by Jessica Beck
I laughed at the question. “Have you ever known Grace to do anything against her will?”
“No, not for as long as I’ve known her.”
“I can say the same thing, and I’ve been around her a lot longer than you have.”
“Just try not to muck things up for me, okay? It would be embarrassing to have to arrest my girlfriend and my favorite donut maker for interfering with an official police investigation.”
“We’ll do our best,” I said.
“Not to do anything questionable, or not to get caught?” he asked me before quickly adding, “Forget I just asked you that. I don’t want to know. One more thing before I go. I’m not going to be able to keep the suspects here indefinitely. I figure I’ve got three days before they start leaving town, and there’s not much I can do about keeping them here without any firm evidence.”
“Is that why you’re willing to take our help?” I asked him.
“Hey, I’m not proud. If Jake were in town, I’d ask him for help, too. As things stand, I’m thinking about bringing in the mayor, but I’m not sure I want to go there just yet.”
“Why, don’t you think George would do a good job? He was a great cop in his day, or so I’ve heard.”
“That’s not the problem. I’m just afraid that if I give him a crack to slip into, he’ll be running my investigation and leaving me on the sidelines before I know what happened. Like I said, I’m not that desperate just yet.”
The chief stood, and I saw that the job was aging him beyond his years. It was clear that he loved being in charge, but it was just as obvious that it was taking a toll on him. I wanted to say something to him about taking things a little slower, but I knew it would be pointless, so I decided not to. Instead, I offered, “I know you won’t accept anything on the house, but I could fill an urn with coffee and bring some donuts over to your crew. Would you be okay with that?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, though it was clear he was tempted.
“Come on. Let me at least do this.”
“Fine,” he said, finally giving in. “I’m sure they’ll all appreciate it. I know I do.”
“I’m happy to be of some service,” I said.
After Chief Grant was gone, Emma came out of the kitchen. “Has he left yet?”
“You weren’t eavesdropping, were you?” I asked her with a smile.
“I tried to, but this door is just too thick. Have you thought about replacing it with something that transmits sound better?”
We both laughed. “I just volunteered to take a dozen donuts and a pot of coffee across the street to the cops who are there working.”
“That’s a great idea. I know you’re busy, so I’ll be glad to do it.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that,” I said.
“Any word on what happened?” she asked softly.
“Not really,” I said. “Nothing has changed. The publisher was murdered in the back room of the bookstore, and so far, there aren’t any specific suspects.”
“That sounds like a quote my father might get from a police spokesman,” she said.
“Then by all means, be sure to share it with him,” I replied with a smile as I started filling a large thermos. “Why don’t you box a dozen assorted cake donuts and run everything over while I finish rolling out the yeast donuts?”
“Can do,” she said.
After Emma was gone on her errand, I went back to my donuts, and as I worked, I couldn’t help wondering who had killed the book publisher. One thing was certain; it appeared to have been a spontaneous act. Or was it? We’d discussed writers and their patterns quite a bit in my book club, and one of the recurring themes was how clever they were at planning murders. Had someone grabbed that bookend on purpose, counting on finding something in the bookstore to make the act look rash? I looked around my own shop and realized that the rolling pin in my hand would make a fine murder weapon, as one of its predecessors had indeed been used for in the past. There were also knives aplenty and other things that could be equally deadly. I tried to think of what I’d seen in the bookstore that might have been used as well, and I came up with half a dozen objects just off the top of my head. I wasn’t sure what that said about me, and I wasn’t completely positive I wanted to find out. Needless to say, if someone had come to the bookstore intent on murder already, a creative mind would be able to find something to use to commit the act, and if anything was true, it was that there was a good chance we were dealing with a creative mind.
Now it was just a matter of figuring out which one had used their wits to end the life of their deceased publisher.
It wasn’t going to be easy, but I believed with all of my heart that Grace and I were up to the challenge if she agreed to join me in my investigation.
I couldn’t imagine her saying no, but if she did, I had other folks in town I could call on, though it was too bad that Jake was away on business of his own.
Either way, I wasn’t about to go it alone.
Chapter 8
We seemed to be getting pretty popular even before we were open for business. At least that’s how it felt when someone started knocking on the door twenty minutes after the police chief left. Had he forgotten something, or was he simply returning the thermos of coffee?
It turned out to be neither.
I walked out front and was surprised to find Paige Hill standing there alone in the darkness. She looked as though she’d been crying, but who could really blame her? Her dream of opening her own bookstore was quickly becoming a nightmare.
I opened the door and let her in. “Come in, let me get you a cup of coffee and something to eat.”
“I’ll take the coffee, but I couldn’t eat a bite,” she said. “Isn’t it just awful?”
