Read on Arrival

by Nora Page

  Cleo could practically feel the wind in her hair. She smiled in anticipatory bliss, but then narrowed her eyes. Was Sergeant Tookey goading her into another speeding ticket? Tookey, however, had a face of pure innocence and was saying that he and his fellow officers were way too preoccupied for traffic stops. “Murder takes precedence over speeders,” he said.

  “Your investigation of a smoke-bombed bookmobile takes precedence too,” Cleo added.

  “It’s likely all connected,” Tookey said, leaving Cleo with a dread that not even having her bookmobile back could cure. Later, she left Rhett at home in case Words on Wheels experienced any more incidents. She drove to the library and parked on the street, leaving the bus’s windows open but locking the door. Leanna greeted her, looking jumpy with anticipation.

  “Belle’s not here,” Leanna said. “I hope you don’t mind. I went ahead and told the painters to go for it with the peachy color we both liked.”

  Originally, Cleo had favored a pale neutral. But the fresh-peach color had grown on her, especially compared to Belle’s blinding alternatives. Now that she saw it, covering two whole walls and the worst of the neon samples, she loved it. “It’s gorgeous,” she said. “A wonderful executive decision, Leanna.”

  Leanna exhaled with relief. “Thank goodness! I panicked, wanting something done in here. I got the contractor on our side. He came over and reinforced the brackets holding in the bookshelves. I told him, we’ll padlock them if we have to.” She took a deep breath. “Sorry. I’m nerved up. I read the newspaper.”

  “I called the board members already,” Cleo said.

  “You told them, right? And they agreed?” Leanna said. “They know we can’t have a first-class paid-access room?”

  “Most do,” Cleo said, trying to focus on the positive. “Think of them as a glass half full.”

  “Half done for,” Leanna mumbled. “I was saving the bad news. We had a bunch of book returns this morning, books checked out yesterday from Words on Wheels.”

  “Coffin threats,” Cleo guessed.

  Leanna nodded. “A couple people said they won’t let their kids come near the bookmobile until we get this fixed. It’s not our fault! Words on Wheels isn’t to blame.”

  Cleo spent the rest of the morning scouring her bookmobile shelves. She found a half-dozen more threats, all in the new books shelves. She called Gabby, who came over on her lunch break with ham sandwiches from Dot’s Drop By. Gabby promised to catalog the notes.

  “I don’t expect much useful evidence from these,” she said. “None of the other notes have had any fingerprints besides those of the people who found them. We do have other leads. We finally got a call about a beehive break-in. The owner just noticed it, but he thought it could have happened a little while back. There was an incident at Iris Hay’s studio too. Someone broke a window and threw moldy fruit inside.”

  “Moldy fruit?” Cleo considered the act. On the surface it seemed childish, a prank. Except … “Iris fears toxic mold.”

  Gabby nodded seriously. “The perp is spreading fear, getting bolder.” She turned concerned eyes to Cleo. “You could shut down the bookmobile for a while until we figure out what’s going on.” Gabby read Cleo’s look and exhaled heavily. “I know … you won’t. But be careful, okay?”

  Cleo planned to do just that. “I’m getting out of town. Words on Wheels has an appointment at Happy Trails Retirement Village this afternoon,” she said. “Nothing’s happened out there that I know of.”

  Gabby tactfully didn’t mention Cleo’s past incidents at the retirement community. When Gabby had gone, Cleo revved her engine and headed for the open road, taking Tookey’s word that the Catalpa Springs Police Department would be otherwise occupied. She edged up the speed and let the wind clear her head and her smoky bus. Her arrival, however, was not as calming. Happy Trails was a gated community, and her favorite gate guard, Tamara, watched over the entry.

  “Sorry!” Tamara said when Cleo pulled up. The young woman hung out the window of the little hut that served as her guardhouse. The gate remained down.

  “Really, I’m truly sorry!” Tamara repeated. “You know I don’t like to turn folks away—well, okay, I kind of like doing that, but not you, Miss Cleo. It’s just that … well …” Tamara bit her lip. “You’re kinda banned.”

  “Banned?”

