A Murder Between the Pages

by Amy Lillard

  Ashley finished pouring Chloe’s water for tea and propped one hand on her hip. “I dunno. Just sad, I suppose.”

  “That’s to be expected,” Arlo said gently. She had never lost a sibling. She could only imagine how difficult that would be.

  “Just give her time,” Chloe added.

  “I just—” She stopped as her deep brown eyes filled with tears. “Why would anyone do something like that to Haley?”

  There’s a lot of evil people in the world.

  But she managed to keep that thought to herself. It wouldn’t help Ashley one bit.

  “I don’t know, sweetie,” Chloe replied. “I wish I had an answer for that.”

  “Me too.” Ashley let out a mirthless laugh as she wiped the tears from her eyes. “Courtney won’t talk to me. How I can help if I don’t know what she needs?”

  “Grief is a funny thing,” Chloe said. And she would know, having just lost the love of her life a couple of months before. “Just give her time and be there when she’s ready. That’s all you can do.”

  Ashley shot Chloe a grateful smile. “Thanks. For the advice. And for listening.”

  Chloe returned the smile with one of her own. “Anytime.”

  Arlo watched Ashley walk away to return the hot water urn to the small waitress station.

  “Are you up for it?” Chloe asked.

  Arlo dragged her attention away from Ashley and settled it on her friend. “Up for what?”

  “The park.”

  “Sure,” she chirped, a little too brightly.

  “You don’t want to go.”

  “It’s not that. I just have piles of laundry to do and a ton of house cleaning.” Not to mention mulling over and over about what to do about Sam and whether or not she should tell anyone about seeing Camille out with her new beau. And how scary that beau really was. Looked. She didn’t know for a fact that he was bad news. Only that he appeared to be.

  Can’t judge a book.

  But after all that, she reminded herself that Camille believed in Joe, and she should too. Arlo just hoped that he was introduced to the book club soon. Maybe she wouldn’t feel like she was sitting on a ticking time bomb if she knew the man firsthand.

  “I need you.” Chloe reached across the table and squeezed Arlo’s hand. “He’ll want to play ball, and you know how hopeless I am at that.”

  She certainly did. “So, you think playing with me is a good substitute for playing with you?”

  “As long as I’m there…” She trailed off.

  Poor Jayden. Heir to one of the largest sport equipment chains in the area and born to two very unathletic people.

  “Why don’t you ask Mads? Or Sam?”

  “You could ask them for me.” Chloe flashed her a saccharine sweet smile.

  “Me?”

  “They won’t turn you down.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  But Chloe didn’t answer as Ashley arrived at their table with their steaming plates.

  “I’m gonna need—”

  “Ketchup and Louisiana.” Ashley pulled them from the front pocket of her shorty apron.

  “You are a good girl, Ashley. I don’t care what your father says about you,” Arlo quipped.

  Ashley’s mouth fell open.

  “She’s kidding,” Chloe hastily interjected.

  “Just trying to make you smile,” Arlo explained.

  Ashley’s eyes once again sparkled with the thick sheen of tears. “Thanks. I wish all my customers were as nice as you two.”

  Chloe sprinkled pepper on her omelet and hash browns while Arlo doctored hers with all the ketchup and hot sauce she could fit on top.

  “Who’s being mean to you?” Arlo said.

  “Yeah,” Chloe added. “We’ll beat ‘em up for ya.”

  Ashley laughed. This time the sound was genuine. “I’d like to see that. It’s that big woman who works out at Lillyfield. Kim…no, Pam something or another.”

  “I don’t think I know who that is.” Chloe took a bite and waited for Ashley to elaborate.

  “She’s new. Comes in on Mondays. I suppose that’s her day off or something. Anyway, she’s just…angry. I guess that’s the right word. Always frowning.”

  “I met her when I was out there trying to pick up a book donation,” Arlo piped in. She didn’t mention that it also just happened to be the day Haley was killed. “She’s been taking care of Mrs. Whitney since her stroke.”

