A Novel Way to Die

by Ali Brandon

  It was almost noon when Jake called back on the store phone.

  “Hey, kid, I got your message. Sorry, I can’t break for lunch. Things are popping.”

  “That’s okay, I understand,” Darla told her. “I don’t suppose what’s popping has anything to do with Tera or Hilda Aguilar, does it?”

  She heard a small sigh from the other end before Jake responded, “Remember what I said about client confidentiality? Oops, someone else is trying to ring through. Let me get that, and I’ll stop by the store later, all right?”

  Jake hung up before Darla could even reply. Frowning, Darla hung up the receiver.

  She considered calling Reese to find out if he’d located Tera, but then thought better of it. He’d just tell her it wasn’t any of her business. She decided to send him a text instead, asking about the neighborhood watch, and let him reply at his convenience. And maybe at the same time he’d give her an update on the Curt situation.

  She waited until Robert finished ringing up the soccer mom he’d been helping. She was pleased to see that the woman had bought one of the books featured in Robert’s window display in addition to a DIY book on plumbing and, strangely, a copy of Robinson Crusoe. But then, she’d gotten used to customers’ eclectic tastes in reading matter.

  “Hey, it’s lunchtime,” she reminded the teen. “I feel like a turkey Reuben special from the deli. How about I buy, you fly?”

  “Yeah, sure.” He gave her an enthusiastic grin. “Is it okay if I get, you know, one of those big chocolate chip cookies, too?”

  “Sure. Consider it a bonus for your good work on the window display. Tell them to put it all on my account.”

  “Yes!” He gave a little fist pump and reached under the counter for his jacket. “Back in a minute.”

  She smiled as he tore out of the store like Hamlet on catnip. All in all, Robert was working out quite well, she decided. Once he’d had a little more time and training, she might even manage an extra day off on occasion, with him to take up the slack.

  Since this was their usual prelunch lull, Darla headed upstairs to the storeroom. She returned downstairs with a lamb’s-wool duster in one hand and an ostrich-feather duster in the other. Picking up where she’d left off a couple of days earlier, she got to work cleaning the inventory, allowing herself the occasional unavoidable sneeze in the process.

  She’d been amazed when she’d first taken over the shop to learn how quickly dust accumulated on books. While the regular stock was treated to the standard duster routine, James had a special HEPA vacuum he used on the collectibles and first editions. He’d also explained how, to avoid damage, it was better to clean on a regular basis, rather than making it an hours-long project on occasion. And so Darla tried to tackle the place with her collection of cloths and dusters whenever she had a slow period during the week.

  She had barely gotten started on the first shelf, however, when she heard the distinctive thud of a book hitting the wood floor.

  “Hamlet?”

  Darla peered around the corner of the shelf to see the cat still stretched out on his rug near the door. Hearing his name, he yawned, showing sharp white teeth and a bubblegum pink tongue, and then settled his chin back on his paws to sleep.

  Frowning, she set down her dusters and headed in the direction from where the sound had come. Sure enough, in the classics section she found a single paperback book lying on the floor. Her frown deepened. The last time that Hamlet had pulled books off the store’s shelves, he’d been trying to communicate a murderer’s identity. Maybe he was at it again. But could the touchy feline have rushed over, snagged the book, and flown back to his sleeping spot that quickly?

  Curious, she picked up the volume and flipped it over. “The Man in the Iron Mask,” she read aloud, followed by a thoughtful, “Hmmm.”

  Of course, Hamlet might have had nothing to do with the book at all. Maybe the customer who’d picked up the copy of Defoe’s classic Robinson Crusoe had accidentally dislodged this Alexandre Dumas book from its spot on the D shelf, with gravity eventually doing the rest of the work. But how often did she have to pick up fallen books after a customer left the store?

  Not too often. Darla pursed her lips and nodded. For the moment, she would assume that it had been Hamlet who had pulled down the book as a clue—no matter that he was being even vaguer than previously in his hints.

