Also by T.C. Wescott
Slay Bells: A Christmas Village Mystery
(COMING NOVEMBER 2018)
A RUNNING STORE MYSTERY
T.C. Wescott
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text Copyright © 2018 by T.C. Wescott
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission by the publisher.
Published by Better Mousetrap Books, Oklahoma
ISBN-13: 978-1-7321358-0-2
Cover design and ebook formatting by Ebooklaunch.com
First Edition
For Ellen
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
ONE
Today’s the day. I’m going to kill her, I think to myself as I pull my purse from under my arm.
I reach in and wiggle my fingers around until they find their target, never taking my eyes off the woman in front of me. I could shoot her or run her down with my car. No, somebody else’s car. A rental? Too obvious. Heck, I’m spoiled for choice!
I tear my eyes away to look at the item in my hand. Knife, hired assassin, force of nature. Sky’s the limit! Whatever your pleasure, just name your poison! Ha! Hmmm… Poison. Now there’s an idea.
“Is something wrong, Lacy?” says the lady behind the register. She says it again before I snap out of my angry daydream and remember why I am here.
“Sorry, Jess, just trying to keep my head from exploding. Or somebody else’s if I get my hands on them.”
I still drip sweat from a three-mile run and regret not swinging by the car for a towel. I can see myself in the mirror behind the counter and realize I look more like a zombie apocalypse survivor than a relatively fit runner in her mid-forties.
It could be worse, I reassure myself. I could look like one of the zombies.
“Another fruitful run under the auspices of Marlene, I take it?” Jess asks with a knowing wink. She knows whenever I speak of murder, I speak of Marlene.
“Yeah, fruitful,” I reply. “If I had any fruit I would have thrown it at her head.”
Jess leans across the counter toward me. “No fruit on the course.” She now seems more like a bartender than a sales person at a running store. “A couple of guys in the Chamber of Commerce come in here every couple of months and pay top dollar for our best shoes. I don’t know what they do with them, because the old ones still look new two months later. But I’m pretty sure Marti doesn’t want them stepping in tomatoes if it can be helped.”
“I was thinking more of a pitted fruit. Harder impact.” We laugh. The air conditioning cools my skin and Jessica’s ease of manner has the same effect on my mood. I realize if she is the bartender in this scenario, I must be the angry drunk.
The purpose for my trip into Run For It is two-fold: an after-run touch of sanity and a product replacement request. A utility belt I purchased the day before has been slipping over my hips during my morning run, forcing me to remove and carry it.
A lot of runners eschew a belt to carry their water, snacks, and phone, but I like how wearing it makes me feel like a superhero. I don’t feel very heroic with it bouncing around like a snake in my hand while I run, so I ask if I can trade it in for one with better adjustment capabilities.
The other running stores in Cedar Mill or in nearby Tulsa—there are four altogether—wouldn’t have considered the request. But Marti and Chase, the proprietors and themselves runners, understand and sympathize with the needs of their customers.
Martina Reynolds and her husband, Chase, opened Run For It five years ago, but it wouldn’t find me until last year when I moved to Cedar Mill following my divorce. Cedar Mill, Oklahoma, is a medium-size city with a small-town feel and coming from Kansas City it was just the kind of culture shock I felt I needed.
Hello, my name is Lacy Purdy: Divorced white female, frequent runner, and still a card-carrying member of the Neilsen Rating’s preferred 18-49 demographic, though my card expires in four years. In my previous life I helped my husband, Curtis, run his insurance agency. By ‘help’ I mean I did all the administrative work that actually got us paid. But I was treated like an employee. In fact, Curtis would often refer to me as his ‘secretary’ when talking to clients. He said it made him sound bigger and more important and would impress a would-be insurance buyer. I wondered if it was the client or his own ego he was trying to impress.
Curtis’s forty-sixth birthday came with an already burgeoned compulsion to completely change his sedentary life style. I had to admit it was a good change and I eventually followed him off the couch and to the gym. While he stretched and grunted on the equipment I made the rounds of swimming classes, Zumba, and Yoga. I even spent a few months with an enthusiastic personal trainer under whose gestapo-like regimen I developed a nasty case of Piriformis Syndrome; if I don’t do regular stretches of my left leg, it will feel like there’s a little gremlin in my butt pulling on my muscles and thumping my nerves.
While I took some time off from the gym to recuperate and keep Curtis’s agency running, he pitched woo to a rail-thin, granola-chomping gym bunny who’d been all of twelve years old when Curtis pitched me the same woo. If I sound a tad bitter it’s because I am. It wasn’t a great marriage, but it was a good one, and I figured that was more than most folks get. Now, I suppose, I’m ‘most folks’—single, over forty, no kids, and starting over.
