Better Off Read

by Nora Page

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Chief Culpepper said.

  Cleo turned her mind to strip bingo. He could never know she was thinking of that.

  “You think she went out shopping, don’t you?” the chief said. “Wrong. I just talked to her neighbor.”

  A round, wrinkled face poked over the hedge. Short white hair set off rich brown skin. Sharp eyes sparkled behind rhinestone-crusted spectacles.

  Cleo waved and raised her voice. “Good morning, Miss Adelaide. Do you need any books?” Adelaide Cox was ninety-six, sharp as a tack, deaf as a stone, and unmovable as a mountain about wearing her hearing aids.

  “What?” Adelaide said, frowning. “Boots?”

  “Books!” Cleo bellowed.

  “Crooks!” Adelaide countered, eyes landing suspiciously on the chief.

  “She heard Miss Pawpaw leaving this morning,” Chief Culpepper said. “Not just leaving to go out for some milk. Hightailing it out of town.”

  Cleo made a polite effort to hide her skepticism.

  “She had her hearing aids in for the four-thirty news.” Culpepper thumped a finger at his ear, miming for Adelaide to attend to her hearing. The elderly woman flipped him a rude gesture and disappeared back behind the hedge. “She did,” he insisted. “She hears like a bat once she’s got those in. There’s nothing wrong with her eyes. She spotted me the second I arrived. She had binoculars on me.”

  “A good neighbor,” Cleo said. “But sometimes even good neighbors can misread the situation.” She thought of Wanda and her rude words about shacks and shacking and boyfriends.

  The chief peered under Priscilla’s small front stoop, as if the jumpy author might be hiding there. “Yeah,” he said, rising and stretching his belly. “That may be so, but Adelaide here saw Pawpaw stuffing her car with suitcases. In a mighty big hurry too. As a professional investigator, I deduce that Pawpaw was running. Now, is she our killer? A witness? A collaborator?” He might have gone on with his professional speculations, but Adelaide popped up again.

  The elderly woman was jabbing a device into her ear. “She sped off like a bat outta you know where,” Adelaide said. The hearing aid emitted a high-pitched buzz. She reared back with a “Whoa.”

  Cleo considered the situation. The chief was right. Why would Priscilla leave town? Another trip was a possibility, but Priscilla had just returned from Daytona Beach. Surely she wouldn’t rush off again anytime soon or at four in the morning.

  “Priscilla warned my friend and me when we were visiting,” Cleo said. “She told us not to try to solve murders. I think she may have been scared.”

  “Your friend?” Adelaide said. “Looked like a boyfriend to me. He’s a cutie. I like a man with facial hair.”

  Cleo didn’t bother to correct her. “Priscilla said she warned Buford Krandall too. I wonder if that’s what he was doing,” Cleo mused. “Trying to solve a crime?”

  “That warning sure did Buford Krandall a lot of good,” the chief grumbled. “See, Mrs. Watkins? A man is dead. Murdered. A woman is presumably on the run. That’s why you civilian types should keep your big noses out of police investigations.”

  “Big nose!” Adelaide exclaimed. “That man with the big nose, like a beak. He got himself murdered. I saw him in the paper. He visited Priscilla.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the chief said patiently. “That would be Buford Krandall. He was a fan of your neighbor’s books. They had a nice friendly visit. We heard all about it, but thank you for the reminder.”

  Adelaide scowled. “Friendly? No, sir, not that other time he visited. I almost took my ears out, those two got so loud, yelling and fussing.” She tapped an ear, and the high-pitched whine resumed.

  Cleo surveyed the setting. The cottages were slightly offset, but she could see windows aligning between them. Adelaide could have a good view of her neighbor’s activities. “Priscilla gave me the impression she adored Buford Krandall,” Cleo said.

  Adelaide got a hearty chuckle out of that. “She liked him the first time he visited. Sweet tea. Smiles. Flirting. Second time, they had a big old fight. She looked fit to kill. She’d know how to do it too, wouldn’t she? She has all sorts of murdering ideas, that girl. She could do it right.” Adelaide nodded approvingly.

  Cleo shivered. Had she and Henry called on a killer? Is that why Priscilla was so adamant in warning them off? Cleo thought about Buford’s body sprawled across Priscilla’s murder guide, pages turned to the chapter on bludgeoning. An artistic flourish? An author’s revenge?

