"Thank you, Peter. Are you sure you want me in here digging around through her books?"
"I don't know. I guess. I'm just going to box them up, anyway. I don't plan on writing any fiction, so this is just one more job I have to do in cleaning up the house to put it on the market."
"Alright, then. Why don't you go and have some of that casserole and maybe take a shower and relax," I hinted, knowing I wouldn't get any good digging done as long as I had Peter here.
"Great," he said with a blank stare. I nudged him, and he walked back out of the room toward the stairs.
Once he left I headed to the bookshelf and took out a book titled Get Your Novel Together in 30 Days. Yeah, right. That would be what I took out of here when he came back. I noticed most of the writing books looked new, like their covers had never been cracked. This would be quite a find for a new novelist. I hoped others would come and visit, or maybe they could use this collection at the public library.
I sat down at her desk. It was white with gold trim and delicate curving legs, and not very much storage. Below it she had a white fluffy rug and a gold trashcan. I opened the only drawer in the desk to find neatly aligned stamps, stationery and a very expensive Mont Blanc pen. Not much there. I lifted the keyboard on her desk and found a folded note. It was from Martha Hoffman.
I must speak to you. We can get away for a moment while the alien guy is talking. I talked to him on the phone, and it took me forever to get off. He'll hog the time for as long as we need. –Martha
I remembered their little disappearing act while the rest of us suffered through slide after slide from Oscar Larry. Whatever they spoke of, Martha was not too happy when they returned. Then when Vanessa was murdered, Martha acted like it was her own daughter on the floor. What was that all about?
Leaning up against the bookcase was a white filing cabinet with lacy wood inlays. I wasn't even sure where you would find a thing like that. I opened the drawers to find a rainbow of multicolored file folders where Vanessa kept track of her writing details. She had files for book sales, schedules, and there were even some rough drafts of works in progress. As I pulled the drawer out further, I spotted a familiar pink-and-white striped box. So, old Vanessa was a closet cupcake eater. The box was empty except for the vestiges of some coconut and chocolate frosting. I opened the lower file drawer and found three more boxes hidden inside. Vanessa had a major thing for these cupcakes. Oh boy, I couldn't wait to tell Pattie that Vanessa wasn't buying all those cupcakes for her husband. How did she get away with eating cupcakes and staying so fit?
I went back to her bookcase. As I ran my finger along the books I found three books by Destiny Wood. Was Vanessa thinking about writing romances, or did she just like a good bodice-ripper now and again? Maybe she was curling up on that couch with a romance in one hand and a cupcake in the other. When it came right down to it, she was more like the rest of us than she let on.
I noticed there weren't any pictures of her parents in the room. Had she been ashamed of the two people I saw at the funeral? Had she ever visited them? Had she let them visit her?
At the lowest shelf of the bookcase was a brown wooden box turned sideways to resemble a book. I pulled it out of the shelf, and a stack of letters fell to the floor. I could hear the microwave beeping downstairs and figured Peter was heating up my casserole. I picked up the scattered letters. Unfolding one, I read:
My darling, I cannot wait for another opportunity to be with you. Your lips are like satin ...
Okay, I got the idea what kinds of letters these were. At the bottom of the letter was the name Damien with the D finished in a beautiful flourish. She didn't seem to need too much time with Edith's books. She had her own personal bodice-ripper. Hearing a dish clank below, I stuffed the letters back in the box and replaced it on the shelf. Maybe I should be kind and take the letters away so as not hurt Peter. Then again, it really wasn't any of my business whether or not he read those letters. I sighed as I debated what to do; he just seemed so fragile at this moment.
Peter would be up those stairs shortly, so I looked around the room one last time. She had some magazines scattered on a table by her bright green couch. Most of them seemed to be about nutrition, which made sense when you thought about how in shape she was. Maybe she was reading about ways to exercise off excess cupcake calories. "Lose 10 pounds in 10 days!" "You Are What You Eat!" "What Junk Food Retailers Don't Tell You!"
"Did you want some of her magazines, too?" I jumped a mile as Peter stood in the door with a bowl and spoon. He took a bite. "Delicious."
"No, thank you," I said. I reached over for the book I had picked out earlier. "But this book looks great. Very helpful." I started for the door. "Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity, Peter."
"No problem. Oh here, why don't you take this nutrition stuff she started collecting. There's a couple of cookbooks in here and a bunch of other stuff." He handed me a pile from the corner of various books about cooking. Maybe there was something in there I could use for my column. "Hey, tell Rocky I'll be in tomorrow to clean out my desk," he continued. "I hear he's got some new guy in covering sports. It's some high school senior working for peanuts."
