For Whom the Book Tolls

by Laura Gail Black

  Rita nodded, and we gathered the coffee things and took them to the kitchen. Silently Rita returned the half-full coffeepot to its base while I rinsed the cups and placed them in the dishwasher.

  Finally, I had to ask. “Rita, why didn’t you bring up the Aunt Irene angle of Stan’s vendetta with Uncle Paul?”

  She turned and leaned on the counter. “Honey, if Stan killed Paul, it was over that real estate deal. I thought about our talk for a long time last night before bed. I really think he could’ve done it.”

  “The police will probably check to see if Stan had a prescription for sleeping medications or if he had access to them. Maybe they’ll put him in a lineup for the cleaning lady to see if she recognizes him. He could be the man she saw Uncle Paul let into the store that day.” I washed the last dish and set it in the dish rack, pulling the sink plug with my other hand and visualizing my stress rushing down the drain with the dirty water. It didn’t help.

  “As many ads as he splashes around town, I can’t believe she wouldn’t know his face,” Rita said.

  Drying my hands on a dish towel, I turned to face Rita. “Thank you for not dragging Aunt Irene’s and Uncle Paul’s memories through the mud.” I hopped up to sit on the kitchen counter, letting my legs swing.

  “I would never do that. Without them here to defend themselves, there’s no telling what the gossips would do. Everyone loved Paul and Irene, but you never know what folks will say to get attention.” Rita flashed a playful grin. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to make the new neighbor mad at me after knowing her less than two days.”

  I chuckled, trying to let go of the tension still knotted in my stomach. “Well, it seems I’ve got a lot to do today, so I guess I’d better get going.” I hopped off the counter and walked to the bedroom to get my keys.

  Rita followed. “It’s early yet. What’s on your agenda for the rest of the day?”

  “First, I need to go check the store. If there’s damage, I need to get someone out to repair things. Then I’ll start wading through some of the mess.” I wasn’t looking forward to all the work, but it would be a wonderful distraction for a while. And I was eager to get everything in place so the store would look its best. Whether I sold it or kept it, it had to be done.

  “Want some company?”

  “If you have the time, I’d love some.” I smiled, happy not to face the mess alone.

  “I have the day off, and I might as well accomplish something. Besides, it might be fun. You never know what we might find in all those piles. Maybe even something worth killing for.”

  Chapter Ten

  Once properly dressed, I met Rita downstairs, and we walked through the disarray. My heart sank at the mess. The store hadn’t been neat and tidy to begin with, but now it looked like a tornado had swept through it. Books had been pulled off the shelves, items had been scattered behind the counter, and even the plastic bags had been tossed across the floor. On top of that, the front door, counter, cash register, and coffee station were covered in black fingerprint dust. And Elmer Peabody still hadn’t come to remove the white lines.

  I called a locksmith to come fix the broken front-door lock, grateful that whoever broke in hadn’t smashed the glass. Next, I used the phone number I’d gotten from Horace Grimes and called Gladys Washburn, asking her to come help clean up and offering to pay overtime if needed.

  When she arrived, the three of us went to work, cleaning, wiping down, vacuuming, and, thanks to Gladys, removing the white tape from the stairs and scouring the floor and stairs in the general area where the body had been found. She would definitely get a nice Christmas bonus this year.

  I was thrilled when the cleaning portion of the day was completed before ten AM and Gladys was able to go to her next client’s home, after we’d hugged and cried together a moment and I’d promised her she would still come clean for me once a week. We walked out with her as she left, and I took the opportunity to step back and look at the store from the front for the first time, getting a customer’s view of my new, albeit possibly short-lived, business. Plus, it was a handy excuse to avoid the even bigger job of straightening and organizing the store after many of the books had been tossed around willy-nilly.

  A plain sign proudly hung over the door bearing the words Baxter’s Book Emporium in bold, black lettering. Way to be creative, Uncle Paul. I shook my head. A name change was definitely in order. If I stayed.

