by Becky Clark
“That the night before your agent’s murder, I couldn’t have tampered with her car because I was breaking into the bookstore.”
“What? Where … which … why?”
Suzanne’s face hardened. “How do you think I got all those books? Do you know what a freelance health care worker makes?”
I pictured my beloved bookstores around Denver—the Tattered Cover, BookBar, Capital Hill Books, the Broadway Book Mall. The idea of someone breaking into them felt like breaking into the very depths of my soul.
I was afraid to ask but did anyway. “Which store?”
“Espresso Yourself.”
“Across the street?” I waved vaguely toward my front door. “The one Lavar and Tuttle own? How can you steal from them?” I felt my face getting hot and fought to control my temper.
Suzanne shrugged. “Never met ’em. They’re never there when I do my … shopping. And I don’t drink coffee.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Let me rephrase. I don’t drink coffee where I steal.”
“What are you thinking?” I dropped my keys into my bag, then dumped all my bags on the floor. “You can’t just go around stealing books. They’ll put you in jail for that.”
“Nah. Those flimsy locks over there just make it so easy. It’s almost as if they want me to break in.”
“Pretty sure they don’t.” I rubbed my injured wrist, glad I hadn’t made it worse.
“It’s not that big a deal. I go over there Sunday nights and pick out three books I’d like. They must not miss them. Haven’t changed the locks. Have they ever said anything to you? You guys are friends.”
I couldn’t recall them ever mentioning a break-in. But would they? It wasn’t information you’d want to get out, it seemed. “What you’re doing is—”
She raised one palm to me. “Not the point right now.”
“What is the point, then?”
“That I don’t have an alibi for the murder.”
I shrugged. “Neither do I.”
Then I cut my eyes at Suzanne. “When did you break into the bookstore?”
“You know, it’s more of a coffee place than a booksto—”
“When?”
“Like, midnight Sunday.”
I stared at her.
“I didn’t kill her.”
I kept staring. Could she have killed Melinda? She was being awfully forthcoming if she had. On the other hand, if I’d killed someone, I’d prefer the lesser crime of breaking and entering too. Suzanne had all those books about murder in her apartment. But she’d read them all and would know she’d be a prime suspect. And why would she kill someone exactly like I wrote? Surely she’d read about better ways, ones that couldn’t be traced back to her reading my manuscript. And motive. What was her motive?
“Stop staring,” Suzanne said. “You’re giving me the creeps.”
“It’s only fair. You’re giving me the creeps, too. And those books you gave me. They were stolen, weren’t they?”
We continued our stare-down until I blinked.
“Charlee, you know I didn’t kill her.”
I glanced at the plate of smushed brownies on the coffee table. I untied the ribbon at the top of the cellophane and peeled back the wrapping. I scooped up a hearty fingerful of fudgy confection with my finger, then licked it off. I didn’t know who or what to believe anymore but hoped brownies would enlighten me.
“Gross.” Suzanne stood and walked toward the door. With her hand on the knob, she leveled her gaze at me. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
I had another fingerful halfway to my mouth. It hung there while I considered Suzanne’s secret life of crime. “Wait.”
She let go of the knob and stood, looking puzzled but hopeful.
Keeping my eyes on her, I dug in my bag until I found my phone. “I’m calling my brother. The cop.”
She started to protest, but I raised one finger as he answered. I continued to stare at her while I said, “Lance, hey, I know I said I’d be there soon but I have to do something real quick. If I don’t call you in fifteen, come over here. Fast. So we’re not late. If I’m not home, I’ll be at my next door neighbor’s.”
I clicked away before Lance could ask questions, but I hoped he could understand subtext. At least if Suzanne was really a murderer and decided to do me in, Lance would be on it. I was hoping that one, she wasn’t a murderer, and that two, my phone call would be insurance.
Keeping my phone in my hand, I ushered Suzanne out the door. “I want to see these books you say you stole.”
I followed her into the second bedroom of her apartment. The only furniture was an easy chair next to a small end table in the center of the room. Every wall was now floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, mostly filled with books. I’d been in here briefly a couple of times over the years, borrowing from her vast library. But this time, I crossed to the far side of the room. “You stay there.” I pointed to the doorway.
She leaned against it, a bemused smile making her lips disappear.
Keeping one eye on her, I began pulling books randomly from the shelves. All of them had price tags from Espresso Yourself. I didn’t know anything about kleptomania, but wondered if this was a manifestation. It didn’t seem logical, but was there a subset of kleptomania where someone only steals one thing from one place?
“What else do you steal?”
“Nothing. Well, sometimes I get hungry when I’m there.”
I inspected practically one entire wall of books. All were from Espresso Yourself.
“Believe me now?” she asked.
“I don’t know what to believe.” I brushed past her into the living room, and a calendar thumb-tacked to the wall caught my eye. All of the Monday squares were colored in neon orange marker. Each square had Senior Center 4 a.m.–noon written in it. Was Suzanne breaking in there, too? And would she be so blatant as to calendar it?
She sauntered past me and flopped on her couch, raising a pillow behind her neck.
“Since when is the Senior Center open at four in the morning?”
