Missy slid into the seat next to her. “Ruby, you okay?”
Ruby nodded and put on a smile. “Yes…sorry.”
“What’s up?”
“We’re supposed to be enjoying this, you know? We’re not supposed to come here and argue all the time.”
Missy didn’t think they argued all the time but didn’t want to be contrary. Ruby was obviously upset and disagreeing with her openly wouldn’t help at all.
“There are a lot of big personalities in here, aren’t there?”
Ruby nodded sadly. “I just don’t like conflict.”
“Me neither.” Missy hated conflict. It made her think about her near-death experience last fall, when Gordon Cooper had put his hands around her neck. And it made her think about her high school sweetheart and current chief detective of the local police force, Tyler Brock. He had come back to town after a long absence and they had reconnected. Missy still had feelings for him, and she was sure he harbored some for her also. He was separated from his wife, but they were apparently trying to work things out.
And it made her think of Mom. Very briefly, Mom had been a suspect in Albert Switzer’s murder but she’d been able to provide an alibi to the police. An alibi she refused to share with her own daughter.
Missy sighed. “For what it’s worth, I think this is a good book.”
Ruby’s eyes lit up. She’d been the one to suggest this cozy mystery novel. Normally the group read traditionally published books because most of the women preferred their books to be vetted before they read them. They’d made an exception because Ruby had pushed hard for this one, though now that they were reading it, Missy realized Ruby had had the least to say about it.
“Oh, thanks.” She smiled shyly. “I’m glad I’m not wasting everybody’s time at least.”
“Don’t worry about Anne Baxter.” Missy put an arm around her shoulder. “At one point or another, she has offended everybody in this room. Except me. I mean, she basically stole Ellen Stein’s boyfriend and married him. She bought that land that Trudy was interested in. She fired Kylie’s brother from the deli because he’d been drinking on the job…the list goes on and on. Truth be told, I don’t think she’s long for this Book Club.”
“We’ve been meeting for over a year now,” Ruby said sadly, basically saying that Anne was here to stay.
Missy shrugged. “She does have a suit of armor. Only Noreen gets under her skin, I think.”
Ruby looked away and stood. “I’m going outside for a few minutes.”
Missy was left alone. She eyed the wine bottles, which were out of place on the children’s table in the middle of the room. So far she’d been good. In the last two months she’d lost some weight and many inches in all the right places. Wine wasn’t that bad when it came to calories in and of itself. The real problem was when she drank, it made her hungry and lowered her inhibitions.
She really wavered on whether to have a glass or not. On the one hand, she’d stuck to this latest diet and was seeing results. On the other hand, she could have used one night where she didn’t have to worry about food. It was exhausting to have to constantly think about it.
“You only live once,” she said to herself. Missy poured herself a tiny glass of pinot grigio and sipped. It was so good. And like that, she wanted to have some crackers to go with it.
Everybody took a long break. It was ten minutes before they all took their seats. Missy smelled smoke on Noreen. Cigarettes to Noreen were like food to Missy. A bad habit both struggled constantly to break. Missy smiled at Noreen, who didn’t return the gesture. She looked preoccupied, probably still thinking about the fight. Her hands fidgeted and she tugged on not one but two broken nails.
Ellen Stein poured herself another glass of wine. Missy noticed her hand shaking as she did and thought it odd. Maybe Ellen had a nervous tic she’d never caught before?
Trudy waited the longest to sit. She was busy quickly typing a text message to somebody.
All the chairs were occupied. All but Anne Baxter’s. Missy looked around but didn’t see her anywhere.
“Where’s Anne?” she asked.
Noreen rolled her eyes. “Who cares?”
Missy did her best to hide a smile. She didn’t like Anne much either, but felt it would have been rude to start without her.
Gloria Campbell, Anne’s only outspoken friend on the group, leveled her brown eyes on Noreen. “We’re not starting without her.”