  Tamara gave a helpless look. “For now. It’s temporary. It wasn’t me!” She named her boss, a flighty woman who would fear a fly’s shadow. “She heard that you were bad luck. She said you were bringing around murder and crime. She said that Happy Trails—and mind you, I’m quoting here—‘doesn’t need any more of your troubles.’ ”

  “But I have a bookmobile appointment,” Cleo protested, knowing she was making her case to the wrong person. “People will expect their books.”

  She noticed Tamara’s gaze drift over her shoulder toward the far distance, where the road disappeared into tall pines. Cleo squinted into her side mirror. A speck of red was fast turning into a pickup, and behind it, a flash of silver Airstream.

  “Arrangements were made,” Tamara mumbled, eyes avoiding Cleo’s gaze. She lifted the gate. A few minutes later, BOOK IT! breezed by in the outside lane, horn tooting, Belle’s hand waving out the window.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Cleo returned to town at a subdued speed. She parked Words on Wheels behind the library and entered through the back door. Leanna had gone to class. A lone painter, a young man named Alex, worked steadily, head bobbing to a headphone beat she couldn’t hear. Cleo surveyed the space, imagining the drop cloths gone, the painting complete, and the hallway filled with books and happy patrons.

  She could imagine it, but would it happen? Darker thoughts seeped in. What if people shunned the library and her, the bad luck librarian, as Happy Trails had just done? What if Belle rolled in and swept aside all she and her colleagues had worked to build? Fifty years of work—gone—and her legacy with it.

  Cleo stepped to the circulation desk and gripped the familiar beveled front. No, she promised herself. No, she couldn’t help what people thought of her, but she could stand up for library principles. Library justice, she thought, slapping the wooden desk.

  Alex looked over, his paintbrush still moving steadily on the wall. He was so tall he hardly needed a ladder, and he was usually reticent to speak. He removed an earbud. “People came by. I told ’em you were closed, but some left messages anyway.”

  He started to replace his earbud.

  “Where? What kind of messages?” Cleo asked.

  “Oh, right …” He rummaged in the many pockets of voluminous coveralls. “These,” he said, handing over three more coffins notes and what appeared to be an irate missive from a concerned parent. “A man came by too, looking for you. I forget his name. Short. Bow tie. Pointy nose. I asked if he found a coffin, and he got madder.”

  “Mercer?” Cleo asked. “Mercer Whitty? Sharp dresser? Thinning hair?” Being polite, she didn’t mention Mercer’s resemblance to a snapping turtle.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” Alex said. He dipped his brush and expertly edged around a doorframe. “He said something about a shake-up or shaking? I wasn’t really listening.” He held the earbud to his ear. Cleo thanked him with a smile and let him get back to his solitude. She tried calling Mercer but twice got his answering machine. Her own voicemail had two messages from the newspaper reporter, asking for Cleo’s response to the “recent report” and her “comments on the proposed radical shake-up of the Catalpa Springs Public Library.”

  Cleo’s finger hovered over the redial icon. She chickened out. She rationalized her reticence, telling herself she should speak with Mercer first. A radical shake-up? Cleo walked through every room, remembering her nearly fifty years here. If Mercer’s shake-up involved her, she would go out fighting.

  Alex left at dusk, and Cleo locked up soon after. She walked home under a rumble of distant thunder and a few tentative raindrops. Cleo put up her hood, which protected her hair
but muffled her ears. She recalled the feeling of being watched she’d had the other night and removed her hood. A few raindrops wouldn’t hurt her. The streets were empty, whether from the weather or the faceless threat, she wasn’t sure. By the time she turned up her lane, she’d convinced herself that she was being silly, a victim of the fear bug. Then she saw the form.

  A figure, dressed in black, ran up the front steps of the bungalow on the corner. The mailbox slot clanked. The figure jogged back to the sidewalk. Cleo backed into a shrub, a sharp-leaved holly that jabbed needles at her neck. Her glasses were fogged and so was the view, the misty rain smudging out the dim light of a lone streetlamp. The figure disappeared down the next walkway, and another metallic clank reached Cleo’s ears. She reached for her purse and rummaged for her phone.

  The phone came to life with a shockingly bright screen. Cleo pushed back into the holly, praying the figure kept moving away from her. But not too far away.

