Better Off Read

by Nora Page

  “No fun in that,” Adelaide said, fussing with her squealing hearing aid. It buzzed and she reared back.

  “Got it!” Mary-Rose held up a familiar cover, a field of cotton, the fleecy puffs dripping lurid red blood.

  Cleo couldn’t wait. She took the book and was flipping to the missing page, when a wavering “ha-ha, ha-ha” came from the back.

  “Peacock!” Adelaide cried.

  Mary-Rose gasped. “That’s Mama. That’s the warning sign. Shh … someone’s here.”

  They froze, listening to the rattle of keys and a scraping at the front door.

  “Hurry,” Mary-Rose whispered. “Let’s go. Out the back.”

  Cleo clutched the book and made sure Mary-Rose and Adelaide were out before her. She muscled shut the stubborn door and quickly locked it and hid the key. With tiptoed steps and a squeaky walker, they made their way up the side pathway. They waited at the corner of the cottage until they heard the front door open and shut.

  “Who is it?” Mary-Rose whispered.

  “Shh…” her mother said. “We’re going back to Adelaide’s. Now.”

  But Adelaide was already back down the path, peeking in the window. She scuttled back. “It’s her. It’s Priscilla. Breaking in!”

  Jo-Marie reminded her it was Priscilla’s home. “We’re the burglars,” she said, hand fluttering dramatically to her chest. “Thieves.”

  “Let’s all go pay her a visit,” Cleo said over Jo-Marie’s protests. “We’ll ask her for a copy of the book. She’ll surely sell us one. Then we can slip the ‘borrowed’ copy onto her bookshelf or her desk when she’s not looking.”

  “What if she’s the killer, and she figures out that we’re onto her?” Adelaide countered. “What do we do then? Fight? Run?” She waggled her cane as if warming up for battle.

  Mary-Rose amended Cleo’s idea. “Mama, why don’t you and Miss Adelaide go back and watch through Adelaide’s window? That way you can call the police if you sense any trouble.”

  The two older women left, Adelaide grumbling about missing all the fun, Jo-Marie muttering that she already sensed trouble.

  * * *

  Priscilla peeked over her door chain with startled bunny-in-headlights eyes. Her odd purple hair frizzed out in tufts.

  “You’re back from vacation!” Cleo announced cheerfully, holding her elbow protectively over her purse and the book within. “Wonderful! Can we come in? We were over visiting with your neighbor Adelaide and saw you return.”

  “It’s not a good time right now,” Priscilla said, inching the door closed.

  “No, it’s not a good time!” Mary-Rose blurted with a slap to the door. “My neighbor has been murdered! Cleo’s grandson is in jail, and another person was murdered during a funeral reception at my Pancake Mill. Strangled with your scarf! Let us in! Cleo has some questions.” Mary-Rose was in high color. She stomped a foot and looked ready to kick the door in.

  With shaky hands, Priscilla undid the lock. “My scarf?” She wore a silk scarf, purple and draped artfully over a wildly printed lavender dress that hung to her ankles.

  “One of your promotional scarves,” Cleo specified. “The crime-scene kind.”

  Priscilla brightened. “Aren’t those fun? Did I give you one? Do you need another? They’re in my office.”

  “No!” Mary-Rose said. “We need answers and a book.”

  “A book? I just got in,” Priscilla said. “You saw that. Let me freshen up. Have a seat. I’ll be back in a wink. Help yourself to a cold drink if you like.”

  Cleo and Mary-Rose perched on the edge of the sofa. “She’s twitchy,” Mary-Rose said.

  “She’s always like that,” Cleo whispered.

  The ice machine clunked and groaned. Water ran in the back, and a toilet flushed. Cleo mentally prepared a list of questions. The book. The anonymous notes left on her porch. The cut brake lines of her bookmobile. Priscilla’s fight with Buford. Whitney.

  Cleo was deep in her lists when she registered a thumping that wasn’t the ice maker. She looked across at Adelaide’s house. Adelaide and Jo-Marie were slapping Adelaide’s picture window, pointing in the direction of the street. Cleo sprang up and hurried to the door. Priscilla was already in her car. Tires squealed and rubber burned the pavement of Sweetgum Court, and the true-crime author was gone.

