by Nora Page
“Quick, let’s stash this in the trunk,” Henry said, stuffing plates and containers into bags. “Evidence of illicit picnicking,” he said with a laugh.
Cleo laughed. “I feel like teenagers about to get caught doing something naughty.”
They were just closing the trunk of Gabby’s patrol car when the big mastiff pulled his mistress to the back patio.
“Funny,” Kat said, eyes scanning. “He’s acting like he smells something. Must be a bunny. Good boy, where’s the bunny?” Beast dragged her to the patio table, circling it until he, Kat, and his leash were tangled.
Gabby, still wiping slobber from her limbs and face, mouthed, “Thank you” to Cleo and Henry. Out loud, she said, “Mrs. Krandall-Stykes, I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t be here. To put it bluntly, you’re a suspect.”
“Me? Still?” She shook her head as if in disbelief. Her thick braid swayed at her hips. “Did you know, our fine state of Georgia is the only one to let spouses disinherit each other? I’m sure Buford took full advantage of that little perk. I am entitled to a year of so-called support, which I plan to spend in advance for a blowout funeral celebration.” She smiled. “Cleo Watkins here has more motive than me.”
“Me?” Cleo said, flustered by an unseemly hope that Buford had left a fortune to the library. “Buford was a fine … a fine friend of both myself and the library.”
Kat scoffed. “Excuse me for saying so, but that’s a lie. No one thought Buford was a fine anything.” She patted her dog, who was enthusiastically digging a hole. “Anyone who says so was either duped, afraid, wanting something, or a bigger suspect than me.”
Cleo might have been offended if she hadn’t agreed.
Gabby took a deep breath. “Okay. My consultants and I should get to work. Mrs. Krandall-Stykes, I’m afraid—”
“Too bad,” Kat said with a shrug. “If you shoo me off, you’ll miss out on all I know.” She patted Beast’s rump. He’d dug himself as deep as his shoulders. “We saw someone, didn’t we boy? Two someones. But if you don’t care, fine by me. Just remember, save the date, Sunday. Funeral bash at the Pancake Mill. Noon. Potluck. Cash bar. I’m trying to get a band too.” Kat waved upward with a rueful smile. “What will I do without him? I’ll need a new hobby. Dog training?” Beast continued to dig.
Cleo was wondering what to question first, the someones or the party plans.
“Two someones?” Gabby said, voicing the more important of Cleo’s questions.
Kat raised her eyebrows provocatively. “Yep, I’ll trade you. You let me peek inside the house and get a few funeral decorations, and I’ll tell you all about it. It could turn your investigation right around, Deputy. You’d be a star.”
The peacocks erupted in chorus. Cleo looked toward Pancake Spring, picturing the sparkling waters, flamboyant birds, and happy swimmers and pancake eaters. It was a perfect spot for a memorial, unless that memorial was for Buford Krandall. “You’re having a gathering at the Pancake Mill? Buford despised that place,” Cleo said.
“I know!” Kat looked happier than Cleo had seen her in days. “It gets even better when you think about it. A potluck and peacocks for that bird-fearing germaphobe. Bring chips and something double-dippable.”
Kat left Beast tied to a tree, which he set about uprooting. The widow was taunting the heavens as Gabby unlocked the police-installed padlock on Buford Krandall’s kitchen door.
Henry leaned close to Cleo. “She’s a better suspect than you.”
* * *
Gabby led the way through Krandall House, Kat close behind her, murmuring assessing sounds of “hmm” and “mmm.” When they reached the library, Cleo’s stomach pitched once again at the book devastation and the memory.
“Shoot,” Kat said. “Now this is plain mean. He loved his library. Who’d do this?”
Gabby shot a sharp look at the party-planning widow. She handed out disposable gloves to all and issued instructions: Look only, at first. Then Gabby and the library experts would start an inventory of the books.
Cleo scanned the room, wondering where to start. The chill had gone, replaced with muggy freshness. Cleo saw why.
“A window’s open,” Cleo said, pointing across the room. It was more than open. It was broken, the screen torn and a corner of glass shattered, enough for a hand to slip in and unlock the frame.