“It’s pretty bad,” I said, locking the door behind her. I grabbed her a cup, filled it with fresh coffee, and then threw in a donut to boot despite her protest. “Here you go.”
She took them absently, and after taking a sip of coffee, Paige said, “I can’t believe you were the one who found John. By all rights, that should have been me. They said there was no sign of a break-in, but I know I locked that door when I left. I just know it!”
“Could it have been Millie?” I asked her, wondering if her assistant might have come back for something later.
“No, right now I only have one key. The other is in my safety deposit box. I had the locks changed the second I bought the building, so I know there are no floaters out there.”
“Maybe you missed someone when you locked up.” It was time to check Chief Grant’s theory that he’d supplied earlier. “Did you look in both restrooms?”
Paige clouded up for a moment. “You know what? I’m an idiot. I didn’t check the men’s room. That’s a mistake I won’t make again. What I can’t figure out is why John was there in the first place after hours.”
“Perhaps he was meeting someone,” I said.
“And he chose to trespass at The Last Page? It doesn’t make sense.”
“It might have been the only place he didn’t think they’d be interrupted. I don’t know, it’s a possibility,” I said.
“Suzanne, you’re going to look into this, aren’t you? Promise me that you won’t ignore this murder.”
“I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about,” I said as evasively as I could manage. Paige hadn’t been a part of our community for all that long. How had she already heard about my exploits as an amateur sleuth?
“Don’t bother being coy. Nam used to revel in telling me all about you and your crack team of April Springs Irregulars. That’s what she called your cohorts, you know.”
“It’s nothing as interesting as all that,” I protested. “I have been dragged into murder investigations from time to time in the past, but not usually by my own curiosi
ty.”
“This is certainly not frivolous for you, is it?” she asked. “After all, you found the poor man. I need to know that you’re going to be looking for whoever did it along with the police. It would go a long way towards helping me deal with it right now.”
“I’ll consider it,” I said, not wanting to tell her that I’d already decided to do exactly what she was asking of me. “Can you tell me anything about John Rumsfield or the writers that might help in my investigation, if I decide to do it?”
“I didn’t know the publisher any more than you did, but he seemed to take joy in tweaking his authors. I thought there would be a more convivial atmosphere when they were all together, but I overheard something when they were in the green room that makes me wonder about that.”
“What did you hear?”
“Alexa Masters was threatening to get out of the second book in her contract, and John was furious with her.”
“How could she do that? I just assumed she’d be locked in with the publishing house until the contract ran its course.”
“Not if there is a breach on the publisher’s part,” Paige said.
“What kind of breach?”
“Alexa claimed that John was lowballing her sales figures so he could cheat her later on her royalties. The publisher was absolutely livid when Brad chimed in that he was planning to do an audit himself.”
“How did Simon and Bev react to the fight?”
“They both tried to fade into the woodwork. Evidently Brad and Alexa were his rock stars. Simon and Bev just looked happy to have deals in place.”
“For however long those might last,” I said, without realizing that Paige might not be privy to everything that I was.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“John was going to drop them both,” I admitted. “It gives them both a motive, doesn’t it?”
“If I didn’t know Brad, I’d think that all four of them had reason to want the man dead.”
I studied her hard for a moment before I asked the next question on my mind. “Are you that convinced Brad didn’t have anything to do with it?”
“Yes,” Paige said simply.
When she didn’t say anything else, I asked, “Is there any reason in particular you feel that strongly about it?”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” she said curtly. Changing the subject, she said, “I understand someone used a bookend to kill him.”
“It was one of the geode pairs,” I said, hoping that Chief Grant wouldn’t mind if I disclosed that fact. Just to be safe, I added, “Don’t tell anyone that I just told you that. I’m not sure I was supposed to mention it even to you, okay?”
“I won’t say a word. Besides, who would I tell?” she asked me.
I could think of lots of possibilities, but I had a question for her. “Were any nonfiction titles stored in the green room last night?”
“What? No, I’m fairly certain they were not.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I am, unless one was misplaced. Why do you ask?”
I took a deep breath, and before I revealed what I knew, I said, “Paige, this is important. What I’m about to tell you could be critical in figuring this out. If you breathe it to a soul, you could jeopardize lives.” Okay, maybe I was being a little melodramatic, but who knew what might arouse a murderer’s suspicions? “Can you promise me that you won’t tell anyone else what I’m about to tell you?”
“I promise,” Paige said solemnly. I didn’t have a bible handy for her to swear an oath on, but I felt as though I could trust her. After all, she didn’t have a reason to want to see the publisher dead.
As far as I knew, anyway.
“Okay. Evidently John Rumsfield had a few moments of consciousness before he died, and he reached out with his bloodied right hand and grabbed a book off one of the stacks.”