  The chief rubbed his temples as if in pain. “Okay, let’s get this straight. The second time you saw them meet, they fought. Do you know why, ma’am?”

  Adelaide, however, was messing with her ears again. The chief had to repeat the question twice before she answered. “Me? How would I know? I can’t hear through walls. Now when they got outside, I heard her yell, ‘Leave it be.’ She was screeching that she didn’t care what he’d found out. It’s those quiet types, I tell you. Once a wallflower sort flies off the handle, watch out.” Adelaide ducked back behind the hedge, muttering about noise and commotion.

  The chief was grumbling too. Cleo left him to it. She mulled Priscilla’s angry words, as recounted by Adelaide. Let it be. She didn’t care what he’d found out. It reinforced her theory that Buford Krandall’s reading list might provide a clue.

  At the front walkway, she heard her name. Adelaide chugged toward her, swinging a cane that barely touched the ground.

  “I do need a new book,” the older woman declared, waggling the cane at Cleo. “I want something spicy, and I don’t mean Cajun cooking.”

  “The bookmobile has lots of options,” Cleo said. She suggested titles Adelaide might like. Adelaide countered with her criteria, many of which Cleo already knew. The list got more difficult to meet every time. No tiny font. No long paragraphs in italics. None of that sans serif font. A good spine. Not too heavy, the book or the story. No heroines under thirty. No serial killers. Nothing sad involving animals. “And I want my hunk tall and handsome and sweet talking and good to his mama,” Adelaide was saying. “No foul mouths. No boys, either. I want my hunk over thirty too. And no kilts.”

  “I’m sure we have just what you’re looking for,” Cleo said, not at all certain. She considered the thriller Tamara had checked out. There were more books in that series, though she didn’t know the shirtless hero’s age or filial affections. “Words on Wheels is parked right over…” She stopped and stared.

  “Where?” Adelaide demanded.

  Cleo froze. She blinked and looked again. She might lose her keys, but she’d never lost an entire bus.

  The parking lot was empty. No bus, no strip bingo players, no ladies in pink hats. A young man puttered nearby. He was in a golf cart, aiming a watering wand at the many hanging baskets. Cleo scanned in all directions. Then she heard a horn, blaring. She knew that horn. That was Words on Wheels! The sound was coming from the south.

  Cleo hustled around the side of the Social Hall for a better view. Over a grassy berm and across a clipped fairway, pink hats bobbed like flamingos on the run. They were following a flash of bright yellow.

  Cleo flagged down the golf cart. She hopped in, uninvited, with Adelaide squeezing beside her.

  “Follow that bus!” Cleo cried.

  “Floor it!” Adelaide crowed.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The driver took off with admirable speed. They bumped airborne across the rough, spun out in a sand hazard, and barreled through a foursome of elderly men. One raised a putter in protest.

  Adelaide yelled “Fore! Playing through!” and waved her cane menacingly.

  Cleo was yelling in her head. Faster, faster … Words on Wheels was in danger, and she couldn’t afford to lose her only remaining library.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The horn had gone silent. Words on Wheels had stopped too, and not gently. The bus tilted forward, front wheels lodged in a ditch, nose smack against a leaning palm. Cleo gave thanks to the unfortunate tre
e. A few feet more and the bookmobile would have hurtled into a water hazard. Cleo thought she saw an alligator’s nose poking up among the reeds and lilies. They’d definitely crossed into Florida.

  “Dang,” their golf-cart chauffeur said, stretching the word in horrified awe. On their bumpy cross-fairway ride, Cleo had learned his name was Marco, he was a certified horticulturalist, and his folks lived in Claymore.

  “Now that’s some bad driving,” Marco said. He parked the golf cart and bounded around the front to help Adelaide and Cleo out.

  Bitsy descended the bus’s steps. She was hatless. A spaghetti strap slipped off one shoulder, and she was hobbling on a broken high heel.

  “Stop, thief!” Adelaide declared, jabbing her cane in Bitsy’s direction.

  Cleo told Adelaide she could lower her weapon. “It’s okay,” she said, though it clearly wasn’t.

  Bitsy’s face was as pink as her dress. “Cleo, I’m sooooo, so sorry! I don’t know what happened.”

  The other Ladies Leaguers were gathered inside. Laughter and chatter drifted out, suggesting no injuries, thank goodness. No human injuries, that is. Marco was inspecting the bookmobile, bravely wading into the ditch and peeking underneath.

