Read on Arrival

by Nora Page

  “The newspaper reporter embellished my emotions,” Cleo repeated. “What really matters is why Dixie was volunteering to give the book back. She was acting strangely yesterday. Frightened. She claimed she was about to die. She’d seen signs that death was coming for her, and she wanted forgiveness. That’s why she offered to return the book.”

  They all looked back toward the kitchen. After a beat, Gabby said quietly. “She was right about death coming for her.” She shifted the duffle to her other shoulder. “So … I should look around the perimeter. Since you’re a suspect, I should forbid you from coming along.”

  “What if Henry and I kept a few steps back and volunteered helpful information?” Cleo asked.

  Gabby headed down the porch, not answering directly. “This one’s creepy. I suspect we’ll need all the help we can get.”

  The young deputy produced a camera from the duffle and looped it around her neck. She began another methodical march, this time around the perimeter of Dixie’s fairytale home.

  Cleo and Henry followed the promised few steps behind. “You said you found a syringe?” Cleo prompted, hoping Gabby would share.

  Gabby photographed a rip in a window screen. “The chief won’t want me sharing info with suspects. On the other hand …” Gabby glanced over her shoulder and then at Cleo and Henry with a wry twist of her lip. “I could ask y’all, as suspects, if you dropped a generic brand Epi-pen into the floor vent near Mrs. Huddleston’s body?”

  Cleo played along with the grim game. “No,” she breathed. “How terrible.” She hadn’t been looking in vents. She’d been focused on the note. “Dixie had medicine but dropped it? Oh, she’d be frantic.”

  Gabby nodded, grim-faced. “Yeah, she would. But the syringe appeared to have been used. Something went wrong.”

  Cleo and Henry shared a solemn look.

  “Tell me about this morning,” Gabby said encouragingly. “I need a time line.”

  Cleo liked details, any good librarian did. She settled into providing an account of the morning. After some internal debate, she decided to tell Gabby about the argument during the Who-Done-It meeting. “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” she said as disclaimer. “It sparked from a heated book discussion.”

  Gabby was squatting, head tilted, eyes practically on the ground. She snapped a photo of a bent flower stem and another of the dirt below it. Cleo stepped closer and spotted an indentation, possibly a footprint.

  “Dixie said she saw the Grim Reaper outside her window,” Cleo said.

  Gabby rose with an easy fluidity Cleo’s knees hadn’t allowed for in years. “Okay, we’ll add the angel of death to the suspect list. Tell me about this book-club argument. We need a better suspect than you, Miss Cleo, and all information is helpful.” She craned her chin up. On a diamond-paned window a few inches above Gabby’s head, a dark blob moved against the pane. Cleo realized they were under the pantry. Dixie was just inside. Cleo stepped back and told Gabby about Iris Hays and her outburst over pancakes.

  “I don’t know why Iris was being so rude, yelling about wanting Dixie dead,” Cleo said. “It upset Dixie’s friend Pat Holmes,” Cleo said. “The whole book group got involved. Some pancake batter got spilled.”

  “We’ll need to talk to Dixie’s friends,” Gabby said. “This Pat, do you know where I can find her?”

  Cleo started to tell Gabby about Pat’s cleaning business. “It’s at the same property as her home, over on the southwest side of town. Or she could be out running errands after book group or—”

  “Or right here,” Henry cut in. He pointed across the lawn. Chugging toward them, head dipped and arms churning, came Pat. She stumbled across a bed of bright impatiens, not bothering with the winding path of mowed grass. “Cleo!” she called, waving and nearly tripping.

  Gabby stepped out to meet Pat, who stopped just short of the deputy, hands on her knees, gulping like a flounder out of water. Cleo reached Pat and put an arm around her shuddering shoulders.

  “Oh, Pat,” Cleo said to the sobbing woman. “You must have heard. I am so very sorry.”

  “I was downtown,” Pat said through gasping breaths. “Someone said Dixie Huddleston’s dead. Dead! I didn’t believe it. I don’t believe it!”

  She turned to Cleo. “There’s an ambulance—that means she’s okay, right? I told her just yesterday that she was fine, that the signs didn’t mean anything.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Gabby said, her slow headshake and grim expression saying the rest.

  Pat sank to the ground. Her fingers clutched at the grass.

  Cleo lowered herself too, ignoring the ache in her knees and the chill under the damp grass. She held Pat’s limp palm in both of hers. “Henry and I found Dixie. I’m afraid the EMTs couldn’t help her. She was too far … gone.”

