For Whom the Book Tolls

by Laura Gail Black

  I shook my head. “Nope, but I’ll definitely check them out. Thanks.”

  “Just keep an eye out for books for Livie,” she called.

  I left with a bounce in my step. I’d helped Phillie find something new to delve into, and I’d taken one more step to ensure good relations with my bookstore’s neighbors. If I could keep the well-known and well-respected Hokes sisters shopping at my store, others might follow their example.

  I rushed back into my store and rummaged for a phone book. I found the number and called, finding out what papers I needed to show to place the storage units in my name instead of Uncle Paul’s. Excitement skittered through me at the hope that the diary might be there.

  After grabbing a quick bite from a drive-through window, I arrived at the storage place and soon stood in a quiet indoor hallway in front of two ten-by-ten spaces with spare keys in hand, provided by the management. With a grin on my face, I stepped forward and threw up the rolling door on the first unit. My smile fell to the floor as I took in the space. The unit was full of boxes stacked head-high with only a few tiny gaps—walkways, I assumed—between the rows. With a sense of dread, I stepped to the second unit, unlocked it, and slid the door up. As with the other unit, I discovered more stacks of boxes, but this unit was only two-thirds full, leaving at least a little room to move around.

  Before delving into the stacks, I stepped back and snapped a picture, texting it to Rita and Mason. Looks like we have more books to catalog. I added a wide-eyed emoji face with raised brows, hit send, and stuffed my phone in my pocket, ready to get to work. I spent the rest of the afternoon going through books of all shapes and sizes and subjects, stopping every once in a while to lay aside a book for Livie or a gardening book to ask Phillie about when I saw her next. Over the next few hours, I made it through almost half of the emptier unit without finding the elusive diary.

  I only hoped I could locate it in time to keep anyone else from dying.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The weekend proved to be a busy one. While I was at the warehouse on Saturday, Mason had finished reorganizing the books, and he floated through the store on Sunday, assisting customers with selections while I manned the register. With so many customers in and out, which delighted me to no end, I didn’t feel right leaving Mason to deal with it alone.

  When Monday dawned, I rose with the chickens, determined to get an early start on the warehouse spaces, and hurried away from the apartment long before anyone else seemed to be awake in Hokes Folly.

  Since I had decided to follow the trend of the other historic district store owners and keep the bookstore closed on Mondays, I stood looking over the boxes of books once more. Frustration bubbled to the surface, and I pushed it aside. Sure, I’d found a few gardening and local history books and little else worth noting, but I refused to let that get me down.

  Instead, I tackled yet another box, then another and another. “It’s got to be here somewhere,” I whispered, almost dropping a heavy encyclopedia when a voice answered.

  “No luck yet?”

  I scrambled out from behind a stack of boxes to see Rita coming down the hallway. Setting the large book aside, I grinned and wiped dust from my hands onto the legs of my jeans. “What are you doing here?”

  “Asks the woman with the secret warehouse.”

  I chuckled and shrugged. “How’d you know to look for me here?”

  “It wasn’t exactly hard to figure out. When you weren’t at the bookstore, I figured this was the only other place you could be. There are only two storage places in Hokes Folly, and I knew Paul would go for the only one with climate control to preserve his books. He’d never allow them to be at the mercy of heat and cold and damp. I saw your car outside and knew I was right. You know, they really should have better security. I found the front gate open. You never know who might come wandering in.”

  “Like you did?” I quirked an eyebrow at her and stood, remembering the manager giving me the code but telling me the gate had a short in it and wouldn’t be fixed until the following week.

  “Hey,” Rita protested. “I’m one of the good guys.”

  “I sure hope so.” I flashed a quick grin.

  “You’d better do more than hope. If I’m the killer, then you’re in trouble, cookie.” Rita moved toward me in a mock-vicious manner, her arms and hands outstretched as if to strangle her victim.

  I crossed my arms and leaned back against a wall. “The other two victims were poisoned.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Rita let her arms fall to her sides. “I guess you’d better not eat the lunch I brought.” She surveyed the boxes, her eyes sad and a small wistful smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “I can almost see him digging through the boxes, excited over this or that book.”

  “I can do this myself, if this is too difficult for you.” Dealing with my own emotional roller coaster this past week and a half had been a huge strain, and I didn’t want to put anyone else through emotional trauma if I could help it.

  “No. I’m okay. Where do we start?” Rita straightened her spine and smiled.

  “If you’re sure, pick a box.” I swept my arm toward the unfinished portion of the smaller unit. “There’s more than enough to go around.”

  We started in on the boxes I’d not gotten to before the weekend, chatting while we sorted.

  “So, what’s the deal with you and the hot detective?” Rita’s voice was nonchalant.

  I almost dropped the books I was pulling out of a box. “What?” An image flashed through my mind of dark hair, tight abs, bronzed skin, long legs, a tight butt—

  “You heard me. Spill it.” Rita tilted her head and gave me a no-nonsense look.

  “Why do you think there’s something?” I stabilized my stack and flipped through the first one, making sure the diary wasn’t hidden in another book jacket.

  “Oh, come on. I’m not blind. I’ve seen the way the man looks at you.”

