Read on Arrival

by Nora Page

  Cleo felt bad for Iris. How terrible to have her dreams and health shattered. “I’ll share this information with my neighbor Gabby, the deputy,” Cleo said. “This will give the police the upper hand when they talk to Iris. See? You’re already helping.”

  Pat twisted her teacup. “I wish I had a police officer next door. I don’t feel good about this, Cleo. After what happened to Dixie? For all we know, the killer was right there among us at the wake! I don’t feel safe!”

  In what Cleo took as evidence of her shaken state, Poor Pat lifted the tea towel and grabbed the biggest blondie on the plate.

  Chapter Ten

  Work came first for Cleo the next morning, a frosty day cloaked in wispy clouds and breezy hints of winter. Cleo bundled up and added a woolier blanket to the peach crate Rhett snuggled in when they drove. Words on Wheels had several scheduled stops: a nursing home, a handful of home visits, and a drop by the preschool.

  Cleo enjoyed every stop. Most importantly, so did her patrons. Cleo felt affirmed in her plan to keep up her bookmobile schedule, even after the library reopened. Kids loved visits by the mobile library. So did those folks who couldn’t get out as much. For them, Words on Wheels was a window to the world. Cleo did a brisk book-lending business, as always. However, few patrons other than the preschoolers wanted to talk about books.

  Gossip spun faster than Cleo’s wheels on the open road. Most folks wanted to hash out the gory details of Dixie’s disturbing death and the brawl at her wake. Others thought Cleo—Catalpa Springs’ own Miss Marple—might have insights. She used her sleuthing reputation to turn the tables, asking folks for their theories and suspects.

  She discovered what she already knew: residents of her tiny hometown had vast imaginations. It was a lovely trait for promoting reading. Not so useful for narrowing down murder suspects. Still, Cleo believed in the power of data and writing things down. By the last stop of the morning, she’d compiled a list that included various serial killers (real and fictional), the postman, a beekeeper, a hairdresser, a ghost said to haunt Dixie’s home, another ghost, an honest-to-goodness extraterrestrial spotted hovering over a local dairy barn, an entire real estate office, the Baptist Ladies’ Raffle Club, and—most absurdly—Cleo herself. More realistic names included those she already knew: son Jefferson, daughter-in-law Jacquelyn, prodigal-daughter Amy-Ray, and angry Iris, as well as a handful of disgruntled real estate clients and colleagues and rafflers who’d lost out to Dixie’s good luck and/or cheating.

  After her final stop of the morning, Cleo treated herself to lunch at the Pancake Mill. She craved restorative pancakes and the company of her best friend. She then headed back to town, where she dropped Rhett at home and proceeded on to Fontaine Park. She had one more scheduled stop before meeting up with Pat.

  While the bookmobile sat at the center of town, Cleo enjoyed visits by Henry, who was out walking Mr. Chaucer, and her cousin Dot, who ran a little general store downtown. She was even happier that Dot had brought some fortifying oatmeal cookies, which they savored while sitting on a park bench. What Cleo didn’t enjoy was a visit from the pesky reporter from the local paper. The persistent young man had snapped unwanted photos of her and Words on Wheels, crouching low and angling his zoom lens up.

  “Ignore him,” Dot advised.

  Cleo tried. However, she feared he’d captured all the worst angles of her chin and her frown, and would twist her polite refusals to speak of Dixie’s death and her missing book. The experience left her edgy. When Dot returned to the store, Cleo retreated to her bus and the comforting presence of books.

  At five minutes to two, Cleo was tidying her shelves, readying the bookmobile to close for business as soon as Pat arrived. Three minutes later, Pat thumped up the steps, apologizing and breathing hard.

  “Sorry I’m late!” Pat scraped back her bangs, which promptly flopped back over her flushed brow. She wore a tan windbreaker, faded jeans, and a T-shirt advertising “Holmes Homes Cleaners.” She looked bedraggled, in outfit and spirit.

  “You’re not late at all,” Cleo said. “You’re a couple minutes early, in fact.”

  Pat breathlessly explained that she’d had to cover for one of her cleaners. Then she’d had troubles with her van’s engine and a tractor that held her up on the highway. She exhaled loudly and sank onto the back bench seat flanking the kids’ corner of the bus. She rolled her neck and stretched her ankles, wiggling her sneakered feet up and down.