  “Gone,” Pat sniffled, tears making rivers down her cheeks. “Why? How? I didn’t believe her! I didn’t listen to her. If anyone should have, it was me.”

  Henry proffered a neatly folded cotton handkerchief. Pat blew and wiped and sniffled some more. Then her eye caught the moving blob on the window. She pointed. ‘What’s that?” Her eyes widened, as if just now taking in Gabby and the implications of her uniformed presence. “Why are you here? The police, I mean. What’s going on?”

  Cleo looked to Gabby for direction, unsure of how much she should say.

  Gabby had regained her composure. “We have some questions regarding the circumstances of Mrs. Huddleston’s death,” she said briskly.

  Pat hefted herself up. With a hearty heave, she helped Cleo to her feet too. Gabby held out an arm to keep Pat from getting too close to the flowerbed with the footprint, but the window was clearly visible and in it, the beekeeper. He wore a mask and protective coveralls and aimed a net at the swarm.

  “Did your friend have any trouble with bees getting inside her home?” Gabby asked. “An infestation?”

  “Bees?” Pat gasped. “No! Dixie would never let bees get inside. She was allergic. Terribly, deadly allergic!”

  Gabby drew out a small notebook, pen poised over it. “Who else knew about her allergies, ma’am? I’m sorry to keep asking you questions, but we have to know, and time is critical.”

  Pat stood rooted, mouth open, staring up at the window. The beekeeper came in and out of focus, net waving wildly. Cleo imagined she could hear the swarm fighting back, loud and angry, stingers zinging.

  But it was a sharper, clearer sound she heard. A whistle, soft at first but coming closer.

  Pat heard it too. She pointed toward the sound, although there was nothing to see in that direction but dense holly hedges. Beyond would be the edge of the back porch and the pathway leading to the cottage.

  “Them!” Pat cried, pointing toward the holly. “They knew! Dixie’s son and daughter-in-law. They were upset with Dixie. She told them she wanted her cottage back. She was going to kick them out.”

  Pat’s voice had risen to just below a bellow. The whistling went silent for a few moments. When it resumed, it was fading farther away, yet lighter and jollier than before.

  Chapter Six

  Some mornings demanded hot biscuits. This was one. Cleo awoke the next day to church bells announcing the early-bird Sunday service. She squeezed her eyes shut and burrowed under her grandmother’s quilt. When the next hour chimed, she squirmed and pried open a heavy eyelid. The quilt was perfectly cozy, but there was a problem. She had biscuits on her mind, and while Cleo could make biscuits in her sleep, dream biscuits wouldn’t appear in her oven or buttered on her plate.

  Cleo resigned herself to rising, both for baking and to appease Rhett Butler. The Persian stood on her chest. Four cat paws pressed down. She closed her eyes, yet could feel his intense stare. He wanted breakfast. Whiskers tickled her face. A cool kitty nose rubbed her forehead.

  “Oh, all right,” Cleo said, extricating herself from her cat and covers. “It is Sunday. When will you learn to sleep in?” Rhett hopped to the floor, mewing in victory, tail
pluming high. Cleo tugged on a long, fluffy bathrobe and stepped into her winter-fleece slippers. In the bathroom, she threw cold water on her face, Rhett twining around her legs impatiently.

  Last night she’d gone to bed early and exhausted by yesterday’s shocks. Rest, however, had eluded her. Nightmares woke her in paralyzing chills. Vaporous images roamed her mind, disturbing flashes of mimes whistling and a silver Airstream speeding toward her to a roaring buzz of bees. It didn’t help that Rhett decided to make his version of biscuits on Cleo’s head around five thirty, claws kneading, purr like a sump pump in a storm. Cleo didn’t chastise him. She was too glad for his furry company.

  Rhett bounded downstairs. Cleo plodded. At the foyer, the cat came to a claw-skidding halt. He rubbed his whiskers against the doorframe and stared at the threshold, tail twitching, suggesting someone—or something—was outside. The Persian could be as keen as a bloodhound. Or he could be making things up. Rhett was big on spotting imaginary prey.

