Memoirs of a Garroter (Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries Book 4)

by Steffanie Holmes

  “So he was garroted.” Morrie leaned forward, his eyes sparkling with interest. “Is that unusual?”

  “Mr. Moriarty, please remove yourself and Ms. Wilde into another room,” Hayes frowned as he stared at the scene. “Let the real detectives deal with this case.”

  Gladly. I bolted into the main room and collapsed in Heathcliff’s chair. The guys followed me – Heathcliff glowering in the doorway, Quoth perched on the corner of the table, Morrie pacing in front of the window, his mind already whirling through possibilities. My stomach churned. Right now, the last thing I wanted to do was think about who was behind this murder. “I can’t believe someone would want to hurt Danny. He seemed like such an affable bloke.”

  “Just because Danny was jovial doesn’t mean he didn’t have enemies. His wife probably wasn’t happy about what was going on in the closet last night,” Morrie said.

  “Do you think she knew?” I asked.

  “Women usually do,” Heathcliff said.

  I remembered the conversation I’d had with Penny Sledge last night. Yes, I think she knew.

  “The guy also had a criminal past,” Morrie pointed out. He picked up a copy of The Somerset Strangler from the stack on the desk and flipped through it. “Maybe something caught up with him. Too bad he didn’t get to publish his memoir. I bet that contained all sorts of sordid tales.”

  “What about that publisher?” Heathcliff asked. “He didn’t look too happy about Danny’s announcement to self-publish his memoir.”

  “Oooh, that’s a good one. Also, his friend Angus might’ve decided he deserved more of Danny’s money for his contributions,” Morrie mused. “Or maybe Amanda wanted Danny to leave his wife for her and he refused.”

  “Don’t forget that batshit woman who screamed bloody murder,” Heathcliff added.

  I winced. Quoth shot Heathcliff a dirty look. “Poor choice of words. Look at Mina, she’s upset.”

  “I’m fine.” I rested my chin in my hands. My head spun. Keep it together. Don’t think about Danny’s bugged-out eyes. Don’t think about those horrible marks around his neck—

  Jo poked her head in. “Just letting you know that we’re taking the body away now, as well as the hall rug. You’re safe to wander around. My guys are gonna be here photographing the shelves and collecting trace evidence, but they’ll be gone in an hour or so, and then you’re free to open up.”

  “That’s great. Thanks, Jo.”

  “Oh, and I have more good news,” Jo’s dazzling smile seemed at odds with the somber occasion, but that was Jo – she dealt with grisly deaths every day, so it took a lot to rattle her. “The exterminator came by this morning. No more locusts.”

  “Locusts?” Morrie raised an eyebrow.

  I gave a weak smile. “That is good news. Any serious damage?”

  “Apart from the fact that my experiment is ruined? Not really. They’ve had a nibble on any exposed natural fibers – the cloth shopping bags, the wicker hanging basket, my merino vest on the indoor clothesline. We’re going to have to replant the herb garden. Those greedy buggers even ate the linen tablecloth. Can you believe it?”

  I leaned back in my chair, my body overcome with weariness. Can I believe that there’s been another murder and a plague of locusts ate our herb garden? I wish I could say I didn’t, but the truth is… that sounds like just another day at Nevermore Bookshop.

  I slumped between Heathcliff and Quoth, their hands in mine, as Wilson took my statement. She kept glancing between me and the guys, and I could tell she was wondering about the nature of our relationship. When I said Quoth and I had been in bed together this morning, her eyebrows went way up.

  I guess I have to get used to people reacting like that if I’m going to stay with the three of them.

  But I didn’t have time to think about my relationship, as Wilson’s questions came thick and fast. She’d always been a little suspicious of me. That probably had to do with the fact that dead bodies seemed to stack up wherever I went. And now here we were again, staring at each other from across Heathcliff’s desk, while the SOCO team dealt with the third crime scene in the shop in as many months.

  We each described as much of the event last night as we could remember, including Danny’s talk and the audience questions, the visit from Beverly, and finding Danny and Amanda in the closet. Wilson asked lots of questions about Beverly and Amanda, as well as making detailed notes about our movements. She then asked us to walk her around the Events room and describe the layout while she jotted down a floorplan on her pad.

