by Nora Page
“A pole? As in sabotage?” Cleo knew someone who’d love to see that machine slain. Its owner too. Her insides tightened. She’d called Mary-Rose right after speaking with the 911 operator. Her friend—Buford’s neighbor and nemesis—didn’t pick up.
“A monster impaled,” Henry said. “Pierced straight through its cold, steel heart.”
* * *
Deputy Gabby Honeywell looked like she’d rushed straight from the emergency training. She wore exercise shorts, a tank top, and combat boots, and jumped from the passenger seat of the patrol car before it came to a full stop.
Cleo was opening the front doors when Gabby jogged up. “Miss Cleo? Are you okay?”
Cleo, Henry, and Rhett stepped out, the cat stretching and yawning with feline nonchalance. Cleo assured her neighbor they were fine. “Buford Krandall is not.” Cleo described what they’d seen and how they came to see it.
“A break-in?” Gabby said. Her partner, the portly Earl Tookey chuffed up. A candy bar balanced in his lips as he struggled to unzip a billowing hazmat suit. When Gabby said there was no immediate lifesaving to be done, Tookey prioritized the chocolate. “Whew,” he said, after finishing the bar and stepping out of the crinkly suit. He wadded up the coveralls and lobbed them back toward the patrol car. The outfit underneath was similar to Gabby’s, but far less flattering, though it would be hard for anyone to challenge a former Miss South Georgia on looks. Gabby had poise and long limbs and was Catalpa Springs Police Department’s youngest deputy, as well as the only female and African American on the force.
Tookey, however, was a champ in his own right. He’d taken the regional BBQ title three years running. Cleo spotted telltale marks of Georgia mustard BBQ sauce speckling his T-shirt. A slight scent of wood smoke always followed him.
“Who’d rob that dump?” the barbequing sergeant asked, turning toward the house, plucking at his shirt. Tookey had the all-over soft pudge of an oversized toddler.
Henry answered. “Mr. Krandall had an outstanding book collection and private library. It’s legendary in antiquarian and rare book circles. I recently sold him some exceptional pieces.”
Tookey snorted. “Old books? Hardly worth breaking in for.” He tromped off to “inspect the perimeter.”
“I hope he knows that’s poison ivy over on the fence,” Cleo said.
Gabby yelled a warning, to which Tookey responded by waving her off and hiking up his socks.
“Good for Took to learn new things,” Gabby said. She leaned to pet Rhett, who was twining and purring at her feet. “Hey, handsome neighbor boy,” she lied to the choppy-furred feline. To Cleo and Henry, she said, “Tookey and I came out straight from an emergency exercise. The chief’s on his way. We have orders to wait ’til he gets here.”
A small parade of vehicles arrived a few minutes later. The ambulance bumped in first, lights flashing, its siren choking off mid-wail. An SUV the size of an elephant lumbered in next, Chief Silas Culpepper behind its wheel. Cleo frowned. Mayor Jeb Day sat in the passenger seat.
The chief greeted them with a puffed chest and a hand on his holster. “This is how it’s gonna go,” he announced. “With a crime scene, the experts and emergency personnel go in first, and the police secure the scene and the evidence and…”
Silas Culpepper was a great explainer, and Cleo appreciated his interest in his field. Unfortunately, the chief often failed to recognize disinterest in his audience. As he droned on, Cleo’s mind wandered to Buford, so pale. So cold and still. She shook her head sharply and refocused on Chief Culpepper’s suspenders. She imagined the chief had an entire closet full of them, all hardworking. Today’s, straining over his prominent belly, were red, with little blue lobsters clutching flags in their claws. Cleo wondered if the chief was one of them, a fisherman. He was chummy with the mayor …
Two EMTs jogged up with a stretcher and duffle bags. The chief interrupted his own exposition to bark, “Clear the way!”
Cleo scooped up Rhett, and she and Henry obligingly stepped aside and pointed to the back.
“It’s too late for any medical help, I’m afraid,” Cleo said, watching the men trot off. Rhett clawed his way to her shoulder, his favorite perch. He purred and nuzzled her ear.
“You’d know, wouldn’t you?” Chief Culpepper said. “Why am I finding you at another crime scene, Mrs. Watkins? What kind of trouble did you get yourself into now?”
