by Amy Lillard
“What about Heck Bascomb?” Fern asked.
As they talked, the women moved into their places in the reading nook.
“Give me a kiss,” Faulkner called. “Give me a kiss.”
“What was that, thirty years ago?” Helen leaned over and put her lips to the birdcage. Faulkner crab walked over and “gave her a kiss.” Arlo kept telling Helen that one day he might decide he wanted a little more than to pretend to bite her lips, but Helen never listened. Affection given and received, she set her purse on the floor next to the armchair she preferred and eased down into it.
Fern frowned a bit but said nothing. That was another contention between the pair. Fern said Helen would never have any money if she set her purse on the floor.
Helen would reply that she had never had any money, so changing her ways now was a “silly endeavor”—her words.
But it was Camille’s purse Arlo was normally interested in. Miss Camille sat with it in her lap the entire time they were at book club…and church…and whenever the Kiwanis Club held a pancake breakfast. In fact, every time Arlo had ever seen her sit down, Camille’s purse had been firmly in her lap. And it was always the same purse. She might change her shoes but never her handbag—large, white, nearly square with one short handle and a clasp that audibly clicked when she closed it. When they got their plates of refreshments, Camille hooked it on her arm. The blessed thing was never unattended.
“Heck Bascomb didn’t kill himself,” Helen said.
“Heck. Heck. Heck. Heck,” Faulkner chanted.
“That’s right.” Camille’s voice was full of awed remembrance. “His wife killed him.”
“Wasn’t he shot in the head?” Fern asked.
“That’s right.” Camille nodded.
“So, his wife shot him in the head and made it look like a suicide?” Fern asked.
“Yep,” Helen said. “Right after she filled him with rat poison.”
3
The conversation continued around her, but Arlo had stopped listening. All she could think about was Chloe’s theory that Wally had been pushed from the rooftop. Could it be?
“Rat poison,” Faulkner repeated. The bird picked up the darnedest things. “He did it. He did it.”
Then the terrible thought dropped into her head like a stink bomb. Did Chloe say that because she knew what had happened? She had been there, witnessed it? Was she the one who pushed Wally to his death?
The very idea sent Arlo’s stomach plummeting. No. She couldn’t believe that. Chloe was heartbroken, sure, but she still wasn’t the kind to do away with ex-boyfriends. But if they had just had coffee…Wally left, then a bit later was lying on the sidewalk in front of the bookstore.
Arlo’s heart gave a hard pound. It was completely possible that Chloe was the last person to see him alive.
Next to last person.
The killer would have been last. Chloe was not a killer.
“Arlo, dear?” Fern’s voice brought her out of that unthinkable thought.
“Yes?”
“Are you coming to sit down?”
Did she have a choice?
She moved around the chair and fairly collapsed onto it.
“Sit down. Sit down.”
Fern shot Helen a look. For once their expressions matched, and Arlo knew they had been talking about her. She mentally pulled herself together. She sat up a little straighter in her seat and smiled at the ladies she had grown to love. Not only Helen for the nurturing she gave Arlo as a teen, but all of them.
“It’s just been an eventful day.”
Nods went around their little circle.
“Is everyone ready to discuss the next chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird?”
For their first month, they had decided to reread a classic novel and discuss how it affected them differently as they had gotten older. So far it had taken them ten weeks to get a little over halfway through.
“Actually, we were thinking about putting a pin in this discussion and reading Missing Girl instead.” Helen smiled at her expectantly.
Camille nodded, a serene smile on her face. “Yes, yes. We should read Missing Girl. After all, Wally wrote it.”
“We all know Wally wrote the book.” Fern frowned a bit, then smoothed out imaginary wrinkles in her skirt.
Arlo figured that while she had been lost in her own reverie, Helen had been elected to broach the subject.
“I’m not sure about that…” She had read the reviews. Most all were glowing, but they led her to believe that among the brilliant words was a lot of deception, sex, and grisly murder.
“Well, I am.” Fern folded her hands complacently in her lap.
Camille nodded in agreement.
She would have been the holdout, Arlo thought, but since they all wanted to…
“I’ve read that it has a great deal of…sex in it,” she said as gently as she could.
“Good, since you won’t let us read Fifty Shades of Grey.” Helen’s mouth twisted into a chastising frown.
“Fifty Shades. Fifty Shades. Any copies of Fifty Shades?” Faulkner asked.
Arlo shook her head. Their talk about whether or not to read the hot book had been a lively discussion. “But what about—”
“No buts,” Helen decided. “We’re reading poor Wally’s book.”
“Fine,” Arlo said on a sigh. There were times when trying to fight simply used up too much energy.
“Yay!” The ladies clapped their hands.
“Yay!” Faulkner mimicked.
“And that’s why I left him covered.”
Sometimes when they met, Faulkner was as quiet as a mouse. Other times, when he’d had a particularly stressful day, he talked and squawked nonstop.
“Go ahead.” Helen waved a hand in the direction of the cage.
Arlo shook her head and retrieved the cover. She draped it around Faulkner’s cage as he said, “Nooooooooo.” He would only stop when he couldn’t see any more of the outside world.
