by Nora Page
Leanna groaned. “Nothing to worry about? I’m not so sure.”
Neither was Cleo.
Chapter Two
Captain Ahab had his whale. His quarry. His quest. His obsession.
Cleo had Dixie Huddleston. She liked to think she stopped short of obsession.
“Dixie,” Cleo muttered, squinting out the windshield of Words on Wheels. A white whale of Buick swung toward the curb, horn still blasting.
Rhett hopped to the dash and swished his tail. Leanna had run along to the main library. Other than Rhett, Cleo was alone in Words on Wheels, and now she was glad of it. Her encounters with Dixie tended to end in embarrassing defeat. At least she knew what to expect. She’d had decades of dealing with Dixie.
Dixie was the kid who’d driven teenage Cleo out of the babysitting business. Twice young Dixie swilled perfume under Cleo’s watch, pricey concoctions from Bourbon French Parfums of New Orleans, requiring pricier trips to the emergency room. On other occasions, Dixie ran off, all to tell her blessed mother she’d told her so: No one can babysit me!
Adult Dixie had turned her get-her-way nature to profits. At sixty-five, Dixie was a well-off divorcée and savvy businesswoman, ranking as Catalpa Springs’ number-one real-estate professional. All around town, her face beamed down from billboards, underlined with her logo: “Come Home with Lady Luck.” Her hobby continued her competitive streak. Dixie entered contests, from dahlia-bloom competitions to high-stakes bingo. She often won, and Cleo had heard the grumbles around town. Dixie was said to cheat, to be strong-armed, manipulative, and outright greedy.
Cleo knew what Dixie would say to such charges. She’d attribute her success to good fortune, which she didn’t sit back and wait for. Dixie grabbed, snagged, and gathered luck at any opportunity. Cleo knew all about that too.
Her gripe with Dixie wasn’t about the babysitting or lost raffles.
It was much more important. It was about a book.
Dixie Huddleston held the most overdue book in Catalpa Springs. And not just by weeks or months. Not even a few years. Cleo frowned, recalling the day Dixie checked out Luck and Lore: Good luck, death lore, and deadly omens of the Deep South. It was as memorable as another milestone, Cleo’s thirtieth birthday, celebrated at her favorite place, the Catalpa Springs Public Library. A colleague had made cake, strawberry with fluffy icing and a blaze of candles. Patrons and staff had gathered around the circulation desk to sing “Happy Birthday.”
Cleo could practically feel the moment. She’d filled her lungs, closed her eyes, made a most lovely wish, and—poof! There’d been a gust, a collective gasp, and a waft of smoke. Dixie Huddleston had blown out all Cleo’s candles.
“Ha! Made my wish first! Got your luck!” Dixie crowed.
Forty-five years, seven months, and four days had come and gone since that birthday. Cleo could calculate so precisely because she’d recently consulted her roster of lost and overdue books. She craved a clean slate before the grand library reopening. She had little hope of getting it with Dixie in the picture.
Dixie considered Luck and Lore to be one of her luckiest charms. Her fortunes had turned, she said, on the day she checked it out and grabbed Cleo’s birthday wishes.
“That afternoon I got my first house listing!” she’d told Cleo more than once. “I wished on your birthday candles that I’d become the best and most successful realtor in Catalpa County, and look—it came true!”
In rare moods of generosity, Dixie would thank Cleo, calling Cleo almost as lucky as her lucky-charm library book. Cleo suggested that the best thanks would be to return Luck and Lore. Dixie always got a good laugh about that. In fact, all Cleo’s attempts brought Dixie a trickster’s glee, as if Cleo’s chase and Dixie’s evasions were their own favorite game.
It wasn’t a game to Cleo.
She wanted Luck and Lore back and had tried every trick in the book to get it. She’d sent polite notes to Dixie. She’d called and faxed and parked her bookmobile outside Dixie’s door. She’d tallied the towering late fee, now teetering toward $800. Once, Cleo had even issued the worst threat she could imagine: banishment from the library.
Cleo hadn’t carried out the library exile. She couldn’t be that cruel. However, she did suspend Dixie’s borrowing privileges until e-books and their automatic return procedures came along. Perhaps most frustratingly, Dixie made no attempt to hide the overdue book. She read it in public, at the Spoonbread Bakery, in Fontaine Park, even in the library! She’d bring it back when she was good and ready, she always said.
When might that be? Cleo occasionally asked, hoping against all logic that the answer might change.
Dixie never said never. “A cold day in Georgia, Cleo! A cold day!”