“Did one of the authors at the signing write it?” she asked, her face suddenly ashen.
“No, it was written by a man named Hebron Smith.”
“I’m not familiar with that name off the bat. What was the title?”
“Seven Deadly Mushrooms,” I said. “Does that ring any bells?”
“Did you just say ‘deadly’?” she asked me, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I did.”
“Don’t you see? That’s Brad’s favorite buzzword for his titles. His two best-known books are A Deadly Kiss and A Deadly Embrace. John Rumsfield was trying to tell us who murdered him.”
Chapter 9
“It’s got to be a coincidence,” I said, even though I hated even considering that as a possibility. “The word ‘deadly’ can’t be that unusual in a book title.”
“It sounds a little too on the nose to be a coincidence to me,” Paige said. “Should we tell the police chief?”
“Let me dig around a little and see what else I can uncover first,” I said. I didn’t want Paige planting the idea in Chief Grant’s head without more reason to think it might be true quite yet.
“So, you’ll do it?” she asked, her eyes full of hope. “You’ll look into John’s murder?”
“I’m not making any promises, but I’ll see what I can do,” I answered her.
“That’s all I can ask. What else can I do to help?”
“Right now, nothing. I need to dig around some, but I’m sure I’ll need to ask you more questions later. Do you have any idea how long your bookstore is going to be closed?”
Paige looked as though she wanted to cry. “It might be until tomorrow before I get it back,” she said. “There goes my chance of making it a success.”
“Don’t be too hasty about that,” I said. “When you do open back up, your business is going to boom for at least a few weeks, unless I miss my guess.”
“Why would you say that? Who in their right mind would want to visit a place where a murder had been so recently committed?”
“Trust me, after it happened in my shop once, I couldn’t keep the people away.”
“That’s kind of macabre, isn’t it?”
I shrugged. “My attitude is that you can’t care about why people are visiting your shop, you just need to be poised to take advantage of it. I know it must sound kind of heartless to you, but it’s not like you’re planning to promote the murder. If some people are motivated to come in and have a look around, what are you supposed to do about it? I’m not saying you should go out of your way to profit from what happened, but it shouldn’t be the reason your bookstore goes under before it even has a chance, either.”
“I’m not sure I can bring myself to look at it that way,” she said with a hint of uncertainty in her voice.
I could see her point of view, but I was afraid that she might be a little too fragile to get through this if she didn’t toughen up. “In the end, you have to do what you think is best. Hey, is the chief waving to you?”
I’d seen Chief Grant over Paige’s shoulder motioning to her.
“He is. I wonder what he wants.”
“There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” I asked.
I unlocked the front door to let her out, but instead of securing it after her, I decided to tag along and see if I could learn anything new that might be helpful to my cause.
Chief Grant just smiled when he saw me following Paige, and he didn’t say a word to me when we reached him, so I had to assume that it was okay with him that I was there.
“What’s going on, Chief? Did you find something else?” Paige asked him.
“Not inside, but we found something in the alley out back, and I was wondering if you’d have a look at it.”
He held out a single sheet of paper, and I saw that it had been formatted to look like a book, with a header reading WIP and a page number
on the bottom. It was number thirty, if that had any meaning to anyone. “Why would I recognize this?”
“I thought it might be a page from one of the writers,” he admitted.
“I don’t think so,” she said as she glanced at it and then handed it back to him.
“How can you be so sure?” Chief Grant asked her.
“From what I’ve learned, writers don’t even submit paper copies of their books anymore. Everything is done electronically, but even if they were going to submit a hardcopy, they wouldn’t format it to look like a book.”
“So, that’s a mistake that an amateur might make, is that what you’re saying?” I asked her.
“Yes, I would think so. Why?”
“I know someone who might have lost a sheet from his book,” I said, and then I looked at Chief Grant before I added, “Abner Mason.”
“I’ll talk to him right now,” the chief said, and then he thanked us both for our time.
“Any idea how long it will be until I can reopen?” she asked the chief before he could go.
“As soon as possible. I promise. In the meantime, why don’t you go home and try to get some rest. I’ll personally call you when we’re ready to release the bookstore back to you.”
“That might be a good idea after all,” she said. Turning to me, she took one of my hands in hers and held it tightly. “Thank you, Suzanne.”
“Happy to help,” I said.
Once she was gone, the police chief looked at me and smiled. “Any reason in particular she’d thank you like that?”
“I gave her some coffee and a donut,” I said with a shrug. “Maybe she’s just really grateful.”
He wasn’t buying it, but it wasn’t that important to me that he did. “Sure. Let’s go with that, shall we? Now I need to go find Abner and ask him about this.”
“Want me to tag along?” I asked him playfully.