by ACF Bookens
"Cool," Tuck said as he opened the break room door before quickly closing it again. "I almost forgot one thing, and before I tell you, I’m not suggesting this has anything to do with her pseudonym. Not at all."
I raised my eyebrows in query.
He sighed and said, "Lizzie only had one arm."
3
Daniel and I stayed in the break room for a few more minutes, cleaning up the trash from lunch and talking over that bit of information that Tuck had just shared.
"I wish it didn't seem like such a big deal that she was an amputee," I said as I ran a cleaning wipe over the table. "But I'm not that enlightened, I guess. Plus, how did I not notice?"
"Well, Tuck said her missing arm was on the side away from you and she was slumped over. We expect what we consider "normal," I guess, and since you expect most people to have two arms, you didn't notice that she only had one." Daniel’s voice was soft, but I could hear the strain in it.
I pursed my lips. "Ugh, I hate that. That's some prejudiced nonsense there in my head. You're right, of course, but how did I ever come to think of "like me" as normal?"
Daniel sighed and squeezed my arm. "But now we know what we think and what's wrong with it, so we can change it. And you get the chance to help bring justice to this woman. That's a good thing in all ways."
I sighed. I knew he was right, but I hated the icky, twisty feeling in my gut when I realized that I had absorbed some hateful thinking along the ways of life. I didn't want that thinking to stay, of course, but it also meant I was going to have to be uncomfortable a while as I unlearned and retrained my brain. Still, I'd done that unlearning a lot in my life, and I could do it again now.
Daniel and I headed back out on the floor, and he gave Taco a scratch before heading back to his shop. Taco didn't even give his owner a second glance before collapsing prone next to Mayhem in the front window. I kind of wanted to join them in that sunbeam . . . to lay there and nap and think, but I had some reading to do.
But first, time to get the invites out to folks for our store picnic. I texted everyone – Stephen and Walter, my friends from San Francisco who had moved here shortly after Mart and I did; my parents, another couple who wound up in St. Marin's to be close to me; Henri and Bear; Pickle; Woody; Elle, and finally Cate and Lucas. I knew that Tuck would have already talked with Cate, but I had a special request. To the message I had copied and pasted from my previous ones, I added, "Red Velvet with cream cheese frosting."
Almost immediately, a cupcake icon appeared on my screen, and I grinned. With dessert handled, it was time for me to get to work on my research presentation. "Marcus, do we have any books on Lizzie Borden?" I was pretty sure we didn't, but Marcus now kept a tighter eye on our inventory that I did.
"Not that I know of. Oh, wait, there is that Angela Carter story in her collection." He smiled. "Want me to pull it?"
I smiled. "Nope. I know the story, almost by heart. Thanks, though. Maybe, let's do a new window display – "Infamous Women" and put Burning Your Boats in there."
"Ooh, so we're doing a 'women who did horrible things' window?" Marcus waggled his eyebrows at his own intentionally obtuse remark.
"Exactly. Let's put misogyny on display, shall we?" I shook my head. "So Lizzie Borden, Amelia Earhart, Joan of Arc, Ruby Bridges, Fannie Lou Hamer, Malala. . . you get the picture."
"Totally. I'm on it." He headed toward the cafe and his girlfriend, Rocky. "Want to help me put women on display?" he said with a wink at me over his shoulder.
"We're doing a porn window?" Rocky quipped.
I loved those two, mostly because I knew they were going to do an amazing tribute to women, despite their witty banter to the contrary. And now, since the store was pretty quiet, I could do some reading for tonight.
* * *
Two hours later, the window display was up, and it looked amazing. Rocky had cut an airplane out of a discarded box and sketched it out to make it look like Earhart's plane. Then, she'd used her beautiful handwriting to write "Not So Well-Behaved" across the side of the plane. It was perfect, and I decided when I saw it that we'd be keeping this display up through Women's History month in March. We were going to celebrate women for a full eight weeks, and it was going to be glorious.
