Fatal Fiction (A Book Barn Mystery)

by Kym Roberts

  “That’s Princess, you moron!”

  The boy looked at me, confusion clouding his eyes. “I thought she was Princess.”

  I smiled weakly. “I’m Princess One.” I pointed at my dad’s pet, “She’s Princess Two.”

  Princess made a noise like she thought we were all crazy—she might be right—and waddled away.

  “Please be careful you don’t hurt her while you’re here today. She’s my dad’s pet,” I said.

  “Don’t those things carry like the plague or something?” The boy peeked around the stall, watching Princess’s departure.

  I stared at him blankly, not sure how to respond because I didn’t know the first thing about armadillos. Yet, as far as I knew, the plague no longer existed.

  “She’s been tested. She’s disease free,” Cade answered from the doorway. His tall physique still looked too good to be true in a pair of basketball shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. The sheriff was right behind him, dressed in cargo shorts and a T-shirt tight across the chest. His sleeves were intact.

  Some of the boys acted like they didn’t quite believe Cade’s statement, while others didn’t care what he said—the mayor and the sheriff were more intimidating than a diseased armadillo. I was just ticked off the man had the guts to show his face in my barn. Especially with Reba Sue right behind him, dressed in designer capris and a tight T-shirt that probably cost more than my meals for the week.

  “Scarlet said you needed some help cleaning out The Barn?” Cade asked.

  The sheriff raised his eyebrow. There was a hidden question under that brow. He wanted to know if I’d tolerate Cade’s presence. The guy in question, however, seemed clueless. Smiling, he winked in my direction.

  Unbelievable. I rolled my eyes at both of them. The sheriff laughed and the mayor looked between the two of us as if he’d missed something.

  What he’d missed was the opportunity to get in my bed. That bird had flown the coop when he’d kissed the top of Reba Sue’s head last night.

  Reba Sue chose that moment to step forward. “I got some of your mail.” She shrugged. “It happens all the time.”

  I looked down at the stack of bills and held back a groan. Her helpfulness was rather questionable, but I put on a smile and said what was expected of me. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  I turned away from the three of them and immediately put several boys to work in the loft, which was so messy my dad had been forced to hang a rope across the stairway to keep customers from going upstairs. I instructed them to divide the books into three sections: one to sell, one to donate and one to trash or make something out of. Then I told Coach I wanted the tiara light fixture moved to the girls’ section and told him I’d have the old fixture that was in the back room painted and ready to hang in the main entry.

  I put Reba Sue in charge of the tearoom. I figured playing hostess would suit her best, especially since she’d brought several cases of vitamin water for everyone to drink, saying it was a healthier choice than well water. I moved on to Cade and the sheriff, neither of whom were exactly on my good side. I gave them the worst job of all: the boulders in the backyard, which I wanted moved into the geek section.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Cade said.

  “I suppose if you’re not up to it, I could ask Scarlet and Joellen to help me.”

  Mateo almost rolled his eyes but refrained and elbowed Cade when he started to argue. “I’ve got just what we need in the back of my truck.” Cade followed him through the barn, looking back at me and clearly wondering why I was mad at him.

  The man had no conscience. Which ticked me off even further, but once they were gone from view, I breathed a sigh of relief. Moving those boulders was a challenge I didn’t even want to try to tackle. And if one of them got bit by a snake or stung by a scorpion while doing it, that was his own fault.

  I checked in on the boys in the loft and snatched up the box of girlie magazines from the 1950s they’d found before Coach or any of the other adults noticed. They were totally embarrassed for the most part, but a few tried to act like they were as old as their size made them look. One went so far as to ask if I was free for dinner.

  It was a new low. I hadn’t had a date in eight months, and now high school students saw me as desperate date material. As if I would let a teenager take me to dinner on his allowance money. I immediately set some boundaries.

  “The magazines will be our secret, and if you find anything else like it, you will immediately put it in this trash bag.” The one who’d asked me out gave a sly smile. “Unless you’d prefer that I have a word with your mommas about what you’ve been up to.”