  “If you’re tired or don’t have time, we can do this another day,” Cleo said. Or she could go herself, which might be for the best. Last spring, Cleo’s sleuthing had almost gotten a loved one hurt. She didn’t want to put anyone else at risk.

  Pat planted her feet firmly on the floor tiles. “No, I asked you to let me help and I meant it.” She stood, smoothing down her windbreaker, which rustled right back to wrinkly. “Do you want me to drive? My van is working. It’s just rattling in the engine when it starts.”

  Cleo had spent many misguided decades letting other folks take the wheel. “I’ll drive,” she said. “A visit from the bookmobile tends to put folks in a happy mood.” She winked at Pat. “And off guard.”

  Pat twined her fingers. “I was worrying all night. Jefferson or Jacquelyn or both could be responsible. What if they come after us? I have bad ankles. I can’t run or fight.”

  Cleo held up her cell phone and made a show of slipping it in her pants pocket. “I have my deputy neighbor on speed dial, and nine-one-one preprogrammed too. But I don’t intend for Jefferson and Jacquelyn to know we’re suspicious. We’ll say we’re stopping by to see how they’re doing. They’re hardly likely to attack two virtual strangers who’ve come visiting.”

  Cleo suspected that Gabby and Henry might see the situation otherwise. However, Cleo had known Jefferson as a child. He’d been gentle and sensitive, almost too passive even when bullied. Logically, he was a suspect, but Dixie’s death had been planned, awfully and elaborately, for optimal terror. The killer was fueled by high emotion: greed, anger, hatred, revenge, or some mix of all of the above. Cleo simply couldn’t see that person being Jefferson.

  Pat continued fretting. “What if Jacquelyn is the only one there? She’ll shut the door on us for sure!”

  “I have a secret weapon.” Cleo headed up the aisle, past the tidy shelves of books. She sat down in her captain’s seat, buckled up, and nodded to the picnic basket tucked beside Rhett’s crate. “I stopped by the Pancake Mill earlier. I have a fresh-baked blueberry pie.” No Southerner would be so rude as to reject bereavement food. Especially pie.

  * * *

  The peach orchards surrounding Dixie’s home looked lonely, the limbs darkened and stark in the rain. Drizzle spit from the clouds, and the Mime over Matter banner flapped in the wind. Dixie’s house stood quiet and dark too. Cleo wondered if Amy-Ray was still inside, lording over the house she claimed she’d won. Cleo and Pat hurried up Dixie’s walkway to the porch, both for cover from the rain and to peek inside.

  Pat hung close to Cleo, glancing in each window nervously. “I keep expecting Amy-Ray to appear and throw us out,” she said.

  “It doesn’t seem like anyone’s inside,” Cleo said. The house had an empty feel. She’d seen it happen before. A home took on the spirit and soul of its owner. When that person departed, so did the homey atmosphere. “Henry was saying, he’s always thought this was the loveliest house in town,” Cleo said.

  Pat murmured agreement. “It is pretty. Albert and I thought about buying this place once. I had a connection with the owner. Thank goodness we didn’t. Think of the cleaning!”

  Cleo could see that if you cleaned for a business, you wouldn’t want to do it at home, especially in a massive Victorian mansion. They made their way around the porch and down the path to the cottage. The cottage windows were dark too, dimming Cleo’s hopes of visiting/interrogating the occupants. She consoled herself. If no one was home, she’d just have to share the pie with Henry. Cleo was smiling, thinking of that en
joyment, as she knocked on the door, aiming for one of the few spots without peeling paint.

  She jumped when it opened before the third knock.

  Jefferson wore a frilly periwinkle apron splotched with damp spots and suds. Sweatpants flopped out at the knees.

  “Oh!” Cleo said. “Jefferson, dear, we’re so glad you’re home.” She held up the pie, as gorgeous as a jewel in its clear plastic carrier.

  He eyed it suspiciously.

  “Pie,” Cleo said firmly. “Miss Pat and I were worried about you, so we brought you a pie. You remember Pat? Pat Holmes, your mother’s dear friend?”

  Pat nodded vigorously. Cleo stepped forward, putting a loafer over his threshold, smiling brightly. “We’ll come in and visit a spell. Is that okay?”

