A Page Marked for Murder

by Lauren Elliott

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Paige,” Addie said as she shifted on her stool, struggling to keep her voice even in an attempt to conceal her shock, “do you really believe your father has something to do with the missing book?”

  “That’s exactly what I think.”

  “But both your mom and I saw it on Gloria’s bedside table, and there’s no evidence of a break-in. How would he have gotten it?”

  “Who knows? He was over at our house a few times last week. Maybe he stole the spare key Mom had, used it to get the book, and then put it back before she missed it, or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  Paige shrugged. “It’s possible he’s had a key since high school. They were all friends back then and still later when they went to college.”

  “Has Gloria lived in that house that long?”

  “Yes, it was her parents’ house. She’s always lived there. From the little bits of conversation I’ve heard between Mom and Gloria over the years, that’s where they all partied for a while. He could have had a key from back then. I doubt in all these years she’s ever had the locks changed. Heck, it’s only been the last ten years or so that some people in town even started locking their doors when they went out.”

  Addie glanced at the book cart filled with copies of The Secret Garden. “I’m going to take one of these to Gloria, so she has something to read in recovery, and I’ll ask her if he or anyone else could have a key from back then.”

  “Yeah, but if it turns out that it was Dad who took the book, there’s not much I can do about it. After all, he gave it to me. I guess that means he can take it back, too.”

  “It doesn’t work like that with gifts.”

  “You don’t know him. He’s never been a man of his word, so this doesn’t surprise me.”

  “If that were the case, why wouldn’t he just ask for the book back?”

  “Maybe he was afraid I knew its value and wouldn’t give it to him. This way, he’s sure to get his hands on it and make off with a tidy sum, isn’t he? Look, I’m going to go in the back and go through the boxes of props we use for displays to see if I can find something to create a secret garden with. That is unless you want me to stay up front?” She stacked books from the counter onto the cart.

  “No, you go ahead. I think by the activity on our doorstep, it might be a slow morning anyway.” Addie slipped a ten-dollar bill into the cash drawer to cover the cost of the book she was giving to Gloria and glanced out the window, noting all the shoppers on the other side of the road. “What do you think about us running a January sale? We have lots of calendars, candles, essential oils, and some other Christmas-themed knickknacks we can clear out.”

  “It is that time of year, and the Emporium on Main is running a huge sale. So yeah, it’s a great idea.”

  “Okay, I’ll pull some merchandise when I get back.” Addie slid into her coat and gave Pippi a scratch. She looked up at Paige. “Do you mind if I leave the princess here? I’ll only be gone a few minutes.”

  “No, she’s great company. She can stand guard at the back-room door and let me know if anyone comes in.” Paige grinned and scooped the little dog into her arms and headed for the back.

  “Guard dog? Hardly.” Addie chuckled softly and put the book into her purse. She turned to leave just as the door opened, and a ginger head appeared around the edge of the door.

  “Keith, hi.”

  “Hey. Paige isn’t at Elli’s or at home. I was wondering if she came here today.”

  “Yeah, she’s in the back.”

  “Of course she is.” He stepped inside and closed the door. “That girl, I told her to take a few days off. With all she’s been through this past week with Brett and that woman and now with Martha . . .” He glanced at the street. “Anyway, I wanted to make sure she and Emma were doing okay.”

  “Other than being a bit of a scatterbrain right now and all over the place in her thinking, she seems to be coping okay. Although, my guess is that what she’s experiencing is still shock, and it hasn’t all hit her yet.”

  “Yeah, that’s my worry, and when it does, she won’t be any good to herself or little Emma. I want to make sure she knows that in spite of . . . well, other things. I’m still here for both of them whenever they need me.”

  Addie guessed that the other things he referred to were the fact that he and Mellissa, Paige’s sister, were now living apart. “You’re welcome to go back and talk to her. I tried to get her to go home, but—”

  “She can be stubborn.” A low laugh rumbled in his chest.

