It looked like dinner would be some cheese and crackers and something on television, preferably something mindless. Actually, maybe just some crackers with the TV. I didn’t think I had any cheese. Dinner would be crackers and water until I heard from Seth, just in case we could still manage a real dinner together.
As I sat on the couch with the plate of crackers and a glass of water, I tipped over my bag that I’d put there. A green piece of paper fell out.
I put the first cracker in my mouth and grabbed the Bob Hope letter I’d somehow managed to take with me. I unfolded it and read the words from a long time before. I wasn’t transported, but I was definitely impressed. I didn’t know much about Bob Hope and his Oscar, but Chester did, and that . . .
The next cracker stopped halfway to my mouth.
“Oh!” I said aloud as I carelessly lifted the plate toward the coffee table, missing my landing and sending it and my sparse dinner to the floor. I ignored the mess as I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Jodie! Meet me at Starry Nights Books, right away,” I said, recording a message. She’d get it soon enough. She didn’t go long without checking her messages.
I didn’t remember if I locked the door or shut it all the way as I hurried out of the house. With the paper clutched in my hand, I hurried down the hill. It was dark and cold, but there wasn’t as much pedestrian traffic, so I was able to move at a quick clip.
I peered inside the dark shop and then stepped up to the stoop. I didn’t expect the door to be unlocked, but the knob turned easily and the door swung open with the now-familiar squeak. Jodie must not have locked it. I wondered if I’d set off the alarms again, but I didn’t care.
I just needed to see one thing. One small thing. I looked around and behind me; again, no one paid me any attention.
“Hello?” I said after I went into the dark shop and closed the door behind me. I held up my cell phone with the flashlight app turned on.
No one answered, so I stepped forward and then took quick steps toward the back room. I didn’t even think about announcing myself as I opened that door.
But I should have.
Sarah was sitting in the chair behind the table. She lifted her head from her arms and sniffed.
“Oh, Sarah, I’m so sorry to disturb you!” I said. “The door was open and I thought maybe I heard someone back here. I thought I’d check.” I switched off my phone.
The only light was a small desk lamp that gave the room more shadows than illumination. However, half of Sarah’s face was lit with a sallow yellow glow. She’d been crying; her eyes were puffy and smudged with ruined mascara. Her hair was a wild neglected nest.
“Clare? What are you doing here?”
“I . . . The door was unlocked.”
She blinked and nodded as if I was making sense.
“Are you okay, Sarah?” I asked as I took a step forward. I glanced in the still-empty garbage can, now sure that I’d seen the thing that had been trying to make its way up to my subconscious. I knew the can would still be empty, but I also thought that the object I’d seen there hadn’t gotten all the way thrown away. It was still in this office somewhere. I was sure. Well, at least ninety percent sure.
“No, I haven’t been okay in a long time.”
“I’m so sorry about Donte,” I said as I stepped closer.
“I’ll be all right eventually.”
As she said the words, I saw the item again. In her grip. If we’d been in a movie, some sort of discovery music would have played in conjunction with her hand wadding up the invitation and pulling her hand off the desk.
“That’s the invitation, isn’t it?” I said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The invitation. You’re holding it.”
For a moment she just glared at me. I wanted to demand that she show it to me, prove that I was right about what she held, but we were silent as we stared at each other for what seemed like a long time. She made the next move.
The room was small. We were basically a desk away from each other as she came around. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about what I was doing, but her move felt threatening. In a split second I decided to fight, not flee. I don’t know why.
As she came at me, I stood strong and put my focus on her hand. Somehow, even though her move toward me was forceful, I grabbed her hand and the item she held as she knocked me to the floor. I had too much adrenaline to feel any immediate pain.
It was the invitation to the meetings. She’d used the ugly green paper. I doubted many places sold such ugly paper, but it was possible that it had come from somewhere other than The Rescued Word.
Doubtful. I still didn’t know what it meant, the invitation being in her grip, and why she was denying it. It might have been just the invitation Donte threw away, but I didn’t think so. I didn’t think Sarah would be so physical if that was it. She could have used it as an excuse, and maybe neither of us would have ended up hurt.
I shrugged her off and then shoved her backward. Somehow I did the moves with such strength that she stumbled back and into the desk.
“Ouch!” she said.
I swallowed the apology that reflexed at my throat. “Keep your hands off me, Sarah!”
She straightened again, but seemed tamed. “I’m sorry, Clare, but that’s not your property.”
“It was in the trash a few days ago. Trash is anyone’s property.” I made that part up, but I said it with authority. “What’s it doing here anyway?”
Sarah shook her head and looked at the floor.
I stepped to the wall. I flipped the switch for the overhead light. The brightness made us both squint, but I managed to get a much better look at the paper. It was an early version of the invitation, I guessed, one with a mistake having been crossed out with red pen. Creighton’s name had been spelled incorrectly.
