The Broken Spine

by Dorothy St. James

  She had. Number One was twenty years older than she was. In some towns, their marriage might have caused a scandal. Here in Cypress, where jobs were scarce and nearly everyone was poor, most folks congratulated Tori for hitching her wagon to such a fancy horse to ride out of town on.

  “Do you think Luke had a crush on you?” Flossie asked. “That boy has been watching you ever since Charlie stepped foot in Perks.” She sniffed the coffee before setting it aside. “Still not selling Coke?”

  “What? My coffee isn’t good enough for you? Fine.” Tori rolled her eyes. “I’ll put some soda in the fridge just for you.”

  “Good.” Flossie said. “Now, about Luke.”

  “It’s not me that boy has a crush on.” Tori nodded over toward Luke. “He’s watching Charlie.”

  Tori had a point. Cypress’s newcomer was sipping the coffee Tori had gotten him while chatting happily with Police Chief Fisher. Luke had now moved as far away from the pair as the coffee shop would allow. But he kept looking over at Charlie.

  “How would the two of them even know each other?” Flossie asked. “Luke hasn’t lived here for decades. And Charlie just moved here—”

  “From Las Vegas,” I finished for her. “Tori, didn’t you tell me that Charlie said he was from Las Vegas?”

  “Yeah. He was some kind of security expert or something sexy like that. Whenever I ask him about it, he changes the subject back to his love of books. It’s the only thing I don’t like about him. I mean, nothing is sexier than a bodyguard. Do you think he protected some big-name star?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” I said. “But that’s not the point. Listen, Charlie moved here from Las Vegas and so did Luke. Mayor Goodvale was talking about it. Well, he didn’t say Las Vegas, but he did say Nevada.” My words came faster as pieces started to fall into place. “Charlie told us that he heard about Cypress and its affordable real estate. That’s why he picked our town to open his bookstore. Who in Nevada would even know Cypress existed? One person: Luke Goodvale.”

  “I don’t get it.” Tori crossed her arms over her chest. She no longer looked happy. “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t know exactly.” I wished I did, but I didn’t. “There is something about the connection between Charlie and Luke, something we need to pay attention to.”

  “I think I know what you’re getting at.” Flossie tapped her chin. “We’ve been thinking that our darling Charlie has no connection to Cypress and so we’ve kept him off our suspect list. But what if—?”

  “What if nothing!” Tori exploded. “I’m not going to let you weave some badly plotted fiction regarding my boo, Flossie. You’re just jealous that I’m young and pretty and that I’m able to attract a man like him.” She grabbed her coffee with such force, the hot liquid sloshed over the rim. With an angry huff, she stalked off toward Charlie.

  “She didn’t mean that,” I said. “Ever since her last divorce, she’s been even more sensitive about having someone question her choices when it comes to men.”

  “That’s because her choices are always all wrong for her. Except . . .” Flossie tapped her chin again. “I like Charlie. I hate to think he might be guilty of committing a crime. And Tori is wrong. If I were to come up with a plot for what’s happening here in Cypress, it would be tight and clever and the best dang plot any of y’all would have ever seen, because that’s the kind of writer I am.”

  “I do wish you’d let me read one of your books,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. You’ve read them,” Flossie said, preening. “Everyone has. But that doesn’t do a blasted thing to help solve our problem with Luke and Charlie or our problem with Delanie and Anne. Speaking of which, there’s Delanie now.”

  The woman I had long considered the library’s best friend stood just inside the doorway of Perks. Her hands were clasped in front of her chest. She licked her ruby red lips as she scanned the room. When she spotted us, her mouth curled into a warm smile. She waved.

  I waved back but didn’t have enough emotional energy to even fake a smile.

  Delanie had arrived exactly on time. And the three of us hadn’t even gotten around to discussing how we planned to confront her. We needed to tread carefully around Delanie. If we upset her, she could easily retaliate by tattling to Mrs. Farnsworth about how I’d broken all the rules and opened a secret bookroom right under the rule-loving woman’s nose.

