by Jen Carter
“In the tomb by the sea,” I supplied, paraphrasing. I couldn’t remember the exact wording, but I knew what Sandie was getting at. It was one thing to love someone beyond words. It was another thing for that love to turn into obsession and denial—and sleeping next to the deceased loved one. It upset Sandie that anyone would link her lost love to something obsessive and demented.
“The lines were meant to be cruel,” I said. “They don’t represent your feelings for Alton. But they’re troubling, in part because they’re close to the lines that do ring true—the lines about love so strong that even angels are jealous.”
Sandie nodded, and the look of overwhelmed emotion cleared from her face just as quickly as it came. “Perhaps,” she said.
Her response was non-committal, but I felt kindness, and maybe even gratitude, in her tone. And it was that kind, maybe even grateful, tone that spurred me on. I leaned in and dropped my voice.
“I heard that someone else received quotes from ‘Annabel Lee’ as well,” I said. My statement was vague and open-ended on purpose, and hopefully her response would guide the conversation wherever it needed to go next.
“Yes. Andrew Stevens. He’s the principal at your school, isn’t he?”
I nodded. “Do you know the lines?”
“They were the same as mine.”
I leaned back. It was time for my eyes to float over Sandie’s head, looking for answers in the wall moldings. “Why?”
The question was rhetorical, mostly because I hadn’t meant to say it aloud.
“I think whoever sent these notes—it’s unnerving how much they know about us,” Sandie said.
My eyes dropped to her. Was she implying that Dr. Stevens had experienced ‘Annabel Lee’-level loss? And what did Sandie know of his loss?
I didn’t ask. Too awkward. Instead, I went with what was more important at the moment. I hoped, at least.
“I think nearly everyone who’s gotten a note has been somehow connected to Fleming or his drama program. Why would you and Dr. Stevens get notes?”
Sandie looked away and took a deep breath. Just as I thought she might offer an answer, the bell above Hathaway House’s entrance jangled and two tourists walked in, their new-arrival status evidenced by their sandals-with-socks footwear and tightly-clutched wine tasting brochures.
Darn. I knew what that meant. My conversation with Sandie was about to be filed away as to-be-continued.
“You’re busy,” I said, standing. “I’ll get out of your hair. Thank you for sharing with me.”
Sandie rose as well. “Before you go, Jill, I did want to tell you that Dr. Stevens does care deeply about education and his students’ well-being.”
I almost sputtered an incredulous guffaw, but I stifled it. I was sure he thought he cared deeply about education. It was cute that he somehow had convinced Sandie of the same.
I nodded and left.
Time for a break. I needed to get my mind off Fleming’s death and all that had followed.
As I crossed Via del Corso toward Amy’s coffee shop, my phone rang. I pulled it from my back pocket and looked at the unfamiliar number displayed on the screen. Maybe it was Lucy. Maybe my comment about the traffic tickets had done the trick.
So much for taking my mind off Fleming and all that had followed.
I braced myself for an unpleasant conversation with one of my least favorite people.
“Hello,” I said, trying for my best all-business voice.
“Jill? This is Esther, from the play.”
“Oh.” I dropped my all-business tone. Darn. I hadn’t been looking forward to speaking with Lucy, but I was sort of disappointed that I wasn’t about to get the hard conversation over with. “Hi Esther. How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “Still a little shaken, but I came to school anyway. I figured that was better than hanging around home and fixating on last night.”
“How’s your ankle?”
“Not great. But I have my crutches, so I’ll make it through the day.”
In the background, the school bell rang.
“Oh, I better make this quick. The break between classes is almost over,” she said, suddenly sounding hurried. “I’m kind of in a jam and need to ask a favor.”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“My friend drove me to work this morning, but I just found out he won’t be able to pick me up. Could you maybe pick me up after school and take me over to the Old Everly Place to get my car? It’s still there after everything that happened last night. Normally I’d ask another teacher here to help me out, but then I’d have to explain what happened, and I really don’t want to get into it.”
“No problem.” I mentally readjusted my afternoon plans. “I was thinking about working a couple extra hours in the winery this afternoon since play practice is cancelled, but I’ll switch that around and—”
“Oh, no,” Esther interrupted. “Don’t change those plans for me. I have a ton of grading I can do on campus. Whenever you can get here is fine.”
“Okay, how’s six-thirty?”
“Perfect.”
“Are you going to be able to drive your car home from the Old Everly Place, though?” I asked. “I can just take you straight home.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want to leave my car there another night. I’m sure I’ll be able to drive. I can grin and bear it.”
“How about I bring someone with me? That way, when we get to the Old Everly Place, one of us can drive you home in your car while the other one follows. We’ll drop you off with the car, then head back to OV together.”
“Really? You think you could get someone to do that?”
“Of course. We’ll see you later today. If anything changes, just text me.”
I hung up and slid my phone into my pocket. Esther’s last words rang in my head. You think you could get someone to do that? The poor girl really must not have had many friends if such a little favor seemed like such a big deal to her. It made me grateful for what I had.