My quick and un-thought-through conclusion was that Sarah and Donte had planned the meetings, but why? And why had it been such a secret who’d done the planning?
I couldn’t formulate a question quickly enough for Sarah’s need to speak, apparently.
“I meant to get rid of that,” she said. “But I just couldn’t. I just . . . I don’t know why, but I couldn’t.”
I looked at her and nodded.
She was certain I was onto her, I could tell by the way shame slumped her shoulders and kept her eyes away from mine. I just hoped she’d continue and I could continue to play along successfully. None of this moment meant much of anything to me. Yet.
“I heard it was your niece who found Lloyd’s boot. If she hadn’t, the police wouldn’t even have thought to look for his body, and I could have taken care of them all without anyone figuring it out, at least for long enough to let me get away.”
“So you . . . why did you kill Lloyd and your husband?” I couldn’t even believe I was asking that question. It seemed unreal.
She nodded once, her eyes flashing only briefly to mine. “It was bound to fall apart after the boot, I guess. Was it Chester?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was it him that told you I came in for the paper that day? After the boot, I knew they’d find me once they saw the invitation. I thought it might take them a few days to track down where I got it, but there’s only one Rescued Word, you know? I got rid of Donte’s, but there was nothing I could do about Lloyd’s, Howard’s, or Creighton’s.”
“No,” I said, being honest for the first time since finding her in her back room. “No, I saw it in your trash can earlier and I finally recognized it as something from the shop. It was all a fluke really. No one else had easy access to their invitation, but you’re right, if we’d seen it we would have known that paper.”
She gave one ironic laugh. “You Henrys, I tell ya. Wait. Earlier? Earlier when? When did you see it?”
“Why did you kil
l them, Sarah? I don’t understand,” I said.
She blinked as if she couldn’t believe I didn’t understand. “They failed me, Clare, you know that!”
“No, I don’t. How in the world did all those men fail you?”
“My husband’s business was tanking. We were going to have to live off whatever this bookshop brought in. Can you imagine? We’d have had to put a cot out front to have a place to sleep. And the rest of them denied me what I was due.”
“What was due to you?”
“For goodness’ sake, Clare, they should have loved me, worshipped me. I was the one, the girl every boy should have wanted. Donte did, but, God, he was a disaster. He only got lucky to make the money he made. I knew it was only a matter of time before he squandered it away. Howard was only interested in getting out of town without any ties to anyone. I could have made him so successful, Clare, I could have.”
I nodded, morbidly interested in her confession. She was more than a narcissist; she was a narcissistic killer. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by that? Scared too, but I still hoped she continued.
She did. “And Lloyd was too afraid of me to pay me any attention. He was such a nerd, but even back then, Clare, I knew the nerds would be the successful ones. He was so smart.” She smiled wryly. “Except that day last week that he let me lead him out to the backcountry to ski. What a fool. He was so easy that day.”
Poor Lloyd. “Creighton?”
“Oh yeah, him. He loved you back then. What an idiot. I tried to get him from you. I tried to get you to dump him too. Remember Romeo and Juliet? I tried to make you think less of him. Remember?”
“I do.” Now.
“You haven’t done anything outside that typewriter shop and you dumped him anyway. If he’d been with me, I would have made him so much more than a police officer. Good grief, how in the world do you people make a living at that shop anyway?”
I shrugged, but she wasn’t truly looking for my financials.
“After Lloyd’s body was found, why did you go ahead and kill Donte? Why didn’t you just get away? Leave town. I don’t know.”
“With what? We had nothing—the last of our money went into paying a couple months’ rent on this place and letting me acquire some inventory. Used books—that’s what it came down to. I needed his insurance money.” She rubbed her finger under her nose. “The thing is, I can still contact Donte, though. He’s on the other side and he’s mad as a rabid dog right now, but he’ll cool down and I’ll be able to talk to him.”
“That séance stuff isn’t real.”
“Of course it is.”
“You were still going to kill Creighton and Howard?” I asked.
“Maybe, or I was going to get one of them to fall in love with me. I tried to tell Howard he and I belonged together. I even thought he’d tell the police about that after Donte was killed, but he must not have.”
“They didn’t want you back then,” I said. “What makes you think they would have wanted you now?”
Those were some mean words, but I couldn’t stop myself from saying them. However, saying them to a deranged, narcissistic killer probably wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had. Sarah lunged again, with a jump move and a swinging fist thrown in for good measure.
One second I was upright, the next flat on my back with stars in front of my eyes and a strange disconnected sense of all-over pain.
In the next instant, Sarah was on top of me, straddling me with one arm lifted in the air. She must have held something that she was going to hit me with. I wanted to brace for it, but I didn’t know how; she had my arms pinned at my sides. I closed my starry eyes as I lay on the floor in Starry Night.
But the blow never came. Instead I heard other loud noises and a loud male voice.
“Clare, are you okay?”