  That would be a disaster.

  But we were out of time. Delanie was here. And we didn’t have a plan.

  “Don’t worry, honey.” Flossie patted my hand. “We’ve got this.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Delanie refused my offer to buy her a coffee. “If I drank caffeine at this time of night, I could forget about sleeping for the next week. As it is, I’ve been having trouble enough with sleeping lately.”

  “You have?” Flossie steepled her slender fingers in front of her lips. “And why is that?”

  The question seemed to startle Delanie. Her hands trembled as she retrieved a lacy handkerchief from inside her bag. She didn’t do anything with the little scrap of cloth other than let her nervous fingers play with it. “There’s been too much drama in this town. Cypress was founded as a gentle farming community. Then they built the lake. Still, everyone expected to be able to live a quiet life, a life only occasionally interrupted by tourists. And now”—she waved the frilly handkerchief in the air—“it feels like soon I won’t even recognize this place. The library’s renovation is only the first step. If Marvin can actually get a few tech industries to open shop in our town, we will find ourselves losing everything that makes Cypress special.”

  Flossie looked at me and nodded encouragingly.

  “We agree.” I reached across the table and rested my hand over her fidgeting fingers. “We’re worried about preserving the town’s character as much as anyone. You know that. That’s why I did what I did for the library.”

  “I know. I know.” She shook her head in dismay. “We fought side by side trying to change Duggar’s mind about stripping the library of its books. You told him and told him how valuable those books were to the town. I told him too.”

  I waited a beat before revealing the real reason we wanted to talk to Delanie. “I know that Anne Lowery is your niece. I overheard her talking on the phone with you this afternoon. I heard her say how you’d promised to help her.”

  Delanie blinked. That was her only reaction. Actually, she blinked twice. And then she sat back and smiled. “Why wouldn’t I agree to help her? She’s my favorite. Don’t tell anyone you heard me say this, but the other children my brother spawned are brainless twits. You know I have no children of my own. It’s a decision I don’t regret, but sometimes I wish Anne were mine. And I do love having her living nearby instead of all the way across the country. So yes, I made sure she met with Duggar when he traveled to Silicon Valley to promote our town. I made sure she transitioned smoothly into her new position. And I’ve been working my butt off helping her get the recognition for the hard work she’s been doing, not that I’ve been successful. The good-old-boy club is as strong as ever in this blasted place.”

  “You helped her?” I squeaked. “She’s destroying the library, and you’ve been helping her?”

  “No, dear. She’s been doing her job. She’s bringing new technologies to the library, which isn’t a bad thing.” She shook out her frilly handkerchief and then spread it neatly on the table. “It was Duggar who insisted the books had to go. It was Duggar who wouldn’t let go of his vision of a modern bookless library, despite how many times we told him what a mistake he was making. Anne had nothing to do with those decisions.”

  “Are you telling us that you were honestly trying to help both Tru and Anne?” Flossie asked.

  Delanie nodded. She finger-pressed away an imaginary crease in her handkerchief. Her eyes were wide and innocent. “Why would I not? I’ve de
dicated my life to the library. Well, perhaps not my entire life, but the past couple of years have been all about promoting the library, keeping it relevant, and filling it with as many current books as possible. I’m still shocked that Duggar insisted we get rid of the printed books.”

  “Anne loves the idea of a bookless library as much as Duggar had,” I pointed out.

  “Of course she does. She’s young and fond of those electronic toys she plays with. But she’s not the one we’re talking about. It’s Duggar who was the ultimate decision maker when it came to the library’s future. We told him and told him that the books were worth more than money and certainly worth much more than an electronic file on a screen. Not that the stubborn fool needed educating. He’s been collecting rare books for decades now. He knew better than the rest of us how many of those books were worth something.”

  “Wait. What?” I said.