A leaf blew by the window. It was a chilly day for the southern edge of the Peach State. Cleo tamped down absurd hope. She could guess what would happen. Dixie would lower her window. She’d wave. She’d blast the horn, attracting everyone’s attention. Right before she peeled out, laughing, flaunting the book.
Cleo gripped the keys to Words on Wheels, picturing herself revving her own engine and chasing Dixie down.
The key bit into her palm. The fantasy fizzled. Cleo had raced after Dixie before, an infamous defeat when Dixie said Cleo could have Luck and Lore if she could catch her. Not only had Cleo failed to keep up, she’d gotten a whopper of a speeding ticket. Cleo released the key. She wouldn’t give Dixie the satisfaction. She certainly couldn’t afford another speeding ticket. Rhett’s fluffy tail brushed Cleo’s nose. She took it as a warning.
“You’re right, Rhett,” she whispered. “We can’t let Dixie get to us.” Turning from the window, Cleo made a show—to no one but her cat—of straightening up the New Reads shelf.
Her mind, however, kept stirring the same old pot of grievances. It wasn’t about the book, per se. It was the principle! Dixie was violating the trust and honor that allowed public libraries to exist. Why, if everyone acted like Dixie Huddleston, there would be no more libraries!
Cleo’s eyes slid back across the dash. Dixie’s taillights had gone dark. The driver’s door opened, and Dixie stepped out. Her hair rose in spiky maple-leaf red. Her outfit resembled an autumn landscape reflected in rippling water, silky layers pinned down by cascades of crystals on glittery chains. Her pants shimmered like copper, each leg as wide as a gown. The cuffs skimmed the ground. Like a hovering ghost, Cleo thought, and she was suddenly gripped with the oddest urge: not to chase after Dixie, but to flee.
The spell broke as the Buick’s passenger door opened, and Dixie’s friend Pat Holmes shuffled after Dixie to muffled calls of “Wait up!”
Cleo steeled herself. Oh, dear … Dixie looked to be in a warpath mood, and Cleo could guess why. The newspaper. The Catalpa Springs Gazette, published once weekly, had done a feature on the library reopening. They’d interviewed Cleo, who’d happened to mention the overdue book and her desire to clear her roster. The young reporter had leapt on it. Forty years was a hunk of a fine, a good story. The issue had just come out, adorned with the blaring headline Most Wanted: Local Librarian Hunts Bold Book Thief, Demands Payment of Forty-Year Late Fee.
Cleo felt some remorse for her loose lips and the sensational headline. On the other hand, it was true, and Cleo hadn’t broken her librarian’s vow of secrecy. Cleo never revealed or judged her patrons’ reading choices. Dixie would recognize herself, though. Others might too.
Dixie thumped up the steps. “There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you, Cleo Watkins. How is anyone supposed to find your library if you’re moving around all the time?”
“I knew.” Pat puffed up behind her. “The schedule is online.”
Pat ran a cleaning company, Holmes Homes, a tough business that often left her looking as weary and washed out as her mops. Her hair was beige and chopped in thick bangs that mimicked the blunt cut falling just above her shoulders. Her too-large T-shirt bore her company logo: “Holmes Homes: We clean your grime when you don’t have time.�
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“Hi, Pat. Hello, Dixie,” Cleo said, dropping her pitch for the latter greeting. “Here for a book, Pat?” Cleo placed her hand on the door lever. She’d wrench it shut if Dixie tried to swipe anything.
“I’m good,” Pat said, still catching her breath. “I have to finish up our mystery for book group tomorrow.”
“I’m not good!” Dixie snapped.
Cleo stood firm, not about to apologize for the newspaper article.
Dixie stomped down the aisle and back again, her hand slapping bookshelves as she went. Several books propped up for display fell.
Pat followed, murmuring comforts and righting the books. “It’s okay, Dix. It’s going to be fine.”
Dixie ignored her, turning sharp eyes to Cleo. “You’re wondering why I’m here.”
Cleo suspected she already knew. Dixie, however, surprised her.
“I’m ready. That’s right. Ready.” Dixie rested a shaky hand on a shelf displaying autumn-themed reads.
A cold gust swept up the steps. “Ready?” Cleo repeated.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Dixie clawed at her spiky locks. “You don’t have to rub it in. You win, Cleo. I’m done with that book. Done with everything!”
Pat murmured, “No, no.” She reached for her friend, who swatted her off.
