Publishable by Death

by A C F Bookens

  The interview itself was pretty straightforward, and I was grateful for the chance to talk about my hopes for the shop – that people would make it a place they gathered, that they’d suggest titles I should carry and authors they’d like to see read here, and that All Booked Up would become a part of St. Marin’s, just like the other wonderful shops on Main Street.

  Stevensmith had said, “How quaint” with a certain dismissive tone and then snapped a few pictures with her phone before heading out. Fortunately, the paper had sent over a photographer the next day, and they had done a nice piece with a few great photos and key quotes in the Sunday edition. Most of Stevensmith’s persnicketiness had gotten edited out, thank goodness.

  When I’d asked Woody about the reporter, he’d rolled his eyes. “That woman rubs every single human on the earth the wrong way. She always has an opinion about everything, and is never afraid to share it. In fact, just last week, she started telling Lucas – the director of the maritime museum – that she thought they should get rid of the exhibition about the enslaved men who fished these waters and ran boats along the waterways here because it made people uncomfortable.” I knew I liked Lucas immediately when Woody said the director had rolled his eyes and said, “That’s sort of the point, Lucia.”

  “Well, I’m glad it’s not just me, then?” I asked Woody.

  “Nope, pretty much nobody likes the woman, but we try to be neighborly, you know.”

  I did know. In small southern communities, neighborliness was the currency on which everyone survived. Without each other, no one would make it. But of course, this also meant there were a fair number of crotchety folks that people had to put up with, and apparently, I’d met one. Lucky me.

  When we arrived at the store, I unlocked the shop door, smiling as the bell rang above me, and held it open for Mart as she headed right to the register with most of my savings in small bills to make change.

  I walked to the back of the store and turned on a second bank of lights by the art and gardening books. I’d wait a bit before I turned on everything since I wasn’t quite ready for customers yet. Opening time for this first day was eight a.m. since I’d promised fresh baked goods, hot coffee, and plenty of hot cocoa in the café. I expected my only employee – Raquel – to be in shortly to staff the food and beverage side of things.

  Rocky, as she preferred to be called, was a tender but confident young woman of about twenty. She took classes at Salisbury, a local university, but still lived at home. Each time I’d met with her to plan the café, her hair had been done in another stylish look – once she had long braids, once a wild pixy cut that framed her face and set off her light-brown skin perfectly. Someday, I’d get up the nerve to get tips on hairstyles from her. But today, I had just managed to get a little pomade in to tame my curls in the short cut I’ve gotten from the salon up the street. The last thing I needed was to worry about a bad hair day.

  While I fussed with the books a bit more, Mart made sure the register was stocked and the tablet that we’d use to take credit cards was working. Then, she began laying small piles of postcards with the shop hours, events, and contact information on all the tables. If she didn’t already have a job (and if I had the money), I’d be looking to hire her as my marketing advisor. She was so good at this stuff.

  The bell chimed, and Rocky came in with her arms full of what looked to be cinnamon rolls doused in icing. Despite my full breakfast, my mouth started watering. “What are those?” Mart asked, coming over to help Rocky carry everything.

  “My mom makes the best cinnamon rolls. She whipped up a batch this morning for the grand opening.”

  I gently peeled back the plastic wrap and leaned down to take a long, slow inhale. “Is that maple icing?”

  “Sure is. Mom’s specialty.”

  “I’ll be having one of those later,” I said, “and maybe if we get good traffic today, we could ask your mom if she’d make these for us regularly.” This weekend would bring the biggest off-seasons crowds for the Tubman festival, so I sure hoped it meant we’d get some good traffic, too.

  “I expect she could be persuaded,” Rocky said as she pushed back the stray strand of black hair that had slipped forward from her gorgeous halo of curls. “I’ll get everything set up.”

  The café was small, just three or four tables in what used to be the garage bay of the gas station, a counter, a baked goods case, and an espresso machine, but I hoped it would encourage customers to stay a while. St. Marin’s didn’t have a formal coffee shop, so I wanted this to be a place people would hang out, do a little work, maybe read a book and make a purchase, too.

