Verse and Vengeance

by Amanda Flower

  I opened the gate in the white picket fence that wound around the yard. Emerson jumped from my arms when I stepped on the porch and ran through the open door and into the shop. He ran straight to the base of the stairs that went around the birch tree. The little tuxie licked his right paw like he didn’t have a care in the world and he’d been there all day.

  Richard Bunting was in the middle of the room sitting on the floor, surrounded by books. The English professor wore brown dress pants and a white button-down shirt. His glasses were perched precariously on the tip of his nose, and his goatee was perfectly groomed. His only concession to the fact that it was summer vacation and he wasn’t teaching was the fact that he wasn’t wearing a tie. Even so, finding him on the floor with all those books was unexpected.

  I blinked at him. “Richard, are you okay?”

  He wiped his brow. “I think so. It’s just that everywhere I look, I see a new book I want or need. You have an amazingly versatile collection. Some of the volumes about British literature are out of print. How is it that you are able to have them, and how are you able to fit them all in this shop? It’s not a huge space. Some of these books I have been looking for all my life.”

  I glanced at the tree. The shop’s motto is “Where the perfect book picks you.” That couldn’t be any more true. The shop knows exactly which books someone needs or wants to read and by magic puts them in the person’s path while they’re in Charming Books. Sometimes books fly across the room when customers aren’t looking, and sometimes they just appear on a shelf right out of thin air. The shop’s essence was working overtime with Richard, and if it had any say in it, the poor man would spend the entirety of his salary in the shop.

  I picked up one of the arcane volumes. “You don’t have to buy all these books. As much as I would love it if you did, I know you can’t afford it. All these together would cost more than you will earn here all summer.”

  “What good is money if you can’t buy books?” he asked, lovingly brushing his hand over the cover of a leather-bound tome. “Besides, some of these I think Renee would like too.” His face reddened. “In my experience books make the very best gifts.”

  I did my best to hide a smile but don’t think I did the best job. Renee Reed was the outspoken librarian at Springside Community College, and Richard was more than a little in love with her. The hardest part about it was everyone knew it. I think even Renee suspected, but Richard, as of yet, hadn’t gotten up the nerve to ask her on a date. Part of me wanted to shake him to wake him up. Women, at least most women I knew, didn’t want someone to pine for them from afar. They wanted to know they were desired; they wanted to know they were loved.

  “I’m sure she would,” I said diplomatically. “It’s fair to say that Renee loves books just as much as we all do in the Red Inkers.”

  He nodded, stood, and blinked, as if he saw the massive circle of books around himself for the very first time. “My goodness, I can’t possibly take all these home.”

  I smiled. “Why don’t you narrow it down to two or three? I’m certain the others will be here when you need them. Maybe it will be best to buy them or read them in spurts.”

  He smoothed his goatee. “That’s probably wise. I’ll take the three I picked out for Renee. This small token will make the long summer days at the library go much more quickly.”

  “I’m sure they will.” I didn’t even bother to hide my smile this time.

  Maybe it was time to give Richard more than a little hint as to what he should do next when it came to Renee. “If you leave now, you can make it to the library before it closes. It’s only open until two on Saturdays in the summer. I bet Renee would like to go out for a coffee to talk over those books, or maybe a stroll around campus?”

  He wrung his hands. “No, now isn’t a good time. She’ll be wanting to return home. I think it will be best if I just talk to her about it at the Red Inkers meeting tomorrow night. You do remember that we have a Red Inkers meeting.”

  “Sadie reminded me,” I said. “But I still think you should take those books to Renee this afternoon. Maybe you could talk about them at the meeting?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want to be a bother to her.”

  “It’s not a bother. You’re her friend. It is not strange for friends to hang out outside of a larger group.”

  “Friend?” He said the word like it was somehow foreign to him. “Renee is my colleague. I wouldn’t presume anything more than that.” He bent and picked up one of the books.

  I rolled my eyes. It seemed I wouldn’t be able to convince Richard to make the first move when it came to these two. Maybe I should start working on Renee.

  He gathered up the three books he’d selected. “I’ll take these and put the others away.” He frowned. “Except I can’t quite understand your shelving system. They seem to be all over the store. I found books on the same topic in four different places. One of my literature books was in the area labeled travel.”

  I forced a laugh. “You know Grandma Daisy. She has her own way of doing things, including shelving books. She must have put that book in travel because of armchair traveling.”

  “Oh,” he said dubiously. “That seems like an odd way to shelve books, even for your grandmother.”

  I shrugged and helped him stack the remaining books on the sales counter. “Anything else happen while I was out? Did you have many customers?”

  “Several came in near the middle of the race. Sales were good. I was amazed how everyone could find what they needed with very little help from me.”

  The shop’s essence had been at work again. I knew it. “I’m glad to hear that. I think I will—”

  Richard snapped his fingers. “I almost forgot something.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “There was a man here very early this morning looking for you.” He added the last book to the stack on the counter.

  “Who was it? Did he give a name?”

  He shook his head. “No, but he said you knew each other.”

  I froze as I picked up a book. “Did he have a guitar and a ponytail?”

