Murder Between the Covers

by Maddie Cochere

  “I don’t know. He’s really grating on me. I think he’s fake and hiding who he is. It couldn’t be any more obvious than his name – Bubba Bones.”

  “Bubba is a common nickname, and Bones is a fine English surname. I don’t think he’s hiding behind an alias.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said. I grabbed my bag and pulled out the picture of the Bohemian woman. “Have you ever seen this woman before?”

  She studied the picture for a moment. “She’s pretty distinctive, isn’t she? I’ve never seen her. Why?”

  “She was in the bookstore yesterday morning. I’d like to find her and ask her if she saw or heard anything before Meredith died.”

  Aunt Bee tilted her head and gave me a quizzical look. “You suspect foul play? I heard her death is going to be ruled an accident.”

  “I know. I only want to find her to put my mind at ease.” I didn’t want to tell her that I suspected the woman might have killed Meredith. I changed the subject back to the mayor. “Does Max like the mayor?”

  She laughed. “Max gets along with everyone. Boy, Bubba’s really gotten under your skin, hasn’t he?”

  “I think he has an ulterior motive for being mayor, and he’s driving everyone nuts looking for a copy of Treasure Island.”

  “The book? Maybe he’s really looking for the treasure.”

  I smiled. “I don’t think there were any pirates in Ohio, Aunt Bee.”

  “Not pirate treasure. Civil War treasure. Haven’t you ever heard about the Buxley legend of the gold?”

  “Oh, stop. You’re just being silly now.”

  “No I’m not. You can ask your mother. She knows about it. We all did when we were kids. We used to dig holes all over town looking for the treasure. Kids today don’t know about it or talk about it. They’re all wrapped up in their phones and video games and aren’t interested in digging holes.”

  “Do you have time to give me the details?”

  She nodded and launched into the story. “Soon after the Civil War, Confederate gold worth millions of dollars was stolen. Some people think it was moved to a secret location. Others think it was broken up into smaller lots and hidden all over the South. The legend is that Randolph Buxley stole over a million dollars worth of the stolen gold, brought it to Ohio, and buried it. He came back later and settled the town of Buxley.

  But, he didn’t dig it up. He thought he was being spied on and would be arrested if the gold surfaced. Later it was said he had an attack of conscience and decided to never dig it up or tell anyone where it was. It might be buried under the town, or it might be buried outside the town. It might not exist at all. No one knows, but plenty of people have tried to find it. The mayor might be another.”

  “He’s a mooch,” I said. “I could totally see him wanting to find the gold.”

  She laughed. “He’s definitely a mooch. He keeps an appointment book with his dinner invitations. The problem is that he invites himself to the dinners.”

  She stood to leave.

  “Thanks, Aunt Bee. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.”

  “No problem. I appreciate the chance to sit for a spell. My knees aren’t getting any younger. Max and I will see you Saturday. Mayor or not, the grand opening is going to be fun.”

  I walked her to the door and retrieved my camera from Nancy. After downloading the laundromat pictures to my own computer, I also downloaded the pictures from yesterday.

  I sent the picture of the Bohemian woman to Jackie and then called her.

  “Buxley Beacon. Jackie Ryder.”

  “You sound busy. I can call back later,” I said.

  “No. Now’s a good time. I need to take a break anyway. I’m writing about the council meeting last night. This town’s going to be broke if the mayor has his way. Now he wants the roads re-striped with reflective paint. It’s not like we can’t see the lines as they are. He isn’t happy unless he’s coming up with some other safety shit.”

  I let out a loud Ha! - partly because it felt good to hear someone else complain about the mayor, and partly because he had driven her to swear.

  “Two of the bikes have been stolen already,” she said. “Collins and Winnie responded to a shoplifter at the convenience store downtown yesterday afternoon, and when they came out, the bikes were gone. Hopefully, the rest of them will be stolen before the day is out.”