  At the back of the garage bay behind the café, Woody and a friend had built a wall and created a storeroom for me. Right now, it was mostly empty since I couldn’t afford to have much inventory that wasn’t already on the floor, but I looked forward to seeing boxes of books, especially for author events and holiday sales, filling the space.

  I took a quick look around the shop to be sure everything was good and then headed to the back to get a few more of the paper bags Mart had bought for the grand opening. They each had our shop name and a sketch of the storefront printed on them, and I wanted to be certain Rocky had some for the café in case anyone wanted to take a pastry for the road.

  I stepped into the back room and flipped on the light. Then, I screamed.

  There, on the floor, was the body of a woman. She was sprawled out like whatever had killed her had taken her by surprise, and while I didn’t see any blood, I was sure she was dead. There’s just something about a living person’s body – a movement even when that person is still – that a dead body doesn’t have. This was my second time finding someone dead, and I didn’t love that now I’d have two images of lifeless bodies haunting me.

  Mart and Rocky came running and stopped short as soon as they could see over my shoulders. “Oh my word,” Rocky said.

  I took a deep breath and reached for my phone just as Mart said, “Isn’t that the reporter who was here the other day? The rude woman?”

  With a few more steps, I was at the body. I leaned down, and sure enough, it was Lucia Stevensmith. “Maybe we shouldn’t call her rude anymore,” I said to Mart. I was trying to lighten the mood, but really I just wanted to cry. Someone had died in my store on my opening day.

  Within minutes, Sheriff Mason had arrived with a new deputy named Williams. The sheriff was beloved in St. Marin’s because he was absolutely no-nonsense when it came to police work, but also super funny. When the high school football team had won the State Championships back in November, the sheriff had organized the townspeople to line the road into St. Marin’s with scarecrows holding each players’ names, and when they reached the town square, there was a huge banner that said, “Catamounts are no scaredy cats” hanging in front of a huge, stuffed mountain lion pinning down a tiny “rebel” soldier that represented the mascot of the team they’d just beaten. Mart had said that was very “on brand” since the African American sheriff was also known for “having a conversation” with anyone who thought it fitting to hang a Confederate flag in his town. “Maybe it is heritage, but it’s a heritage of hate,” he’d said in a local newspaper. I pretty much loved him for that.

  When he and Officer Williams, a petite, almost tiny, black woman who looked like her utility belt might drag her to the ground at any moment, showed up in the back room of my store, I let out the breath I hadn’t even been aware I was holding. The sheriff took a very close look at Stevensmith’s body and then escorted us out of the room before saying, “Probably not the opening day attention you were hoping for, huh, Harvey?” He gave me a wry grin and then dispatched Williams to call the coroner before guiding me to the café to get my statement.

  “You okay?” he asked as we sat down.

  I nodded, grateful for his kindness. He’d been by a few times, just to say hello and let us know his staff was keeping an eye on things as we got the shop started. I had appreciated his attention and already felt
like he was a friend.

  “Okay, so just tell me what you know.” His voice was soft and encouraging.

  “Not much to tell,” I began. “I went in the back room, and there she was.” I told him about my morning, about when I arrived, in as much detail as I could remember, hoping that something would help.

  Mason nodded and made a few notes. Then he sat back, took a long sip of his cappuccino with extra foam, and said, “One of the things we’ll have to figure out is how she got in. I know there’s a back door off the garage, I mean café here, right? I expect you keep that locked.”

  I nodded. “Of course.” I tried to remember closing up the night before, but I had been so tired that I only remembered getting home, eating cereal for dinner, and collapsing into bed. “But it’s been a busy few days. Let me check.”

  I walked back past the storeroom, the sheriff close behind, to the half-glass back door that opened onto a small parking lot and turned the handle. It opened right up. “Oh no! I must have forgotten to lock it.”

