The Trouble with Cupid

by Carolyn Haines

  Tammy shook her head. “I don’t remember him,” she said. “But I’m not always here.” She stepped to the back room where Jerry was still working with that box of books. “Did this man come in here recently?”

  Jerry took the cell phone and stared at it for a long moment before he handed it back. “Not while I was here.”

  Tammy took Aiden’s phone back to him. “Jerry says he hasn’t seen him. I haven’t seen him, but obviously he’s been in this shop at some point.” She glanced around the small room. “There isn’t much here worth stealing. A few antique books I keep locked in the safe. Of everything he might have stolen, that novel is the strangest.”

  “True. The bigger question is how did it know it was here?”

  Another chill found its way to Tammy’s spine as she said, “I wish I knew.”

  “I need to get back to the crime scene. If you think of anything, give me a call.” He closed the door behind him, then opened it again and stepped back inside. “I’ll call you with details about Valentine’s Day, Tammy. Thanks for accepting my invitation.”

  “Thanks for offering it,” she said as she cut her gaze toward Trouble who was curled peacefully in the cat bed.

  Chapter 2

  The rest of the day went by without incident. Tammy finished shelving the books in her box then checked with Jerry to see if he needed her help with his work. He’d been with her for less than a month, but she already depended on him. Quiet and unassuming, he began working when he arrived, stopped for lunch, and then worked until closing. He’d finished his initial box and two more in the time it took her to do one.

  But then, she’d been interrupted.

  The thought of Aiden made her smile. It also made her remember Trouble’s strange behavior. She made a pot of tea and poured one for herself and one for Jerry. She was on her way back to the front of the store when the bell on the door jangled.

  “Hello,” she said to the man who entered. She knew nearly all her customers, but this man was a stranger.

  “Hello,” he said. “Are you Tammy Lynn?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was told to pick up a book from you.”

  The wives of Wetumpka often asked their husbands to pick up a novel from the bookstore on their way home from work, but unless this man did shift work for the pencil factory outside of town, he was not on his way home from work.

  “Okay, what book?”

  He pulled a piece of notebook paper from his pocket. Tammy took that moment to study him. He was shorter than Aiden, but Aiden stood six-foot-two, so many men were shorter than he. Dark hair, a lot of which had turned loose of his scalp a while back. He glanced at her, and she saw his eyes were hazel, but hazel brown or hazel green, she couldn’t say.

  “Classified as Murder,” he said.

  Tammy staggered.

  “Do you have it?” His tone made it sound like she’d be an idiot not to have it.

  “No.”

  He stepped backward as if she’d hit him.

  “No?”

  “No. I’m sorry. I don’t have that novel. How did you hear about it?”

  “Never mind how. I’ll pay you whatever you want. Please.” His eyes filled with sudden tears. “I must have it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, taken back by the tears. “I don’t have it.”

  He leaned back, gazed at the door to the back room. “Could you at least look?”

  There was no need to look, but he seemed so upset, she nodded. “Of course. Wait right here.”

  She made a show of looking through the shelving in the back room. After an initial look over his shoulder, Jerry ignored her. She was on her way back to the front room when she heard the door jangle and close.

  She sometimes had a brisk business, but almost always when there was an event going on downtown. To have two customers this close together was unusual.

  “I am so sorry,” she said as she entered the room and then stopped. “Sir? Sir?” The room wasn’t large enough for anyone to hide, but she went from corner to corner anyway. The man was gone. On a hunch, Tammy went behind her counter and knelt. The candy wrappers she’d seen earlier were shoved all the way back. They’d been right at the front of the shelf before.

  She grabbed her cell phone and dialed Aiden’s number.

  “Hey,” he said as he answered. “Didn’t expect to hear from you again today.”

  “A man came in asking for the book you found earlier. I told him I didn’t have it, but he insisted I look in the back. When I returned, he was gone, but it looks like he ducked behind the counter while I was out of the room. Aiden, there’s something spooky about this book. Can you look inside, see if there’s anything unusual in it?”

  “Sure. Let me talk to the dust bunnies. I’ll call you right back.” The “dust bunnies” were the county’s forensic experts, both ladies, who came with their brushes and covered everything with fingerprint powder.

  Her cell phone chimed minutes later.

  “Hey,” Aiden said. “I’ve looked through it, but other than a few circled words, I didn’t find anything.”

  “Circled words?”

  “Yeah. There are a few scattered throughout.”

  “If you write them down, do they make sense?”

  “No,” he said. “I tried that.”

  “Text them to me,” she said. “I’m sure I won’t be able to make any more sense than you, but I’d like to see them.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  A hunger pang made her glance at the clock. Five o’clock. No wonder she was hungry.

  “Jerry?”

  “Yes?”

  “Time to shut ‘er down and go home.”

  “Okay.”

  In a few moments, she heard the back door close. She changed the open sign to closed, and took a good look around. Trouble came from his corner with his tail switching and his head up.

  His dinner tonight would be fish, Tammy decided, fresh from the store, sautéed in a light sauce and seasoned to perfection, as he loved it.