  His smile disappeared and the group got back to work, grumbling about a term paper that was due in a few days and how far behind they all were.

  I made my way down the steps with my boxful of magazines, then stopped and looked up at the plain white steps. One of the pictures of book art Scarlet had shown me the previous night came to mind. The kick plates of the steps needed to be painted like book bindings and the walls in the stairwell needed to be lined with shelves—full of books. It would make a statement.

  I balanced my box on the railing and grabbed my cell phone from my cargo pocket, typing a reminder note to myself. Once that was done, I headed for the storeroom to put away the unmentionables. Princess stood at the entrance to the storeroom, right in the spot where I’d stood when I’d found Marlene. I turned away, determined not to dwell on the memory.

  “Have you seen Coach?” I asked Darrin, the current quarterback for Hazel Rock and Aubrey’s boyfriend.

  “He went into the back room to wash his arm. He cut it while he was taking down the tiara.”

  Fuzz buckets. That was all I needed. I turned back toward Princess and the curtain. “Were you trying to tell me that Coach needed me?” Princess just turned and walked away. I could have sworn by her expression that she was calling me an idiot for not understanding her message sooner.

  Sue me for not speaking armadillo.

  I pulled back the curtain and found Coach standing where Marlene had died. His long sleeves rolled up around his forearm as he casually patted several cuts on his wrist with a paper towel.

  It was worse than someone failing to walk around the gravesites in a cemetery.

  Coach walked right onto Marlene’s resting spot. His feet were planted in the middle of Marlene’s chest—at least in my mind they were. He didn’t realize his mistake. There were no signs that a horrible crime had occurred under his tennis shoes. The permanent chalk outline of her body was only in my head—where it glowed in bright neon yellow.

  Coach looked up from inspecting a particularly nasty cut on his arm. “Prin—Charli, are you okay? You’re as pale as a ghost.”

  My breath hitched before I was able to answer. “I–I’m fine. I just don’t like the sight of blood,” I lied. Blood didn’t bother me in the least—unless of course you were talking about it leaving someone’s body in mass quantities. I was pretty sure that would leave me speechless.

  “Here, let me take that box from you. One of the boys should have volunteered to carry it for you.”

  “No!”

  Coach jumped and I realized I’d overreacted.

  “I mean, I’ve got it, don’t worry. Are you okay?” I asked as I shoved the box under the sink and washed my hands.

  “It’s just a scratch. Nothing to worry about.” He dabbed at his arm with the paper towel one last time before wadding it up and throwing it away.

  Just then, the sound of books falling across the concrete echoed through The Barn. Aubrey’s voice, filled with panic, followed. “Scarlet!”

  Coach and I went through the curtain at the same time, his sweaty body rubbing against my arm. Boys were gathered in the front of the store near the register and it sounded like a herd of cattle was making its way down the steps. But I saw Scarlet first. Her red hair piled high on her head in a Grace Kelly–style bun, she raced from the tearoom to Aubrey’s
side, knocking football player after football player out of her way.

  I followed with Coach right behind me. Aubrey stood at the register, her hand covering her mouth with a look of pure terror on her face. Books were scattered across the floor in front of her like my five-year-olds at nap time. Some faceup, some facedown. Some with their covers curled around their bodies, others with their arms and legs spread wide like the books that were splitting their spines.

  “What’s wrong?” Scarlet asked as she reached for Aubrey and turned her around to look for any injuries.

  Aubrey’s eyes focused on me, her look of terror turning to horror. I’d never believed there was a difference between those two expressions, but I saw the change in Aubrey’s face—felt it, even. Looking at me was worse than whatever had frightened her to begin with, which was more than a little unsettling.

  She pointed at the counter.

  At first I couldn’t read it. Not because it wasn’t legible but because it was unfathomable that someone would write a message on the smooth white surface in of all things . . . blood.

