by Nora Page
“I know,” Cleo said. “It’s not right, any of it.”
Rhett’s tail slapped the concrete.
“Except the harness. That’s for your own safety,” Cleo told her cat. Not only for skunks. Two murders in her pretty town. A killer still walking free, regardless of what Chief Culpepper contended. Her heart tightened, picturing the dismal jail and innocent Ollie inside it, charged with strangling Whitney Greene. Angela said not to worry, that he’d be out on bond by this afternoon. Angela was brisk and confident, but she couldn’t quell Fred’s fretting, and this time, she couldn’t ease Cleo’s mind either.
Cleo was going to keep walking, when she saw Jimmy Teeks marching down the sidewalk toward them. The Vegas consultant wore shorts and a vest of crinkly fabric and many pockets. Fishing attire, Cleo guessed, in which Jimmy looked as comfortable as Leanna in a biscuit costume. A canvas hat hid his bald top, but not his potato features. He held a fishing pole around its middle, as if throttling it.
“Come along, Rhett,” Cleo said, her pulse quickening. Ever since Jimmy’s “watch your back” comment at the bookmobile crash, she’d been extra leery of the man. Rightfully so, she thought. Gabby had run a background check on Mr. Teeks and found nothing, not even his name or variations of it. He was either a perfectly spotless citizen, Gabby suggested, or not who he said he was.
Rhett stretched and rolled and remained stubbornly prone on the sidewalk. His leash had a long extension. Wanting to avoid an awkward chat, Cleo left Rhett lounging and stepped into the library’s garden, where she set about looking busy. She pulled a few weeds and kept her ears and eyes keen, waiting for Jimmy to pass. His shoes scuffed at the sidewalk. Slap, scrape, slap, and then the footsteps stopped.
“Hey there, grumpy guy,” he said in his high-pitched rasp.
Cleo straightened and looked in alarm at Jimmy standing over her cat. She resisted the urge to reel Rhett in via his lead. Instead, she went to join them, explaining Rhett’s leash and harness aversion.
“No one likes to be held back, do they, furry man?” Jimmy rested his fishing pole on a nearby post box and crouched to pet Rhett. To Cleo’s surprise and irritation, the cat stood to rub and fawn and make a drooling fool of himself. Cleo wondered if she’d misjudged her pet’s ability to judge strangers.
“He’s a gorgeous cat,” Jimmy said, and Cleo’s feelings began to shift. A man who liked cats couldn’t be all that bad, could he?
Jimmy scratched Rhett under his chin. “I always wanted a fluffy cat. I found one once, when I was a kid. It was gray. Pretty. Blue eyes. Great fur. My dad wouldn’t let me keep it. Said it was girly, too fluffy.”
Indignation replaced Cleo’s remaining wariness. “Why, that is simply ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “Awful!”
Small, dark potato eyes narrowed.
Cleo stepped back. She’d more than stuck a bad-manners foot in her mouth. She’d insulted a possible mobster’s father.
Jimmy’s eyes seemed to get harder and smaller. “Yeah,” he said, after an uncomfortable beat. “You’re right. It was wrong. Unnecessary. Cruel.”
“We shouldn’t keep you,” Cleo said, giving Rhett’s leash the gentlest of encouraging tugs.
Rhett, the traitor, flopped on Jimmy Teeks’s unmoving feet. “You don’t have any books for sale in that library, do you?” Jimmy said. “I need a something to read.”
She had to disappoint Jimmy, who took the news stoically.
“We used to sell donated books and use the profits for the library,” she said. “But those books are all in storage now. I could use the few extra dollars they brought in and a lot more too.” She scooped up Rhett, who wasn’t going to leave his new pal by any other means.
Rhett scrambled up to his preferred spot on her shoulder. Jimmy reached over and scratched Rhett’s head. “You’re a good cat. Hope you get your library fixed soon.”
“Tell your boss that,” Cleo muttered.
Jimmy’s potato eyes narrowed again. “Is the mayor giving you trouble?
Yes! Cleo wanted to yell. “It’s all about money, isn’t it?” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “Mayor Day says the library fund has run dry, but I just don’t see how that can be true. We used to be fine. Enough for what we needed and a little saved up.”
“Is that so?” Jimmy He resumed his choke hold on the fishing pole. Then he turned heel and strode back toward City Hall.
