by Tonya Kappes
“You just keep on being who you are and they’ll come around. It might take longer than you anticipated to sell the place.” She smiled. “But mark my words, everyone will help out when they see that you are doing the right thing. Me and all the girls know you are.”
“Thank you, but I don’t want to think about that right now.” I put my hand on the cart. “I’m here to work.”
“Have you ever worked in a library?” she asked.
Worked? I wanted to laugh, but her face was so serious that I kept the fact that I’d maybe even used a library a handful of times and that was my high school library.
“No. But I do know how to put books back and these look like they need to go back.” It was a perfect start for me.
“Great.” She checked her watch. “It gives me free time to get story time together.”
“That’s so cute.” I glanced back at the children’s section. “I heard them when I walked in.”
“Unfortunately, we have the children’s section in the back because they like to run away and they usually can’t make it to the door before we can grab them.” She gave a half smile. “Anyways, just let me know if you need anything.”
“I will. Thanks, Abby for giving me this chance.” I wanted to make sure that I thanked her.
“It’s nothing.” She brushed it off. “I pulled you some reference books for RV owners and I put them on the counter so you wouldn’t forget.”
“Thank you. You know, I get why people are skeptical of me, but like you said, I’m going to show them differently.” I put my other hand on the cart and pushed it down the aisle she was working in before I’d gotten there.
Abby hurried off and left me to figure it out, though she thought I knew what I was doing. How hard could it be?
After comparing the numbers and the letters, it wasn’t as tough as it looked. I was happy to get the first stack of books put away and got a little sidetracked when I got to the travel section and found a book on Normal.
There were all sorts of photos of Happy Trails in the hay day and the lake. I couldn’t help but wonder if it looked like this when Paul won it in college. He was much older than me and if did the math, say he was twenty-one when he won the bet, he was sixty-one now. That’d been forty-years ago. I remember Alvin Deters’s saying he was in his fifties and wondered if he’d remembered what it looked like. Maybe I could go back and see him and approach him that way. Really get to know him instead of just asking for credit.
“Are you almost done?” Abby pepped around the corner of the travel bookshelf. “Oh, you’ve not finished but one shelf? It’s been an hour.”
“It has?” My jaw dropped. “I’m so sorry. I picked up this book on Normal and just got lost into it.”
I’d heard many times from people how they could get lost in a library for hours. I never understood that until this moment.
“Well, just leave it. You can finish after story hour.” She held out a book and a bag.
“Story hour?” I looked between her and the bag.
“Yeah, it’s fun. I thought you’d enjoy that.” Abby was wrong. By far wrong.
“Kids don’t really like me.” I shrugged.
“Three-fourths of Normal don’t like you either, but you’re still here.” She joked. “Here. You’ll be fine. Just read the book. The craft is a color page today so that’s easy.”
“Craft? Easy? Trust me when I say that I can screw up a color page.” I waved my hands in front of me.
“You’ll be fine.” She jammed the bag in my hand and then the book. “Take it as a lesson. If you can handle the children in Normal, you can handle their parents when you start working on that fundraiser.”
She didn’t leave any room for me to protest as she walked away.
Story time felt like it went longer than thirty minutes. I’d been told several times by the kids that they couldn’t see the pictures as I read, so I quickly learned to hold the book out in front of me and try to read sideways. Then someone said that all the characters sounded the same, so I changed my voice a few times and they laughed, so I kept changing my voice with different characters.
It was the craft coloring page that took me under. Some kids broke the crayons, some kids crumbled the paper, while some just fell asleep. Trying to keep everyone engage was exhausting.
“Librarian? I never figured you for the type.” The familiar southern draw snickered from behind me.
“Hank.” I stood up from trying to get one of the children to sit and color. “I mean, Detective Hank.” I gulped. “Detective Sharp.” I looked away when I felt myself blush. “I had to get a job and this . . .”
“This seems to be harder than you thought?” He laughed. “You look frustrated. Let me help.”
I took a step back, “If you think you can do better.”
“Hey kids.” He spoke above their whimpers, giggles, and chatter. “Who would like a police sticker?”
The kids ran screaming towards him with their hands flailing in the air.
“Great. When you finish coloring your paper, bring it to me for a sticker,” he spoke in a gentle and kind tone.
Quickly, the children I’d been trying to get to color along with the rest of the kids, hurried back to the miniature tables and were silent as they colored the page.
“I didn’t know I could bribe them.” I smiled. “Thanks for the tip. I need stickers. I’m guessing you aren’t here to check out a book?”
“I’m here to check you out.” He looked at me. I wasn’t sure if that was a pick up line, but he completely clarified. “Not check you out, but talk to you and I heard over at the diner about you going to The Tough Nickel and then you went to see Alvin.”
“Gosh, word sure does travel fast around here.” I rolled my eyes and put my hands on my hips. “Everyone in town thinks I killed Paul.”
“Did you?” He asked.
My head tilted, I glared.
