Better Off Read

by Nora Page

  Cleo realized she’d gotten the porch swing swaying fast. Rhett had his claws sunk into the cushions, ears back. She eased up. “Bitsy could be entirely innocent. Here and in Florida. Her father died of a gunshot from the gun found in his own hand. Her mother was shot with the same weapon. It makes terrible sense as a murder–suicide. Bitsy has her reputation to think of, but folks wouldn’t hold her childhood against her. She’s a good person who volunteers. She got Leanna a job and hasn’t killed Maybelle, and she likes cats.”

  “Well, you make strong points regarding Maybelle and cats,” Gabby said, grinning.

  Cleo patted Rhett. “We discovered her past identity through Priscilla Pawpaw’s books. Someone removed a page from a chapter that dealt with Bitsy—Liza Blackwell—and her family. There’s no way to know who removed the page. It could have been chance, a library patron spilling coffee on the page and hoping to hide the evidence. Or Buford, keeping a record? Or maybe Bitsy herself? Bitsy would hardly admit to me if she harmed a library book. She’s a great library supporter.”

  Gabby was balancing in a precarious pretzel stretch now, an ankle crossed over the opposite knee. “Yeah, ’cause book abuse is a crime not even a murdering arsonist would admit to,” she joked grimly. “I haven’t told the chief about Bitsy yet. I want to talk to her first and don’t want him jumping to conclusions. He could go either way: yell at me for bothering a town bigwig’s spouse or leap on the chance for a flashy arrest.”

  Cleo checked her watch. She told Gabby she was going to pick up Bitsy soon. “So she doesn’t change her mind and she knows she has a friend. If she didn’t harm anyone, she’s taking a big risk.”

  Gabby came out of her twisty stretch. “I don’t like you doing that alone. Tell you what, how about I tail you? Better yet, how about I put a wire in your car so I can listen in too? I’m on my own this morning. The chief and Tookey will be at the mayor’s press conference at City Hall.”

  Cleo debated. It seemed a betrayal of friendship and trust. However, she had promised Henry she’d be careful, and there was no harm if Bitsy was innocent. She agreed. “It’s a lovely day, and I’m putting the top down on the convertible. You might hear some wind.”

  “I’m fine with that. Just don’t drive like Beelzebub’s bat, so I can keep up with you, okay?”

  “I’ll try,” Cleo promised, already anticipating the feel of the road flying under her wheels.

  * * *

  Cleo’s father had kept his cherry-red Ford Galaxie locked up in the garage for years. About once a season, Daddy would take the car out for a spin. If Cleo was around, he always invited her. They’d put down the top and pretend they were flying.

  Cleo rested her elbow on the doorframe, as Daddy always did. She took in the sights as well as the scents, from fresh baked treats at the Spoonbread Bakery to the liquid green of the Tallgrass River. Cleo would know the river’s special scent anywhere. If she were ever forced to leave her hometown—heaven forbid—she’d want perfumes replicating the river and the jasmine from her garden.

  Cleo slowed over the bridge, both to admire the view and let Gabby catch up. The Givens’s home was just on the other side, set up on a small rise overlooking the river. Cleo marveled that Vernon didn’t fish. All he’d have to do was stroll down the driveway and cast a line.

  Cleo parked at the looping end of the long driveway. She started to unbuckle. Ollie might have beeped the horn, but Cleo thought it more polite to knock. Before she could get out, the grand double doors opened, and Bitsy trotted forth, mincing in towering heels and a business-like pink skirt and jacket.

  “’Bye!” she yelled behind her.

  The door slammed, and Bitsy jumped in the passenger seat. “Let’s roll,” she said. “I want to get this over with and get on to more important business. I got on the phone last night and talked three Leaguers down from ditching the library as our Gala cause. I argued it would be unseemly.” She tied a pink silk scarf over her blond locks and donned dark glasses, resembling a forties film star. “I figured I had to make the most of my ‘unseemly’ argument while I could.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Cleo said. “Hopefully, the police can keep everything quiet.” She took her time at the end of the driveway, looking up and down the road. She didn’t see Gabby anywhere.

  Bitsy chattered on with nervous energy. “We have a lot of donations for the Gala auction. There’s jewelry, spa dates, restaurant gift certificates. You and your sweetie could bid on the spa and have yourselves a fine time.”

