Midnight Paws

by Jessica Beck

  “What did you find?” Lincoln asked me.

  “It’s Cora’s journal,” I said.

  Lincoln looked a little deflated. “I was hoping for something a shade more valuable.”

  “Are you nuts?” Marybeth asked as she snatched it from my hands. “This could very well be the reason that Cora and Midnight were both murdered.”

  “Over some random scribbling in a book?” he asked.

  “It makes perfect sense to me,” I said. “Secrets can be powerful motivators.”

  Lincoln shrugged. “I’m not denying that. I just wonder how many of Cora’s ramblings are based on anything factual.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Marybeth said with delight. It was clear that she was really going to enjoy this. “Who’s first on Cora’s hit list?”

  “Hey, I should be the one to read it first,” I said. “After all, I’m the one who found it.”

  Marybeth nodded. “Do you know what? You are absolutely right. Here you go.”

  As I took the notebook from her, I suddenly wasn’t so sure that I wanted to read it. I’d liked Cora an awful lot, and I didn’t want the things she’d written in her notebook to change my mind about her. Then again, if it helped me find her killer, I was just going to have to swallow my distaste and do it.

  I opened the book carefully and started to examine it.

  “What’s it say?” Marybeth asked impatiently. “Is it anything good?”

  “I’m not sure,” I answered. “It’s not exactly indexed. There are names, and they are accompanied by random observations and theories attached to them.”

  Lincoln said, “I’m glad you had some success in your hunt, but I need to go now.”

  “You don’t approve of this, do you?” I asked him as I closed the notebook again. Suddenly, Lincoln’s opinion mattered to me.

  “I completely understand why you have to do this,” he said. “I just need to go prepare for court.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” I said.

  He smiled at me. “I’m a lawyer, remember? It’s what we do.”

  “I mean it,” I said. “I want to know how you feel about this.”

  He nodded, and his smile disappeared. “I suppose I just don’t want my attitude about these people tainted by what you’re about to read. Trust me, there are times I wish I knew quite a bit less about the people in our fair little town.”

  “It can’t be helped, though,” I said. “You just admitted that much.”

  “If you’re not going to read it, at least let me have it,” Marybeth said as she made a grab for the book.

  “No, I’ll do it,” I said, “but I want to let Lincoln out before I get started.”

  The two of us walked the attorney to the front, and after I unlocked the door, he asked, “Would it be possible to have a late lunch with you? I really would like to know what you find in there.”

  “Sure, we’d love to go with you,” Marybeth said. “What time would you like to pick us up?” She watched the expressions on our faces, and then she started laughing. “Relax you two. I know I wasn’t included in that invitation.”

  “You know that you’re welcome to join us,” Lincoln said. “In fact, I insist.”

  “Nice try, but I’m going to let you off the hook. I have to be in Lincolnton and Gastonia all day, so I won’t be available.”

  “Nevertheless, if your plans change, the invitation stands.”

  After he was gone, I smiled at Marybeth. “You really love doing that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said with her wickedest grin.

  “I’m sure that you don’t,” I said, matching it with one of my own. “Let’s go back and see what Cora had to say about our dear townsfolk.”

  Thirty minutes later, I was beginning to wonder if I should have taken Lincoln’s advice after all. I’d read Cora’s entries aloud, and Marybeth and I took turns being surprised by the things my former boss had written there.

  “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Marybeth said as I closed the book. “We’ve read things inflammatory enough to make a dozen people want to kill Cora to keep her from spreading rumors about them in that little notebook.”

  “Not a dozen,” I said defensively. “Some of her claims weren’t all that bad.”

  “Like Eugenia Coffee lacing her sodas with vodka every morning?” she asked.

  “That’s as good an example as any,” I said. “I suspected as much about her, anyway.”

  “Sure, but seeing it written down like that is another thing entirely. Okay, I concede that not all of the things she said were worthy of homicide, but a few of them sure were.”

  “Let’s try starting a suspect list, and add what Cora wrote about them,” I said. “I know that it might not be complete, but it’s as good a place to start as any.”

  “Agreed,” Marybeth said as she looked around the back of the shop. “Is there anything here we can write on? I’m not sure I can keep everything straight unless we record it.”

  “How about this?” I asked as I got a portable chalkboard and stand from behind some boxes. “We use this whenever we have a sidewalk sale.”

  “That’ll do just fine. Do you happen to have any white chalk on you?”

  I dug around, but finally I said, “All I could come up with is this.” It was purple, and the only reason that the piece I had was as large as it was was because it didn’t show up all that well on the chalkboard.

  “It’ll be fine,” she said. “Okay, let’s start with names. You call them out, and I’ll write them down.”

  I thumbed through the notebook, calling out names as I came across them. When I finished, we had Kelly Madigan, Jim Hicks, Professor Jenkins, Celeste from next door, Mayor Kelly, and Barbara Hastings listed on the board.

  “I hate that Celeste’s name is on here,” I said. “I really like her.”

  “So do I, but we can’t take her name off just because we enjoy eating her French toast,” Marybeth said.