  “Yes, she can.” Addie’s laugh mixed into a chorus with his. “Well, I have to pop out for a few minutes, but you can go back. She’s just sorting through some boxes.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Fingers crossed you can talk some sense into her and get her to take some time off to process all this.”

  Addie could hear his low chuckles all the way to the back room as she stepped out onto the street. She clasped her jacket tight around her neck to fend off an icy ocean windblast, and with head down, strode over through the park to the hospital.

  Paige’s words gnawed in Addie’s gut. Could Paige’s father really be behind the disappearance of the book? The thought was unfathomable to Addie, but from what little she knew about that family, she did know there were deep-seated problems. Perhaps Paige was right. She tried to wrap her head around it and recalled the first time she saw Ken and Brett. They were familiar to each other, which stood to reason. Brett was Ken’s granddaughter’s father, but there was something more to the animosity between them. Or am I only imagining that given one is dead and the other’s in jail?

  Addie snaked around a group of decorating committee members who were hard at work taking down the ice festival decorations. She made some small talk as she passed through—all the while keeping one eye open for Bill. If he had information to prove that someone else was on the beach at the time, he may well have been the last person to see Brett alive other than the killer. She would have to convince him to talk to Marc. How she would manage that, she wasn’t sure, but she knew in her gut that he knew more than he was saying. Perhaps if she could make him understand that withholding information about a crime was far more serious than the trouble he thought he would be in for disclosing it, that would help sway him to come forward.

  With no sign of Bill, she made her way into the hospital, up to Gloria’s room, and peeked around the door to make sure she wasn’t sleeping.

  “Addie, come in. You just missed Cliff. Look at the gorgeous flowers he brought me.”

  Addie glanced at the bouquet lying on the bedside table. She still couldn’t shake the feeling she’d had when Cliff miraculously found the keys in spite of the thorough search she’d conducted. For Gloria’s sake, she forced a smile. “They’re beautiful. I’ll go to the desk and see if they have a vase we can put them in.”

  “That’s okay. The nurse was by and said she’d bring me one when she comes back in a few minutes with my pills.” She glanced at Addie’s handbag. “Where’s my baby?”

  “I’m sorry. I left her at the bookstore to play guard dog for Paige.”

  “My Pippi a guard dog?” Gloria snickered. “That would be the day.”

  “I just thought it would be quicker if I left her there while I popped in to drop this off for you.” Addie slipped the copy of The Secret Garden out of her bag and placed it on the table beside the dozen long-stemmed roses. “It’s pretty special to receive a dozen roses from a gentleman. Are you sure that you and Cliff—”

  “Oh you.” She swiped her hand in the air. “Don’t start that again. Cliff and I are just old friends, and he knows roses are my favorite flower.”

  Addie raised a teasing brow as she took a seat on the bedside chair. “If you say so.”

  “Yes, I do say so.” Gloria’s face glowed with a healthy flush, and she crossed her arms, a mock look of indignation in her eyes as she peered sideways at Addie. “Thank you for the book.”
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br />   “No problem. I know it’s not the copy you had, but until we find that one, I thought at least you could still read it before the next book club meeting.”

  “And it will be such a relief to have something else to think about other than dwelling on everything that happened and beating myself up for being so stupid on Friday.”

  Addie reached over and slipped Gloria’s cool hand into hers. “You can’t think that way. It was an unfortunate accident. That’s all. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I shouldn’t have been on that ladder in the first place. As soon as it started to shake, I knew I must not have made sure it was stable before I climbed up. I was just in such a hurry to get everything done . . .” She buried her face in her hands and moaned, “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

  “Now, now, it’s in the past, and what you have to do is move forward and think of it this way. You have a brand-new shiny hip, and you’ll be back to climbing ladders again in no time.” Addie hoped her smile looked authentic. In truth, she wasn’t certain if her words rang true or not. She really wasn’t familiar with the procedure of hip replacements or the recovery after. The last thing she wanted was to give her friend false hope.