Curtis and I visited Cedar Mill twice in recent years for the annual Mistletoe Marathon in December. Why a state with such unpredictable winters should risk scheduling a major marathon in December is beyond me, but I became charmed by the town the moment I breathed its air. And if there’s one thing besides a lingering—though, I like to think, dissipating—bitterness I brought with me from our final years together, it was the joy I found in running.
I also possess a wealth of knowledge of the insurance industry and particular skills in administrative assisting. Skills I now put to use working for a wonderful couple operating their own private agency here in Cedar Mill. Thanks, Curtis!
It’s hard for a runner to explain to the uninitiated why we run. You either get it or you don’t. It’s not necessarily for the health benefits, even if that’s why some of us started out. Sure, your cardio will be great, but you’ll spend a week out of each month walking like an invalid who’s lost her crutches. You’ll need to eat a lot of carbs to run strong, so don’t expect the pounds to fall off. And you’d better be rich or prepared to live frugally, because you will spend more money on shoes than you ever considered possible.
I don’t presume what motivates me is what motivates all runners,
but what I feel I’m doing is chasing ‘can’t’.
Yes, I’m Chasing Can’t.
When you begin running you’ll find yourself hitting an invisible wall you can’t push through. Your lungs will burn; your legs will scream. If you decide never to do something so foolish again, you’re normal. If you go to bed knowing you’ll get up and do it all over again just to break that wall, then congratulations—you’re a runner. And the more you run, the more walls you break through. You find yourself having to run farther and push harder to find your Can’t—the point where you cannot continue. The sense of personal victory that comes from proving yourself wrong becomes addictive and the better you get, the harder it is to find your Can’t.
The bling doesn’t hurt, either. I hang the medals I get at the end of each sponsored run on a wall in my bedroom, positioned so they’re the first things I see upon waking. At the rate I’m going, I’ll soon need more walls.
One of my favorite perks of running is something Oklahoma has in abundance—wind. I didn’t used to think too much about wind, except what effect it might be having on my hair, but since I became a runner I can’t walk outside without noticing it. A runner learns to read the wind, to use it to their advantage, or how to overcome its obstacles. Since coming to Cedar Mill I’ve learned you can taste the air, and the air tastes different depending on where you happen to be.
I expected to get plenty of fresh air running in Cedar Mill. What I did not expect—what no one in my running group could have expected—is that a woman would disappear into thin air before our very eyes only to reappear days later as a corpse.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
TWO
I don’t want to burden Jessica with my woes over Marlene (I have another set of ears in mind for that), so I exchange my belt for one better fitting to my fussy form and off I head into the warm July sun. I stop by my car to drop off the belt and exchange my sweaty bandana for a quick comb-through and a hair tie. I won’t need my car where I am going.
A walk along Cedar Mill’s Main Street is always a treat. No matter how many times you make the trek you can’t help but be charmed by the vibrant storefronts, the clean-swept sidewalks decorated with chalk art, and the rows of small concrete gardens surrounded by wrought-iron benches.
The only unbecoming feature is the crosswalk squawk box ordering ‘Wait!’ when you press the red button. Fortunately, this is a one-squawk trip as my destination is less than a block ahead of me.
Nestled snug on one side by a bridal store that in a past life was a two-screen movie theater, and on the other side by a country and western knickknack shop that once or twice served as a bakery, sits a quaint affair the town elders might still recall as the Ben Franklin Five & Dime of their youth. For the last generation it has served the literary needs of Cedar Mill as its most quirky and idiosyncratic independent bookseller.
The front door is adorned with a new book poster—an animated skeleton wearing a deer-stalker hat and smoking a pipe whilst battling a ferocious werewolf (or is it supposed to be a Baskerville hound?). In blood red horror font the title reads Sherlock’s Bones. The little bell above the door jingles as I enter.
“Yo, Stax,” I say loud enough to be heard but not so loud as to frighten any browsers.
“I’m sorry, but we don’t allow pets here,” an assertive, almost shrill voice sounds out from amidst the rows of shelves. “Is it raining outside?”
Before I finish rolling my eyes, a short, brown-skinned woman shaped like a chicken nugget emerges from behind a row titled ‘Esoterica’. Her black curly hair is done up in a messy bun and her trademark Buddy Holly glasses rest precariously on the tip of her nose. That’s Stax.
“Oh, Lacy, it’s you,” Stax says, feigning surprise. “I couldn’t see you, but I could smell you, and I figured a big wet dog must have wandered in here.”
Juanita ‘Stax’ Best is in her mid-thirties and grew up in the bookstore owned by her parents, Joseph and Patricia. Unable to have children of their own, the Bests adopted Stax when she was two. A few years later they added Larry to the family and Stax became a big sister. To look at Stax is to know she’s of Hispanic heritage, but her adoptive family is not and she feels no affinity whatsoever with the customs of her heritage. She says she didn’t know guacamole came from avocados until I casually mentioned it while we were dining (against her will) at an El Tequila. You can never tell with Stax.