  “I know you’re right, but I still don’t like it. Okay, now that we have the names, let’s add their motives.”

  “That sounds good,” Marybeth said as she started jotting down brief notes about each of our suspects. I thought her comment section was a little simplistic, but it did give us a general idea about where to look. According to Cora’s notes, Kelly Madigan was a kleptomaniac who had escalated her thefts recently, Jim Hicks had cheated his former partner out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, Professor Jenkins was a fraud ripe for exposure, Celeste had done something mysterious and bad to her late husband, Mayor Kelly was having an affair with his next door neighbor, and Barbara Hastings was responsible for embezzling thousands of dollars from the school PTA.

  I studied the list. “Wow, we live in a hotbed of crime, don’t we? I didn’t have a clue about any of this.”

  “Remember, we haven’t confirmed any of this yet,” Marybeth said. “As far as we know, none of this is true.”

  “If it weren’t, why would Cora write it all down?” I asked.

  “Who knows? Maybe she was trying her hand at writing a mystery, and she was going to base it on people she knew.”

  “Do you think she’d actually use their real names? I’m sure that she could get sued for that.”

  “The names would have been easy enough to change at the last second,” Marybeth said, “but I think it would work just fine in a first draft. For someone not used to writing fiction, wouldn’t it be easier just to base her writing on people she knew, and then change all of the names later?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Cora never said anything about ever wanting to try her hand at writing.”

  “Okay, maybe this was just a way to amuse herself. I’m not saying that any of it means anything, but don’t you think we owe it to her to try to figure out
if any of these folks might have found out about her journal, and wanted to kill her to protect their secrets?”

  “I can’t think of any other reason for what’s been happening. We’ve never had all that much of value in our shop. Well, except for this,” I said as I pulled my necklace chain out from under my shirt. “Evidently this is worth more than I realized.” I grabbed the chalk from Cora and added one more name to her list, David Whitman.

  “He’s broke and desperate, according to Cora,” Marybeth said. “Is that motive enough for murder?”

  “What you don’t know is that his mother sold this without his blessing. Evidently it’s worth a great deal more than the hundred dollars Cora paid for it, and David was pretty desperate to get it back.”

  “So, we have seven names on our list. It’s kind of daunting, isn’t it?” Marybeth asked.

  “I’m sorry to say that I have a few more to add. We can’t overlook the obvious. Cora’s cousins, Sandy and Mandy, have the most to gain by her death. I’m certain they were under the impression that they were inheriting the shop. They had a real monetary stake in things.”

  “Should we go ahead and add their attorney, too?” Marybeth asked. “After all, the more the merrier.”

  “I’m hesitant to list him, since he wasn’t mentioned in Cora’s book, and he has no real motive to want her dead.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. For a second there, I thought we might have to just add the entire telephone book for Noble Point. I’m not afraid to say that all of this overwhelms me.”

  “I’d feel the exact same way if we didn’t have a secret weapon of our own,” I replied.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we go ask our favorite librarian and researcher to help us with our list?” I suggested. “If anybody in town knows about the folks written here, it’s got to be Trudy.”

  Marybeth glanced at her watch. “I hate to do this, especially when it’s just getting so interesting, but I’ve got those appointments, and I still have to go home, shower, and change before I go. Tell me what she says, though, okay?”

  “I promise,” I said, and I let her out of the shop. I had time to go next door for a quick cup of coffee before I had to open, but after what I’d just read about Celeste, I was in no hurry to see her. Lincoln had been right. Reading Cora’s notebook had changed the way I looked at my friends in town, and I wasn’t sure that I’d ever be able to look at any of them the same way again. The sooner I separated rumor and speculation from truth, the better. I took a quick photo of our list with my phone, locked the door behind me, and went off in search of Trudy.

  Hopefully she’d be able to clear up some of the many questions I had about the people who surrounded me every day. I just wished that I had a new scarf to take her. I was asking an awful lot of her, but I honestly didn’t know where else to turn.

  Chapter 12

  “Hey, Trudy. I hope you’ve got a little time, because I need some help,” I said as I walked into the library where my friend worked. Trudy Jefferson had her nose in a book, which was no real surprise.

  “Sure thing,” she said as she marked her place with a bookmark designed from a winning entry in the last contest they’d held for their young readers. It was a bright green caterpillar, and the words, “Words Are Tasty” were emblazoned on it. “What can I do?” She tapped a few keys on her computer, and then she added, “I can access information from around the world right here. It’s all pretty amazing, actually.”

  “This isn’t as much library business as it is personal,” I said.

  She nodded. “I’m sorry, then. I can’t help you until I’m on my break. It’s library policy. You understand, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” I said. It was too bad I’d lost my main research resource, but Trudy had to do her job before she could help me.

  As I started back out of the library, she asked, “Where are you going, Christy?”

  “I didn’t think you could help me,” I said.

  “You never asked me when my break was,” Trudy said with a grin as she looked at her watch. “In four, three, two, one. Okay, I’m on break.”