  “How about sometime you give me a book title that’s an actual name?” she told Hamlet as she carried the book to the counter. “You know, like Anna Karenina or David Copperfield or Jonathan Livingston Seagull. That would really help narrow down the suspect list, you know?”

  Hamlet did not deign to reply.

  “Fine, so I’ll play twenty questions by my lonesome,” she told him. “You speak up if I get it right.”

  Dragging out a pen and sheet of paper, she scribbled Man in Iron Mask at the top of the page. Then she halted, momentarily stumped. She hadn’t read the book since high school, and even then she’d skimmed it. For better or worse, she’d seen the movie version—which likely bore only a nominal resemblance to the original novel—but that had been quite a while ago. Her memory of the characters’ names and the plot was hazy.

  “Let’s take it a face value and assume that the killer is male . . . as in, Man,” she said and underlined that word on her page. “Help me out, Hamlet. How about D’Artagnan or Aramis or Porthos or Athos? Any of those ring a bell?”

  Once more, the feline remained provokingly silent. “Okay, maybe I need to back up. Since the author is Alexandre Dumas, let’s try Alexander for the killer.”

  Darla wrote down that name, followed by a large question mark. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know any Alexanders, but maybe Curt had. Or maybe he knew an Al or Alec or an—

  “Alex,” she exclaimed with a triumphant smile, writing that name in large letters and circling it. “Robert’s buddy Alex Putin, the Russian mafia guy. He’s in construction, and he’s probably killed a bunch of people before.”

  Not that she had firsthand knowledge of this—either the Russian mafia connections or any actual killings—but his name was as good a place as any to start.

  She added Alex Putin to her budding list as a second possibility; then, with a snort, she crossed out that name and glanced toward the cat.

  “Too easy. If the killer was Alex Putin, you’d have snagged something from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or else a Vladimir Putin bio, wouldn’t you? Besides, there’s no reason to believe that Curt has ever even met the man, just because they’re both in construction.”

  Then she frowned. The more obvious candidate was Porn Shop Bill, though how he could possibly be tied to Dumas’s work, she couldn’t guess. Maybe there was a “William” somewhere in the story? She turned to her keyboard and did a quick online search.

  “Well, close,” she decided a moment later as, scrolling through a popular movie database, she saw that the director of an older film version of The Man in the Iron Mask had the first name of William. A bit too much of a reach? She shook her head even as she wrote down Bill. What she needed was a list of characters from the novel. Unfortunately, the publisher had neglected to supply that little convenience in the copy that she held. But she did find a story summary as part of a preface. Swiftly, she began to read bits of it aloud.

  “Story opens in the Bastille . . . Aramis was a Musketeer, is now a priest . . . listening to a prisoner’s confession . . . he claims he’s the twin brother of King Louis XIV.”

  She paused long enough to scribble down the words Louis and king, and then went on, “Blah, blah, Aramis decides to free this prisoner . . . will swap him for his brother. Meanwhile, things aren’t going well at court. King Louis sulking, blah, blah . . . can’t decide between his mistress and his wife, Maria Theresa—”

  She broke off abruptly and stared at Hamlet. “Maria Theresa,” she slowly repeated as she recalled the overheard phone conversation at Hilda’s shop the day before. “Maria Teresa is Tera’s full name. But sur
ely she couldn’t . . .”

  Darla trailed off as her previous mental image of Hilda wielding a crowbar was replaced by the mental picture she’d been trying to hold at bay ever since she’d first heard that Tera was missing: that of the petite girl doing her version of “batter’s up” on Curt’s skull. After all, hadn’t Barry said he’d overheard the pair fighting the day before they found Curt’s body? But surely a run-of-the-mill lovers’ quarrel couldn’t be enough to drive the hot-tempered Tera to murder. Or could it?

  Reluctantly, she added Tera to her list; then, for good measure, she added Hilda’s name, too. Better that she not decide this early in the game that Curt’s killer was male, despite Hamlet’s choice of book titles. After all, a crowbar was as deadly a weapon in a female’s hand as it was in a man’s.