  Gabby answered on the second ring. Cleo whispered her location and what she was seeing. “Where are you?” Cleo asked, imagining Gabby at the police station, several blocks away. The deputy could get to Cleo’s location quickly at a run or in her cruiser.

  “I’m home,” Gabby said, now whispering herself. “I can see him coming. Stay where you are. Do not follow him.”

  “Him?” Cleo asked, but Gabby had hung up. Cleo could no longer see the figure. The homes on their street nestled behind picket fences, flowering hedges, and arbors of climbing roses and vines. Cleo stepped out from her holly hiding place and started up the street, toward home, Gabby, and the prowler. She wished she had Henry’s pepper spray or a cane with a pointed end or …

  “Ahh!” The prowler yelled, swung around, and lumbered back toward Cleo, pursued by Gabby. Cleo froze, knowing she couldn’t outrun him and banking on Gabby running faster.

  “Jefferson!” Cleo gasped, as his hood fell back, revealing his pale, panicked face.

  He grabbed her shoulders. “Help me, Miss Cleo, help me.” He ducked behind her, and Cleo could feel him shaking.

  Cleo managed to extract herself from his grasp. Gabby helped, pulling Jefferson’s arm behind his back and snapping on a handcuff.

  “Help!” Jefferson cried again. “She pointed a gun at me! I’m just giving out invitations!”

  “Right,” Gabby said. “Invitations to the grave? ‘Welcome to your new home’?” Gabby clicked the other handcuff, speaking into the radio clipped to her jacket as she did. “Got him. Yes, sir, it’s Jefferson Huddleston.”

  Chief Culpepper replied in blustery blurts and codes Cleo didn’t understand. She put her hand on a nearby fence to steady herself. What a shock. What good luck. Relief swept over Cleo. Maybe the terrorizing was over. Sadness crept in next.

  “Why, Jefferson?” Cleo murmured. She didn’t want him to be the killer. He’d been such a nice kid, a good reader …

  Porch lights came on in the nearest house. A siren approached and more lights appeared, along with more figures, crossing their arms anxiously.

  “My bag,” Jefferson said in a quavering voice. “Miss Cleo, please, look in my bag.”

  Cleo reached toward the small tote slung across his chest. Gabby stopped her, putting up a protective palm. “Let me,” she said. She drew out a handful of postcard-sized papers and read.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Gabby exclaimed. She thrust a note at Cleo with disgust and got back on her radio.

  Cleo read.

  Pass the word. Mother’s spirit will leave this world.

  Clashes to ashes, cussed to dust.

  You’re invited!!

  A closing line gave a date and time, Dixie’s full name, burial plot location, and notice of further poetry.

  “A funeral invitation?” Cleo said.

  Gabby groaned as a police car careened to a halt beside them and the chief stepped out, tugging at his suspenders. He took one of the cards and read, head shaking. “I’m not even going to try to understand this one,” he said. He turned to Gabby, who was unlocking the handcuffs. “Good work, Deputy. You’ve nabbed us a criminally bad invitation. When is this funeral? Saturday? We’ll be there for sure.”

  * * *

  Moss dripped from branches and padded the graves of Eternal Rest Cemetery. Ancient live oaks arched above the cobbled drive. Headstones buckled over roots, wedged in their rows like crooked teeth.

  Cleo drove through the scrolled iron gates, glad she and her full convertible of funeral carpoolers were heading to the newer part of the cemetery. A low-lying area, too damp for graves, had recently been converted to a wildflower meadow overlooked by a marble-pillared columbarium. Mary-Rose sat in the passenger’s seat, her arm out the open window, hand surfing the wind as if they were out sightseeing. Henry and Leanna sat in the back.

  Cleo could feel Leanna fidgeting, knees bumping against the back of her driver’s seat. On top of disliking funerals, Leanna had a research paper due and an exam to study for. However, Leanna, like the rest of them, felt a funeral could not be missed. Especially this one.

  “I still can’t believe Jefferson was prowling around, leaving invitations in mailboxes,” Mary-Rose said. “Didn’t he understand how that would scare people?”

  “It scared me,” Cleo said. “He claimed he wanted elements of ‘surprise’ and ‘individual attention.’ He also thought the mail would be too slow, and he needed to spread the word.” She tapped her brakes. They were stuck in a funeral traffic jam.

