by Cleo Coyle
The shelved books ended at the letter M, with a first edition of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.
There was no sign of my Shades of Leather, however.
Jack whistled. Emma Hudson’s got quite a stash. Do you think her light fingers lifted them all?
“I doubt it. But it does beg a question . . .”
What?
“How can a woman who owns so many valuable books be completely unaware that big bestsellers like Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train aren’t part of the same series?”
I eyed the sealed boxes, wondering what hidden treasures they contained. It was my ghost who pulled me back to reality.
Your eyes are bigger than a hooch hound at a hop joint. We’re here to find Emma Hudson and your purloined pulp—not gawk at a pile of prehistoric publications. And maybe that’s your answer anyway. The broad seems more interested in collecting the past than keeping up with the present.
“Okay, okay . . .”
Tearing my attention away from the fabulous collection, I stepped through a door to a dining nook—and bumped my head. Loose birdseed rained down on my flats, followed by a host of downy feathers.
“AWWWKKK!”
An agitated blue parrot glared at me from inside a faux-gilded cage. The bird’s crest was up, wings spread wide.
“Sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t enough!” the bird squawked, followed by another angry whistle from its beak, and a preening of blue feathers.
That’s one prickly parrot.
I called out for Mrs. Hudson again with silence as my reply.
“Emma’s not here, Jack. What should we do?”
Keep looking around. That open front door should tell you something’s hinky here.
The bathroom was empty, so I headed to the bedroom. Emma Hudson furnished her sleeping quarters with a French Provincial bedroom set and a queen-sized bed.
The spacious room included a balcony (of sorts), amounting to a metal-framed sliding door that led to another section of the railed widow’s walk. In better times, I had no doubt the floor-to-ceiling window would have been beautifully framed by elaborate French doors. But these weren’t better times. Not for this neighborhood. Or, apparently, this woman.
That flimsy sliding door stood open, allowing a chilly draft to billow the long drapes. Despite the earlier downpour and sopping wet pines around the house, I noticed the carpeting was dry.
On the bed, the lilac cashmere sweater that Emma Hudson had worn earlier that day lay beside her designer jeans.
Looks like she switched duds before taking a powder, Jack noted.
A second, smaller room contained a fold-out bed piled high with suitcases. The case on top was open. It contained women’s clothing and intimates.
“Odd that Mrs. Hudson is still living out of her suitcase,” I said.
There’s no real furniture in the living room. These digs may be temporary for the dame. Maybe she planned a quick exit. Or maybe she’s already gone.
“Certainly not for good. No one in their right mind would leave all these valuable books behind—”
Her “right mind” is what’s in question, isn’t it?
“She also left the front door wide open. And the sliding door in her bedroom, too. That makes no sense, either . . .”
Since when do candidates for the cackle factory act rational?
“Lack of rationality is one thing, Jack. I’m worried she’s unhinged to the point of harming herself . . .”
And with those words, the vision of my husband’s corpse returned with such power that I held my head.
Easy, baby, don’t go back there.
But my husband’s death leap was too vivid a memory. In this moment, it felt more like a premonition.
With dread, I hurried across the dry carpeting of Emma Hudson’s bedroom, through the open sliding door, and onto the rickety widow’s walk. I had to stick my head through the tips of wet pine branches to peer over the side, and that’s when I saw her.
Emma Hudson, in a pink terry cloth robe, was sprawled on the rain-soaked ground. She lay facedown, and from the way her body was twisted, her head smashed like a burst pumpkin against a large rock, I had no doubt she was gone—
This time for good.
CHAPTER 6
Gone with the Windstorm
Suspicious? I should say I was; if my face ever betrayed anything, it betrayed it then.
—Carroll John Daly, “Three Gun Terry,” Black Mask, May 1923 (cited as the first published appearance of a hard-boiled detective)
GRIMACING AT THE mangled corpse below, I speed-dialed the Quindicott PD.
Chief Ciders answered, and I described what I’d found. He told me he was on his way and ordered me to stay to answer questions. He also warned me not to touch the body or anything around it.
“Don’t you disturb that corpse, Penelope McClure!”
Of course, he failed to say a thing about looking around Emma Hudson’s apartment four stories above that corpse—as the ghost gleefully noted—
I doubt the deceased would mind if you snooped around. You do have stolen property to recover.
“You’re a bad influence, Jack.”
Maybe. But as a private dick, I’m the berries.
“Then how can you think of a stolen book at a time like this?”
Because that book is why Emma Hudson is lying among the pines, waiting for a pine box.
“You’re right, in a way. I think that poor woman’s delusion about the author photo drove her over the edge and she jumped.”
And I think we’re supposed to think she jumped. But in this PI’s not-so-humble opinion, someone staged this scene like a Busby Berkeley extravaganza.
“Staged? Then you suspect foul play?”
No, I suspect homicide.
“Jack, it’s obviously suicide. Just like my husband, Calvin—”
Emma Hudson is not your husband. Push the past out of the frame, or you’ll miss the real picture.