  “Well, stop wondering. There’s nothing. And I’m not sure I want something to be there either. I may not even stay here once things are settled.” Warm brown eyes and a gentle touch popped into my mind next, and I almost wished there really could be something there.

  “Why not?” Rita flipped a book open and closed and put it back into her own emptied box.

  “Why not what? Why am I possibly not staying, or why isn’t there something there with Keith Logan?” I plopped three books back into the box and folded the lid closed.

  “Either. Both.” Rita shrugged. “First, tell me why you may not stay.”

  I stood and piled the box on a growing stack of those already sorted. “I really like it here, and I think I might be good at running the bookstore. But I’m not sure if this is where I need to be.”

  “Do you want to go back to accounting?” Rita pulled the tape from another box and flipped it open.

  “Maybe.” I’d opened another as well, and my fingers slid over the tooled-leather cover on the top book. “I don’t know. With my history, I’m not sure anyone would hire me.”

  Rita stopped working and gave me a searching look. “Did you really love it so much?”

  I sighed. How could I answer that when I wasn’t really sure? “It was challenging. I met interesting people. It was steady and stable.”

  “But somewhere along the way it changed?” Rita offered gently.

  “You could say that.” I nodded. “I’m not even sure when it changed. I only know one day I looked up and it wasn’t so fun anymore. I guess it was about the time I realized my only steady relationship in years was with a guy who didn’t want anyone to know we were dating. I couldn’t make friends with anyone at work because they might find out, and I didn’t have time to make friends elsewhere.” It had been a lonely life, and I’d been too blind to notice.

  “I’m sure you mattered to your clients.” Rita’s voice softened, the books forgotten for now.

  “My clients, with rare exception, probably couldn’t have cared less.” I looked back, a
ssessing, processing. “Their only concern if I disappeared off the face of the earth would have been how it affected their marketing timetables and budgets.” I heaved a deep sigh and leaned back, slid the box to the floor, and plopped down beside it.

  “I care,” Rita said gently.

  “I know.” I smiled at my new friend. “I’ve only been here two weeks, but I’ve made more real friends in these few days than I have in the last five years.”

  Rita picked up a book and resumed our task. “What’s so hard about deciding to stay where you’re happy?”

  “I guess there’s a determination to prove everyone wrong, to prove I’m capable of bouncing back from all that happened.” To prove to myself I wasn’t the loser I’d felt like when everything collapsed like the proverbial house of cards. I slid a leather tome from my lap onto a pile and brushed off my hands.

  “But couldn’t your bounce back be through running a successful bookstore?” Rita wiggled a couple of volumes at me.

  “I’ll think about it.” Honestly, I didn’t know how I’d manage to think about much else. “At least I’ll be here long enough to get it all sorted out. Can’t sell something in this much of a mess. After that, we’ll see.”

  Rita apparently sensed the subject was closed and changed topics. “So, what about you and the sexy cop?”

  I shrugged and picked up another book, absently opening the cover and running my fingers across the aging page. “Nothing to tell.”

  Rita rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re still mooning over a man who hid you like some nasty secret and dumped you at the first sign of trouble.”

  “No, not really.” The past played across my eyes like a B-grade movie. The pain, the hurt, the anger. “It still hurts, but not like it should.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We were engaged. We lived together. I thought I was in love with him.” I blinked, cutting off the movie rerun of my love life. “After things ended, I realized I had loved the idea of the relationship more than I had loved him. I simply never had the opportunity to find someone else.”

  “Has it occurred to you that Keith Logan might be your someone else?”

  I pictured spending time with the detective and his warm smiles, the soft squeeze of his hand, and the way he’d stood up for me when his partner went too far. “What makes you so sure he’s even interested? Not that I’m ready for it anyway, but I’m curious.” I placed a gardening book to the side for Phillie.

  “Let me tell you something, girl.” Rita scooted closer and pulled my hands into hers. “I haven’t lived this long not to learn a few things. When a man looks at a woman the way he looks at you, he’s interested. When a man looks like he’s ready to knock another man’s teeth down his throat for upsetting you, he’s not just interested, he’s serious.”

  “As nice as it might be, I’m not sure I want a relationship right now.”

  “Well, I don’t want you talking yourself into becoming a hermit. You need to get out there and realize that good men do exist.” She squeezed my fingers and scooted back to her own box.

  “We’ll see.” I closed the subject for the time being and opened another box. “I’ll tell you one thing, Uncle Paul sure was a bookaholic.”

  “Seems that way, doesn’t it? Whenever I came over, he was always researching some book or other, trying to figure out if he should send it to auction or put it on the shelf for the average collector. Sometimes it really panned out for him. One time he found a book that went to auction and sold for about fifty thousand dollars. That made him all the more determined to see if there was another like it in every batch he bought.”

  “I could see why he would take the time. It seemed to pay off for him.” I eyed the stacks of boxes and wondered what treasures, other than the frustratingly elusive diary, I might eventually discover in here.

  “In that instance it did, but mostly he found the books he had were nothing really special.”