  “That hypocrite,” Flossie cried at the same time.

  Delanie nodded. “The collecting bug bit him when he was in high school. I remember he’d bought an old Hawthorne book at a garage sale. The local newspaper wrote a story about it. The book he’d found was a children’s book Hawthorne had penned. He said he’d purchased it for a grand sum of fifty cents. Turned out the book was worth more than a thousand dollars. That’s why the newspaper was interested. There was a picture of him holding the old book. He had it wrapped in linen and was holding it gingerly as if the tome were made of spun glass instead of paper. He refused to sell it. To him the book was priceless. Over the years, he’d occasionally show me a new book he’d acquired. He’d tell me stories about how hard (and dirty) he sometimes had to fight to win an especially rare book. The book-collecting business, apparently, is particularly cutthroat.”

  “Are you sure you’re talking about Duggar Hargrove?” Flossie demanded. “The town manager? The man who carried a tablet around with him everywhere just in case he wanted to jot down a note to himself because he refused to waste his time with a piece of scrap paper?”

  “He may have loved those old books of his, but he also believed investing in technology was the only way forward for our town,” Delanie said. She picked up her lacy handkerchief and pressed it to her lips for a moment. “Gracious, we all heard him pontificate on that topic enough times to have memorized that silly speech of his.”

  “Duggar collected rare books?” I had a hard time believing it. If the town manager had loved old books, why would he tear apart the library? Why would he send books that were actually worth money to a landfill? Why would he ignore everyone telling him that those books were worth more than money to our residents?

  Delanie clicked her tongue. “I suppose Duggar was so blinded by his vision for building the town of the future that he couldn’t see past it. If that’s all you wanted to talk to me about, I’ll say goodnight. I have an early appointment in the morning and a woman my age can use all the beauty sleep she can get. Surely you understand that, Flossie.”

  “I don’t understand anything you’re saying,” Flossie said tartly.

  I didn’t understand it either. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my head around the idea that Duggar collected old books. How could a fellow bibliophile betray an entire town like that? What could turn a bibliophile into a biblioclast—a destroyer of books? Didn’t he care that he was robbing future generations of the joy of opening up a favorite book and surrounding themselves with the sweet scent of leather and paper?

  “I didn’t miss any of the juicy stuff, did I?” Tori asked. She walked up just as Delanie rose from her chair.

  Anne’s aunt stuffed her lacy handkerchief back into her purse. “Excuse me. I was just leaving.”

  “Not because of me, I hope.” Tori sounded a little too happy.

  “Excuse me? Have I done something to upset you?” Delanie asked.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Tori said with a wide, somewhat malicious, smile.

  “That nothing sounds like a heaping amount of somethings,” Flossie said. “Y’all better sit and explain why there’s all this bad blood between the two of you.”

  “Perhaps another time. I do have to get going.” Delanie tried again to slide past Tori.

  “Please,” I said. “We need to all be working together if we’re going to have any hope of figuring out what’s going on with this town.”

  “You mean with the changes to the library?” Delanie asked.

  “No, Tru means with Duggar’s death and the attack on Luke.” Tori’s giddy tone sharpened. “She means how you pretended to be her friend while stabbing her in the back.”

  “Stabbing Tru? Child, you must be madder than everyone thinks, which is really saying something. I already explained to Tru that I have always been a supporter of the library.”

  “Really? You tell us that, and yet I personally heard you brag to Mayor Goodvale how Anne was going to whip our shabby library into shape. You told him how she was the best thing that had ever happened to the library. You told him that you wholeheartedly supported what Duggar was trying to do with the library, since everyone working there was as moldy as the books on the shelves.”

  “You told the mayor that?” I asked Delanie. That hurt.

  “Delanie tells everyone what she thinks they want to hear, don’t you?” Tori said to her.

  Delanie opened and closed her mouth several times before finally saying, “I wanted to help Anne. Things can be difficult when moving into a town as set in its ways as ours is. That’s not a crime.”