  Bitsy pressed her hands in prayer formation. “I was in the back, looking at cookbooks. Mama Givens was only trying to start the air-conditioning up. She said she needed to give it a boost, and we started going, but we couldn’t stop it. It’s like the brakes gave out. They were smooshy, and then nothing.” Bitsy exhaled and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Mama may have punched the gas once or twice, but only because she was trying to get a pedal that worked.”

  Cleo reminded herself to be thankful and gracious. “She’s okay? You’re all right?” When Bitsy nodded yes to both, Cleo allowed herself to internally vent. Maybelle! Punching pedals! This is how drivers of a certain age and gender got bad reputations, sullying their competent, safe-driving peers.

  Bitsy was struggling to remove her height-mismatched shoes. Cleo offered her a shoulder to lean on, telling herself to be generous in other ways too. Could the brakes actually have failed? The bus was having some health issues—as was natural with age—but the brakes had felt fine earlier, and mechanics had just recently checked under the hood. Cleo took a deep breath and went to get a closer look at the damage—and the unauthorized driver.

  Five cooing Ladies Leaguers were helping Maybelle disentangle from the seatbelt. To Cleo’s eyes, Maybelle appeared more pleased than injured. Sympathetic words were being said. “There, there. You poor, sweet thing.” Then there were not-so-sympathetic words. “Imagine,” Cleo heard a snapping voice say, “Cleo Watkins driving us around in this death trap!”

  Cleo bristled. Death trap! Such rudeness. There was surely nothing wrong with her bus that its rogue driver hadn’t caused.

  Maybelle stood, appearing quite spritely. She spotted Cleo and pointed a witchy finger. “You! Your bus, this book-heavy death machine, tried to kill me!” Maybelle twisted her neck with the dexterity of an owl and declared she had whiplash. “I need a doctor. And my chiropractor. I stomped on those brakes. Nothing happened! My corns are aching from it. Bitsy, call the podiatrist and the massage therapist and a lawyer. I’m suing!”

  The cooing ladies in pink parted, and Maybelle stomped off the bus, robust with anger.

  Cleo dogged her heels. “So, Maybelle, you were trying to get the air-conditioning going? Why were you buckled up?

  “For safety,” Maybelle muttered. “Looks like I was right too.”

  “You had to put the bus in gear. You meant to move,” Cleo persisted.

  The older woman stopped and thrust fists to her hips. “So what? It was hot. If we couldn’t get good AC air, we needed a breeze. Anyway, I like to drive.”

  Cleo did too. She looked back at the sad sight. Marco was inside. He saw her and held up the keys. Wise man. She should have removed them when she left her precious bookmobile with Maybelle Givens.

  Maybelle was reinforcing this thought. “You left us—me—in charge, Cleo. You said I was the honorary, temporary librarian. If I’m going to work, I want some perks. So I took the bus for a spin. So what? I didn’t know it would try to kill me.” She jutted her chin defiantly and then seemed to recall whiplash. “Ow,” she said, a hand clutching her neck.

  Cleo suspected she was just fine. However, Words on Wheels and the library cause might be in for a whole lot of pain. The Ladies Leaguers were huddling. Their heads shook, and they flashed accusatory glances Cleo’s way. Bitsy was among them, making the prayerful pleading gesture again.

  Cleo saw another golf cart approaching fast, soaring across the fairway. A scooter zipped down the cart path, its driver hunched as if to urge it on. Help arriving? Not for her. Cleo needed a tow truck and a mechanic. She went back to Marco’s cart to retrieve her purse and cell phone. Adelaide sat snoozing, head back, lips softly sputtering. Ah, to be so relaxed. A horrible thought popped into Cleo’s head, a thought that made her shiver. She wondered if she should retire.

  “No,” Cleo said, aloud and louder than necessary.

  “Gnomes!” Adelaide blurted. She started, shifted, and fell back to sleep.

  The scooter skidded to a stop, and a young man jumped off. He was about Ollie’s age, sporting similarly messy hair and a fledgling beard, and wielding a camera and a name tag. Toby. The young reporter Leanna said she’d call and ask to cover the bookmobile tour.

  “Catalpa Gazette,” he announced. “Man, I was going to blow off this boring bookmobile tour, but this is good stuff!” He bounded off to take shots of the wounded bus and Maybelle, holding her neck and being attended to by the driver of the other golf cart, Happy Trail’s resident lawyer and accident chaser, Thurgood Byron.