“It’s not. But the residential side needs caregivers. Namely, me. On Mondays for the last three years, anyway.”
I watched as she adjusted the pillow. I had to admit, Suzanne did not look like a killer. She seemed calm and at ease with me asking her questions and inspecting her life. But still. “You mean to tell me you break into the coffee shop every Sunday night at midnight, then go to work at 4 a.m.?”
“I don’t sleep much.”
My brow furrowed, and she realized I’d need more information.
“They get new books every Friday but don’t get around to putting them out until late Saturday. I don’t like ’em picked over.”
“Then why not break in on Saturday night?”
“Because after the Sunday rush, they get their pastries ready for the week. I told you, sometimes I get hungry. Have you ever had their butter braids? Magnificent.”
It all sounded ridiculous enough to be true. And the butter braids were magnificent, and usually scarce, which is why I always got a muffin. I didn’t know what to believe. I stared at my neighbor lounging on the couch, looking relaxed, perhaps even relieved to have confessed. She certainly didn’t look like a murderer. But my gut feeling wasn’t proof. I needed more.
I pulled my phone from the pocket of my jeans and, without looking, pushed the power button and flipped the silencer on the side. “What was that?” I pointed toward the kitchen.
As Suzanne tilted her head and glanced that direction, I snapped a series of photos of her.
She never knew.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Must have been my imagination.” I turned to leave. “I need to think about all of this.” Before the door closed behind me, I reminded her about my brother, the cop.
I ran into my apartment long enough to grab a coat. As I walked to Espresso Yourself, I called Lance.
“Finally!” he said. “I was two seconds out the door. What was that all about?”
“Stand down, Officer.” I didn’t want to explain about Suzanne until I knew more. “I was just talking to somebody I felt iffy about, but it’s okay now. They’re gone.”
“Sounds like you’re being stupid.”
“If by stupid you mean the opposite of stupid, then yes.” I expected at least a chuckle from him but didn’t get it. “Remember how Mom and Dad used to say we could use them as an excuse if we didn’t want to go to a party or something that made us feel uncomfortable?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well, I do, and that’s what I was doing with you.”
“Does this have anything to do with Melinda’s murder?”
I stopped walking and jiggled my knees in frustration. “Lance, I need to prove my friends aren’t killers. I need to put this behind me, get some closure, and get back to my writing.”
“What you need is to let the police solve this.”
“You’re the police, so who did it?”
He ignored my snark. “I’m not working this case. In fact, I’m not even supposed to be talking to you about it.”
Before I could ask why, he said, “Leave it to the professionals, Charlee. I mean it,” and then he hung up.
“Oh, he means it,” I mocked, dropping the phone in my bag. “Easy for him to say.”
A few minutes later I saw the coffee shop sign. Wooden, hand-lettered, with bright colors announcing Espresso Yourself—Coffee and Books, with a tagline underneath: For when you have a latte on your mind.
The sign wasn’t the only thing about the coffee place that I loved. Even when it was crowded, nobody was surly. The coffee wasn’t great, but it was more than serviceable. Cheap and plentiful, too. And someone else made it, which increased deliciousness a hundredfold. Suzanne was right about the pastries. Everything was always magnificent. The muffins were covered in mysteriously marvelous streusel, made with prodigious amounts of butter, brown sugar, and what I theorized must be crack cocaine, ensuring my loyalty.
So I walked into Espresso Yourself, completely dead at 4:30 on a Thursday afternoon. The proprietors were two gay ex-Marines—Lavar the crazy Christian and Tuttle the crazy atheist—both with physiques that would put a recruiting poster to shame. If it wasn’t too busy, they’d argue, tease, and score philosophical points with the other to pass the time. Regardless, it was clear they loved each other, and they made everyone feel welcome, no matter what.
Lavar sat at a table with an empty plate crisscrossed by a knife and fork in front of him. Tuttle perched on a stool behind the counter, reading a book. They both jumped up to hug me when I walked in.
“Girl, what you doing here? Got a case of writer’s block only my coffee will dislodge?” Lavar asked.
“Nope, not writing much the past few days.”
“Tut and I are both praying for you.”
“Speak for yourself, Lavar. I ain’t praying for nobody.” Tuttle’s face softened. “But I do hope they find out what happened to your friend, Charlee. Shameful business.”
“Thanks, guys. I wanted to see if you know this woman.” I held out my phone to Lavar and scrolled through a few of the photos of Suzanne. I didn’t want to say anything about the break-ins until I knew more.
Lavar shook his head and handed the phone to Tuttle. “Doesn’t look familiar.”
“To me neither.” Tuttle handed the phone back to me.
“Do you guys keep a customer database?”
They both laughed.
“Aren’t you precious,” Lavar finally said.
“So, no?”
“No.”
“Why? Who is she? Wait—you’re investigating!” Tuttle’s hand flew to his throat. “Is she the murderer?”
“That’s an unpleasant thought.” I didn’t tell them it had crossed my mind more than once.
“You know what I mean,” he said.
“She’s my neighbor.”
“Did something happen to her? Is she okay?” Lavar asked.