  Cleo pressed her bifocal to the peephole. In fisheye perspective, her porch looked fine and ordinary. The floorboards were a glossy midnight blue, freshly painted just this fall. The ceiling was a lighter blue. Lots of southern porches sported similar sky-blue ceilings. Haint blue, her grandmother called it, for the belief that it scared off ghosts. It was supposed to fend off bees and wasps as well. Cleo searched her memory. She thought Dixie’s porch had a blue ceiling. It certainly hadn’t worked.

  Cleo was about to turn away, when she heard a squeak, metallic and repetitive. Rhett meowed to be let out.

  “Let me check first,” she told her cat, who was as prone to leaping into trouble as she was. With Rhett, trouble came in tangles with skunks or aggressive jays.

  Narrow windows flanked Cleo’s door. She edged back the filmy curtain. A pair of scarlet boots sailed upward, attached to rosy stockings, a flowery dress, a red-wool jacket, and a face she’d known and loved since they were babies.

  Cleo swung the door open. “Mary-Rose!” she exclaimed. “You must be freezing.” Rhett shot out, heading straight to the screen door, where he meowed more demands.

  Cleo continued her faux chastisement of her best friend. “Why didn’t you knock?” It was so chilly Cleo thought she might almost see her breath.

  “Nonsense.” Mary-Rose hopped off the swing and patted Rhett before doing his bidding and holding open the door for him. “Cold air is invigorating. I didn’t knock because I thought you might be resting.” She nodded at Cleo’s fluffy robe and slippers. “I was right.”

  Cleo tugged her robe tighter. “Come get inside. I’m about to make biscuits.”

  Mary-Rose slipped off her boots and led the way to the kitchen, where she drew a jar from the inner pocket of her jacket, like a spy turning over state secrets. Her cheeks glowed, as rosy as her name, and her long hair was twisted up in a braided bun. “It’s forbidden,” she warned. “We won’t tell your doctor.”

  Cleo read the label. “Pecan jam? That sounds delightful.”

  “It’s like pie in a jar,” Mary-Rose said. “I had a sample, and I said to myself, ‘It’s Sunday and Cleo’s had a shock finding another body.’ Plus being accused of murder is unsettling. I should know.”

  She did know. Cleo had helped her friend out of that trouble last spring too. She’d offered friendship and clues, but hadn’t thought to bring by pie in a jar. Cleo felt new urgency to get her biscuits going. She set out the ingredients, rationalizing as she tied an apron over her bathrobe. “It looks like it has a lot of nuts. Nuts are healthy. It’s spreadable. That means it hardly counts.”

  “Exactly,” Mary-Rose said, leaning back in her chair. “It’s a condiment. Like ketchup or hot sauce or pickle relish. No doctor should deny you flavoring.”

  Cleo’s doctor denied her sugar, and Mary-Rose often took the good doctor’s side, disregarding Cleo’s orders at the Pancake Mill and serving her bitter unsweetened tea and whole-wheat pancakes with plain berries on top. It was kind of Mary-Rose to bring her a restorative treat. Cleo felt better already.

  “Why are you out so early?” Cleo asked as she measured out the not-at-all-secret ingredient in her towering biscuits: White Lily flour.

  “Early church,” Mary-Rose said.

  Cleo felt a twinge of guilt. When her dear husband, Richard, was alive, they’d gone to the early service every week, seven thirty on the dot. Everything Richard did was on the dot. Since his passing—heavens, some ten years ago, now—Cleo had shaken up her Sunday routine and a bunch of other routines too. She reassured herself that she’d been right to sleep in today.

  Mary-Rose gave a bashful grin. “I shouldn’t lie on a Sunday. I went for uncharitable purposes as much as worshipping. Remember how William’s childhood pal came for vacation and has since lodged himself in our guest room? I swear, Cleo, my husband has regressed. William has turned into a gossipy, giggly teenager who snickers at bathroom humor. I needed a respite, so I took myself to church. Afterward, there was a lady outside, selling this jam out of the trunk of her car. Sweet temptation. I thought of you.”

  Cleo told her she was honored.

  “I can help more too,” Mary-Rose said. “I have a clue, something that’ll point to another suspect than you.”

  “There are other suspects much better than me already,” Cleo said. “The chief was just being silly. He’d been to a workshop.” She hoped that was all it was. He couldn’t really suspect her, could he? She cut the butter into her biscuit dough with a strength enhanced by a healthy helping of irritation and a dash of worry.

