A Murder Between the Pages

by Amy Lillard

Fern looked over to where Murphy Jones had waded out into the mud. He was feeling around the car at the back wheels.

  Behind him, on the other side of the lake, a group of townspeople watched. One of them in particular caught Arlo’s eye as he moved through the scene. Joe! At least it looked like Joe. Maybe it was Dutch, the cook. But what would Dutch be doing on that side of the property? He would more likely be standing at the edge of the small stone wall that surrounded the back gardens of the mansion. Surely it was Joe. She scanned the crowd for the man she had seen, but he was there one minute and gone the next. She looked back over to the group of Lillyfield staff. No Dutch in sight.

  “That’s never going to work,” Fern said with a shake of her head. “Murphy Jones couldn’t pour water from a boot with the instructions on the heel.” Her criticism brought Arlo out of her own thoughts. Maybe she had just imagined that she had seen Joe. After all, he and Dutch couldn’t be the only bald men in the area. Could they? “Men,” Fern muttered.

  “If you have so much experience, why don’t you tell him what to do?” Camille said. The two were definitely at odds today. Although Arlo didn’t know exactly what it was about, she suspected this whole deal with Joe was making Camille a little bit edgy. And if he was indeed among the crowd watching…

  “You know what? I think I will.” Fern started toward the group of men still standing next to the tow truck. Then she stopped and turned back around. “Come on, Jayden.”

  Jayden’s eyes lit up like fireworks on the Fourth. “Really?”

  Fern nodded once and motioned for him to follow.

  Jayden took off running like only a young boy in galoshes could do, Manny nipping at his heels.

  Arlo, Chloe, Camille, and Helen watched the boy and dog approach the men who were doing their best to get the little Volkswagen out of the mud.

  “Do you really think she dated a mechanic?” Camille asked.

  “I think she was a mechanic,” Helen whipped.

  Arlo chuckled. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  It was true Fern was a different soul, but that’s what made the book club so special.

  Okay, Arlo had finally admitted it. As much as she wanted her book club to be filled with hipsters and young, up-and-coming citizens of Sugar Springs, she couldn’t imagine not having these three ladies in her life. Not that they wouldn’t have been. They all lived in a tiny little town in Mississippi. But they might not have been as much of a part of her everyday as they were now. Sometimes it made her feel exhausted. Most times it made her feel blessed.

  As they watched, Fern gestured this way and that while Manny ran around the men, barking to get someone to chase him. But the men paid the little white dog no mind, and Jayden was too enthralled in the conversation to either. Arlo kept one eye on them and the other on the crowd, unable to stop herself from searching for the man she thought she had seen. Joe or Dutch or some other bald figure with scary tattoos.

  Fern gestured with her arms wide and then made another gesture like she was playing tug of war with an invisible rope.

  Mads nodded even as Murphy Jones shook his head. Both men turned to the volunteer fireman, no doubt to break the tie between them.

  From the distance they couldn’t hear what was being said, but knew Fern had won her argument when she clapped her hands together.

  “Oh, brother,” Camille muttered.

  “If it works, there will be hell to pay next week.” Helen shook her head, her long braid falling back behind her shoulder.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Camille exclaimed.

  Arlo turned to see Fern standing at the edge of the mud, shouting and gesturing to Murphy Jones. Once again, he had waded back into the mud. He was doing his best to work a chain through the open windows of the Beetle.

  “I guess that explains how someone got that Beetle to sink,” Helen said, gesturing to the open windows on both sides of the car. Arlo hadn’t been paying much attention to that when they walked up. “I wonder if there’s still water inside,” Helen said. “Those things are practically watertight.”

  They watched as Fern continued to instruct. Once Murphy Jones had pulled the chain through both sides of the car, he secured it in the back. The chain looping through both windows would allow it to be pulled from the water by the car body, not the bumper or the chassis as Fern had been talking about.