“I’m not going to start without her,” Missy said. “Did anybody see her?”
“She was outside,” Ellen said. As she sipped her wine, Missy noticed her hand was still shaking. Come to think of it, Ellen had been acting strangely all night. As a local reporter, Ellen was normally full of comments about the author’s style, typically complaining about how long-winded fiction writers could be. As a person who had to write quickly and had little space to tell her story, everybody took her opinion on that matter with a grain of salt.
“Was she on the phone, maybe?” Missy asked.
Ruby sat up. “Maybe we should just go look? She’s always getting calls, you know.”
It was true. Rare was the Book Club meeting where Anne Baxter did not get at least three calls and a dozen texts. Nobody (except Noreen) begrudged her for this because she was busy helping her father run three grocery stores.
“I’ll check,” Gloria said. She was the oldest in the group, almost fifty, and had a bad knee, but Missy noticed she was moving much more stiffly than usual tonight. She wondered if Gloria had hurt herself.
Gloria went outside. While they waited, Missy couldn’t resist the urge to eat a few crackers. No doubt the two hundred calories would go straight to her derriere. Everybody waited patiently, and quietly—except Noreen, who made sure to sigh her impatience loudly and frequently.
Missy heard the door open behind her. “We’re almost out of time, so we can—”
It was just Gloria, and her eyes were bulging. Her chest heaved. She had to rest her hands on her thighs and bend over.
“Call the police!” Gloria said.
Chapter Two
Within ten minutes, the Grove City library parking lot filled up with police cruisers, two ambulances, and a swarm of civilian vehicles. Missy had been the one to call nine-one-one. The operator had asked for details, and since Gloria was beside her and appeared to be in shock, Missy had been forced to go outside to describe the scene. At least Noreen and Ruby had gone with her.
Anne Baxter’s body was on its side. She must have been on her cell phone or texting, because the phone was on the ground next to her, though by now the screen had gone dark. If it was a call, it must have dropped.
The back of her head looked funny to Missy. Her hair was a darker shade of brown back there, and Missy knew right away it was blood. She described what she saw to the nine-one-one operator, who asked if Anne was dead. Missy told her yes. She’d seen that glazed look in a pair of eyeballs before, and not too long ago, when she’d discovered Albert Switzer dead in his own living room strangled minutes before she got there.
The operator then told her to move away from the body and not disturb anything, reminding her she was inside of a crime scene. Missy didn’t need reminding. She stepped backward, as if to retrace her steps. Noreen and Ruby did the same thing.
As she stepped away, Missy tried to spot what had done that to the back of Anne’s head. She didn’t see any weapons on the ground, but there were several pipe stands and hard, heavy materials near Anne. She remembered Ruby telling them about the work the county was doing to the building. It had plumbing issues.
Ten minutes later, the police had set up a perimeter with yellow Police Line tape. Missy was still outside with Noreen, who was working on her third cigarette in a row. She smoked when she was really worked up, like right now. Noreen didn’t know where Ruby had gone.
“God, I’m shaking,” Noreen said.
She wasn’t kidding. Missy watched as her friend held out an arm. It trembled like she
was in the middle of an earthquake. It reminded her of noticing the same thing about Ellen earlier. Her hand had been shaking when she’d returned from the break the Book Club had taken. Had she killed Anne? It would explain the shakes Missy saw, it was her adrenaline either kicking in or continuing. Had she fought with Anne outside, activating her fight or flight response?
Missy glazed right over the obvious question facing her. Noreen was shaking right now too. Had she…no, that was ridiculous. Noreen was tough and fearless, but she wasn’t vicious. Unless they’d gotten into a fight and accidentally Anne had hit the back of her head on the pipe stand.
Missy scanned the parking lot to see how the others were holding up. Gloria Campbell was crying into her husband’s shoulder. Ellen Stein was sitting on top of an old bicycle rack, staring at her feet. Ruby was pacing back and forth at the far end of the parking lot. Missy figured she was worried about her job. Her boss had okayed the use of the library for the Book Club after hours and looked the other way when it came to the wine, but now she’d probably have to do something about it.
