A Murder Between the Pages

by Amy Lillard

  Mads sighed. “I know.”

  “So you heard.”

  “Let’s just say that Judith Whitney is the last person who needs the welcome wagon to come bringing casseroles to her door.”

  “I wouldn’t call it the welcome wagon,” Arlo corrected. “One of the lady’s church auxiliaries, maybe. And it was a cake.”

  “Don’t push me, Arlo. It’s been a long day.”

  She felt a little sorry for him, just about. Even if he’d almost threatened to take her to jail. “You’re trying to keep the girls out from behind bars, and I’m trying to keep the girls out from behind bars.”

  “Then we should work this together, don’t you think?”

  She supposed he was right. “Go over to the mansion,” she said. “Talk to the other maid. Not the one who gave a statement against Haley and Dylan. See what she has to say.”

  “I’ll put Jason on it.”

  Arlo opened her mouth to say that she wished he would check it out for himself, but she knew what his plan was for Jason and this investigation. Still she would’ve felt better if Mads had gone out himself.

  “But now you have to tell your book club not to mess with Judith Whitney.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Mads gave a quick nod. And she knew that he understood how hard it was to keep three headstrong elderly ladies in check. It sounded like an easy feat, but in practice it lost all of its logic.

  “I just don’t need any more complaints, Arlo,” Mads said. “Sooner or later I’ll have to take them seriously.”

  Chapter 20

  “This is going to be marvelous fun,” Camille said Friday night just after six o’clock.

  Camille, Fern, Helen, Arlo, Sam, and Joe were all meeting at the bowling alley to have a fun night out. She hadn’t been bowling in years. Though she knew that the first hurdle was not in the 6–10 split, but Joe himself.

  “I think so too.” Helen smiled.

  Arlo certainly hoped so. After spending what seemed like half the day in the beauty parlor with her book club to glean any and all gossip from the many conversations around her, Arlo found herself with her hair a good two inches shorter than it had been when she went in and her brain no more knowledgeable about the goings-on in Sugar Springs.

  Leave it to her to pick the least gossipy day to actually get her hair cut.

  And two inches might not mean a lot to some folks, but Arlo felt practically naked. Her head felt too light to be on her shoulders, and she suspected that Teresa took off more than she needed to just to say she cut Arlo’s hair.

  Or maybe she was being a tad overdramatic and paranoid.

  “Oh, there he is,” Camille squealed like a schoolgirl and clapped her hands together.

  “Sam?” Helen asked. Arlo was certain she meant it as joke. Though Sam was expected at any moment. Everyone knew it was time to meet Joe.

  Even over the crack of the balls hitting pins in the many lanes around them, Arlo was certain she could hear a pin drop as Camille rushed over to her new beau.

  Arlo had been holding out some hope that Joe wasn’t really as tatted up as she remembered. That he wasn’t quite as scary looking in person as he was in her memory. Surely time had sharpened all those edges instead of sanding them down, and once she saw Joe again, she would realize that he was not as bad as she had originally thought. But she didn’t even have to look at him to see that wasn’t the truth. Her own concerns were mirrored in the faces of Fern and Helen.

  Camille rushed over to Joe, her voice so high Arlo was certain only a few dogs were able to hear it. She fussed about him, brushed her hand down his arm, kissed the side of his bald head, then tucked her arm into the crook of his elbow before escorting him down to where they waited.

  “Fern, Helen, Arlo.” Camille looked at each of them in turn. “This is Joe. Joe, these are the friends I was telling you about.”

  Arlo had to hand it to Helen and Fern. They recovered quite well.

  “Joe,” Helen greeted him, coming forward with one hand outstretched. “It’s so good to finally meet you.” They shook hands.

  “Yeah,” Fern said, though Arlo suspected she was having trouble finding words. A unique situation for Fern, to be certain.

  “Joe.” Arlo shook his hand as well.

  By now Fern had managed to push herself to her feet, and she walked over to where they stood. “I’m Fern.”

  Joe smiled. He really had a nice smile. Tattoos and everything else aside, he seemed to be a happy fellow. His blue eyes twinkled merrily as he looked at each of them, greeted them, and commented on how much Camille had talked about all of them.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Sam loped down the stairs where they waited next to the lanes.

  “Joe, this is Sam Tucker.”

  “Oh, the private dick from upstairs.”

  Sam shook his hand with a smile. “I usually don’t go around telling people that.” Then he winked at Arlo.

  She shook her head.

  “It’s nice to finally meet everyone. I was beginning to think Camille was trying to keep me a secret.”

  Camille blushed, the color of her cheeks completely complementing her rose-colored pantsuit. “Oh, Joe.” She patted his arm, and he smiled lovingly at her.

  “Let’s get this party started,” Fern said. She had rolled up the legs of her overalls, and the effect with the multicolored, well-worn bowling shoes of the Stardust bowling alley, Sugar Springs, Mississippi, was a sight to behold.

  “Get up there and see what you can do,” Helen said.

  “Highest pin goes first?” Sam asked.

  Helen nodded as Fern knocked down seven pins on her first try. She hit reset. “Always.” And she grabbed her ball and headed for the lane.

