Can't Judge a Book by Its Murder

by Amy Lillard

  She sat down next to Chloe. Auggie jumped onto the back of the couch, kneading his paws into the worn quilt lying there. Then he stretched his back legs and moved close enough for Arlo to pet him. It was his standard, I guess you can touch me, peasant move that she knew so well.

  “I’m fine.” Chloe stood and crossed the room, staring into the empty fireplace.

  “You don’t seem fine. In fact, I’d say you are the opposite of fine.”

  “I thought I could handle it, you know, him coming to town. But…” Chloe shook her head. “I wasn’t expecting to talk to him. We settled all that a long time ago.”

  “Then why did you let him into the shop?”

  Phil’s wasn’t the only store with access to the roof. Chloe had invited Wally in and given him coffee. It was only two flights of stairs to the roof from there. The thought made Arlo’s stomach pitch.

  Chloe took a shuddering breath and pressed the wadded tissue she held to her mouth. “I don’t know.”

  Arlo waited. She had never seen her friend like this.

  “He said he wanted to talk about Jayden. That he wanted to see him.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him no. He made his decision a long time ago.”

  “Good for you.” Arlo was genuinely proud of her friend.

  “But Wally said he would find a way. That I owed him that much.”

  “Skunk,” Arlo hissed. “That man is nothing but a skunk.”

  “Was,” Chloe corrected.

  “Was.” The word sobered her anger. “Then?”

  “I told him good luck and pushed him out the door.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t use words like that,” Arlo said.

  “Oh my gosh, you’re right.” Chloe sniffed. “This makes me look that much guiltier.” Her tears started again. “I guess it’s a good thing Jayden lives with Mama and Daddy. His father is dead, and now his mother is about to be accused of murdering him.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  Wally jumped. Wally jumped. Maybe if she said it enough times, she would believe it were true.

  Chloe had discovered that she was pregnant two days after their high school graduation. She immediately told Wally, but he told her that he didn’t want anything to do with her or the baby. He was getting out of town as soon as possible, and they weren’t going to hold him back. He was probably packing his bags when she told him the news. He left the very next day.

  Chloe’s father hired a PI to find him and an attorney to draw up the papers, and had Wally make it official. He gave up all rights to his son. Now, ten years later, he was back in town and wanted to see the boy? Impossible.

  Chloe had worked hard to support herself and Jayden, but when it became apparent that she couldn’t do it alone, she moved back in with her parents. Five years later, she wanted some independence and moved out again. Knowing Jayden needed the stability of her childhood home, she allowed him to stay with his grandparents. It was a magnificent and dreadful sacrifice, but one that was necessary. And to have Wally threatening any of that…

  Arlo shook her head. She didn’t want to think about it. It gave Chloe way too much motive. Mads probably didn’t know that Wally was Jayden’s father. But once he found out…

  There was no doubt: Chloe would be his number one suspect.

  4

  Emotionally and physically drained. The phrase was trite but true to how Arlo felt when she pulled into her own driveway. She turned off her car and sat there for a moment, just…waiting…on nothing…something…anything…

  That’s how the day had been. Hurry up, wait. Wait some more. Book club, Chloe, and now. Here she sat, strangely unsatisfied. Completely unsettled. She should be doing something. Helping Chloe. Straightening up the store. She shouldn’t have left the book club early. She should have talked to Mads more. She needed to do something to help Chloe.

  And yet there was nothing to be done.

  She sighed, palmed her keys, and headed for the door. The small house with yellow siding might be sitting on its own parcel of land in Sugar Springs, but it wasn’t much larger than Chloe’s. Arlo didn’t mind. Any bigger and she would have knocked around a little too much in a space too large for one person. And she loved the house. It was the one place that had ever been all hers. Her parents had never stayed in one place long. Then she had moved in with Elly. Off to college and she’d had a roommate. But this house—412 Wisteria Drive—was all hers, complete with a creaky wooden porch with a swing on one end, box planters under the windows, and a front door painted a cheery cherry red.

