A Murder in Helvetica Bold

by Jessa Archer

  But I discovered that I didn’t mind it one little bit.

  ✰ Chapter Twenty-Three ✰

  The spring I’d special-ordered to repair Stella had popped off again and was now somewhere under the printing press. I was lying on the floor trying to sweep it out with the handle of a broom when I heard the faint tinkle of the bell over the door. I’d already scraped a dustpan full of crap out from beneath the press. A few dozen ancient peanut M&Ms—Jim Dealey had been addicted to the things—along with a wide array of pens, paper clips, and type sorts. The spring, however, was still hiding somewhere in the depths. And now I’d have to answer the door with hands that were covered in a sludge that was part machine oil, part ink, and several decades of dust.

  “Ruth?” Wren called out. “Are you here?”

  “In the back!” I replied, relieved that it was just her. Sadly, she’d seen me looking worse. I swiped the broom under the press again. Something metal scraped against the concrete floor and I cringed. Hopefully the spring wouldn’t be broken by the time I retrieved it.

  Wren crouched down next to me. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Trying to fix Stella, but the new spring popped off. I think I have it, though.” I pulled the next batch of debris toward us with the broomstick, only to discover that the metal I’d heard wasn’t the spring at all. It was a large star-shaped earring, in candy-apple red.

  “Well, I’ll be!” Wren said. “Would you look at that? I remember those earrings. We wore them to the Fourth of July parade the summer of our senior year. Yours were red, mine were white…”

  “And Tanya’s were blue,” I said with a wistful smile. That Fourth of July was one of the last times the three of us had been together before Tanya disappeared. “I never realized I lost the earring here at work. I just got home that night and only had one when I went to take them off.”

  “Talk about a trip down memory lane,” Wren said. “Anyway, I just stopped by to see if you want to go get some lunch.”

  I pushed up from the floor, leaving a grimy handprint in my wake. “Sure. Just let me clean up. Did you finish giving Blevins your statement?”

  Cassie, Ed, and I had gone to the station yesterday as ordered and spent several hours telling and retelling the events of the past week. The sheriff’s office had been busy with processing and interrogating the two Mr. Winters, so they waited until this morning to get Wren, Clarence, and Elaine’s side of the story.

  “Deputy Thorpe took my statement,” Wren said, “but Blevins did stop in briefly to yell at me. Did he give you the breaking-and-entering lecture, as well?”

  “Of course. Which was stupid, since he knows full well that Clarence isn’t pressing charges.”

  Wren smiled. “I don’t think he’s very happy about that. Clarence and Elaine gave their statements just before I did this morning, and Clarence apparently told Thorpe that if they’d had any qualms about me entering the house for any reason, Edith would never have given me a key. Oh…and did you know that Thorpe saw us on her rooftop?”

  “Yeah. Ed said Thorpe was parked over on Main Street and could see someone was on the roof. By the time he got the car started and made it over to Edith’s, the two of us were running into the funeral home. He called Ed to narc on us instead of telling Blevins. Which is a good thing.”

  “Definitely a good thing,” Wren said. “I don’t think Clarence put the pieces together and realized exactly when we were in his house. He might not have been so willing to let things slide if he’d known we got a nice long look at his bare bottom. I hope Blevins took it easy on Cassie?”

  “He did not,” I said, frowning. “In fact, he told her he could press charges for theft even without Clarence’s permission, which I’m not entirely sure is true. She was already upset, and that just made things worse. I think that’s what Ed was yelling about when he went in after Cassie to give his statement. He was still steaming when he came out twenty minutes later. Even told the receptionist on duty that she had his deepest sympathies for having to work with Blevins.”

  “Is Cassie okay?”

  “I think so. She hasn’t slept well since it happened, which I get. I was shaken after being at gunpoint for only a few minutes, and she was held for well over an hour. She seems in pretty good spirits otherwise, but she’s going to wait on going back to Nashville for a few days. And she was definitely relieved when we found out that the charge against Nick Winters will be murder. Even if they argue it down to manslaughter, he won’t be out anytime soon.”