“What real picture?”
Let’s start with the facts, plain and simple. Tell me what happened here. Do it clean.
I scanned the porch and peeked over the side, cringing involuntarily at my second look at the dead woman.
“It’s clear enough what happened, isn’t it? Based on her behavior in my bookshop, I’d say she went into some kind of an emotional tailspin, became irrational, and—”
Skip the headshrinker stuff and tell me what gave her the big chill.
“She jumped from this widow’s walk. Isn’t it obvious?”
She dived headfirst, then? Like Johnny Weissmuller off a high board? Because that’s the way she landed.
I stepped back and eyed the rail. Jack was right. To get over the rail cleanly, I would have to swing one leg, then the other. So my “jump” would have to be legs first, not head first, unless . . .
No “unless,” baby. Most jumpers don’t dive. They close their eyes, ease themselves off their perch, and down they go.
“Maybe she leaned over the rail as far as she could and let gravity take her down. Maybe she was determined.”
If she was so determined, why didn’t she use the bridge outside of town? That’s a nice nosedive into a rocky creek. Or how about that hundred-foot cliff by the railroad tracks? Both sound more effective than four lousy floors off your own bedroom balcony—why, that’s sixty feet, tops—yet she drove right past those prime places, to end her days here?
“Maybe she wanted to write a suicide note?”
Do you see one?
“No, but it could be in her robe, her hand, her pocket . . .”
And if it isn’t?
“That doesn’t mean a thing. My husband didn’t leave a suicide note.”
Okay, so not every jumper leaves a “good-bye cruel world,” but don
’t you think the dame would have something to say, even if it’s how to care for her suddenly orphaned stool pigeon?
I shivered. Not about Emma’s corpse this time, but at Jack’s implication. “So, you think Emma Hudson was—”
Murdered. That’s right. And a suicide scene staged just well enough to fool the local yokels. It’s possible she was dead before she went over the side . . .
As Jack went on, I noticed an aroma in the air. “Do you smell that?”
I do now. My Jimmy Durante picked it up with yours.
It took me less than a minute to locate the source of the savory scent. A warm slow cooker sat on the kitchen counter, beside a half-empty bottle of Eclipse coffee syrup and a spoon sticky with the sweet, delicious goo.
According to the digital timer, the cooker had been working for many hours. The lid was hot, but I couldn’t resist the urge to lift it. Yes, Chief Ciders told me not to touch anything, but I decided an untended pot was a potential fire hazard and should be checked out—
Put on your gloves first, Jack advised.
“Don’t worry, Jack, I won’t burn my fingers.”
But your FINGERPRINTS might burn evidence. PUT ON THE GLOVES!
“All right! For heaven’s sake, calm down . . .”
Reaching into my pocket, I felt for my leather gloves—and suddenly remembered Emma’s driving gloves, the ones I’d come here to return.
“I left hers in the car.”
Forget it, doll. That dame don’t need gloves anymore. What she needs is a coffin.
With a sad sigh, I pulled on my own gloves and lifted the lid on the woman’s slow cooker. Simmering inside, I found a heavenly dinner of short ribs in red wine. I glanced around, found the empty bottle on the counter next to two untouched baguettes and a Cooper Family Bakery box. Inside I counted five cinnamon buns.
“If she was murdered, Jack, then the killer made a huge mistake.”
Okay, how so? the ghost replied in a tone that told me he already knew the answer.
“Why prepare a magnificent last meal like this and not eat it?”
Good. Now you’re thinking like me.
“If you’re saying I have a completely jaundiced view of the world and everything in it, you’re mistaken. But, I admit, something seems awfully suspicious here.”
I agree. Leaving the pot cooking was sloppy work by a killer in a hurry.
“In a hurry . . .” Another thought occurred to me. “You know the sliding door that was left wide open? During the storm, rain would have come in and soaked the bedroom carpet. But that carpet was dry. Jack, whatever happened in this apartment happened after the storm passed, which means we just missed it.”
You better hope the murderer doesn’t remember that slow cooker being on—and come back to fix the scene.
“Why risk it?”
Why do you think criminals return to the scene of the crime?
“A guilty conscience?”
It’s not guilt. It’s fear that draws them back. The culprit can’t shake the nagging suspicion that incriminating evidence was left behind.
“Now you’re trying to scare me.”
I’m trying to warn you.
“Jack, remember those footsteps we heard when we first got here? It’s possible that was the killer fleeing the scene!”
It’s also possible that the perp might be lurking around now, watching the apartment, waiting to see who comes by.
I shivered. “I hope the chief gets here soon—”
A loud creak, followed by another, silenced me. Outside, heavy boots began the long ascent to the porch.
“Someone’s coming up the stairs!”
The local yokel?
“The chief’s on the other side of town. Even with his siren, he can’t get here this soon.”
Another creak came, followed by a deep grunt.
“That’s a man, and he’s getting closer. Jack, there’s no other way out but the front door—or over the rail of that widow’s walk! I’m trapped!”