Trudy Shaw had one of those wine bottles on her person. She was drinking right out of it. Her husband rubbed her shoulder but Trudy seemed not to notice him.
Alison Breckmyer stood alone, talking to one of the cops who was directing traffic away from the library. Out of everybody, she seemed unfazed by what had happened. But that made a sort of sense. She was new to Grove City and had zero history with Anne Baxter. To her, what had happened was probably little different than hearing about a murder on the news.
Missy hadn’t put her amateur sleuth hat on yet. She was still in shock. But thinking about it, the other six women were all suspects.
“This is bad,” Noreen said. “This is real bad.”
She smoked the cigarette down to the nub and went to light another, but Missy grabbed her wrist.
“Are you okay?”
Noreen shook her head. Her usually pretty hazel eyes were red-rimmed and worry lines etched into her face.
“They’re going to think I did this, Miss.”
Did you? She didn’t ask the question. “Did you see anything?”
“No. I knew she’d gone that way. I didn’t want to be around her so I went the other way.”
“Did anybody see you?”
Noreen thought about it. “I don’t think so.”
“Nobody else was outside?”
“I heard some voices, but I went to the far end of the lot to blow off steam. I wanted to walk, catch a smoke, and cool down.”
“Did you hear an argument or anybody fighting?”
“No. But like I said, I went to the far end of the lot. If Anne was on the other side of the building, I wouldn’t have heard anything.”
Missy nodded. Noreen was right. She wouldn’t have heard anything. Still, it was pretty poor luck that Noreen hadn’t seen any of the other women while she was outside. They could have confirmed her whereabouts and excluded her from the suspect pool immediately.
“Don’t give me that look,” Noreen said.
“What look?”
Noreen folded her arms and jutted a hip out. “I didn’t do this, Missy.”
“Whoa, Nor. I didn’t say you did.”
“You didn’t have to, with that look.” Noreen shook her head. “I can’t believe you seriously think I killed someone. How long have we known each other?”
“Noreen Sullivan, I know in my heart of hearts that you’d never kill anyone. But the police don’t know you the same way I do.”
“Tyler does.”
“You guys were friends, sure, but he doesn’t—”
“No, Miss. You’re not understanding me. Tyler knew me pretty well.”
Suddenly the world was spinning. “What are you talking about?”
Noreen couldn’t hold her stare. “It happened in college…”
“What happened in college! And why are you telling me this now?”
Noreen opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t. “I…”
“Ladies.”
They both started at the sound of his voice. Tyler Brock, chief detective, second in command in the Grove City Police Department.
“Hi, Tyler,” Noreen said.
He nodded at her, then faced Missy. He was dressed in his khaki uniform shirt and dark brown pants. The shirt was taut against his pecs and stretched by his broad shoulders, and it tapered down to contour to his lean waist. Normally the sight of him got her excited, but Missy was still reeling from this latest revelation. Noreen and Tyler had been together…but for how long... and had it been serious—
“Melissa, you okay?” Tyler asked.
“I’m fine, considering. It’s the second dead body I’ve seen in six months.”
He nodded, calm and cool as ever. His eyes drifted back to Noreen. “How about you, Noreen?”
She couldn’t stand still. Her legs were twitching. As much as Missy hated to admit this, Noreen was acting guilty.
“Been better.”
Tyler took that in and rubbed his chin. “I need to talk to you both, separately. How about I start with you, Noreen?”
She nodded quickly several times, as if she’d momentarily lost control of her head. “Yes, sure, sound goods, okay.”