  Mary-Rose popped her jam jar open, unsealed the lid, and breathed in. “This smells like a Thanksgiving dessert table,” she said. “I agree. It’s silly of the chief to suspect you. But there is a whole newspaper headline about you being on the warpath to get that book back. Some ladies at church were talking about that. Don’t worry—I walked by and dropped a loud ‘Judge not lest ye be judged’ on them.” Mary-Rose nodded, looking pleased.

  “Very kind,” Cleo said, thinking the quote, while good and church-appropriate, didn’t actually specify her innocence. How irritating that people are gossiping about me. How absurd! She took care not to let her frustration affect her biscuit dough, which she rolled out gently and cut into quick squares. Her mother would have pinched off equally sized rounds or employed the biscuit cutter. Cleo was going for speed. She set the oven timer for a long fifteen minutes.

  Thankfully, hot coffee already awaited them. Cleo warmed cream and poured two cups. She was about to ask Mary-Rose about her new suspect when the doorbell rang. This time, the peephole revealed two friendly faces, one glistening, the other furry.

  Gabby wore Spandex tights, a pink windbreaker, and flashy running shoes. She was still catching her breath from what must have been a vigorous run. Rhett snuggled in her arms, purring yet frowning.

  “I’m delivering a wet Persian,” Gabby said, holding Rhett up to reveal damp belly fur, messy with bits of grass clippings and a stray leaf. “He was standing in my yard, holding up his paw. I thought he might be hurt, but he seems fine.”

  Cleo tsked. “He’s silly is what he is. He gets stuck if he runs out into wet grass. He doesn’t want to put his paw down on it and thus can’t move.” She plucked the leaf from his belly and said, “You’re just in time. I have biscuits in the oven and a possible clue.”

  “A fresh suspect!” Mary-Rose called from the kitchen. “And pie in a jar.”

  Gabby let Rhett down and wiped her brow. “Those all sound like things I need, if you don’t mind my appearance.”

  “You’re lovely and dewy, dear,” Cleo said. To Rhett’s displeasure, Cleo toweled off his feet and belly before getting him his breakfast. While waiting for the biscuits, they made polite chitchat about topics other than murder, like pie and the weather. The timer chimed, but Cleo wouldn’t have needed it. She could tell biscuit perfection by the buttery aroma filling her kitchen.

  Cleo took out the tray and asked, “Should we wait a decent moment for them to cool?�
��

  “I don’t need decent,” Mary-Rose said, already unfolding her napkin.

  “I don’t either,” Gabby agreed.

  Cleo snagged three biscuits straight from the baking sheet and put them on plates, pleased with the towering layers. She’d learned her biscuit technique from her mother and grandmother and honed it in college, working her way through library school by baking in the dining hall. The layers gave way with a gentle tug, releasing buttery steam. Cleo slathered on more butter and a hefty spoonful of jam. She closed her eyes for the first bite and assumed her guests would be doing the same.

  “My,” Cleo said after some savoring. “It is just like pie.”

  “Divine,” Mary-Rose said. “Fortifying for the unjustly accused.” She waved a half-eaten biscuit at Gabby. “You don’t believe that Cleo here killed a patron over an overdue book, do you? You know our Cleo has all sorts of librarian codes. I assume not murdering the readers is one of them, right, Cleo?”

  Cleo was busy helping herself to more pecan jam. Besides, she took that as a rhetorical question.

  Gabby made a noncommittal sound. “The chief says we have to ‘cast a wide net.’ He learned that in a seminar too. Anyone we can suspect, we should. He claims it’s only fair.”

  “True,” Mary-Rose said. “Cleo could have murdered Dixie.”

  Cleo nearly choked on her biscuit. “Mary-Rose Garland!”

  Her friend looked wickedly pleased. “You’re always saying, Cleo Jane: we senior ladies should not be discounted because of our age or our gender. We can do anything we set our minds to. Well, except for perhaps that American Ninja Warrior reality show. Your knees and my hip would not permit the mega-warped-wall challenge.”

  Her best friend considered her capable of murder. Cleo decided that, overall, the sentiment was complimentary. “For the record, I did not murder Dixie Huddleston,” she said. She added more cream to her coffee before asking, “Do you know the cause of death? Can you say?”

  Gabby hesitated. She stirred her coffee, although she hadn’t added any cream or sugar. She sipped and stirred some more, gazing over Cleo’s shoulder toward Cleo’s back garden and the cute little mother-in-law cottage. Cleo knew without looking that she needed to fix up the flower boxes. It looked so lonely without Ollie there.