  I couldn’t help smiling at her rant. She let out a big sigh and asked, “What’s with your Christmas tree break-in last night?”

  “You’re kidding? Glenn and Clay wrote that up?”

  “I saw it this morning. They must have been bored.”

  “I called to tell you I emailed a picture to you.”

  “I’m looking at it now. Who is she?”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “I’ve never seen her before.”

  “She was in the bookstore about twenty minutes before I found Meredith.”

  There was silence on the line. For a moment, I thought we had been disconnected.

  “Jackie?”

  “I’m looking. Wait a minute.” I heard her shuffling papers and swearing under her breath. “Here it is. Howard declared her death an accident this morning. Time of death – nine forty-five. That puts this woman in the bookstore when Meredith died. Geez, Jo, that’s a helluva piece of information. We need to tell Sergeant Rorski right away.”

  Fartbusters! Once Jackie got onto something, it was hard to get her off.

  “Not yet. Let me track her down and get her story. You can have the exclusive if she knows anything. She may have simply gone into the store, and when there was no one to wait on her, she left. I don’t want to make anything of this until there’s something to make.” I held my breath and waited for her response.

  “Maybe,” she said thoughtfully. “I guess there’s no reason to rile up the sergeant when he thinks the matter is settled.”

  “Thank you. I promise I’ll let you know the minute I have something solid, and before I let you go, did you know there was gold buried around here somewhere?”

  “The Civil War legend? My dad used to talk about it. Said he and his buddies got hauled in front of a judge for digging holes all over the O’Leary farm. Lucky for him no charges were filed. Mr. O’Leary only wanted to put a scare into the boys.”

  “I don’t know why Mama didn’t tell us about it when we were kids. We sure could have used the money.”

  She laughed. “When I first moved back here, I did some historical research on the town. Did you know there used to be seven saloons up and down Main Street? It was probably like the Wild West around here. Randolph Buxley first tried to take the land belonging to Daniel Schneider. They fought over who the rightful owner was until the creek rose and flooded the farm. Randolph gave up on Daniel’s land and set his sights on the neighboring farm, where he founded Buxley.”

  Jackie had a ton of information stored in her head. Some of it was useless. There weren’t any creeks around here, and I almost asked what creek, but I was afraid she’d part with more information.

  “Thanks for the history lesson. I have to run.” I said.

  I sat for a few minutes to think about what my next move should be. Obviously, Bubba was on a fool’s errand looking for gold. Maybe that was why he ran for mayor. He would have access … to what? Was he digging holes in basements all over town?

  The thought made me smile. He couldn’t dig holes in our basement. The furnace and water pipes would give him a heart attack.

  Hank might know about the woman. He was a photographer by day and a bouncer next door at Parker’s by night. Not that Parker needed a bouncer. Hank’s position there had evolved more into greeter and host than bouncer.

  I called him on his cell phone.

  “What’s wrong? he asked.

  “What happened to hello?”

  “You never call me, so I figured something’s wrong. What did you do now?”

  “Stop it,” I said, laug
hing. “Nothing’s wrong. Everyone in the family is fine, and I didn’t do anything.”

  “Well then, what do you want?”

  “Now you’re talking. I’m going to text a photo to you. Take a good look at it and call me back. I want to know if you’ve ever seen the woman before – either in Parker’s or around town.”

  “Ok, will do.”

  I sent the picture and waited for his call.

  Arnie stuck his head through my doorway. “Agent Roberts will be here at three o’clock today. You should probably sit in on the meeting.”

  Arnie may have been gracious about my blowing the surveillance of the laundromat, but he wasn’t going to go so far as to take the meeting with the FBI agent by himself. I nodded my head and mumbled, “Ok.”

  My cell phone rang.

  “Have you seen her before?” I asked.

  “What happened to hello?”

  I laughed. “I knew it was you.”

  “I’ve seen her. She came into Parker’s last month with some dude. They were both artsy-fartsy types.”

