by Amy Lillard
“On the third floor of our building? After he came by to talk to me? That doesn’t make any sense. And the only person he would have been meeting there would have been the Realtor.”
“Think hard, Chloe. Did he mention anything about that when he was with you?”
“All he talked about was Jayden. I think he’d had him watched or something. He knew too much about him. Too much for a sperm donor who wanted nothing to do with his child for nine years.”
“You’re sure?” She didn’t bother to say anything about Chloe’s sperm-donor comment. Chloe hadn’t gone to a clinic but essentially that was what Wally had become.
Chloe rubbed her temples. “I’m sure.”
* * *
Arlo was loath to leave Chloe, but what choice did she have? None. She had to open Books & More and pretend like nothing was out of sorts.
Arlo let herself into Books & More and propped the door open without turning on the lights. It was early for the official opening, but late as far as Chloe was concerned.
“Hey, Arlo.”
She turned to find Phil from next door standing close. Either he was a quick and silent mover, or she had been deep in her daydreams.
“Hi, Phil.”
He shifted. “Can I get a cup of coffee? Chloe always let me buy a cup before opening.”
“Of course. Let me get the lights. You don’t mind the Keurig, do you? I’m not much on working the espresso machine, and Courtney doesn’t come in until three thirty.” She led the way into the shop and headed to the back to turn on the lights.
“Keurig is fine.” Phil stopped at the bar and knocked his knuckles against the counter while he waited for her to return.
“I can hear you,” Faulkner crooned. “You don’t think I can, but I can.” His echo sounded more than a little creepy.
“Help yourself,” Arlo called back to Phil and turned on the lights before going back to the front.
Phil had already filled the coffee machine and had a cup brewing. “Is Chloe okay there in the jail?”
“She seems to be,” Arlo said. She went around to the backside of the coffee bar and grabbed her own K-cup for the morning. “She’s still here instead of at the county jail, so that’s a plus. But Mads isn’t going to let her stay here for long.”
“Then what?” Phil took a sip of his coffee and waited for Arlo to answer.
It was a question she didn’t know how to respond to. What would happen after the ten days had passed? Would Mads make good on his promise to send Chloe to the county jail? Would she be able to survive if he did? Arlo didn’t want to wait and find out firsthand. And the only way to do that was to uncover who really killed Wally.
“Phil,” she started, turning to her next-door neighbor on Main Street. “The morning that Wally died. Did you see anything? Anything at all that might seem suspicious.”
Phil shrugged. “Not much happens around here.”
That was an understatement. Maybe she needed to go about this from a different angle. “What did you see that morning?”
Phil leaned one hip against the counter and sipped his coffee. He was a tall man, thin and wiry despite his age. His sixtieth birthday and come and gone a few years back, but he refused to retire, stating that he felt the good citizens of Sugar Springs needed the unique services his store had to offer. Arlo hadn’t yet figured out what those services were exactly. But Phil had always been a good enough Main Street neighbor. “I saw Chloe let him in that morning really early. It was hard to tell how she felt about him. She would start toward him, then pull back as if she wanted to touch him but knew she couldn’t. Like a junkie faced with a bag of drugs.”
It was a crude analogy—crude but accurate.
“Anything else?”
“Nothing really. I came down to get a cup a little bit later and saw Wally and some man standing outside the other entrance.”
18
“Another man? Who?”
“I dunno. I’ve seen him before but can’t remember where.”
Arlo’s heart began to thump. “You’ve seen him here? In Sugar Springs?” This could be the missing link they had been looking for.
“I think so. Maybe. I don’t go many other places.” Like Arlo, he worked in his shop from open to close six days a week.
“Did they go in the building? Up to the third floor?”
“They went inside. I don’t know where they went from there.”
“But they were outside? At the door that leads to the third floor?”
“Yes.”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know.” He gave a loose shrug.
“Anything,” she pleaded.
“He was tall. Kinda bald, with the fringe around the edge.”
It wasn’t much of a description, but it was a start.
“You’ve seen him before. Does he live here?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“How did he get a key?” The man Wally was with had to have had a key. There were no signs of a break-in, and Arlo and Chloe were careful about keeping it locked.
“How would I know?” Phil shot her a stern look.
“Right,” she said. “Maybe from Sandy,” she mused. But she was certain Mads had questioned the Realtor. He was thorough that way. But he wasn’t perfect. Maybe there was something he had missed.
Green Reality was only a couple of blocks from Books & More. After lunch, when the book club got there, she would head down the street and see what Sandy had to say about this strange man who let Wally onto the third floor just before he was murdered.
* * *
“Hi, Arlo. I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”
Arlo smiled at Sandy Green, Sugar Springs’s only Realtor—blond hair, brown eyes, with a little extra weight around the middle, but still as cute and dimpled as she had been when she was voted homecoming queen her senior year. “I was hoping I could talk to you about something.”
Sandy smiled. “Of course,” she drawled. “Everything okay with your new tenant?”