  The sheriff stepped around me and looked closely at the door jamb. “Nope, looks like someone credit carded it.”

  “That’s actually a thing people can do? I thought it was just on TV shows.”

  “Actually a thing. Pretty easy, too, on a door like this at least.” He turned to the storeroom door. “Let me show you.” The sheriff took a grocery store discount club card out of his wallet, turned the simple tab on the storeroom doorknob, and pulled the door shut. Then, he took the card, slid it between the door and the jamb, and worked it down until he was at the latch. Then, he wiggled the card a bit, and the door popped open. “See. Pretty easy.”

  “Glory! Alright, I’m having a deadbolt put on that backdoor right away.”

  “Good plan. I’ll ask Williams to check for prints – not that it’s likely we’ll get much that’s usable – and then you can call your alarm company. I might go with a full-on security bar if I were you. It would keep the door locked but also let you know if someone tried to sneak out of the store from the back. Should be easy to do before the end of the day.”

  “Thanks.” I looked at my watch – 7:45. I was supposed to open in fifteen minutes. I let out a long sigh of disappointment.

  Mason looked at me and smiled. “Don’t worry, Harvey. It’ll only take the coroner a minute to load out Stevensmith’s body, and then no one will be the wiser. After all, she was our only reporter. No one left to tell the story.” He winked.

  I laughed hesitantly. “Some people might think you’re a little flippant about a death, Sheriff.”

  He frowned. “Never. But then, it’s not going to bring her back for me to be overly serious is it.” A smile crept into the corner of his mouth. “Besides, we don’t want to hurt business in our newest shop here in town. I’ll do my best to keep this quiet until this afternoon.”

  “Oh, thank you, Sheriff. I mean, I don’t want to hinder an investigation or anything, but if there’s no harm in keeping things quiet . . . “

  “Actually, it might be a help. As soon as word gets out, everyone will have a theory. This will give me a few hours to get a handle on things before the entire town starts in on my cellphone.” He tapped the smartphone holstered opposite his pistol. “Now, how about another of those cinnamon rolls while we wait?”

  3

  By the time we closed the shop at seven p.m. that first day, I was some dazzling combination of exhausted and exhilarated that had me smiling nonstop, but also very much in need of a comfy chair and an ottoman. Mart locked the front door, and I collapsed in the chair-and-a-half by the fiction section, curling my feet up under me and dropping my head back on the overstuffed cushion.

  “That was A.MA.ZING.” Mart said as she slumped to the floor against the L bookshelf next to me. “There must have been 1,000 people through here today.”

  “1,312 to be exact.”

  “You were counting?!”

  I held up the silver counter-clicker I’d picked up at an office supply store when I’d visited Salisbury last week. “I come prepared.”

  “Love it! So over 1,300 people. Wow. No wonder we’re so tired.”

  “Tired doesn’t even begin to cover it. I still can’t believe I have my own bookstore.”

  “Not only that, but Catherine Clinton signed her books AND agreed to come do a book event for you in April. That’s huge.”

  “It is . . . but not as huge as finding a dead body in my back room.” I was so excited that Clinton was coming to sign, but all day, I’d kept flashing back to the image of Lucia Stevensmith’s lifeless body. It had been a great grand opening day . . . but a tainted one. I hadn’t liked the reporter, but I was still sad that she had died – and horrified that someone had killed her, killed her in my shop.

  Mart sighed. “Right.”

  The sheriff had come by late in the day to say the coroner had ruled the cause of death to be a blow to the head by something cylindrical.

  “The reporter in the storeroom with a candlestick,” Sheriff Mason had said with a terrible English accent, and I hadn’t been able to keep from laughing. I sounded a little hysterical to myself. The fatigue and double-adrenaline shot of the grand opening and the murder had started to fray my nerves.

  “I don’t think there’s anything shaped like that in my store,” I said, looking around and finding myself grateful that the sheriff had come by in jeans and a “Meyerhoff’s Grocery” T-shirt instead of his uniform.