“Trouble for your library.” The mayor sauntered up, his smug smile more annoying than his Bermuda shorts and their remarkably awful print of orange plaid and pink flamingos. “Buford Krandall was your big library supporter, wasn’t he? Your great, loony hope?”
“A man is dead,” Cleo said in the chastising tone she leveled at gum chewers and loud cell-phone users in the library.
The impertinent mayor failed to notice. His cell phone beeped and he wandered off, poking at the tiny screen.
Henry bristled beside her.
Cleo patted her male friend—hardly a boyfriend—on the arm. “Mr. Lafayette and I were delivering books.”
“Books? That figures too,” the chief said with exaggerated weariness. “What kind of books?”
With a wave of guilt, Cleo realized they’d abandoned their books on the back porch. She fought the urge to run back and retrieve them. They’d be safe with the police, she told herself. And better that the police discovered Buford Krandall’s questionable reading taste on their own.
“I brought by some library books Mr. Krandall ordered through the interlibrary loan service,” Cleo said. “I’ve been doing home deliveries since Mr. Krandall doesn’t go out much during the day.”
“A weird man,” the chief mumbled, then glanced toward the house and looked appropriately chagrined.
“I brought a gift,” Henry said. “A reproduction of an illustrated Tudor book of inventions.”
An unexpected sadness struck Cleo. “How perfect. Mr. Krandall would have adored that.” He might have gotten onto a new do-it-yourself kick, for better or worse. Cleo imagined a homemade trebuchet launching buckets of boiling oil at the Pancake Mill.
Henry was elaborating on the original book’s age, illustrations, typography—
“Yeah, yeah,” Culpepper said, pulling on his overtaxed suspenders, bored with details he wasn’t personally providing. “Fascinating. You two stay here and talk all about it. We’ll take your statements later.” His eyes surveyed Gabby’s bare legs. “Nice uniform, Honeywell. We should have emergency trainings more often. Now, when we get to the scene, Tookey and I’ll go in first. You’ll guard the door. It might not be a nice sight for a gal—whoops, I mean, a newbie—such as yourself.” He waved to Jeb Day. “Mayor? You want to come with?”
Cleo admired Gabby’s ability to maintain a pleasant, impassive expression. That mask had surely served her well in beauty pageants and the police force and being a pretty young woman in general.
“Crude man,” Henry said as the chief’s broad backside waddled out of sight. “We might as well wait in Words on Wheels.” He swatted at a buzzing black fly. Cleo’s mother said loopy flies meant a storm was coming. Her grandmother said the same of flicking cat tails. Cleo didn’t need insects or Rhett to forecast this weather. Thunder grumbled to the west, and the clouds pressed low.
The brightly painted bookmobile did look tempting, but Cleo was tired of waiting. “How about we put Rhett safely inside Words on Wheels, then give it a minute or two and go check on Gabby? I bet she’d be awfully interested in the disabled drill.”
Gabby wasn’t waiting around either. They found her on the back porch, inspecting the kitchen door. “Was this broken when you went inside?” she asked, not turning to see who was approaching.
“Mr. Lafayette and I certainly didn’t kick it in,” Cleo gently joked.
Gabby didn’t smile. “Look here.” She pointed a gloved finger at a hinge. The surrounding wood was pale and recently splintered.
“Neither door was locked,” Cleo said, serious now and ashamed of h
er previous levity. She must be in shock. “The kitchen door was already open a crack,” she clarified. “I didn’t look on the back side. I merely pulled it. I’m afraid I didn’t wear gloves.”
Gabby sat back on her heels. Her hair swung in a thick ponytail of shoulder-sweeping curls. She coiled a strand around her finger, staring wistfully toward the kitchen and the action beyond. “You couldn’t know what you’d find. But you were pretty sure of murder when you called 911. Why?”
Cleo told her about the sounds from inside, the possible door banging, the moving chair, and the devastated library. Henry showed her the drill and the thick metal bar through it. They kept several yards back, so as not to disturb the chief’s scene.
“A busted door, possible break-in, trashed library, vandalism … a deceased homeowner…,” Gabby repeated thoughtfully. “Then there are those books on the porch. Your library’s books, Miss Cleo, both about getting away with murder. Was Krandall planning to kill someone?”
“Kill?” The chief approached, with Tookey at his heels and the mayor, on his phone, lagging behind. “That crackpot Krandall wanted to kill someone? Whoever it was, looks like they got to him first.”