  Ashley nodded. “I heard her tell Joey, you know, from the dry cleaners, that she was a nutritionist.”

  “Yeah.” Chloe nodded. “That’s right. She was hired right before Judith’s stroke. I remember because I thought it was ironic that Judith had hired someone to help her make better, healthier choices, then she had a stroke.”

  “Too little too late,” Arlo murmured. Wasn’t that how it always went? People wanted to change, but sometimes not until it was too late to do anything about it.

  Ashley frowned. “She doesn’t eat like a nutritionist.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Arlo and Chloe shared a look.

  “Gets biscuits and gravy every time she’s in. Whether Mama is cooking or not.”

  “I heard that,” Tyrone called from behind the counter. His voice was stern, but he wore a teasing grin.

  Ashley shot them an apologetic smile. “Busted. I better get back to work.” She glanced down at their mugs. “I’ll bring you some more coffee and hot water.”

  “And a new tea bag,” Chloe asked with a beseeching smile.

  “Of course,” Ashley said before spinning away.

  “Now what do you mean by Mads and Sam won’t turn me down?” Arlo asked.

  Chloe shrugged and spent way too much time trying to get the perfect amount of egg, cheese, and mushroom onto her fork. “You weren’t supposed to remember that I had said that.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Fine,” Chloe said and set down her fork. Arlo continued to eat. “I’ve seen how they both look at you.”

  Her stomach dropped, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to swallow the bite she had in her mouth. “How’s that?” she managed to say around the food.

  “Like you’re dessert.”

  She almost choked but managed to recover and swallow the bite in the same second. “Dessert?”

  “Sam looks at you like you’re the dessert he can’t wait to eat, and Mads looks at you like a diabetic.”

  “Now I’m really not following you.”

  “Mads looks at you like something he wants but knows he can’t have.”

  “Maybe you should make an appointment with Dr. Grover.”

  “I do not need to see the optometrist.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  The conversation lulled as Ashley refilled their cups then moved to the next table.

  “When have you seen these looks?” Arlo demanded.

  “All the time.”

  “Why haven’t I noticed them?”

  “‘There are none so blind…’” Chloe quoted.

  “If I can’t see them, how come you can?”

  Chloe stopped, pressed her lips together, even twirled one of her springy curls around her index finger. “I noticed because…well, because I see them look at you, and I wish someone would look at me the same way.”

  Arlo didn’t know how to respond. Instead she shoveled a large bite of omelet into her mouth and chewed as if her life depended on it. Why had she never noticed those looks, and why was Chloe telling her about them now?

  Chapter 8

  “You don’t say,” Helen said as she and Arlo browsed the cake baking aisle at the Piggly Wiggly the following day.

  After a Sunday afternoon in the park with Jayden and Chloe, Arlo had finally managed to push Chloe’s words from h
er mind. Sam and Mads—two ships that had already sailed. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t remain friends. They were adults after all.

  Which was why she was helping Helen pick up the ingredients for Mads’s birthday cake. Helen baked him a cake every year and had for as long as he had been back in Sugar Springs. She said it was to ensure that the police always viewed the Inn with favorable eyes, but Arlo suspected it had more to do with her and Mads than Helen was letting on.

  “I think it’ll be good for both of them,” Arlo said. “Though I haven’t had long enough with Chloe that we could talk about it.” Arlo had barely arrived at the Books and More this morning when Chloe had hit her with the surprise that she was moving Jayden into her cottage at Lillyfield. It was a long time coming, but Arlo had known that it would happen eventually. Maybe not in the small little cottage, but she had known that they couldn’t stay apart for long. A mom and a son needed to be together. But she hadn’t had a moment to ask when and how they were going to arrange it or even what Chloe’s mom and dad had to say about the matter before Helen had breezed in and taken her away to search for sprinkles for the cake.

  “I think strawberry,” Helen said. “Hasn’t that always been Mads’s favorite?”

