by Amy Lillard
They all agreed.
“But if we could get our hands on one of his little notebooks…” Helen started.
“Diaries?” Arlo asked.
Fern nodded.
“Then we would know for certain,” Camille finished for her.
“Who knows if they even kept them?” Fern asked. “Those little books could be at the bottom of the landfill by now.”
“We don’t have a landfill,” Camille pointed out.
“And what exactly does this have to do with Missing Girl?” Arlo asked.
“Well, it’s the same,” Helen said.
“Exactly the same,” Fern backed her up.
Not exactly if there was no necklace. “The missing lady in the book comes back to town.” Years later, but she does return. That was a major difference.
Camille waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, that part’s a little different. But the rest is the same.”
“Well, she wasn’t a piano teacher in the book either. She was just a visitor at a party,” Arlo reminded them.
Helen nodded. “But she disappeared after leaving the mansion.”
“Which is not Lillyfield,” Arlo pointed out.
“Maybe not by name, but by every other standard,” Helen argued.
“And her car was never found in the book,” Camille said.
“Just like Mary Kennedy,” Fern added. “See the similarities?”
They were still no more apparent to Arlo now than they had been before. And even if they were there, maybe Wally had simply patterned his mystery after the disappearance of Mary Kennedy. He might have heard the stories as a child while he sat at the feet of his grandmother and ate homegrown watermelon. Or maybe it was just a coincidence entirely. Who knew?
Chloe leaned in close. “What would be the harm in letting them go on about this?”
Arlo thought about it for a moment. All the players were gone, she supposed. Maybe it wasn’t a terrible idea to let them try and solve the mystery of the missing piano teacher, especially if it kept them away from Lillyfield and out of Mads’s hair while he investigated the tragedy that had just occurred there. “What happened to her husband?”
“Judith? He died years back,” Helen replied. “I thought everybody knew that.”
“No,” Arlo said. “Mary.”
“Prison, I heard,” Fern replied.
“For?” Arlo asked.
“Murder,” Camille said.
“Whose murder?” Arlo asked.
Fern shot her a look that said she really wished Arlo would keep up. “Mary Kennedy.”
“But if… I mean, she was never… I don’t understand,” Arlo admitted. Was it possible to have a murder without a body?
“Things were different back then. He went to prison for a few years. And that was that.” Helen gave a small shrug.
“So, he’s out now?” Arlo asked.
“Maybe,” Fern said. “I don’t know.”
“He doesn’t have any family around here that I know of,” Camille answered. “If he’s out, there’s really no reason for him to come back.”
“I suppose not,” Arlo murmured.
The bell over the door rang, and a customer came in. Tiffany, the young mom who hired a teenager to look after her toddler for one hour in the afternoon so she could have a break at the bookstore.
Tiffany’s arrival meant the slow time was over. The kids would be getting out of school and heading down Main to their favorite stores before starting home. Arlo had a crowd that came in for coffee each afternoon. She supposed that was as good a reason as any, and maybe having them so close to the books would spark a love for them as well. She could hope anyway. Still Arlo and Chloe’s Books and More could hold its own against the drugstore’s old-fashioned soda counter and the arcade games Phil next door let them play for a quarter a turn.
Arlo waved but didn’t get up. Chloe was already on her feet.
“Unless he took the necklace and has hidden it somewhere, biding his time until he can cash it in.” Fern raised her eyebrows in an encouraging way, once again trying to get everyone in on the mystery.
“Wouldn’t he have done that like thirty years ago?” Arlo asked. “Cashed it in?”
Fern shrugged. “Prison time moves differently.”
“How do we get back in?” Helen asked.
“In where?” Arlo demanded.
Fern rolled her eyes. “Lillyfield.” If she had been seventy-five years younger she would have finished with a “duh.”
“You don’t need to go to Lillyfield.” Arlo looked to Chloe for help, but she was behind the counter making Tiffany one of her almost-famous coffee drinks.
“Plus it’s crawling with coppers.”
She didn’t have time to answer Fern as someone else came in the front, the bell going off again.
“Arlo?”
She spun around. With the conversation swirling and the traffic trickling in through the front door, she hadn’t heard Sam come down the stairs from the third floor. “Sam.” She pressed a hand to her beating heart. All this talk of murders and missing people had her a little jumpy. Or maybe it was knowing that she had been out to Lillyfield when someone had died. Accident or not, that was a little unnerving.
“Did I scare you?”
“A little.” She shot him a forgiving smile.
“Sorry.” He didn’t really look sorry, or maybe that was just those dimples playing tricks on her.
“What’s up?” she asked, pushing all thoughts of his dimples aside.
Sam, normally so confident and cocky, shifted from one booted foot to the other. He was dressed as he usually was in faded blue jeans and a button-down shirt. Today’s was denim as well. His version of a Canadian tuxedo. “I was just wondering…” he started, then shifted again. “I mean, if you’re not busy and you’re free on Friday night. That maybe…”
Arlo waited. This was so unlike Sam. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. “Want to go to dinner on Friday night?”
It might not have been the very last thing she had expected him to say, but it was definitely in the top five. “Dinner?”