Chapter Five
“Murdered?” Mary-Rose repeated. Pleased pink bloomed beneath her freckles. “Dead? Gone? Passed beyond? Out of my hair?” She patted a loose bun where silver outnumbered her natural red.
Cleo was glad few were around to witness her friend’s unseemly delight. The Pancake Mill opened from breakfast through lunch and was now closed for the day. Besides Cleo, Henry, and Mary-Rose, the only other occupant of the big, dim dining room was Mary-Rose’s granddaughter, Zoe. The seven-year-old sat a few tables away, a book hiding her face, but not the riotous red curls that reminded Cleo of a young Mary-Rose. A soft clatter of dishwashing filtered through from the kitchen. Outside, the wind rippled Pancake Spring, and the resident peacocks fanned and fluffed their feathers.
Visitors loved snapping photos of the flamboyant birds framed against the historic mill and sparkling spring. Cleo knew the less lovely reason for their presence. Mary-Rose had gotten the flock to keep bird-fearing Buford Krandall off her property. It had worked. The peacock trio could be as territorial and threatening as a guard dog, particularly at night.
“I’ll ask Juan to measure out extra batter,” Mary-Rose was saying brightly. “We’ll have a full house tomorrow. A give-thanks Sunday.” She caught Cleo’s stern look. “I am not applauding a death, Cleo Jane. But I will not pretend I am sad or sorry.”
“Understandable,” murmured Henry, who was enjoying pie and thus in restored good humor. Cleo eyed the slice with jealousy. It was peanut, a specialty of the Pancake Mill. Fluffy meringue topped creamy vanilla custard and a sweet whipped peanut base.
“Mary-Rose,” Cleo said, forcing her eyes from the pie. “Be careful what you say. People may have heard about your feud with Buford Krandall and get the wrong idea.”
“May have?” Mary-Rose grinned. “Of course everyone knows! I’ll hardly be the only one celebrating. Half the town had troubles with that man peeping and prying into their business, and the other half worried about keeping on his good side. Speaking of peeping…” She jumped up and grabbed two pairs of binoculars from under the front counter. She was out the door before Cleo could protest, a jaunty spring in her step, Zoe skipping behind her.
“I’ll just clean up my plate,” Henry said.
Cleo swallowed her envy. She caught up with Mary-Rose on the boardwalk that zigzagged along the swampy border closest to Krandall House. Zoe leaned over the railing at the viewing platform, stirring polka-dot duckweed with a long stick, calling it “magic stew.”
“Mary-Rose,” Cleo said sharply. “Chief Culpepper might think you did it.”
Mary-Rose snorted. “Did it? Please! I am an old woman, Cleo. We are old women. How would I kill a man in—what, his fifties? Although he was shriveled and likely vitamin D deficient, hiding from the sun as he did.”
Cleo studied Mary-Rose. Her friend was a picture of robust health, and age was certainly no alibi for murder.
Mary-Rose adjusted her lacy, rose-hued cardigan, worn over a long, floral sundress. “I wouldn’t have had time,” she said primly. “I’m babysitting Zoe this week and next. Out of curiosity, though, how did he die?”
Cleo didn’t know. Better Mary-Rose knew nothing too. “The coroner will determine that. Of course, you’ll have an alibi for…” Cleo hesitated.
“Well? When?” Mary-Rose demanded, swinging to eye Cleo.
Cleo watched the swirling duckweed stew. A peacock called, an eerie laugh that echoed off the water and tall cypress. “The EMTs guessed early this morning or last night,” Cleo said.
“Fine either way,” Mary-Rose declared. “I was here all morning and home with Zoe and William last night. William’s new knee is mending up nicely. We might go on a cruise when he’s healed.”
Mary-Rose’s husband William had a new knee, an operation Cleo feared she might have to endure someday. She turned her binoculars back to Krandall House and zoomed in on Gabby. Her young neighbor appeared to be dusting the drill for prints. Chief Culpepper stood a few yards away, talking at Mayor Day and Sergeant Tookey. Tookey munched another candy bar. The boy mayor poked at his phone.
Mary-Rose sniffed. “Look at those men, standing about. If they’d only acted when I called to complain. Well, I won’t have to worry now.”
Cleo was worried. “Mary-Rose, when did the drilling machine go silent?”
“Mmm? I don’t know.” Mary-Rose tugged her earlobe and shrugged.