  He shook his head. “No ponytail, but he did have a guitar case with him. I assume there was a guitar with it, but I never saw it.”

  I frowned. When I’d seen Fenimore earlier, he’d definitely still had his guitar with him. Then I remembered that Private Investigator Redding also carried a guitar case. He used it as his briefcase. He said it put people at ease. He had never opened the case in my presence, so I didn’t exactly know what was in it. I bit the inside of my lip. If the guitar case was his briefcase of sorts, I wondered if he had information about me and Charming Books inside it. I very much wanted to know what was in that guitar case.

  “Did the man have a light-blond beard and glasses?”

  He nodded. “Yes, he did. You do recognize him, then?” He nodded approvingly. “He said you would.”

  My stomach ached. “When did he stop by?”

  “It was right after I opened the shop for the day. I opened it at nine sharp like you asked. An hour earlier than usual so we could take advantage of the early spectators. That was an excellent idea.”

  “What was he wearing?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “The man with the guitar case.”

  Richard’s brow went up when I asked the question. “I don’t remember really. Normal clothes. Pants and a shirt. I don’t pay much attention to fashion. I’m not like Sadie in that regard.”

  “So he wasn’t wearing clothes for the bike race.”

  “I should say not. He was wearing just everyday clothes. Perhaps a button-down shirt, but not a racing outfit. I know that much. He did ask if people could the join the race that was starting just about then. I said I didn’t know and he would have to ask Bobby who was in charge of registration.”

  His comment made me think of something else. If Redding had come to Charming Books looking for me and found out I was in the race, then decided to join the
race wearing his street clothes so that he could catch up with me, that still didn’t answer how he had gotten one of Bobby’s bicycles.

  “So it would have been just before the race began,” I mused. “Did he tell you what he wanted?”

  Richard shook his head. “But then, I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to intrude on any business you might have had with the man.”

  “Why do you think it was business related?”

  His face reddened. “Well, I know that you and David Rainwater are”—he searched for the right word—“a close pair, so I knew it must not have been a gentleman caller.”

  Gentleman caller. Sometimes I thought Richard actually believed he lived in the seventeenth-century literature he taught at the college.

  “That was the correct assumption. Did he say he planned to join the race?”

  Richard pressed his lips together like he was thinking hard. “He did mention that he wanted to. He asked where he could find a bike on short notice, and I told him to talk to Bobby about that too.”

  Things were starting to become clear as to how Redding had acquired the bike and joined the race, but I still didn’t know why he’d bothered. If he’d wanted to pester me, he could have just waited outside Charming Books like he had been for days on end. There had to be a big reason why he wanted to join the race so badly. What did he think he was going to see?

  “If he comes back when I’m here, I will take care to question him more thoroughly.”

  I didn’t tell Richard that wouldn’t be necessary because the man he described was dead. He would learn that soon enough.

  “Did he do anything while he was in the shop?”

  He rubbed the bottom of his goatee. “He seemed to have a great interest in the birch tree. He asked me many questions about how old it was and how it was able to grow inside the shop. I told him it had always been a part of the shop as long as I’ve lived in the village and I didn’t know anything more than that. I said that it was just something the people of the village had accepted as part of the Waverlys’ business.”

  I felt cold. “And did he ask anything else?”

  “No, but he told me to tell you something.”

  I grew very still. “What was that?”

  “I can read it to you. He had me write it down.”

  I knew Redding’s message from beyond the grave was something I needed to hear.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Oh,” Richard fussed, rubbing his brow. “Where did I put that scrap of paper with the message on it? I was so distracted when he told me because of all the books I was finding.” He snapped his fingers. “I know. I was using the note as a bookmark inside those books.” He paused. “Or was it another book?”

  I grimaced. There had to have been thirty books on the floor around where Richard had been sitting. One of the books on the counter fell with a thud to the floor.

  I bent down and reached for the book on the floor, and its pages fluttered. A scrap of paper flew out. I grabbed it out of the air before it could fly away. “I think I found your note,” I said to Richard.

  “That’s extraordinary.” Richard removed his glasses and polished the lenses on the hem of his shirt. “Extraordinary. By some bit of dumb luck, the book that fell from the counter was the one with the note in it. What are the odds of that happening?”

  The odds were pretty high if you lived and worked in a magical bookshop like I did. I unfolded the note. ALL TRUTHS WAIT IN ALL THINGS. THEY NEITHER HASTEN THEIR OWN DELIVERY NOR RESIST IT.

  Truths. I glanced at the tree. Was Redding trying to tell me he would get to the bottom of what was going on at Charming Books?

  I recognized it as a quote of poetry. I picked up the book the note had fallen from, flipped it over, and smoothed the cover. It was a paperback edition of Leaves of Grass.

  “Yes,” Richard said. “Now I remember. I thought it was quite strange that he was quoting Whitman, but then again, nineteenth-century American is your specialty. I thought perhaps he was also an American literature scholar. When I asked him this, he seemed not to have any interest in talking about it.” He frowned. “I have found that most scholars love nothing more than to speak about their field of study. He was quite an odd fellow.”