  * * *

  Cleo’s purse felt heavy on her lap, not only because of the ill-gotten book inside, but also for what it contained. Nothing, she thought dismally, gazing out the passenger’s window at a blur of green. It had all been a waste of time except to confirm Priscilla’s flightiness. The page in question mostly contained photos. They were black and white and poorly focused and no one Cleo recognized, at least at first glance. A glimpse was all Cleo had gotten. Mary-Rose had been in a hurry to get going, and speeding cars were the one place Cleo couldn’t even open a book for fear of motion sickness.

  They were heading to town. Mary-Rose would then zip back to Happy Trails, having agreed to take her mother and Adelaide to a bingo game and shopping and an early-bird buffet in Claymore. Penance, Mary-Rose said.

  When they reached downtown Catalpa Springs, Cleo asked to be let off by the park. She apologized again for getting Mary-Rose in trouble with her mother.

  “This gives Mama something to chew on. Keeps her mind off her health. Keeps her young.” Mary-Rose idled in a no-parking zone, blinkers clicking.

  “You’re a good daughter then,” Cleo said. “Her mind will certainly be busy.” She hugged Mary-Rose across the console and promised to call when she heard more about Ollie.

  The day was sunny and hot, already feeling as steamy as summer. Cleo wasn’t out for a stroll. She had a destination. When she got to The Gilded Page, however, the door sign read “CLOSED.” Cleo’s spirits dipped lower until she saw Henry and Mr. Chaucer coming down the sidewalk. Henry beamed. Mr. Chaucer woofed, tottering with the effort.

  “Come in out of the heat,” Henry said. They settled in his reading nook, a little area of armchairs upholstered in soft maroon velvet. The shop was cool and lit only by natural light, the view out the windows so bright it blurred. Cleo told Henry of her morning, hoping he wouldn’t feel left out. “You didn’t miss much,” she said. “The book seems to be a letdown in terms of clues.”

  He rubbed his bearded chin, thoughtful. “It is interesting that Priscilla ran away from you. That’s something. Did she seem scared or guilty?”

  Cleo didn’t know. “She always seems rather scared. I called Gabby on the way back to town. She and Sergeant Tookey will be keeping an eye out for Priscilla.” She fished the book out of her purse. “I didn’t get a chance to fully study it. Mary-Rose had to run. I thought you might like to see it too, since you discovered the missing page.”

  Henry was eager to look, but the doorbell interrupted. “Let me see who that is,” Henry said.

  Cleo sat back, soaking in the comforting company of books. Henry’s shop was a candy store of bookish delights. The priciest, most valuable tomes resided in glass-paneled cabinets and air-conditioned cases, to be handled only with gloves. Other books were precious in their own ways. There were thick bibles with family trees drawn inside their covers, and cookbooks from Cleo’s grandmother’s generation and earlier, the marginalia and smudges revealing favorite recipes. Poetry, classics, art, fiction and fact, and words from centuries past all mingled in The Gilded Page. So did a small collection of vintage children’s books and comics, like Pogo, featuring Cleo’s favorite talking possum from the nearby Okefenokee Swamp. Cleo took a Pogo from the shelf, feeling the warmth of reuniting with old friends.

  Mr. Chaucer roused himself from his red satin bed, yawned, and wandered to his water bowl behind the counter. Noisy lapping and snorting ensued, over which Cleo could hear Henry greeting Leanna.

  Leanna was in her banking attire, taking mincing steps in pointy heels.

  “I didn’t recognize you at first,” Henry was saying. “You look very professional.”

  “L
ike a banker?” Leanna asked with a beaming smile. She kicked off the shoes and exhaled with pleasure. “That’s good. Miss Bitsy says that looking the part is half the battle. More than half. A lot.”

  “You’re winning, then,” Henry said. “Are you looking for a book? Or a certain librarian?”

  Leanna said she’d seen Cleo coming this way. “My office window looks out over the park.” She emphasized office proudly. “I’m done with work for the day and wondered if you’d heard anything? About Ollie or Words on Wheels or the Gala or library?”

  Cleo reported waiting on all fronts. She explained her book-sleuthing expedition too and the disappointing result.

  “I still want to see that page,” Leanna said eagerly.

  Cleo opened Killings in Cotton Country, with Leanna and Henry hovering at her shoulder.