  As half the town watched, Murphy Jones then tried to make his way out of the mud. Arlo had to admit it was a lot like watching a Laurel and Hardy slapstick comedy routine as every step he took sucked the boot from each foot, forcing him to backtrack into his shoe again. He finally made it out of the mud by holding onto each boot with one hand and walking like some sort of duck until he got to the grass. Fern nodded and gave him a boost up, then dusted her hands on the seat of her overalls. She waited at the edge of the mud pit for him to get into the cab of the truck and start the engine.

  A small cheer went up in the crowd as he started to pull the Volkswagen from the mud. But it was a short-lived triumph. After only a couple of inches, the bogged-down car stalled. Dirt flew in all directions as Jones revved the engine. He pressed the gas, popped the clutch, and did everything in his power to work the car out of the mud.

  “Oh my!” Camille said.

  Finally, with a large sucking sound, the truck found traction, and the Beetle slipped from its fifty-year-old resting place. Murphy Jones engaged the towing mechanism and pulled the car the rest of the way from the mud and onto the now dirt banks of what had once been Lillyfield Lake. One of the firemen went over to the car and opened the door. Water poured from inside, and a lone fish flopped on the grass. The firemen picked it up and tossed it back into the mud.

  “Manny!” Jayden’s voice rose above all others. It was closely followed by Chloe’s exclamation of “Jayden!”

  The ten-year-old stood at the edge of the mud watching as his dog plunged through the muddy lakebed. Each step the canine took looked to be harder than the last. Manny seemed to be sinking further into the mud. And suddenly, he stopped. Struggled. He was stuck. And the harder he tried to escape, the farther down he sank.

  Jayden took off into the mud, holding onto his boots much the same way that Murphy Jones had. Right before Jayden reached his dog, he fell face first into the muck.

  “Jayden!” Chloe hollered again.

  Arlo took off toward her best friend. Fern beat her there by a split second.

  “I’m going to go get him.” Chloe looked around as if trying to find something that would help her. But there was nothing, not a stick or a branch. Maybe Murphy Jones had some rope in his truck, but someone was going to have to wade out into the mud to retrieve the boy and his dog.

  “I’ll get him.” Tyler Blake, one of the volunteer firemen, nodded at the three of them, then trudged into the muddy lake bed. By the time he reached him, Jayden had managed to push himself into a sitting position. He seemed mortified that he had to be rescued.

  “You get the dog,” Mads said. “I’ll get the boy.”

  Until Mads spoke the words, Arlo hadn’t realized that the Chief of Police had waded out behind Tyler.

  Jayden’s face crumpled, and his embarrassment seemed to double. “I didn’t fall,” he said, even as Tyler picked up Manny. “Honest, Mads. I didn’t fall. I tripped.”

  “I know, buddy,” Mads said in a soothing voice.

  Beside Arlo, Chloe nearly wilted in relief.

  “There was something in the mud.” Jayden said.

  “Of course. Probably a tree branch or some kind of log,” Mads assured him. “The main thing is you’re okay.”

  “But I didn’t just fall,” Jayden wailed as Mads set him on his feet next to his mom.

  Chloe knelt beside him and wrapped her arms around him, smearing mud all over herself as well.

  Tyler appeared a second later, placing an incredibly muddy Manny next
to the two of them.

  “There is not enough soap in the world,” Fern said.

  “Thank heavens,” Camille gushed as she and Helen made it to their side. Manny started to bark happily. He braced his legs up on Helen but she grabbed him up and held them away from her. Like that was going to help. Somehow even being held away up in the air, Manny managed to shake himself and sling mud on everyone around. The action seemed to break the spell that Jayden was under. He laughed.

  “But I want you to know I didn’t fall,” he said. “I’m not clumsy. But there was something in the mud.”

  “I know, baby.” Chloe smoothed a clump of hair back from his forehead.

  “And I’m not a baby,” he reminded her.

  “I’m sorry. I know you’re not.”