  She unlocked the door, ready to leave, then stopped. She’d promised Amelia Weatherford she’d bring that new novel by tonight. Amelia taught Tammy to love reading when Tammy was six. When she was forced to give up the Book Basket because of ill health, Amelia had insisted Tammy take it. Amelia almost never left her house now due to illness, but Tammy stopped by several times a week to bring dinner and conversation.

  No dinner tonight, though. Tammy wanted to look at the words Aiden texted her earlier.

  Before she could get to Amelia’s book, the front door opened.

  Tammy whirled, thinking it might be Aiden, but the man who towered over her was the customer who’d asked earlier about Classified as Murder.

  “What do you want?” She hadn’t meant it to sound so aggressive, but he must have seen the closed sign.

  “I want that book.”

  She backed up a step or two, then turned, tucked herself behind the counter, and laid Amelia’s book beside her Ipad. This guy was beginning to sound unhinged. “Sir, I cannot give you what I do not have.”

  He moved in front of the counter. “Look, lady, you don’t know how important this is. I must have it!”

  Tammy fingered her cell phone in her pocket, decided if she tried to call Aiden, the man might lose it completely and said, “I don’t have it, sir. I don’t know how to say it any better.”

  “You do! I know you do!”

  Before she could do anything, he reached across the counter, snatched up Amerlia’s book, scanned the title and flung the book into her face.

  She ducked, but the spine caught her above her right eye. She stumbled backward, hit the wall, and put a hand on her throbbing forehead. When she pulled her hand away, there was a smear of blood on her palm.

  She was reaching for her baseball bat when Trouble came through the door, his body low to the ground, moving fast. The intruder ignored the cat. Halfway across the room, Trouble leapt and angled his body for the man’s face. In o
ne motion, he slapped a thorny paw across the intruder’s face and dropped to the floor.

  Blood spurted.

  Whether intentional or not, the slash on the customer’s face was in the same place as the one on Tammy’s.

  “Son of a…”

  Tammy lifted the bat, ready to cold cock this son of a gun all the way to the river. “Get out of my store. Do it now.”

  He stared at her from his good eye with his hand over the other one. “All right. You win this time, but this ain’t over, lady.” For the second time that day, he slammed the door behind him.”

  With her fingers shaking, Tammy once again punched in Aiden’s number.

  Chapter 3

  Aiden circled the Book Basket outside before he went through the front door. He poked his head in and jerked back. “You planning on hitting me with that?”

  She stared at him. He nodded at the bat on her shoulder.

  “Oh! Sorry. That man was . . .” Her words trailed away as she took the bat behind the counter and left it.

  Her skin was ashen. A small cut and a darkening bruise showed over her left eye. Her hazel eyes were strained. He met her behind the counter, put his hand on her chin, and got a good look at her injuries. “Who did this to you?” he asked and winced at the harshness of his tone.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know his name.”

  Aiden kept his temper at bay while she told her story. When she finished, he asked, “Do you need a doctor?”

  “No,” she said with a dismissive flip of her hand. “It’s just a minor scratch.” She described the man and watched while Aiden wrote down what she said. “Aiden?”

  “Yes.”

  “You remember this book doesn’t exist, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The murdered man knew about it. This man knows about it. Do you think he’s the killer?”

  Aiden hesitated before he said, “Hard to say, but it sure sounds like the two men are connected. We need to know if those circled words mean anything.”

  “I’ve made some tea. Would you like a cup?”

  She brought the hot tea on a delicate tray with a tiny beehive-shaped honey pot and a cup of cream and set it on the table between the two rocking chairs in the corner. Aiden lowered himself into one of them and barely managed not to sigh at the relief to his feet and back. This had been a long day.

  Tammy dropped into her chair with a moan that said she was as tired as Aiden.

  He’d been thinking about her often lately. His wife’s murder had locked him in a dark place for a long time. Through it all, Tammy had been his friend, never pushing, never demanding. Even during the worst time, he’d realized her intelligence and beauty. Hard not to notice a hot redhead with lovely hazel eyes.

  She was also nice and easy to get along with. He glanced at Trouble who was sleeping beside Tammy’s chair. Strange how the little fella had gone after those flyers.

  He cleared his throat and his thoughts at the same time and caught Tammy up on the investigation. The dead man was at the medical examiner’s. Cause of death was not at question. Time was, since the body was found several hours after the murder. In the spring, summer, and fall, the riverfront would have been teeming with families, but mid-February was cool enough to keep most folks inside.

  Aiden wondered if that had been factored into the murderer’s plans.

  Tammy downed the last of her tea and said, “I was on my way home when he barged in here. We both have the words from the book. If you feel like working on them tonight, I’ll pick up dinner for us and meet you back here in about a half hour.”

  “That would be perfect, but let me bring dinner.”

  “Absolutely not. You’re paying for dinner on Valentine’s day. This will be my treat.”

  •* * * *

  The diner was oddly free of customers, so Tammy made it to Amelia’s, dropped off the book, and was back at the Book Basket in less time than she’d expected. Aiden’s car was not outside. She gazed at the containers full of warm, ready to eat food and reluctantly shoved them into the ‘fridge in the back room in case Aiden had been held up. That done, she collected a white board she used sometimes to entertain children. She also gathered a marker and four sets of magnetic letters in various colors and propped the board on an easel in front of the rocking chairs.