  “Yoo-hoo.”

  The voice stopped her in her tracks.

  And nosy neighbors.

  Arlo pulled in a fortifying breath and turned to face her very own Mrs. Kravitz: Cindy Jo Houston. Cindy Jo wasn’t much older than Arlo herself, but a tragic car accident on the highway turnoff leading into Sugar Springs had given her a permanent limp and a brain injury that left her unable to fulfill her teaching duties at the high school. The entire time Arlo had known Cindy Jo, she had wanted nothing more than to marry her high school sweetheart, teach at Sugar Springs High, and live in the tiny Mississippi town forever.

  One out of three ain’t bad.

  She pasted on the best smile she could muster and turned to face her neighbor. “Hi, Cindy Jo.”

  Cindy Jo returned her greeting, then sadly shook her head. “I suppose you heard what happened.”

  Arlo resisted the urge to tell Cindy Jo that Wally Harrison had fallen to his death right outside her store. If she gave away that detail and Cindy Jo didn’t already have it, then she would spend the next forty-five minutes recounting everything she knew about the crime scene and having to speculate at her neighbor’s insistence about what “Sheriff Mads” was going to do about it. “Yes,” she said simply.

  “What are we going to do?”

  Arlo shot her a sympathetic smile. What were they going to do? Pray that Mads found no reason to charge Chloe, that the real murderer would step forward, or both.

  What was she saying? She had gotten too caught up in Chloe’s theories. They didn’t know if there was a real murderer. It could simply be a matter of too much fame getting to a narcissistic jerk—not that she would ever say those words aloud—and maybe, just maybe, Mads was right. Maybe Wally really did willingly jump to his death.

  “Let the chief handle it as best he can, I suppose.”

  For a moment Cindy Jo’s expression froze in shock, then it puckered to a frown. “Sheriff Mads?” She said his name as if it was ludicrous that anyone would expect him to do anything concerning the matter.

  “That’s right,” Arlo replied, not bothering to correct Cindy Jo over Mads’s official title. It would do no good to remind her neighbor that Tom Watson was the sheriff of Alcorn County.

  Cindy Jo’s face immediately brightened. “Is he on the board now? What a blessing! It’s kind of late in the game, but better now than never, eh?” She winked at Arlo, then shoved her hands into the front pockets of her floral housedress. She frowned again. “You don’t suppose that he’ll get some of those frozen things from Sam’s, do you? I mean, they’re good and all, but not the thing for such an important reunion.”

  “Of course.” Arlo nodded, then turned to go into her house. Then Cindy Jo’s words hit home. She swung back around and eyed her neighbor. “Reunion?” They were talking about two entirely different things.

  “Uh-huh,” Cindy Jo said. “Mary Beth told me today when I was down at the Piggly Wiggly that something had happened to the order of food that was supposed to be for the reunion. Something about the shrimp truck breaking down, and the driver wasn’t able to keep everything at a low enough temperature.” She wrinkled her nose, the movement making her dimples deepen. “But that’s good of Sheriff Mads to take over like that. I hope he doesn’t take the easy way out, Sam’s and all
that.”

  Arlo shook her head. “Cindy Jo, I—” She stopped. There was no sense going into it now. Cindy wasn’t on the committee and Mads wouldn’t be responsible for the replacement food order. It was a misunderstanding, but Cindy Jo didn’t need to know all that. It would only confuse her more and cause Arlo another forty-five minutes trying to sort it out with her. “That’s right,” she said again. For once she wished for a pet she could claim she needed to feed so she would have an easy excuse to escape into her own house, but there was no fuzzy creature waiting for her. Just a lonely supper and a bottle of wine. On second thought, she might skip the food altogether. Less calories that way. “I’ve got to…go,” she finally said.

  Cindy Jo smiled. “Sure thing. See ya tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Arlo asked before she could stop herself.

  “At the reunion,” Cindy Jo patiently explained.

  “Right.” Arlo jangled her keys against her palm. “Tomorrow.”