* * *
At the Drop By, Rhett hopped on the window ledge, where Dot displayed vintage canisters and tin signs and now a fluffy orange cat belly. Cleo was happy to find Angela at the deli counter. Her lawyer daughter-in-law was picking up sandwiches. Pimento cheese and tomato for herself, ham and Swiss with chow-chow pickle—hold the onions—for Ollie.
“He wanted onions,” Angela said, “but we can’t have his breath offending the judge if we have to approach the bench. Details matter.”
Cleo approved. Details did matter. She inquired about the time of the bail hearing.
“Later this afternoon,” Angela said. “I’ll let you know. I’m going to visit Ollie now. There’s not much for him to do or say, but I want him ready.”
Dot plunked paper-wrapped parcels on the counter. “I put extra filling on your sandwiches and added some chips and brownies. Grab a couple cold drinks from the cooler.”
When Dot saw a problem, she applied food to fix it. She offered Angela ice cream but then realized it would melt and get fingers and tables sticky, and they probably weren’t allowed aprons in court. Dot stuffed a handful of napkins into Angela’s bag.
“It will turn out fine,” Cleo said. “Right, Angela?”
When Angela didn’t answer right away, Dot made up a packet of chocolate chip cookies and trilled, “Of course. Oliver had no reason to hurt that young lady. He’s a nice boy, and when he brought her to Sunday lunch at your house, Cleo, they seemed so happy. Well, Ollie seemed happy. She seemed…” Dot frowned and wiped her spotless counter, mumbling that one mustn’t speak ill of the recently deceased.
Angela gathered the weighty lunch sack. “I’ll tell you the truth. The prosecutor will claim Ollie was angry for getting dumped, for Whitney’s betrayal of him and the spring. Those are big motives. Plus he found her body. He touched the murder weapon, the scarf. It looks like Whitney was killed during or just before that funeral party at the Pancake Mill, so he had opportunity.”
“A lot of people were celebrating Buford Kandall’s death,” Cleo pointed out. “Anyone could have slipped away.”
“I said it at the time,” Dot said. “That event was off. It wasn’t right. There was an air of menace.”
A mother and preschooler came in, making a beeline for the ice-cream freezer. Cleo leaned closer to the counter and lowered her voice. “The murderer could easily have been among us yesterday. I’ve been thinking. What if Whitney was killed not because of personal betrayal or anger, but because of something she knew or saw?”
Angela hoisted her heavy lunch bags. “It’s a good theory, but just that. Ollie did finally admit that Whitney went back on her own the night they stupidly sabotaged that drilling machine. She claimed she dropped something. She was gone a few minutes. It would have been helpful if he’d admitted this sooner.”
Oh, Ollie! Cleo shared her daughter-in-law’s loving frustration. A darker idea struck her. What if the killer thought Ollie saw something too? She caught Angela’s eye and guessed she’d already considered that too.
The mom and child stepped up to the cash register with their ice-cream sandwiches. Dot managed a cheery face and gave them some on-the-house cookies.
Angela put an ice tea and Coke in her to-go bags and insisted on paying Dot for everything. While Dot was banging on the cash register, Angela said, “Your theory only helps if we have firm evidence and a better suspect than Ollie. I’d like to know more about that scarf. Was it hers or the killer’s?”
Cleo tried to remember if she’d seen anyone wearing a Priscilla Pawpaw promotional scarf/murder weapon at the recept
ion. She couldn’t, but a scarf could easily be tucked in a purse or pocket. It would be nearly as easy for the killer to slip away and meet Whitney at Krandall House.
“So, who would have had these scarves?” Angela asked.
“Lots of people,” Cleo said. “Me, Henry.” Mary-Rose.
“Me,” chimed in Dot. “Mine’s still in my fabric chest. I was going to incorporate it into a Halloween apron, but I won’t go near it now.”
“Priscilla had loads of those scarves,” Cleo said. Her mind turned, and an idea brewed. Priscilla likely also had loads of her own books, including a complete version of Killings in Cotton Country. Cleo wanted a look at the page that had been removed from the library copy. With the new murder and arrest, the police would have little time or incentive to track down a single page. But Cleo did, if she could get inside Priscilla’s house. A plan took form, involving a touch of trespassing and a certain watchful neighbor.