  By the time Wilson finished with us, the SOCO team had left with their evidence. Outside the shop, a crowd of writers had gathered – the participants of Danny’s workshop. I noticed our purple-haired erotica writer talking with two ladies from Mrs. Ellis’ knitting club. They inched away as he described a sex scene he was working on.

  “…and her nipples were hard and round, like the rivets on a steam engine…”

  “Excuse me.” I cleared my throat. No one looked up.

  “…his mouth wet with her delicious vaginal sap…”

  Heathcliff stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out a mighty whistle. Our purple-haired friend nearly jumped out of his skin. Mrs. Ellis’ friends flashed me relieved smiles.

  I cleared my throat. “Hi everyone. I’m Mina, the organizer of today’s workshop. Unfortunately, Danny’s not going to be able to host the workshop today. He…”

  The words died on my tongue. I tried to focus on the people in front of me but all I could see was Danny’s bloated face and gaping mouth. I tried again. “Danny is… he is…”

  “He’s dead as a doornail,” Heathcliff finished.

  A collective gasp rose through the crowd. I glared at Heathcliff.

  “What?” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “That’s what he is. He’s croaked, expired, popped his clogs, bereft of life, and gone west to meet his maker. He’s passed on, cashed in his chips, kicked his oxygen habit, and checked into the Horizontal Hilton for his Hamlet sleep. He’s immortality challenged, and will no longer be counted on the census—”

  Mrs. Ellis’ two friends looked aghast. The erotica writer affixed a solemn expression to his face, but the corner of his mouth tugged up at Heathcliff’s description. Immortality-challenged? I can’t believe he just said that. I jabbed Heathcliff in the side and shot him a warning look, which he ignored.

  “It’s true?” One of the other writers – a man in a tweed jacket with a pencil tucked behind his ear – asked. “He’s really dead?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. So we won’t be able to hold the event today. I’ll organize refunds for you this week. In the meantime, I know you’ve come all this way, so why don’t you come inside? I’ve got refreshments arriving shortly, and we could sit in the Events room and discuss writing, maybe read excerpts of your work—”

  “What’s the point?” growled Tweed-Man. “I’ve come all the way from Crookshollow to learn from Danny Sledge. I’m not going to discuss my masterpiece with these hacks.”

  “Who are you calling a hack?” shot back a woman with tortoiseshell glasses. “I’m going to be the next Nora Roberts. I wouldn’t want to waste an afternoon with a bunch of literary toffs, I’ve got a bestselling manuscript to finish.”

  One by one, the writers turned away, muttering their disappointment. Mrs. Ellis’ friends shook their heads sadly as they shuffled away toward the green, nattering loudly about where to get a good cup of tea in the village. I slumped down on the step, my head in my hands.

  An arm fell around my shoulders, and a whiff of fresh grass enveloped me. Heathcliff’s dark eyes regarded mine with fierce kindness. “I’m sorry, Mina. I knew you were looking forward to that workshop.”

  “It’s fine.” Who was I kidding? It didn’t feel fine. It felt like things had just started to go right in my life and now everything was falling apart. It felt like no matter what I did I was never going to catch a break. It felt like I’d never get to find out if I could possibly writ
e…

  Except that, of course, I wasn’t interested in that. I had no talent for writing. No way could I come close to the writers I admire. I was no Emily Brontë or Arthur Conan Doyle. I didn’t even think I could manage an E. L. James.

  Footsteps sounded on the steps behind me. Quoth slipped down on the other side of me and tipped my head onto his shoulder. His fingers squeezed my skin. He could sense the emotion rising inside me, the flood of melancholy that I’d done so much to temper flaring to life and threatening to overwhelm me.

  Heathcliff’s eyes bore into mine, their depths unfathomable. “There’s a surefire way to cure this malaise.”

  I sniffed. “How?”

  “We’ll have our own workshop,” Heathcliff tugged me to my feet. “Morrie has a bottle of expensive French absinthe hidden under the sink. We’ll finish it, then test Hemingway’s concept that one should write drunk and edit sober. Personally, I think it should be ‘write drunk, edit drunker,’ but that’s why he’s the author and I’m the tortured antihero.”