Keep a cool head. Just stall until the Keystone Cop arrives . . .
Jack kept talking, but I wasn’t listening. Like a desperate woman who didn’t want her son to grow up an orphan, I searched for any means to fight back.
When I spied a line of steak knives in a rack beside the sink, I snatched two of them. Then I ran to the front door and raised them above my head, ready to ambush the killer.
Meanwhile, those big, steady footsteps crossed the porch to the open door.
When the silhouette of a large man loomed into view, I screamed loud enough to scare the stranger into screaming, too.
Our delirious duet became a trio when the parrot joined in.
Jack was not amused.
Holy ghost! What are you tryin’ to do? Raise the dead?
CHAPTER 7
My Baby Wrote Me a Letter
I get mail; therefore I am.
—Scott Adams, American cartoonist
“SEYMOUR!” I CRIED when our crazy choir went quiet. “What are you doing here?!”
Seymour Tarnish, my know-it-all childhood friend, blinked. “I’m the mailman, Pen. What do you think I’m doing?”
He nervously looked at the knives still raised above my head.
“Why the Jack the Ripper routine? I thought you were Norma Bates coming at me. I nearly filled my Underoos.”
I lowered the blades. “A maniac dressed as his mother? That’s some compliment.”
The bird whistled. “Hello, Seymour. Hello!”
Seymour stuck his gawky, round face through the door and called back, “Hello there, Waldo!”
The bird talks to the birdbrain, Jack cracked. Why am I not surprised?
“Sorry about the knives,” I told Seymour. “I thought you were a killer.”
“Just what the heck is going on here?” he demanded. “I’ve got a registered letter for Emma Hudson that she needs to sign for.”
“Does she get many registered letters?”
“She mostly gets packages from PetMeds.com.” His voice trailed off as the bird angrily ruffled its feathers. “That’s one sick bird.”
I slipped through the door to join Seymour on the porch.
“Emma Hudson seems to have jumped to her death.”
The mailman grimaced in shock. Then he sighed, shook his head, and his gaze followed mine to the edge of the widow’s walk.
“Did you call the cops?”
“Chief Ciders is on his way.”
“Wait a minute! You said she jumped. But you also said something about a killer!”
Sharp as a bent nail, this one.
“I said she seems to have jumped to her death. But I’m not sure . . .”
Unfortunately, there was no time to elaborate further. Another set of heavy steps climbed the wooden platform. This time it actually was Chief Ciders, his gun belt half hidden under a paunch that appeared to have expanded since the last time I’d seen him. His hat was tipped back on his head, and his grizzled face was scowling.
Huffing and puffing, Ciders crested the final few steps and immediately fixed a suspicious eye on Seymour. “What are you doing here?”
“Chief, you do know there’s a reason that United States Postal workers wear uniforms? It’s for recognition purposes.”
“So you were delivering mail?”
Seymour faced me with a smirk. “With insights like that, it’s no wonder he’s chief.”
“The mailbox is at the bottom of the stairs,” Ciders pointed out.
“Do you think I wanted to scale Mount Everest? I do enough walking on a given day. I didn’t need this. As I told Pen, I have a registered letter the deceased was supposed to sign for.”
Ciders’ eyes narrowed. “How do you know Emma Hudson is deceased?”
“What kind of
question is that? You think I croaked her?”
Ciders gave Seymour the kind of look he reserved for an undersized fish he had to toss back into the creek. Then the chief faced a bigger fish (metaphorically speaking)—me.
“Since I’m not convinced this widow’s walk can hold our combined weight, we’d better step inside the apartment. Knowing your busybody ways, Mrs. McClure, I’m sure you’ve already made yourself comfortable.”
As we all moved toward the door, Ciders blocked Seymour.
“Not you, Tarnish. You can wait at the bottom of the stairs like a good mailman. But stay away from the corpse. The medical examiner is on the way.”
“I can’t stick around,” Seymour protested. “I have work to do.”
“It won’t take long.”
“It better not. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor pointless queries from uniformed authorities will stay this courier from the swift completion of his appointed rounds!”
“Stow it, Tarnish. And sit your butt on those steps. When Pen and I are finished, you’re going to tell me all about that registered letter you’re holding for the dead woman.”
CHAPTER 8
Ciders’ House Rules
“Cops are just people,” she said irrelevantly.
“They start out that way, I’ve heard.”
—Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, 1940
“LISTEN, PENELOPE, I’VE known you for years. When you run that bookshop with your aunt, you act like a levelheaded businesswoman. But right now, you’re talking like someone who’s been reading too many of those cheap thrillers you peddle.”
“Please, Chief. You’re not looking at the facts—”
“This is suicide, not homicide. You told me yourself that the woman was acting kooky . . .”
Ciders and I were sitting at Emma Hudson’s kitchen table. By now, I’d gone through the events of my day, recounting the woman’s odd actions. Ciders even phoned Wanda Clark and my aunt Sadie to corroborate my story.