"Well, there's not a lot of guys around here like you, Peter. You were a real asset to our paper. I'm sure Rocky hates to see you go."
"Yeah, but it just doesn't feel right to stick around here anymore. I have a friend who's in ... another town." He looked down into his casserole. "I guess you heard our fight that day, so I can't really hide it anymore. You know I wasn't faithful to my wife. It was so exciting at the time, but now that she's dead, it just feels ... flat. What kind of a schmuck am I cheating on somebody who then gets brutally murdered?"
"So are you going to her?"
"I guess so, if she'll have me. I'm not too sure if she wants me now that I'm not attached, and oh, I was just questioned in the untimely death of my wife."
I squeezed his arm and started descending the white steps toward the front door. "Listen, I'm no expert here, but I did lose my husband suddenly and not under very good circumstances. Take a little time to find yourself first. I waited for years for my husband, and during that time I guess I slowly became who I am today. Heck, I'm still just starting to date after all of that. It's a tough adjustment to make, Peter. Whether or not your marriage was perfect, it being over is ... different." I juggled the books and magazines to open the front door, ready to make my exit.
"Thanks, Betsy." He put his bowl down and hugged me again, this time a long, long hug. I was afraid my face would be blue from holding my breath that long. "No problem, Peter," I answered.
As I felt Peter let go of me, a blue Toyota pulled into the driveway. Edith Martin, a.k.a Destiny Wood, climbed out of the driver's side.
"Well, hello, Edith. Have you come to look at Vanessa's books?" I said as Peter and I moved away from each other.
She walked toward us, her sandals making tapping sounds as each foot hit the sidewalk. "Hello, yourself," her reply was crisp. Nothing like the sweltering love scene I'd heard her read at the library. I guess you couldn't be in that mood all the time, even if you do write romance. She stamped up the walk and pushed by me without a word and started up the stairs before even asking where Vanessa's study was. Had she been here before? Maybe this was her second visit to come look at books. For a woman who had so many novels penned, I was surprised she wanted some other writer's books.
"Edith, don't be that way," Peter said.
Suddenly I understood. She had been here before, but not to look through Vanessa's library. She was the other woman. Why hadn't I put it all together before? Could it have been the fact that Edith Martin did not look like anyone who would have an affair with a man who looked like Peter Markham? The two of them were so very different from one another. Peter was a handsome young man in his early thirties and looked like he had come straight out of a Hollywood casting call. Edith was Edith. She was so much older, probably weighed around 115 pounds and just didn't exu
de anything that seemed too seductive. She was the kind of woman I would invite to my book club, not set up with a young single male friend.
Peter's face flushed, realizing what I had just figured out. "Betsy ... it's complicated."
I backed up, nearly falling off the stoop. "I think I just realized that. It's also none of my business, Peter. Thanks for letting me stop by."
As he closed his front door, I pulled out my phone. Pattie would just die to hear this one. I rang up the bakery, and she finally answered on the fifth ring.
"Pattie, I think I know who Peter Markham's other woman is."
I heard a cash register ring in the background. "Thank you," Pattie said away from the phone, then she spoke directly into the phone. "Who?"
"Try Edith Martin."
"What? You're kidding me, right?"
"I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't just seen the two of them together."
"Where?"
"I was just at Peter's house, digging through Vanessa's study to try and find something to take the heat off of me. And you'll never guess what I found stuffed in the back of her bookcases?"
"What?
"Empty boxes of your cupcakes. There had to be four or five of them. And on top of all that she actually had magazines out about nutrition and the dangers of junk food."
Pattie laughed. "You never know who the closet cupcake eaters are, do you?"
"It was when Peter was giving me a hug at the door that Edith drove up and got really huffy."
"Like she thought ..."
"Like she thought Peter and I had just ... well she's the one with the vivid imagination in that area."
"Oh my gosh, Betsy. You're lucky you got out alive. Did you ever stop to think it might have been Edith who killed Vanessa? Now we know she certainly had a motive."
I heard the cash register jingle again and Pattie's thank-yous.
"I didn't think of that, but I can't believe it. Edith was upset with me today, but generally she's been pretty nice to me. Not like Martha Hoffman."
"Oh, you can never tell about people, Betsy. Even the nice ones."