  I looked around at the boxes we’d managed to go through. “It’s those times he did find a gem that I wonder about. Where did he keep the really valuable ones until he could sell them?”

  “That, my friend”—Rita stood to look around the room as she stretched her cramped muscles—“is a question we’d better find an answer to pretty soon.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Rita had thought to pack a cooler before she came that morning, and as we laid out paper plates and took the food out, I remembered our earlier teasing.

  “I thought I wasn’t supposed to let you fix the food, in case you’re the killer.” I opened a container of potato salad and sniffed it.

  “Shoot.” Rita shook her red tresses. “You caught me.” Sighing, she began putting part of the food back into the cooler.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  “Since you won’t be eating any, I thought I’d put the poisoned stuff back in the cooler so I won’t accidentally eat any of it. I wouldn’t want to kill myself, now would I?” With one corner of her mouth turned up impishly, Rita calmly continued to pack away my part of the lunch.

  “I was kidding. Right now, I wouldn’t mind if it was poisoned. I’m too hungry to care.” I grabbed the sandwich Rita was putting away, slid it from its baggie, and took a huge bite. “There. It’s too late now. I’m already contaminated. I might as well enjoy my last meal. Besides, you probably wouldn’t poison me before we find the diary. You need access to Uncle Paul’s stuff.”

  Rita laughed and set the food back on the makeshift table we’d made from stacked boxes. We settled onto the floor to eat, and Rita took a bite of her sandwich, chewed, and swallowed.

  “Hey, I was joking about poisoning the food. You’re not eating.”

  I stopped stirring my fork in the potato salad on my plate. “Can I ask you something?”

  Rita put down her sandwich and gave me her full attention. “Sure, what’s up?”

  I explained about my run-in with Stan and his gift of a potted hydrangea.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” She leaned in, pinning me with her gaze.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just wanted to think about it for a while, to make sure I wasn’t overreacting. But I can’t help feeling like maybe there’s something there. Maybe he really did do it.”

  Rita shrugged. “There’s always that possibility.”

  “I guess so.” I ate a bite of the potato salad then listed my concerns. “He obviously has hydrangea available. But then, so does a huge portion of the world. It’s a popular plant. And he did know about Norman’s murder. I know it’s all over the news now, but it wasn’t on the day after the murder when he talked to me.”

  Rita had picked up her sandwich again, and she wiped her mouth before speaking. “Oh, he really does have a cousin who works as a dispatcher. She’s quite the busybody and a gossip to boot. It’s a miracle the newswires hadn’t already picked up the story. The only reason they hadn’t is we’re too small of a town for the TV stations to notice.”

  “But would he have known about the secret passages at the hotel?”

  Rita nodded. “He was a junior agent at the real estate company that brokered the sale to the hotel. He was very familiar with the plans and was even inside a couple of times while it was being built. Plus he and Barbie were there the night Norman was killed.”

  “Hmm.” I ate some more potato salad. I needed to get her recipe. “I guess the brownie and cobbler angle fit too.”

  “So that’s why you asked me if he liked to bake.” Rita had polished off the last of her lunch, leaving me with half a plate to go. She grabbed a plastic bag from the cooler and began to put the lunch trash into it.

  My brows knit together. “Yeah, I was trying to fit the pieces into something that made sense. But we’ll probably never know if he used sleeping pills for anything.” Whether we found that connection or not, a lot of other evidence was piling up that Stan might have killed my uncle and Norman Childers. “I guess the big question remains: how w
ould he have known about the diary?”

  “Who knows? But until we find it and can turn it over to the police, whoever wants it still has you in his cross hairs.”

  I ate the last of my sandwich while Rita packed the leftovers neatly in the cooler. We’d just finished as the door at the end of the hall opened and two figures entered, shadowed by the light behind them. I jumped to my feet, relieved when I saw not only Mason Craig but Keith Logan exiting as well. I quickly asked Rita to keep our conversation about Stan private for now. I didn’t want to point a finger at a possibly innocent man simply because he’d been nice enough to give me a potted plant.

  “Hi, Jenna, Rita. We thought you guys might need some help.” Mason walked up the hallway with a bounce in his step.

  “Sure. We’d love it,” replied Rita.

  I looked at Keith, trying to figure out why he had come. I was pretty sure he wasn’t there in an official capacity, so maybe Rita was right about him. I narrowed my eyes. “You do know I haven’t told Detective Sutter about this place yet, right?”

  “I know nothing, see nothing, hear nothing.” Keith winked and walked past me into the almost completed unit.

  Mason grinned. “I had to stop by the store to pick up my jacket, and he was looking in the windows.” He gestured toward Keith. “I told him we were closed on Mondays, and he asked if I knew where you were today. I figured it was the place with the heat and air.”

  “Don’t worry,” Keith interrupted. “He swore me to secrecy.”

  “Won’t you get in trouble if someone else official shows up and catches you here helping me? Isn’t this a conflict of interest or something?” I crossed my arms and tilted my head.

  “Nah,” Keith replied, his face serious. “I’ll tell them I was patrolling and caught everyone here, and I’m arresting you all.”

  My breath caught in my throat, my stomach tightened, and my knees sagged.