Read on Arrival

by Nora Page

  “Wait!” Pat said. “Don’t leave. I have to get something.”

  Cleo froze. She tried to think what she could grab in defense, something to throw or use as a shield. A pan. The coffee pot. That awful jar filled with notes of hatred and vengeance.

  Pat took a step forward, her cheeks red, her eyes flashing their whites. Cleo stepped back until she bumped up against the sharp edge of the counter. She turned to reach for the cookie jar, but before she could grasp it, she heard a noise. Pat ran down the hall. Something crashed, a cabinet banged, and the front door slammed.

  Cleo exhaled. She looked outside, where Henry and Ida chatted on the patio. The pug and Persian lounged on a little patch of grass nearby. Mr. Chaucer lay on his back. Rhett languidly batted at a tall blade of grass. A calm, pleasant scene, except for Pat, storming toward them, her arm outstretched. Ida backed up, mouth gaping. Henry put himself in front of her, his palms up. Cleo’s eyes locked on the gun in Pat’s hands.

  “No!” Cleo yelled. She pounded on the window and then ran to the back door, where she fumbled with the dead bolt. She burst outside to find Pat aiming the gun at Henry.

  “He’s coming with me,” Pat said, eyes skittering right, left, and nowhere. “On the bus, Henry. Get on that bus!”

  “Pat, please,” Cleo begged. Beside her, Ida prayed in a whispered monotone.

  “It’s okay,” Henry said, his voice pitched low, a forced calm. “Cleo, stay here.”

  “Don’t follow us!” Pat snapped. “Stay back!” She poked the gun within inches of Henry’s nose. “You—you’re driving.”

  He walked to the bus, stumbling once when Pat jabbed the gun at his shoulders. Pat followed him up the steps. Henry got in Cleo’s captain’s seat. The door closed, and Cleo’s stomach sank as Words on Wheels took off at a jolting jerk.

  “Ida!” Cleo cried, swinging toward the stunned woman. “Where’s your car?”

  “I … I walked …” Ida stammered.

  “Watch the pets!” Cleo ordered. “Take their leads. Keep yourselves safe. I’m calling the police.”

  Ida blinked out of her stupor. She rushed for the cat and dog while Cleo bolted back into the house. She needed her purse, her phone. She needed a vehicle. Her purse lay where she left it, on the counter, just down from the jar of unhappy thoughts.

  Cleo called 911 as she scoured the kitchen for car keys. She found a key holder behind the door, dozens and dozens of keys, all on little pegs, each marked with clients’ names and addresses. She struggled to explain to the dispatcher while simultaneously reading the labels. When she thought the dispatcher understood, she hung up and pawed through the keys until she found a set marked “HH van.” Holmes Homes. Cleo raced back outside and was met by pacing Ida.

  “Miss Pat’s been acting odd,” Ida said. Rhett was on her shoulder, nuzzling her ear. Mr. Chaucer hung close to her feet, his wrinkled face quivering. “Angry and snappy at us cleaners. I thought she was upset about her husband or the holidays or her health, like always.” She followed after Cleo all the way to the van.

  Cleo gave Rhett a quick kiss and Mr. Chaucer a pat. “Keep them safe,” Cleo pleaded, and she knew from Ida’s expression she would.

  “Go get ’em,” Ida said as Cleo climbed into the dented white van. “Don’t let her get away.”

  Henry. Words on Wheels … Cleo had no intention of letting them get away.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The van coughed and sputtered. The stick shift stuck and muddled between gears. Cleo muscled it into first, but before she stomped on the gas, she put her phone on her lap and speed-dialed Gabby. She managed to turn on the speaker function and then took off, over the railroad track, her head swiveling.

  Which way had they gone? She’d lost time looking for the keys and trying to explain the unexplainable to the 911 dispatcher. But, bless his heart, Henry wasn’t a speedy driver, and he was in a bright yellow school bus with opalescent flames. How hard could that be to find?

  “Cleo!” Gabby’s voice cut across the engine noise. “I just heard! I was out on patrol, so I’m already looking. We’ll get her! Do you have any idea which way they went?”

  “No,” Cleo said, almost choking on the word. She’d come to a three-way stop, a prong of roads with no far view in any direction. One street led straight into downtown. Surely Pat wouldn’t want to go there. That left two possibilities. Right went south, left to the north. From there, Cleo pictured a spiderweb map spreading across the entire country.