“There is something at Priscilla’s I could check into,” Cleo said. She ordered a couple of oatmeal cookies—an expedition required supplies, and oatmeal counted as healthy. Then she collected Rhett and carried him to the door.
“Should I know what you’re doing?” Angela asked as they lingered on the threshold.
“Probably not,” Cleo said.
“I thought so,” Angela said.
Cleo waited for a warning, a caution that she was too old or out of her league.
“Whatever it is, be careful,” Angela said. “I don’t need any more family clients.”
* * *
Mary-Rose picked Cleo up outside her house. “Should we be doing this in daylight?” Mary-Rose asked. “It’s awfully clear and bright.”
“Yes,” Cleo said, primly for a person hoping to break and enter. “Sunny is perfect. We need to be spotted.” Cleo scooched down, however, as they drove past The Gilded Page. The “OPEN” sign hung on the door, and a light shone inside. Henry would have come along in an instant. Cleo had already gotten him into enough tricky situations recently. Besides, it was Monday, when Mary-Rose went to Happy Trails anyway to visit her mother.
Tamara greeted them at the guardhouse. “The girl-detective book you recommended is awesome,” she said to Cleo. “Do you have any others by that author?”
“I can look in the main library.” Cleo had to lean over Mary-Rose to see out the driver’s window. This was another reason she preferred to sit behind the steering wheel. “Have you seen Miss Pawpaw?”
“Miss V.? Nope. Not since she went and disappeared. You want my theory? She’s the killer! Why else would she run for the hills?” Tamara gestured in the vague direction of west and hills. “Off to see your mama, Mary-Rose?”
“Yes,” Mary-Rose said woodenly. “We’re off to see my mother.” As they pulled away, she asked, “Did that sound too fake? Think she noticed?”
“Only a little,” said Cleo, in answer to both questions. She directed the way to Sweetgum Court. “Now, park right out front. Perfect.”
With Mary-Rose at her heels, Cleo marched to the bright yellow door of Priscilla Vinogradov, aka Pawpaw, and knocked loudly.
“This isn’t how we used to go about our trespassing,” Mary-Rose said. She grinned. “Ah, the good old days, when we never thought we’d get caught. I guess we’re not worrying about that now either.”
“I’m counting on getting caught,” Cleo said.
She bellowed Priscilla’s name. She rapped at the door. No sound came from within. Cleo headed around the side of the tidy patio home. She stopped to peer in Priscilla’s windows, right across from watchful neighbor Adelaide Cox’s house. She cupped her hands to the glass and called again. She was starting to get worried. Perhaps the elderly woman had her hearing aids out or was napping or—
A high-pitched tone sounded in the shrubbery to her left. Cleo smiled.
“Stop, burglar!” A wizened face appeared over the shrubbery and widened into a smile. “Why, it’s the fighting librarian! That’s quite a shiner you have.” Adelaide chuckled. “And Mary-Rose! Now this is a surprise. What are you girls up to? Breaking in? Doing some spying?”
Cleo said, pleasantly, “Why, yes, we are, and we’re hoping you can help us. I’m betting you have a spare key. Good neighbors do, and we’re worried Priscilla could be in danger.”
Adelaide ducked back down, and Cleo worried she’d misjudged. Gabby had an extra key to Cleo’s house, but nosy Wanda Boxer most certainly did not. Fred—the dear innocent—once gave Wanda a key, contending that if Cleo became ill or fell in the tub, Wanda could help. Cleo had waited a polite few days before changing the locks while Wanda was at work. Neither Fred nor Wanda would be finding her in her tub. Perhaps Priscilla felt a similar leeriness.
A click-clack sound approached. “I don’t have a key,” Adelaide announced, swinging her cane in a wide, shin-threatening swath. “But I know where to find her spare. Why do you want in? We looking for something? A body? You’re a magnet for those lately, Cleo Watkins.”
Cleo felt a twinge of unease. Surely someone had checked inside Priscilla’s cottage since she’d gone missing. Gabby or the chief, a friend, someone …
Mary-Rose groaned, “Oh no.”
Cleo heard a soft squeak of metal. She recognized the sound of a walker, as Mary-Rose surely had too. Even before turning, she knew who was behind it: Mary-Rose’s mother.
“Yep,” Adelaide said merrily. “Jo-Marie and I were visiting, strategizing what to do with all her strip bingo winnings. She had time, you know, since her daughter cancelled on her.”