  Sam scooted a little closer to Arlo. “I forgot how serious she was about this. If I had remembered, I never would have agreed.” He said the words where only Arlo could hear.

  “Same here,” she whispered in return.

  “It might still be fun,” he said. But she couldn’t read his eyes or his expression; even his body language seemed incredibly neutral. How was she supposed to know what he was thinking and if he wanted this to be a real date-date if he kept himself so vague?

  “Beat that.” Helen dusted her hands and looked to Camille and Joe to meet her challenge. Of course she’d made a strike.

  “Why don’t you just go ahead and go first,” Joe said with a chuckle. “I don’t mind.”

  “Don’t you want to throw a couple balls first?” Camille asked him.

  “We all get to have a turn, don’t we?”

  They nodded.

  “What difference does it make who gets to go first?”

  He had a point, though Arlo knew firsthand when it came to bowling Helen did not share his philosophy.

  “Suit yourself,” Helen said. And she sat down at the desk and began writing everyone’s names in the blocks. “I say we’re having teams,” she said though she didn’t wait for anyone to answer before grouping them together. Her and Fern against Joe and Camille against Arlo and Sam.

  Then she tossed her braid over her shoulder and stood once again, making her way to the air blower to dry her hands. On her right wrist she sported a custom wristband for support that had Elly stitched on the back. A present from Arlo a few Christmases back.

  Helen’s first ball knocked down nine pins, and her second picked up the spare. Fern knocked down six on her first try and two on her second. Helen gave her a short coaching session on keeping her wrist tight and straight as Joe prepared to throw his first.

  The crack of pins drew everyone’s attention.

  “You’re a bowler, I see.” Helen said.

  Camille smiled prettily, as if she’d been holding in the secret all along.

  “I’ve always been an avid bowler,” Joe said.


  Sam leaned in close. And the smell of his aftershave tickled Arlo’s senses. So different than high school and yet so much the same. “That didn’t come up in my investigation,” he whispered near her ear.

  “I spent some time inside,” Joe said. “Those of us who had proven that we were there to serve our time and not cause any problems were given a few special privileges.” He gave another one of those charming smiles. “Bowling was one of those.”

  Camille patted his cheek as she went to retrieve her ball.

  “Nor did that come up in my investigation.”

  Arlo scooted a little closer to Sam, just to make certain no one else could hear. And that reason only. “That means he’s come clean with her.”

  “It would seem so.”

  “And it doesn’t seem like he’s trying to hide it from anyone else either.”

  “He’s got a cross on the back of his hand.” Arlo allowed her gaze to drift to where Joe’s hand rested on his knee. Indeed there was a cross tattooed there. It appeared as if there was a cloth draped around the symbol and what looked to be a tear. Or maybe a drop of blood. Arlo wasn’t certain. She didn’t know enough about such things to make a guess as to its significance.

  “I suppose he found God on the inside?” Sam asked.

  “It looks that way.” And Arlo was somewhat relieved. It appeared that Joe was exactly who he said he was and perhaps even exactly who they thought him to be. And she was beginning to believe that it wasn’t him that she had seen that day at Lillyfield, the day Haley was killed.

  When it was Arlo’s turn, she managed to pick up a spare before taking her seat again.

  “I still can’t believe they brought you in for questioning,” Camille said.

  Sam stopped on his way to the line.

  “They brought you in for questioning?”

  Joe shrugged as if it was no big deal. “Just standard stuff, I guess.”

  “I for one find it disgraceful that they would ask you to come in when you don’t even know Haley Adams. Have you even been to Lillyfield mansion?” Camille asked.

  “It happens.” Joe shrugged.

  If Arlo was reading them correctly, he was trying to make it less of it so Camille wouldn’t get angry. Arlo had a feeling he was called in anytime anything happened in whatever small town he happened to be in. But she couldn’t imagine. Seeing as how they had no record of him anywhere except for Memphis six months ago. Her thoughts warred with each other. He seemed like a big teddy bear; he doted on Camille and had obviously turned his life around. He hadn’t said what he’d gone to prison for, and Arlo wasn’t about to ask. But she had an idea that as soon as Fern thought about it she would. But it was so suspicious that he had no past.

  No one doesn’t have a past. He just had a hidden one. And why would someone want to hide their past? If they didn’t want anyone else to know.

  The real question was why?

  “It’s not worth getting upset over,” Joe said.

  “I still think it’s shameful,” Camille said.

  “You said disgraceful,” Fern agreed.

  “It’s both.” Camille nodded emphatically.

  “Where are you staying while you’re in town?” Helen asked. Ever the business owner.

  “I have an apartment in Corinth,” Joe said.

  “And that’s how you found Camille?” Fern asked. Like she didn’t already know.

  “Golden Years.” He smiled at Camille, and she returned it, beaming. Arlo had never seen her happier, and the idea was both sweet and unsettling. To fall in love that quick, that fast, it just seemed that heartbreak was inevitable.

  “Jason is a little zealous,” Fern said, turning the conversation back to Joe being called into the police for questioning.

  “Amen to that,” Sam said, having just returned from executing a perfect strike. It seemed that the teams were a little more well balanced than Arlo had originally thought.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” Arlo asked.