  “Do you remember what day?”

  “It was a Friday, and it was before Thanksgiving. Let me think for a minute. … Ok, now I remember. I was shooting a wedding the next day. All the bridesmaids dyed their hair red to match the bride, but they didn’t really match. The bride called and wanted to know if I’d be able to retouch the photos to make the hair color the same on everyone.”

  “Were you?”

  “They all looked like pumpkin heads when I was done, but the bride was happy.”

  I laughed again, but I was certain they were all beautiful. Hank’s work was some of the best around.

  “So, whose wedding and what day?”

  It was the Hagar-Corona wedding the seventeenth of November, so your girl was in on the sixteenth.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I’d just hung up with Camilla Hagar, and in walks this woman with wild red hair. She wasn’t the type of woman you’d forget. Her hair made her stand out, but she was really pretty, too, and it worked on her. The guy she was with wanted to sit at the bar.”

  “Perfect. I knew I could count on you.”

  I ended the call and walked over to Parker’s. Lunchtime was in full swing, and Parker was busy pulling beers. I slipped onto a stool at the end of the bar and waited for him to work his way down to me.

  Parker was about the same age as Arnie. As far as I knew, they had been friends since childhood. Arnie wanted to retire in another year or two, but Parker wasn’t interested in retiring. For having been a heavy smoker and drinker for many years, he looked surprisingly young. He was an attractive, string bean of a man with a full head of hair and a gaggle of single senior women in town continually vying for his attention. He wasn’t interested in any of them. His wife died six years ago, and he always said he was now married to the bar.

  “What can I get for you, Jo?”

  I grabbed a drink napkin from a short stack at the bar’s edge and pointed to the pen stuck behind his ear. “Are your security cameras running? More specifically, are your tapes up to date?”

  I wrote the days and times I wanted to review on the napkin.

  “They sure are,” he said.

  Parker was an electronics geek in his spare time. Everyone in town knew he had state-of-the-art security equipment on the premises. I slid the napkin over to him.

  “What are you hoping to see?” he asked.

  I pulled the picture of the woman out of my jacket pocket and showed it to him.

  He nodded his head. “Came in with some guy who acted like the place was a haven for disease. I keep a clean place here. You know I do.”

  I could see the memory was irritating him.

  “What about the woman?”

  “She was nicer than he was. What are you working on?”

  “I’m unofficially checking her out. Chances are, she didn’t do anything, but I need to be sure.”

  “I’m busy today, but how about tomorrow morning before ten, and I’ll have these cued up for you. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  “That’d be great. Thanks. And I’ll have a Cobb salad and unsweetened tea for lunch.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “And you thought going into a place you were strictly forbidden to go into was a good idea because …”

  Agent Roberts’ voice trailed off.

  I didn’t appreciate his attitude.

  “Number one,” I said. “You didn’t forbid me to go into the laundromat. Your instructions were to not interact or talk with anyone.”

  “The operative word being interact,” he said.

  “I don’t know what you want from me. I had laundry to do, so I did it. I didn’t talk to the owner or anyone else in the place. If it wasn’t for that dimwit mayor of ours, there wouldn’t be any concern, and you would be thanking me for going above and beyond and getting all these photos for you.”

  “Well, you’re done here,” he said. “Thanks to you, I’m stuck running surveillance for a few days.”

  “You have everything you need,” I said. “Why don’t you raid the place like you were going to do at their last location?”

  “We don’t have everything we need. You saw a box and an envelope. That’s not proof that fake IDs are being made and sold there. Just stay away. I don’t need you screwing up anything else. I’ll get the proof we need myself.”

  “No problem,” I said, barely able to keep my anger in check. “But if I have laundry to do, I’m going back.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said.

  “It’s a free country, and I’ll do my laundry wherever I like.”

  He pointed a finger at me. “You step one foot in that laundromat, and I’ll have you thrown in jail for interfering in a federal investigation.”