While Rocky and Marcus had pulled and arranged books, I'd read everything I could find online about Lizzie Borden. She was unmarried. She never left Fall River, even when the community ostracized her after the trial. She never made a public statement about the murders, her arrest, or anything else that I could find. She was famous for something she wasn't believed to have done. It was profoundly ironic, and yet, it felt very 21st century. I wondered if Lizzie Borden would have been a reality star if she lived now.
When I reached the end of the things I could refresh in my mind about Lizzie Borden, I realized I finally had to reach out to Max and hear what he was thinking in terms of the wine angle. I opened my email and entered his address, which I had culled from his website, never having cause or desire to use it before. I told him that I hadn't uncovered anything much that seemed relevant to the murder or his late bartender and Lizzie Borden, and I hoped he was having more success. I stalled out in my note when I got to the sign off. I thought about a typical "Thanks" but could hear Max snarking, "Thanks for what" in the back of my head. "Sincerely" sounded far too formal, and "Best" too stuffy. I went with a simple, "Harvey" and hit send.
Then, I closed my computer and stretched. I'd been hunched over far too long, and I half-expected my spine to crack like popcorn when I straightened it. But without the satisfaction of a string of cracks, I felt disappointed and still achy. I decided my best course of action was to do some heavy lifting to get my blood flowing.
So I headed to the back room and loaded up a library cart so I could fill the overstock shelves in the store with our backstock. We'd had everything full to the brim at the holidays, but in the post-seasonal lull, we'd gotten a bit lax about keeping those spaces looking rich with good reading.
I pushed the cart over to the shelves above the fiction section, stacked books from the crook of my arm to my chin, and hiked myself up the ladder with my other arm. I'd done this a thousand times, but this time, I paid careful attention to the way having both my arms on my body made this easier and required less effort. If I only had one arm, like Lizzie, I'd have had to make more trips and would have been far more tired.
Yet she had been a competent – probably expert bartender given that Max didn't hire anyone who was less than amazing to work in his restaurant. His chef, Symeon, Mart's boyfriend, could have had his pick of Baltimore's or DC's finest restaurants when he began to search for a new job, but the quaintness of St. Marin's had drawn him in, he said. He'd had family here, and once he'd visited, he decided to stay. It was a common story. Like Three Pines in Louise Penny's books, St. Marin's seemed to draw people to herself and keep them close.
Maybe that's why Lizzie Bordo had come here, to find a quiet place to land. And to use her bartending skills, I presumed. I kept thinking about how I couldn't make a martini with two hands.
I went back to my computer and googled "one-armed bartender." A small part of me thought I might find a video of Lizzie herself, but no such luck. Instead, I watched clip after clip of people with one arm or one hand pouring drinks expertly, and once again, I had to sit with the discomfort that I had presumed a great deal about what someone without a limb could do.
I realized then that I needed to call my mom. I needed her help again. I needed to do something to help myself learn and to just simply help, and I needed Mom to guide me. "Mom, can you come early tonight? I want to talk to you about an event."
"An event?" Mom said. "Now you're talking. Five thirty work?"
"See you then." I hung up and took a deep breath. I need to prepare.
If life on the Eastern Shore was like life in the fictionalized version of the Outer Banks that the Netflix show described, then my mother would be a Kook, a total society lady dedicated to her cha
rities and good works. She'd been organizing volunteer events for years, but she'd come into her full event-planning element here in St. Marin's. Every week she was spearheading or pretending to serve on a committee while actually overseeing a different charity event, and she was really good at it. Every event she'd planned had exceeded its fundraising goal by far.
Thus, I knew I needed to be prepared for our conversation or I, too, would be "coached" right out of my own idea and find my mother coordinating some event that would require me to buy another fancy dress. I needed to have a plan, and a good one. So I opened my computer again and got to work researching organizations that could educate me – and other "abled" people, those of us without disabilities – about the difficulties of operating fully in our society as a person with a disability. I read pages and pages about disability rights, and with each thing I read, I realized I needed to learn a lot more to actually be a supporter of people with disabilities. Moreover, I realized we needed to make some changes in the store.
