she was hiding.
She nudged Chloe into a deep armchair, then pulled her hair over her shoulder and sank down into the opposite one. “Wally was here. Don’t try to deny that. What did he want?”
Chloe shrugged. “He said he wanted to talk,” she sputtered. “Ten years later and now he wants to talk?”
“Why did you let him in?” Arlo asked. She waved a hand and shook her head, as if that would erase her words. “Never mind. Stupid question.” She leaned forward and clasped Chloe’s hands into her own. “Tell me what happened.” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know all of it. But Chloe was her best friend and she had to give her the chance to say her piece.
Chloe took a deep, shuddering breath. “He came by to talk.” She snorted. “Talk. Imagine. And just like that, I got sucked up again.” She sniffed and looked up at the ceiling, a ploy, Arlo was sure, to keep the tears from falling.
“And you thought ‘what’s the harm?’”
“Exactly.”
“So you made the two of you a cup of coffee.”
“I made him a coffee.”
Of course. Chloe made the best coffee drinks this side of the Mississippi but only drank tea. “Was the shop open?”
“Not yet. It was barely six.”
Arlo blinked. Had he been lying out there for hours? It was unthinkable.
Each morning Chloe came into the store at five. She baked for two hours, then opened the shop for the rest of the Main Street vendors to stop by for a pastry and a fresh cup of coffee.
“He said he wanted to see Jayden.” The words fell between them like a wet bag of cement.
“He what?” Arlo had to whisper the words to keep from yelling them.
“Wally is his father.”
Arlo pffted. “Who gave up his rights.” Wally might be Jayden’s father, but he had never been a father to the boy. It had always been only Chloe, right from the start.
Chloe shook her head sadly. “He’s got attorneys working on the contract, trying to find loopholes. Good attorneys.”
Better than she could afford. But Arlo hated to see Chloe give up without a fight.
Now Wally was dead. There would be no custody battle. A detail she felt sure she needed to keep to herself.
“How did he get onto the roof?” Arlo asked.
Chloe pulled her fingers from Arlo’s grasp and stood. “How am I supposed to know? Through Phil’s I guess.” She propped her hands on the back of her hips and stretched, a gesture Arlo had seen her perform countless times over the years. Then Chloe shook out her short blond curls and sniffed once again. The action held a note of finality. “I guess there’s no going back now.”
“I suppose not.” Death tended to do that to relationships. But Chloe and Wally’s had been poison from the start. It needed ending. Maybe now Chloe could get on with her life, though Arlo knew if she said anything, Chloe would swear that she hadn’t been waiting for Wally for the last ten years. Just as she had waited for him all prom night.
“Phil’s, huh?” Arlo said after a few moments. Wally came by the bookstore, then left after…well, Arlo didn’t want to speculate about that in too much detail. And he went to Phil’s video store for…what?
Phil’s was what a sane person would call a throwback sort of place. Yes, they rented a few DVDs and there were still a couple of VHSs hanging around on some of the back shelves. Mostly he rented video games to the younger teens while the rest of Main Street wondered how he stayed in business.
“I guess. How else would he have gotten up on the roof?”
How else? Their building only housed the two stores. The top two floors of Phil’s were used for storage. She supposed Wally could have jumped over from another building, but why would he have done that?
“What did you say to him?” Arlo asked.
“Nothing. Why?” The frown puckering Chloe’s brow was made of innocent confusion.
Arlo cleared her throat. She wasn’t sure how to say the words without restarting Chloe’s waterworks. “He left here, went next door, then jumped—”
“From the roof?” Chloe shook her head. “Wally’s not the jumping kind. He was pushed.”
2
“Pushed?” The word escaped Arlo like air from a popped balloon. It exploded, filling the space between them. Pushed had intent. Pushed meant murder and if he was murdered, C
hloe might very well be the last person to have seen him alive.
“He had to have been.” Chloe sniffed. “You know Wally.”
That she did. And despite the fact that Chloe felt there was enough good in the man to pine for him for the last ten years, Arlo knew how he really was. He was too self-absorbed and arrogant to jump from the roof or to kill himself in any manner. Maybe that was what was so strange about the scene out front. Why it looked so wrong. So fabricated.
“What?” Chloe asked.
Arlo shook her head.