  “No. But dripping poison in your niece’s ear and convincing her to kill Duggar in order to smooth the way for her might be a crime. Tell her, Tru. Tell her how you believe Anne is responsible not only for Duggar’s death but also for sending Luke to the hospital.”

  Delanie turned and gaped at me.

  “I—” My entire face felt as if it had caught fire.

  “Anne would never hurt anyone,” Delanie declared. She lowered her voice. “I thought y’all were my friends.”

  “I thought you were my friend,” I countered. “Until this evening, I didn’t know Anne was related to you. I didn’t know you were supporting her. She’s never mentioned you. And it’s not like she’s been staying silent. She’s been telling the police every chance she gets that I’m the one who killed Duggar. Did you know that?”

  Delanie looked away from me. “She might have expressed concerns about—”

  “That niece of yours has been on a one-woman campaign against our Tru,” Flossie said. “It makes one wonder why she’s so set on making sure the authorities think Tru looks guilty. The more Tru looks into the matter, the more she’s realizes that out of everyone who was in the library at the time of the murder, it’s Anne who has the biggest motive.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. The more I thought about the murder, the more Tori’s motive seemed to outshine everyone else’s. Duggar’s death had actually stopped the town from closing down her coffee shop. Plus, we hadn’t ever considered Charlie. Did he have a motive for wanting Duggar out of the way? Had he also benefited from the town manager’s death?

  “Isn’t that why you were so upset when you found Luke all beat up and unconscious, in the library today?” Tori demanded. “You were worried your precious niece had taken her anger at being overlooked out on the town’s newest golden boy, the mayor’s son.”

  “I . . . I . . . I would never think . . .” Delanie’s face blazed red.

  “But you did,” Tori insisted. “You hate that you did. That’s why you called her at the library, isn’t it? You needed to hear her deny that she hurt Luke. Do you believe her? She sounded angry, didn’t she? So perhaps, just perhaps that worried voice in your head is now wondering whether your sweet Anne is ambitious enough to have also killed Duggar. We all know how he had been planning all along to take credit for Anne’s work.”

  It
was my turn to gape at my friends. From the first moment I’d mentioned Anne and my theory that she was a murderess, they’d teased me. To see them standing up for me and my suspicions made me feel all warm and gushy inside.

  “I have to admit that finding Luke hurt like that did send me into a panic,” Delanie said quietly. She pulled the frilly handkerchief from her purse again. “But Anne has sworn to me that she didn’t have anything to do with the attack. And I believe her.” She twisted the handkerchief into a knot between her trembling hands before crying, “I have to.”

  After a few minutes, Delanie excused herself and quietly left the café. On the other side of the room, Charlie and Luke were standing right next to each other. Charlie had a frothy cappuccino cupped in his hands, while Luke sipped an iced coffee through a straw. While they weren’t looking at each other, both men were taking turns speaking.

  That seemed . . . suspicious.

  Tori would howl when I asked her, but I needed her to find out what Charlie and Luke were talking about while pretending they weren’t talking to each other. I had a sinking feeling that I was going to have to tell both Jace and Fisher how Charlie was in the library the day Duggar died. Which meant I’d have to tell them why I’d let a near-stranger into the library that morning. Which also meant I’d have to tell them about the unauthorized library tucked away in the basement.

  I sank back into my chair and took a long sip of my rich Colombian coffee. Delanie hadn’t said anything to prove Anne’s innocence. So maybe I didn’t have to go running off to the police yet. After all, believing Anne guilty of murder made my life so much simpler.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Tori swatted my arm. “Oh! Oh! Don’t look now. Your nemesis just walked in.”

  “My nemesis?” Despite her warning, I turned and looked. Who wouldn’t have?

  Detective Jace Bailey stood a few feet inside the entrance of Perks, his hands on his hips, his gaze scanning the room as if searching for someone. He nodded in my direction before continuing his visual exploration.