  Arlo watched as Chloe swallowed down her emotions.

  “But I think we’re gonna need a bath.”

  Jayden chuckled and looked at his dog. “All three of us.”

  “Would you look at that!” Fern pointed to where Tyler had trudged back out into the mud. He was standing close to the same spot where Jayden had tripped, and in his hands he held up very muddy object, but even then, it was unmistakably some sort of small statuette.

  Chapter 16

  “It’s all anybody can talk about,” Helen explained sometime after noon the following day.

  Mondays on Main Street were normally a quiet affair. Most of the shops were closed on Sunday, and Monday was all about getting back into the work week. The Books and More was no exception, though on this particular Monday the rule had been shattered. Main Street was abuzz with the events at Lillyfield the day before.

  After Tyler Blake pulled the muddy statuette from the lake bed, Mads had rushed over to where Tyler stood, grabbing the statuette and putting it in the back of his city SUV.

  Then he yelled for everyone to clear the scene, and the fun was over. Everyone returned to their regularly scheduled lives.

  Arlo knew what Helen said was true. It was all anyone could talk about—the discovery of the Volkswagen and Tyler finding the statuette in the mud. Well, it had really been Jayden who found it, but Tyler was getting all the credit for digging it out.

  “I know,” Camille said. “If I hear one more person say DNA, I think I might scream.”

  “Here, here,” Fern said. “All anybody cares about is that statuette.”

  “Which is allegedly the murder weapon that killed Haley Adams,” Arlo pointed out.

  “Well, yeah,” Helen said. “But it’s as if no one remembers Mary Kennedy at all.”

  “Well, you have to admit Haley is fresher in everyone’s mind.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Camille acquiesced.

  And now that they had the murder weapon, or what they believed to be the murder weapon, then justice seemed within their grasp. Everyone was talking about DNA and wondering if fingerprints could be found on the statuette. It was a hideous-looking thing even covered in mud, a bronze woman standing tall and proud, her skirt swishing around her and a bouquet of flowers behind her back. Arlo supposed it might have been a pretty statuette once upon a time, but beneath the shadow of Haley’s murder, it now appeared tainted.

  “So how is Mads going to get all that dirt off of it and find DNA as well?” Helen asked.

  “Yeah,” Camille added. “It’s not like he can wash it. That would wash away blood and fingerprints, right?”

  “I think so,” Arlo said. She got up from her perch on the edge of Helen’s chair and made her way back to the bookcase she had been working on when the ladies had arrived.

  “I don’t think it’s possible to wash away all the blood,” Camille said. “Is it? I mean, what if it was already dried on there?”

  “What about that stuff they spray on blood to make it glow under a blue light? Some sort of magic stuff,” Helen said.

  “Luminol,” Fern replied with an emphatic nod.

  Arlo wondered if she should be worried that the lady knew the word so readily. How many times had luminol come up in a normal conversation? Not many, she was certain.

  “It picks up protein traces,” Fern continued. “And it glows under a blue light. You can scrub and scrub and scrub, but it can still pick up traces of blood. Of course, sometimes it depends on how much blood there was to begin with.”

  “And you know this how?” Helen asked.

  Fern shrugged. “You just pick these things up along the way.”

  Arlo stifled a chuckle and went back to work.

  “I for one want to know about the car,” Camille said.

  “I’m with you,” Fern agreed. “Though I don’t know if they would be able to pull any fingerprints off the vehicle since it’s been in the water for fifty years.”

  “Probably not,” Helen said. “More’s the pity. It seems like a really good clue to finding out what happened to Mary Kennedy.”

  Fern nodded. “It just proves foul play.”

  “Agreed.” Camille pressed her lips together and gave a nod of her own. “A car that floats sunk in a lake with the windows down on the property belonging to the number one suspect in the murder case.”