She is a walking contradiction in more ways than one. Her parents opened their bookstore in the late eighties and adorably named it Best’s Cellar. They operated it themselves until their retirement six months ago when they passed it to their children. Because Larry worked as a fry cook a few times in his career, Stax got the idea of turning a corner of the store into a small café for Larry to run while she handled the responsibilities of the bookstore. Despite protestations from her family, including Larry, that an occasional fry cook does not a head chef make, she felt certain she was on the right track.
To advertise the café, she changed the name of the store to Read It or Eat It. I thought it was a deplorable name sounding more like a command than an invite. I made the mistake only once of conveying my opinion to Stax. Her mind was made up.
The makeover, to her credit, is working. The eight tables in the café are rarely full when I come by, but they’re never empty, and Stax’s emphasis on carrying books one cannot get at the Barnes & Noble in Tulsa earns her a small but loyal and growing clientele. In spite of her undeniable instincts for the business, Stax claims not to have personally read a book since high school.
One would be wrong if they assumed she earned the nickname ‘Stax’ from having grown up among the stacks of books; or because of her rather substantial chest. I came to learn the name is a diminutive of ‘Short Stack’, which is what Larry called her when they were children. She was short then, and, at barely five-feet-tall on her tiptoes, she’s short now. As the second child adopted into the Best family, Stax in turn christened Larry ‘Second Best’.
“You were missed today, Stax,” I say.
“If you came here to lie to me, Stretch, the least you can do is help me put some of these new books out.” With that, she disappears again.
I occasionally help Stax out when she gets in new shipments. Although I’m only six inches taller than her, she likes to call me ‘Stretch’, particularly when she needs help with the top shelves.
When we first became friendly, I agreed to join her in the stacks primarily to satisfy my curiosity as to how such a brash, offensive person could at the same time be so generous. Stax was the first one to take me under her wing when I started the training classes at Run For It. Spending time with her taught me her biting rhetoric is more defensive than offensive. It also taught me she is a wonderful friend to those who are willing to make an effort with her.
“Here,” she says, handing me a small but heavy box of books. The tape was cut and I spied the ‘Royal Mail’ insignia on one of the flaps, telling me it came from the UK. “Put these on the top shelf, lest some little old lady wanders over here from the Cozy Mystery aisle and finds herself scandalized.”
I pull a couple of the books out and find myself gazing upon the images of dark, cobbled streets and a faceless man in a cloak and top hat. Deconstructing Jack by Simon D. Wood, One Autumn in Whitechapel by M.P. Priestley. All the books in the box pertain to Victorian London’s real-life bogeyman, Jack the Ripper.
“You think someone who reads Madison Johns would find these offensive?” I ask.
Stax nods. “Never fails. Put a cat on the cover and they’ll read bloody murder all day long. Put a picture of a real corpse in the book and they turn green and run.”
“I’m not sure I can blame them.” I’m a rabid consumer of mystery fiction but can’t remember the last time I cast an eye to the True Crime section. “Wait, these books have pictures? Of Jack the Ripper’s victims?”
Stax snatches the copy of The Ripper Haunts by Michael Hawley from my hands as though
to protect me from it. “Yep,” she says with authority. “They ain’t in color, but trust me, they’re pretty gruesome. Particularly the one of the last victim.” At this she shivers.
“Wait, I thought you didn’t read the books you sell.”
“I gotta inspect the inventory, don’t I?”
I try to ignore the sheepish grin she works hard to swallow, but it is contagious. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Stax.”
“You’d sure as hell run a lot slower. Speaking of which, how was the run today? I hate missing Saturdays, but I need these books up before tomorrow. For some reason, blood and guts is popular with the after-church crowd.”
For the paltry sum of $30 twice a year, Run For It offers training programs for runners of all paces and abilities. There’s the Level 1 pace group largely comprised of experienced runners who maintain an above-average pace. Most of them have numerous marathons and ultramarathons under their belt. The Level 2 group, of which I am a member, is made up of the less experienced runners. Level 3 is for individuals with a much slower pace, mostly seniors and the mildly disabled who enjoy the lifestyle and the exercise but whose bodies won’t allow them to do much beyond walking.
Most of us in Level 2 are still running 5k (five-kilometer) and 10k runs as we work to master our pace and endurance. I’m currently training to run my first half-marathon in December, still six months away, while hopefully racking up a new 10k PR, or ‘personal record’, along the way. Tomorrow will be my first trail run and I’m hoping not to trip on a rock and twist my ankle.
Stax could run with the Level 1 group if she wanted, but she chooses to run with Level 2. She says she’d rather be the fastest runner in a slow group than the slowest runner in a fast group, but I suspect she likes to be where she’s most needed.
Seeing Stax this morning so boosts my spirits that I don’t want to broach the subject of Marlene, or that I am considering leaving the running group. But time and tide wait for no woman, and Stax sure as heck isn’t going to wait for me to feel like talking.
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