  Cleo let Bitsy have that happy joshing. “Or you and Vernon could,” she countered. “How is he? Did you … uh…?”

  Bitsy snorted. “Did I tell him my deep, dark, unhappy past? Yes, I did it the best way possible, over cake and a shot of bourbon last night. He’s fine. He was only upset that I didn’t tell him sooner so he could support me. Vern’s such a sugar bear.”

  “Of course,” Cleo said. “I bet he loved your cake.”

  “Our cake,” Bitsy said. “I confessed you helped me. No more secrets! Vern and Vernie Jr. both loved it. Big Vern said it was the best he’d ever had. Mama Givens was spitting mad when she heard that.” Bitsy laughed. “Vern’s taking the morning off so he can take his mama to lunch, calm her down some.”

  Cleo savored the image of spitting Maybelle, outshined using the very recipe she’d swiped. She turned onto the bridge and back toward town. On the other side, she spotted Gabby’s car, parked at the entrance to the perfectly fine and functional fishing pier. It was a good spot to wait. Gabby’s unmarked vehicle looked like that of a park patron or fisherman out for a day on the river. Cleo glanced in her back mirrors, as she often did, following the rules of driving safety. A van was coming up fast behind her. Folks could be so impatient! Cleo liked speed, but she never, ever tailgated. So rude!

  “What’s going on?” Bitsy said, twisting to look behind them. “Oh my gosh, that jerk is right on our bumper. Let’s speed up. I don’t like bridges anyway.”

  The bridge spanned low over the slow water and was hardly scary. “He can pass when we get across,” Cleo said. In other circumstances, she might have slowed down to teach the bully some patience. However, she pressed the gas harder for Bitsy’s sake. A great jolt sent the car jerking forward, and not from the boost of the accelerator. They both gasped. Cleo’s seatbelt bit into her collarbone and belly, and the car shuddered. Cleo stomped the gas. The van fell back. Was the driver feeling like a fool for texting or not paying attention? No, Cleo realized with terror. The van was surging again. “Hang on!” Cleo cried.

  She leaned on the horn to alert Gabby. Just a few more yards and they’d be across. Several more after that and they’d pass Gabby, and the policewoman could activate her stick-on siren. Metal met metal again. Cleo’s car spun, the back end swinging out, the front end skidding and slipping as if on oiled ice. Bitsy screamed as the car bumped off the road at the edge of the bridge, careening head-on into the marshy margin between land and river.

  Bitsy yelled oaths and prayers until the moment the car smacked the tree and Cleo’s head banged the steering wheel.

  A dizzying pain shot through Cleo’s skull and down her neck. In silly shock, she imagined hiring Thurgood Byron out from under Maybelle and her supposed whiplash. She pried her eyes open and tried to focus on the van. The vehicle was pulling up beside them, gravel crunching under tires. The windows were tinted so dark, she couldn’t see in. The door opened a crack.

  “Cleo!” Gabby sprinted up the road, a gun in one hand, her badge in the other. “Police! Keep back!”

  Cleo looked toward her neighbor and then back at the van. She saw a hand in a black glove and a glint of metal. She stared, fixated, at the metal. It was small, round, a barrel. She fumbled, trying to start the motor again, to escape. The engine whirred and stalled.

  “Police!” Gabby yelled again.

  The van door slammed shut. Its engine revved, and the tires caught pavement, spitting pebbles. Gabby planted herself in the road, arms outstretch
ed in a STOP gesture. The van wasn’t stopping. It sped up, and Cleo put a hand over her eyes. When she looked again, Gabby was on the side of the road, dusting herself off.

  “Bitsy?” Cleo said, turning her attention to her passenger. “Bitsy!” Bitsy’s long locks covered her face. Her chin hung to her chest. She wasn’t moving.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Bitsy moaned and clutched her forehead, and Cleo exhaled heavily with relief. Gabby was beside them, calling for the ambulance and backup.

  “No, sir,” Gabby said coolly, when transferred to the chief. “No, it definitely was not the fault of Miss Cleo’s old lady driving. I saw the incident. The van rammed her on purpose, on the bridge.” Gabby bit her lip. “I’ll write a report on why I was out here, sir.”

  To the EMTs, Gabby reported possible concussions.

