by Alana Terry
Joe, Wilma, and Alexa sat in her living room discussing her unwelcome visitors. If Alexa’s mystery spies were the killers, then they were some incredibly bold people. Alexa took a sip of her tea, thinking, and startled. Joe caught it. “What?”
“Well... oh, it’s ridiculous.”
Joe glared.
Chuckling, she continued. “It’s just that so many people know so much about me and my life, but a lot of what they believe about me is not true. Like the way I handwrite my manuscripts. Did you know that there’s a local legend that says I burn them page by page?”
Joe’s and Wilma’s heads nodded, their bodies tensing slightly with anticipation. Alexa almost felt as if she would destroy their illusions about the reality of Santa Claus if she spoke. “Sorry—not true. I write them on acid free paper, bind them in ribbon, and store them in acid free pasteboard boxes.”
“Why?” Despite her initial disappointment, Wilma almost quivered with excitement. “I always thought the stories were true—your dresses. You do wear...”
“Sorry to disappoint you. It’s a purely mercenary ritual. The first time I handwrote one was after I completed the final edit on my first book. I was amazed at how long it took me to get the book written, edited, re-edited, and edited...again. It’s exhausting.”
Joe crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.
Taking that as his way of saying, “Continue,” she did. “Well, I was thinking about Jane Austen—my heroine, obviously—and how she had to write every word with quill and ink. She had no electricity, so most of her writing would have had to be done by natural and candlelight or oil lamp. She likely sat in straight-backed chairs and kept warm by wearing shawls to protect her from drafts. I decided to try it. To live as much like she did—within reason—as possible and hand copy my manuscript just to see how long it would take to produce a ‘perfect copy’ suitable for submission to a publisher as she must have done.”
“How long did it take?”
The semi-breathlessness to Wilma’s tone brought a smile to her lips. “The first one took over four weeks, writing most of each day. I mentioned it to my best friend, and she said she thought it’d be worth a fortune someday. I’d planned to toss it eventually, but once the first book was a bestseller, I decided to keep it. I did it again after the second. I now have eight of those pasteboard boxes in my linen closet.”
Joe sat up abruptly. “You keep them in your linen closet? Why not a safe or safe deposit box?”
“I was advised to keep them out of plastic and in some place where air circulates—something about how the paper needs to breathe or something.”
Curiosity grew on Wilma’s face until she spoke. “Alexa, do you have a piece of the paper you use for your manuscripts? I don’t need an actual page you wrote on—just the kind you use.”
Alexa pulled a sheet of acid free “parchment” paper from her writing desk drawer. “This is what I use. No acid, no lignin. Archival quality.”
Wilma smiled. “I used to work for a company responsible for training people how to handle historical books and documents. Your friend had the right idea but wrong product. Your books can be put in Mylar for protection from general problems. The linen closet is a really good place here. It’s not too cold, hot, humidity is constant, and they’re protected from light.”
Fascinated, Alexa asked, “So why did she say not to use plastics around the paper?”
“You don’t use plastics around real parchment, but for papers like this, it’s fine.”
UNCONCERNED WITH PLASTIC and parchment—real or fake—Joe stood and wandered around the house, lost in thought. He returned to the living room and watched Alexa pick up a string of pearls and drape them over a few branches. She stepped back to view the effect with what he assumed was a critical eye. It sparked a thought.
“Don’t you change your tree every year? I thought I read that somewhere. Aren’t you on the garden club’s after-Christmas tour?”
“Yep. I change it every year and every other year I’m on the tour.”
“What do you do with previous year’s ornaments?”
She turned to look at him and slipped from the ladder. Wilma jumped up with more speed and agility than he’d seen from the woman since he’d arrested her. Alexa brushed off their concern. “I feel stupid,” she muttered as she adjusted a pant set that looked like something out of I Love Lucy to him. She met Joe’s eyes, her own curious. “They’re in the garage. Why?”
“Mind if I take a look?”