Cleo backed into the dashboard. Glee and skepticism wrestled. That more realistic emotion won out. This was surely a trick, a punishment for the newspaper article. On several April Fools days, Dixie had called the library, telling Cleo she could come pick up Luck and Lore. The first two times, Cleo had arrived to find a note on Dixie’s door: Got you! You’re the April Fool! The third time, when Cleo resisted Dixie’s tease, the infuriating woman called to say she’d been waiting, book in hand.
“Well?” Dixie demanded. “Aren’t you going to beg for your precious book?”
Cleo wouldn’t be fooled again. “Oh? When shall I stop by, then?” Cleo said, stretching her syllables into an icy drawl. “On a cold day in Georgia?”
Splotches rose across Dixie’s cheeks. “What? You? You’re mocking me? My former babysitter? The town librarian? I suppose I should have expected this after you taunted me in the newspaper. So rude, Cleo. Rude, rude, rude!”
There it was. Confirmation. Dixie had read the paper. Cleo straightened her cardigan, pleased she’d sidestepped a trick.
Dixie’s shoulders twitched, rippling the silky layers. “Fine. What does it matter to me?”
Outside, Lilliput neighed, and a gust sent leathery magnolia leaves scraping along the sidewalk. Dixie lurched toward the nearest window, eyes wide and scanning. She gasped and drew back.
“Dixie?” Cleo said, concern overcoming her stern stance. Something wasn’t right. Dixie seemed truly upset. Scared, even. “What’s wrong?” Cleo asked. She sharpened the point. “Why are you offering to give back that book?”
A tear slipped over Dixie’s high cheekbone. She swiped angrily. “That book of yours! It’s turned on me! I’ve used up all my luck. I’m a dead woman walking. I’m dying, Cleo!”
Pat protested and was again rebuffed.
Cleo slapped a palm to her heart. “Oh no, Dixie, surely no—” Her mind reeled with potential afflictions. Dixie was only in her sixties. So young. But age wasn’t the only decider, Cleo well knew.
“You’ve been to a doctor,” Cleo said, as close as manners would allow to asking the cause.
Dixie scoffed. “I don’t need a doctor to tell me what I know. I’ve seen the signs, Cleo. I’m a goner.”
“There has to be a mistake,” Pat said. She turned wide doe eyes on Cleo. “It’s a misreading of signs and omens, surely.”
Cleo breathed out in relief. Here was another trait of Dixie’s. She was … Cleo searched for the right word. Superstitious was most apt but seemed a tad judgmental. Cleo tried to respect other people’s beliefs, however outlandish they might seem to her. Dixie’s death signs did sound downright ridiculous. She was listing them, rambling on about crows and doves.
“Birds!” Dixie shouted, hands waving. “Birds in my house, Cleo! In my kitchen! A live bird! A dead one too! You know what that means, don’t you?” Dixie scowled outside, eyes narrowing on the bookless bookmobile party.
Cleo glanced again too, but this time her spirits lifted even more. Henry Lafayette made his way through the crowd, accompanied by his aged pug, Mr. Chaucer. Cleo didn’t call Henry her “boyfriend.” That sounded too young and frivolous. Henry was her “gentleman friend,” a kindred spirit, a lover of books, and an awfully nice person to snuggle up with beside by a fireplace. Henry and his dog paused to gape at a giant soap bubble sailing across their path. Mr. Chaucer sneezed, breaking the low-floating bubble. When he’d recovered his balance, they continued their trek toward Words on Wheels.
Cleo turned back to Dixie. “Birds do fly inside sometimes, and it is migratory season. Snowbirds of all sorts are coming down in droves. People, hummingbirds, ducks, cranes …”
“This isn’t about weather, Cleo, or wildlife. There’s more.” Dixie listed cows, baying at midnight. A hound, bellowing her impending death to the moon. Clouds of ominous shapes. Black cats, ladders, cracked mirrors, a wasp the size of a hummingbird in her bathroom.
Pat raised her shoulders in a helpless shrug to Cleo.
Henry and Mr. Chaucer reached the door. The elderly dog—gray-snouted with wrinkly fawn fur—launched himself up the steps, as if using all available momentum. At the top, he promptly plopped on the floor next to Rhett, who was glowering under Cleo’s seat.
“Morning, ladies. Cold weather we’re having, isn’t it?” Henry said, following more leisurely. Henry, an antiquarian bookseller, had grown his white beard Santa Claus fluffy for the season. His hair waved in tufts over prominent ears and around the felt cap he was now politely removing. His wire-rim glasses were slightly fogged. Like Cleo, Henry was on the short side of average height and pleasantly padded around the middle.