  “What about Sam?” Wren asked.

  “They’re waiting until they have Carlos’s body, although I don’t know how much they’ll be able to learn from it after all these years. I’m just glad they didn’t check my place too carefully. We smudged the ones we found, but when I checked the next morning there were bear prints running all the way to the back of the yard. And speaking of yards, have they started digging at Edith’s yet?”

  Wren shook her head. “I saw Elaine this morning as she was moving her things into the house. She says they’re supposed to start later this afternoon. Sam gave Blevins an approximate location, so she’s hoping they won’t have to rip up too much of their lawn.”

  “Clarence isn’t selling the house?”

  “Apparently not. They read the will yesterday. Edith left everything to him, with just one stipulation—that he didn’t sell the house. His attorney said he could probably challenge that, but to be honest, it might be a bit hard to sell right now. I mean, there’s this reporter in town who just published a story about a body being buried in their backyard for the past sixty years.” She gave me a sly grin.

  There have only been a few weeks when the Thistlewood Star was published on any day other than Wednesday. At Ed and Cassie’s urging, this had been one of those weeks. The two of them chipped in and helped me get the story written up so that I could have the paper to the printer in Knoxville Monday night. I doubled my normal print run, and they were on shelves and doorsteps a day early.

  I groaned. “Are Clarence and Elaine upset about the story?”

  “No. I was joking! I don’t even know if they’ve seen the paper yet. They just seem really happy. Like newlyweds…as I suspect they will be soon. Elaine was chattering yesterday about redecorating the house. Maybe taking a cruise.” Wren gave me a perplexed look. “You don’t seem entirely pleased about that. Do you still think Clarence was involved in any of this?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure. I don’t think he wanted Edith dead, by any means, but anything that resulted in her being declared incompetent would have been really good for him. He might have been willing to work with Nick to make that happen. One thing’s for certain, though…if Clarence was in on it, Nick Winters won’t cover for him. He was willing to hang his own grandfather out to dry.”

  I glanced down at my hands, which were as clean as they were going to get, but still ink-stained around the nails. I’d need to start painting my nails extra dark again now that I was back in the business.

  When we got to the diner, Sheriff Blevins was sitting at the counter, chatting with Jesse. Patsy looked up and waved. “Ruth! I’m glad to see you. If you’ve got more copies, we’re almost sold out.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Nope,” she said. “Check the rack.”

  She was right. There were only two copies left out of the twenty-five I’d delivered that morning.

  “I have extras at the office,” I told her. “I’ll bring them over when we’re finished eating.”

  Blevins pushed his empty plate aside. “And there we have the problem with modern journalism in a nutshell. Always eager to cash in on tragedy.”

  Wren bristled, but I just laughed. “That’s rich coming from someone in your profession, Steve. If there were no tragedies, no violations of the law, you’d be out of a job, wouldn’t you? But people would still need the Star to advertise a bake sale or post a wedding announcement.”

  “Well, man, she’s got you there,” Jesse
said. “Maybe we’d still need a school crossing guard to keep the kiddies from runnin’ out into the street, but that’d be about it.”

  After we sat down at our usual booth, Wren said, “Blevins has got a lot of nerve. You’re the one who solved the case for him, and he acts like you’re some sort of ambulance chaser.”

  I shrugged. “It’s like I told him when he was making the arrests. Yes, getting a scoop for the Star was a nice bonus. That wasn’t the reason I was determined to find out what happened to Edith, though. I might not believe in ghosts in quite the same way that Cassie does, but if I hadn’t at least tried to find out who killed her, Edith Morton would have haunted me. Maybe not in the literal sense, but she would have hung out in the back of my head, reminding me that justice had not prevailed. Now it feels like she’s at peace. And maybe Carlos is, too.”

  Patsy arrived to take our order just as Blevins was heading out. “Hey, Townsend?” he called as he stood in the half-open doorway. I didn’t answer, just looked up at him with a raised eyebrow.