She reached for a cardigan lying over the back of a chair and retrieved keys from a hook near the back door. “C’mon. I’ll show you. It’s easier than trying to explain how to find them.”
Outside, she shivered, pulling her cardigan tighter around her. “Not to be rude, especially since Wilma seems to feel better with you here, but don’t you have to be at work?”
Joe shook his head and unzipped his jacket, showing civilian clothes. “My night off.”
Even in the dim reflection of her garage outside light, he saw the dismay in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called your personal phone. I ruined your night off.”
He shook his head. “I want this guy even more than you do. I’m glad you called.”
She gave him a weak smile as she opened the side door and flipped on the interior light. Something scurried behind her car. Alexa unhooked a broom from its place on the wall and moved to attack. Joe pulled it from her hand, irritating her. “Why’d you do that! I’ve got to get that thing before it breeds—whatever it is.”
Joe stepped near the back of the vehicle. “Officer Joe Freidan speaking. Come out from behind that car. It’s my night off and I don’t want to have to arrest you—don’t need the paperwork for one thing.”
Another scuffle, followed by a thud, preceded a pained, “Ow!” A head surfaced behind her right rear bumper. He snickered as Alexa’s jaw connected with her knees before she could retrieve it and replace it in its proper position on her face.
“Hunter? Hunter Badgerton, what are you doing in my garage!”
Alexa and Joe stared at one another as they tried to comprehend the young teen’s three-and-a-half-minute run-on sentence. Joe started to interrupt twice, but to deprive their local author of such a masterpiece of grammatical horrors seemed cruel. By the time he finished confessing something—of great import, Joe was certain—the poor kid was near tears. “I just wanted a little extra money for Christmas. I wasn’t going to take anything. Just look. That’s all they said!”
“All who said?” The unified question echoed through the garage.
Alexa motioned for Hunter to follow her inside. Joe glanced around the garage to see if anything looked disturbed. By the time he reached the kitchen, Wilma fussed over Hunter, and Alexa stood at the stove, making him hot chocolate. Joe managed enough self-control not to request tweezers with which to tear out his buzz cut hair.
“So, a kid breaks into your garage, does who knows what in there for some unnamed ‘them,’ and you’re making him hot cocoa?”
Alexa nodded. “Sandwich?”
Hunter’s nod nearly sent Joe through the roof. “Thanks, Miss Lexie. I missed dinner.”
“You have that teenaged boy, half-starved look to you.”
Joe watched in disgusted fascination as Alexa grilled a roast beef, provolone, and turkey sandwich. His mouth watered as she added lettuce, tomato, and pepper. A carrot, peeled and quartered, and an apple appeared and disappeared from the plate as the boy inhaled his food.
Joe’s traitorous stomach rumbled. Without a glance his way, Alexa retrieved the loaf of sourdough bread and removed two more slices. Another pat of butter sizzled in the frying pan while she assembled another sandwich. As it grilled, she gave Hunter another appraising look and pulled a container from the fridge. While Joe ate his sandwich, savoring every bite, and while Hunter nibbled at his last apple wedge as if it was his final meal, Alexa reheated a pot of soup. Large ladles of minestrone filled soup cups. She h
anded each of them a spoon and admonished them to eat all they wanted.
“Hunter, I’m going to go work on my Christmas tree some more. You come talk to me when you’re done eating.”
Joe’s first bite of soup stuck in his throat as she spoke. He coughed and sputtered, gulping down a huge glass of milk—one he didn’t remember her pouring—in his attempt to clear his airway. He’d forgotten why Hunter was even there. Food should never have that kind of power over anyone.
As Alexa hung more strands of pearls from the tree branches, she and Wilma discussed strategies for proving Wilma’s innocence. “I just know there has to be a way to prove you were not the one who put that cyanide in that coffee.”
“I thought it was in the cupcake.”
“Nope, in my story, it was the coffee. Cyanide is too bitter for a cupcake to mask.”
