by Ellery Adams
My life is a revolving door of secrets, Jane thought as she left the kitchens for her small office.
She’d barely nudged her computer out of sleep mode when one of the front desk clerks called on the intercom to inform her that Sheriff Evans was holding on line two.
“Ms. Steward, I have good news,” the sheriff said cheerfully when Jane picked up the phone. “We won’t have to wait for an anthropologist.”
Out of habit, Jane grabbed a pen and held it over her desk calendar. “We won’t?”
“We got really lucky,” Evans continued. “It just so happens that a forensic anthropologist is serving as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia. When the state office contacted her, she offered to drive down to Storyton straightaway. Not only that, but she’s also bringing along a small team of grad school students to help out. They’ll be arriving around eight. Can you put them up for a couple of nights if need be?”
“Of course. What’s the anthropologist’s name?”
Jane heard the rustling of paper. “Hold on a moment. I wrote it on the case file.” There was a pause and more rustling. “Ah, here we go. Doctor Celia Wallace. But she insists on being called Celia. Nice lady. Anyway, I’ll be over first thing in the morning with the box and the evidence bags.”
“What about the bones in the garage?” Jane asked. “Did Doctor Wallace, er, Celia, tell you what to do about them?”
“She asked that we leave them as they are. That’s not a problem, right?”
Jane shook her head, even though the sheriff couldn’t see her. “No, no.”
“You don’t have to be nervous about Celia’s arrival, Ms. Steward. I believe she’ll fit in well with everyone at Storyton Hall. She was positively giddy about visiting a place filled with books.”
She sounds promising, but initial impressions can be deceiving, Jane thought.
The moment she ended the call with Sheriff Evans, she phoned Sinclair and told him to run a background check on Celia Wallace.
“I have my book club meeting tonight,” she told her head librarian. “So I’m going to let you and Butterworth play the hosts to Doctor Wallace and her students. However, if she raises any red flags . . .”
“Rest assured, I’ll inform you at once,” promised Sinclair. “In the meantime, try to enjoy yourself. Remember what another Wallace wrote. In this case, I’m referring to Wallace Stegner.”
Jane smiled. She loved when Sinclair quoted obscure lines from novels she’d read once, and often, over a decade ago. For some reason, he expected her to remember every word of every book. Jane wished she could. What she did recall was the feeling each book inspired. Sinclair, on the other hand, had what was nearly a photographic memory when it came to works of literature. He could accurately quote thousands of lines.
“Which was?” she asked him.
Sinclair cleared his throat and intoned, “‘Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes and failures had been wiped clean by summer.’”
“That’s lovely.”
Sinclair made a noise of assent. “So get together with your friends, pour a glass of wine, and find something of jubilee.”
* * *
The Cover Girls appeared to be of the same mind as Sinclair.
Jane had just finished feeding the twins and had sent them upstairs to get ready for bed when the doorbell rang and Eloise Alcott let herself into the house. Two other Cover Girls, Violet Osborne and Phoebe Doyle, were close on Eloise’s heels. Like Eloise, both women were Storyton Village merchants. Violet owned Tresses Hair Salon and Phoebe owned the Canvas Creamery, which was not only a frozen yogurt and coffee bar, but also an art gallery.
“Is it true?” Eloise demanded breathlessly. “Was a body dug up today? And if it’s true, then why didn’t you call me?”
Jane waited until her friends were completely in the kitchen before saying, “Because I knew you’d hear about the skeleton within hours after my telling Mrs. Hubbard. Also, I knew we’d be seeing each other tonight. It’s much better to share this story in person.”
“I wish you’d had time to drop in at Run for Cover, but I’m sure you had to call the sheriff and . . .” Eloise trailed off, her lovely face clouding over. “What is the protocol when a skeleton suddenly surfaces on your property?”
Violet nudged Eloise, who was blocking the doorway, aside. “Can we put the lasagna in the oven before we bombard Jane with questions?”