I sat up woozily and saw Creighton at the door, holding Sarah’s hands behind her back.
“I think so,” I said.
“Call 911. I need to get her subdued. We need help,” Creighton said.
I did as he said. After I found my phone, which I could do only after the stars cleared a little more.
27
I had seen Creighton looking in Starry Night Books’ window as I was driving home. He’d escaped his police officer babysitter because he couldn’t let go of the idea that Sarah was somehow involved in the murders that had occurred. He was looking for her, and then he watched for her from across the street. He’d been three steps behind me when I went inside the shop, his curiosity about what I was up to greater than his desire to stop me from exploring and asking a few questions. I hadn’t noticed him at all. He was good at being covert.
“Why did you think Sarah was involved?” Jodie asked.
We were in the office that Jodie and Creighton shared with four other officers, but we were the only three in there at the moment.
“She’d been too friendly to me,” Creighton said. “It was weird and uncomfortable. And the séance, Eloise MacPherson. I had no doubt it was a story she put together, though I had no idea why. Now I know she was just diverting attention. It didn’t mean much to me until Donte was killed. By then I knew his business was suffering and that they’d laid off most of their employees. Not many other people would have had access to the building. I had no clue as to the motives for her killing, however. She’s one delusional mess.”
“Howard never entered your mind?” Jodie asked.
“Sure he did, but I could tell he wasn’t a killer by his behavior at the bar.”
Jodie sent her brother a sideways look. “Yeah, I thought the same after Donte’s murder. Howard just didn’t act like a killer. But neither did Sarah, really. We should have seen that she wasn’t operating on all cylinders. She’d come unhinged.”
“How did Howard not act like a killer?” I said.
Jodie shrugged. “There was no underlying current of panic to him. That’s the best I can tell you, Clare. Psychopaths can lie, innocent people can behave in a guilty manner, but that underlying current is what you look for.”
“A cop thing?” I asked.
“Probably.”
“You know Sarah came into The Rescued Word to show me a book. Carrie. She was off then, but I didn’t know to attribute her strangeness to having killed her husband.”
“She was trying to establish an alibi but wasn’t good at it. The book and the time she spent cleaning the store,” Creighton said. “That’s what she told me on the way down here. She thought you’d figured it all out when you confronted her.”
“I hadn’t. I just remembered seeing the green paper in her trash. It didn’t register at the time I saw it, but I also saw the word ‘invitation’ on it. If I’d just put it all together the next day or so . . .”
“It was too much. The stress of Lloyd’s death jumbled us all up a bit, and then when Nathan went missing, we looked away from the murder, or, as in my case, tried to make the two events be related.”
“You mean”—I swallowed hard, because my question was going to sound critical, but I had to ask it—“if Nathan hadn’t gone missing, Donte might not have been murdered?”
Creighton said. “Not all of us were distracted, and her plans were all about murder.”
For a moment Jodie didn’t make eye contact with either Creighton or me, but she was neither angry nor ashamed. I couldn’t read her; it was rare that I couldn’t read her.
I asked, “The gun she killed Lloyd with?”
“Not registered anywhere. An old .22 that had been in her family,” Creighton said. “The financial troubles she and Donte were having sent her over the edge. She became obsessed with those of us who, in her mind, had wronged her.”
“She was a mess,” Jodie said, a thread of sympathy to her words.
“I’m sorry, Clare,” Creighton said. “I thought I could get in there before she tried to hurt you, but I
needed to get her whole confession.” He held up the small recording device that he’d put at the right angle under the door to record what we’d said. Yep, he was good at being covert.
“I’m okay,” I said as I repositioned the ice pack on my chin.
“Clare!” Chester said as he came through the doorway. “What in the world?”
He rushed to me and tilted my chin up with his finger. “Creighton, Jodie, what happened?”
“I’m okay,” I said.
Chester sent both Jodie and Creighton a look that told them he was yet again tired of their shenanigans. They were both a little scared of him, but they kept their firm police officer faces this time.
“Clare!” Seth said as he, Adal, Nathan, and Marion also came through the door.
It was getting crowded.
Jodie, still the one in charge, it seemed, gave everyone a summary of what had happened, and how Creighton had actually saved me, though I’d been the one to solve the murder, all because of a piece of ugly green paper.
As we were all leaving, I heard Seth thank Creighton for his heroics. Creighton told Seth he was sorry he hadn’t gotten to me sooner. Was it possible that we all might be friends someday? A ping of pain hit my jaw and I decided I’d think about that later.
Marion and Nathan walked out with Chester, and Jodie walked with me to Seth’s car after telling Creighton to have a seat and wait for her. We walked a bit behind the others so we could talk privately.
“You think Creighton’s not telling the truth?” I said.
“He’s telling the truth about Sarah,” she said.
“But there’s still something else?”
“I’m sure he’s up to something, Clare, and he escaped the officer observing him. That’s not good, even if he helped you.”
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