  But that’s exactly what it was, and once I got past the gore, the letters and the message became clear:

  Leave

  I couldn’t help it. I looked at Coach, meeting his hazel eyes dead-on, ready to take the fight to another level. I looked at his arm and his gaze followed mine. He had the decency to blush.

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “Then who was it?” I accused, looking around at everyone assembled, ready to fight back for every wrong I’d ever experienced—which they had nothing to do with, though that didn’t stop my ire.

  “It’s paint.” I turned to find Scarlet holding up the can of red paint we’d used the day before.

  “Paint?” I heard my voice squeak.

  She nodded. “It’s dry and the paint brush is hard.” Aubrey moved to Darrin’s side as Scarlet held up the can we’d used the previous day along with the paint brush.

  All eyes were on me, waiting for me to say something.

  “What’s going on?” Mateo made his way through the crowd of football players.

  “Someone wrote LEAVE on the front counter. We thought it was written in blood, but it turned out to be paint,” said Darrin, who now had his arm around Aubrey.

  Mateo slipped past Cade and Reba Sue, who just happened to be clinging to the mayor’s arm, then gingerly took the paintbrush from Scarlet’s hand. He held it by the bristles, along with the handle on the can of paint, and set them at the end of the counter. As on the day I’d met him, a scowl drew the sheriff’s brows together. “Has anyone else touched any of this?” His eyes scanned the crowd, each person getting that piercing look I’d received just a couple of days ago as they shook their heads in denial.

  He turned to me. “When was the last time you used the paint?”

  “Yesterday, around nine o’clock.” I knew exactly when it was, because at the time, I’d been counting the minutes before I could quit and get dinner.

  “When did you lock up for the night?” He pulled a pad of paper and a pen from the back pocket of his jeans and started taking notes.

  “About that time,” I answered, wondering why he would question me in front of a room full of potential suspects.

  “No, you didn’t,” Cade interjected.

  “Excuse me?”

  My irritation didn’t daunt him in the least. “I came by at eleven and the door was wide open. I checked the store, didn’t find anything, and locked up. Then I knocked on your apartment door, but you didn’t answer. I called Scarlet, and she told me you guys had worked late and that you were ready to drop when you left her place around ten-thirty. Your door was secure, so I left.”

  Scarlet nodded her head in agreement. “That’s when I asked him to help today.”

  “I locked the store—” I insisted, but I was still stuck on Cade saying he’d stopped by. He had some nerve—comforting Reba Sue and then dropping by The Barn like nothing had happened. It made me wonder if the mayor’s job title now included warming the bed of every single woman in town.

  Scarlet corrected me. “I don’t think so. We walked out of the store with one thing on our mind—lasagna.”

  She was right. The thought of homemade pasta had consumed us when she and I had finished for the night. “How did none of us notice this until now?”

  “Those books were stacked at the front of the counter. No one could see it until I picked them up,” Aubrey explained.

  “How did you lock the store last night?” I asked Cade accusingly.

  “With my keys. Your dad gave them to me.”

  “He what?” My dad guarded his keys with his life, yet in the last couple of days two different people had said he’d given them a set. None of this made any sense.

  “He’d gotten in the habit of leaving the store unlocked. When I started hounding him about it, he gave me a set of keys and said to quit waking him up in the middle of the night to lock the doors.”

  “Why is the mayor checking doors late at night?” It was more a question to myself, but because I’d voiced it aloud, Cade felt obligated to respond.

  “I check to make sure all my tenants are locked up. We don’t want any temptation for a crime spree.”

  “Tenants?” My curiosity got the best of me. “How many tenants do you have?” I didn’t ask if Reba Sue was a tenant.

  It was the first time Cade had looked sheepish since my return. “All of the stores, except The Book Barn Princess, Beaus and Beauties, the diner, and the Tool Shed.”

