Tricia was already familiar with that name. She'd read at least one, perhaps two, books in the Bonnie Chesterfield librarian "cozy mystery" series. She remembered she'd liked them, but hadn't kept up with the rest of the series-- simply because she'd been preoccupied. By her divorce, by opening Haven't Got a Clue, and by the hundreds of other mystery books vying for her attention . . .
The question was: Could Fiona Sample actually be Faith Stone?
She clicked on the link to the author's bio. Fiona Sample was born in the U.S., but came to Canada in the early 1990s to live and work in Toronto. She married a Canadian citizen and lived happily outside of Kitchener, Ontario, with her two children, twins Jessica and Andre, and a house full of cats and dogs, as well as a yard full of chickens.
Chickens? Addie Martin from the Forever book series had kept chickens, too.
Tricia tried to remember the Bonnie Chesterfield books. They were contemporary novels set in western New York. Had Faith originally come from that state and transplanted herself to New Hampshire, as Tricia had done, or was the locale just enough over the border to interest an American publisher?
Tricia left the computer long enough to search her own bookshelves. It took ten minutes, but she did find the first book in Fiona Sample's series: Death Turns a Page, published some seven years before.
She flipped through the pages, reading paragraphs at random. The book was well written, and memories of it came back to her almost at once, but it didn't resonate like the Jess and Addie Forever historical mysteries. Could this be the same author who wrote the books Zoe took credit for?
Tricia just wasn't sure.
She went back to the computer and scanned the rest of the entry, then clicked on the link to Fiona's Web site. The site had only four pages. The About Fiona page had little more on it than the CWC site, and no picture, either. Tricia clicked the Contact button. That page gave her yet another link, which she clicked, and up popped an empty note addressed to [email protected] with a subject line of From the Web site.
Tricia thought about what she could write in the message area, something that would elicit a fast reply. After a few moments she erased the subject line and typed in "Nikki's in trouble." In the message area, she added, "She needs her mother." Tricia signed it with her standard signature line of her name, the store name, and the telephone number; clicked the Send button; and sent it flying through cyberspace.
With her laptop tucked under her arm, Tricia returned to Haven't Got a Clue, set the computer up behind the sales counter, and wondered when--or even if--she'd get a reply to her e-mail. For now, there was nothing to do but wait. And since the store was quiet, she decided to surf the Internet.
What she'd seen Sunday night at the scene of her car-- chase? wreck?--had stayed with her: an open body of water with no geese. She Googled the words "swan" and "geese," and hit the Enter key. Within seconds, a list of Web sites appeared on her computer screen.
The first few sites weren't helpful. But on the fourth one, she hit pay dirt. It suggested that mute swans, like the one she'd seen on Miller's Pond, had been used successfully as goose deterrents. Apparently swans aggressively protect their young, chasing away any creatures--including man--that dare to intrude on their breeding grounds. Bob hadn't mentioned swans during their talk some days before. Did he even know about this?
Hitting the Compose button, Tricia keyed in a quick note, including the Web site's URL, addressed the note to Bob at his Chamber e-mail address, and hit the Send key-- just as a customer opened the door and entered. Tricia didn't get back to her computer for another ten minutes. The note she found waiting her attention wasn't from Fiona Sample or Bob, but from Portia McAlister.
"Did you see my latest report? Catch it online," and she gave the URL.
Tricia clicked on the link.
The report was dated that morning, and she waited impatiently while the video loaded, then hit the Play button.
Portia stood along a bare patch of road, tall pines the only backdrop. The location looked suspiciously familiar. The door opened, admitting three potential customers. Ginny sprang into action, welcoming them as Tricia strained to listen to the report.
"--on this lonely patch of road. Stoneham merchants Tricia Miles, owner of the mystery bookstore Haven't Got a Clue, and her sister Angelica, who owns the Cookery bookstore, were two sisters on a mission of mercy when tragedy almost struck."
"Is this the only Agatha Christie book you have in stock?" asked a white-haired woman in a purple ski jacket.
"Uh--" Tricia tore her attention from the laptop's screen. "No." She cast about. "Mr. Everett, could you help this customer?"
Mr. Everett signaled the woman to follow him.
Portia had continued with her report, heedless of her lack of an audience. "--Kimberly Peters, in critical condition at Southern New Hampshire Medical Center--"
"There's no more coffee in the pot," said a gentleman customer, thrusting his empty cardboard cup at Tricia.
She gritted her teeth, trying to hold her temper. "One of us will take care of that in just a minute. Please excuse me for a moment." She turned back to the screen.
"Are these three incidents linked?" Portia asked earnestly.
The old telephone on the cash desk rang.
"With murder and attempted murder," Portia went on.
The phone rang again.
Tricia clicked on the video, stopping Portia in midsentence. She grabbed the phone. "Haven't Got a Clue mystery bookstore. This is Tricia, how may I help you?" she asked, sounding anything but helpful.
"This is Fiona Sample. What did you mean by your e-mail, Ms. Miles?"
"Oh, it's you!" Tricia said, startled, and had to catch her breath. "Uh, as I said in the note, I think your daughter Nikki's in terrible trouble. She needs her mother."
"I don't have a daughter by that name."
"You did when your name was Faith Stone."
Silence.
"Did you write the five Jess and Addie Forever historical mysteries attributed to Zoe Carter?" Tricia asked, pointblank.