  “Did he buy a book?” I asked.

  “Now that you mention it, he did. He bought a copy of Leaves of Grass. I told him it was a very wise selection and challenging too. Scholars have been debating Whitman for over a hundred years. I agree with many that he was the father of strictly American poetry, but I, of course, am more partial to the British greats, such as Keats. The way he was able to write beautiful poems and break all the rules including iambic pentameter is a mystery to me. Whitman’s free-verse style, although very American, doesn’t soothe my need for order in the same way.”

  “Whitman wasn’t trying to cause order,” I said, thinking of the poet and wondering why Redding had chosen this line from his work.

  I knew Walt Whitman just as I knew all of my dead nineteenth-century American authors. He was a contemporary of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom I had spent the better part of my adult life studying. Because of that, I knew Whitman too. I knew all the writers who moved in and out of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s life. Whitman was one of the more unique of the bunch. He wasn’t a cultured man of substance. He’d left school when he was ten to work to help his family. Many of his siblings in the large family were troubled. He did many jobs over his life, but focus was hard on the day-to-day for him. He read that Emerson called for the first great American poet with a truly American voice. Whitman, who had no doubt in his own potential for greatness, thought he was that poet.

  Emerson did too, to some extent, and complimented Whitman’s first edition of Leaves of Grass that came out in 1855. Perhaps it was praise that Emerson later regretted, as Whitman used Emerson’s letter as fuel to continue his career. He even published the complimentary letter in the newspapers of the time without Emerson’s permission with the hope of increasing sales. In many ways, Whitman was one of the first self-promoting authors and saw his career as a business, which at the time was a new perspective on the art of writing.

  Richard gathered up his books. “Was there anything else you needed, Violet? I’ve been thinking maybe you’re right and I should take these to Renee now. It will save her time from carrying them home from the Red Inkers meeting tomorrow. It seems like the easiest solution. I hope she will enjoy them.”

  Despite my anxiety over Leaves of Grass and Redding, I smiled. “I know she will, but before you go, mind if I run upstairs for a few minutes and get cleaned up?”

  He looked at me and blinked, as if he was noticing my disheveled appearance for the first time. “Yes, of course. The ride must have been challenging. You appear to be a bit … um …”

  For the first time since I had known him, Richard was at a loss for words.

  I didn’t want to be there when he thought of the word, because chances were high I wouldn’t like it. Taking the note and the volume of Whitman with me, I went up the winding staircase to my apartment on the second floor.

  Inside the safety of my apartment and standing in front of my bathroom mirror, I grimaced, seeing why Richard had been taken aback by my appearance. My hair was a tangled mess and my face red and blotchy.

  I turned away from the mirror, peeled off my clothes, jumped in the shower, and washed away the grime of the day. I wished that it was just as easy to wash away the events of the day, but it looked like they would be with me for some time to come.

  In the shower and while I dressed and dried my hair, I kept thinking about the message Redding had made Richard record verbatim. Why had he chosen Whitman? Why had the shop chosen Whitman? Had Redding known what the shop could do? All I knew was that I had to find out Redding’s connection to Whitman and what it all had to do with his murder and with me.

  * * *

  Feeling more like myself, I headed down the stairs. Faulkner fluffed his wings as I walked by. It was midday, and the crow was taki
ng a siesta—or, I thought, he might just be pretending to be sleeping in the hopes that his ploy would make Emerson bored of watching him.

  That wasn’t likely. The little tuxie sat on the step just below Faulkner’s favorite branch, watching the bird with the same intensity he had when he watched the laser beam Rainwater had gotten him for Christmas. Just like with the red dot, Emerson was determined to catch Falkner … someday. It was a day I hoped would never come.

  “There she is,” I heard Richard say as I reached the main floor. He was speaking to a young woman at the sales desk.

  She turned around, and I gasped. Finding Jo Fitzgerald was to be my number-one mission when I started investigating Redding’s death, and there she was standing in the middle of my bookshop.

  Richard smiled at me. “Violet, I can’t tell you how excited I am about the selection of books that you have. I’ll be sure to tell everyone on campus that this is the place to come when they need research.”

  I smiled back. Something I appreciated about Richard the most was his cluelessness. It worked to my advantage at times. “Thanks, Richard. That means a lot.”

  My eyes flitted to Jo. It was clear that Richard had no idea how uncomfortable she was. The girl shifted her weight back and forth between her feet. Her eyes darted around the room as if she expected someone to jump out and scare her at any moment. Jo was many things, but most of all, she was scared.

  The chain hanging from her pocket rattled when she pivoted away from me and faced the giant fireplace on the wall to the left of the sales counter. It was May, so there was no fire in the hearth.

  “Thanks again for watching the store, Richard,” I said. “Now, you had better hurry if you want to make it to campus before the library closes.”

  “Right,” he said, and gathered up the books he had purchased for the librarian. “We will see you at the meeting tonight.”

  I followed him to the door. “See you then.”

  As soon as the front door closed, Jo turned around, and there were tears in her eyes. “Professor Waverly—Violet—I need your help.”