Joe stepped into the room as Alexa called out to him, asking about fingerprints on Wilma’s back door. “Yep. They got ‘em. Wilma accounted for every one they found.”
“Whose did they find? Don’t you live alone?”
“Just mine, my son’s, Ray Connors—he fixed my back door last week—hinge was getting loose—and the man from the gas company who came in to light my pilot when it went out.”
The discussion took off in a new direction, leaving Hunter standing in the doorway. After a few minutes, he cleared his throat. “This is all cool and stuff, but I have to get home. Can we get the lecture thing over?”
Joe opened his mouth to ask the usual questions of someone caught trespassing, but Alexa preempted him. Unaware of his frustration, she asked, “Who paid you and what did they pay you to do?”
The boy shrugged. “I don’t know who they are, but they just paid me to look in your car to see if there were any unusual maps, medicine bottles, bills, parking tickets... that kind of thing. I never even got into the car. It was locked.”
“They wanted to know what was in it? Were you supposed to take whatever you found?”
Hunter had the grace to blush. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a ridiculously small digital camera. Alexa stared at it in disgust. “That thing is hardly bigger than a pack of gum. How are you supposed to hold onto it? My fingers are too big to push those buttons properly.”
Joe dropped his voice a notch—that precise tone that kids dreaded. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you could be in? Are you aware that what you’ve done is called breaking and entering? It’s a misdemeanor. If you’d taken those pictures—serious trouble, buddy.”
Hunter’s face shifted from beet red to paste white. “I didn’t—I mean, I guess I knew it wasn’t right, but illegal? I didn’t realize. I thought I was help—”
Alexa’s eyes leveled on the boy. “Well, you do now, and boy, let me tell you. This is the last time you’ll invade someone’s privacy.”
“You gonna tell my mom?”
“Nope.” Hunter’s relief dissolved into frustration as she continued. “You are. Got it?”
“Yeah...”
Joe interrupted before Alexa could let him go. “When are you supposed to give these people the camera?”
“Well, they gave me the camera. I just have to give them the memory card.”
“When?” Joe pressed. “When do you give them their camera back?”
Hunter’s shoulders slumped. “I’m supposed to be at The Confectionary eating a maple donut on Saturday morning at six. I hope they’re on time. I hate maple.”
Joe suppressed the urge to laugh and if Alexa’s expression could be trusted, so did she. Whoever set the crazy scheme in motion knew how to appeal to a kid’s sense of adventure. He started to tell the boy how the meeting would change when Alexa interrupted.
“Hey. Who are these people? What do they look like? Where did you meet them, and why on earth did you agree to help them?”
“Well... when you were gone I forgot to hold your paper one day, so I went back to get it. When I got there, they were on your porch, trying to look through your window. I said you weren’t home.”
Joe waited, but the boy didn’t continue. “And...”
“Well, they said you guys were old friends and that they’d heard you were in trouble with the police. They said they wanted to help, but I said you didn’t need help. I mean, come on, someone who writes murders would know how to handle the police.”
“You’d think,” Alexa muttered, shooting Joe an amused glance.
Obviously eager to finish, Hunter continued. “They said that they were afraid you might miss something—being too close to the situation and everything.”
“But why did you believe strangers like that?”
“Because their car had been here a lot before you left. I mean, why wouldn’t I?”
“Car?” Alexa, Wilma, and Joe all spoke in unison.
“Yeah—that white Ford Focus? It’s been out there every other day for the past three weeks.”
Chapter 14
SATURDAY, ALEXA PUTTERED around her house, accomplishing little. She wrapped a few gifts and baked cookies and her traditional Yule log, but her heart wasn’t in it. Though she desperately tried to be patient, the idea of patience being a virtue rapidly grew into an overrated notion.
She glanced at the clock again. Eleven-thirty. She checked the house phone—dial tone present and accounted for. Her cellphone showed adequate bars and nothing on the voicemail.