  Even as she mulled over that unsettling possibility, the bells on the shop door jangled, and in rushed a woman whom she didn’t recognize.

  At least, not at first.

  TWELVE

  “HILDA?”

  Had Darla passed this version of the Great Scentsations owner on the street, she likely would have slipped the woman a dollar and kept on walking. Never had she suspected that the coolly elegant Hilda Aguilar could look so downright . . . well, frumpy.

  Today, the woman’s frosted blond hair was pulled back in a stubby, lopsided ponytail rather than styled into the usual sleek French twist or smooth bob Darla was used to seeing. As for the usual professional makeup job—the one that looked airbrushed on—this morning it consisted of simply a slash of red lipstick that had already been partially chewed off. But, the designer handbag over her shoulder notwithstanding, the most surprising aspect of the woman’s appearance was the fact she was wearing a tracksuit of the kind septuagenarian Mary Ann Plinski favored when not dressed for work.

  Hilda, however, seemed either unaware or unconcerned that her appearance had shocked Darla into momentary speechlessness. Barely missing stepping on Hamlet, who scrambled out of the way just in time, she hurried to the counter where Darla was standing.

  “Darla, thank God you are here! I came to see Jake, but she won’t be back for a while. I talked to her on the phone, and she said I could wait for her up here, if you don’t mind.”

  Darla shook her head, her concern growing. “No, I don’t mind. Why don’t you sit upstairs in the lounge area? There’s coffee up there, and hot water if you want tea.”

  Though the woman could probably use a cup of something stronger, Darla decided. Hilda’s eyes were ringed with dark circles that were likely owed in equal parts to a sleepless night and yesterday’s makeup.

  Hilda, however, shook her head, refusing the offer. “I-I’d rather stay down here, if you don’t mind. I’m afraid I’ll go crazy if I stay alone.”

  Darla stepped around the counter and impulsively took the woman’s hand. “Tell me what’s wrong,” she urged. “Is it Tera?”

  The other woman nodded.

  “Darla, she-she never came home last night.”

  A tear spilled down one unpowdered cheek and left a faint eyeliner trail behind. “I spent all yesterday afternoon calling her, and she never answered her phone. I finally closed the shop early because I thought maybe she was home sick in bed, but she wasn’t there, either.”

  The woman paused and took a shuddering breath. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I phoned a few of her friends. No one saw her at school yesterday morning. And then that detective—I don’t remember his name—came by my house looking for her last night. He said that when she showed up again, he needed to talk to her right away.”

  “I’m sure it’s just routine,” Darla assured her, but Hilda shook her head.

  “You don’t understand. The questions he asked me about her, I could not believe. Does she have a passport . . . does she have any friends with criminal records? Finally, I got angry and told him to leave.”

  Probably not the best move, going Mama Grizzly on a cop, Darla thought wryly, though she could understand a parent wanting to protect her child. Aloud, she asked, “So is that why you’re looking for Jake, to see if she can find Tera before the police do?”

  “That’s all I could think to do. Tera has no one in this city besides me. The rest of the family, they’re back in Miami or in Cuba. I’ve always taken care of her. She knows nothing of life, of what it takes to survive on her own.”

  Hilda paused and gave a swipe at her eyes, which were damp again.

  “Me, I was only seventeen when I escaped from Cuba with my husband and his entire family on a little fishing boat meant for just six people. It was the hurricane season, but we didn’t know a storm was forming in the Atlantic when we set out. With the wind and the waves, it was a miracle that we stayed afloat long enough to reach Miami.”

  “Hilda, I didn’t know. That must have been a terrifying journey.”

  “I suppose it was, but I had grown up being frightened and hungry. To me, it was just one more thing to endure. But after that, I was never frightened of anything else again . . . not until now.” She paused, and her regal features abruptly crumpled. “Dios mío, I am so afraid! I’m afraid that the police think my daughter killed Curt Benedetto!”

  “Who wants lunch? Get it while it’s hot!”