  “Excellent,” I said. I looked around the room, and I knew that just because I couldn’t see anyone didn’t mean that they weren’t there. “Is there somewhere we can go and talk in private? This is some pretty potentially volatile stuff.”

  Trudy frowned. “I’m supposed to have a volunteer from our Friends of the Library program, but she’s late. Tell you what. Why don’t you start talking, and if we get any company, we can postpone the rest of our conversation until we have a chance to chat. I’m sorry. I know that it’s not ideal, but I’m afraid that it’s the best I’m going to be able to do right now.”

  “I’ll take what I can get,” I said. “The thing is, it’s critical that what we discuss is just between the two of us. You’ll know more once I explain, but I need your solemn vow that you won’t breathe a word of what I’m doing to anyone else.”

  “Done,” she said.

  “Is it honestly going to be that easy?” I asked her. “I figured you’d need something more than that.”

  “I realize that we haven’t known each other a long time, but I can usually trust my instincts when it comes to knowing whether I can trust someone or not. I trust you. Is that foolish on my part?”

  “No, I’d give myself a ringing endorsement if I could, though I would have no idea why you’d take my word for it.”

  “Christy, let’s just start off trusting each other and go from there. What can I do for you?”

  “I told you the truth when I said that I needed information. I’m just not sure how much of it you’ll be able to get from your computer.”

  “You might be amazed. Now talk. We don’t really know how much time we have.”

  “Okay, here goes. Cora kept a notebook, a journal really, and she said some pretty inflammatory things in it about the folks of Noble Point.”

  Trudy frowned. “I was wondering if it had turned up yet.”

  “You knew about Cora’s hobby?” I asked.

  “I knew of it,” she said. “Is it as bad as some people around here think?”

  “It’s pretty harsh in places,” I said. “I’m trying to use it to figure out who killed her and my Midnight,” I said. “If she had information that could be damaging to someone, they might have killed her to keep her from telling anyone.”

  “It sounds like a reasonable assumption,” Trudy said. “That might explain all of the break-ins you’ve been having, too.”

  “How do you know about those?”

  “It’s a small town, and besides, I keep a police scanner on by my bed. What can I say, it makes me feel safe knowing that the sheriff and his staff are out there working through the night. It must sound odd to you, though.”

  “If it helps you sleep, I’d say go for it,” I said.

  “Have you managed to narrow your list down at all?” she asked.

  I opened my phone and pulled up the picture I’d taken of the list that Marybeth and I had made this morning. “It might just be easier to show you this than to try to explain.”

  She studied the list for a minute, and then Trudy said, “Send this to my phone, would you, please?”

  I did as she asked, and twenty seconds later, Trudy was studying the names on her own telephone. After three minutes of frowning at her phone, she looked at me and smiled. “I have some notes for you about your list.”

  “Go on. I’m listening,” I said.

  “Okay, first off, it’s quite possible that every one of these accusations has a kernel of truth to it,” she said. “That might make it a little harder to start paring names off the list.”

  “Are things really that bad in our little town?” I asked. What had I gotten myself into when I’d moved to be closer to Marybeth? Noble
Point certainly hadn’t appeared to be a hotbed of crime, but I was beginning to wonder.

  “Kelly Madigan steals,” Trudy said. “I’ve been hearing rumors for years about it, but usually her uncle pays off whoever complains about it, so it’s not exactly a well-kept secret.”

  “Who’s her uncle?” I asked. I hadn’t heard a word about that.

  “Actually, you might know him. It’s Jim Hicks. He’s a local realtor.”

  “Oh, I know him a little too well,” I said.

  “That sounds intriguing,” Trudy said with a gleam in her eye.

  “It’s nothing like that. He keeps pressuring me to sell the shop, though.”

  “You’re not considering it, are you?” Trudy asked, clearly appalled by the idea.

  “I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” I said. “Cora left some pretty tight restrictions on what I could do with the place.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m not unhappy that you’re staying. You are staying, aren’t you?”

  “For now,” I said. That was all that I was willing to commit to at this point. After I found the murderer, if I ever did, I’d reevaluate my plans, but for now, I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Good. You belong in our town. It suits you.”

  I wasn’t going to comment on that, since I wasn’t at all sure that I agreed with her. “What about the other names? And is it true what Cora wrote about Jim?”

  “If he cheated his former partner, I haven’t heard anything about it, with the exception of a few whispers here and there. I need to dig into it a little further before I say one way or the other.”

  “How about the rest of them?” I asked.

  “I don’t know the professor, but I should be able to dig something up on him,” Trudy said. She pointed to another name. “Celeste’s husband refused treatment, over her protests. She tried to sneak him his meds, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted to die with whatever dignity he could hold onto, but she wasn’t about to give up the fight. It got so bad that Hank started telling anyone who would listen that Celeste was poisoning her food, but in actuality, she was just trying to save his life. Anyone who knew Hank understood, but some folks around here believed him. Cora should have known better, but I suppose it was too juicy to pass up.”