  Sam grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Jason’s just trying to make sure he does right,” Helen said.

  “I don’t blame him,” Joe said. “Now let’s talk about something else.”

  The conversation immediately turned from Joe and his police woes to the merits of nachos versus pizza.

  Arlo caught Sam’s gaze.

  Did Joe want to change the subject because he had more to hide than what he was letting on, or was he simply tired of being the main focus of the conversation?

  There was no way to know.

  Chapter 21

  “Would you look at this.” Fern buzzed into the Books and More shortly after Arlo unlocked the doors and turned the sign from CLOSED to OPEN. She wielded a yellow file folder high over her head as she marched over to where Arlo stood next to Faulkner’s cage.

  “Good morning, honey,” Faulkner said, climbing up the inside of his wire cage as Arlo folded up the canvas cover.

  “Good morning,” Fern replied.

  “What am I looking at?” Arlo asked, holding out a hand for the file.

  “Help!” Faulkner called. “I’m being held prisoner. Help. Someone call the cops.”

  “Heavens!” Fern exclaimed. “Get him out first and then we’ll talk.”

  Arlo laughed. “That’s Jayden’s influence. He’s taught the bird all sorts of things this week.”

  “Perfect.” Fern waited until Arlo had released Faulkner before handing her the files. “Mary Kennedy’s medical records.”

  Arlo accepted the file and sank down into the couch.

  “The butler did it!” Faulkner squawked.

  “Mary Kennedy’s medical records?” Arlo repeated.

  “Yup.”

  Arlo shut her eyes briefly. “Do I want to know how you got these?” Arlo asked.

  “Mary Kennedy is the piano teacher who went missing,” Fern said.

  “Missing! Missing!”

  “I know who Mary Kennedy is,” Arlo said. “I just don’t know how you got her confidential medical records.” She flipped open the folder and scanned the first page. “Are these even real?”

  Fern crossed her arms in a self-satisfied way. “One hundred percent.”

  “And they came from?”

  “The Sugar Springs Medical Clinic.”

  “You didn’t break into the place to steal these records. Please tell me you didn’t.”

  “I most certainly did not. I cut my finger.” Fern held up the injured digit. “They were just lying there.”

  Arlo shook her head and tried to make sense of what Fern was saying. There was an explanation in there somewhere, she was certain of it.

  “Okay, so you cut your finger and went to Sugar Springs Medical Clinic.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And while you’re there you snooped around and found Mary Kennedy’s medical records?”

  “They were just out in the open. It seems that the medical clinic is getting computerized, and they’re putting all the old medical records into the system. They’ve hired temps and everything. I thought about maybe getting a job. Anyway, they were just laying out there.”

  It was perfectly plausible yet hard to believe all in the same moment.

  “How did you cut your finger?”

  “Opening a can of refried beans.”

  “This morning? Never mind.”

  Only Fern would cut her finger on a can bad enough to need stitches.

  “Then I went to the medical clinic,” Fern continued. “While I was waiting, the girl went to the back, and I just happened to see them lying there.”

  “Out in the waiting room?”

  Fern gave a small shrug. “Maybe I went behind the glass. But I was getting bored, and there were no magazines, and I don’t know where everyone else is to
day…”

  Truth be known, Arlo was shocked but not surprised that Fern had actually taken the files.

  Fern gave another one of those negligent shrugs. “I figure since us girls are the only ones who seem to be interested in what happened to Mary Kennedy and bringing her killer to justice, she wouldn’t care if I took her medical file.”

  HIPAA be damned.

  “And you know what it says in her file?” Fern continued.

  “I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” Arlo replied.

  Fern plowed on, undeterred. “Mary Kennedy was pregnant when she disappeared.”

  “Really?” Arlo didn’t want to appear too interested, but that did make things a little more…interesting.

  “Just think about it. We found letters from Weston Whitney in her car—”

  “We found a wet mess of papers that may or may not have been from Weston. For all we know, they could have been grocery lists.”

  But Fern was already on a tear. “And then there was the necklace that she was accused of taking from the mansion. That Weston assuredly planted in her car. Not to mention the car managed to miraculously stay covered up for fifty years in a man-made lake in Mississippi.

  “I think this proves that she was murdered,” Fern said.

  “How so?”

  But Fern didn’t have a chance to answer as the bell over the door rang and someone came into the Books and More.

  Arlo stood and handed the file folder back to Fern. “Hey there, Phil,” Arlo said.

  “No coffee today?” Phil asked.

  “We got the self-serve if that’ll do,” Arlo said, coming around and out of the reading nook in order to fully greet him. “Courtney’s still out. But Chloe’ll be in later. Then we’ll be back to normal on Monday.”

  Phil nodded.

  Behind him, Joey from the dry cleaners slipped into the bookstore.

  “Help yourself,” Arlo said to them both, and Phil gave a quick nod.

  Fern sidled up next to her as Phil moved over to the coffee bar and started brewing his cup from the Keurig, idly chatting with Joey about the weather and ring around the collar. “If she was pregnant and leaving her husband, and she stole the necklace to finance her escape, then why would she have left it in the car?”