“Sam?” Arlo stumbled over the name as she said it, then composed herself. “He’s all moved in.” She thought so anyway. There hadn’t been much noise coming from up on the third floor this morning.
“Good, good.” Sandy continued to smile. “So what did you need to talk about?”
Arlo cleared her throat. She thought that she had this all lined out, but now that she was there… “The day Wally…fell…did you give someone a key to let him into the third floor?”
“No. I already told Mads all about it. I wasn’t even in town then.”
“You weren’t?”
“I had gone over to New Albany to visit my mother.” A frown darkened her otherwise chipper features.
“How’s she doing?”
“Good, just—” She stopped, and to Arlo’s surprise, her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry.” The trickle turned into all-out sobs.
Arlo moved toward her, unsure of how to proceed but feeling obligated to do something.
Sandy held up one hand and grabbed a tissue with the other. She sniffed as she tried to pull herself together.
“So sorry.” Sandy sniffed again.
“Did something happen?” Arlo really didn’t want to get involved. She had enough on her own plate right now, but she couldn’t ignore the breakdown happening in front of her.
“I came home from my mama’s a little early and found my boyfriend…” Tears welled again, and she pressed a hand to her mouth. “Anyway…that’s over now.”
“This boyfriend,” Arlo started.
“Ex-boyfriend,” Sandy corrected.
“Right. Ex-boyfriend. Is he balding and tall?”
Sandy stopped. “How did you know that?”
“Does he have the keys to my building?”
“N-no. Of course not, but my work keys were on a hook at my house when I left.”
“And where was the boyfriend all the time you were gone?”
“Our—I mean, my house. We were moving in together. He knows where I keep all my business stuff. We were going to be married.” She dabbed her eyes again, careful to not muss her makeup.
Arlo hadn’t known Sandy’s boyfriend…hadn’t even known Sandy had a boyfriend. Until now. “Do you think he could have given your set of keys to the third floor to Wally?”
“Why would Wally want to see the third floor of your building?”
“Maybe he wanted to use it as an office space or something. That’s not the point. Could he have given the key to Wally?” She waited impatiently for Sandy to answer. Instead, the Realtor got out her phone and tapped the screen. She nodded and put the phone to her ear as if the answers to all Arlo’s questions were forthcoming.
“Travis, you lying, cheating pile of dog feces. Did you give the key to 309 Main to Wally Harrison last week? Thursday to be exact. That’s the same day you decided to throw our love in the gutter and piss on it. Just wondering. Call me when you get this.” The dimples mixed with tears as she hung up the phone and took a deep, relieved breath. “He didn’t answer.” She told Arlo.
“Travis?” she asked. “Coleman?”
“That’s right.” Sandy harrumphed, obviously still a little wound up.
“Travis Coleman is your boyfriend.” It wasn’t much of a question.
“Ex-boyfriend.”
“Right. And Travis Coleman had access to the third floor of my building.”
“I didn’t know he was going to use them.” A defensive edge had taken over her tone.
“I know. Just making sure I have my facts straight.”
Sandy nodded understandingly.
And Arlo had more than enough to go on. “Thanks for all your help, Sandy. By the way…do you think I could possibly get Travis’s number? I would like to see if he remembers anything about that day.” Like if Wally had been alone or with someone. Had he already stopped at the store and bought scones before dropping by Sandy’s to pick up a key to Arlo’s third floor? Or if maybe the grief over his brother’s death had finally gotten the better of him and he pushed Wally to his own demise in retaliation.
“You want his number?” Sandy seemed surprised.
“He might respond…quicker if I call.” And refrain from insulting him.
Sandy shrugged. “Prank call him a little for me too, will ya?”
Arlo mumbled something that she hoped Sandy took for a yes, then got the number and headed for the door.
* * *
Arlo dialed Travis’s number all the way back to the police station. She knew he wouldn’t answer. Even if he was inclined to answer calls from numbers he didn’t know, she was sure Sandy’s message would turn him off the minute he listened to it.
The line went to voicemail again and again. She hung up. Leaving a message would probably do no good after the butt-chewing Sandy had given him. “One more,” she muttered as she dialed the number again.
Voicemail.
But this time she did leave a message, a quick one stating who she was, that she needed to talk to him about something important, and her phone number.
She pocketed her phone as she pushed through the glass doors leading into the police station.
“Hey, Frances.”
She looked up from her paper, the beaded chain that held her glasses in place around her neck swaying with the motion. “Hi, Arlo. Here to see Chloe? Go on back.”
“Actually, I need to see Mads.”
“He’s gone.”
Arlo stopped. She had drawn even with Frances’s desk, intending to walk right past and into Mads’s office. “He’s not here?”
Frances sat back in her chair and gave Arlo a little smile. “He does get out once and a while. You know, to solve crimes and such.”
“I know,” Arlo said defensively. Just why did he have to be gone the time she really needed to talk to him? “Can you have him call me? Or come down to Books & More as soon as he gets back?”