  He shrugged. “Sure. Okay. It’s just me. Jacquelyn’s at a conference in North Carolina. Lucky her to get out of town, right? I’m trying to clean up. I’m sorry it’s a mess.”

  Cleo took this as the usual disclaimer against a little clutter. She was wrong. Jefferson was being modest in the opposite way. It wasn’t a bit of a mess. It was a mess of massive proportions. Stacks of cardboard boxes brushed the ceiling and dominated most of the limited floor space.

  “You’re moving?” Cleo asked, feeling Pat hovering anxiously at her side.

  “We never unpacked.” Jefferson navigated around the box mountain. Somewhere under mounds of paper and bubble wrap, a coffee table likely stood. A sofa and two armchairs huddled against a wall, dressed in more clutter and rusty plaid upholstery that Cleo suspected would be scratchy.

  “I was making coffee,” Jefferson said. “Can I get you some?” He cleared papers from the armchairs, waving for them to sit. Pat perched on the edge of her seat, looking ready to jump up and flee. Cleo confirmed that the armchair upholstery was scratchy. As she waited, she read the labels on the nearest pile of boxes. “J. Office. Important.” “J. Research files. Important.” “Drama. J.’s Important.”

  Jefferson returned with a tray of mugs, a carton of creamer, and a box of cookies. “Do you need sugar?” he asked, looking worried.

  Yes, Cleo thought. “No, thank you,” she said aloud. “None for me. This is lovely.”

  “Lovely,” Pat parroted. “No sugar.”

  The cookie box boasted its contents as sugar free, dairy free, wheat free, nut free, peanut free, gluten free, GMO free, and—most disturbingly—raw. Pat took two. Cleo, for once, found herself able to resist a cookie.

  “Are these all your boxes?” Cleo asked, pointing to the “J. important” cartons.

  Jefferson flushed. “Those are Jac’s. All the important stuff. Her permanent office at the college isn’t available yet, so she’s keeping them here. Mine are over there.” He nodded toward a stack labeled “Clown,” “Mime,” and “Jeff stuff.” The handwriting matched the important labels. Cleo guessed it was Jacquelyn’s.

  “I remember you always liked theater and costumes,” Cleo said. “I’m glad you found a calling you love. You’re starting a school, we see?”

  “Yes, we saw that,” Pat said, her tone verging on accusatory.

  “You’d be the only ones who noticed,” he said petulantly. “It was supposed to be the grand reveal last night, until Amy-Ray ruined it.”

  “A reveal at a wake?” Pat said.

  Pat wasn’t the most subtle interrogator, Cleo thought, but she got to the point. Pat could be the bad, blurting cop to Cleo’s pie-bearing good cop.

  Jefferson shrugged and fumbled with untying his flouncy apron, muttering that he’d been doing dishes. “Why not at a wake? It’s like a new rebirth for the house, a new beginning.”

  “Your sister,” Cleo said over Pat’s mutters. “That was quite a surprise. Did you know she was coming?”

  Jefferson’s face flared red. He tugged the apron off and tossed it on the coffee table. “No. We didn’t know. We didn’t invite her. No one’s seen Amy-Ray for ages. The police had to go inside and drag her out of Mother’s house. Now no one is allowed back in until after probate, and that won’t be fun either. Amy-Ray says she has a written something or other from Mother, saying she gets the house.”

  Cleo glanced to the main house, which looked even more massive from Jefferson’s cluttered little living room. The property would be worth a lot by Catalpa Springs’ standards too. Whether for sentiment or greed, it was a house she could see family members fighting over, maybe even killing over.

  Jefferson took a raw cookie and chewed glumly. “Amy-Ray’s always been a bully. I might never have been Mother’s favorite, but she let me live here. At least she and I still talked to each other. That’s more than Amy-Ray did.” Tears welled, and he turned away.

  Cleo felt bad. She hadn’t intended to make him cry. “Pie,” she said brightly. “Let’s have some pie. I’ll help you get some plates.”

  “None for me, thanks,” Pat said. “I’m good with these wonderful cookies.” She took a healthy bite and chewed as if gnawing on tree bark.