“Now.” She sat back down with a sigh and picked up her copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. “Let’s talk about Scout and Jem. Does anyone remember where we were?” She opened her book to the exact page but wanted someone to say it out loud.
“Dill had just run away and come up from Mobile,” Fern said.
“Meridian,” Helen corrected.
“That’s right. He was in Mississippi while Scout and Jem were in Alabama.”
“Why do you suppose a young man with his entire life ahead of him would do something like that?” Camille mused.
“I believe he was feeling left out at home and felt more comfortable with Scout and Jem,” Arlo explained.
“Not Dill. Mr. Harrison,” Camille said.
“Wally?”
“That’s the only Mr. Harrison I know since his father died.” Camille gave her a look as if to say is there another that I don’t know about?
“I can’t even pretend to know the answer to that, but as far as Dill…” Arlo tried to steer the conversation back to the book.
“Do you suppose Wally was depressed?” Camille asked.
“What did he have to be depressed about?” Fern countered.
“You don’t need a reason to have depression. It just is.” Camille’s tone was softened with patience.
“I saw him yesterday when he first got into town,” Helen said. “He was at the gas station. Imagine a famous writer like that pumping his own gas. Anyway, he didn’t seem depressed to me. A little stuck up maybe, but not depressed.”
“Helen,” Fern exclaimed. “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
Helen shrugged. “I call ’em like I see ’em.”
“Still.” Fern shot her a disapproving look.
Stuck up. That was the perfect way to describe Wallace J. Harrison. But stuck up wasn’t
a trait that would turn a successful author into a dead jumper.
“Let’s get back to Dill coming up from Mobile,” Arlo said.
“Meridian,” Camille corrected.
“Right.” She bit back a sigh. After today she didn’t know whether she was coming or going. “When Dill arrives in Maycomb, Atticus doesn’t immediately call his mother and stepfather, or even his aunt across the street. This shows how compassionate he is and how loving toward all people, don’t you think?”
“Maybe he was on the drugs,” Fern mused.
“Atticus Finch was not taking drugs.” Arlo’s own patience was beginning to slip.
“Not Atticus. Mr. Harrison.” This from Camille.
“Drugs do terrible things.” Helen shook her head.
She would know, but Arlo wasn’t going to remind her of the fact. Helen had been her own sort of hippie once upon a time, but she had put those days behind her. Helen wanted to run her inn and live out her days in quiet Sugar Springs.
“Can we get back to the book?” Arlo snapped. She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself. She wasn’t normally this edgy. Then again it was hardly normal for former classmates to jump from her third story window.
Camille, looking utterly chastised, opened her book. “I think Dill wanted what Scout and Jem had even though they didn’t have a mother. Envy drove him up from Meridian. Pure envy and the worry that he was missing out.”
What if it was no random roof Wally had flung himself off but one with a purpose? Had he been trying to get back at one of them? Maybe. If he had really jumped.
He was pushed. Chloe’s words came back to Arlo. It certainly fit what they knew about him. But who pushed him? That was the question. And how long was it going to be before all fingers were pointed toward Chloe?
“That’s a thing now, isn’t it?” Helen asked. “People being anxious because they think they’re missing something.”
“They call it FOMO—fear of missing out,” Fern explained.
Camille shook her head. “That’s the craziest bloody thing I have ever heard.” The more passionate Camille grew over something, the more her Australian background came forward.
“You were the one who brought it up,” Fern pointed out.
“I didn’t know it was a syndrome.” Helen shook her head.
“It’s not a syndrome,” Fern explained. “It’s a thing.”
“What’s the difference?” Camille asked.
Fern gave a dainty shrug. “I have no idea.”
“You don’t suppose he was pushed?” Arlo asked.
Three sets of eyes swung in her direction. The ladies were so accustomed to having her pull them back to task that they were all shocked at her deviation from the topic that had been a deviation from the topic they were supposed to be talking about.
Fern and Camille looked from Arlo to Helen.
“What do you mean?” Helen asked.
“Pushed. You know. He went off the building at someone else’s insistence.”
“I suppose anything is possible at this point,” Helen said.
“Travis Coleman came in today,” she mused.
“Coleman…Coleman…why does that name seem so familiar?”
“His brother had a wreck during his senior year and died,” Arlo reminded them.
“That’s right,” Fern said. “I remember now.”
Everyone in town knew about the accident that cost Toby Coleman his life and put Wally J. Harrison in the hospital for two solid weeks.
“Travis accused Wally of switching places with his brother in order to keep himself out of trouble,” Helen said.
“Yes,” Fern replied, her voice filled with remembrance. “Travis claimed that Wally was driving and his brother was a passenger.”
Arlo nodded. “And Wally stood firm that Toby was the driver.”
“I remember that big write-up in the paper,” Helen continued. “Travis even wrote a letter to the editor.”
“What became of all that?” Camille asked, her brow knit as she tried to remember.
“Nothing,” Arlo said. “Travis couldn’t prove anything since no one else was in the car.”
“And Wally got out of the hospital and went about the rest of his life,” Fern said.