  Chapter Nine

  Given my dark mood, it didn’t take much convincing from Heathcliff for me to concede to his plan. I drew the line at absinthe (I read Poppy Z Brite), but I did agree to lock up the shop and join the boys at the Rose & Wimple for an early lunch. Heathcliff and Morrie flanked me as we cut across the village green. Quoth’s talons dug into my shoulder. He decided that he couldn’t face the gossiping villagers after Danny’s murder, but that if we sat in the beer garden he’d come and perch on the wall beside us.

  It looked like the entire village had gathered at the pub. They spilled out onto the green, talking in furtive whispers. Heads turned toward us as we made our way down the steps and past the jaunty iron pig announcing the day’s special. The village gossip mill must be in full swing with news of Danny’s murder. I hope they at least have the decency to leave us alone—

  As soon as we stepped through the door, the whole place fell silent. Even though I could barely make out the faces in the gloomy interior, I could feel their eyes crawling over my body, their unanswered questions hanging in the air.

  “Let’s go somewhere else,” Heathcliff muttered. “Tir Na Nog in Crookshollow does a decent ploughman’s lunch.”

  “Nope.” Fierce determination settled in my gut. This was our village too, and we’d done nothing wrong. If we wanted to eat a four-quid basket of chips and drown our sorrows over a pint, then we had a right to do it. I strode up to the bar and slammed my wallet down. “Hi, Richard. We’ll have a pint of lager, one of cider, a glass of your house white, and a couple of menus, please.”

  The landlord pulled pints for Heathcliff and I. Morrie hopped from foot to foot. From the expression on his face, I could tell he was dying to wrest the cheap wine from Richard’s hand and tip it over his head, but even he wasn’t prepared to make a scene with the whole village staring us down. All he managed was a weak protest. “Don’t you have anything with a more fragrant bouquet? Maybe something from the Napa Valley, or New Zealand…”

  “Not for six quid a glass, sorry, mate.” Richard set down the wine in front of him. Morrie looked like he’d rather drink toilet water. He picked up the glass and held it up to the light before taking a dainty sip. A choking sound escaped his lips.

  “You all right there?” Richard leaned across the bar, his kindly face creased in concern.

  “Fine,” Morrie croaked.

  If I wasn’t so wrapped up in Danny’s murder and the eerie silence of the pub, I would have cracked up laughing. I quickly paid for our drinks and shuffled away from the bar. “Let’s find a table,” I muttered.

  Chatter picked up in hushed tones, closing behind us like the wake of a boat. Snatches of conversation caught my ears as we maneuvered between the tables.

  “That place has always been strange. Remember the old blind man who used to own it? Why did a blind bloke want to spend so much time with books he couldn’t read. That’s weird.”

  “I’ve always said that gypsy was up to no good in the village. He’s probably murdering writers to steal their wallets.”

  “I think that young lady’s in charge. She’s from the council estate, you know. They don’t raise children right out there. I bet you anything she’s sleeping with all those blokes. Got them wrapped around her little finger. It ain’t right, I tell you.”

  “One thing’s for sure. I’m not setting foot in that shop again. It’s too dangerous.”

  Maybe this was a bad idea, after all.

  As we made our way out the back to the beer garden, I caught sight of a hand waving above a table. “Yoohoo, Mina.” It was Mrs. Ellis. “Over here!”

  I didn’t exactly want to spend my drinking time filling Mrs. Ellis in on every gory detail of the murder, but her company couldn’t help but improve my mood. Gratefully, we sat down at the end of her table. I glanced around at her companions, recognizing the two writers from her knitting group, as well as local historian Florence Lawton, who I’d roped into giving a history lecture at the shop next week.

  “Another spot of trouble at the bookshop, Mina?” asked Dotty.

  “Yes.” I shuddered. “I don’t really want to talk about it, so—”

  Mrs. Ellis tsked. “A famous and handsome crime writer, killed in the same manner as the victims in his books! It sounds like the plot of an Agatha Christie novel. You found the body, didn’t you Mina? Tell us, was it terribly gory? Was his face all bloated and—”

  “Right, I’m having the steak and kidney pie. Mina?” Heathcliff growled, pointedly flinging open the menu in front of my face.

