Publishable by Death

by A C F Bookens

  Cate hugged me again. “Sounds wise, Harvey. Sounds very wise. Get on home and get some rest.”

  I locked the door behind them and finished my count. I had just returned to the chair by the fiction section – a seat that was quickly becoming my favorite – when I heard another knock at the door. “I’ll get it. You rest,” Daniel said to me as he stepped around the shelf to look toward the front of the store. “It’s Elle. I’ll take the dogs for a walk while you two talk for a few minutes, see if you can piece anything together.”

  “Okay, sounds good. But come back quickly will you? I’m tuckered and ready to go home.”

  He leaned down and kissed my cheek before heading to let Elle in. I heard the tinkle of the bell and the jingle of the dogs’ tags as he slipped out.

  Elle looked more composed than she had earlier, and I was glad to see it. I stood up and gestured to the comfy chair, but she pulled over the wingback from the history section and plopped into it.

  “Long day, huh?” I asked as I settled back into my seat, tucking my feet under me.

  “So long . . . it was great in terms of business. I sold out of everything except for a few bunches of Dusty Miller that no one but a florist really knows how to use.” She let out a long sigh. “But in terms of Divina, I don’t even know what to do.”

  I let out my own matching exhale and nodded.

  “How did she seem with your explanation about what I meant about her knowing what she did?”

  I thought back over that conversation, somehow less convinced than I had been that I’d gotten through to her. I didn’t think it would help Elle to know that though, so I said, “I think she heard me, probably believed me, too. When I left her, she sounded like she was going to let things go.”

  Elle let her head fall back. “Okay, good. At least she doesn’t know we’re on to her.” Her head snapped forward. “But what do we do now?”

  “We tell the sheriff. First thing tomorrow, you and I go in and tell him what we know, and we let him take it from there.” I felt disappointed, but also relieved with that decision. I still wanted to spare him the work – and I really wanted to satisfy my own curiosity about Divina’s motive – but none of that justified letting a murderer be free any longer.

  “Sounds like a good plan.” She stood up. “I forgot to ask. Things go okay here?”

  I stood alongside her and heard the doorbell ring as Daniel came back. “They did. We raised a lot of money for the scholarship fund, and I think the shop did really well, too.”

  I started to walk her to the door, but as we stepped around the local history shelf, we met the muzzle of a shotgun. Behind it, Divina Stevensmith was steady as an ocean breeze. “I think we have something to discuss, ladies.”

  I tried to step toward the front of the store, but Divina swung her shotgun and herded me back before putting herself between me and the front door. Then, she started walking forward as Elle and I slowly stepped backward, trying not to trip over dog beds or bump into bookshelves. The whole time I was hoping that Divina had locked the front door so that Daniel wouldn’t come in and get himself shot while I also tried to figure out how to call for help.

  “We’re just going to have a conversation, be sure we’re clear on some things.” As soon as we reached the bathroom doors, Divina stopped. She pointed the gun right into Elle’s face and said, “You just had to be nosy.” Then, she swung the barrel until it grazed my nose, “And you just had to be kind. If you’d both minded your own business, this would all be behind us. Now, I have to sully Berkeley’s place again.”

  My brain wasn’t really firing correctly, but I did manage to say, “Divina, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She moved the barrel down and shoved it into my sternum. “Stop it. Don’t play dumb. It doesn’t suit you. You know I killed Lucia and Deputy Williams, God rest her soul. Poor woman. If she hadn’t come patrolling that night . . .”

  I still was having trouble forming complete thoughts, but something clicked, and I could picture Divina there at the back of the shop with a sage smudging stick as Deputy Williams came around the building.

  “I might have been able to get her to leave if I’d just told her the truth, but I couldn’t. And then she started asking a lot of questions . . . about Lucia and the umbrella. I didn’t know she knew about the umbrella.” She looked like she might cry for a split second, but then, a wash of determination came over her face. “I did what I had to do. Berkeley’s place had to be cleansed, and I couldn’t let her take me away before I finished.”