“More to the point, can we pour the wine?” said Anna, setting two bottles on the counter. Anna worked at Storyton Pharmacy. She and Violet were the youngest members of the Cover Girls.
The doorbell rang again and the rest of the Cover Girls burst into Jane’s house with Mrs. Pratt leading the charge. She hurried into the kitchen, clutching two loaves of bread in one hand and her copy of their club’s most recent read, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, in the other.
“Jane Steward, whenever I entertain thoughts of buying a beach condo—just a tiny place where I can warm myself when we have a winter with too much freezing rain—I think of what I might miss if I ever left Storyton!” She drew in a breath before continuing in the theatrical manner she was known for. “What would I do for excitement? Having a friend and neighbor like you is better than paying for premium cable channels.”
“I’m glad my troubles have entertainment value,” Jane muttered grumpily.
Mabel Wimberly, the proprietor of La Grande Dame Clothing Boutique, placed a wooden salad bowl on the kitchen island and put her arm around Jane’s waist. “You most certainly have value! You’re the sun of our solar system! We gravitate to your house week after week to eat delectable food, drink delicious drinks, and talk about anything and everything that matters. Sometimes, we even get around to discussing the book we read.”
This elicited a laugh from Betty Carmichael. She and her husband, Bob, ran the Cheshire Cat Pub. “Oh, come on. We always start with the book. We just get sidetracked by other subjects. I think that’s okay. We’re women, which means we can multitask. We always return to the key themes before we call it a night. We never part without arguing about who’d be the best book boyfriend, sharing beautifully written lines from the novel, and spilling something on Jane’s rug.”
Mrs. Pratt glanced around at her fellow club members with an incredulous look. “How can you all act like this is any other night? Isn’t anyone else dying to hear what happened today? With the body?”
“Of course we are,” Eloise said soothingly. “And Jane promised to tell us. But first, wine!”
As Eloise and Anna opened wine bottles and filled glasses, Betty and Mabel put the finishing touches on the salad. Violet grated fresh Parmesan cheese for the lasagna while Jane added napkins and flatware to the table.
“I like that we’ve basically made the same meal served by one character to another,” Phoebe said, pointing to her own copy of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry. “Because the setting mostly takes place in Nantucket, I was afraid we’d be having a fish course, and you know I’m not a big seafood fan.”
“But you are a big lemon fan, and I baked lemon shortbread bars for dessert,” Betty said. “Jane? You have the strawberries and cream to put on top, right?”
Jane gave Betty a thumbs-up before accepting a wineglass from Eloise. The two best friends clinked rims and Jane took a grateful sip.
After granting herself a second sip, Jane gave her friends a recap of her day, omitting the part where the twins had purportedly witnessed the driver pocketing an object from the grave site. By the time she was done, her wineglass was empty.
“A forensic anthropologist?” Anna cried. “And she’s coming to Storyton Hall tonight?”
“She should be here any minute now,” Jane said.
Mrs. Pratt sighed. “I’d prefer a male, à la Sean Connery from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”
“You’re just saying that because Mr. Connery is a Scot and you like your men in
kilts,” Mabel teased.
The women laughed and raised their glasses to Mrs. Pratt. It was a known fact that Eugenia Pratt, a devoted fan of romance novels, had read nearly every Scottish-themed romance both in and out of print.
Always delighted to be the center of attention, Mrs. Pratt smiled. “It sounds like your mystery skeleton was an Englishman. Could he have been a relative? Was there a family burial plot in that location?”
Jane shook her head. “According to the original drawings, it was once a rose garden. There were multiple gardens. Kitchen gardens. Herb gardens. Topiary gardens. Hedge mazes. And so on. Milton’s Gardens is the only one we’ve managed to restore to match the original plan. The folly and the orchard are on my Hopes and Dreams board, but I wanted to build the spa first.”
“Why bury a person in the garden? Like he was a pet?” Phoebe asked.
“Or something you wanted to hide,” Betty added.
Mabel made a time-out gesture. “Hold on, ladies. Do we know that this man is a man at all?”