  “Doesn’t look like she was hit here.”

  “Oh, thank God,” I said a little too loudly as several shoppers turned to look. “I mean, the woman is still dead, and that’s still horrible. But I didn’t like thinking she’d died here.”

  “Well, I didn’t say that.” The sheriff looked a little sheepish as I gave him a squinty look. “I said she wasn’t hit here. But it does look like she stumbled in here, maybe to hide.”

  I puffed up my cheeks. “Would she have been able to credit card my door with a head injury like that?”

  “Human beings are capable of a great many things when driven by necessity. I’m not sure that’s what happened, but it seems likely. We found Stevensmith’s fingerprints on the outside of the door.”

  I nodded and lowered my voice. “Okay, so she did die here. I suppose in a few years we might be able to trot out her ghost for a spooky book night.” I immediately winced as the words left my mouth. “Too soon?”

  “Nope. You’re thinking like a business woman, and I like it. Plus, the ghost tours around here are pretty epic.”

  I laughed. I loved when older people like me used slang, especially when it was a little behind the times. “I’ll make a note.”

  From her now-reclining position on the floor, Mart said, “Did the sheriff have any leads on the murder?”

  “Not that he told me.” In fact, he’d as much as told me to stop asking questions when I’d asked. “He was pretty tight-lipped. But I have some theories.”

  Mart sat up. “Ooh, I love a good theory. Tell me.”

  “Well,” I said, resting my elbows on my knees, “It’s not like Stevensmith was everybody’s favorite person. Did you meet Ms. Heron when she came in today? White woman about my height. Blonde hair to her chin. Mud on her shirt.”

  “Oh yes, I remember her. I wondered about the mud.”

  “She grows her flowers and veggies and then sells them at that little farm stand at the end of the street. She’d been planting potatoes all day. Hence the dirt.”

  Mart nodded. “Got it. What about her?”

  “She stopped by earlier in the week to see if I wanted to buy any flowers for the café tables when they were ready. She’d seen Stevensmith’s article and wanted to show her support, one business woman to another. While she was here, she told me that Stevensmith had slammed her stand when it first opened.” I tried my best imitation of Heron’s thick, Eastern Maryland accent, “She said my carrots were dirty and my zinnias ‘limpid.’ I wanted to kill the woman.”

  “Ooh, and the
n, there she is dead.” Mart’s eyes were wide, and I could see the wheels of suspicion turning.

  “Exactly. I don’t think Eleanor would do that, but it was interesting. Sheriff said there wasn’t much love lost for the old reporter. Kind of makes me feel bad for the woman – I mean I feel bad she’s dead – but, well, she was a pretty serious pain in the tuckus.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.” Mart laid back down on the floor and stared at the ceiling. “But let’s talk about the important stuff. That mechanic and his pup were sure cute.”

  Mayhem, who had been snoring away on her dog bed by the cash register, sat up at the mention of Taco. They’d taken an immediate liking to each other. Mart laughed, “Like owner like dog.

  I tried to act cool by draping my legs over one end of the chair and lacing my fingers behind my head, but Mart was on to me. “Oh my gracious. You like him!” She sat up. “You like him a lot!”

  I knew my face was as red as the spine on the Everyman’s Library edition of Love in the Time of Cholera. There was no hiding it. I had a crush.

  Daniel had come in around lunch with Taco on a leash. The dog walked into the store like he’d been visiting bookshops all his life. Daniel unhooked him, and the Basset walked to the dog bed by the animal section and climbed in, stretching his full length so his head draped onto the floor. “He does know how to make himself comfortable,” I said.

  “Yes, he does. He’s never met a bed he didn’t like.” Daniel was grinning with pride.

  I smiled. “Glad you guys could come.”

  “Wouldn’t have missed it.” He smiled back.

  Just remembering his visit brought my grin right back. “And you know what, Mart?” I gave up all pretense of nonchalance. “He bought a copy of Possession because I recommended it.”