  Elle grabbed my hand, and I tried to focus on her touch so that it would let my brain work behind the scenes of my fear. “So you were smudging the place Berkeley died? The place those hateful people killed him, trying to purify his shop.” I wasn’t sure I knew what I was talking about, but I must have been close because Divina’s face crumpled.

  “This place was a safe haven. It was pure, untainted.” She took a shuddering breath, and then her voice was cold as steel, “but those monsters, they stole Berkeley and they ruined this building.”

  “Oh, Divina, that’s awful.” I didn’t have to work hard to feign sympathy. I could see her there as a young woman, hiding in the bushes while her husband was murdered. “But Divina, why didn’t you seek justice then? Why not go to the police with what you knew?”

  Her eyes locked on mine. “You think I didn’t try that. Of course I tried that, but our marriage was illegal . . . so no one had to listen to me as his wife.” Her voice broke then. “Besides, one of the men who killed Berkeley . . . “Her jaw was so tight I thought she might break her teeth.

  “One of them was a police officer,” Elle’s voice was very quiet.

  Divina nodded, and I felt a tug to go hug her. The shotgun shut down that impulse though.

  “I knew there would never be justice. I just tried to tamp it down, let it go like people said to do. And I thought I had . . . “

  I willed myself to make the connection, to figure out what all this had to do with the fact that she had murdered her daughter, but I couldn’t tie it together.

  Elle got it, though. “Then, your daughter wrote those horrible things about Harriet Tubman, another hero who provided safe haven for travelers.”

  Elle was far better than me under pressure. She’d put it together. All of Divina’s suppressed trauma and rage had come boiling out when she’d seen her daughter’s hateful comments about the hero who had helped found the Underground Railroad.

  “I couldn’t believe any child of mine would be so ignorant.” She shook her head violently. “I tried to talk to her, explain, tell her about Berkeley, but she was so arrogant. She just kept waving around those sheets of horrid orange paper that she used for her notes, telling me that she was just offering an ‘alternative perspective.’”

  I slipped my hand around the wall, easing it upward ever so slowly.

  “Before I knew it, the umbrella was in my hand, and—”

  “You didn’t mean to kill her,” Elle said, giving my hand a squeeze.

  Divina’s eyes were blazing. “Of course, I didn’t. The umbrella was heavier than I thought . . . and I was so angry.”

  I kept inching my fingers upward and feeling for the alarm keypad.

  “Before I could help her, she came in here, and I couldn’t force myself to follow her. I thought she’d be okay, wake up the next day with a nasty headache but be okay.”

  Elle started to step forward with her right hand out, but Divina whipped the shotgun up again. I froze, my finger just at the bottom of the keypad.

  “Now, though, I need to finish what I started. Get things tidied up.” She looked around the store. “You’ve done a good job here, Harvey— Wait! What are you doing? Don’t move a muscle.”

  She stalked over to me and grabbed my left arm. Then, she sighed. “Into the storeroom. Both of you.”

  I wasn’t willing to take my eyes off Divina, and apparently Elle had the same thought because we inched our way backward
again. I stepped back through the doorway first, and then Elle followed after me. Divina closed the door behind her and then leaned back against it, her breathing heavy.

  I was desperate. I needed to keep her talking. “You know this is where Lucia died. I know you know that. And Deputy Williams died just behind here. You’re back there smudging the bathroom door, smudging the bathroom over at the courthouse where you hid until Berkeley’s murderers left. There’s no amount of sage that is going to undo that much bloodshed and sorrow, Divina.” I was saying anything to change her mind while I hoped that Elle had an idea of how to get out of here.

  Divina sighed. “I know. But my art is the way I make good on the awful things I’ve done.”

  “You mean by donating it to the scholarship fund to cover up your guilty conscience?” Elle asked. Apparently, Elle and I weren’t on the same wavelength about how to deal with the homicidal woman. I wanted to placate her, dissuade her. Elle was apparently going for antagonism.