  A bee buzzed around Adelaide and she awoke again, cane swinging. “What’d I miss? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing good,” Cleo said.

  * * *

  Further assistance and bad news arrived in spurts. Cleo waited in the shade, watching and dreading. The chief sped over, siren blaring. The mayor arrived with potato-faced Jimmy Teeks and a tall middle-aged woman in teenager attire. TJ and Joe, the mechanics, rolled in in their biggest tow rig. Thurgood Byron briefed the press, all eager one of him. Vernon Givens stormed up in his black SUV, with Leanna in the passenger seat. Adelaide had gotten a golf-cart ride back home, deeming the post-crash “boring.”

  Vernon rushed to his mother, who was honing her wounded routine with the help of Thurgood. Leanna came over to stand with Cleo. Bitsy joined them.

  Leanna tugged anxiously at her tight navy pencil skirt. She was buttoned up in a cream silk blouse with a big bow down the front. “Is your mama-in-law going to be okay?” she asked Bitsy, tugging a finger under the tight neck of the blouse.

  Bitsy was looking more herself, except for her bare feet. Her lipstick and hat were back in place, and her face was coated in a heavy layer of powder. “Mama’s fine,” she said, and Cleo detected a hint of bitterness. “Don’t worry, Cleo. Mama’s acting up so Vern and that lawyer will fuss over her and I’ll have to haul her off to every back, neck, foot, and head specialist in the county. She loves her doctors.” She pursed her perfect lips. “Listen to me, being all ugly. I’m shaken up. Truly, I think she’s okay, and it was kind of her fault.”

  Cleo remained tactfully silent, letting Leanna ask how the bus took off on its own.

  Bitsy threw up her palms. “Mama started it up and took it for a spin. She’s…” She seemed to be struggling for a nice word.

  “Eccentric?” Cleo supplied. “Incorrigible?”

  Bitsy gave a wry smile. “Those. And stubborn as a mule.” She glanced back at her mother-in-law and husband. “It’s Vern I’m most worried about. He told me this morning that Mama Givens didn’t want to go on this tour and to let her stay home. I bullied her to come along. For her own good, to get her away from the house and doctors’ offices! I was wrong there. Messed up again.” She kicked bare feet at the grass. Cleo considered t
aking her shoes off too. Toes in grass seemed nice and calming.

  Bitsy kicked a dandelion puff, sending seeds soaring. “The Leaguers are going to be disappointed in me too. A couple of them never did think I’d make a good president.”

  “But they can’t blame you,” Cleo said. “None of this was your fault.”

  “I chose the library as our cause this year and came up with the bookmobile tour idea. Jasmine Wagner, our VP—she wanted to redecorate the jail and pump in aromatherapy. She says it’s a depressing gray place and that serene surroundings and essential oils would help criminals reform.”

  Cleo had visions of Mary-Rose and Ollie locked away in grim, non-aromatic cells. Perhaps Jasmine should have picked the cause. She tried to fan away such awful thoughts. “The library is a great cause. They were all behind it this morning. When it turns out that Maybelle pushed the wrong pedal, they’ll understand. Everyone’s had a shock.”

  Bitsy reached out and squeezed Cleo’s hand. “You’re right. Positive thoughts. Speaking of which, Leanna, you’re looking pretty as a peach blossom. How’s banking going?”

  Leanna bubbled about the joys of filing and working for Mr. Givens. “His previous assistant didn’t do anything! I mean, no offense, but the computer files are a mess. I have loads to do. It’s great.” She fussed with her skirt and shifted in her pointy patent shoes and then asked, worriedly, “Is Words on Wheels going to be okay?”

  Cleo almost feared knowing. She’d have to face the gory repair costs sometime. Or convince Thurgood Byron to switch clients and sue Maybelle Givens. “Let’s go see,” she said.

  * * *

  TJ—at least, Cleo thought it was TJ—was under the bus. Joe had his head under the hood. The mechanics had towed Words on Wheels to firmer, flatter ground. A long, deep gash marred the driver’s side. The front bumper was badly crumpled, and a wheel looked twisted, like a broken limb.

  “Tell us the damage,” Mayor Day said, stepping up with an alligator’s smile. His female companion, tall and busty, squeezed into tight capris and a bejeweled, belly-revealing top, gave him a behave look.