  “My head is just fine,” Cleo protested. She’d have a goose egg to go with her bruised eye. How lovely she’d look for the Gala. If there still was a Gala. She held Bitsy’s hand.

  “Keep Bitsy still and seated,” Gabby said. “Try to get her talking. Keep her awake.” Gabby strode back up the road and out over the bridge, eyes to the pavement.

  Cleo searched for a topic to rouse her passenger. Nothing too soothing or dull that might lull her to sleep. Something startling to wake her, but not overly upsetting. “Maybelle’s corns!” Cleo blurted out. “Bitsy, how are your mama-in-law’s feet today?”

  “Huh? Her feet? Ugly.” Bitsy held her head and made a pained sound. She took away her hand, looked at the blood smearing her palm, and shut her eyes. “Don’t tell Mama Givens I said that.”

  “No, I won’t. No napping, now.” Cleo gently shook Bitsy’s shoulder. She found some tissues in the glove compartment and pressed them to Bitsy’s temple. The cut might need stitches, but thankfully it seemed superficial. “Speaking of Maybelle,” Cleo continued brightly. “I remember when your mama-in-law accidentally flashed the entire school. Can you imagine?”

  Bitsy blinked. She looked confused, which was understandable, given the bump on her head and the image of Maybelle’s unmentionables.

  Cleo went on brightly. “It was homecoming, and I distinctly remember her standing at a podium, lecturing us all about refraining from homecoming pranks and unseemly activities when whoosh, a great wind sent her dress flying up. Like Marilyn Monroe, yet not quite as alluring. The yearbook photographer snapped a picture.”

  Bitsy gave a look between a smile and a grimace. “I bet she cursed out that wind.”

  “Mad as an adder at everyone in sight,” Cleo said. “That photographer didn’t keep his film long. He was lucky to get away with his camera.”

  Bitsy chuckled and grabbed her head in pain. “Ow, laughing hurts. So does my knee. Skinned it.”

  Sirens grew louder. Cleo unbuckled herself. She pushed open her door, testing her knees before stepping out into ankle-deep water. She steadied herself on the hood and cringed at the sight of her car. The front tire was twisted against a cypress knee. The shining bumper was horribly crumpled, and the hood buckled. Another beloved vehicle wounded!

  Cleo picked her way out of the reeds, water and mud oozing between her sandaled toes. The EMTs were jogging toward them. Bitsy was shakily undoing her driving scarf, unleashing her curls, and mumbling about needing a bucket of face powder.

  Gabby rejoined them. “So what happened? I saw you coming over the bridge. Then that van was on your tail, out of nowhere. Road rage?”

  Cleo didn’t think so. “No one was coming when I pulled out. I looked closely because I was looking for you.”

  Gabby started to apologize, which Cleo wouldn’t have any of. “We’re lucky you were here. You saved us, and just in time too.” She thought of the gloved hand, their helplessness. She didn’t want to think what might have happened if Gabby hadn’t been around. Who was the target? Herself? Bitsy?

  “You saved us, Gabby!” Bitsy crowed, craning around the attentive EMTs. “Saved us by the skin of our teeth! Skin of our knees.” She laughed shakily.

  Cleo frowned. A thought rattled in her shaken head. It was interrupted by doubt and by Gabby.

  “Did either of you see anything?” Gabby asked. “I couldn’t make out the driver or a plate.”

  Bitsy was distracted by medical attention. “Ooh … sweetie, watch where you’re grabbing.” She giggled. The EMTs were both male, young, and good looking. They eased Bitsy out of the car. She stood unsteadily, her arms draped over their shoulders.

  Cleo hadn’t seen the driver. “I was trying to stay on the road. Bitsy, honey, did you see him?”

  “Mmm?” Bitsy said, wobbling with assistance toward the waiting ambulance. “Him? You think so? No…”

  The EMTs got Bitsy situated and turned their attention to Cleo’s knocked noggin. She accepted a bandage but declined further fussing.

  “You should come with us, ma’am,” the blond EMT said. “We can get you a head scan and observe you.”

  “You could stay for a hospital lunch,” his dark-haired colleague added, as if that were an incentive. “Jell-O. Pudding. Turkey surprise.”

