Publishable by Death

by A C F Bookens

  “Divina can’t know I was talking to you about this. It’ll put you in danger.”

  “Wait, what?! Danger? Are you in danger? From Divina? What is—?”

  She put a finger up to her lips. “I’ll explain. Just can I get a minute to catch my breath?” She gave me a little smile as she sat down on a chair in the corner and started selecting stems of flowers from the five-gallon buckets at her feet. Her hands were shaking, but she selected each blossom with attention and then arranged it skillfully in her fingers. By the time she had a glorious pastel bouquet of pink roses, baby’s breath, and hyacinth, her hands were steady again, and she looked up at me. “I think Divina Stevensmith murdered her daughter and Deputy Williams.”

  I looked around, saw an empty bucket, and turned it over as a seat. I needed to sit down. “Does she know that you suspect her?” I had about five thousand other questions, but I figured she’d get to the answers soon enough, now that she was talking.

  “I imagine she does now. I shouldn’t have intervened back there, at least not that way, but I didn’t want her ruining this day. It’s so beautiful, and you worked so hard.” She looked up at me, and I could see the tears in her eyes again.

  I reached over and took the bouquet from her and slipped it into a vase full of water on a small table beside her. Then I slid my bucket closer and held her hands. “Oh, Elle. So the articles Cate saw?”

  She let out a raspy laugh. “I wondered if that’s why you all had come back in that day. Yeah, I was doing a little investigating, following a hunch. That day you came to ask about the flowers, I’d seen Divina back behind your shop, poking around. I asked her if she’d lost something, and she said she’d dropped a pair of scissors. We looked for a while but didn’t find them. It was only when I got back here that I thought to wonder why she’d had scissors near your shop. That got me thinking.”

  I shook my head. Divina had pulled the same thing on us the previous night. I told Elle that story, and we sat quietly for a while. “The articles were research then, but not about Lucia. About her mom.”

  “Right. I was trying to figure out why Divina would kill her own daughter, but I didn’t see anything that made sense.” She studied her fingernails. “Then, when Deputy Williams got killed, it suddenly felt really unsafe. I mean, if she could kill twice . . . “ She looked up at me with shock.

  “I know just what you mean.” I leaned back on my bucket and stretched my back. “Okay, but now we need a cover story, something that makes sense of what you just said to Divina, something that will get you out of her cross-hairs.”

  Elle nodded. “Or at least be believable enough that other people will think that’s what we’re fighting about. I can’t be sure, but something tells me that Divina just wants to keep her secret from going public. Maybe she doesn’t care that I know?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. But maybe we can be sure, too.” I stood up and paced around the cooler and then struck on something. “What if I went over there and told her you felt terrible about accusing her, that you thought she was trying to steal the attention away from Deputy Williams with her donation.”

  Elle looked skeptical. “Do you think she’ll buy that?”

  “Maybe. I mean I think I can convince her. She’s so private and this donation is so out of the ordinary—” I stopped mid-sentence because I just realized something. “She feels guilty.”

  “What?” Elle asked.

  “She donated her work of art because she feels guilty about killing Deputy Williams. I’m sure of it.” I headed toward the cooler door. “That makes perfect sense.”

  Elle trailed after me. “It does, but we still don’t know why she did it.”

  She was right. Motive still wasn’t clear, but I imagined Sheriff Mason could make more sense of that. But first, I needed to be sure Elle was safe.

  I gave her a quick hug, told her to come by the shop when she closed up for the night, and that we’d make a plan from there. Then, I headed to the co-op in the hopes that I’d find Divina in her studio.

  13

  The kid with the gauges in his ears was still on duty, and when I told him I was hoping to see Ms. Stevensmith, he didn’t bat an eye and took me right back to her studio. “She doesn’t usually like to be disturbed.” He said it with casual ease, as if it didn’t matter to him if artists needed privacy or not. Given the circumstances, neither did I.

  I knocked lightly on the door and then tried the knob. It was open, so I stepped in and saw Divina with her scissors working at her counter. She glanced up and then went right back to work.