“You know it’s true.”
“Yes,” Arlo whispered.
“You should tell Mads. He didn’t really know Wally when he lived here. I’m sure to him it looks like a regular ol’ jumping from the roof.” She stopped, tilted her head to one side. “Is there such a thing?”
Arlo had the feeling her friend was slipping into shock. She was on her feet in an instant, guiding Chloe back to her seat. “I think you should sit down.”
She went without protest.
Once again Arlo clasped her friend’s hands in her own. Chloe’s fingers were ice cold. “Let me make you some tea.”
Chloe nodded obediently, another sign that something was wrong. Chloe had spent a year in Paris at a pastry school, though truth be known, Arlo suspected she had actually spent more time in England than France. There Chloe had learned the “proper way to make tea.” She didn’t miss an opportunity to remind Arlo of the fact. Until now.
Arlo released Chloe’s hands and made her way back down the stairs to the main floor. She glanced up at the loft once more, then stuffed a tea bag into a mug, used the Keurig to heat water, and poured in the sugar and cream.
She stirred the brew and looked around for a moment. The bookstore had been a dream of hers for a while. Not just a bookstore, but her piece of Sugar Springs: roots, land, home. She had taken this desire and mixed it with her love of books. A few tweaks and a lot of paint later, Arlo and Chloe’s Books & More was born.
“Arlo?” Chloe called.
“Coming.” She tapped the spoon against the rim of the mug, then laid it on the counter. It wasn’t like they would be opening today. She climbed the stairs to where Chloe waited.
Her friend smiled gratefully as she accepted the cup, then she took a tentative sip. No grimace followed, another sign that Chloe was more affected by Wally’s death than she was letting on. Usually she couldn’t stand the tea Arlo made. “Are you going to tell Mads?”
Go out there where the dead body still lay? No, thank you. She had seen the county coroner’s car pull up while she was making Chloe’s tea. Maybe after they…removed him.
Her mouth grew dry. She should have made herself a drink when she was downstairs, but she really wanted something a bit stronger than Earl Grey. About ninety proof stronger.
“Later,” she finally said. Mads would be around awhile. And how long before he came in to talk to the one person who might have witnessed it all?
“Chloe,” Arlo started, broaching the subject carefully, “did you happen to…what I mean is, did you watch…” Arlo shook her head. The words were tripping her up. They all sounded harsh. “Did you see Wally…fall?”
Chloe took another sip of tea, cradling the cup in her hands. She shook her head. “I had gone to the back to get more flour. I heard this noise—” She choked on the words. Arlo could only imagine what the sound was like. “And when I came back out here, he was dead. I called Mads, then I locked the door till you came.”
She had called Mads, but she hadn’t called Arlo. Dispatch had. Well, if you could call Frances Jacobs dispatch. She answered the phones at the police station, played right field on the county softball team, and kept the deputies in line. The woman was seventy-five if she was a day, but she could still hit a mean line drive.
“You locked the door?”
Chloe nodded. “The killer is still out there.”
If there was a killer. The evidence pointed toward Wally Harrison taking his own life. But evidence could be deceiving. They both knew Wally wasn’t the type. Could he have really been pushed?
“Do you think it was a mob hit?” Chloe asked, then took another drink of her tea. The sip was a big one, more like a gulp.
Arlo drew back. “A mob hit? What would make you think that?” Because there was so much organized crime in Sugar Springs. Not. The town was so quiet, if anything less happened, they would be in a coma. Before today anyway.
“I dunno. Wally has to do research for his books. Maybe he started talking to the wrong people. Then…” She made a squelching noise as she dragged a finger across her neck. She laughed, took another drink, then hiccupped loudly. If Arlo hadn’t made the tea herself, she would have thought it had been spiked. As it was, she knew that Chloe was about to crack. Having your high school sweetheart and one-time lover fall to his death—by whatever means—was too much for one morning.
“I don’t think it was a mob hit.”
A knock sounded on the door downstairs.
Arlo stirred herself out of her chair and smoothed her hands down her sides. “That’s probably Mads,” she said. “I’ll go down and talk to him.”
Chloe shook her head. “I can’t—”
“Shhh.” Arlo patted her shoulder reassuringly. “I’ll take care of it.”
