Bookman Dead Style

by Paige Shelton

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you need to leave. Everyone else, stay,” Omar said. “And no one else is to leave. I’ll be out front. Are there any back doors?”

  “I don’t think so,” the robed man answered, his face seemingly becoming greener with each passing second.

  “What does that mean, you don’t know?” Omar said.

  “No back door that I saw.”

  “Where’s someone from the hotel? Is anyone working?”

  No one had an answer for Omar.

  “All right. Just stay put, you two. Out, Clare.”

  I nodded and moved toward the door, but couldn’t resist asking, “What happened?”

  Omar didn’t answer, but the robed man spoke up, as if he needed to say the words, get them out of his system maybe.

  “A woman was killed. That movie star killed her! So tragic.”

  “What?” I said.

  The man who’d come into The Rescued Word after Matt shook his head and groaned.

  “Come on, folks,” Omar said with a glare in my direction that almost rivaled Jodie’s. “Let’s just settle down.”

  I took my cue and scooted through the front doors, finding an empty space where the police car had been. Jodie had been quick about getting Matt out of there. Before I could climb down the few stairs, a Subaru pulled into the space and I could see the two young women inside high-five each other. They’d managed to snag a great parking spot.

  I was distracted as I stepped onto the sidewalk and crossed the street, but I made it in one piece. The crowds were currently oblivious to what had happened inside The Fountain, but the news would spread quickly. The story of this year’s festival wouldn’t be about Matt Bane purchasing personalized note cards from The Rescued Word so he could politely thank people. Marion wouldn’t even get a bit part in this year’s festival story.

  It looked like the script would be all about Matt Bane killing someone.

  The plot had most definitely thickened.

  3

  “No, I had no idea,” I said as I looked at Marion, Seth, Chester, and Baskerville.

  Baskerville seemed unimpressed by the news as Chester rubbed the back of his finger over each side of his mustache and shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I don’t pay attention to those sorts of things.”

  “Yeah,” Marion said. “It’s why he’s here. Well, I did also hear that he’s working on another project, but, nevertheless, his superhero movies aren’t independent films. The movie he’s here for is supposed to be his big ‘serious’ breakout film. Kill Night. He plays a cop who is also a killer, not like that serial killer who killed only other serial killers. No, Matt Bane’s role is that of a vicious killer who likes to play mind games with the other cops, leave evidence to challenge them. That kind of thing. I hear it’s gruesome and creepy and wonderful.”

  “Sounds it,” I said. “Well, gruesome and creepy at least.”

  Seth smiled. “I heard it’s so well written that you actually start to root for Matt’s evil character even if you can’t understand why. It’s one of the few films I wanted to try to see. I bet it will be sold out just as soon as news hits the streets.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “You don’t think this is all a marketing ploy?”

  Chester laughed. “You think Jodie would participate in such a thing?”

  “No,” I said.

  “No, never,” Marion agreed. “I just can’t believe what has happened. He was so nice when he came in, and he’s known for doing nice things. He’s always visiting children’s hospitals. He was supposed to be one of the good guys.”

  “Well, we don’t know what happened yet. Let’s wait and see,” I said.

  “I got his note cards done.” Marion looked toward the short stack of note cards and envelopes she’d placed on the end of the counter. She’d wrapped the soft brown cards and envelopes with a bright red ribbon. She’d used a bold Bookman Old Style font to set “MB” in the bottom right corner of the cards. Though it had been a simple project, Matt’s thank-yous would have been masculine and classy.

  “We should have made him pay when he ordered,” Chester said. We all looked at him. “I’m kidding. Sorry. I can see you all are fond of this fellow. I will reserve judgment until we better know the details of the crime. Gracious, you’re all so sensitive.”

  He put his arm around Marion and pulled her close. “I’m sorry, dear girl.”

  “It’s okay, Chester. You can’t help yourself,” Marion said.

  “So true,” he agreed.

  Chester announced that he had some errands to run, and Marion asked if she could take a few minutes to dash up the hill to one of the festival’s local ticket booths to see if any tickets were still available for Kill Night and some other films she wanted to see. I didn’t have anywhere else I needed to be, but the conversation I’d had with Jodie about some additional help at the shop crossed my mind. We’d done fine so far, but Jodie was correct—Marion’s life was potentially about to take her to places that would turn into more serious commitments than her part-time job. I didn’t bring it up then, but I decided it would probably be a good idea to discuss it with Chester later. I said I’d watch the shop, and we all gave Marion some money so she could buy us tickets too. Even Chester—though hesitantly—became caught up in the Matt Bane frenzy we expected to unfold any minute and gave Marion some cash for tickets for him and his girlfriend, Ramona.

  “What the heck, I might as well catch one film every ten years or so. I’ll come with you and then run my errands afterwards,” he said as he held the front door for Marion and then followed behind her.

  When it was just Seth and me in the shop, he gave me his rock look, which was something I’d come to call his deeply curious inspection eyes. He loved rocks and geology. I think I realized he felt almost the same about me when one day he started looking at me in the same way he inspected the giant geode in his apartment. He said, “You okay?”