  “I keep replaying it over and over in my mind, and I guess the only good thing to come out of that moment was seeing how helpful people in this town really are in an emergency. Like the fellow who was at my side as soon as I hit the ground. Now I know who he is.” She picked up a folded newspaper lying on the bed and pointed to a photo. “As soon as I saw this picture it came back to me, and I remembered. He was the dark blur crouched over me, making sure I was comfortable. He even readjusted my parka, so it wasn’t bunched up underneath me.” Gloria flung the newspaper back onto the bed. “But it says here that he died on Saturday, so I can’t even thank him for being so kind to me.”

  Addie reached over and seized the paper. She stared at the photo of Brett Palmer on the front page and then glanced at Gloria. Her chest constricted. “Are you sure this is the man who was the first on the scene after your fall?”

  “Yes, as soon as I saw his face, it came back to me. He had such kind soft-brown eyes.”

  Addie sat back on the chair with a thud.

  “What happened to him? Was he hit by a car or something? All it says here is that Brett Palmer has been identified as the person who was found in the alley off Birch.” Gloria’s eyes widened and filled with horror. “That’s yours and Martha’s alley, isn’t it?” She shifted to support herself up on one arm and locked her gaze on Addie’s. “Is that why Martha hasn’t been by? Is she the one who hit him?”

  Given the fact that Gloria had no recognition of the name Brett Palmer told Addie that if Martha ever discussed Emma’s paternity with her friends, she must have used far more colorful language than his name to describe him with—something Martha was famous for.

  It was also clear that Gloria, being in relative isolation from the outside world these past few days, wasn’t aware of what had happened or that her friend was sitting in a jail cell under suspicion of murder. That was a testament to the fact that Cliff or any hospital staff which came and went weren’t spreading rumors or gossip either. Addie gripped the chair arms. She had hoped that by now Martha herself would have been released so she could explain everything to her friend. But she could see by the look on Gloria’s face it was up to her.

  Addie drew in a deep, slow breath and relayed everything she knew about Brett’s death, where the body was discovered, and the hardest part—the reason this woman’s lifelong friend couldn’t come to visit. When Addie finished, she sat back in the chair, her gaze fixed on Gloria’s expressionless eyes.

  “Hmm”—Gloria fluffed the pillow under her head—“I’d say we have a bit of work to do to get her out, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “I’ve read my fair share of murder mystery novels, and you seem to be a magnet for bodies, and if I remember correctly, have had a hand in solving one or two murders lately, right?”

  “Well”—Addie wrung her hands in her lap—“I guess I have led the police to solve them in one way or another.”

  “You did more than that by my recollection, but that’s neither here nor there. We have a mystery to solve, and it affects my best friend and her future. I know she didn’t have anything to do with that scoundrel of a man winding up dead behind her store, so how are we going to prove it?”

  “To be honest with you, I don’t know. Between trying to find your lost book and everything else, I haven’t been able to focus on Brett’s death. I told you what the witness said about the state Brett was in on the beach Saturday night, and that he was on the phone, arguing with someone. But I spoke to that same witness not long ago, and he said there was someone else there that he hadn’t told the police about. I think until I can persuade him to talk to me and come forward with his information, there’s not much we can do but let the police do their job.”

  “Who’s this witness you’re referring to?”

  “I shouldn’t say anything until I can get more information.”

  Gloria’s eyes narrowed on Addie’s.

  Addie shifted uneasily in her seat. “Okay, if you must know, it’s Old Bill.”

  Gloria tossed back her head and laughed. “Old Bill, as everyone refers to him, is no older than Martha or me. As a matter of fact, he was part of our group back in the day.”

  “Really?” Addie blinked in disbelief.

  “Really. He used to have such a crush on Martha, followed her around like a puppy dog. He’d have done anything for her.”

  Her words turned Addie’s blood to ice water. “Would anything include killing someone he thought was causing Martha stress or pain?”