“Regarding?”
“I think I know who killed Wally Harrison.”
* * *
“Welcome back. Come on in,” Faulkner said as Arlo returned to Books & More.
She ignored the bird and instead turned her attention to the now once-a-day book club ladies. Camille and Fern were seated in the reading nook, while Helen worked behind the coffee counter, no doubt making everyone drinks. No one was holding a book.
“I thought y’all were reading today,” Arlo said. She looked at them all in turn, but only Camille braved an answer.
“I can’t speak for everyone, but I have a new great-grandbaby on the way and I need to get this blanket done for the little tyke.”
The tyke was actually so little that the family hadn’t found out the gender yet. But that didn’t stop Camille from knitting away in soft pale green. Arlo wondered how she got any knits and purls done around the lump in her lap that was her handbag, but she didn’t ask.
“Sam not coming?” She moved behind the coffee bar, taking Helen’s place as she came out with a tray balancing three drinks, one hot coffee, one iced coffee, one hot tea for Camille.
“He’s got something else today.” Fern waved a hand around as if she were shooing off a pesky fly. “But he said he would come tomorrow.”
Of course. She took a bottle of water from the fridge and started toward the back office. “I hate to impose, but with Chloe gone…”
“You want us to watch the front?”
“Would you mind?” she asked. “I have some paperwork to finish up and—” And Chloe being in jail left a big hole, but she didn’t want to say that. She didn’t want to talk about Chloe being in jail or that her days of agreement with Mads were running out. They were almost gone and the best clue she had lay with a man who had just been called a lying pile of dog doo. And cheating. Don’t forget the cheating.
Helen agreed to come get her in case someone needed something, and Arlo escaped into the office. She wasn’t lying; she did have paperwork to do. She had to mark the damaged books from Wally’s display out of her inventory. She had to check the orders and see if there was anything new she needed to get for the store. She needed to check Chloe’s coffee invoices and see if anything was lacking there. She had done the coffee order once before, right after they first opened, and she was certain she could do it again without messing anything up beyond repair, but she was still a little upset that she had to.
Her best friend was in jail, accused of murder, and here she sat ordering K-cups, coffee filters, and two dozen copies of Stephen King’s latest paperback. What was wrong with her? She needed to be out there doing whatever needed to be done in order to prove Chloe’s innocence. And she would be, if she had any idea what that next step might be.
A knock sounded on the door and she jumped to her feet. Her first thought was that Mads had come to find out what new information she had.
“Come in,” she called, then waited for Mads to appear. The storeroom/office was narrow and windy, and the office part was a little secluded, tucked back in a corner away from all else. It was great in those times when the store was busy, and she needed to get away. So far that had never happened—she had never been so busy that she needed to get away—but she was glad it was set up that way all the same. It made her feel a little more secure to have her business info more than one door from nosy third graders on a field trip.
“Arlo?”
She swung her gaze to Sam Tucker, standing in the entry way to the office. Not Mads.
“S-Sam?” she stammered. “What are you doing here?”
“Can you come look at something with me for a minute please?” His voice was quiet but there was something about it that relayed an urge
ncy.
“Sure.” Whatever his issue was, it was most probably better than staring at paperwork she didn’t have the concentration to finish, even if she had the mental desire.
She stood and followed him to the interior door that led to the stairway and up to the third floor. The chair that usually blocked the entrance was pushed to one side.
“Did you come down this way?” Arlo asked.
“Yeah. You don’t mind, do you?” Sam continued to climb, affording her an intimate look at his tight backside as he moved ahead of her. He must work out. A lot. “It’s easier to come this way if I’m coming in to see you or to get a coffee. But I’ll use the other door for my business traffic and when I come and go for the day.”
“No problem.” She was almost sad when they reached the third-floor landing. “What do you need?” Please don’t let it be a leaky pipe. It was the first thing she could think of. There was a bathroom on both the second and third levels and two on the main floor. It was an old building with old plumbing. She was surprised she hadn’t had an issue and she supposed she was due for one. Though she wasn’t sure where she was going to get money for a plumber to come in and repair a bunch of pipes.
He paused for a moment, his expression unreadable, then he motioned her behind his extra-large L-shaped desk. Three laptops sat on the mahogany wood, though only one was open. Next to the window a chair had been placed. A tablet sat there, plugged into the wall outlet nearby. He hadn’t added much to the large space, other than the desk and the chair. But she saw a box in one corner that looked like it had the word futon printed on it and a large-screen TV box propped up against that.
“Here.” He gestured for her to sit while he stood next to her, tapping keys on the open laptop.
“What happened to your hand?” Three large angry marks slashed across the back of his hand. The marks were red and painful looking.
He motioned in the air, a noncommittal gesture. “Auggie.” He said the name with obvious derision. “He’s not very happy with all the moves, I guess.”
Arlo stared at the scratches. “I guess.” What else could she say? “Where is he now?”