  Cleo declined politely but firmly. She walked to Gabby’s car, where she sat in the driver’s seat with the doors open, her feet kicking over pale gravel, her mind again remixing the puzzle pieces of suspects, this time with added words and faces. Her eyes glazed, blurring the green leaves and water until an image took shape, as unlikely and shocking as anything on Priscilla Pawpaw’s pages.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Gabby asked, approaching. She had her hands on her hips and was frowning down at Cleo. “Forgive me for saying, but you looked spacey just now. You could have a concussion. You should get back to town. Let’s call Henry or Leanna or your son or Ollie, although Ollie’s on bail and should probably stay away from crime scenes.”

  Cleo did feel a little dizzy. She let Gabby call Henry and heard her assuring and reassuring the silly, sweet man that Cleo was okay. She waited and watched as the chief arrived. Chief Culpepper seemed especially full of bluster this morning in his yellow smiley-face suspenders.

  The mayor came next, followed by a van, white like the one that had attacked her, but distinctly different. This van was decorated in a satellite dish, the logo of a Valdosta TV station, and the claim “We Brake for Breaking News.” Cleo remembered the mayor’s press conference and his plan to crow about his pier and the murder suspect in custody. The reporters must have tagged along, in search of a more exciting scoop and a prettier river backdrop. She wondered what Chief Culpepper would say now. Surely he couldn’t claim he’d solved the case. No one could ever think Oliver Watkins attacked his own grandmother. She leaned the seat back and let her thoughts roam.

  * * *

  Henry arrived at uncharacteristically high speed, his station wagon kicking up dust when he stopped. Even more unusual was his outfit. The typically dapper bookseller wore baggy striped pants, resembling pajama bottoms, and a rumpled linen shirt. “You look awful,” he said, and then flushed and apologized.

  “You don’t look up to standards yourself,” Cleo countered with a smile. “Where’s your pocket square?”

  “Left behind, along with proper pants and my dog. You do get an early start to trouble.”

  Cleo explained what had happened, leaving out the parts that might make her voice shake. Sergeant Tookey joined them. He was munching a hotdog with bacon and calling it breakfast. The sergeant leaned on the hood of Gabby’s car, ankles crossed. On the bridge, a cameraman aimed a massive lens at Chief Culpepper and Mayor Day.

  “Lucky break for the press,” Tookey observed through a mouthful of bun. “The chief was right in the middle of his interview out in front of City Hall. He was just saying how we’d solved the crime spree, when we got this call saying someone tried to kill you. The reporter caught wind. Said it sounded more exciting and we should move the interviews out here.”

  “This destroys the chief’s whole theory,” Cleo pointed out. “No one would think a fine, upstanding, law-a
biding grandson would run his grandmother off a bridge.” She held her chin high and defiant.

  Tookey popped the last bite of hotdog into chubby cheeks and chewed thoughtfully. “Isn’t it supposed to be the person you least suspect?” He tapped his temple in a think-about-it gesture. “I’m just saying, that grandson of yours is hardly law-abiding, is he? He admitted to trespassing and socializing with eco-terrorists and destroying property.”

  Cleo swung her feet, kicking up gravel, a few pebbles of which landed on Tookey’s shoes. She concentrated on the scene beyond. A young woman was powdering Mayor Day’s nose. Chief Culpepper was adjusting his smiley-face suspenders. Cleo noticed that the camera had swung toward Gabby, bent to inspect Cleo’s stricken convertible. “I’m glad Bitsy got to leave before all this,” she said.

  “Why?” Tookey asked, his baby-faced features sharpening.

  Cleo touched her head, thinking the bump might have affected her good judgment. “Oh,” she said, easily able to sound befuddled, “a proper Southern lady such as Bitsy Givens wouldn’t want her photo taken with her hair and face a mess.”

  “I hear that,” Tookey said. He scrubbed a napkin over his face. Cleo tactfully pointed to the red smudge on his nose. He dabbed, missed a spot, and scratched an angry red rash on his arm. “Don’t you worry, Mrs. Watkins. We’ve got an all-points bulletin on that van. Everyone in Georgia and beyond will be looking for it. Don’t worry about your car, either. I called TJ at Speedy Auto. He’ll be out here ASAP. Hey, I think the mayor wants us in front of the camera, or probably just you.”

  On the bridge, Mayor Day was smiling their way and waving them over.

  “Friendly today, isn’t he?” Henry said with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Cameras are on,” Cleo said.