  “I bet it was that publisher, Brian Letterman.” Dotty leaned forward, her voice conspiratorial. Mrs. Ellis’ friends were bound to love a juicy murder just as much as she did. “Did you see his face when Danny announced he was self-publishing his memoir? He looked ready to kill.”

  “Or it could’ve been Beverly Ingram. What was she doing, barging in like that!” Mrs. Ellis said. “I know it’s a tragedy, but it’s not handsome Danny’s fault that he happened to use the same murder weapon in his book as Abigail’s murderer.”

  “Beverly’s been a bit doddery these last few weeks,” added Wenda. “That’s what happens when you don’t have a husband and when you turn away all the friendly people in the village. Why, just the other week I ran into her at the market. She parked her trolley across the entire aisle, just staring at a rack of cereals. I says to her, I says, ‘Beverly, you just have to let it go.’ But then she just starts flailing her arms at the shelves. Cereal everywhere! She’s been barred from the market for a month.”

  “Why was she attacking the cereal aisle?” Morrie asked. While Mrs. Ellis turned to elaborate, he swapped her wine glass for his. He sampled the bouquet and decided it was superior, for he took a grateful sip.

  “Her daughter Abigail did some modeling back in the day. Abigail’s face appeared on a cereal box. She did a commercial for toothpaste, too. Beverly thought her daughter would be in the pictures one day. She was a real looker, was Abigail, and she knew it. She had a trail of boys following her around the village like she was the pied bloody piper. But she could be a vicious trollop – she and Beverly were always going at it about her drinking and partying with the wrong sorts of people. You could hear them screaming at each other halfway across the village.”

  “I was only young when the murder happened,” I said. “I don’t remember it, but it must have shaken the whole village.”

  “It was a terrible tragedy. Beverly was a nurse at Barchester General. She came home from a late shift around two in the morning and found Abigail dead in her room, garroted by her own silk scarf.”

  My fingers raked at the wooden table. “That’s horrible,” I breathed.

  “It was quite the scandal. There was some drug paraphernalia in the room, and signs of a struggle – a broken mirror, knickknacks all over the floor. But there wasn’t a break-in, so she must have known and trusted her killer, at least initially. The police assumed it was one of her boyfr
iends, perhaps flying into a jealous rage.”

  “Boyfriends?” Did Beverly’s daughter have a harem, like me? That was chilling.

  “Oh yes, at least two they knew about, including Danny Sledge. But they couldn’t pin it on any of them since the coppers had nicked them all for dealing drugs that same night. That lovely Angus Donahue was the inspector at the time, wasn’t he?”

  Dotty nodded. “Poor Angus. He tried so hard to crack that case, and with the media breathing down his neck too, but they couldn’t find who did it. I think it haunted him because he left the police force soon after, and he’d only just been promoted. That’s maybe why Danny’s book has some of the same elements of the crime. It weighs on both Danny and Angus. No wonder Beverly was upset.”

  “That’s not Danny’s fault!” Mrs. Ellis cried. “Beverly shouldn’t have killed him just because he wrote a book!”

  “Who says Beverly was the one who killed him?” Wenda leaned forward. “I heard that Danny wasn’t exactly a devoted husband. Had a bit of a wandering eye, didn’t he? Maybe that sour wife of his bumped him off in order to put a stop to his philandering. I imagine she stands to inherit a great deal.”

  “Or maybe it was a crazed fan,” Dotty squealed with delight. “That happens, you know. One minute, they’re collecting rare first editions, the next minute they’re carving their name into your internal organs.”

  “Only in Stephen King books,” Heathcliff muttered, reaching across the table to steal some of their chips.

  “Or it could be a serial killer, stalking authors who speak in the bookshop,” added Florence. She shuddered.

  Panic fluttered in my stomach. “Please don’t worry, Florence. I’m sure that’s not it. The police are going to catch the killer and everything will be fine in time for your event.”

  She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry, Mina. I’m not going to be able to do the event. With the murderer still running loose, I just don’t feel comfortable in the shop, especially not after all the other deaths. You understand, don’t you?”