  “See?” Cleo said dismally. Page seventy-nine contained a few paragraphs of text and the same photo they’d seen in Sunshine State Crimes. The fated family on their picnic, blurry and smiling. Page eighty was filled with more photos. The husband and wife at their wedding. A small yearbook photo of one of the daughters, a pale girl with stringy hair and a tight smile. A skinny young man with long, would-be rock-star hair, bent over an electric guitar. As before, Cleo recognized no one. Neither did Henry and Leanna.

  “It’s good to rule out possibilities too,” Henry said, the voice of optimism.

  Cleo stared at the pages in frustration, willing something to materialize. Henry had taken the stack of Priscilla Pawpaw books to his shop to examine. She asked him to retrieve Sunshine State Crimes for comparison.

  “Good idea.” He read out the arson story again, summarizing and skimming. Suddenly Cleo didn’t feel so down.

  “Wait,” she said, flipping back to page seventy-nine of her “borrowed” book. “There is something. Cotton Country was published a few years later and seems to have updated information. The father didn’t kill his family and run off as was thought at first. His body was in the house too. Another family member was missing instead. Insurance investigators and the coroner figured it out later, after some mix-up.”

  Henry rubbed his beard in thought. “In the earlier book, Priscilla said first responders found all the children, teenagers and younger, in their beds. The mother was killed in the kitchen. Shot.”

  Cleo flipped to the photo page and they stared at the skeleton of the burned home. “It must have been difficult to identify the family members,” she said quietly.

  Hovering over Cleo’s shoulder, Leanna summarized the update. “So, the father was found in a teenage daughter’s bedroom in the basement. The teenage girl in the photo. She turned out to be the missing family member. Her boyfriend couldn’t be found either. The boyfriend’s the guy with the guitar and long hair. Liza and Clyde. Sounds like Bonnie and Clyde. Oh, but look. That terrible father had a gun at his side and the mother was shot. So he probably did it! He killed his family, set the fire, and shot himself. Awful!”

  Cleo read and reread the words. The teenager daughter’s name was Liza Blackwell. She was wanted for questioning. The boyfriend was Clyde Alvarez, a musician and construction worker with no fixed address.

  “‘Her disreputable and criminal boyfriend,’” Leanna said, quoting Priscilla’s words. “‘Weak-jawed, long-haired ne’er-do-well.’ Ne’er-do-well? I’ve never seen that word written out before.” Leanna snorted. “Seems kind of mean. Just because the guy didn’t have a stable home or a good chin or haircut doesn’t mean he was bad.”

  Cleo patted her young friend’s hand. “Of course not, dear. Priscilla’s writing is highly dramatic. Shock is her thing, in writing and perhaps in life too.”

  Cleo studied the pictures, hoping something else would leap out. The photos were muddy grays. The text didn’t change. “I wonder what happened to those two missing young people?”

  Henry produced a magnifying glass and they all stared at the grainy family photo. The unlucky mother looked thin to the point of malnourished, like her children. The father was a wiry little man. Cleo clicked her tongue. Those poor children. That poor woman.

  “I wish we had a better photo of Liza and Clyde,” Cleo said.

  Leanna snapped her fingers. “Of course! We can search online. The police and sheriff’s websites might have made wanted notices or missing persons alerts. Or the Florida Bureau of Investigation. School photos. Newspapers. Everyone has photos out there.”

  “This was a while back,” Cleo pointed out. “Those teenagers would be—what? In their late thirties or early forties now? Back in the good old days, we didn’t post our self-portraits on computers all the time for the world to see.”

  “Yeah,” Leanna said. “That sounds nice to me. But it doesn’t mean older things have stayed off the Web. A lot of newspaper archives are available, and school yearbooks and sports pages—all sorts of old, old stuff. We should do a library technology class about online archives.”

  Cleo shared a smile with Henry. Mr. Chaucer waddled over to them, looked up, and groaned.

  “We’re old, old stuff, Chaucy,” Henry said with a chuckle. The pug sat back with a whimper. “Leanna, let me set you up on the computer in the back room.”

  Cleo settled back into a velvet armchair to wait. Henry joined her, flipping through the newspaper. It was quiet and cool, and Cleo felt herself drifting off into a nap that may have been a moment, minutes, or more.

  “Miss Cleo,” Leanna’s voice was urgent. “Mr. Henry!”

  Cleo’s eyes popped open. Leanna stood in front of them, wringing her hands. “Come look and see, and tell me I’m wrong. It’s a clearer image, but I have to be wrong.”