  “If that were the case, Ken would have been dead years ago. No, Bill’s a good soul. Lovestruck still maybe, but he wouldn’t harm a fly.”

  “Was Bill afraid of Ken?” Addie recalled the look on Bill’s face when he realized he had said too much to her.

  “Afraid? No. Well, perhaps a bit. You see, Bill Unger was a fringer. He hung around with us, always sort of in the shadows but never really part of the group. He was a Vietnam vet. Did you know that?”

  “No, I wasn’t aware.”

  “Yeah, he always wanted to be a chef and to go to culinary school, but the day Martha and Ken announced their engagement, he went straight to the closest recruitment center and signed up. He served a couple of years and spent part of that as a prisoner of war before the troops pulled out. When he was released and got to come home . . .” She laid her head back, her eyes reddening. “Let’s just say, he was never the same. He avoided all of us and didn’t even show up to his own welcome-home party that I threw for him at my house.”

  Addie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It all made more sense now. If Bill had been a POW, that explained so much about his fear of the police and of going to jail. “Has he been on the streets since then?”

  “Not really. It was gradual. He worked wherever he could find it, doing odd jobs and such. I think he even tried his hand at being a line cook for a while when he first came back, but he couldn’t hold a job. Finally, it seems whatever died inside during the war also killed his spirit, and that’s when . . . well. You’ve seen the results.”

  Addie nodded and took a deep breath as she shifted uncomfortably on her chair and squeezed Gloria’s hand. “I understand more now. I also understand that most of the partying back then went on at your place, the house you still live in. Is that true?”

  “Yeah.” Gloria turned her head toward Addie. “My parents were killed in a horrific car accident up there on the switchback by Pen Hollow when I was a senior in high school. Since I had just turned eighteen, and they had left me the house in their will, the courts allowed me to stay. I was in rough shape for a long time and took it out by partying pretty hard. We all did. Since everyone lived at home, and I had no parental supervision, my house was the place to be in those days.”

  “D
id anyone else in the group have a key to your house?”

  “A key? Heavens no! The house was always open. Nobody locked their doors back then. The world was a different place than it is today.”

  “But could it have been possible for someone to have had one and have used it recently?”

  “I suppose so, but I don’t even remember needing to use a key myself then. The locks have never been changed in all these years.” Gloria raised her head and stared at Addie. “Why, what are you thinking?”

  “I’ m trying to figure out how the book from your bedside table has gone missing when there are no signs of a break-in.”

  “You know that? Have you been speaking to that Detective Ryley, too?”

  “Actually, I was with Carolyn when she went to look for evidence when I couldn’t find the book.”

  “My, my, you have been busy with all of this, haven’t you?” Gloria said, dropping her head back on the pillow. “The detective told me that the book was missing and asked me a ton of questions, but what she didn’t tell me is why such a fuss over it?” She pinned Addie with a glare. “What is it you’re not telling me, and does this have anything to do with my friend rotting in a jail cell?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I don’t think the book has anything to do with Brett being killed, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “The book Paige loaned you is actually a first edition and worth over twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  Gloria let out a low whistle. “You don’t say. This book was on my nightstand, and now it’s gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ken!”

  “What?”

  “It had to have been Ken. He gave that book to Paige. He knew she had it. I bet ten-to-one when he found out the value that he’s the one who went in and took it.”

  “That’s what Paige is thinking, too, which is why—”

  “Which is why you wanted to know about the house key?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Addie pressed her back against the wall in the hallway outside Gloria’s room. Paige wasn’t the only one who needed to process all the information being thrown at her lately. Granted, Addie’s wasn’t as monumental as a person once close to her winding up dead; her parents being held as prime suspects; or having been faced with the possibility of losing the most important person in her life, her daughter; or her valuable book going missing. Nevertheless, it all seemed to involve, in one way or the other, many of the people Addie cared deeply about. She needed Simon. He always offered a clear perspective to these situations.