  “Oh, I didn’t donate that painting because I felt guilty – at least not entirely. Nope, that was about telling the story of that night. I expect neither of you noticed, but there’s a black man chasing down two men on horses with a shotgun in that piece. It’s subtle, almost a secret, just like Berkeley’s murder has been kept secret all these years.”

  I tried to remember the details of the art piece from when I’d looked at it earlier, but I couldn’t recall anything that resembled a person chasing two men on horseback. It had looked like an abstract collage with hints of the town buildings to me. But then, I didn’t know art. Maybe that story was there . . . or maybe Divina was more mentally unwell than we knew and just thought it was.

  “My art is my work of justice. And I’m not done yet. So I’m afraid you will have to be.” She lowered the shotgun while she scanned the room. “I don’t want to ruin your inventory. You’ve done such a nice job of creating this story. I know Berkeley would love it, and that display at the front, the one with The Green Book, that’s beautiful. Now, we need a place—“

  Just then, the door burst open, and Mayhem charged the petite woman just as I jumped forward to grab her gun. A shot went off, and I spun around in some sort of Matrix-inspired attempt to dodge a bullet I suppose.

  The spray of shot blasted into a stack of books just as Daniel tackled Divina and I wrested the gun from her hands. Mayhem stood growling over her, and Taco waddled over to check on Elle.

  A few second later, Sheriff Mason ran into the room, gun raised, but when he saw that Daniel had Divina firmly by the wrists, he holstered his weapon and put the artist in handcuffs.

  Elle and I ran to each other and hugged, tears streaming down our faces. Then, we turned to face Divina, only to be met with a blank stare, as if she couldn’t even see us.

  As the sheriff escorted Divina out, he turned to us. “I’ll need your statements, ladies, but why don’t I come to your place and get them, Harvey? Daniel, you can get them home?”

  “Absolutely.” He came to me then and wrapped me in a deep hug before pulling Elle to him, too.

  When we got to my house, Mart met us at the door with blankets and mugs of hot chocolate spiked with what I suspected was whiskey. Daniel had apparently texted her about what happened as we walked over. I had insisted on walking, and Elle had agreed. We both needed the cool night air to calm our heart rates.

  Mart installed both Elle and me on the sofa, and Aslan came to settle right between us. Daniel called Cate and Lucas and texted Marcus and Rocky. Soon everyone, including Woody Isherwood, was in our living room with looks of concern written deep on their faces. Not a single one of our friends asked us about what had happened, but they kept checking to be sure we were warm enough, asking if we needed more hot cocoa – or straight shots of whiskey if Woody was doing the asking – and getting us snacks every few minutes.

  By the time the sheriff arrived, I was calmer and so exhausted that I wondered if I might drift off there right in the midst of everybody. When Mason said he needed to take our statements, everyone but Elle and me headed to the kitchen within earshot, but far enough away to give us space.

  We told the sheriff what happened, what had led us to believe that Divina was the murderer and what she’d confessed to us. “You didn’t happen to record all that, did you?” he said with a wry grin.

  “Alas, no, I was a little more worried about getting shot than I was about getting my phone out.” I tried to laugh, but the sound caught in my throat.

  Elle smiled. “I actually thought about it, but since I can barely turn on the flashlight on my phone, I figured I couldn’t be stealthy enough to actually record anything. With my luck, I’d probably start playing Queen’s “We Are The Champions” instead.”

  I giggled at the image of Freddy Mercury’s voice filling up the bookshop, and then I started to laugh for real. Soon, I was doubled over and breathless with laughter. . . and then I was sobbing. The sheriff motioned for Daniel to come in, and I felt a warm arm pull me close as I let myself cry.

  After I caught my breath, Sheriff Mason said, “I was mostly kidding about the recording. Divina confessed to everything in the car, told me pretty much the same thing you did. Even mentioned dropping the knife and going back to find it. That’s what she was doing the night we caught her back there.”

  I turned to Elle. “You put things together quickly – how did you know about the Tubman connection?”