  “Wait!” Gabby cried. “I’m on Old Coopers Highway. I think I see yellow in the distance. Could be the bus. It’s coming this way.”

  Cleo heard the police radio squawking on Gabby’s end and a siren scream to life. Gabby was radioing in a roadblock. “Cleo, I have to go,” Gabby said to the phone. “Stay where you are. Wait somewhere safe. I’ll call you as soon as I have an update.”

  Cleo wasn’t about to wait. She turned to the right, toward Old Coopers Highway. The van shuddered and took corners at shivering wobbles. She urged it on with a mental chant of please, please, please …

  The road twisted through a shaded stretch of tall pines. When the landscape opened up, Cleo’s heart soared. There was an unmistakable gleam in the distance: school-bus yellow. Leaning back, Cleo pressed her foot full on the gas. She caught up quickly, giving thanks that even under duress, Henry Lafayette was the slowest poke of a driver she’d ever met.

  The bookmobile lurched along at under fifty miles per hour. Cleo got within several school-bus distances and slowed. She pushed the speed dial for Gabby again. Gabby answered before the first ring finished.

  “I’m behind them,” Cleo said.

  “I see that. Slow down! I’m in front of them.”

  Words on Wheels weaved, and Cleo saw flashing lights and a vehicle blocking the highway. Gabby’s roadblock. “Gabby, what if he can’t stop?” Tears blurred Cleo’s vision. She fought them. She had to keep her eyes and head clear.

  “He will,” Gabby said, her tone reassuringly crisp.

  Cleo prayed he would. The brake lights winked red. The long bus swerved, forcing a car on the other side of the highway onto the berm. Ditches edged the road, clogged with reedy grasses and wet, muddy depths. Cleo fixed her eyes on the back of the bus and the flashy cartoon text spelling out “READ!” in the space over the back window.

  The bus jerked left, letting Cleo see ahead again. Gabby stood in the highway, feet planted wide, arms extended. Aiming her gun?

  “Oh no … no, no, no …” Cleo eased off the gas. All she knew of car chases, she’d seen on the TV news and police dramas. Rarely did those—real or fictional—end up well. The brake lights danced. Henry had slowed to a jerky crawl, but the bus still ploughed forward. It clipped the front bumper of Gabby’s car, shoving it aside like a discarded toy. Gabby jumped clear, gun still drawn but mercifully unfired.

  Cleo skidded to a stop beside Gabby, and the young deputy jumped in. Cleo sped on, and Gabby radioed the chief with an update. Curses and lectures rumbled over the airwaves. Gabby pointed.

  “He’s turning,” Gabby said. “That’s the road to the gravel mine, the adventure camp.”

  In Cleo’s day, the gravel mine had been where the wilder teens went to do the things their parents feared. Now it was a destination for other dangerous activities. Thrill seekers and tourists paid to bungee jump toward a murky lake far below. Cleo had never liked looking into those depths. Her stomach pitched, and she felt like she was freefalling.

  The van bumped onto the dirt road, sagging and scraping over ruts. Pain jolted through Cleo’s fingers, already aching from her white-knuckled grip on the wheel. Gabby was updating Tookey on their location, and Cleo thought she heard sirens. Or was she just willing it so? She thought of the quarry, and her stomach plunged again.

  “This road,” she said. “It ends at the quarry. A drop-off. A dead end!”

  “Don’t think of it like that,” Gabby said firmly. “It only means they have to stop. We’ll talk it out. S
he likes you, right?”

  “I thought so,” Cleo said. “I thought she wanted to be my friend. But she killed Dixie, her own best friend! I found notes in her kitchen saying awful things about people she blamed for her troubles, wishing them death and failure and the worst kinds of pain. She has a gun!”

  Gabby didn’t respond. She was rifling in the console between their seats. “Coffins,” she said.

  Cleo glanced over to see her holding a handful of paper coffins. Gabby opened the glove compartment and more fell out. Gabby cursed softly.

  A happy welcome sign greeted them at the adventure center. It was closed for the season, but that hadn’t stopped the school bus. The entry gate hung busted open. Cleo drove through, past a ticket booth shaped like a log-cabin phone booth and a carved wooden bear, waving. The best sight of all was a colorful school bus idling in the parking lot.

  The taillights indicated the engine was still running. The bookmobile stood at the edge of the lot, facing the pit.