“I cleared all that up with everyone. I told them you didn’t because the preliminary report came back and it appears Paul had been there a few days.” His words were music to my ears only for the fact that it showed I didn’t kill him. “According to the pings on your cell phone,”
“You pinged my cell phone?” My jaw dropped as I interrupted him.
“I got a warrant.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “You weren’t anywhere near Normal.”
“I told you that. But it still upsets me that Paul was murdered. You have a whole town as suspects,” I said and began to rattle, “Not that I think Ty Randal did it, but he has reason, then you have Henry, who I really don’t think did it, but what about Dottie Swaggert?”
“Hmmm…maybe reading to little kids and being in charge of a trailer park is what you need to stick too,” he said.
“What does that mean?” I drew back.
“It means that you aren’t a detective. I’m only here to let you know that you’re off the hook. You can leave Normal today if you wanted.” He looked down when a little child walked up and tugged on his pants with their scribbled page done.
“I’m not leaving Normal,” I spat. “I’m staying and I’m going to fix up Happy Trails.”
“Really?” He looked all sort of not happy and a little shocked rolled up into one. He took out some of those stickers he’d promised the kids and dolled them out to the little hands like candy.
“Yes. Really.” I confirmed and took a few more coloring pages as he gave them the sticker.
“I just figured you’d go back to your old life.” He apparently didn’t listen to me last night after I told him why I was in Normal.
That tip of my eye started to twitch and the anger boiled inside of me.
“You figured?” I questioned.
“Are you mad that I thought you’d leave?” He questioned, his voice a little louder. “It’s not every day that someone with your social status decides to live in a run-down camper in a rural Kentucky town they know nothing about. Unless you do know more about Kentucky
than you’re letting on.”
“I see that you’ve been snooping in my background, which was a lifetime ago. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Hank,” I put an emphasis on his name, “but I own a campground that needs to be fixed up. I’m sorry that you figured wrong about me and my intention to stay in town.”
I left out the fact that I had no place to go or zero cash to do it with. Normal was all I had and he came along with it whether I liked him or not. Because currently, I wasn’t liking him.
He took a step back.
“According to my sources, your family perished in a horrific house fire and you survived. There was talk about how you got out and not everyone else.” He brought back memories that taken a lot of therapy and money to get rid of. “Then you had to live with foster families up until you turned eighteen.” His eyes lowered as did his voice, “Why is it that you’re really here in Normal?”
“Listen,” I lowered my voice when I noticed there were no children in the children’s section and Abby had peeked her head around the corner. “As much as you and everyone in town would like to believe, I don’t have a caring bone in my body, I do. I want to help out the people in Normal and I’m going to prove it. You didn’t hear a word I said to you last night, did you?”
I tried not to even comment on what he’d said about my past.
“I didn’t listen because I was busy making sure you had electricity.” His southern charm turned on and I tried to assess if he did it on purpose or if just came naturally.
“Recap.” I put my hand up for him to stop talking. “My only home is that RV and Happy Trails. Yes. My entire family died in a house fire. It was awful, but not as bad as being thrown from one foster family to the next. I got out of Kentucky and I’m sorry if it’s not the grand place everyone thinks it is, because it’s not fond for me.”
I sucked in a deep breath and stuck my hand up when he opened his mouth.
“Now that you know I’m not a suspect, I’m going to try my hardest to make Happy Trails what it used to be. It might take me years, but I’m here and I’m going to do it. I’m terribly upset about what Paul did to the citizens in Normal. Whether you want to believe it or not, I never will excuse Paul for what he did, but he didn’t deserve what someone did to him either.”
“Are you trying to tell me that not only are you staying here, but you’re not going to stop snooping around with this list of suspects you have in your head?” He questioned.
“It means that I’m going to try to make everything right. If that means making good on the people he wronged here in Normal while trying to figure out who killed him. . .” I hesitated, “Yeah. That’s what that means.”
We stood there in silence staring at each other. He opened his mouth and shut it a couple of times like he wanted to say something to me. It appeared I’d stumped him and he didn’t have the words. As he did this little internal battle with himself, the words that’d come out of my mouth about how I was going to make everything really did start to settle into my soul.
Then it dawned on me. I wasn’t here to just to get Happy Trails back to the way it was, but to make everything right with everyone in Normal. That also included Paul and what happened to him.
“Here’s the book for the next book club.” Abby handed me a worn out paperback book that was kept together with duct tape.
“I’ve got to get going.” Hank gave me one last long hard look before he turned around and walked out of the library.
“I don’t read.” I reluctantly took the book and curled it to my chest as I thought about Ty Randal and his situation.
He was the first person I was going to see in the matter of who did Paul in.
NINE
“You can’t leave your clothes in the washer.” Queenie was scolding a young girl on the other side of The Laundry Club. “It’ll get all mildewed and stinky.” She threw her hip to the side and planted her hand on the lime green waist band of the tights she was wearing. “Who wants to smell a stinky uniform when you’re trying to deliver delicious food?”