  The words Aiden sent had no pattern or connection as far as Tammy had been able to see. She was deep in thought when Aiden stepped through the door. The frown on his face caught her attention immediately. “What?”

  He jerked his head toward the door. “You didn’t lock it?”

  “I knew you were coming.”

  “Nonetheless,” Aiden shook his head. “You should never be here alone with the door unlocked, Tammy. Not even during the day.”

  “I’m a shop owner, Aiden. I can’t lock the door and sell books. Let me nuke our dinner. I’ll be right back.”

  “Sure,” Aiden said. He looked worn out. Aiden worked long, hard hours. Maybe she shouldn’t have suggested working tonight. She heated the food and carried his and a soda back to the front room, then retrieved her dinner and drink and joined him.

  They ate in silence for a minute or two.

  “This is wonderful, Tammy. Thank you.”

  It was good, as the diner’s food always was. She’d brought a piece of grilled albacore for Trouble and put it in his food bowl in the back room. He was nowhere to be seen, which told her he was enjoying his dinner as they enjoyed theirs.

  “Let’s put the words on the white board,” she said.

  She grabbed the marker and wrote the twenty-nine circled words on the board. They ranged from “dead” to “Xanadu,” with no obvious connections among them. When they were all listed, Tammy came back to her chair. “I don’t think the words themselves are part of the message,” she said.

  “First letters?”

  “Yeah. Or second or third or—it could be any letter in any word.”

  “Yes, but since at least two only have three letters, it can’t be the fourth.”

  “Right. Let’s begin with first letters.”

  She circled the first letter of each word, then moved the magnetic letters onto the white board so they had red, green, yellow, orange, purple, black and white letters, representing the first letters in each word.

  There were twenty-nine letters: D T E H L G I I V N E E R N Y I A T T N S E I L X A O V N

  Tammy stared at them for a while, trying to find a word or two. She thought she saw HIGH, but there was only one H. She did see ATTENTION and moved the letters to make that word, but when she looked at what was left, she saw nothing that worked.

  They moved the letters around a thousand times, made at least that many words, but at the end of the evening, when Aiden’s eyes looked like they could not stay open for one more minute, they’d come no closer to a message than when they began.

  “You’re almost asleep,” she said.

  Aiden dragged himself up in the chair. “I’m so sorry.”

  “No need,” Tammy said, collecting their paper plates and glasses. “We’ll give up for tonight and try again tomorrow.”

  “Good idea.” He glanced at the door. “I’ll wait until you’re ready to leave and follow you home.”

  Tammy didn’t argue. The cut over her eye still hurt. She didn’t want to run into that man again. When the plates and cups were in the trash, she carefully lifted the white board and carried it into the back room so the letters wouldn’t be moved around by a customer’s child tomorrow. She wanted them to stay as she and Aiden had left them.

  A few minutes later, she pulled her car into the driveway and flashed her lights at Aiden, but he didn’t move from the road in front of her house until she had unlocked the door and stepped inside. She wasn’t sure, but she thought he even waited until she had time to lock it behind her.

  Trouble made a pit stop and then headed for the bedroom as if to say it was too late to be dawdling on the way to bed.

  By the time
she got there, he was curled on the pillow next to hers with his eyes closed.

  “Long day, huh bud,” she said as she slid in beside him. She ran her hand over his silken head and was rewarded with a purr. Cats in general fascinated her with their eyes that could see movement where human eyes could not, the peace they generally exuded, their ability to leap tall buildings at a single bound, or at least to jump onto the kitchen counter with as little effort as if it were the kitchen stool.

  But this cat was special. She rubbed his head again and scratched behind his ears as she knew he liked. He opened one sleepy eye and purred again. “That man who came after the book has a connection to the dead man, Trouble. But he must also have a connection with me and my shop.” She continued to pet while she talked even though her eyes were growing heavy. “He knew where the book should be.” She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “But he didn’t know the other man had already taken it, so they weren’t partners. Hmmm.” She snapped the light off and continued to stare into the dark, but before the idea that teased her from the corner of her mind could come forward, she fell asleep.

  Chapter 4

  Tammy unlocked the Book Basket’s door and took a moment to glance around, something she’d never done before. The back of her neck prickled as if someone were right behind her, and her stomach was drawn into a tight little knot. Ordinarily, she would have chastised herself for being such a ninny, but the cut over her left eye was a reminder that she’d been attacked in this very store only yesterday.

  The “attack” was born of pique, and the “attacker” hadn’t tried to do more. In fact, he’d fled like he was afraid she might hurt him. Nonetheless, Tammy didn’t feel secure in her place of business. Trouble bounded through the door, tail up and head high. The cat didn’t seem to have a worry in the world. She watched him prance across the room and disappear through the door to the back room. He was so nonchalant, in fact, she wondered if he’d understood anything that happened yesterday. Then she remembered the way he’d gone after her attacker.