  “Go slow,” Gabby said, her tone low and tense. “We don’t want to spook her. Nonthreatening. Calm, engaging …” She sounded like she was instructing herself, recalling a training she’d never had to put into action. “Park a little bit away. I’ll get out. I’ll try to connect with her. Stay here.”

  Cleo was grateful for Gabby’s bravery and calm, but she feared what Pat might do if cornered. “Wait,” she said, holding out a hand. “I think Pat will respond better to me. She’ll feel threatened by you. Let me try to speak to her alone first, as a friend.” She had trouble saying the last word. A friend didn’t do what Pat had done, certainly not to Dixie and now to Cleo too.

  Gabby looked ready to refuse.

  “Please,” Cleo said. “Henry is in there.”

  Gabby bit her lip. “Okay. I’ll be right outside the van here. I can get to you in a flash. Don’t get within touching distance of her. Whatever you do, don’t get on the bus.”

  Cleo’s legs felt rubbery. When she reached the back of the bookmobile, she touched it for balance and luck. She made her way to the door, doing as Gabby instructed and staying a few feet away. Henry sat gripping the wheel, his face tight. Pat stood behind him, the gun aimed at his back.

  Stretching a smile across her face hurt, but Cleo did it. She summoned Jefferson’s miming. She waved and gestured for the door to open. Henry tentatively touched the lever. The door cracked open a few inches. Pat jabbed the gun in his shoulder, and he froze.

  “Pat, please, I want to talk,” Cleo shouted, giving up on the pantomime.

  Pat’s eyes flashed from Cleo to the pit beyond.

  “Pat, please,” Cleo said. “We’re friends. Let’s talk.”

  Pat’s head shook fast, her bangs flapping.

  “Pat, I don’t want you to get hurt.” This was true. Cleo didn’t want anyone getting hurt, most of all Henry. She locked eyes with him and saw him mouth words she knew in her heart and had wanted to hear and say. Not like this.

  I love you.

  Cleo slapped a hand to her mouth, her eyes watering and fixed on his. The door flew open.

  “Oh, stop it!” Pat yelled, face flaming. “You always liked him more, didn’t you? You like all of ’em more. Henry, Mary-Rose—all your friends. What about me? I’m beginning to think that you’re as bad as Dixie, Cleo Watkins!” She edged the gun up Henry’s back to rest against his neck.

  Cleo’s knees wavered. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gabby slip from the van and run to the side of the bus, where she hunched, gun at the ready. Cleo inched out her arm, palm toward Gabby, hoping to halt her. From where Gabby stood, she couldn’t see Pat’s twitching trigger finger.

  “I’m sorry,” Cleo said. “I never meant to hurt you, Pat. Tell me what I did, and I’ll do better, I promise. We’re friends. Partners. Right?”

  Pat scoffed. “Right. Friends like me and Dixie? Everyone said we were the best of best friends. She only kept me around as her frumpy sidekick to make her look better. She had the better job, better house, better looks, better luck. She always said so.”

  “That was wrong,” Cleo said. “Wrong as a friend and incorrect too.”

  “How was it incorrect?” Pat demanded.

  Henry winced, likely realizing what Cleo had done. She’d just talked herself into trouble. How could she claim that Pat outshined Dixie in any manner? She decided to stick to Dixie’s faults.

  “Dixie wasn’t truly lucky,” Cleo said. “Look at all the people who disliked her, all the people she offended. On the surface, her life seemed fabulous, but she wasn’t who she made herself out to be, was she?” Pat certainly wasn’t either, but at least she was nodding in agreement. The gun lowered a few inches.

  Cleo forged on. Outright insults went against her ingrained manners, but this was a desperate situation. “Dixie was self-centered. She didn’t care about Iris’s health troubles or yours.” Pat loved to talk about her health. Cleo hoped she’d take the bait.

  “She mocked my troubles,” Pat said, letting the gun sink a bit more. “She said that if I keeled over at seventy, it would be death by hypochondria.”

  “Rude!” Cleo declared.

  “Yeah,” Pat agreed. “Rude. It’s frightening to see death lurking on one’s doorstep. Dixie didn’t understand until I showed her. Then she realized. Ha! She sure realized!”

  Cleo glanced at Henry. The dear man had slumped low in the seat, his arm and shoulders drooping low. She willed him not to give up.