  Darla had been so caught up in Hilda’s account that she hadn’t heard the bells on the shop door jingle. Robert had returned from the deli and was making his way toward the counter triumphantly waving a large and slightly greasy paper bag. Darla released Hilda’s hand and hurried to intercept him.

  “Why don’t you put mine in the fridge upstairs in the lounge?” she suggested, giving her head a meaningful shake as he peered curiously past her. “I’ve got a customer I’m helping right now.”

  Hilda began to sob, and the teen’s inquisitive expression promptly morphed into the distressed look common to males who can’t bear to see the opposite gender cry.

  “Yeah, sure,” he verbally backpedaled. “Do you want me to, uh, take my break now, or wait?”

  “Go ahead. I’ve got things under control here.”

  Which wasn’t exactly the truth. For the moment, she had no idea what to say to a mother whose only child had just become a suspect in a murder investigation. And she couldn’t just leave the woman there crying, especially since her usual lunchtime customers would be popping in any minute now.

  Darla hurried back around the counter, grabbed the box of tissues from the shelf below, and then thrust it into Hilda’s arms.

  “Let’s find you a quiet spot,” she said, deftly steering the woman toward the shop’s rear room. As in the main part of the store, a few small tufted chairs were tucked in strategic corners so customers could sit and peruse potential purchases. Darla settled the woman alongside the New Age shelves. Maybe she’d gain a bit of serenity by osmosis.

  “Here you go,” she said and plumped a tapestry pillow, which she then slipped behind Hilda’s back. “You can wait right there until Jake comes back. Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to bring you something?”

  Hilda sniffled a moment into her tissue and then shook her head. “I’m so sorry, causing such a scene in your nice store. But I know my daughter. She’s not capable of doing such a horrible thing. How could that detective suspect her of murder?”

  “Reese has to check her out, just like he’s doing with everyone else who knew Curt. He’s only doing his job,” Darla gently reassured her. “Remember, she didn’t come home the night that Curt was murdered, and you yourself said that she usually spent her evenings with him. It does seem a bit suspicious.”

  “I know, I know,” the woman agreed, breaking into fresh sobs. “But no matter what happened, I can’t believe Tera would leave home without telling me.”

  Darla handed her another tissue and desperately wished that Jake would hurry up. While she was inclined to agree with Hilda that Tera didn’t seem to fit the type, she’d heard Reese and Jake recount enough tales about unlikely killers to know that one could never say never when it came to murder.
On the other hand—

  “Hilda, maybe Tera did have something to do with Curt’s death,” she ventured, “but that doesn’t mean it was deliberate. Maybe they had a fight, and he tried to hurt her, and she was defending herself. Or maybe he brought her down to the basement and tried to force himself on her, and she had to hit him with the crowbar to get away. I think on the cop shows they call it justifiable homicide or something.”

  “You mean, self-defense?”

  “Right. And maybe she’s afraid to come home because she knows the police will be looking for her. And she won’t call you because no one can accuse you of helping her if you don’t know where she is.”

  “Oh, Darla, that does make sense.” Hilda looked up from her pile of sodden tissues, her swollen eyes suddenly filling with hope. “I know she could never hurt anyone on purpose . . . but maybe if he had tried to hurt her . . .”

  She straightened and reached into her handbag, pulling out a compact. “I look a fright,” she exclaimed with a glance in the small mirror. Shoving the mirror back into her purse, she got to her feet again. “Please, I must make myself halfway presentable before Jake gets here.”

  Darla obligingly pointed her in the direction of the ladies’ room and then went to wait on the middle-aged executive who’d just walked in. By the time she’d sent him off with a best-selling business biography and then rang up another customer who’d come in for her weekly fix of the latest romance novels, Hilda had emerged from the restroom looking almost like her usual self.

  Darla took in the woman’s deftly recoiffed hair and fresh makeup with amazement. She must have a personal stylist stashed in that purse, she thought with a wry shake of her head. Even the tracksuit looked suddenly trendier, thanks to a scarf Hilda must have found somewhere in the handbag and which now was wrapped jauntily around her throat.