TWENTY-SEVEN
When I walked into Amy’s coffee shop after speaking with Esther, she was standing behind the counter making fancy espresso drinks. I found an empty table and sat, thinking about how my afternoon plans had changed. Maybe Amy would come with me to pick up Esther. She seemed to work mornings most of the time, so maybe she’d be free this afternoon to take a ride with me.
“There you are!” Amy said once she finished with her customers and caught sight of me. “I knew you’d be in sooner or later. What can I get you?”
I stood and walked to the counter. “Maybe a triple espresso mocha with a shot of liquid clairvoyance.”
Amy grabbed a to-go cup and started scrawling on it with a Sharpie. “How about we make it a double since you probably don’t need that much caffeine, and then since I just ran out of liquid clairvoyance, I’ll draw a cute picture.” She held the cup toward me so that I could see the lovely palm tree and monkey face she had drawn.
“Even better,” I said.
She went to work making the drink.
“How are you?” she asked from behind the counter.
“Okay. I’d be better if I knew what had happened to Livy. But putting that aside for now, there’s something else I wanted to ask you about.”
Amy finished the drink and handed it to me. “Sure. Anything.”
I dropped my voice. “How does everything work upstairs? Do I need an appointment?”
“Most people do, but you don’t. What are you interested in?”
“Do you have any Steinbeck? I was thinking about getting Nico something.”
“I do. Anything in particular?”
I scrunched my nose. When I met Nico in Italy, one of the many reasons I fell in love with him was his love of books—particularly books that I felt were sometimes overlooked for their brilliance. Everyone talked about Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath when John Steinbeck came up. Those books were great, but they weren’t the only books Steinbeck
wrote.
“East of Eden?” I asked.
It was still a popular title, but being overshadowed by other titles championed by high schools across the United States, I had no idea what Amy would say. That is, until she smiled.
“Yes, probably seven or eight of them. You can have your pick. I’ll give it to you.”
She was as bad at selling rare books as she was at selling coffee.
“No way,” I said. “You can’t just give books away. I want to buy one from you.”
Amy shook her head. “No, I want you to have it.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” I said. “It’s going to be a birthday present.”
“If you’re bent on spending money, buy some Fitzgerald or Hemingway to go with the Steinbeck.”
Well, okay. I could do that. I had always wanted to read more Hemingway short stories.
“Do you have time now to show me the titles you have?” I asked. “Or maybe I can come back later, like tonight?”
“Tonight I have an appointment.” Amy scanned the coffee shop and then reached in her apron pocket. “I don’t have help down here for another two hours, and I probably shouldn’t leave the store unattended.” She handed me a set of keys from her apron. “Go on upstairs by yourself. Pick out whatever you want. The twentieth century American lit is on the back wall, off to the left. If you want to touch anything, there are gloves in the center-most display case with the Shakespeare First Folio.”
“Okay, thank you.” I pocketed the keys and turned toward the bookstore. After a couple steps, Amy’s words hit me. I stopped, turned, and walked back to her.
In a low voice, nearly a whisper, I said, “Did you just say you have an original Shakespeare upstairs? A Shakespeare First Folio?”
“Oh,” Amy said with a laugh. “No, no, no. That one upstairs is a replica. It’d be silly of me to have the original out.”
I blinked at her.
Ah, of course. It would be silly to put the original out. Something like that was only worth millions of dollars.
I couldn’t find words to respond.
“I’ll be here whenever you’re done,” she said. “Just make sure to lock the door at the bottom of the stairs and then swing by with the keys.”
I didn’t move. Was she serious? A Shakespeare First Folio?
“Jill,” she said, leaning slightly over the counter toward me. “Go. You’ve got stuff to do.”
That snapped me out of it. She was right. I had stuff to do.
I turned back to the bookstore archway, but again, after just a couple steps I backtracked.
“One more thing,” I said.
Amy smiled with the same sort of half-amused, half-patient look that my mother had perfected when my sisters and I were on the verge of driving her nuts.
“I know you said that you have an appointment tonight. What time? Want to run an errand with me about six-fifteen? Esther needs me to pick her up from school and take her to her car. And then since she still can’t drive with her sprained ankle, we need to get her and her car home. I think we’ll be back by six-forty-five.”
Amy pulled out her phone and opened its calendar. “Sure,” she said. “Bianca is working here tonight, and my appointment isn’t until seven. That’ll work.” She pocketed her phone and gave another one of those half-amused, half-patient smiles. “Now go,” she said.
I turned and scampered through the archway to the bookstore and went straight for the far back corner. Just a few people were browsing in the shop, and no one paid me any attention. As though I had every right to be there, I slid the key into the door’s lock and let myself into the narrow stairway up to Amy’s secret-ish shop. This time as I climbed the stairs, it was fun to look at the photos of writers on the walls. Last time I had been so confused about what was happening that I couldn’t appreciate them. This time, the photos made me feel joyful, like they were a celebration of art.