  In the back room, Cleo stared at the screen. She adjusted her glasses. She squinted and tried to imagine the person she knew with a younger face, different hair, and a vastly different life.

  “Oh dear,” Henry said. “I think I see it.”

  “No,” Leanna said, stepping back. “No, I’m wrong.”

  A pain thumped behind Cleo’s bruised eye. “I’m afraid you’re not.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Hummingbird cake was one of Cleo’s favorites, her mother’s specialty. Mama made it for birthdays, potlucks, and picnics. She once lugged a magnificent four-layer hummingbird on a summer beach trip, an infamous day when a loose dog stole their packed sandwiches and the sand blew in gales and stuck like gritty sprinkles to the cream cheese frosting. Mama carried on, as she did. She’d scraped off the sand and bundled Cleo, her sister Helen, and their grumpy father into the station wagon for the best picnic ever, sweet tea and cake.

  Cleo got out her mother’s original recipe card. Mama had written the instructions in her neat cursive, just the bare essentials. The ingredients. The oven temperature. The instructions: mix, divide, bake, cool, frost.

  Leanna banged about in Cleo’s walk-in pantry, repeating the ingredients. “Pineapple, got it. Sugar. Brown sugar. Flour. Oil. Pecans. Round cake pans. Cinnamon. Baking powder. Miss Cleo, have you ever thought of Dewey-decimalizing your pantry somehow?”

  Cleo had to smile. Suggesting kitchen reorganization might be considered sparring words by some Southern ladies, but Cleo adored Leanna’s quest for order. “I alphabetized once,” Cleo said, “but now I go by categories. Canned fruit and baking supplies should be on the middle shelves to your right.”

  An ah-ha signaled Leanna was on the right track.

  “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?” Leanna asked, emerging with two types of canned pineapple in her hands.

  Cleo selected the crushed variety and tried to sound as certain about their plan. “Yes. We’re just chatting, and we have backup. Gabby’s usually home by six or seven, and Henry will be sitting on the back porch right outside. We’ll be fine.” She wished Ollie were here. Her grandson was blessedly free from jail, out on a hefty bond, but dear fretful Fred had insisted Ollie stay at his place again. “Out of trouble’s way,” Fred said accusatorily, as if Cleo might be a cause of Ollie’s troubles. She supposed her el
dest son did have a point, considering her recent activities and what she was planning.

  Cleo glanced out the back window and saw Henry reading, Mr. Chaucer sitting at his feet. She imagined borrowing Beast. Now there would be an attack dog, although she still wasn’t entirely sure of the innocence of his owner.

  “We owe our friend the benefit of the doubt,” Cleo said. She checked the clock for the umpteenth time.

  Leanna paced nervously. She’d changed back into her usual comfort clothes, knee-length leggings and a big baggy shirt. Her hair was braided and twisted into a bun, like her twisting hands. When the doorbell rang, Leanna jumped.

  Cleo opened the door to a beaming Bitsy Givens.

  “Y’all are beyond sweet to help me!” Bitsy said, giving Cleo air-kisses on each cheek. Her perfume and enthusiasm wafted over Cleo, and her prodigious purse bumped Cleo’s hip. “Mama Givens is going to be shocked—shocked!—when I whip up the best hummingbird birthday cake in Catalpa County. Vern will be so surprised.”

  The Givens were in for a bigger shock than cake, Cleo feared, her head spinning from the situation and perfume. She stared at Bitsy. Were they right? That stringy-haired teenage girl in the photo could hardly compare to the polished, perfect socialite and philanthropist. Bitsy fluffed her hair.

  “Let’s get to it,” Bitsy said. “I can’t wait.”

  I can, Cleo thought. She led Bitsy to the kitchen, doubts swirling. Bitsy’s polish and manner gave her pause, but it was her hair that had sparked recognition. When Bitsy and Leanna had arrived the other day in the rainstorm, Bitsy’s hair was sopping and stringy. Right then, with her makeup running off and bedraggled, she resembled a mature version of Liza Blackwell, missing teenager and possible murder suspect from Tarpon Springs, Florida. But how could Cleo ask? What if they were wrong? Cleo shivered. What if they were right?

  “So, what’s first?” Bitsy asked after hugging a stiff-backed Leanna. Only Rhett was relaxed, lounging on the kitchen table.