  “You heard about the incident on the street?” she said quietly.

  “I did. I actually heard the incident.” I took a deep breath and dug deep for my best sincere voice. “Are you okay? You seemed pretty upset.”

  My acting must have worked because she put down her scissors and laid her hands on the waist-high counter in front of her and sighed. “That Max Davies pushes my buttons. Can’t let anything go.” She winced at her own words, but I couldn’t very well ask why. “One review in that newspaper, and he was after Lucia all the time. My daughter was not a kind human being. I’m not denying that. But his escargot is kind of chewy.” She let out a breathy laugh, and I relaxed a little.

  I said, “Yeah, he does seem kind of incensed about something from, what, a few years ago.”

  She looked up abruptly then. “Well, time doesn’t heal all wounds, my dear. But this wound of Max’s, it’s pretty petty.” She came around the desk, and I double-checked to be sure the scissors stayed behind. I was glad to see them on the counter. “Sit.” She pointed to two club chairs covered in red fabric at the edge of the studio.

  I made my way over, being sure to keep myself between the door and Divina, even though I felt kind of silly. She sure didn’t come off like a cold-blooded killer, and right now, she just seemed sad.

  “I just talked to Elle,” I almost whispered.

  Her eyes darted to mine and narrowed. “Oh? What does she have to say for herself?”

  The energy in the room had changed just like that. It was suddenly colder, sharper in here. “She’s sorry for accusing you of trying to steal the attention away from Deputy Williams. She really is.”

  Divina turned her head to look at me from the corner of her left eye. “Oh, right. She is? Well, that’s good.” I could hear the hesitation in her voice, as if she was waiting to hear more.

  “I explained that you’d donated the piece and had wanted to stay out of the limelight as much as possible, that you’d even insisted on not being a part of the fair directly because you really wanted to keep the focus on Deputy Williams.” Divina was nodding and looking at me. “I told her your donation wasn’t about you at all, but about taking care of your community.”

  She smiled then. “Thank you, Harvey. That’s exactly it. If anything, I’d like to have donated the work anonymously. Maybe I should have done that, but sometimes,” she looked past me toward the door of the studio, “sometimes, we just need to put our names to things, claim our responsibility for them. You know?” She kicked her eyes back to me.

  I felt like something was being said that wasn’t being said, but I wasn’t about to ask. “I do know. Absolutely. Anyway, I just wanted to come as an emissary for Elle, who feels so terrible that she was too ashamed to come talk to you herself. I hope you’ll forgive her.” I stood up.

  Divina stood with me. “Of course. Some slights need to be overlooked.”

  I faked a laugh that I hoped sounded more real than it felt. “Like chewy escargot.”

  “Exactly.” She held the door open for me as I left, and when I looked back, she was still watching me. I shivered.

  Back at the shop, Cate and Lucas’s sales were winding down as they tended the shoppers of the last few dozen books. I caught Cate’s eye as I passed, pointed inside, and said, “When you can. No rush.” She must have read something in my face because she handed the copy of Black Book, a collection of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph
y, back to Lucas and followed me inside.

  As we passed the café, I waved to Mart, who left the wine table to follow us. I gave Daniel a quick wave, too, and asked Marcus to take over the register for a few minutes. Then, the four of us huddled in the back room while I told them about what Elle had found, what I suspected about the reason for the art donation, and my conviction that Divina Stevensmith was our murderer.

  With the facts laid out like that, no one disagreed. “Nice work, Harvey,” Daniel said, “but now, it’s time to call the sheriff.”

  “Wait.” I could hear the anxiety in my voice. It felt really important to me to figure this out. “We don’t have a motive yet. And there’s no physical evidence. Just possibilities.” I wanted to tell the sheriff, but I also wanted to give him everything he needed. After all, he’d lost his deputy and friend to this woman’s actions. If I could spare him the pain of further investigation . . . “Just give me until tomorrow. If we can’t figure it out by then, I’ll call.”