  Arlo made her escape to her front door and let herself into her house trying hard not to rush. She didn’t want Cindy Jo to think there was anything wrong when there was. Several things were wrong. Starting with but not limited to the fact that she may have volunteered Mads to supply some kind of appetizer at the high school reunion tomorrow.

  She had barely changed out of her work clothes and into her pajamas when her phone started to ring. With a wince, she checked the caller ID. Mads.

  “Hey, Chief,” she said brightly.

  “Why is it that Lorie Blake just called and asked me what I was planning on bringing to the reunion mixer tomorrow?”

  “I—uh…” Arlo searched her brain for a logical answer. Finding none, she said in an apologetic voice, “Because I might have told Cindy Jo that you had it.”

  “It?” His voice was flat across the phone line.

  “Not it.” She tried to explain. “Had it. You know, under control.” She bit her lip. “Okay, I’m not explaining this very well and I suppose it doesn’t matter. I mean, are we really going to have the reunion mixer after what happed today?”

  “I wish I had a nickel for every time someone asked me that since breakfast.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to retire,” she joked. “There’s not that many people in Sugar Springs.”

  “No, but I’d be able to buy the appetizers I’m told I’m bringing.”

  Arlo flopped down on the sofa and stacked her feet onto the steamer trunk she used as a coffee table. “Sorry about that. Really. I thought Cindy Jo was talking about Wally’s…accident.” Why couldn’t she bring herself to say the word? Death. Wally’s death. “She asked what we should do about the problem.”

  “And you told her I had it.”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I think the shrimp rolls I’m supposed to bring tomorrow will be more challenging than figuring out what happened to Wally Harrison.”

  Arlo almost imparted Cindy Jo’s wish that he not bring anything from the freezer section at Sam’s, but she had to keep things in perspective and the part concerning Wally was much more important. “Why do you say that?”

  On the other end of the line, something rattled, and a dog let out a deep bark. “Hush, Dew,” Mads chastised. “I’m feeding you as fast as I can.”

  Mads’s overgrown Airedale terrier barked again.

  Arlo sucked in a breath and told herself to be patient. “Mads,” she said, trying to get him back on the subject she wanted to talk about.

  “Yeah?”

  “What about Wally?”

  “We’re waiting on the coroner’s report since it is classified as a suspicious death, but I think it’s pretty obvious. Wally Harrison killed himself.”

  Arlo allowed the air to seep slowly from her lungs. Mads and his crew looking at Wally’s death as a suicide meant no one would be asking too many questions of Chloe. She knew it! And once again she had let herself get caught up in Chloe’s drama. In her love and passion for Wally. In her hopes that he wouldn’t do something so terrible as take his own life. But as awful as it sounded, it was better this way. “And the reunion mixer is still on?”

  “I think so, don’t you? We should keep things as normal as possible.”

  But normalcy meant going on as if Wally’s death never happened. Obviously Sunday’s book signing would have to be canceled. Arlo winced at the thought of all the expensive books she had ordered for the event. Her mind spun faster. Should they invite Daisy and Inna to the mixer? What was the etiquette? She wasn’t sure even Emily Post could sort through this one.

  “Yeah. I suppose.” But even to her own ears, her voice didn’t sound convincing. There were too many thoughts running through her brain at once and, try as she might, she couldn’t get ahold of one long enough to filter through it. It was like trying to hang on to a greased pig at the county fair.

  “What?” he asked. His tone had changed from casual friend to chief of police just that fast.

  “It’s not normal. None of this is normal.”

  “And canceling everything and hosting some type of memorial service is?”

  “It’s what people normally do when someone dies.”

  Across the line, Mads sighed. He hadn’t been back in Sugar Springs long, only a couple of months. Long enough to clean off his desk and order his uniforms. And in all the time he had been gone, he had forgotten what living in a small town meant. “Okay.” His voice sounded tired, as if the day had pushed him over whatever ledge he had been standing on. “I’ll talk to Mary Jo tomorrow and see what she has to say about it.”