  “Yeah, fine. I didn’t see anything gory other than a little blood”—I swallowed hard—“but I’d like to know what’s going on.”

  “Jodie will tell you,” he said as he leaned a hip on the counter and crossed his arms in front of himself. “Maybe it’s not what we think it is. Like you told Marion, let’s get the facts first.”

  I wished I could open those arms and wedge myself inside them, but it didn’t seem like a work-appropriate move. Yeah, I was smitten with the tall fellow who liked to read but had more rocks in his nerdy apartment than books. As befitted a scientist, at least a part of his mind was always taken up by his work. Even when I was the main focus of his attention, which was often, I knew his job never vacated his thoughts entirely. I didn’t hold it against him. In fact, his immersive devotion to his career was one of the things I found so fetching about him. The others things included his clever sense of humor and the way he always pushed his glasses up his nose a second or two after I did the same thing to mine. Then there was the way we could talk for hours about anything, or say nothing and just sit silently together.

  “Definitely, and I’ll get Jodie to talk,” I said. “Eventually.”

  Seth smiled. “Depends on her mood, I suppose.”

  “Everything depends on Jodie’s mood.” I pushed up my glasses.

  So did Seth.

  We were a couple of mostly opposites. I was on the shorter side, fair with long blond curls that drove me crazy more than they behaved. He was tall, thin but toned, not wiry, and molded with a defined softness that on him was somehow masculine. His dark curly hair was perpetually just slightly too long and looked in need of a good brushing. His skin was fair, but more alabaster than my peachy tones, and you could see the blue of his eyes from a couple of blocks away. He was a numbers guy; I was a words girl. We filled in each other’s spaces.

  “She’s been in a good mood lately. Girl power makes it difficult for me to say
this, but I give some credit to Mutt. I think they make each other happy,” I said.

  “They’re a good couple. Last time we had dinner with them, he told me more about the work his motorcycle group does. I don’t know how he has time to get everything done and see Jodie every now and then. Their mid-canyon meeting place is more like a hole-in-the-wall than a spot for a romantic rendezvous.”

  “Must not matter.” I shrugged. I also liked that Seth said things like “romantic rendezvous.” For a numbers guy, he still had some word surprises up his sleeve.

  “So,” Seth said as he bounced away from the counter. “I brought something for you.”

  “Oooh, really?” I said.

  “Don’t get too excited. It’s more work related than personal.”

  I’d only halfway noticed that he’d placed a shoe box on the top of one of the middle paper shelves when he came in. He grabbed it, brought it back to the counter, and put his hands on the lid.

  “I got this box from one of the geologists who helped with one of the reclamation projects. His mother lived in Salt Lake City. She passed away last week, and he’s been cleaning out her house. I stopped by there yesterday to help him with some heavy lifting. He knows what you do for a living and said he thought you might be interested in these. He wanted you to have them.”

  “Intriguing.”

  With a bit more drama than the moment required, he lifted the lid.

  “Ribbon tins!” I said as I peered inside the box. “So many of them!”

  “By your happy tone, I take it this is a good surprise.”

  “It’s a terrific surprise! Ribbon tins are fabulous.” I reached inside and pulled out two. Both were round, about three inches in diameter. One was illustrated with a black background behind a decked-out equestrian on a horse that was jumping a pristine wooden fence; the other was decorated with a red cardinal sitting on a yellow tree branch, the black background on that one bringing out the red and yellow in bold relief.

  “There are so many,” I said. “I need to pay him for these.”

  “I told him that’s what you’d want to do, but he insisted I give them to you. He thought maybe you might collect them, or go ahead and sell them if you want to. They are yours to do with whatever you please. He doesn’t want any money. I got the sense that he was just glad to have one more box out of his mother’s house, and it was a good way to thank me for my help.”

  “Typewriter ribbon tins are probably the most sought-after items associated with old typewriters. So many were created—it’s difficult to know exactly how many—but they’re small, and usually decorated with something interesting or weird. I think manufacturers started putting the ribbons in tins in the late eighteen hundreds. They’re collectible, but none are all that valuable. People who love them really love them. We always sell them within a few days of getting them in the store. We don’t even have to advertise. It’s like there’s some strange radar out there. I guarantee that within the next few days someone will come in asking if we have any ribbon tins to sell.”

  Carefully, I sifted through the box. Some of the art was bizarre; some of the tins didn’t have any art but just words. But every single one was interesting. A woman seated in front of a typewriter with a bag over her head; a silhouette of an elk; a guy in a kilt playing bagpipes; a pigeon; the planet Saturn. And that was only the beginning.

  “Glad I could contribute.” Seth smiled.

  I frowned. “I don’t think I’d feel comfortable selling these. We’ll see. Let me talk to Chester.”

  “Sure, but you don’t need to worry. Seriously, do whatever you’d like to do with them. Daryl said that the only way he wants a cut is if you make over a million dollars.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you. Well, I’ll thank him personally, but these are terrific.”