  Pat gabbled on, her words quickening as she described Dixie’s growing terror and how Pat had tricked her into the pantry and locked the door. “She finally acknowledged me then,” Pat said, her face cracking into a satisfied smile. “ ‘You’re sick, Pat,’ she said. Well, I told her it was about time she noticed.” Pat laughed, and in that moment Henry jerked upright, yanking the fluffy blanket from Rhett’s peach crate along with him.

  He flung the blanket back, over the seat and into Pat’s face. As she struggled, he leapt up and hurtled down the steps, landing in Cleo’s arms. “Run!” he ordered, swinging Cleo around. They hustled down the side of the bus as Gabby raced by them and Words on Wheels revved. The doors snapped shut, gears ground, and the bus jolted forward.

  Cleo and Henry pulled each other back, holding tight. Gabby jogged alongside the bookmobile, trying to tug the doors open. The young deputy hung on as Words on Wheels bumped over the end of the parking lot. The bus surged, and Gabby fell to the dirt. With a screech of metal, Words on Wheels crashed through the wire fence separating the parking lot from the quarry pit. Cleo’s knees buckled. Then, with a skidding of tires and gravel, the bus stopped, front wheels at the edge.

  Cleo breathed again.

  Gabby raced up, pushed through the doors, and pulled Pat out. The young deputy was clicking on handcuffs when a parade of vehicles arrived. There were two police SUVs, an ambulance, a fire truck, the newspaper reporter, and a sight that made Cleo’s heart complete: Ida jumping out of a police SUV with a frowny-faced Persian in her arms and a waggling pug at her heels.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The grand reopening of the Catalpa Springs Public Library took place as scheduled, with a miniature pony grazing in the garden, a proud Persian lording over the checkout desk, and a buzzing crowd, relieved to have a killer caught and their library back in circulation.

  Cleo and Leanna did their own circulating, greeting visitors and showing off the library’s features, new and old. After a mingling round, Cleo looped back to Henry. Her gentleman friend stood apart from the crush around the food tables laden with goodies fit for a funeral and a fete. There were cheese straws and funeral potatoes, pies, cookies, and Belle’s fondue station, serving up melted cheeses, chocolate, and caramel too. Cleo, having faced her worst fears, no longer feared fondue.

  Henry gazed at a wall-mounted display case. Rhett flopped on the circulation desk beside him within ear-scratching distance. Cleo smiled at the two and the locked glass case. Their clever carpenter had fashioned a shelf on which the lib
rary’s copy of Luck and Lore stood, along with various ephemera, including a newspaper headline declaring the book’s return. The original lending card was on display too, with a due date stamped three weeks after Cleo’s thirtieth birthday. Cleo had already explained the card to several members of the under-thirty-something crowd. Another slip of paper tallied up Dixie’s towering late fee.

  “Over eight hundred dollars,” Henry read out, shaking his head. “That’s a massive library fine. On the other hand, Dixie Huddleston could have afforded it.”

  “Maybe she would have paid,” Cleo said. “She would have if she thought it would turn her luck around.” She patted her hair. “Of course, I was prepared to give her a little break.”

  Henry chuckled. “Four hundred?”

  They both knew that Cleo would have forgiven all fines. She’d have forgiven Dixie too. She wished she’d gotten a chance.

  “Under lock and key, I see. Clever.” Mary-Rose joined them, looking lovely in a rosy dress and sweater set. Voices rose and Cleo’s best friend scowled over her shoulder. By the punch bowl, the Who-Done-It mystery readers, minus their murderous member, were arguing about whether to select a book from the main library or have the bookmobile come to them. Either way, Cleo would be happy.

  “That book group,” Mary-Rose said, clicking her tongue. “I’m polite, so I won’t say that I told you so, Cleo, but it figures it was one of them.”

  Cleo smiled at her friend. “I’ll admit, I brushed off your concerns about the Who-Done-Its.”

  Mary-Rose waved a dismissive hand. Her smile sagged. “I may have told you so, but I never thought Pat would be the killer among them. I still can’t fathom it. We all thought Pat and Dixie were best friends. They did everything together. Pat put up with Dixie. Dixie put up with Pat.”

  “I don’t know if Dixie did real friendship,” Cleo said. “It was all a competition to her. Poor Pat always lost out. Maybe that’s what Dixie liked about their arrangement. Dixie was guaranteed to win. She had someone to put down, and she loved rubbing in her good fortune to Pat.”