  The phone jangled from inside, and we hurried back inside to the sound of tinkling bells over the door. I rushed to answer the call, hoping it would be my first real customer. Remembering the sign outside, I answered cheerfully, “Baxter’s Book Emporium.”

  “Are you happy with your sales? Would you like to increase your daily profit? Well, we at Book Distributors of America would like to offer you—”

  A telemarketer? Really? I interrupted the salesman before he could get too far into his spiel. “I’m sorry, but I’m not interested right now.” Over the top of his second attempt at stating his case, I hung up and let my gaze scan the room, once again taking in the utter chaos. “Any idea where to start?”

  “I don’t think it’ll make any difference.” Rita chuckled. “But as my grandmother used to say, ‘Rita Sue, there won’t be no gettin’ to the end if you don’t make no beginnin’.’”

  “Rita Sue?”

  “Don’t knock it. It’s my name.” Rita grinned.

  “Seriously?” At her pursed lips and narrowed eyes, I sobered. “Well, it fit perfectly with that southern accent you were faking.”

  “Who says the accent was fake?”

  Good Lord, now I was insulting her. “You don’t have a southern accent now.”

  “Honey, let me tell you somethin’ about myself.” Rita slipped back into her southern drawl. “I grew up in a li’l ol’ town in Georgia. My whole family speaks with this here accent.”

  “Why did you learn not to use it?” As I asked, I moved to the coffee station and opened the cabinet beneath it, hoping to find coffee-making supplies. Maybe if I had coffee in my mouth, I wouldn’t put my foot in it so much.

  Rita’s accent disappeared. “After I graduated from cosmetology school—” She held up her hand to forestall my interruption. “I know, I know, a very stereotypical thing for a southern girl from a small country town to do.”

  “I wasn’t going to say that.” Under her glare, I winced. Okay, so maybe I was. I pulled out a stack of filters and fitted one into the coffeemaker, but there had been no coffee with them. “I was going to say it was interesting that you found your vocation so young in life.” A weak claim, but it would have to do. “Come on, I need coffee. Let’s look in the back to see if we can find some.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Rita shot me a look that said she didn’t believe me, but she followed me down an aisle to the jumbled back room.

  “So, what came next?” I looked into cabinets and under counters. There had to be coffee somewhere!

  “As I was saying, after I graduated, I went out to Hollywood, determined to make a name for myself and a fortune to boot. One of the first things I learned was the country bumpkin thing didn’t go over well out there. So, I sort of remade myself. I gave myself a makeover, saved my pennies and replaced my wardrobe, and managed to get an interview with a Hollywood makeup artist. I got the job, and the rest is history.”

  “Just like that?” I turned to stare at her. “You make it sound so easy to up and change your whole way of life.” I didn’t think I’d ever feel like I’d changed enough to get past what had happened in Charlotte.

  She chuckled. “Oh honey, let me tell you, it was anything but easy. I made a lot of mistakes, but eventually I got my foot in the door with a couple of well-known professionals.”

  “Did you stay with the same artist the whole time?” I returned to my search for coffee.

  “Yes, but eventually the glamour wore off, and the stress of Hollywood got old.” Rita riffled through the desk drawers. “A few years ago, when I heard about a job at the Hok
es Bluff Inn, I jumped at it. And here I am.” She raised a can of Folgers in her hand like it was the World Cup. “Found it!”

  “Thank God.” I followed her this time as we headed back to the coffeemaker. “What does a makeup artist do at a hotel?”

  “Haven’t you heard about the Hokes Bluff Inn?” Rita glanced over her shoulder at me.

  “No. What’s so special about it?” So it was a fancy hotel. It couldn’t be that big a deal.

  “And you a native of the lovely state of North Carolina. Shame on you for not knowing about your own historical landmarks.” Rita turned and shook her finger in mock sternness.

  “Oh, and you can tell me all of the historical landmarks in Georgia?” I gave her what I hoped was a withering look. I apparently failed.