  “Mary Beth,” Arlo corrected. “It’s Mary Beth and Cindy Jo. You went to school with both of them.” The school wasn’t that big. Everyone knew everyone, just the way it was in small towns. “I swear, Mads.” It was like he had forgotten more than he remembered about life in Sugar Springs. If he hated it so much, why had he returned?

  “Right. Mary Beth. I remember.”

  “And you better call her tonight. She’ll have a cow when she finds out you want to change something.”

  “Do people still have cows these days?”

  Arlo chuckled. Across town, she heard Dewey bark through the phone line. “You tell Mary Beth there’s an addition to the program tomorrow and watch what happens.”

  Mads sighed again. “So she has a cow. With any luck she can enter it in the county fair this year.”

  5

  Arlo slipped out of her shoes and wiggled her bandaged toes. The one good thing about hosting the mixer in the high school gymnasium was that no one was allowed to wear dress shoes on the polished wood floor. After yesterday’s long and trying day in a new pair of heels, she was more than grateful to the overzealous janitor, Leonard Moore, for his diligence in keeping the floor unscuffed.

  She smoothed her hands down her dress and tried not to appear nervous. But she was. She was always nervous around so many of the indigenous residents of Sugar Springs. No matter how long she had lived here, she knew she would never completely fit in. She wasn’t a Yankee. No, it wasn’t that bad, but when everyone gathered around like this, it became apparent that she wasn’t southern. It didn’t matter that she had spent most of her formative years in Mexico or farther south in Central America, she was still an outsider. Around here “South” was more than a direction; it was an attitude. A way of life. And she was not southern enough for anyone in the room. Except for maybe Chloe.

  Arlo waved to her friend and made her way over to where she stood next to the refreshments table.

  “The planning committee really outdid themselves,” Arlo remarked. Or rather, the high school art department did. Blue and silver streamers draped down from the center of the gym, giving the place a carnival-tent effect. Matching balloons were tied to every available surface, bobbing on the gusts of air coming in from the vents. Crepe paper flowers of bl
ue and white were clustered together, filling the basketball goal nets and otherwise tricking a person into not immediately realizing they were in a gym. Only the royal-blue-painted bleachers and the grinning face of the Blue Devils mascot in the center of the court gave it away. And the scoreboard, of course, but the overall effect was nice. Even the tablecloths, cups, plates, and plasticware matched to the school’s colors. On the table next to them sat two large bowls of punch: one lime green, the other sweet pink. Some trickster had placed a card in front of each. The card in front of the green punch had the word “virgin” written on it; the pink punch’s card said “experienced.” She could only hope that no one brought cocktail wieners.

  “You’re late.” Chloe hissed.

  “I got caught up with Cindy Jo,” Arlo explained.

  Chloe nodded to the far corner of the room where Cindy Jo stood by herself, nursing a blue plastic cup of punch. The virgin version if Arlo was guessing right. “She made it on time.”

  “She was already dressed when she stopped me from going into the house and getting ready,” Arlo returned.

  “I needed you here.” Chloe’s voice held a panicked edge.

  “I’m here now. What’s been going on?”

  “Same ol’, same ol.” Chloe took a long draw on her punch—definitely the spiked version.

  “Better slow down on that.” Arlo reached to take the glass from her.

  Chloe held it out of her reach. “Get your own.”

  Arlo poured herself a cup of the pink punch, vowing it would be her one and only. After this drink, she would switch to the virgin punch. If she was guessing right, she was going to have to take Chloe home at the end of the evening.

  Chloe raised a hand to her riotous blond curls, pulling on one behind her ear. Her fingers were shaking as she unwound it and let it spring back into place.

  “Why are you so nervous?” Arlo took a sip of the sherbet-based concoction. It was actually pretty good. A little strong, she thought as the liquor hit the back of her throat, but good. Yes, definitely only one of these would do the trick. She glanced at Chloe. Wonder how many she’s had.