Dixie’s eyes widened. “It is. It is a cold day! Just like I always said. You’d get your book on a cold day in Georgia, Cleo.”
“Dixie, really,” Cleo soothed. “I don’t think—”
“You don’t think?” Dixie said. “Well, how about the Reaper outside my window? I saw him. I saw the coffins too, with my name right on them. I don’t care what you or anyone says—I know I’m a goner.”
Henry moved close to Cleo’s side. Mr. Chaucer whimpered.
“What’s happening?” Henry asked, looking anxiously from Cleo to Dixie and on to Pat, her forehead as furrowed as Mr. Chaucer’s.
“Oh, we’re just chatting about my upcoming death,” Dixie said with panicked levity. She eyed Cleo. “I’m setting my affairs in order. Atoning. If there’s an afterlife, I’ll rebuild my luck there.”
Cleo thought Dixie was overreacting. Selfishly, however, she saw an opportunity. “You want to return Luck and Lore, then,” she said. “I can take it back right now, and you’ll surely feel much better.”
Dixie scowled, a more familiar and reassuring look. “Not now. I had it yesterday but couldn’t find you. It’s at home. Besides, your library book isn’t the only account I need to settle. Come to my house tomorrow. Ten. Or noon. I should still be around then.”
“I have a book group at nine thirty.” Cleo nodded to Pat, who was a member of the Who-Done-It mystery readers. “I can stop by afterward.” Cleo was the group’s moderator and couldn’t back out. Besides, part of her didn’t trust Dixie. A big part. They settled on just before noon.
“Hopefully I’ll be there,” Dixie said, and she was down the steps in a wave of silk and chiming charms.
“She will!” Pat agreed, hurrying after her friend.
When they were gone, Cleo tried to explain to Henry what had happened. She wasn’t sure she understood it herself.
“Signs?” Henry asked. “Death signs? Do you think they’re for real?”
The white-whale Buick peeled out, kicking up gravel and dust that hung in the sunlight after
Dixie was gone. A dread lingered over Cleo. She almost said yes. “No,” she said instead. “No, of course not. Birds and noisy cows? Clouds shaped like skulls and caskets? The Grim Reaper? Dixie seems truly afraid and might actually believe it, though. I’ll know she does if I get that book back.”
Henry stroked his beard, his signal of an idea taking form.
Cleo asked before he did. “Do you want to come along? I have to stop at the Pancake Mill for a book group beforehand, and I can’t guarantee that Dixie will give up Luck and Lore. I suspect she’s punishing me for mentioning her overdue fine in the paper.”
“Pancakes? Books? Possible treachery? Sounds delightful,” Henry said. “Except for the treachery. You’ll need a guard dog in case any real reapers or death hounds show up.”
Mr. Chaucer, guard pug, lay on his back, wrinkles puddling, a paw twitching in a dreamtime romp. Henry smiled, clearly dismissing the potential for danger.
Cleo wasn’t one to see signs and omens, but she feared this morning’s encounters with Dixie Huddleston and Belle Beauchamp didn’t bode well.
Chapter Three
“She deserves to die!”
The words wafted over Cleo, as ethereal as the fine mist rising from Pancake Spring just outside the wide, paned windows. Inside, pancakes sizzled on tabletop griddles, the signature feature of the Pancake Mill, a historic sugar mill turned to pie and do-it-yourself flapjacks. Butter and blueberries snapped and spit. The discussion by the Who-Done-It mystery readers club was equally heated.
Mutters of indignation arose, peppered with nervous giggles and clinking cutlery. For the past hour, the seven women and sole man had been analyzing every victim in a long and bloody mystery, issuing judgments on why each had death coming. Cleo sat at the head of the table. Although officially the moderator, she hadn’t contributed much. Her thoughts kept drifting. She wasn’t bored. She was distracted.
By pie, for one. A waitress sailed by with a golden slice of honey chess pie, the November special. Cleo craved a piece, but her cruel yet well-meaning doctor had her on a low-sugar diet. The view distracted too. Pancake Spring peeped in and out from under its fog cap. Ripples crisscrossed the deep waters, tracing the trails of hardy lap swimmers. On the banks, the trio of resident peacocks fanned and fluffed, and two walkers slowly strolled. Henry and Mr. Chaucer were both bundled up for the chilly morning. Henry wore a thick wool coat and scarf. Mr. Chaucer sported a puffy pug jacket that seemed to tip him further off balance.