He shifted. “You know food. At the steak house. To catch up.”
She nodded in return. They’d had plenty of time to catch up, but neither one had made the effort. It might be good to sit down and clear the air. Just as friends.
“Is that a yes?”
“Sure.” The word surprised her. Yes, she did want to have dinner with him, and yes, she did want to talk. The thought took her off guard. But at the same time, it didn’t. Sam had been a big part of her life back then and continuing on today, seeing as how he was in her shop almost as much as he was upstairs in his office.
He smiled, his shifting stopped, and it looked as if the tension left his shoulders. Was it such a big deal that they were having supper?
She turned to find all eyes on her. At least the ones belonging to Chloe and the book club members.
Okay. Maybe it was a big deal. But it was just as friends. Right? Or was it more? Did she want more? She didn’t know.
* * *
“I just don’t get it,” Helen said as she came into the Books and More the following day at noon. She set her Crock-Pot on the coffee table in the reading nook and placed her hands on her hips. “Who would want to murder sweet little Haley?”
“Jealous lover?” Fern asked, coming in directly behind her. Close enough that Arlo suspected they had ridden over together.
“She was twenty years old.” Arlo sighed.
Fern shrugged. “You never know with kids these days.”
Helen shook her head. “Not Haley. She was one of the good ones.”
“What’d you bring?” Arlo asked.
“Sausage Ro-Tel dip.” Helen set the Crock-Pot on the coffee table and reached into her tote for a bag of
tortilla chips.
“Yum.” Fern rubbed her hands together in anticipation.
“Where’s Camille?” Arlo looked around as the two ladies settled in and started munching on their midday snack.
Helen rolled her eyes. “On a date.”
“A date?” Arlo and Chloe asked at the same time.
“A date,” Fern confirmed, her mouth half-full of chips and cheese.
“With who?” This was good stuff, and Arlo moved around the couch to sit down next to Helen. It didn’t hurt that it put her that much closer to the food. She hadn’t had lunch yet.
“He’s a keeper,” Faulkner squawked. “A keeper.”
“Some man she met on the internet.” Helen rolled her eyes and dredged another chip through the dip before popping the entire thing into her mouth.
“Chaser,” Faulkner continued.
“Wait,” Arlo said, loaded chip halfway to her mouth. “Camille was on the internet?”
“She’s ninety,” Fern said. “Not living in Outer Mongolia.”
“I think Outer Mongolia is very modern these days,” Chloe added. Like Arlo, she had moved around to be closer to the food, but she didn’t settle herself into a seat. She propped her rear against the arm of one and reached for the bag of chips.
“You know what I mean. She’s smart enough to work a computer.”
“Beater,” Faulkner continued. “Might be a beater.”
“I know he’s a bird and all, but what if he’s right and this man hurts Camille?” Chloe asked.
“Or he could be a scammer,” Arlo added.
“Where’d she meet him?” Chloe continued. The bell over the door rang. Chloe grabbed one more chip before heading back to the coffee bar to take care of the customer now waiting there.
“Golden Years,” Fern supplied. “It’s a dating site for people over seventy.”
“I had no idea such a thing existed,” Arlo said in awe.
“Neither did I,” Helen said. Not surprising, seeing as how Helen hated electronics. “Why would she want to go on a dating site anyway?”
“To find a man?” Arlo asked.
Helen shook her head. “Why she wants one of those is beyond me.”
But Arlo understood. Helen had constant company. There was always someone staying in the inn, and half the bachelors in the county came to eat supper with her. She was one of the finest cooks in Northeast Mississippi. But with so many people around, it was easy to forget that you had no one special. But Arlo went home to an empty house. Every. Day.
Maybe that was why she accepted Sam’s offer of dinner. It was one more evening she wouldn’t be alone.
She hated the words as they floated around in her head. It wasn’t that she was always lonely. She loved her life. She loved her store, her job, her friends, she even loved the ladies in this ridiculous book club. But there were times…
“Did she check into him before she met him?” Arlo asked.
“How should I know?” Fern grumbled.
“She’s your friend,” Arlo pointed out. “You could have asked her.”
Fern shook her head. “She messaged me on Facebook and said she was going to meet him for coffee in Corinth.”
“Why didn’t they meet here?” Arlo asked.
Fern shot her a look.
“Right,” she said. Camille wouldn’t have gotten any peace if she had met the man here and they would have grilled him with questions until he ran off screaming into the night. Or afternoon, whatever. “I wish she had told you his name.”
“Jack,” Fern said with a quick nod. “James. No, Jack. Wait. Joe.”
“Joe?” Arlo asked.
“It was definitely Joe.”
“Joe what?”
“Joe Mama.” Helen snorted.
“Will you take this seriously?” Arlo did her best to keep her tone level, getting upset wouldn’t do any good. But these ladies, they were almost like children when it came to the internet. They didn’t understand the dangers that lurked on their innocent-looking laptops.
“Sorry.” Helen sobered up and waited for Fern to continue.
“Does this Joe have a last name?” Arlo asked.
“She didn’t say,” Fern replied.