  Rita saucily waved aside her own shortcoming. “No, but that’s beside the point. If you’ve not heard of the Hokes Bluff Inn, you’re in for a treat. This is definitely history with some personality. It’s also the reason for the town’s name. You’ll love this.”

  Armed with fresh coffee, we began sorting stacks of books, separating them by category, while Rita told the colorful story of the town of Hokes Folly.

  Chapter Eleven

  Before I let her start her story, I created a store section plan for each type of book, so we wouldn’t start out by simply moving books from one random pile to the other. We moved to the front corner, armed with a few empty cardboard boxes I’d found and labeled with things like Cookbooks, Romance, and Self-Help, and sat amid the clutter.

  “Are you familiar with the Vanderbilt family?” Rita asked.

  I searched my memory. “As in Vanderbilt University in Tennessee?”

  “Yep, that’s the one. In the late 1800s, Cornelius Vanderbilt donated a million dollars, and they renamed the college after him.”

  “What does Vanderbilt University have to do with your inn?” I sipped my coffee and hoped this story would make the time pass more quickly while we pawed through scattered piles of books.

  “Cornelius had a son, George Washington Vanderbilt. The Vanderbilt family built several large, expensively gorgeous estates. One of those estates, the one George built, is here in North Carolina.”

  “I know. I’ve always wanted to visit Biltmore in Asheville, but I’ve never managed to find the time.” And once I’d had the time, fun vacation junkets had no longer been an option. “I’ve heard it’s absolutely fantastic.”

  “Make time. It’s worth it. Biltmore had every possible amenity for the times. And then some. George wanted to build a completely self-sustaining estate like the ones in Europe, and he succeeded.”

  “Cool.” I added a trip to Biltmore to my checklist of things to do. “But what does this have to do with Hokes Folly?”

  Rita grabbed a small pile of books from the floor and separated them into the boxes, but her eyes sparkled as if she was truly enjoying telling her story. “I’ve always loved the history of Hokes Folly, and I’m tickled to have a captive audience.”

  “It’s not like I have anywhere else to be right now.” I grinned and moved to the next pile of books.

  “Very true.” Rita handed me a cookbook to stick into the box next to me. “John Jacob Hokes inherited a large sum of money in the spring of 1895 at the age of thirty-one. An uncle, whose only son had died as a child from a bad case of strep throat, passed away and left it all to dear John as his brother’s oldest son. Good old Uncle Barton Hokes had made his fortune the same way the Vanderbilt family had—in shipping and railroading.”

  “Wait, Hokes. As in Olivia Hokes?” I cringed at the memory of the rude woman.

  Rita chuckled. “I take it you’ve met one of our ‘town treasures.’”

  I nodded. “Not a memory I relish.”

  She handed me another cookbook. “John was their great-great-great-uncle. And he’d inherited scads of cash. This was wonderful, except for one thing. He had no head for handling money. All of his life, whenever he’d gotten ahold of some, he squandered it on poor investments or gambling. So, when he inherited this fortune, he decided to hire a financial adviser and a solicitor.

  “Things were great for a while. John was invited to some of the best parties and was on the guest list for certain balls where eligible daughters were trotted out by mothers hoping to rebuild family finances through marriage to money, in spite of the fact that it was, after all, only inherited business money. But there were still some things John wasn’t considered ‘good enough’ for. As a result, he went through life with a chip on his shoulder, always expecting the worst from society.”

  I jumped in, wanting to know how the hotel played in. “And he moved here, and they named the town after him?”

  “Stop rushing my story. I don’t get to tell this very often. Let me enjoy it.”

  “Okay, okay.” I held up my hands in mock surrender before grabbing another handful of books to sort. At least the story was keeping me from thinking about my own issues for a while.

  “When George Vanderbilt opened Biltmore on Christmas Eve, 1895, he threw a ritzy party for his family and friends, and John Hokes didn’t get an invitation. Feeling left out again, John set out to prove he was as good and as smart as any of them. It wasn’t until years later that it came out that John had been on the invitation list but his was unfortunately lost in the mail.”