Sure enough, Mads was waiting outside the doors of Books and More. He waved Arlo over and she went reluctantly. She unlocked the door to let him in and tried not to look over to where Wally still lay on the sidewalk. By this time, he had been moved and was positioned in a more dignified pose for a dead person. Someone had taken the time and care to cover him with a sheet.
She tried not to look; not that she had succeeded.
“Could I trouble you for—”
She was not going to let him talk to Chloe. It was inevitable, but it wasn’t going to happen this morning.
“—some coffee for the guys?”
Arlo glanced toward the stairs, back to the coffee bar, and once again to Mads. She was letting Chloe’s imagination get way with her. Wally had jumped. It was that simple. “Yeah, uh, sure. How many?”
“Four,” he said, showing her the number on his fingers as a physical backup.
“Coming up.” Arlo moved behind the counter and got out four paper cups with sleeves, then started the Keurig once again.
Chloe hated the thing, preferring to make the coffee in the espresso machine or the French press. But it was easier for the customers who wanted a straight cup of coffee to use it as a self-serve.
“I’m going to need to talk to Chloe, you know,” Mads said as she started to brew the first cup. He leaned one elbow against the dogleg bar and looked around as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“I know. Just not now, okay?” She didn’t want to tell Mads how much Chloe still cared for Wally, or about all the promises he had made to her, then broken shortly after. If Wally had indeed been pushed, then that information would make Chloe look guilty as all get-out.
She resisted the urge to shake her head at herself and started the next cup of coffee instead.
Mads checked his watch and blew out a breath. “Once Bob gets his body out of here…”
Arlo added lids to the cups and nodded. “Okay.” She didn’t think Chloe would be better by then, but she would be better than she was now. Arlo hoped anyway. “It’s just…”
“What?” Mads asked.
She shook her head. “You didn’t hang around him.”
“And when would that have been?”
“In high school.” She dipped her chin toward the large sign hanging from the second-story railing. Welcome Classmates All-School Reunion. Unfortunately, Sugar Springs High School rarely had enough attendees for single-year reunions. Sometimes Arlo thought an all-school reunion was better since most kids were friends with others in different grades. This way ever
yone could get together and reminisce. “We were all in poetry club together. Me, Chloe, and Wally.” Though, she had only joined because Chloe wanted to be close to Wally and she wanted Arlo there for moral support. “You were too busy with football.”
Mads nodded and took a sip of his coffee. “What does this have to do with what has happened now?”
“Wally was always a bit…” Arrogant? Full of himself? Haughty? How about all the above? “Confident. Very, very, very confident.” Even after the car wreck that nearly cost him his life. Most people would have been humble. Wally just grew more self-assured.
Mads turned as Faulkner rattled something inside his cage. The cover was still on, but Arlo had heard the noise before. The crazy bird was trying to open the cage himself.
“Faulkner,” she said by way of explanation.
He squawked again, responding to his name.
Mads turned his attention back to her. “So he was a jerk.”
“What?” Oh, Wally. “Something like that.” But it was more. “He was always so damn sure of himself.”
“And you think a guy like that wouldn’t walk off a three-story building?”
“Yeah,” she said, relieved that Mads had picked up on what she was trying to say.
“I worked homicide for five years. Those kinds of men? They are the worst offenders.”
“But this isn’t a homicide.” Was it? According to Chloe it is.
“Murder is murder whether you kill someone else or yourself.”
She hadn’t thought about it that way. But still—
“Trust me on this one,” Mads said with his own brand of blown-up confidence. Where did it all come from? Maybe there was a warehouse down in Jackson where men went to pick up the stuff by the truckload.
Mads picked up the paper carrier filled with the to-go cups that Arlo had prepared. “I’ve seen it all before.”
* * *
It took the rest of the morning and the better part of the afternoon before Mads and Jason were finished out front. Arlo had uncovered Faulkner only to cover him again a couple of hours later. All the commotion outside agitated him and his squawks and cries of “He did it!” had started to put her on edge. The crime scene tape still partitioned off a strip of the sidewalk, though there was nothing to see. The men who normally ran the street cleaners had come out to work on the dark stain that Wally’s fall had left behind. And even though the mess was gone, the too-clean spot on the pavement was something of a reminder. So there were still gawkers, edging by every so often to take it all in.