“No,” Jane said. “But by the end of tomorrow, I’m sure the anthropologist will have identified the skeleton’s gender. Which means you’ll know.”
“If you tell us.” Eloise pretended to pout.
Suddenly, the oven timer chimed.
Jane cupped her hand over one ear. “The oven’s playing my song. Cover Girls? Shall we feast?”
The women spread out the food buffet style in Jane’s bright, cheerful kitchen, served themselves, and then sat around her table to eat and discuss Gabrielle Zevin’s novel.
“I just want to say, Jane, that this is my favorite of all our reading themes to date,” Violet said. “Books about books. I had fun when we chose titles starting with certain letters too, but I really love this theme.”
“Me too,” Betty agreed. “I was surprised by how much I liked the nonfiction-book-themed books. I learned so much about bibliophiles and bibliomania from How Reading Changed My Life, A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, and Rare Books Uncovered. I thought we were book crazy, but we’re not as crazy as some of the people we met in those books.”
Mabel used a slice of garlic bread to point at Betty. “I don’t know about that. Have you seen Eugenia’s living room? The place is wall-to-wall books.”
“It’s beautiful,” Jane said. “You clearly know what’s important, my friend.”
“Thank you.” Mrs. Pratt preened. “I guess I’ll have plenty to talk about with the dashing men attending the rare book conference.”
Anna giggled. “Do you think they collect romance novels featuring hunky Highlanders?”
Mrs. Pratt shrugged. “If the books are hardbacks, in the original dust jacket, and signed by the author, it’s possible. They can’t all collect religious texts bound with vellum or parchment pages filled with diplomatic treatises. If so, this will be a seriously tedious convention.”
The Cover Girls shared another laugh.
As was their tradition, the friends discussed a host of topics about The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry. At one point, Jane popped upstairs to give the twins a good-night kiss and to check under their blankets for stashed paperbacks, comic books, and flashlights. Satisfied that her sons were worn out from the day’s excitement, she returned to the kitchen and prepared individual servings of lemon shortbread bars topped with sliced strawberries and whipped cream.
Over dessert, each of the Cover Girls took turns reciting a quote from the novel that had resonated with them.
“Mine should be pretty obvious.” Eloise smiled broadly. Tossing a lock of honey-blond hair off her shoulder, she placed her hand over her heart and said, “‘A place is not really a place without a bookstore.’”
There were numerous murmurs of agreement and Mrs. Pratt suddenly grabbed Eloise by the hand. “It’s so true. I can’t imagine life in Storyton without you or Run for Cover. It would be colorless and dull.”
The two women exchanged affectionate, teary-eyed glances.
“You’d better say yours before things get too emotional,” Betty whispered to Mabel.
Mabel nodded and pulled a piece of scrap paper from her copy of the novel. Multicolored sticky notes protruded from three of four sides of the book, indicating lines or passages she’d found memorable. “Here’s the quote. Actually, it was more of a question that kept me up until all hours of the night. I’m not kidding, either. I couldn’t fall asleep because I wasn’t able to answer this question. Just when I thought I had the answer and I’d start to drift off, another answer would pop in my head and I’d be awake again.”
Violet was on the verge of biting into a strawberry topped with cream, but she was so intrigued by Mabel’s dilemma that she lowered her fork to her plate. “What’s the quote?”
“‘You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?’” Mabel threw out her hands, nearly knocking over her wineglass. “See what I mean? Can you name just one favorite? Because I can’t. After hours of tossing and turning, I whittled it down to three. Charlotte’s Web, The Secret Life of Bees, and The Bluest Eye.”
Phoebe rolled her eyes. “I can’t limit it to three. I might be able to do five. Let’s see.” She gazed into the middle distance and said, “Anne of Green Gables, Gone with the Wind, Naked in Death, The Pillars of the Earth, and Girl with a Pearl Earring.”
The rest of the Cover Girls had lapsed into silence, a list of beloved book titles scrolling through their brains.