“And you didn’t ask.” It wasn’t a question.
“She is a grown woman.”
Arlo couldn’t argue with that, and she had talked to them about the dangers on the internet. No sense beating a dead horse. “This man could be anybody,” she tried again.
“I suppose.” Fern gave a small shrug. “Still not sure what she wants with a man anyway. My Charlie was as useless as tits on a boar hog.”
Arlo closed her eyes. She had heard the expression her entire Mississippi life, and every time it stopped her in her tracks. “We’re not talking about Charlie,” she said as patiently as she could. “We were talking about Camille.”
“Well, you know Camille. She’ll charm him with that Aussie accent. He won’t be able to refuse.”
Refuse what? Arlo wasn’t going to ask.
“And if that doesn’t work, she can tase him.”
“Does she carry a Taser gun?” Arlo wouldn’t be surprised. Camille seemed to have everything else in that magical handbag of hers.
“More like shoot him with a .357,” Fern corrected.
“Please tell me she doesn’t carry a gun.” Arlo closed her eyes against the thought.
Fern shrugged. “Mississippi is a constitutional carry state.” Which meant anyone could carry a weapon without having to obtain a permit for it.
“Lord, help us all,” Arlo breathed. The last thing she wanted to do was go visit Camille in jail because she had shot some man she had met on the internet. “Do you know what time their date is supposed to end?”
“I guess when they decide it’s over,” Fern replied.
“You know, you’re not being much help here,” Arlo said with a sharp look in her direction.
Fern just shrugged again. “She’s fine.”
“I hope so,” Arlo whispered.
“But this deal with Haley,” Helen said.
Arlo supposed that since Camille was gone for the morning, they weren’t going to discuss Missing Girl or even Mary Kennedy.
“It’s so sad,” Fern agreed. “Who would do that?”
“I thought your vote was for a jealous lover,” Arlo said.
Fern frowned. “Seriously. Who?”
They all thought about it for a moment. Who would do something like that to Haley, a sweet girl who seemed to have the world at her fingertips? How could someone so young make an enemy that cruel?
“Poor Courtney,” Helen said.
“I suppose she’s taking some time off,” Fern asked.
Arlo nodded. “We told her to take all the time she needs.”
“What about the afternoon shift at the coffee bar?” Helen asked. “You’re not going to hire someone to replace her, are you? That wouldn’t be right.”
“No. We’re not hiring anyone to replace her. Chloe’s just going to work late. Or I guess I could try my hand at coffee drinks again.” They had made it okay these last couple of days. They could hold on a while longer.
“Lord, please no!” Helen threw her hands up in the air in an overly dramatic gesture.
“Hey!” Arlo protested. “I can run the Keurig.”
“Faulkner can run the Keurig.”
“Make me a cuppa, sweet thang,” he squawked.
“Seriously,” Fern said. “You are not allowed behind the coffee bar for anything but brewed cups.”
“Sweet thang,” Faulkner continued.
Fern turned to Chloe. “And you’re not allowed to work overtime.”
“Not sure how that’s going to work,” Chloe murmured.
“I’ll make the coffee,” Fern
said. “All you have to do is show me how. I’m a quick learner.”
Chloe looked to Arlo. She just shrugged. “We pay Courtney a little over minimum wage. Sound good?”
But Fern was already shaking her head. “Don’t want to do all that and have to worry about taxes and such.”
“You want cash?” Arlo asked, not sure how that would affect her taxes and such.
Fern’s eyes twinkled. “I want coffee.”
Chloe grinned. “Deal.”
“I sure wish Camille was here,” Helen said. “She’s going to love it when we tell her about the movie premiere.”
“So much,” Fern said. “And maybe…”
“Maybe what?” Helen asked.
“Maybe with all that publicity on the story, we can get Mads to reopen the case on Mary Kennedy.”
Arlo wasn’t a hundred percent sure that it had been closed. “Can they close it if she’s never been found?”
Fern nodded. “Yeah. They sent her husband to prison.”
“That’s right.” Helen snapped her fingers. “So it has to be closed.”
“But if we can get some new evidence, then we can have him reopen the case.”
“And if Jeff Kennedy is still in prison, then they would release him.”
Fern gasped. “Just like the Innocence Project.”
“He did it,” Faulkner squawked. “The butler did it.”
“And the West Memphis Three,” Helen said.
Arlo looked to Chloe, who shrugged. Once the women got on a roll like this it was hard to get them off it. And she surely wasn’t wasting time informing them that the West Memphis Three got out of jail on an Alford plea. Which basically said they were guilty, but they didn’t do it and had served enough time for their crime. It was the perfect way for the government not to have to take responsibility for locking up three innocent men for two decades.
“Are you sure it’s the same story though?” she asked. Deciding it was time to come back around to Missing Girl, the real reason why they were there.
“Positive,” Helen said with a firm nod.
“See, there are things about stories,” Fern said. “Things that make them satisfying. If Wally had left the missing girl missing, he wouldn’t have had a novel, just a recounting of part of a tale that happened fifty years ago. Readers want for the missing girl to be found.”