  “You two stay out of trouble, okay?”

  “Can’t make any promises,” I told him. “I have a job to do. But we’ll try to let you solve one every now and then.”

  Blevins didn’t think that was funny.

  But Wren did.

  “I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I’m looking forward to getting into a lot more trouble.”

  Grinning widely, I clinked my coffee mug against hers. “That makes two of us.”

  ✰✰✰

  NEXT UP: PALATINO FOR THE PAINTER (Thistlewood Star #2)

  Journalist Ruth Townsend and her best friend, Wren Lawson, think they’ve finally learned the truth about the disappearance of their high school friend, Tanya Blackburn. Things aren’t always as they appear on the surface, though. A set of paintings left for Ruth at the estate sale of a former teacher seem to contain clues about what really happened to Tanya in the summer of 1987. But when Ruth unboxes the collection, she discovers that Wren may be keeping a few secrets of her own.

  ✰✰✰

  A note from Ruth: I never miss a good story, and neither should you. Sign up now to be in the know about all the great stuff Jessa offers subscribers—giveaways, excerpts, and new release notifications. See you on the list!

  More Cozies from Jessa Archer

  Legal Beagle Mysteries

  Thistlewood Star

  Hidden Harbor Tea Shop

  Knitting Mysteries

  Hand Lettering Mysteries

  Golf Mysteries

  Coastal Playhouse

  Sneak Peek: Palatino for the Painter (Thistlewood Star Mysteries #2)

  ✰ Chapter One ✰

  ESTATE SALE

  10–12 TODAY

  EVERYTHING MUST GO!

  The hand-lettered sign was barely visible between the cars parked in front of the modest brick house on Poplar Avenue. At least two dozen vehicles lined the curb, with several more in the driveway. Lucy McBride’s home was only a few blocks from Main Street, so I suspected quite a few people had arrived on foot, as well. Small towns like Thistlewood don’t get a lot of excitement, except in the summer when tourists flock to the area. It looked like half the town was taking advantage of this opportunity to snoop—and maybe pick up a bargain.

  I’d printed a notice for the sale in last week’s Thistlewood Star, exactly as requested by McBride’s son, even though I’d been tempted to tell him that no one around here would call the event an estate sale. Even when someone died, it was still just a yard sale or a garage sale, if you wanted to get fancy. Plenty of people would be snickering about how pretentious Kenneth McBride had gotten living off in California all these years.

  On the other hand, given how far down we were having to park, it looked like he’d gotten an excellent turnout. Maybe he’d known what he was doing, after all.

  Wren Lawson, my best friend, said, “You should take pictures of this crowd and post them in the classified section, with the caption Classifieds Work.”

  My daughter, Cassie, laughed from the backseat. “I’m not buying it. There are more cars here than you have subscribers.”

  I faked an offended look. “That’s no longer true. I’ll have you know we are officially in triple digits now. But to be fair, I suspect he pulled in at least as many people with the signs he was plastering downtown.”

  “True,” Wren said as she craned her neck to inspect the cars parked along the right side of the narrow street. “I don’t think all of these are locals.”

  She was right. Quite a few of the cars had out-of-state tags.

  “Why would someone on vacation go to a garage sale?” Cassie seemed skeptical.

  “Unless something has changed since the 1980s, Memorial Day weekend is kind of weird,” I told her as I pulled into an empty spot two blocks down. “It’s warm enough that people want to be outdoors, but the river is still wicked cold. So while the crowds aren’t nearly as large as we’ll get at the height of the summer, there’s usually decent traffic at the shops. And this is just a few blocks from the shops, so…”

  Wren nodded. “The diner was packed earlier. Guess some of them saw the sign and decided to check it out on their way down to the river.”

  As I got out of the car, my eyes drifted to the house on the opposite side of the street. Nostalgia hit me hard, and I could tell from Wren’s expression that she was feeling the same. The house across the street, the one with the now-peeling blue shutters, had been like a second home to us when we were teens. I think we spent almost as much time there as we did at our own houses.