“Stand clear,” Gabby said, but Cleo had already seen the imprint of a muddy footprint. A boot had stepped rudely on a book, leaving a zigzag tread on an open page. “I’m sure this wasn’t here before,” Gabby said. “You all stay put. I’ll check the rest of the house. Make sure no one else is inside.”
They listened to her feet travel up the stairs and overhead. Henry inspected a book of poems. Kat hummed.
When Gabby returned, finding no one, she said to Kat. “Okay, what—who—did you see, and when?”
Kat negotiated to borrow two stone-head bookends for her funeral potluck. “I came out for a peek the other day. Beast was at the doggy spa, and I hiked down the drive, like today.” She wandered to a window and looked out through the grime and vines. “Guess who I found, having a friendly little chat like she owned the place? The darling niece I never knew I had.” She ran a finger over a dusty shelf. “She was out by that drill with some bald guy in a suit. They didn’t notice me. Without Beast, I can be stealthier.”
Outside, Beast howled.
“The bald man,” Cleo said. “Did he have lots of moles, tight skin, small eyes?”
Kat nodded. “Yeah. And a really high voice, kind of raspy.”
“Jimmy Teeks,” Cleo said. “The mayor’s Vegas consultant on the pier and casino projects.”
Kat grumbled that it figured. “Whitney’s a true Krandall, all right. She and your Jimmy guy were chatting about her selling this dump for its river access. The back end of the property extends to the Tallgrass, a nice deep spot. She said that if she got control of this dump, she could get that water pump going again too, for the right price. So much for Miss Eco-Warrior, selling out to bottled water and riverboat gambling. Typical.” She brightened. “Hey, I could fight her in court. She could be my next project.”
Kat and Beast left soon after, Kat happy with her new litigation prospects, Beast on the trail of a rabbit. Cleo, Henry, and Gabby turned their focus to the library.
“I’ll go back to the station later and pick up a tech guy to document the broken window,” Gabby said. “It could just be kids on a dare. Let’s do what we came to do first. Stay clear of that side by the window. What’s our book strategy?”
Cleo and Henry had agreed on a plan. “I’ll look for a pattern in which books were taken from their shelves,” Henry said.
Cleo had a librarian’s trick up her sleeve. “I’ll flip through pages and covers. You wouldn’t believe what people leave in books. Money, love letters, lottery tickets, lists…”
“Confessions?” Gabby said. She grinned. “I can still hope. I’ll search the other rooms while we’re here. I’m looking for Mr. Krandall’s gun, and I’ll try to find your library books, Miss Cleo, and more of those Priscilla Pawpaw notes. The dozen or so pages left at your door don’t sound like enough for a whole book.”
They worked in silent concentration. After about an hour, Gabby clumped downstairs. “Nothing,” she said. “No more Pawpaw notes that I could find anywhere. I do have the library books. They were all on the nightstand by his bed. Not the kind of bedtime reading I’d want.”
“No,” Cleo said, from unpleasant experience.
Gabby set the library books on a side table and sunk into an armchair. “Any luck here?”
Henry rubbed his beard in thought. “Many of the fallen books are mysteries, but then Mr. Krandall had a large mystery collection, so it’s not surprising. I found some impressive items.” He gestured to several neat stacks. “I took notes of titles as I stacked them. I couldn’t leave them lying on the floor.” He estimated their combined value in a high five-figure range. “A layperson thief wouldn’t have re
alized how much they’re worth.”
“So expensive books aren’t what our killer and/or burglar wanted,” Gabby said.
Cleo was next to report. She too had made neat stacks of books containing something other than their pages. “I found quite a few newspaper clippings, most decades old.” She selected a book as an example. “See, several in this book alone, left at different spots. Perhaps he was marking pages, but I couldn’t see how the pages were remarkable.”
They gathered around her book collections. Gabby took photos of each book, the pages where they were found, and the clippings. She read out some as she went. “Buford Krandall ran for mayor three times? Imagine! A drowning, a car wreck … he’s always been into dark stuff, hasn’t he? Local politics, a divorce case, another divorce.” Gabby collected the clippings in a large evidence bag. “I guarantee the chief won’t be impressed with old news clippings, but I’ll look into some of these events. Do you want to read through these and the library books too?” Her smooth brow knitted. “It’s a lot to ask, I know.”
“We’d be delighted,” Cleo said enthusiastically. “Mary-Rose can help.”