  I stood to leave the room. “I’ll have my report and expenses on your desk within the hour,” I told Arnie. “Nancy can send our bill out today.”

  “You might want to hold off on that,” the agent said. “If these guys pack up and leave, you’re not getting a dime. We didn’t offer to pay you, so you could ruin nearly a year’s worth of our hard work.”

  I stomped off and left Arnie to deal with Agent Roberts. I slammed Arnie’s door for good measure.

  “Are you ok?” Nancy asked, her eyes wide.

  “That man is maddening. If anything has gone haywire with this job, it’s because of the mayor.”

  I was tempted to go back into the office and tell the agent he should talk to the mayor. Bubba was in the laundromat every day, and he might know something about the fake IDs, but I was no longer willing to help. He could figure it out on his own.

  I managed to temper my anger and gave Nancy a bit of a smile. “Are you going to Pepper’s tonight to bake cookies?”

  “I can’t. I’m having dinner with my parents. I’d cancel, but I haven’t seen them since Thanksgiving. Pepper said she’d send a box of cookies over to Hank’s for us.”

  Agent Roberts came out of Arnie’s office and left without acknowledging Nancy or myself. Arnie stood in his office doorway. He, too, had nothing to say.

  I was suddenly defensive. “I may have screwed up, Arnie, but I still say I would have been a hero if the mayor hadn’t opened his big mouth, and the more I think about it, the more I think he might have done that on purpose. He wanted the owner of the laundromat to see my face and hear my name. And I think I know what he’s up to. He’s not looking for a person. He’s looking for the gold that’s buried around here somewhere.”

  Nancy’s eyes opened wide. “Gold? What gold?”

  Arnie finally spoke. “There’s no gold. It’s a legend almost a hundred and fifty years old, and every forty years or so it rears its ugly head again, and people start digging up the town. There was never any proof that gold was brought here, and my dad always said that the original old man Buxley started the rumor to get more people to settle here.” He pointed a finger at me. “You didn’t screw up. I’ve run plenty of surve
illance in the midst of my targets. Go about your business and forget about the FBI.” He turned to go back into his office.

  A question of Pepper’s from months ago popped into my head. “Wait a minute. How many dead bodies have you found since you’ve been a private investigator?”

  He called back over his shoulder before shutting his door, “None.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Mama, if you and Keith don’t stop eating these cookies, I’m going to banish both of you to the basement.”

  Pepper stood glaring at the two of them with her hands on her hips.

  Kelly was in the kitchen, rolling dough, cutting shapes, and baking the sugar cutouts. Mama, Pepper, Keith and I were frosting and decorating the cooled cookies in the dining room.

  Pepper began tapping her foot rapidly while watching Keith chew the cookie in his mouth as fast as he could. She didn’t notice when Mama put a glop of icing on a spoon, pulled one end back, and let the icing fly at Pepper. It hit her squarely in the forehead.

  I burst out laughing. The look of astonishment on Pepper’s face was well worth Mama’s prank. Keith flopped out of his chair and onto the floor with laughter.

  “What?” Kelly asked, running in from the kitchen. “What am I missing? Mom, I don’t want to bake any more. I want to decorate. We have to switch. It’s no fun in the kitchen.”

  Pepper was speechless. Her mouth was still hanging open. I knew this was going to go one of two ways. She would either be furious with Mama and go on a rant about her behavior, or she’d laugh.

  When she looked over at me, I said, “You’d better close your mouth or she’ll launch the next round in there.” Keith laughed harder still from the floor.

  “Very funny,” she said, wiping the glop off with a dishtowel. “I think we all need to take a little break.”

  “I’m going out to smoke a cigarette,” Mama said, still wheezing from her own laughter. “I’ll roll dough and do the baking when I come back in.”

  “Keith, go up to your room,” Pepper said. “I’ll call you when we’re ready to start decorating again.”