I couldn’t help but smile. The poor young lady didn’t look more than twenty-years-old. She had her dishwater blonde hair pulled in a high ponytail. I could tell by the length of her ponytail that her hair must’ve been long because the end of the ponytail went past her shoulders. She had a thick waist and full hips and stood about five feet eight inches tall. There was a look of terror on her face when she watched Queenie push buttons and pour liquid in the cups of the laundry machine.
“How did the library gig go?” Dottie asked. She was sitting at card table where Queenie ’s fake crystal ball had once sat.
“Crazy.” My brows shot up. “First I got sidetracked when I was putting the returned books back on the shelf.” I held up a couple of the books about Normal. “I found these in the non-fiction section and was really happy to see that the brochure and the photos in the book look similar, so we can get the RV park back in tiptop shape. And now I think I can figure out how this whole RV living thing works with the books Abby pulled for me. She also found me some books on how to run a business.”
“That’s what you call crazy?” Dottie asked and pointed to the coffee station. “Fresh pot. Go grab you one and fill me back up.” She exchanged her coffee mug with the books in my arms. “And the book club book.”
“Yeah. Abby shoved that into my hands after I had to do the story time for the children,” I said over my shoulder on my way to the coffee. “and crafts. That was crazy because I’ve never been good with kids,. And Hank.” I poured, and Dottie interrupted me.
“Detective Sharp?” She asked.
“Yeah. He came in to talk to me and he actually got the kids to do the craft by bribing them with stickers.” I walked back with a cup in each hand and sat them on the table.
“Did he say anything about the investigation?” She asked, which reminded me about what Betts had said about overhearing the older ladies in the community gossip as she cleans their houses.
“He said that Paul had been dead longer than I’d been in town and he’d subpoena my cell phone records to show that I’d not been in contact with Paul by checking the location feature. Who knew phones were so smart.” I brought the cup up to my lips. “I told him I didn’t do it and I gave him a list of people who might’ve had motive from Normal.”
“That’s why I don’t have one of them darned cell phones. The government is spying on me.” Queenie headed over to the puzzle table and gave what was already completed a good onceover.
“No one cares what you’re doing, Queenie.” Dottie rolled her eyes.
Queenie shot Dottie a look, but Dottie didn’t see it. I gave Queenie a smile and mouthed that I cared about her. She grinned.
“Why do you think it was someone from Normal?” Dottie shifted in her chair.
“Because he did a lot of people wrong here and was found here. Not just money either.” I gnawed on the thought of whether I should ask her about the conversation Abby heard and just went for it. “Dottie,” I put my cup down and reached over the table, cupping her hand in mine. “I understand that Paul gave you a sob story, but I also understand that he was planning on firing you.”
“How did you know that?” She jerked her hand away and leaned further back in the chair, crossing her arms over her chest.
“I’m finding out really fast that Normal is very small. People talk around here, even to strangers.” I circled my finger around my mug and sat there in silence.
“You think I killed him?” She leaned forward and tapped her fingernail on the table. “That just beats the band, Mae West. You come waltzing into our town and we,” she circled her finger around the air around her, “take you in, flaws and all, because honey, you’ve got a lot more issues than Time Magazine.”
“I. . .” I stammered from the little bit of tongue lashing I was getting. It wasn’t my intent at all.
“Don’t go and give me no excuse. I didn’t kill that sorry sack of youknowwhat and I don’t have to explain
nothin’ to you or Hank Sharp.” She jumped up and grabbed her pleather cigarette case that had a top snap closer.
In a flash, she scurried over to the door and shoved it opened, causing the glass door to slam into the outside wall of the building and light her cig as she sat on the curb of the sidewalk.
“Now what did you do?” Queenie glowered at me and rushed out the door to Dottie’s side.
I sat there wondering how to make the situation right, but she sure was acting guilty instead of just telling me about the fight, I thought as I watched her stiff lips fussing as the smoke rolled out with each word. Every once in a while, she jabbed the air with her cigarette and fingers towards me.
“Excuse me,” the young girl who Queenie was helping got my attention. She had on a pair of black skinny jeans with black Converse tennis shoes on. “Do you know how to start this dryer? Mine broke and my boyfriend is out of town.”
“Sure. In fact, I didn’t know how to use it until yesterday.” My heart tugged knowing that without Dottie, I’d never survived my last couple of days in Normal where nothing was normal.
“Really?” She questioned.
“Really. I think we should write the directions down and post them. Don’t you?” I took her quarter and showed her what the best option was for the quick dry cycle since she didn’t have a whole lot.
“That would be a good idea. Thanks.” She nodded and went back to the book shelf.
“No problem.” I glanced back out of the door on my way back to the front. Queenie was rubbing Dottie’s back. Dottie had her forehead planted in the palm of her hand. “I’m Mae.”
I wanted her to feel welcome because it was only a few short days ago that I was here in her shoes and didn’t know a soul in the Laundry Club. I recalled how good I felt when they helped me out and I wanted to pay the kindness forward.
“Trudy Bull,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you and I’m so glad you helped me.” She put her hands in prayer pose with a small bow.