“Mama,” said Mary-Rose with nervous cheeriness. “Cleo and I were just—”
Jo-Marie cut her off with a shake of her finger. “I know what you’re doing, young lady. You cancel my visit to make trouble with Cleo? Cleo, your eye! Mary-Rose, your reputation! If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it for forever. You girls and your exploits will be the death of me. The death!”
“There’re worse ways to go,” Adelaide said. “Come on. Let’s see what murder lady next door is hiding.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Adelaide proposed a game. “Go ahead, try and guess where Priscilla hides her key. Remember, that woman knows all about crimes. She knows about psychos and killers and prowlers who could break in and do heaven knows what.”
Mary-Rose and her mother looked appropriately aghast.
Cleo played along. She liked a puzzle. Where would the key be? In a fake rock? Under the garden gnome? Buried in the fire-ant mound over by the fence? Cleo hoped it wasn’t the ants, though that would be a good place. No one would look there. Fire ants were worse garden invaders than even air potatoes—unless the air potato was flying toward one’s eye.
“It’s clever, actually. So obvious you’d never guess.” Adelaide chuckled. “She has a cleaning woman who lets herself in, that’s how I know.” She went to a grouping of patio chairs and a table under the awning. The metal table sported a faded floral tablecloth, some dusty plastic placemats, and an ashtray. Adelaide lifted the ashtray and there was the key.
Jo-Marie fussed. “She might as well have put it under the mat or right in the lock itself. Anyone could guess that. Burglars, strangers, killers…”
“Neighbors,” Adelaide added with a chuckle. “Librarians. Pancake makers.” She inserted the key in the sliding glass door.
They all hesitated. Jo-Marie leaned on her walker and declared the situation wrong.
“Pah!” Adelaide said. “We’ll water her plants, check her mail. She’d thank us, if she knew. Now, what are we looking for? Bodies? Weapons?”
“Books,” Cleo said. She slid the door open with effort and stepped inside.
* * *
Thankfully, no alarms rang out, and there was no sign of a body, live or otherwise.
“Shoot,” Adelaide declared. “This is kind of a letdown. Not even a plant to water.”
The living room was cozy and tidy, as when Cleo had visited before. However, the atmosphere seemed different. A stuffy emptiness pervaded,
the quiet broken only by Adelaide’s cane swinging over the tile and an ice maker groaning and clunking.
“Sounds like a good ice maker. Energetic,” Adelaide commented, opening the fridge and freezer doors and sticking her head in. She exhaled. “Ah … cool…” Then she turned to yell, “Jo-Marie, want a Coke? She’s got stacks of cold drinks. She surely wouldn’t miss one.”
Mary-Rose’s mother hovered outside on the back patio, righteously refusing to be part of “this, whatever this is.”
“You’re already trespassing, Mama,” Mary-Rose said.
“Abetting too,” Adelaide said. “You stay outside, though. Be our lookout. If you see anyone coming, give us a warning. A sound. Something subtle, like those peacocks your daughter keeps. Ha-ha, ha-ha!” Adelaide’s birdcall could use some work and was definitely not subtle.
Mutters about daughters and peacocks and “death of me” resumed on the patio. Cleo promised to be quick.
The built-in bookshelves in the living room held knickknacks. The coffee table was piled high with magazines on subjects of gardening, cooking, and crime. Cleo peeked in a bedroom. The bed was unmade, clothes strewn over it, and the closet a mess, as if a mini-tornado had struck, or Priscilla—as Adelaide claimed—had run off in a hurry.
“Over here!” Mary-Rose called from a small room off the kitchen.
Cleo stepped into a box room that lived up to its name. Cardboard and clear plastic containers stuffed with books, crime-scene scarves, and papers towered around a cluttered desk. Cleo disapproved. Books should be neatly stacked on shelves, dusted and organized, preferably by the ways of Dewey’s decimals.
“What a mess,” Mary-Rose said. “How does she find anything?”
“I’m looking for Killings in Cotton Country,” Cleo said. “That’s why we’re here. The library’s copy is missing a page. This is an emergency book-borrowing situation.”
They opened boxes and read out titles whose subjects ranged from murder and crime to noxious plants, to a surprising guide to spring bulbs.
“This is nice,” Mary-Rose said, inspecting the bulb guide. “I wonder why Priscilla didn’t stick to writing gardening books?”