  Just as I dug my hand into the box again, Seth’s cell phone and the shop’s phone rang at the same time. The shop’s phone was an older model that still plugged into a landline. It didn’t have caller ID, but it did have a tangled and knotted cord.

  Seth looked at his caller ID, mouthed me a “See you later,” and left out the front door just as I answered the shop’s phone.

  “Rescued Word,” I said distractedly as I peered inside the box.

  “Clare, s’me.”

  “Jodie? I can’t think of the last time you called on the shop’s phone. What’s up?”

  “I tried your cell. No answer. Hey, did you follow me over to The Fountain?”

  “Yes,” I confessed as I patted my pockets and looked over the front counter for my cell phone.

  “Thought that’s why you were there.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you because it will be all over the news any minute. We’ve arrested Matt Bane for murder. He’s in one of our holding cells right now.”

  “That’s horrible.” My heart sank. “Who’d he kill?” I no longer cared about where my phone was hiding. I didn’t know Matt well, but his movie star superhero persona and his friendliness in the shop that morning had given me a small connection to him. Or maybe it was just a sense of a connection. Either way, the news was deeply sad, and utterly shocking even after watching him being herded out of The Fountain in handcuffs.

  “His sister. She was in town too. Some nobody actress who was trying to ride his coattails to stardom, according to Omar. I don’t pay attention to any of this movie star stuff. Anyway, there’s another reason I’m calling. You already told me Mr. Movie Star was in your shop this morning. Got that, but he said his sister came in after him, and that he, his sister, and some guy named . . .” I heard some paper rustle. “. . . Howard Langer, Howie; he’s Matt’s guy. Matt called him his assistant, but I get the impression that he’s more than that, maybe a kind of manager or agent; something more powerful than an assistant. Anyway, they all walked back down Bygone Alley together, and his sister—uh, Cassie—turned and headed down Main Street instead of crossing the street to go back to The Fountain. Mr. Bane is claiming that Cassie went somewhere and came back to The Fountain a little bit later. First, can you confirm that Ms. Cassie Bane and Mr. Howie Langer were in the shop?”

  “Two people came in after Matt and they both seemed to be looking for him. A short guy with stubble over his face and head, glasses like Chester’s but for someone farsighted; and a woman dressed like a stereotypical polygamist—pioneer stuff. I didn’t get either of their names.”

  “Sounds like them. Okay, did you by chance see where they went after they left the shop?”

  “Just toward Main Street. I didn’t follow them outside to watch. No one did. Marion was too flummoxed by Matt coming in the store to do much of anything and Chester just didn’t care.”

  “You’ve got that security camera outside the shop, right?”

  “Well, yes, but it’s not aimed down toward Main. It just gives us a view of who’s directly outside by our front door.”

  Jodie cursed.

  “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault. Gotta go, see if I can track down where his sister went after The Rescued Word, or if she really did go anywhere else.”

  “Jodie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would it matter if she went anywhere? Wasn’t she killed at The Fountain?”

  “She was, but Mr. Bane claims that someone came back to the hotel with her, that he heard voices coming from her room before he heard a big thud. At that moment Howie was in Matt’s room. Matt ran next door and found the victim.” She cleared her throat. “And then Matt grabbed the murder weapon, got blood on his hands and an interesting spatter pattern on his shirt. We don’t think that’s exactly what happened.”

  “How was she killed?”

  “Knife to the gut. Quick and dirty. Crime scene folks will be cleaning up for another hour or so.”

  “Ugh. Wouldn’t stabbing someone
cause more blood?”

  “Not necessarily. But good question. You’re almost ready for cop school.”

  I smiled. Jodie had been razzing me about my overinvolvement in a murder that had occurred in town not too long ago. Typewriters had played a big part in that crime. It had seemed natural to be involved. For a brief moment or two Marion had been in danger as well. You can’t help but jump into the middle of a murder when family could get hurt.

  “I’m going to investigate every possible lead, including Matt’s idea that someone else was in the room with Cassie. But at this time we don’t having anything indicating that happened. If we had a recording of Cassie going right at the end of Bygone, we might have something more to go on.”

  “The hotel receptionist didn’t see anyone go in with her?”

  “No, no one was at the desk at that time. Hey, I gotta go, Clare.”

  “Okay. Bye,” I said.

  But she’d already hung up.

  The news knocked me for a loop. Murder was always horrible, but the news that Matt had been arrested for the evil deed didn’t sit right with me. He’d seemed like such a nice young man. My grandmother’s words rang in my mind.

  At the very least he hadn’t seemed like a killer. However, I knew that some killers were the best actors. I shook away the disturbing thoughts.

  I lifted the few pieces of paper on the counter in search of my cell phone, and then patted my pockets again. I hadn’t been back to the workshop after returning from the hotel. Had I?

  Baskerville had climbed to one of his sunning spots high atop the front shelves. He meowed down at me.

  “Have you seen my phone?” I asked up to him.

  He turned in a circle and relaxed into a naptime curl.

  I hurried back to the workshop and glanced quickly over my desk. No sign of the phone. I returned to the front of the unmanned shop. I could do a better search in the back later when either Marion or Chester was back.