by Nora Page
“The demonstration that many people attended,” Cleo reminded everyone, and especially Chief Culpepper. “At the table that was open to the public and left unattended.” Guilt gnawed at her. Henry had left his table unattended because she was chasing after Dot, butting into Dot’s troubles.
The chief rubbed his forehead. “I need more coffee.” He held out his cup and Cleo and Henry jumped up, vying to refill it.
Caffeine seemed to wake up the chief’s interest in other suspects. “So you’re again claiming that any of those book types, or anyone, could have strolled by and swiped the hammer, like that awl. Then, or the next day at your demo table?”
“Yes,” Cleo answered, since Henry was hanging his head. She guessed he didn’t want to pin the blame on his colleagues.
“Was anyone else here for the social?” Gabby asked. “Other than fellow booksellers, I mean?”
“I dropped by briefly,” Cleo said.
The chief muttered, “Of course you did.”
Henry’s eyes drifted to the distance. If he could have seen through walls, he’d have been looking at the alley, the crime scene.
“My neighbor dropped by,” Henry said. “She got a package of mine by mistake. She didn’t stay, just came through to find me in the workshop.”
“Your neighbor Madame Romanov?” Cleo turned to Gabby. “Have you asked her whether she knew Hunter Fox?”
“Mrs. Watkins,” the chief snapped. “The police are doing the questioning here.”
Cleo did her best to look contrite. She knew Gabby would tell her later anyway.
“This hammer,” Gabby said, guiding the conversation back to the reason for their search. “Does the outline on the pegboard give its general shape and length? Could you positively identify it as yours if it turns up?”
Henry could. He opened his workshop laptop and produced a series of photographs from all angles, some with a ruler included.
Rather than expressing gratitude, the chief frowned. “Why all the photos of a hammer?” he demanded.
A flush rose over Henry’s beard and spread to the tips of his prominent ears. “For posting to a bookbinders’ tool forum.” He shot Cleo a bashful look. “It’s a chat group. We talk about techniques and, well, tools mostly. I guess I’m a geek online.”
Cleo thought it was sweet. She could see how it would be fun to chat with friends all over the world with similar bookish interests.
Gabby scanned through the photos. “It’s the right size. Vicious-looking thing …” She glanced over the screen and added, “Sorry. I’m sure it’s perfectly nice for what it’s meant for, but that claw part looks like something off a pterodactyl.”
Henry explained. “It’s called a backing hammer, also known as a folding tool. The single claw is used to manipulate the spine during the rounding process. To create a hinge on the book board, allowing the cover to open.”
He reached for a nearby book and ran his finger down the cusped curve between spine and cover.
Cleo marveled. Here she spent her days around books, and she had never particularly pondered how that common curve was so essential.
The chief cursed under his breath. “I don’t want to know what it does to books. I simply need to know if it killed someone. If you own it, Mr. Lafayette, and I find you’re hiding it, then that’s two murder weapons. Two! That and lying to the police would make you a pretty good suspect, wouldn’t it? Of course, if you cared to confess and explain yourself …”
Henry blanched. Mr. Chaucer leaned into Henry’s shins.
Cleo thrust her fists to her hips. She knew the chief was making valid points. However, he was missing the one fact that outshone them all. Henry was a good person.
She couldn’t change the chief’s mind by telling him that. Instead, she said, “Henry had absolutely no motive to hurt that man.”
“Unlike your cousin,” Culpepper countered. He downed his coffee and exhaled with satisfaction.
Cleo worried he’d had too much of a caffeine boost. “Why, that’s just as absurd. Dot would never—”
The chief held up his hand. “Let’s get all our murder weapons in a row first, shall we? Deputy, search the rest of this workshop and look for that whatcha-call-it hammer. Once we find that, we can hammer in our investigative nails.” He looked pleased with his play on words in a way Cleo didn’t like.
She didn’t like his final words to Henry either.
“I’ll be seeing you soon, Mr. Lafayette,” he said, making a hammering gesture. “We have a lot to talk about.”
Chapter Nineteen
A disapproving clucking met Cleo at her picket gate. Cleo winced. She knew that sound. Wanda Boxer was warming up for a tongue-lashing. Two options came to mind. Cleo could duck and hustle around the side of the house to her back door. Or she could face the inevitable, already in progress.