“Yeah, but…” Arlo started.
If they were looking for someone who wanted Wally dead, Travis should be at the top of the list. But as far as she knew, he hadn’t been anywhere near Main Street that morning. She was on her feet in an instant. “I’ve got to go,” she said in a rush. She looked around at the floor, trying to figure out her next move. Her brain was whirring like a pinwheel in a hurricane. So much that she momentarily couldn’t remember what to do next. “Purse,” she said and headed toward the back of the store, where their office was located.
It was really nothing more than an oversized broom closet with a table set up as a desk that could be used from both sides. Oftentimes she and Chloe worked face-to-face on their business projects.
Arlo eased under the open staircase that led to the loft and into the part of the store where the new books were stocked. She stumbled a bit when she saw the enormous display she had designed for Wally’s new book—a huge poster with the cover of the book and the tagline Who will be next?
At the time she had made the poster, she had thought herself to be so clever. Now the words seemed a bit threatening. She shivered.
She tried to ignore the stacks of books turned so shoppers could see the back of the dust jacket and Wally’s mysterious look. If she squinted—a lot—she could make out the scar on his left cheek, a souvenir from the car accident so long ago. His arms were folded, the earpiece of the glasses he held in his right hand lightly touching his lips. And the turtleneck. The suave, I’m so New York turtleneck.
Arlo wasn’t exactly sure that people in New York wore turtlenecks, but that’s what everyone in Sugar Springs thought. There weren’t many turtleneck wearers in town. At least not male ones.
But something about the picture… Her feet stilled as she looked at it. It wasn’t a picture of the Wally she knew. Nor was her last view of him an image from the past. Wally had changed in his years away. Yet wasn’t that why people left their sleepy town? To become the person they wanted to be? It seemed that Wally had succeeded.
Or maybe not, if he felt the need to fling himself out a third story window.
She continued to stare at the photo, somehow feeling the answer was there. Did she really want to know? “Arlo?” Helen touched her elbow as she said her name. Arlo had been so deep in her thoughts that she jumped as if she had been shocked by a cattle prod. “Sorry.”
Arlo tried to smile. “It’s okay, Elly.”
“But are you okay?” Helen gently asked.
“Just a goose walking over my grave.” It was something she had said all her Mississippi life and yet now it had a warning ring to it.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?”
“I need to check on Chloe. Can you lock up?”
Helen frowned. “You’re leaving?”
She nodded. “It’s important, Elly.”
“Okay.” Helen sighed.
Arlo could see the worry on her face. This…upheaval with Wally had everyone a little out of sorts. “Thank you.” She kissed the old woman’s cheek, then ducked into her office to get her handbag. “I’ll see you later.”
* * *
Chloe rented the former servants’ quarters behind one of the largest houses in the area. An antebellum mansion of epic proportions, Lillyfield was more than a house. It was on the historical registry and had once belonged to General Eustace Lilly.
Lilly had never been an actual general, but the title was a courtesy given to him by the people of Sugar Springs and somehow it stuck. Rumor had it that good old Eustace was a gun runner during The War—the only one that m
attered around there, the one of Northern Aggression—but wasn’t so choosey about which side he sold to. Of course, this was explicitly denied by any of his descendants, no matter how far removed.
Still, there was a lot of money involved and the four-story sprawling structure with colonial columns and a ballroom on the third floor was as impressive today as it had been then. The servants’ quarters were a little less spacious, but it was enough for Chloe and Auggie, her ginger striped cat.
“Chloe.” Arlo knocked on the door and impatiently waited. “Chloe. I know you’re in there. I want to make sure you’re okay.” She knocked again. “Chlo—”
The door was suddenly wrenched open.
“Thank heaven,” Arlo said. She gave her friend a quick hug, then pushed past her into the cozy house.
“I’m okay,” Chloe said, but it was an obvious lie. Her eyes were puffy from crying, her nose red and swollen. She was wearing that sweater Arlo hated, the one that Wally had left behind ten years ago. If Arlo ever caught that sweater out alone, it was history. But its presence tonight revealed how upset Chloe was.
“Who would want to kill him?” Chloe moaned as she sank into one corner of the couch.
Arlo figured there might be a list somewhere starting with Wally’s wife, Daisy, and possibly ending with Chloe herself. And then there was Travis Coleman. But Arlo decided not to say that out loud. “I’m not worried about that,” she said instead. “I’m worried about you.”
She believed with all her heart that her best friend and business partner was innocent, but the evidence was working against her. And there was the fact that Wally had been mean, cruel even, to Chloe when she told him she was pregnant. Because of her decision to keep the baby and Wally’s decision to leave, Chloe’s life had been forever altered. She hadn’t gone to college or business school. The lessons she had learned had been from hard knocks. She had been left to raise the child on her own, and she had turned to the only people she knew she could trust to help her—her parents. And that help had led to Jayden living with his grandparents and Chloe getting a cat so her own place didn’t seem so lonely.
Anything Chloe had dished out to Wally had been well deserved, but Arlo knew it was only a blistering tirade about how he had no rights to Jayden and had signed them away years ago, instead of a short trip back to street level.