  “Wait,” Arlo said, setting aside her vow to not get involved. “Weston Whitney wasn’t the number one suspect. He never even went to trial for it. Her husband did. Jeff, right? Jeff Kennedy?”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Fern said. “Maybe he wasn’t the number one suspect, but we all think that Weston did it. You read his diaries, how he was going to plant the necklace on her so that everyone thought she stole it.”

  “But that’s not the same as murder,” Arlo protested.

  “Close enough for me,” Fern grumbled.

  “So if he is guilty…was guilty, that means an innocent man was wrongly accused and spent over a decade in prison.” Arlo looked at each of them in turn to see if they were still in agreement.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.” Helen nodded.

  As much as she hated that fact was true, it was true. But there was still no proof that Weston Whitney had anything at all to do with Mary Kennedy, and it certainly had never been proven that she was murdered. How her husband got railroaded for the crime was anybody’s guess, but the justice system was a mite different in the seventies than it was in the twenty-first century.

  “I don’t think Weston had it in him to kill anybody,” Helen said.

  “He must’ve grown himself a pair,” Fern added.

  Arlo gasped at the language. Behind her, she heard Chloe stifle a chuckle. Yes, it was all fine and dandy if you weren’t the one responsible for the crazy lady.

  “Fern,” Arlo admonished.

  Fern shrugged. “I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em. And Weston Whitney was a sweet, sweet man.”

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” Helen added.

  “All I’m saying,” Fern began again. “If Weston Whitney, and not Jeff Kennedy, did indeed kill Mary, then Weston must have found some gumption some other place. Because he sure wasn’t born with it.”

  “That sounds a little bit better, thank you.” Arlo turned back to her books.

  “He just never seemed the type,” Camille mused.

  It was a typical day for the book club ladies despite all the excitement. They were the same as ever. Fern in her overalls and big floppy hat, Camille and her pearls, matching pantsuit, and running shoes. Helen and her bedazzled everything. Yet there was a different vibe in the air, a new kind of electricity. Arlo wasn’t sure if it was from the upcoming storm the weatherman kept calling for or if it was merely the excitement of the biggest clue in a fifty-year-old murder being found.

  “We really need to look at that car.”

  “It’s still there on the grass,” Chloe said.

  Arlo shot her best friend a shut up now look.

  Chloe just shrugged.

&n
bsp; “Just right there on the grass?” Camille asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “And no one’s watching it? No one is guarding it?” Fern looked from Helen to Camille.

  “Don’t even,” Arlo said. “If Mads is reopening that investigation, you need to let him work.”

  “But if he left a clue right there out in the open—” Fern countered.

  “You are a book club,” Arlo informed them. “Why not talk about a book?”

  Chloe sniggered as all three ladies turned to stare at Arlo as if she had lost her cotton-pickin’ mind.

  Arlo sighed and went back to shelving cookbooks.

  “I’m not as worried about the car as I am the journals,” Camille said.

  “That’s because you were an English teacher. They always want to read everything,” Fern scoffed.

  Arlo shook her head and told herself she would not comment that they were a book club, and book clubs should read, and even if Camille was the English teacher, that didn’t mean she wanted to read any more than Fern. Because if Arlo actually said the words, they would just be white noise to the three ladies.

  “I don’t know,” Helen said.

  “She might be onto something here. There’s got to be all sorts of stuff in his journals. And it seems to be the way, doesn’t it? A killer commits a crime and writes all the details down in a journal or an email or a letter to his mother… Maybe we just haven’t run across it yet.”

  Fern shook her head. “You have been reading way too many crime novels.”

  “Is there such a thing?” Helen asked.

  “There is if you think every killer’s going to outline their confession in a monologue somewhere,” Fern scoffed. “Besides, I’ve been through the journals we have…twice. We already know what’s in those.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Helen said. “But I would like to find the rest of them.”

  “You and me both,” Camille said. “They have to be somewhere at Lillyfield.”

  “My guess is the attic.” Fern gave a confident nod. “Where else would you keep something like that?”

  “The basement?” Helen countered.