“Jury’s still out, but I’ll let you know.”
Eighteen
I finally got a solid eight hours of sleep, but only because I dosed myself with some expired nighttime cold-and-flu concoction I found in the medicine cabinet. Friday dawned cloudy in all the imaginable ways. Don’t tell the FDA.
Wedging myself in the corner of the shower until the hot water ran cold helped brush away the majority of the cobwebs in my brain. I made a plan for the day. It had two things in it: make coffee, and verify the alibi of Dave and Veta Burr.
I padded out to the kitchen in my ratty chenille robe and stared into the empty coffee container. I pulled the carafe out from the coffeemaker. Empty. Revising my plan to “obtain” coffee and clear Dave and Veta, I padded back to my room to get dressed.
Espresso Yourself was crowded, so no time to chitchat with Lavar or Tuttle. I did ask about the deliciously sweet berry and butter aroma, but that could hardly be considered chitchat.
“Blueberry butter braid,” Lavar said while he poured my coffee. “But it’s gone already. We never seem to have enough of that stuff.” He tightened the lid of my plastic travel mug, then handed me a streusel muffin.
I pulled out my wallet but he waved it away.
“How do you guys stay in business?”
“Power of prayer, baby. Power of prayer.”
When he turned to the next customer, I crammed a twenty in the tip jar. As I walked to my car I wondered if that was their nefarious business plan. Did they convince everyone to pay twenty bucks for a five-dollar order? If so, they were geniuses.
Everything was cold, inside the car and out, so I kept my gloves on even though it made it more difficult to pull my mug from the cup holder. In the half hour it took to get to Dave and Veta’s neighborhood, I was only able to sip half my coffee before it got tepid and uninspiring.
I had just turned into their Westminster subdivision of cookie cutter houses when a black SUV with darkly tinted windows almost
T-boned me from the left, forcing me into a cul-de-sac on the right. I slammed on the brakes and let loose a stream of profanity, directed its way, that fogged up my windshield. I assumed they simply hadn’t seen me in their rush to get to work or school or the hospital to have their baby. But as I rolled down my window to help defog the car, I was surprised to see that instead of leaving the subdivision, the SUV turned and went deeper into the development.
I used a sleeve to clear the windshield the rest of the way and rolled my window up. I pulled up a mental map of Dave and Veta’s neighborhood but couldn’t picture another way out. Like most large subdivisions, there probably was one, but why wouldn’t the SUV take the closest exit, especially when they were obviously in a hurry?
Oh well, what did I care, as long as they didn’t hit me.
I hoped I remembered the series of quick turns required to find the Burrs’ address. The streets were all short because there was an elementary school in the center of the development. I didn’t know why that mattered, but it did, and I had to get to the other side. I’d forgotten about the school and was glad it was after nine so the streets weren’t packed with carpoolers. Alone at a four-way stop, I began to cross the intersection when a black SUV—was it the same one that had almost hit me?—slowed, then rolled past. I tried to see who was driving but the tint was too dark. Hadn’t Lance told me one time that it was illegal to have such a dark tint?
Again, what did I care? That is, until they pulled a U-turn behind me.
My eyes kept darting from my mirror to the road in front of me. Was it the same car? Were they following me?
The road curved past a small pocket park and I turned right on the street just past it. The SUV
slowed but kept traveling straight. I unclenched my grip on the steering wheel and made a quick right onto Dave and Veta’s street. I passed their house and parked at the curb four houses down. I sat there for a bit, sipping my gross tepid coffee to settle my nerves and make sure the SUV didn’t come back.
I called Lance. “The weirdest thing just happened.”
“You didn’t fart in public?”
“Ha. And no.” I explained what had happened with the SUV. “Isn’t that weird?”
“That you saw two of the most popular cars in the most popular color in Colorado?”
“Is that true or are you just making stuff up?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out, Space Case.”
“Lance.” I tried to use my mother’s voice. “I’m serious.”
“It was your imagination. Why would a car that almost hit you also try and follow you? You’re jumpy lately. Remember those footprints under your window? Routine maintenance check of the gutters.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m a cop with a phone. It ain’t rocket surgery.”
“You called them? Because you were worried about me? Even when you’d told me not to worry? That’s sweet.”
“Shaddup. Why are you at Dave and Veta’s?”
“Social call.”
“You sure? It’s not part of your investigation?”
I was fairly certain he knew I was lying, but I said, “I told you. It’s a social call.” What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
“Riiight.” He paused. “Be careful, Space Case.” Another pause. “Call me later.”
“Only if you promise to tell everyone how very much you love me,” I said with a smile.
“Bye.”
I dropped the phone into my bag, but my smile disappeared. Why would maintenance have been sidling along the wall of my apartment to check the gutters on the third floor? Why wouldn’t they have used the grassy area between the buildings? And didn’t they have an easier way to access the roof? But I had to believe Lance asked the right questions. I was a bit chagrined I hadn’t thought to call the management office myself.
At least it made me more confident in my decision not to tell Lance everything that was going on. If I did, he would start looking into it, and he’d told me he wasn’t supposed to be involved.