Inside the shop, I locked the door behind me and took my time wandering around. I knew what I wanted already, but I was just fascinated by all those first editions and rare documents. On my third lap around the store, I decided I wanted to make an appointment with Amy in the next couple days to come back. Hopefully by then I’d already have Nico’s present picked out, but I wanted to schedule some time to hear the whole back story on how she ended up with all those books. I wanted to hear more about her grandmother and her grandmother’s friend. I wanted to hear about how she decided what she wanted to keep, to give away, and to sell. I wanted to hear it all—it was just so fascinating.
I was just about to text her a request to get on her appointment calendar when my phone rang. Again it was an unrecognized number, but I wasn’t going to get my hopes up that it was Lucy this time. I didn’t want to pull out my all-business voice again unnecessarily. It was a waste of energy.
“Hello?” I said in my usual voice upon answering.
“So you’re going to fix my tickets?”
Dang. It was Lucy. I should have gone with the all-business greeting.
“That depends,” I said. “I need some information from you. If you give it to me, I’ll see what I can do.”
“I don’t divulge my sources,” she said.
“Look,” I said. “Livy was drugged. I don’t know what your source told you, but Livy was drugged. She didn’t just ingest some herbs accidentally. Unless you were in the hospital last night eavesdropping when Hunter told me and Nico about the drugging, the only other person who could know about it was the person who drugged her. So tell me, were you eavesdropping last night?”
“No.”
“Then your source was the person trying to kill Livy—and probably the person who killed Fleming. Why would you care about breeching confidentiality if we’re talking about a killer? Do you seriously have no conscience?”
“My source couldn’t be the killer. She got a threatening note herself, so she’s been just as much a target as anyone else. She’s not a killer.”
“Have fun paying your traffic tickets,” I said. And with that, I hung up.
Lucy didn’t directly give away her source, but I was pretty sure she had indirectly given it away.
I pulled up a note taking app on my phone and quickly listed all the women who had been sent a note.
Gracie
Ashyln
Sophia
Livy
Esther
me
Lucy
Jules
Sandie
I could rule out me and Livy. After that, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure anyone else could be crossed off. It was possible that anyone else on the list could have snuck into Livy’s store and gotten the belladonna. I didn’t have a clear motive for any of them, but that didn’t mean a motive didn’t exist.
My gut told me I could cross off Jules and Lucy. Jules was our friend, and Lucy was just too ambitious to do anything that would compromise her career. My gut also told me I could cross off the teenage girls. They may have been in the drama crowd at school, but their acting wasn’t that great. I doubted they could have sustained a charade like this for as long as Fleming had been missing. Plus, they loved Livy.
That left Sandie and Esther.
Was it possible that the person who poisoned Livy had faked a note to herself to throw off the Fleming investigation? I had thought Dr. Stevens might have done that, but maybe someone else did. Maybe Sandie or Esther did.
Sandie was a retired English professor, and Esther was filling in for a ninth grade English teacher. With their backgrounds, either one of them could have picked out literary quotes to put us on edge. Still, I couldn’t think of a motive either of them could have had. Sandie was friends with Dr. Stevens, Dr. Stevens used to work at Temecula Hills with Fleming, and Fleming was almost fired by Stevens. Could there have been some sort of connection there? I didn’t see it. And Esther. She asked Livy to help with the play in the first place, so why would she try to hurt Livy in the end? She was too shy and nervous to do something like that anyw
ay.
But just in case.
I walked back downstairs, locking each door behind me, and went directly to Amy in the coffee shop. She was still behind the counter and just finishing up with a customer. As that customer walked away, I handed over her keys and said, “I’m going to have Nico come with me tonight to pick up Esther. I don’t want to risk you being late for your appointment at seven, and I’m slightly concerned that there might be something fishy going on with her. It’s probably nothing, but Nico would kill me if I ignored my suspicion and it led to me and you being in danger.”
She nodded. “Okay. Are you going to tell Detective Fitts your suspicions?”
I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know. It’s really, really minor, and he’ll probably tell me I’m acting crazy. Maybe I’ll run it by Nico and see what he thinks.”
Amy nodded again. “Just do me a favor. Text me when you’re back after dropping her off so I know you’re safe.”
“You’ve got it.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Nico had no problem going with me to pick up Esther from school.
“I get it,” he said while driving toward Temecula Hills. “She asked you for a favor, you said yes, and you want to honor that.”
“I sort of wish I hadn’t called Lucy about her source. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have this teeny-tiny suspicion about Esther now. Plus, I shouldn’t be snooping in the first place.”
“Well, I understand why you did that, too,” he said. “One of your best friends was poisoned. If it were one of my best friends, I’d probably do the same. And I’d rather you be suspicious than totally caught off guard.”
Oh, how I loved him.
“Do you think I should tell Fitts that I’m just a little worried about Esther?” I asked.
“Do you want to get yelled at for being nosy?” He glanced at me in the passenger seat as I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s a big deal right now. Esther should be out in front when we get to the school, and we’ll take her to get her car. I’ll drive her car home, and you can follow us. Then we’ll go home. This should be a non-event, so I don’t think the detective needs to be involved. But even so,” he paused and glanced at me again, “I’m glad you asked me to go rather than taking Amy. For the sake of precaution.”