After we hung up, I thought about Pattie's statement. Had Edith killed Vanessa out of jealousy? If she had, why would she not work a little harder to cover up her involvement with Peter? No wonder he showed up on the night she read her love scene at author night. Was he there to hear her fiction or to relive old memories?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I needed to know what it was Martha and Vanessa had been discussing during the meeting, so I headed over to talk to the one person in this town who truly hated me. I checked the time, and Zach was at Little League with my dad for another hour. I could talk to Martha until she tried to drop-kick me out of the public library. Knowing this would probably require all my stamina, I pulled through our local coffee house, Earl's Java, and picked up a caramel macchiato.
"Hey Betsy, wanted to let you know, I loved your recipe for coffee creamers," Earl, the proprietor, said. "You're drinking one now."
"That's great, Earl. Did you make the mocha flavor, too?"
"Yes, but I added just a touch of cinnamon to mine."
"Yum. Well, this ought to get me through," I said. "Thanks, Earl."
"No problem, Betsy, and tell Judd his officers can drive through for a free java anytime."
"I will. Thanks again." I pulled out of the drive-through and took a swig of my coffee, feeling it rush through my bloodstream and stimulate dulling nerve endings. I pulled into the library parking lot and walked in under the shade of the large trees that surrounded the building. I walked through the entrance and into the main library.
Martha was behind the circulation desk, her high-backed stool squeaking as she entered data into her desktop computer. She had her glasses down on her nose as she squinted at the letters on the screen. She had on a crisp white blouse with a bow tied at the collar. She did not look up when I stood at the desk in front of her.
"No beverages inside the library. Take it out to the tiled entrance. You can pick it up after you check out your books."
"Oh," I said, taking one final gulp of the coffee and setting it down just outside the door on a table in the tiled area. When the carpet in the library was new I remember them telling the kids to leave their muddy boots in this location during heavy rains.
I walked back to the desk and stood while Martha continued to type into her computer. Realizing I wasn't going anywhere, she finally looked up in exasperation. "Can I help ..." Upon realizing she was facing me, the killer of her dearest friend, her professional smile fell flat. "What do you want?" Ah, the real Martha.
"I want to ask you about this." I pulled out the folded note from Vanessa's office.
"Where did you get that? It's personal property."
"Well, I was invited to choose writing books from Vanessa's collection, and I found this little note folded inside of a book I took home," I lied.
"Fine." She reached across the desk to grab for it, but I was too quick and pulled it out of her grasp. She snorted. "I suggest you go home and do whatever it is you do. That issue is none of your business."
"Yeah, well as long as you are shouting out to anyone who will listen that I'm a murderer, it becomes my business. What was so important that you had to talk to Vanessa?"
"Nothing. Vanessa and I were very close. I don't expect you to understand. When you killed her, it's like you killed a part of me."
"First of all, I didn't kill her. Second, where do you get off talking about this special friendship you had? She just wanted to get that tacky book of hers into your library."
"Tacky book? That book was a masterpiece. I can show you the reviews."
"You have the reviews? Really?"
"Yes, I do. A book like that doesn't come along every day, and a local author that talented is hard to find. She knew her craft."
"I read her column in the paper. I wasn't all that impressed by her use of the word 'dashing' three times in one article."
"Poor editing."
"Give it up. She wasn't that good."
"So why did her book get picked up by a major publisher?"
"Because she looked so good on the back cover?" I said. How did she get a book accepted by a major publisher? Why was her book so good and her column so bad? I looked back at Martha, who seemed to be ready to dedicate an entire room of the library to her. Then it hit me. Martha wasn't protecting the memory of her friend, she was protecting her book. A book that Vanessa could have never written. If she didn't, who did?
"Miss Hoffman, you wrote the book, didn't you?" I said. For once, Martha Hoffman didn't jump back at me. She didn't say anything but toyed with a pad of yellow sticky notes on the desk for a moment. Finally, her eyes met mine.
"She paid me. Well, at first she paid me. She just thought it would look good if she was a columnist and a novelist. She tried writing a book on her own, but you were right. She wasn't very good at writing ... anything. Her emails were atrocious. So when she offered me money to write for her and then a percentage of the book sales, I agreed. I had always wanted to write a book, any kind of book. I could be a fashionista for money. I wrote it in four months, and then Vanessa started submitting it with her picture and her column on her writing resume. She got an agent and a book deal in less time than it took me to write the book. She was so beautiful – the publisher was thrilled to be able to put her on the back of their books." She picked up a newspaper that was folded on the circulation desk. "I mean look at this, even the vampire guy has a book signing at Petal's Books on Friday. Are his books any good? Who cares, what a great book jacket picture he takes!"
"So why did you need to talk to her at the meeting that night?"
Overdue for Murder (Pecan Bayou) Page 9