  Daniel held his phone out in front of him, his finger still poised to hit the sheriff’s number in his contacts. But then Mart reached over and lowered his arm. “We’ll work together to figure it out,” she said, “and we won’t leave Harvey alone for a minute.”

  I smiled my best “I’ve got this” smile for Daniel, even though I could feel the tension in my shoulders starting to creep up the back of my neck. I had no idea how to figure this out by tomorrow.

  We headed back out onto the floor, and I went to relieve Marcus at the register and tell him to go take a break, enjoy the nice weather. “Oh, I’m waiting for my mom. She texted a few minutes ago, said she’d be here soon.”

  Then, as if on cue, this gorgeous black woman with thin braids twisted into a crown came through the door, and Marcus’s face lit up. “That her?” I asked behind my own smile.

  “Yep,” he looked at me as he headed toward his mom. “Do you mind if I introduce you?”

  “Mind? I’d be offended if you didn’t.” He laughed and then went and hugged his mother before bringing her over to the counter. “Mrs. Dawson, you have raised one fine son.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Beckett. I’m glad you can see that, too.” She reached across the counter to shake my hand. “And thank you, too, for giving Marcus work, and in a bookstore, no less. You know this boy loves books?”

  “Oh yes, ma’am, I do. If he’s not skating or working, he’s reading.”

  Mrs. Dawson beamed. “It’s very nice to meet you, Ms. Beckett.”

  “Harvey, please.”

  “Harvey, then. Marcus, you keep on doing your thing. I’m going to browse.”

  I leaned over to Marcus. “You’re due a break. Why don’t you give your mom the grand tour?”

  “You sure? It’s been kind of busy.”

  “I’ve got it.” I pointed behind Marcus toward where Daniel was getting Taco and Mayhem a bowl of water. “I have help if I need it.”

  Marcus caught up to his mom, who had made a stop at the wine table first thing. My kind of woman, I thought.

  The rest of the afternoon went by in a blur of activity. Between customers, I tried to ponder what possible reason a woman could have for killing her own child, but I kept coming up empty. Nothing about the idea of Divina killing her daughter made much sense. I could see, however, why she might have killed Deputy Williams to cover up the first murder. If the deputy had come upon something incriminating – what that would be I hadn’t yet figured out either – Divina might have acted just to “tie up loose ends” as they say on the TV dramas.

  By the end of the day, I still had no solid motivation for why Divina would kill Lucia Stevensmith, and it looked more and more like I’d have to tell the sheriff everything I knew in the morning. But I still had a few hours, and I was determined to make the most of them.

  At 4:45, I started our normal closing ritual. I walked around and told the remaining customers that we would be closing soon and asked them to bring their final purchases to the registers. I turned off the neon sign and asked Daniel to scout for misplaced books and reshelve them. I peeked in and saw that Rocky and Phoebe were beginning their clean-up, too, and when Rocky caught my eye, she whisper-shouted, “Best day yet.” I grinned. I was happy for her. Our arrangement was that she got thirty percent of the take from the café as well as her hourly wage, and I hoped these big sale days were helping cover the costs of her next semester at school.

  Marcus and his mom had spent the better part of the afternoon recommending books to customers, and the customers were thrilled. They were a power duo, passing book titles back and forth between them and delighting the customers with the depth of their knowledge.

  At five o’clock, the last customer headed out, and I locked the door behind them. Ms. Dawson stopped by the register while Marcus helped Daniel with the reshelves. “I heard about Ms. Stevensmith,” Ms. Dawson said, a frown on her face. “That woman had done me no kindness, but I never wished her ill either. Sad what happened to her.”

  I nodded. “It is. I’m sorry about what she did to you, though, although I have to admit that it was reading about that story and then hearing about Marcus’s, er, situation that led me to try and get him some work.”

  She tilted her head. “Really? Well, then I suppose something good came out of it all, didn’t it?”

  “I guess it did. Actually, I know it did, especially for me. Marcus is amazing, and I hope he’ll stay on here full-time, maybe even think about stepping in as my assistant manager once my payroll numbers allow for that.”