I read and read and made pages and pages of notes, and by the time five thirty rolled around, I was ready. We were going to hold a fundraiser for the National Disability Rights Network. I had thought about holding it in honor of Lizzie, but since I didn't know the woman, didn't know if she'd want such a thing done for her, and had just learned how humiliating and objectifying it is for events to be held for people with disabilities without having those people present, I decided against it. Instead, I was going to make sure Mom and I organized an event that focused on Disability Rights by having a disabled speaker who would also work with us in every other capacity we could find to make this event inclusive and representative of what true advocacy looked like.
Fortunately, while Mom was terrible at taking direction on event planning itself, she was really open-minded and very aware of when she needed help. So I knew I could ask her to contact the Network and get their guidance on how to appropriately host an event as a fundraiser for them. And when we hunkered down with our planners and two of Rocky's snowflake-decorated decaf lattes, Mom was on board immediately.
"You know, I don't know much at all about disability rights. Is it terrible to say that I haven't ever thought about it before?" She grimaced.
"I think it is terrible, but you're not alone. I hadn't either." I sighed. "It's too bad it took a woman's death for me to be aware."
Mom made a note in her planner. "I'm making a call to the Network my top priority for tomorrow. I don't want to set anything in stone until I talk with them, but let's spitball some ideas to share."
I almost spit my latte on my mother. "Since when is "spitball" a term you use?"
"I'm updating my slang to relate to younger people," she said.
I rolled my eyes. "I think you may need to talk with some actually younger people, Mom. I don't think teenagers say 'spitball.' Not even sure they'd know what the original term meant."
"Really?" Mom said with a shrug. "Oh well. I tried." She picked up her phone and began showing me possible locations and themes for our event, and an hour later, we had two good, solid suggestions for fundraising events that would be accessible and fun. I was getting excited.
Since Marcus had handled the evening without me, I sent him out at six thirty and closed up the store by myself. It was a quiet night. The roads were clear, and most of the snow had melted. But Eastern Shore folks didn't contend with snow much, and it had kept most people at home all day. It wasn't going to take me long to reshelve and cash out the register. Besides, I wanted a little quiet time to think about Lizzie and her pseudonym. I couldn't get my mind around why someone would choose a woman accused of murder as her namesake. Did she admire Lizzie? Think she'd been falsely accused?
Or was it more personal? Tuck had said our Lizzie was in her early thirties, like Lizzie Borden. Our Lizzie hadn't worn a ring or said anything, according to Max, that indicated she was married. So maybe the two Lizzies had an affinity as women who were unmarried for longer than most people thought acceptable?
I kept letting my questions flip around in my mind as I tidied the store. I wasn't getting any definitive answers, but I hoped that when Tuck finally figured out Lizzie's given name, we might be able to start pulling threads together.
A bit before seven, I checked my email for the last time and saw a message from Max. Mostly, it was a long sermon on the history of Bordeaux, both the region and the wine, and I almost closed my email before finishing the long message. But his last sentence caught my attention. "Lizzie did tell me that she wished to visit France one day, that she was hoping to settle there, to get away, to start over. Maybe she was going to Bordeaux?"
As someone who had started over not that long ago, Lizzie's statement about that desire rang bells for me. People who were happy didn't pick up their lives and start over. People who were happy didn't do that and also change their names. I had no idea what this woman had gone through in her life, but I felt a connection to her now, as a woman who needed to find a new place in the world. Something was telling me that this wasn't simply about getting a new job or a new haircut. No, such a drastic change of locale and identity signaled something serious. Something scary.
* * *
At seven on the nose, the bell over the shop door began to ring, and one by one or two by two my friends came into the shop. Mom had run home to pick up Dad and Benji, their dog, and when the three of them arrived, they came with smoked gouda and crackers, which Dad quickly laid out on the counter by the register so people could snack as they came in.