Gabby’s worry lines deepened. “She’s still a suspect too.”
“Anyone can enjoy library books,” Cleo pointed out. “And they’re not evidence, according to Chief Culpepper.”
“Okay,” Gabby said. “Let’s take some over to the Pancake Mill. Then I’ll drop y’all back in town.”
Cleo was feeling quite good about the plan. She had a purpose and something she was good at too. Reading. Henry, in the backseat, mused about the daily pie selection.
They got out and were welcomed by scents of pie and pancakes. The peacocks strutted, and the parking lot was packed. Cleo’s sunny outlook, however, soon dimmed. Mary-Rose, Ollie, and little Zoe sat at the bench near the entry, tugging off muddy rubber boots. Gabby leaned, head cocked. “Interesting tread pattern,” she said in a neutral tone that made Cleo’s heart leap. The zigzag resembled the muddy print left on Buford’s book. “Out for a walk?” Gabby asked.
“Our secret trail!” Zoe exclaimed.
Mary-Rose placed herself between her granddaughter and Gabby. “We were walking around the spring, pulling invasive weeds,” she said. She eyed the books in Cleo’s arms. “Oh, joy, more for our ways-of-murder book group? Cleo, you’re going to make us look ghoulish.”
“Have you seen Whitney Greene?” Gabby interjected.
“She’s gone,” Ollie said, his mussed hair obscuring his face, his attention seemingly on his boots.
“No, she’s not.” Gabby reported that Whitney had recently been seen next door. “Talking about selling Krandall land and water to Mayor Day and his cronies,” Gabby said, her tone nonchalant, her eyes watching Ollie intently.
Ollie’s head jerked up. Cleo expected the blazing blush in his cheeks, but not the angry curses that followed.
Chapter Twenty-One
Aside from all the murder, it was an agreeable way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Cleo and Henry sat on her front porch in padded rockers, reading through a stack of Priscilla Pawpaw books. Hummingbirds dive-bombed the syrup feeder, and the ceiling fan swirled softly overhead. Cleo heard the random patter and clink of raindrops on her metal roof. She looked up, an automatic response, though the view overhead was always blue. Haint blue. Her Granny Bess claimed blue porch ceilings kept haints away, as well as wasps. Cleo hoped that was true. She had enough to worry about without malevolent spirits and stinging insects.
Thunder ripped and cracked the sky. Mr. Chaucer moaned. The pug was curled up on Rhett’s cat bed, the big Persian draped over him. Lightning lit up the porch, and Cleo put down Murder and Mayhem in Mississippi, waiting for the next rumble and breathing in one of her favorite perfumes, new rain.
Henry flipped another page of Killings in Cotton Country. “It’s horribly addictive reading,” he said. “I can’t find any connection to Buford’s murder, though.”
Cleo couldn’t either. “I wish we could talk to Priscilla. Buford must have given her some hint about what he was looking for.” Cleo remembered the box of notes left right here on her porch. They’d arrived the very morning Priscilla Pawpaw fled town. With Leanna’s help, Cleo had printed out the photos she’d taken of each page. She’d already read through them several times, but it never hurt to reread or get a second opinion. She retrieved them from the kitchen and handed them to Henry, who read with interest.
“Mmm … Tampa, arson,” he said, squinting at the loopy writing. “Tarpon Springs. That’s a nice place. Ever been there? No? It’s a quaint little town on the Gulf, settled by Greek sponge divers. They still dive for sponges. There’s lovely Greek food.”
Cleo prayed he wouldn’t say they should visit.
“There’s a chapter about an arson case near Tampa in the book I’ve been reading,” Henry said. He put down the photos and reached for the book.
“It’s in one of the other books too,” Cleo realized. “They’re all becoming a blur.” She scanned the indexes of several books. “Here it is—Sunshine State Crimes.”
Henry was looking through Killings in Cotton Country, the first Pawpaw book Cleo had read. They compared stories.
“Same crime,” Henry said. “It doesn’t seem like Priscilla to run out of fresh murder and mayhem.” He flipped pages back and forth until Cleo asked what he was doing.
“A page is missing,” he said. “From the arson chapter. I’m ashamed I didn’t notice this before. It’s been removed so cleanly, you’d only notice by the page numbers.” He handed the book to Cleo.