  “Too bad our dear old postal service hasn’t improved much over the years,” I grumbled under my breath.

  “So very true.” Rita shook her head. “Well, due to this particular error, John decided to one-up Vanderbilt. He planned an estate to rival Biltmore. He went about sixty miles from what is now Asheville and made sure his elevation was a bit higher than Vanderbilt’s. He chose an architect and a landscaper who could create a style to outshine Biltmore’s, and by late 1896, the work had begun. John’s house would have all that his perceived rival’s had, and then some. It would have three hundred rooms instead of only two hundred fifty, two indoor swimming pools instead of only one—one for ladies and one for men so anyone could swim at any hour—a larger staff to better serve the guests, larger gardens, a larger conservatory with plants even more exotic … well, you get the picture.”

  “Yep.” I sang a few bars of “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.”

  “Exactly.” Rita shifted down the row, working only on the books piled in the floor space for now. “The construction went well. The house took shape, one slow piece at a time. Until 1901, when John’s financial adviser made some very bad investments and lost John’s fortune in a matter of months. The house was only about eighty percent built. The grounds were still a mess, since the landscaping was supposed to be finished in the last year of construction.”

  “How awful for him.” I knew exactly how it felt to have every hope and dream snatched away in an instant.

  “It was, in more ways than one. He’d insisted they complete the gardener’s cottage so he could live on the estate during the actual building process.” She handed me yet another cookbook, which topped off the cookbook box.

  As I took the box to the proposed cookbook area and emptied it, I raised my voice to answer. “At least he had a place to stay and wasn’t out on the street with nowhere to go.” I thought of my own recent past and shuddered.

  “Yes, but there was the problem. It also allowed him to spend long hours looking through his windows at the great hulking monstrosity of unfinished work that was supposed to have been his shining achievement.”

  “What a waste of a lifetime.” I strode back down the aisle and sat again.

  “Oh, it gets better. The town that had sprung up on the estate with folks there to build and maintain the house and grounds continued to prosper. The estate was originally named Hokes Bluff, and the town was called Hokes Bluff Village. However, when the lord of the manor went financially belly-up, the town renamed itself Hokes Folly.”

  When Rita held out three more cookbooks, I simply handed her the cookbook box for her to fill. “You mean the town is named after
someone’s failure?” That was wrong on so many levels.

  “You got it, babe.” Rita shifted down the aisle.

  “That’s horrible.” I shook my head. “What happened to him?”

  Rita settled herself by another stack of books and began sorting. “The locals got used to seeing him mumble to himself as he walked the streets, running his errands. He babbled to everyone about how he would one day reclaim his fortune and finish the building of the estate. They all figured he’d become delusional or just plain senile. They made fun of him, played jokes and pranks on him, and it was said some parents even used him as an example to their kids of what would happen if they didn’t eat their veggies, go to bed, get good grades, or do what their parents said.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” I thought about the frustrated old man desperately clinging to his lifelong dream, and I found myself rooting for him.

  “Sadly, I’m dead-level serious. As the Great Depression took hold of the town, the young and able left to find work, and the town began to die. In 1934, at the age of seventy, John Hokes finally passed away, never having achieved his dream of finishing Hokes Bluff. Upon his death, the government seized the unfinished manor and land in payment for back taxes.”

  “There was nothing left for an inheritance of any kind so someone else could try to finish his work?”

  “Nothing at all. Although there was John’s nephew, Olivia and Ophelia Hokes’s great-grandfather.”

  “I haven’t met Ophelia yet, but if she’s anything like Olivia, I can wait.” I had no desire to be scrutinized again.

  “The Hokes sisters are definitely unique. Their great-grandfather petitioned the government about the manor and land. He wanted to retain ownership of the estate and proposed a way to pay off his uncle’s debt, but the government refused. He was furious, but there was nothing he could do about it. That little tidbit of history has always stuck in Olivia Hokes’s craw. If her great-grandfather had been able to gain control of the estate, she and her sister would probably be extremely rich women right now.”