  Cleo cut herself and Jefferson big slices, figuring they might as well divvy up Pat’s portion. Settling back in the scratchy chair, she tried to lighten the mood. She smiled encouragingly at Pat and repeated, “We just wanted to stop by and see how y’all are doing, didn’t we, Pat? It must feel lonely around here with the big main house empty.”

  Jefferson was tucking into his pie. “Yeah,” he said between bites. “The police keep coming by, but Jacquelyn says we shouldn’t talk to them without lawyers. The chief seems really nice. He understands me. He gets my art and poetry and miming.”

  “Oh, he’s very understanding,” Cleo said, thinking Jefferson would be a good target for Chief Culpepper’s empathy-based confession technique. If Jefferson hadn’t crumbled already, maybe he was innocent. She ate some pie, blueberries bursting under the buttery crust. It was so good, she almost forgot where she was and why.

  “Did you do it?” Pat blurted out. “Did you taunt your mother with her fears? Kill her?” She slapped the coffee table, and they all jumped, Pat included. She flung a fist to her mouth and shot Cleo an apologetic look. “Sorry!” she said aloud. “Oh no, Cleo, you have pie on your … down your … It’s my fault for startling everyone.”

  A blueberry balanced on Cleo’s cream-colored blouse, prominently over her heart. She caught it with a napkin. A large purple stain remained.

  “What?” Jefferson sputtered. “No! You’re Mother’s friend, how could you think that? I couldn’t hurt Mother. All those death signs she saw? I never could have done any of that. The police say someone must have planted them—the dead bird and the Grim Reaper and stuff she said she saw and those bees! I couldn’t do that, especially the birds and bees. I’m phobic about winged things. Ask my wife. She’ll be happy to tell you what a big old baby I am when it comes to insects. Swear to the heavens, I get sweaty around butterflies. I couldn’t even help Mother with those birds in her kitchen. I’m useless. Mother said so.”

  Pat squirmed in her seat. She caught Cleo’s eye. “We should go?” she said, the statement rising in a question.

  Cleo might have stayed longer. However, Pat was uncomfortable, and now Jefferson was too, and Cleo had pie on her chest. “Before we go, may I use your restroom to put some soap on this stain?” Cleo asked. “I don’t want it to set.” The stain did bother her. She also wanted to see more of the little cottage.

  Jefferson gave directions to the only way to go, down the hall. The passage was dark and narrow with floorboards that cried out at each step. Cleo glimpsed a tidy bedroom. The bathroom featured mauve fixtures clumped in so tight she could barely turn around. She dabbed water and soap on the spot, which only made it spread wider. She leaned over the sink, holding the fabric to the mirror as she rubbed soap in a circle. The mirrored front of the medicine cabinet hung open an inch.

  Cleo’s hand moved to the mirror. She hesitated. She shouldn’t. She wasn’t the type to snoop in people’s medicine cabinets. Their refrigerators, yes. Their bookshelves, most certainly. A bookshelf, C
leo believed, was the window of one’s heart and soul.

  However, they had come to investigate. Cleo opened the cabinet, and a plastic tube fell into the sink. She picked it up and recognized an injector, labeled with a prescription. She squinted at the letters, always so tiny and hard to read, expecting it to be Jefferson’s or Jacquelyn’s. She gasped when she read Dixie’s name, highlighted in neon yellow. Two more tubular injectors wobbled on the narrow cabinet shelf.

  This could be the missing syringe Gabby sought. The deputy would want to see this. Cleo gave thanks that she’d put her phone in her pocket. She pressed Gabby’s number and held her breath until Gabby answered. Then she ran the water for cover and whispered what she’d found. “What should I do?” she asked.

  “Get out now,” Gabby ordered. “Please, Cleo. I’ll be right over.”

  Gabby hung up. Cleo flushed the toilet and ran more water, thinking of Dixie’s life-saving medicine, replaced with sugar syrup. To do that, the culprit needed access to the syringe and Dixie’s home. Jefferson and Jacquelyn had both. With a tremor to her hand, Cleo replaced the plastic tube on the shelf. The cabinet creaked as she shut it, and again when she opened it right back up. She wanted a photo. What if Gabby couldn’t get inside and someone destroyed the evidence? Cleo aimed her phone camera at the vials. She was messing with the camera, which always got stuck on video, when footsteps sounded in the hall. A step, a squeak, and then five more heavy tromps. The sound stopped just outside the bathroom door.