  “I don’t know. It just sort of came together in my head, and I said it before I had a chance to think. Looking back, it all seems sort of obvious.”

  “It always does,” the sheriff said. “It’s too bad justice couldn’t have been served back then. Maybe we wouldn’t have had to serve it now.” He stood up and headed for the door, and I couldn’t help but wondering how he was doing. Now didn’t seem the time to ask, though.

  “So that’s it. Nothing else,” I said.

  “Nope, nothing else. Daniel had already given me the heads up about Divina earlier today, so I was planning on picking her up for questioning tomorrow. You two just saved me the trouble.”

  I gave Daniel a quick glance. He shrugged and give me a sad smile.

  Somehow, I didn’t think that our investigation was exactly making less work for the sheriff, but I was glad the murderer was off the streets. Mason waved as he headed toward his car.

  Lucas and Cate gave me a hug and offered to give Elle a lift home, and Woody headed out at the same time. Mart and Marcus offered to do clean-up, so Daniel and I drifted back to the couch.

  “You couldn’t wait until tomorrow, huh?” I wanted to be angry with him, but I just couldn’t.

  “No, I couldn’t. I was too worried. And I don’t know you well, but I know you well enough to know you weren’t going to let this go.” His face fell. “I should have been there tonight, though. Harvey, I’m so sorry. I thought you were safe with Elle there.”

  I scooted closer to him, folding my legs and leaning over to grab his shoulders. “Me, too. I had really hoped Divina had bought my story about Elle. But I guess she didn’t . . . we did make it a little too easy for her, though, both of us being together. Two birds with one—”

  “Nope, too soon. No killing metaphors, please.”

  I turned and let myself lean against him, and he pulled me close and tucked a blanket around my legs.

  14

  By the next morning, the entire day before felt like a dream – one that had gone from delightful to nightmare. I had mostly relegated Divina’s actions to the past, vowing to not forget them or to ignore them, but to not dwell in the darkness either.

  Mart took a day off from the winery – a well-earned one since she’d signed up a record number of folks for their subscription offering during the festival the day before – and came in to help me run the shop. Marcus was right on time as usual, and Rocky came in with a plate full of muffins. “Mama says muffins are for recovery, so this is for you.” She handed me a white paper bag that was hand-decorated with beautiful drawings
of hyacinths. Inside was a single muffin in a bright blue paper and a note, “You are strong, Harvey Beckett. Never forget that. – Love, Mama Phoebe.”

  I didn’t even wait for the tears to stop before I took a bite right out of the top of that muffin – banana nut with more walnuts in it than I’d ever had in a muffin before. I could taste the vanilla, and the caramelized sugar on top crunched on my teeth. But those walnuts, “Oh woman, you tell your mama that she knows how to help a woman recover.” Rocky laughed and headed to the shop.

  The sheriff came by later to tell me that Divina had been arraigned first thing. She was foregoing a trial because, in her words, “I want to spare the town any more drama.” She’d be sentenced later in the week.

  “Now, maybe you can stick to bookselling and leave the police work to me,” he said as he headed out the door to tell Elle the news about Divina’s case.

  “Maybe.” I said, never one to make promises I couldn’t keep.

  Daniel came by at lunch with tacos from Lu’s truck, and we sat at a table in the café with cups of fresh limeade that Rocky had decided to add to her menu. The drink tasted amazing, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat much.

  “Lu Mason is going to come in here and demand an explanation if you don’t eat that carnitas, Ms. Beckett.” Daniel’s voice was teasing, but there was concern in his eyes.

  I looked up at him. “It’s not the taco. I just keep thinking about Berkeley Hudson and that night. He did so much for so many people, and no one, even in his town, knows his story.”

  Daniel nodded. “It is sad.”

  The next week went by without event. Galen came by on Thursday with Mack, the most adorable senior bulldog I’d ever seen. He, Mayhem, and Taco, who had started spending days at the shop since he was a bit, um, under foot in the garage, became fast friends and all shared one giant bed that I’d added back by the self-help section.