Tyler gestured toward the library and they headed inside. Missy hugged herself in the cold night air. It was the middle of March and the nights in Pennsylvania could turn bitter quickly. She knew she couldn’t leave because Tyler would have questions for her, so to keep warm she started walking the parking lot. The other women were still there, either being consoled or by themselves. Missy passed each one and only got a response from Alison Breckmyer, who had given up flirting with the uniformed cop that Missy didn’t even recognize keeping traffic away from the library.
“So that happened,” Alison said. “I can’t believe it.”
“Me either.”
Alison leaned in. “It has to be one of us.”
Missy agreed but didn’t want to admit that. She liked Alison but wasn’t close to her, so she was uncomfortable sharing her thoughts.
But either way, Alison was right.
The library sat on a two-lane road and the next nearest building was probably a quarter mile away. Someone wouldn’t have just happened upon Anne and decided to kill her. Given the relative isolation of the library, it was most likely someone in the Book Club. Unless someone else had been planning to murder Anne and plotted out this elaborate scheme to kill her at her Book Club to throw the police off…no, that didn’t work. Who would have planned that? The killer would have had to plan for Anne to wander off alone long enough for them to kill her. And again, if they’d planned it, they would have brought some kind of weapon. No way could they have anticipated forcing her to hit her head on the pipe stand.
Only an insane person would have concocted such a scheme. Since the odds were slim that an insane person would have planned to kill Anne Baxter, that led to one conclusion: one of the women from the Book Club had murdered her.
“Did you and Anne ever see each other outside of the club?”
Alison gave Missy an are you seriously questioning me look. “I ran into her probably twice a month.”
Missy knew Alison was already putting a wall up, but she pushed on anyway. “Where?”
“At that big grocery store. What’s it called? Oh, that’s right: Baxter’s. She owns it with daddy, remember?”
Missy pretended to be offended. “Alison, I wasn’t—”
“Yeah, you were.” She shook her head. “Everybody knows about what you did last time somebody got killed in Grove City. The police department spun that story and made you out to be a hero, but everybody knows they didn’t want your help and asked you several times to stay out of it. A leopard can’t change its spots, huh?”
Missy was angry even though Alison was right. She had been questioning her.
“Now if you’ll excuse me.” Alison took her phone out and turned away. “From this point on I’ll only answer questio
ns from real detectives.”
Missy was getting cold standing around anyway, so she got a move on. After reaching the end of the parking lot, she turned back around. By then somebody had turned all the exterior lights on so the grounds and parking lot were completely illuminated. Through the glass exterior, Missy saw people moving around inside the library also. While she was waiting, she decided to give Mom a buzz.
“Oh, Missy, I heard,” Mom said by way of answer.
“You heard already?”
“News travels fast. I know you have Book Club there on Wednesday nights and figured you were in the middle of this. Poor girl. This always happens to you.”
“I know.” She shook her head. “Two murders.”
“I don’t mean just the murders,” Mom said. “I mean, whenever something unfortunate happened, it always seemed like it touched you, directly or indirectly.”
“Yeah, well, don’t feel bad for me.” Missy was thinking of Noreen right now. She knew her friend hadn’t killed Anne Baxter. There was just no way. But looking at things objectively, from the police’s perspective, Noreen was the perfect suspect. The two of them had argued last week, then again this week. Both times they’d nearly started fist fighting. And this last argument had happened less than five minutes before Anne was killed.
“Missy, is everything alright?” Mom asked. “You don’t sound yourself.”
“It’s Noreen,” she said. “Even though she’s innocent, the police are going to think she did it and…”
Missy stopped short. It seemed so petty to be thinking about Noreen’s revelation at a time like this, so she decided to drop it. But still, her mind was stuck on that. After all this time, why didn’t she know about Noreen and Tyler’s relationship? And when did…
She forced herself to stop thinking about it.
“Well, if the police wrongfully arrest her, then you have to do something about it, don’t you?” Mom said, as if it were the most obvious fact in the world, like two plus two equaling four. “She is your best friend. Not too many friends like her come along in life.”
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