  Mary-Rose made a scoffing sound. “I saw Jefferson and his wife at the park yesterday in full mime getup, handing out more of these things. Not that anyone was taking them. They eventually tossed them around like confetti. I’m surprised so many people are even here.”

  Cleo smiled. “Are you really surprised?”

  “Not really,” Mary-Rose admitted. “People enjoy a spectacle, and I predict this’ll be a good one.”

  A somber-suited parking attendant waved for them to park along the lane. The “event,” as he put it, was a short hike away. They arrived to see Jefferson climbing the little hill to the columbarium. A pedestal stood at the top, with a microphone attached. “Testing, testing,” he said between the microphone’s squeals and squawks.

  “Thank goodness!” Cleo said. “He’s wearing a normal suit.” It was pale gray, with only a ruffle to the white shirt displaying his love of flair.

  Mary-Rose took in the crowd. “There’s trouble already. That book club of yours. They’re all together again.” She pointed to the other side of the flower garden, where the Who-Done-Its stood as a group, Pat and Iris at opposite sides of the little cluster. Iris’s choppy hair hived above a prominent bandage wrapped around her forehead.

  “I should go say hello to them,” Cleo said to her little group.

  “I’ll stay here,” Mary-Rose declared. “It’s higher ground. I can watch out for you, Cleo. Let’s all meet up here at the end of the service or police action, whatever comes first.”

  Leanna drifted off to wander among the flowers. Henry accompanied Cleo.

  “How are you?” Cleo asked Pat, the first Who-Done-It she encountered. She felt a little guilty. She hadn’t been keeping up with sleuthing. Despite the smoke bomb, Pat was still eager to detect. She’d called Cleo yesterday, hoping to get together to study Amy-Ray’s copy of Luck and Lore. It was a good idea and something Cleo kept intending to do.

  The trouble was, she’d been stuck for days dealing with Mercer’s staff “shake-up,” which turned out to be mind-numbing meetings about the library’s “image” and a staff bonding retreat on Friday. They’d retreated only as far as Mercer’s country home, where Belle led exercises such as waving their arms and making free-form animal sounds, and walking Lilliput while blindfolded. Cleo had refused the blindfolding, citing her age and doctor’s orders. Neither were true hindrances, but Cleo liked to keep her eyes open.

  “I’m fine,” Pat said. “How was the bonding retreat you had to go to? Did you learn anything useful about Belle?”
<
br />   Cleo considered. There had been something. “We had to play a truth-or-dare game, and I asked her again if she argued with Dixie Huddleston at the farmers’ market.”

  Pat clasped her hands. “And?”

  “And she decided that we’d done enough team building,” Cleo said. “That was a good outcome for me. I still find it odd that she’s so evasive about Dixie. She must remember Dixie. You always remember a bully, don’t you?”

  Pat nodded solemnly. “She likely remembers every single thing Dixie did.”

  “You always remember getting pushed out of a smoky school bus too,” Iris offered, leaning around Mrs. K. and the other group members.

  “Sorry!” Pat exclaimed. “I pulled too hard!”

  “Iris,” Cleo said with forced cheer, “I’m very happy you’re okay.” She continued over Iris’s mutters of not really being okay. “I heard you had some vandalism too? That’s awful.”

  “Moldy fruit,” Iris said darkly. “There’s a vile person on the loose.” She looked around at the crowd, as if suspecting everyone. “Police are all over this place, and they can’t catch ’em. I bet they don’t have any clue who bombed your bookmobile either. Did you bring it? Is it safe for the public?”

  “It’s safe,” Cleo said quickly.

  Pat whispered, “Is it really? Did you bring Words on Wheels?”

  Cleo said she’d carpooled with Henry and friends. “The bookmobile is fine, although I’d like to hire your ladies to scrub it out,” Cleo said, politely but firmly refusing Pat’s kind offers to help for free. “The ladies are already scheduled to clean the library before the grand reopening. We’ll add the bookmobile to the tab.”

  “The library party’s still going on?” Pat flushed. “Sorry, I read the paper and heard some people talking, saying they wouldn’t go near Words on Wheels, and I thought maybe people were avoiding the library too. Not me, of course! And I didn’t mean your library is cursed or anything. That’d be absurd.”