“I never!” Wanda declared, her voice like a rake across a sidewalk. “First the police haul your boyfriend in for lying. Now they come by raiding your home at dawn. You’re bringing down our neighborhood, Cleo. Bringing it down!”
Wanda stood beside a camellia. She looked pleased. The shrub looked tortured.
Cleo strode briskly up her pathway. “Good morning, Wanda,” she said, as if her neighbor’s rudeness had sailed over on mute. “Lovely day.” She was glad now that Henry and Mr. Chaucer had stayed back at the Gilded Page. Henry had given Gabby permission to search his entire shop and his apartment too. He had nothing to hide, he’d said.
Cleo believed him. She felt that Gabby must too. By extending her search to every book and reading nook, Gabby could then surely tell the chief they’d found nothing. They could move on to other suspects, like Kitty and Professor Weber and Catalpa Springs’ premier psychic.
“It reflects badly on the neighborhood and your library, you shacking up with a potential killer,” Wanda bellowed. “Your cousin’s still a big-time suspect too, isn’t she?” A tsk-tsk carried in the blustery breeze, and then Wanda turned disturbingly cheery. “Ah, Mrs. Stolberg, have you heard? Cleo’s dating a murder suspect!”
Mrs. Stolberg, a neighbor two houses down, had been strolling up the sidewalk with her wolfhound. Hearing Wanda, the woman veered herself and her dog into the street. Wise move, Cleo thought. Traffic was light in their neighborhood, and better to risk a speeding car than a head-on encounter with Wanda on a spring morning.
So rude, Cleo thought as she hurried to her porch. She bit her tongue. From reading magazines in Words on Wheels, Cleo knew that one should avoid engaging with a bully or the modern equivalent: a troll. Troll seemed apt for Wanda, lurking amid her devastated landscape.
Cleo yanked open her door and hurtled into the calm sanctuary of her front porch.
Wanda’s words wormed through the screen. “I’m retracting my alibi for your boyfriend too!” Wanda yelled. “You tricked me!”
Cleo fumbled with her keys, urgency making her muddled. For a moment, the nightmare feeling returned, the feeling of a pursuer closing in. But like in the dream, there was nothing obvious, nothing there beyond Wanda and her words.
Ill words could strangle and terrify too, Cleo thought. As soon as the killer was caught, she’d turn her attention to gardening. She’d get Ollie to help her plant a thick evergreen hedge along her border with Wanda. Images of spiky hollies or a dense bamboo grove filled Cleo’s head.
Once inside, Cleo exhaled. “Unseemly,” she informed Rhett Butler, who bounded to the foyer. “Uncouth,” she vented. “There is no excuse for such bad behavior.”
Rhett yelled a meow that Cleo chose to take as agreement. Her cat scampered off to the kitchen, where Cleo fed them both treats. Tuna Delight for Rhett. The last of the strawberries and a toasted biscuit for herself.
The belated breakfast brightened Cleo’s mood. So did plans for the day ahead. She had a busy bookmobile schedule, including a stop outside the book fair this morning. Around eleven, she’d go by the elementary school for recess, always a fun stop. And after lunch? That’s when
she hoped to fit in some sleuthing, namely visiting Madame Romanov.
She pondered her approach when it came to the psychic. Should she give a pretext for her visit? Dropping by for a palm reading or a talk with Hunter’s spirit? Looking for Henry’s misdelivered mail, Madame’s reason for visiting his shop the night of the social?
Cleo got up to wash her dishes. She knew two things: dishes left in the sink didn’t wash themselves, and she didn’t want to go see Madame Romanov on her own.
* * *
The wispy clouds had grown brooding cumulus heads by the time Cleo parked near the Depot. She sat in her captain’s seat, flipping through a gardening magazine and watching folks hurry by, umbrellas in hand. A few spits of rain dotted her windshield.
Cleo liked rainy days, the best for cozying up with a good book. Unfortunately, such days tended to drive down bookmobile business. She’d had a handful of visitors, most dropping by to chat, presumably about the weather.
“Looks like rain,” they’d say, before edging toward the topic of murder and Cleo’s theories. She consoled herself by touting the innocence of everyone’s top two suspects, Henry and Dot.