Soon after, Lu and Tuck arrived with her hot toddy makings – a big thermos of decaf coffee and a bottle of whisky. Then came Elle with tulips from her hothouse to set on the table by all the food as well as her weekly delivery of small bouquets for the cafe tables. As Woody helped her set the flowers out, Mart and Symeon arrived with crab dip, a Symeon specialty that almost made me want to like seafood. Almost.
Then, Stephen and Walter carried in a huge bowl of salad made from greens Elle had grown, local goat cheese, and dried cranberries as well as three huge casserole dishes full of Shepherd's Pie. My mouth started watering at just the sight of the browned mashed potatoes. Then, Henri, Bear, and Pickle arrived, and the brownies they carried in – one plate with nuts and one without – scented the shop with chocolate. Cate and Lucas arrived with two platters of red velvet cupcakes from Lucas's side business as a cupcake baker. Finally, Marcus and Rocky joined us, having run out to pick up limeades from a little roadside stand just down Route 13. It was, as always, a veritable feast, and I found myself grateful I'd not snacked all afternoon, even though Rocky's Rice Krispies treats had been tempting me for hours.
Everyone took a sturdy paper plate from the stash I now kept at the store at all times, and soon, we were all quietly filling our faces in chairs and on the floor around the fiction section, our usual gathering place. We'd begun having meals here not long after I'd opened the store, and I loved that the tradition kept going, even if I hated the reason we'd gathered tonight.
Tuck, out of uniform and off-duty, stretched out his legs and said, "Okay, so I know you've heard we had murder yesterday."
"No secret lives long in St. Marin's, Sheriff," Woody said with a smile. "But we don't know much. Is that why we're here?"
Tuck took a sip of his toddy and said, "Well, yes, but first, I need to tell you the very specific reason you're here." He grinned at me and said, "It's because Harvey can't keep a secret."
Every single person in my bookstore gasped in mock shock at this not-so-revelatory statement. I sighed. Guess that secret was out. Still, it felt good to be known so well by such great people, even if they were taking joy in one of my foibles. "Yes, that's right, friends. I invited you all here to tell you what I would eventually tell you individually by the week's end. I'm helping Tuck with this investigation."
Now, the mock surprise turned to genuine concern because I didn't have the best track record of helping Tuck without getting into some trouble myself. I hurried to explain and
calm my friends' fears. "Let me explain. As some of you know, I have a deep interest in Lizzie Borden." I told them about our victim Lizzie's name and the possible tie to the infamous woman of Fall River, Massachusetts.
"Which brings me to something Harvey does not yet know." The sheriff added.
I spun to look at him with fake surprise and said, "What?!"
He smirked and said, "Our Lizzie is also from Massachusetts. Boston to be exact. And her real name was Cassandra. Cassandra Leicht. She was thirty-four, and so far, we haven't found any record of her being married or having children."
My heart picked up its pace a bit as I realized I may have been on to something with the idea that our Lizzie chose her name because the other Lizzie was also single and childless.
Tuck filled the group in on what we did know – the possible cause of death, Lizzie’s amputated arm, and her recent move to St. Marin’s to work as a bartender for Max.
"Anything about her parents?" Henri asked.
"Nothing yet, although we know she was born in a hospital, and I found mention of her at a private girls' high school. So it's probably safe to say she came from at least an upper middle class family," Tuck answered.
Well, that was different from Lizzie Borden, I thought. The Bordens hadn't been poverty-stricken, but they definitely weren't wealthy enough to send their daughters to private school.
"Also, I found this in a newspaper article about an elite bartending competition. Our Lizzie won, and they took her picture." He passed around a printed image.
"She's gorgeous," Cate said. "Was she a model?"
When the picture reached me, I saw why Cate had asked. Cassandra, our Lizzie, had the kind of silky brown hair, white porcelain-like skin, and build that was the staid standard of the beauty industry. I could almost picture her on Next in Fashion, listening to Tan France critique the clothes she was wearing. "Was she?" I echoed Cate's question