  Ms. Dawson looked down, and I thought I saw her wipe a tear away. “I expect he’d like that. I know I would. This place,” she gestured around the shop with an open hand, “is good. Real good.”

  I blushed. “Thank you. I have a question for you, too. I don’t know if you have room in your schedule for this, but I was wondering if I could hire you to write a book review for us each week – any book you want as long as I can order it for the store. Just a few paragraphs about why someone might want to read it?” I paused and tried to read the baffled expression on her face. “What do you think?

  “You want to hire me to read books and write about them.”

  “Well, yes. I mean I can’t pay much, surely not what you’re worth—“

  “Yes. I’d love to. You don’t even have to pay me.” She was bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Maybe Marcus and I can write some together sometime?”

  “I love that idea, but I’m going to pay you. We all have to eat.”

  Marcus strolled over and looked from his mom to me. “What’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you about it over dinner. Tacos are on me.” She pointed out the window toward Lu’s truck.

  I laughed. “See you at home later, Marcus?” I glanced at his mother really quickly, but clearly he had told her he was staying with Mart and I because she didn’t bat an eye. “Tomorrow, when you come in, we’ll talk about your full-time schedule, if that suits.”

  He looked at me with a wide smile. “That suits, Ms. B. See you later.”

  As they passed under the ringing bell, Mart came over, a box full of wine bottles under her arm. “That was kind of you, Harvey. I’ll run the numbers tonight for you, see what kind of salary you can offer your new assistant manager.”

  I shrugged and smiled. “I could use the help.”

  “Yes, you could, and you can’t help yourself. You love being kind to people. It’s one of the things I love about you.”

  I started to hug her but stopped short. “Oh, Mart, but this doesn’t mean I’m not going to start paying rent—“

  “Gracious, Harvey Beckett. Of course, you’re going to pay rent. I would never doubt that for a minute. I expect the last two weeks of income have you set up well for the rest of the month. Budgets, we’ll work on budgets for both of us this week.”

  I gave her that hug now. “Okay, see you at home in a bit?”

  “Yep, just going to drop off my trusty assistant,” she gestured with her head
at the young woman by the door, “and return these last bottles of wine to the winery – we sold all but five. BIG weekend for us. Then, I’ll be back. Cereal for dinner?”

  “Perfect. See you there.”

  I was just finishing the register count and putting together the bank deposit when Cate and Lucas knocked on the glass. I let them in and then looked outside. “You guys. You didn’t have to put everything away. I was headed out to do that. You did so much already.”

  Cate wrapped her arms around my waist and squeezed. “Harvey, do you really think we did more than you did today? You put together this whole event and,” she leaned over to whisper, “figured out who the murderer is. I think we can manage to fold up some tables.”

  I blushed, but then peeked out the window again. “Wait, where are all the books?”

  Lucas clapped his hands and then rubbed them together. “We sold all but about two dozen, and Mrs. Murphy, the librarian, came by and picked up the rest.”

  “Yep! She said they’ll use some of them in their collection and the rest they’ll let the kids in the summer program cut up for art projects.” Cate laughed.

  My hand flew to my mouth. “Oh no, Cate, your books.”

  “Are you kidding me? Kids making art out of copies of art – that’s almost better than the $4,283 we raised for the scholarship fund.”

  I dropped into the arm chair next to the Eastern Shore history shelf. “Whoa. That’s a lot of money.”

  “Yep. Most of it came from book sales, but a few people gave a little extra.” Lucas pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and showed it to me, careful to keep his body between the window and the money. “I’ll take it to the sheriff’s department in the morning, but for now, I think we’re headed home . . . unless you need us to help with anything?”

  “Like figuring out a motive,” Cate piped in.

  I sighed. “Oh, thanks, guys, but honestly, at this point, I’m too tired. I really wanted to figure this out for the sheriff, save him the work, but I’m at a loss. I’ll just call him in the morning.”