  Arlo shook her head, silently thankful that she had something else to think about, even if it was cake flavors. “Sam likes strawberry. Mads likes banana rum.”

  Helen’s eyes lit up. “Banana rum. We could decorate it with pecans.”

  Arlo knew in an instant that she had lost her. Helen was a fine baker, and Mads did like his cake. It was a good combo, and Arlo wouldn’t complain. She just hoped that Helen wouldn’t think that baking Mads a cake for his birthday would somehow reconcile the two of them. As far as Arlo could see, it just wasn’t happening. Heck, she couldn’t even get past trying to discuss things with Sam.

  They all three tiptoed around each other, prom night ten years ago hanging heavy between them, but none of them wanted to say anything. Arlo supposed one day they would have a reckoning; she just wasn’t sure where and when that would be.

  “Fern!” Helen called.

  Arlo turned as Fern whirled around and placed one finger over her lips to shush them. She flattened herself toward the side of the aisle, pushing boxes of pudding mix down in the process.

  “What are you doing?” Helen asked. She handed Arlo a bag of flour and a package of powdered sugar, then proceeded toward the pecans.

  “She’s here.” Fern pushed the words softly through clenched teeth as she inclined her head toward the center aisle.

  Arlo shuffled the items in her arms and waited for…whatever it was Fern thought was about to happen.

  Helen sucked in a breath and opened her mouth, no doubt preparing to ask who she was, but before she could get out even one word, a woman pushing a cart walked past them down the center aisle.

  She was tall, rivaling Helen in height and stature. She was broad and solid and, unlike Helen, not as elegant by far.

  “Pam,” Fern hissed.

  “What’s so interesting about Pam?” Helen demanded in a normal tone.

  Fern cringed, then pressed one finger over her lips once more. “She’s buying groceries.”

  Helen nodded indulgently while Arlo shifted the groceries in her arms. One hand was beginning to go to sleep.

  “Did you see what was in her basket?” Fern asked.

  Helen and Arlo shook their heads.

  Fern motioned for them to follow, then ducked her head low before swinging out into the center aisle of the store. She almost duckwalked to the next aisle. Or maybe it was her version of a true duckwalk. After all, it would be hard to get down that low at Fern’s age. But when Arlo factored in Fern’s faded overalls and worn Chucks, she had to work to keep her laughter to herself.

  Fern threw herself down the next aisle.

  Helen and Arlo followed, but once they got there, Fern was casually studying cans of peaches. “See her over there?” Fern asked. She didn’t take her eyes from the can she held in her hand. “That’s her. Across the way. Looking at the paper towels.”

  Arlo and Helen turned to look across the aisle at the woman, the same woman they had seen at Lillyfield the day of the murder. Pam.

  “Don’t look!”

  Helen and Arlo turned back around.

  “You see what was in her basket?”

  Helen harrumphed. “How can I when you keep telling me not to look?”

  Fern shook her head. “You don’t need to look. I’ll tell you what’s in there. Chips, candy, granola bars—which are not healthy at all, you know—and a cake from the bakery. And now she’s headed toward the ice cream.”

  “That’s all very interesting, Fern,” Arlo said. “Elly, I need to get back to the store.”

  But Helen had been sucked in. “She’s a nutritionist, and she’s buying ice cream?”

  “And not the healthy kind.”

  Arlo wanted to ask if there any truly healthy ice creams but managed to bite back the question. It would only prolong this trip to the store.

  “You know what this means?” Fern asked. She raised her eyebrows at Helen, most likely realizing that Arlo was a lost cause.

  “It means she likes junk food. It’s a problem a lot of us have,” Arlo said. “Elly…”

  Her onetime guardian, almost-grandmother, was lost to her. “We need to find out what all she has in her basket.”

  Fern grinned in a mischievous, almost devious way. “I already have.” She took a small notebook from the chest pocket of her bib overalls. She opened it and took the pencil from behind her ear. Today she was wearing a big straw hat in addition to her new getup.