She examined it, abashed she hadn’t noticed either, but Henry was right. The missing page was easy to skip over. It had been cleanly sliced right at the binding.
“Killings in Cotton Country was in the library returns bin, along with another book Buford borrowed about local geology,” Cleo said. She turned back to the Sunshine State Crimes and studied the text again. Five family members perished in a house fire, a mother and four children. The mother worked at a B&B in Tarpon Springs. “What was initially thought to be faulty wiring was later considered murder and arson by the controlling husband and father.” Cleo sighed. “Terrible, just awful. What is wrong with some people? It was a long time ago. Twenty-five years or so? Look, my book has photos.”
They bent their heads over pixilated pictures, one of a home reduced to its charred bones and another of a family on a picnic, the father a looming blur in the foreground.
Henry’s book gave a similar introduction to the family, elaborating on the mother’s dream of taking her children and leaving. There was the same photo of the scorched home, as well as details of the father’s abusive offenses. Henry clicked his tongue. “Everyone claimed they had no idea he was a monster. I wonder what was on the missing page?”
The clouds let loose, and rain drummed the metal roof. Rhett scowled hard and snuggled closer to the whimpering pug.
Henry began methodically flipping page by page through another book. “We should check all of these. Do you have any other copies of Killings in Cotton Country in the library?”
Cleo knew without checking that the Catalpa Springs library carried a single copy of Priscilla’s books, if at all. “I was lucky to get her earlier books through interlibrary loan,” Cleo said. “Buford Krandall had all her works checked out.”
Henry said he could order the book, but it would probably take some time to arrive, given the work’s age and obscurity. “I’ll check into it,” he said. “We don’t know if the page is important, do we? In any case, I’ll donate it to the library so you can have a fresh copy.”
Cleo thanked him. “I am curious,” she said, trying not to get her hopes up that the page contained a clue. She watched the rain sheet down, thinking and listening as drops turned to a deluge rapping on metal and whooshing through the gutters. There was another sound too, shrieks and giggles and footsteps splashing up the walkway.
Cleo jumped up to hold the screen door for sopping Leanna and Bitsy. “You�
�re drenched!” she said. “What are you doing out?”
Both women held impractical shoes. Their feet were bare and dresses plastered to their fronts. Leanna bent and shook out her hair. Bitsy arched her back and fluffed her dripping locks more elegantly. Makeup streamed down both faces. Henry went inside to fetch towels and tissues.
“We were walking from the bank,” Leanna said, still winded and dripping. “We thought we could make it before the storm.”
Bitsy fluffed and scrunched, attempting to turn straight, stringy hair bouncy again. “Ah, what a mess I must look,” she said, accepting a tissue from Henry and swiping at her melted makeup.
“You both look lovely,” Cleo said politely. “Fresh faced and dewy.”
Bitsy laughed. “There’s a nice way of saying ‘drowned rat.’” Her smile wavered. “I feel like one too. I came to apologize—again—for Mama Givens. I talked to Vernon and we agreed, we’ll pay for those bookmobile repairs. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have let Mama get in the driver’s seat. Vern’s still upset I exposed Mama to that danger. The Ladies Leaguers are grumpy with me too.” She took a deep breath and declared, “At least we’re refreshed and dewy, Leanna.”
Leanna was bent over, wrapping a towel around her hair. When she straightened, she said, “No one should be mad at you, Miss Bitsy. It’s not your fault. Remember what you told me? Present the image you want to be.” Leanna stood tall, her towel headdress tilting. “Like my banking clothes that Miss Bitsy lent me. I look banky, right?”
“You look very nice, dear,” Cleo said, thinking Leanna looked uncomfortable and not herself in the clothes. Gone were Leanna’s fun retro earrings and flouncy fifties skirts and comfortable flip-flops. Cleo never thought she’d cheer flip-flops. She chided herself for what was likely petty jealousy and offered seats, snacks, and beverages. Bitsy said she couldn’t stay long. She and Leanna chose two wooden chairs so they wouldn’t leave damp spots on cushions.
Bitsy’s gaze drifted around the patio. She complimented Cleo’s hanging baskets of petunias and the pretty blue of the ceiling. Then her eyes landed on the stack of books. “Goodness, what are y’all reading?” she asked. “These sound awful.”