She was getting ready for her next stop at the school when a flash of bright color caught her eye. Kitty Peavey strolled from the Depot. She paused under the eaves and then out to the dim daylight, palm up, checking the weather. Cleo expected the “proprietress of Southern Delights” to retreat from the hair-frizzing mist. Instead, Kitty sashayed down the sidewalk and straight for Words on Wheels.
“I’ve been meaning to visit your cute bus,” Kitty said, entering with a cloud of perfume. “Aw, what a sweet kitty cat,” she cooed at Rhett, who sat on a shelf, looking grumpily out at the weather.
Rhett immediately flopped and purred, and Kitty gushed more pretty-kitty praise.
Cleo’s feelings toward the woman rose. She reminded herself that Kitty was a suspect, for murder and various book crimes. Thus warned, Cleo extended cautious greetings. “His name is Rhett Butler,” she admitted when Kitty asked.
Kitty clapped. “How cute! You and your cousin really are true GWTW fans!”
“We are,” Cleo said, swept by a chilliness that wasn’t blown in with the weather. “She has the police looking for her valuable signed copy, the copy Hunter Fox acquired under … misleading circumstances.” Cleo’s manners kept her from outright bad-mouthing the recently deceased.
“Bless him,” Kitty said with a pout. “That man was the best scout ever. He could sniff out high-value books like a bloodhound, I tell you. ‘Look low, look high,’ that was his motto.” Seeing Cleo’s perplexed expression, she said. “On the shelves, for treasures other buyers miss. I suppose it’s the same in the library. Folks focus on eye height.”
“It is true,” Cleo said. She was guilty of it too, although she did have the dual excuses of bad knees and a height of barely five feet three inches.
Kitty shook her head. “Poor Hunt. He told me he was coming into something big too. It’s a shame.”
“Big?” Cleo asked, her interest piqued. She stood to lean back against the dash and watch Kitty’s face. “A rare book?”
“I don’t know,” Kitty said with a sorrowful sigh. “All he said was, he wasn’t going to have to spend so much time digging around dusty old bookshelves and attics and chatting folks up.” She looked up, and Cleo saw a true tear in her eye. Kitty recovered quickly, flicking her hand and leaning back down to inspect Cleo’s traveling display.
“Why, this is cute too,” Kitty said. “What a sweet idea to display these old due-date cards. But why are they special enough to care about?”
“Signatures,” Cleo said, stepping to the case. “There’s a former governor who grew up in Catalpa Springs.” She pointed out a long-ago mayor and a minor-league baseball player. “And the best, the author Shirley Macon James. I’m sure you know, she lived just outside Catalpa Springs for a spell in the 1950s. She wrote her novel—”
“Into the Waves,” Kitty breathed, clasping her hands. “She wrote that around here? Oh my goodness, I’d clean forgotten. You all should be putting that in your tourism ads, instead of that lie about this place being safe. Shirley was such a timid little thing, wasn’t she? Bless her heart.”
Kitty had leaned so low her breath fogged the glass. She was squinting hard, and Cleo wondered if vanity kept her from wearing eyeglasses.
“You have a signed copy of her book too? Oh, my!”
“A second edition,” Cleo said, aiming for modesty, but with pride seeping through. The reclusive author had dreaded book signings and passed away young, making autographed copies of any edition a rarity.
“That is a true delight.” Kitty tapped the Plexiglas with her right index finger. The nail was shiny red with a perfectly long, square tip. Cleo recalled Kitty fussing with that same nail on the morning of Hunter’s death. She must have had it fixed. Cleo wondered how she’d broken it. In a scuffle? Goose bumps rose up Cleo’s arm. Kitty, by her own admission, had been with Hunter the night of his death. They had a business relationship and possibly a romantic one too. Cleo knew money and passion were both prime motives for murder.
Kitty tapped faster, bringing Cleo’s mind back to the bookmobile and blustery day. The taps ended in a decisive thump. Kitty straightened. “I have to have this.” Her eyes fixed on Cleo. “Let’s deal. Tell me your price. We’ll work down from there.”