Cleo frowned. Several decades ago, she, Mary-Rose, and a handful of other Catalpa ladies played a monthly poker game. Cleo wasn’t a gambler and she’d never set foot in a floating casino—heavens, no! But she was good at poker, being good at reading people. Ida Gunny, for instance, sweated profusely when bluffing. Nancy O’Mallory would fold every time she sniffled. And Mary-Rose? Cleo’s best friend had telling hands. When she was bluffing or lying, those hands flew straight to her pearls. On the rare days Mary-Rose wasn’t wearing pearls, like today, she tugged her earlobe. Just like she was tugging it now …
Cleo knew the sign. She didn’t know the reason. Raindrops spotted her glasses. Her vision was blurry, in more ways than one. “The storm’s coming,” she said. “Let’s get inside.”
Mary-Rose called to Zoe, and grandmother and grandchild swung hands all the way back to the mill.
* * *
Later, driving toward town in Words on Wheels, Cleo voiced her worries to Henry. “I think Mary-Rose knows something, at least about that drill.”
“I know something too,” Henry said. “I went to the kitchen for more pie.”
A huff of indignation escaped Cleo’s lips.
“To gather information,” Henry said, rather righteously for a man who’d enjoyed two slices of pie. “A gentleman named Juan was cleaning up. He said that drill went silent late yesterday afternoon, when Mary-Rose drove out to Krandall House in a huff. Juan appeared to be unaware of Buford’s death. I don’t think he would have told me otherwise. He seems devoted to Mary-Rose.”
So was Cleo. “I wonder what Mary-Rose did to make Buford stop drilling? Said, I mean.” The bus rolled by pines, their needles drooping in the rain. Rumbles of thunder had Rhett cowering in his peach crate.
Henry said, “I don’t know what was said, but Juan heard yelling. And a gunshot.”
“What?” Cleo braked a little too hard around a curve.
“It’s okay,” Henry said quickly. “Buford wasn’t shot.”
Cleo was hardly comforted. A gunshot could still mean trouble. She thought of the chief’s logic. What if Buford was planning to kill, but his would-be victim got to him first? “If the chief hears about this, he might say Mary-Rose struck out at Buford in fear for her life.”
“He doesn’t know yet,” Henry said.
But everyone knew of Mary-Rose’s feud with Buford Krandall. Cleo drove on under a din of spitting hail.
/>
When she pulled up in front of The Gilded Page, Henry thanked her. “It was an, uh, interesting afternoon,” he said, politely. Cleo waited until he’d gotten inside and the bookshop glowed with warm light. Then she punched the gas, eager for home.
* * *
When Cleo was little, it was Alice Tidwell, the doctor’s wife, who delivered the news no one wanted to receive. If Alice appeared at one’s door bearing a baked good, a death could be expected. At best, a dire disease with a poor prognosis. Cleo still remembered a sweltering summer day and Mama on the porch, wiping sudsy hands on her apron one moment, engulfed in Alice’s prodigious bust the next. Auntie Violet had cancer. Alice Tidwell hadn’t paid another visit until Grandma Watkins passed.
Cleo was easing Words on Wheels into her driveway, when her heart jumped. A figure stood on her porch, blurry through the rain-dotted screen. It was a woman, holding a tray. And another. And another still. Cleo’s mind spun wildly to Alice Tidwell and a mass disaster. Then she noted the pink scarves and hats.
“Ladies Leaguers,” she informed Rhett. She scooped up the rain-loathing Persian and hustled for the porch between thunder rumbles. A group hug enveloped them, led by Bitsy Givens, president of the Ladies League.
“You all shouldn’t have come out in this weather. I’m fine,” Cleo said.
“Nonsense.” Bitsy waved a sparkly pink manicure. “You’ve had a shock. Besides, we had to do something for someone. It’s not like Buford Krandall left behind a bunch of grieving relatives.”
Cleo unlocked the door, and ladies streamed inside. Rhett led the way to the kitchen, surely expecting treats in return.
Bitsy hung back with Cleo. She slipped off her hat and adjusted strappy high heels. “We promise not to keep you up all night. We have some goodies to drop off for your honey Henry at The Gilded Page after this, and my Vernon’s picking me up in a bit. He’ll have Mama Givens in the car so I won’t be able to dawdle. Mama’s in a mood today. Rain makes her feet and her temper act up.”