Jane watched her friends. She wasn’t even going to take a stab at the exercise. She knew she needed a minimum of ten titles if she were to create an all-time favorite list, and while she could write down a few fairly quickly, such as A Wrinkle in Time, The Hobbit, The Once and Future King, To Kill A Mockingbird, and The Secret Garden, the second half of the list would require several minutes of quiet and solitary rumination.
“If my life depended on it,” Mrs. Pratt began with a dramatic air, “I could force myself to a mere two titles. Outlander and Pride and Prejudice.”
Eloise grinned at her. “You are such a hopeless romantic. May you never change.”
Mrs. Pratt responded with a hapless shrug. “I don’t think Gavin would agree with you,” she said, referring to Storyton Hall’s former head of Recreation. “He wanted me to change. He wanted me to move to another state. All along, I thought I’d been waiting for just such a proposal. A good-looking, intelligent, Scottish gentleman who occasionally wears a kilt comes along and would have probably asked for my hand if I’d agreed to the move. But I hadn’t. Why? Because it turned out that I didn’t want the fantasy from my romance novels. I realized, after half a dozen dates with Gavin, that I’d have to compromise for our relationship to work. I would’ve gladly done that if we stayed in Storyton, but to leave this place would mean losing the life I’d built here. It would mean losing too much of myself. And it would mean losing you, my dear friends. In the end, a man in a kilt who wanted to whisk me away wasn’t what I truly wanted.”
Anna folded her arms over her chest. “Sometimes, I read for the sole purpose of driving Randall’s monotone out of my head. All day long, he stands on his elevated platform in the pharmacy like he’s the pope, delivering sermons on head lice, good and bad bacteria, flu shots, and seasonal allergies. It’s no surprise that my favorite books are escapist reads. Tamora Pierce, Jonathan Kellerman, and Mary Stewart. I also reread my Nancy Drew collection every few years.”
Eloise looked at Jane. “You’ve been awfully quiet. Is it too hard for you to hone down your list?”
“I was focusing on titles for a bit,” Jane said. “But then I started thinking about the nonfiction books we read for our book-related theme. There were so many anecdotes about the lengths bibliomaniacs will go to possess certain works. They’ll lie, cheat, and steal. They’ll take incredible risks. Foolish risks.”
“Why do I have the feeling we’re no longer talking about our current novel?” Violet whisper
ed softly.
“Because I think we’re talking about a skeleton and a box containing an old, decrepit book,” Phoebe whispered back.
Jane went on as if neither of her friends had spoken. “What would a book collector do to protect his most valuable prize?”
“Anything,” Eloise blurted. “He might even—” She stopped, put her hand to her mouth, and then slowly lowered it. “Take it to his grave.”
Chapter Four
Eloise’s words stayed with Jane long after the Cover Girls went home.
The next morning, Jane woke early. There was a tangible difference to the air, and when she pushed back the covers and felt a breath of coolness in the room, she knew that summer had finally given way to autumn.
The change was subtle. There was a slackening of humidity, as if the morning had less weight to it. The twins must have noticed the shift too. Even though they couldn’t verbalize it, they were more raucous at the breakfast table than usual.
“Is the bone lady here?” Hem asked as he poured a river of syrup over his pancakes.
Jane watched him out of the corner of her eye. Over the summer, she’d been trying her hand at pancake art. She didn’t attempt the complicated creations she’d seen online—celebrity portraits or three-dimensional architectural structures—but stuck to basics like hearts, stars, cats, dogs, birds, or other easily recognizable animals. Today, however, she believed she’d topped all of her previous creations by forming batter letters. She’d then sprinkled each letter with mini chocolate chips prior to flipping it.
When she presented her sons with their names spelled out in polka-dot pancake form, she expected a better reaction than the one she got. The twins murmured a hurried thanks, but that was all. They were too focused on wolfing down their breakfasts as quickly as possible so that they might catch a glimpse of “the bone lady.”
“I was told that Doctor Wallace and her students arrived last night,” Jane said to her sons. “However, I have no idea if you’ll be allowed near her work site. We’ll have to ask for permission.”