“I’m sorry,” Cleo said, the apology a polite formality only. “This book is not for sale. It’s a library book, part of our special collection. We don’t even lend it out. I’m thrilled you recognize Miss James. Gothic romance isn’t so well known, nor is she. As you know, this was her only book. She passed away far too young.” A car-versus-pedestrian accident had taken her life, eerily similar to the tragedy that took young Margaret Mitchell. Sadness struck Cleo. What other books might the world have enjoyed if those women had lived longer?
A cloud passed over Kitty’s face too.
“It’s tragic,” Cleo said, realizing she’d tactlessly mentioned death to a woman who’d just suffered a loss.
“Fifteen hundred,” Kitty said.
“What?” Cleo was momentarily taken aback. “Oh, the price? No, I’m serious, Miss Peavey. The book is not for sale. The special collection is—”
“Oh, don’t say ‘special,’” Kitty said. “Tell me, who around here comes to see this special book? Anyone? Who appreciates it?”
Hardly anyone, Cleo thought guiltily. The special collection was housed in the Reference Room at the main library. Patrons visited the room for its wood-paneled splendor and solemn silence. Few, however, ever asked to see the books locked in the glass-fronted shelves.
Kitty continued, waggling a chastising finger at Cleo. “Don’t tell me you and your library staff appreciate it, either. I mean, who really cares? I, on the other hand, will love this book and take proper care of it.”
“We take good care of our books,” Cleo said. “Patrons regularly visit the special collection.” Her cheeks flushed, knowing she was tiptoeing to the precipice of an untruth. When Cleo had checked the request record for Shirley Macon James’s signed work, she’d been shocked to see the book hadn’t felt the touch of a hand in over three years. Cleo vowed to do more.
“I’m highlighting the book here to build up interest,” Cleo said.
Kitty curled her lip. “By driving Miss Shirley around in a derelict bus? It’s warm in here, in case you haven’t noticed. Worse, it’s humid. Do you even have air conditioning?”
“Of course,” Cleo said, not mentioning that the AC wheezed tepid until Words on Wheels reached highway speeds. Forty-five miles per hour achieved mildly temperate. Fifty and above offered a chance of chilly.
Cleo patted her hair, “This display is only temporary. Back at the library, we have nice, cold, dehumidified conditions.” But not as arctic as at the Myrtles Bed and Breakfast. Most library books and library patrons didn’t need to be refrigerated.
Kitty hovered close to the case ag
ain, running her finger in a circle over the book below. When she stepped back, her hand glided over the latches holding the portable display case on the shelf.
“Can I touch the book?” she asked.
In other circumstances, Cleo would have readily agreed. Kitty, however, was a known book thief.
“Ah … not today,” Cleo said.
“Oh well,” Kitty said, her tone cheery again. “Cute case, nicer book. I’ll get my hands on it someday. Soon, I hope.” She left with a singsong, “’Bye, for now!”
Air seemed to whoosh out with her and then right back in a misty gust. Cleo closed the door firmly, feeling a sudden need to protect the books from the uncontrolled climate and Kitty Peavey too.
Chapter Twenty
“So … we’re lying?” Mary-Rose held a shopping bag in one hand and a large purse slung shieldlike across her chest. Dressed in a rosy raincoat and red rubber boots, she looked ready for the weather. And battle.
“No,” Cleo said, automatically fibbing. Cleo glanced across the street to Madame Romanov’s purple-shingled cottage and said, “We’ll give a partial truth. We’ll tell Madame Romanov that we’re interested in her second sight. That’s true. I am interested.”
Mary-Rose made a scoffing sound. “I’m sure you are, Cleo. You’re interested in whether she’ll slip up and drop a clue.”
“Or drop one on purpose,” Cleo said. “She might want to tell us something.”
Mary-Rose’s eyes narrowed. “What if she did it? What if she’s the killer? What’s our plan then?”
Cleo had called Mary-Rose after lunch. Her friend had immediately intuited that Cleo was looking for backup. They stood where they’d met up, at the corner across from Henry’s shop, with a fine view of the crime-taped alley and Madame Romanov’s cottage. Individual shingles were painted in varying shades of lavender, grape, and eggplant, like scales on a psychedelic lizard. A light glowed behind lace curtains, and a neon sign flashed OPEN: Welcome. The Seer Sees All.