  “Just like I told you: chips, cake, granola bars,” she said the last as if they were somehow the evilest of all.

  “What does this mean?” Helen asked.

  Fern pressed her lips together. “It means she’s lying about being a nutritionist. What sort of nutritionist buys that kind of food at the grocery store?”

  “The sort that lies,” Helen said with a decisive dip of her chin.

  “The food is not for Judith,” Arlo said. “Obviously. And the woman is allowed to eat whatever she wants on her own time.” But even as she said the words, they sounded strange. She was allowed to eat whatever she wanted to eat; it was America after all, but…

  “And if she lied about that… ” Helen mused.

  “Ladies,” Arlo started, not sure what she would say next, but she needed to get their attention at least. To no avail.

  Fern glanced down the aisle to where Pam the so-called nutritionist was still shopping, this time studying the ice cream as anticipated. “If she lied about that,” Fern repeated, “what else has she lied about?”

  * * *

  “I wonder if Sam could run a background check on her,” Fern said once they were all back at the Books and More.

  Chloe had gone to the school to work out the paperwork for Jayden’s move, updating all the emergency contacts and such, which left Arlo to rein in the book club alone.

  “Of course Sam can run a background check on her,” Arlo said. “But you won’t ask him to.”

  “I won’t?” Fern asked.

  “Then I will,” Helen put in.

  “Neither of you will. That woman has the right to buy whatever groceries she wants to at a store. This is America, not Communist China.”

  “I’m pretty sure that the Chinese can buy what they want to at the grocery store,” Helen said.

  “My point exactly,” Arlo returned. “Besides”—she nodded toward the coffee bar where a customer waited—“it’s time for you to work your magic, Miss Fern.”

  Fern whipped off her floppy straw hat and fluffed her blue-tinted curls. Miraculously they sprung back into place. But that was the power of Teresa at Dye Me a River.

  “Don’t tell me Camille is
out with her new man again.” Arlo stumbled over the word man, not that he wasn’t a man, but other descriptions popped to mind. None of them should be said aloud.

  She mentally chastised herself for being so unfair and waited for Helen to reply.

  Her guardian sadly shook her head. “I just wonder when we’re going to get to meet him. Before the wedding, I hope.”

  “There’s not going to be any wedding,” Fern called from the coffee bar. Her tone was akin to a drill sergeant barking orders; then she turned back to the customer with a sweet smile and pushed his coffee across the counter to him. “There you are.” Her voice had turned saccharine sweet.

  Arlo started toward the book cart she had left when Helen had come by demanding she go buy cake supplies with her. Arlo needed something to do with her hands. And something to keep her mind occupied.

  “I still hope we get to meet him soon,” Helen said. She made her way over to the reading nook, where Faulkner squawked from inside his cage.

  “Pretty bird,” he chirped. “Pretty bird.”

  “Yes, you are,” Helen crooned in her baby talk voice.

  “Let me outta here,” Faulkner demanded.

  Arlo shook her head and turned back to the self-help section. Too bad there weren’t any books on how to deal with your geriatric book club when it got out of control. Maybe she should write one. First, she had to figure out what to do.

  Fern wiped down the coffee counter as Helen let Faulkner out of his cage.

  “Are you sure Auggie is upstairs?” Arlo asked.

  “I don’t see him down here,” Helen said.

  Faulkner climbed his way to the top of his cage using both feet and his beak for balance and stretched his wings as far as they would go. He flapped them a couple of times, then shook his head and turned to Helen. “Gimme a kiss, sugar.”

  “Sugar?” Arlo looked to her guardian. Helen leaned in with lips pursed to give the bird a kiss.

  Arlo went back to shelving books.

  “Do you think she doesn’t want us to meet him?” Helen asked. She ran a finger down Faulkner’s head, then back up, ruffling his feathers. He chirped happily, then made a sound like a purring cat.