  “You’re kidding.” Everyone looked at me as if what he’d said was old news or wasn’t any big deal. But what Cade was talking about was one man—the mayor—owning 80 percent of the town. “You own the quilt shop and the pottery shop?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “The barber shop and all the antique stores?”

  Again he nodded.

  “And none of you have a problem with that?” I looked around the room.

  The kids shrugged. Coach stepped forward. “It beats the alternative.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The stores ending up empty with no businesses to fill them.”

  “But . . .”

  “Hazel Rock was turning into a ghost town after Country Mart left. The mayor rescued it from that,” said Mateo. His voice was soft, yet it captured everyone’s attention, and most of the kids nodded in agreement. Cade was their hero. Not only had he graduated from Hazel Rock High but he’d gone to college and played in the NFL.

  Cade had the entire town and a sheriff in his back pocket . . . and keys to every bedroom. What more could a man ask for?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mateo stayed to work on crime scene number two at The Book Barn Princess while the rest of us headed to the diner for a bite to eat—on Cade’s dime.

  The money he was throwing around was beginning to make me think thoughts I had no right to think. But I couldn’t help it. My ex-boyfriend had the means and the motive to kill Marlene. Especially if he wanted to own the town. The standing joke during our childhood was that it should be called Calloway, Texas, not Hazel Rock.

  Cade’s daddy, however, had remained steadfast in maintaining history, which I’d always thought a little out of character. He was powerful, egotistical, and critical of his only son. Yet he’d knocked down the talk of creating a Calloway, Texas, with a swift and stern speech during halftime of the opening football game my freshman year of high school.

  The town had loved him even more after his speech. He’d spoken eloquently of how the blue-green–colored rocks reflected in the river and were so beautiful they could compete with the bluebonnets of Texas. Nobody bought into it, except the entire population of Hazel Rock. Our ancestors settled down and created our small town because of it, and apparently the voters weren’t about to give that up.

  My guess? The river itself was the main reason they chose this area. Water could be hard to come by in mid-July. Plus, the land around Enchanted Rock
was already settled. But the mayor’s moment of humility was met with cheers almost as loud as the win his son delivered later that night.

  Had Cade ever agreed the town deserved to have its own name, or was he caught up with making his legacy, a term my generation seemed to obsess about? Cade’s smile appeared as real as it had when he was eighteen, but his confidence may have taken a hit when his professional career died. Plus, he’d put his coveted career before our relationship. Would he put his need to succeed before the town? Did he want to own every business and finally have a Calloway, Texas? Would his ego drive him to commit murder? So many people had committed murder for less, and I wondered if I ever really knew the boy I’d loved.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?”

  “What?” I shook my head loose from the haze of the past and focused on Scarlet sitting across from me in the booth.

  “You’re off in the clouds, staring at Cade like he’s up to something when all he’s done since you came back is stand by you.”

  I leaned forward and whispered the question I shouldn’t ask. “Don’t you find it odd that he’s doing all this?”

  She folded her arms and I knew I’d made a mistake. “No. I find it odd you’re questioning him.”

  But I couldn’t let it go. I leaned in farther across the wooden table. “I haven’t seen him since we were kids.”

  Scarlet gave in and leaned over, our faces inches apart. “He’s probably the best friend your dad has in the whole state.”

  I couldn’t have been any more caught off guard. “What?”

  Scarlet rolled her eyes and held the menu up in front of us, as if we were discussing the food instead of my conspiracy theories. “Have you not been paying attention?”

  “Of course I’ve been paying attention.” I pointed at the chili cheese fries with bacon and sour cream.

  She shook her head and turned the page to the salads. Rabbit food didn’t appeal to my empty stomach.

  “I don’t think you have,” she lectured and pointed to a strawberry and chicken salad with spinach, black beans, corn, and avocado, all topped with a Margarita-style dressing. “Your dad disappeared after you left town. From what I heard, he was so depressed he couldn’t function. And if I remember right, the store didn’t open for about a month. It was Cade who brought him back and got him to reopen The Barn.”