Her stomach rumbled. Alexa glanced in her fridge, trying to remember what she’d planned for lunch. Only half-aware of her actions, she chopped chicken, onion, and mushrooms. She grated parmesan cheese and cooked fresh pasta. By the time she finished, a plate of chicken linguini and a Caesar salad sat at her usual place on her dining room table. Absently, and after two nasty glances at her silent phone, she prayed and picked up her fork. Her Sunday dinner had just become her Saturday lunch.
Before she took the first bite, Alexa heard someone on her steps. A knock at the door made her jump despite knowing it was coming. She answered the door, her fork still in hand. At the sight of Joe, she opened the door wider to let him in, bombarding him with one question after another.
“Where have you been? I’ve been going crazy! Did you catch them? Who are they?”
The look on Joe’s face told her before he could open his mouth. “They didn’t show. We searched all the area hotels, rental agencies, everything. They’ve vanished. If you hadn’t seen them outside your house and described the identical car Hunter mentioned...”
She beckoned him to follow her. “No, Joe. Hunter wouldn’t. I’ve known him too long. He thought he was being helpful.” She pointed to her plate. “I’m having lunch. Do you want some?”
“He acted guilty.”
“We treated him like he was guilty. He was ready to clam up when he realized he was caught and things weren’t what he’d been told.”
Joe took the plate she offered him. “Is that why you fed him? To relax him into telling us what we wanted to know?”
“We played good cop/bad cop. I was the good cop.”
“You came down pretty hard on him too.”
“Once I knew what I needed to know.” Alexa smirked and took another bite before Joe countered with another objection.
The silence of her house magnified each clink of forks against plates, each sip of water. The heavy realization that the probable murderers of two of Fairbury’s citizens had been sitting outside Alexa’s house less than twenty-four hours earlier created even more tension. The air fairly sizzled with unspoken questions.
As she ate, Alexa enjoyed a little discreet observation of Fairbury’s favorite officer. He enjoyed the food—that fact evident by the way he savored each bite—but there was something more to it. It made him curious, but what about, she couldn’t imagine. Thoughts flickered across his face as he chewed, ranging from delighted with his food, to curiosity over something, and at last, bewilderment. The rock wall that usually protected his thoughts and feelings had vanished. This side of him made Joe seem more likeable.
>
She couldn’t stand it anymore. “What?”
The wall dropped back over Joe’s face like prison bars. “Did I say something?”
Alexa laughed. “Yes. Your expression did.”
“I didn’t say a word. What do you think my face said?”
“Well, you liked the food and something about it and me is confusing. You’re curious about it.”
Joe’s face almost betrayed him. She saw a nearly imperceptible flicker of surprise before the familiar wall returned to protect him from any vulnerability. He swallowed and took a drink before saying, “Well, those things are true, but they’re also an excellent guess.”
“But you don’t guess. You ask specific questions and base your decisions upon facts that you can substantiate. If you weren’t exactly who you are, you would have branded me guilty faster than the chief.”
Laughing, Joe wiped his mouth with his napkin and tossed it on the table next to his plate. “Well, that’s not quite true. It’s a logistical impossibility for you to have killed either of those people.”
“Logistical or not, whomever did this has slaughtered my manuscript. I’m afraid to continue writing. I stare at my monitor, wondering if I dare to kill the next person in the plot or if I should change genres so that I can stop this.”
Their eyes met and held, shock washing over her as she realized she’d spoken the thought she never thought to share. Since the first murder, the idea that the crimes she had fabricated in her imagination could become a reality had overwhelmed her. She would rather quit writing if it meant that innocent people would die. The idea seemed like a dime novel plot from the turn of the twentieth century. Now that she had voiced it, it seemed a death sentence—the death of her career.
“I disagree. If you don’t continue writing, we’ll never catch these guys. They’ll move onto someone else, and we or some other department will have to start all over again. We need to determine why they are doing this and how.”