  Tanya’s place had two advantages. First and foremost was location. She lived walking distance from both the school and the diner. While very little that would interest your average teen tends to happen in Thistlewood, anything that did happen, happened downtown. The second advantage was parents who didn’t hover. It’s kind of hard to hover if you’re rarely home. When we were at my house, Mom stuck her head in every half hour or so to check on us or offer snacks. Wren and her brother lived with their grandmother, and while Gran Lawson was a sweet lady who made really good oatmeal cookies, she didn’t have cable or a VCR. As long as we didn’t burn the house down or crank MTV up too loud, we had the basement to ourselves, so we were willing to deal with the fact that the food selection was generally limited to PB&J and microwave popcorn.

  “I’d forgotten that Ms. McBride lived so close to the Blackburns,” Wren said.

  “Me, too. But I’m pretty sure the only time we were ever there was for the graduation cookout.”

  “True.” Wren turned to look at Cassie, who was getting out of the Jeep. “Last time we were at Ms. McBride’s house, your mom and I were only a few years younger than you. We were rocking eighties hair, pegged jeans, and shoulder pads, and we were ready to Wang Chung and walk like Egyptians all night long.” She stuck one arm out in front and one behind her.

  Cassie laughed. “I’ve seen a few of Mom’s pictures from back then. What were you guys thinking?”

  “Thinking we looked wicked cool,” I told her. “And we were right. It’s not our fault that your generation has no sense of style.”

  A flash of movement at the Blackburn house caught my eye. Did Tanya’s parents still live there? Were they even still alive? A curtain on the upper floor flickered again, almost as if to say that at least someone there was indeed alive.

  Or, far more likely, the curtain had simply moved because the air conditioner kicked on.

  “Do her parents still live there?” I asked Wren. As the owner of Memory Grove, the town’s funeral home, she was also an excellent source of information about which of our citizens had passed away over the past decade since she returned to Thistlewood.

  “Her mom does,” Wren said. “Her brother, too. Bud moved away for a while, but he came back a few years before I did.”

  “So, did her dad die?” I asked.

  Wren shook her head. “Or at least, if he did, he didn’t die in Thistlewood. He left tow
n a few years back. No one even knew he was gone for the longest time. He and Bud never really socialized much. Pretty much the mirror opposite of Tanya and her mom.”

  Sally Blackburn had worked part-time when we were teens, managing the books at her husband’s construction company. She’d kept busy the rest of the week with her clubs and church, so she was rarely home. And Tanya had definitely inherited her mother’s social nature. If there was a crowd, you’d find Tanya in the middle.

  The fact that Wren and I were her friends had been the only reason we’d made it through high school relatively unscathed. Like many small towns, Thistlewood tends to group people into two categories—from-here and not. Depending on the individual you’re talking to, from-here might mean you’ve lived in town a few years, but more often it means that both sets of your grandparents were born in Woodward County, if not Thistlewood itself. My own family moved here when I was thirteen, and that fact, combined with my stubborn refusal to suffer fools gladly, meant that I was suspect. Wren and her brother came to live with her grandmother a year later, and their primary fault in the eyes of many Thistlewood residents was the color of their skin.

  Our shared status as social outsiders in a teeny-tiny school had quickly forged a strong bond between me and Wren. In ninth grade, however, for reasons I’ve never fully understood, Tanya Blackburn—who was definitely from-here—thumbed her nose at her social circle by carrying her lunch tray over to sit with the two of us. The whole situation was touch and go for a bit, as to whether the others would accept us or shun Tanya. Her total indifference to the outcome was probably what decided the matter. She made it clear that the three of us were a package deal, and the center of gravity in the cafeteria gradually shifted to what had been the outcast table. There were still plenty of snide comments about me and Wren over the next few years, but Tanya pulled us into her circle through the sheer force of her will.