"What?" Fiona said, sounding breathless. "What did you say?"
"Did you write the Jess and Addie historical mysteries?"
"Who are you? Where did you get that idea?"
"Miss, Miss!" the woman in the purple jacket insisted, holding up two volumes in her hands. "These aren't the Agatha Christie books I want. Don't you have a back room with other titles?"
"Mr. Everett!" Tricia called.
"Ms. Miles?" Fiona Sample insisted from hundreds of miles away.
"Excuse me," Tricia told Fiona, and turned to Mr. Everett. "We may have other titles, but they haven't been inventoried. I wouldn't know where to find them right this minute."
The woman slammed the books onto the glass counter. "What kind of customer service is this? I want Murder at Hazelmoor. I was told your store stocked every mystery book ever written!" she said indignantly.
Was she crazy?
"Ginny!" Tricia called.
Ginny looked up from her customer, excused herself, and hurried to the cash desk.
"Ginny, I'm on a very important phone call. Can you please help this customer?" she asked, pleading.
Ginny turned to the irate woman. "How can I help you, ma'am?"
"Ms. Miles," Fiona said firmly.
"I'm sorry," Tricia apologized. "It's organized mayhem in the store today. Would you be open to me calling you right back from a more quiet location?"
Tricia heard the woman on the other end of the line sigh. "Yes." She gave Tricia her number.
"Please call me right back," Fiona said. "I want to get to the bottom of this."
t w e n t y - t w o
"Wow," Ginny murmured, not for the first time. "You're practically a living, breathing Miss Marple to figure all that out yourself." Hearing her name, Tricia's little gray cat jumped onto the cash desk, immediately nuzzling her head on Ginny's chin. "Not you," she chided, petting the purring cat.
Tricia sho
ok her head. "I had a lot of help. And a lot could still go wrong. That's why I need your help to set this up."
"Hey, all you have to do is ask," Ginny said. "But do you really think you can pull it off by tomorrow? And what are your safeguards?"
"Good question."
Ginny beamed. "Hey, in the last year, I've read a lot of mysteries. I can't wait to see how this goes down," she said, perhaps a bit too eagerly.
Tricia shook her head. "You aren't going to be here. I won't put you or Mr. Everett in danger."
"Oh, but you being in danger is okay, right?"
"I won't be in danger."
"Doesn't that kind of contradict your previous statement?"
"It all depends on how much cooperation I can get from the Sheriff's Department."
Ginny snorted. "I think you can count on one hundred percent total noninvolvement from our local law enforcement."
"I hope you're wrong, but it will mean pulling in a few favors from friends and acquaintances."
Ginny crossed her arms over her chest. "Okay, I'll do as you ask, but if I don't get all the juicy details, I will commit serious mayhem."
"And you won't be the only one, I'm sure."
Ginny sobered. "What do you want me to do?"
"Tomorrow, late in the afternoon, you and I will call all the members of the Tuesday Night Book Club and tell them the regular meeting's been canceled."
"All but one member?" Ginny asked.
"Yes."
"And what if she calls or comes in asking about it?"
"There's only one person who could spill the beans."
"Frannie?"
Tricia nodded. "I'll handle her myself."
"Okay. That doesn't seem like much work to me."
"I'm sure I'll think of something else for you to do. In the meantime, there's a box of Agatha Christie books to shelve. I want to be ready in case our irate customer decides to come back and berate us again."
Ginny smiled. "You got it," she said, and trotted to the back shelves.
Tricia looked down at the notepad in front of her. The logistics of pulling everything off in just about twenty-four hours were frightening, but she felt she needed to gather all the players and have an old-fashioned showdown, just like in a Rex Stout Nero Wolfe Story.
First up was talking to Artemus Hamilton. She called his office and was told he would be out of town for at least the rest of the week, and no, she could not have his cell phone number. The Southern New England Medical Center told her that Kimberly Peters's room had no phone hookup. Okay, if that meant she'd have to make another visit to the hospital to track down Hamilton, she would.
Next on the agenda: backup for herself. She didn't feel like making the lonely ride to Nashua all by herself. Another phone call later and she'd lined up Russ to ride shotgun, but only if she promised to tell him the whole story. This time she readily agreed. There were just two people she didn't want to make a party to her plans: Angelica and Frannie. As she told Ginny, although without malice, Frannie was liable to blather, and Angelica was likely to put herself in danger trying to protect her baby sister. Tricia wasn't about to put her plan at risk by telling either woman more than she needed to know.
Still, the twenty-four-plus hours until her own private D-Day seemed like a lifetime.
Tricia let out a sigh and hoped she could orchestrate her plan. If the whole thing soured, Zoe Carter might not be the only fatality.
The elevator doors whooshed open. Tricia stepped into the quiet hospital corridor, with Russ right on her heels. He hadn't ridden shotgun after all, leaving that spot for her, and their trip to Nashua in his beat-up old pickup truck had been uneventful. The journey, that is. The conversation had been lively.
"Are you nuts?" Russ had asked when Tricia told him her plans for the next day. His next question had been "Can I be there?"
The answer to that was a flat "No! If you want to watch the store--either from across the street or behind in the alley, I could use someone out in the field on guard, just in case something goes wrong."
"Okay, but only because I'm getting that exclusive."
They turned the corner, passing the nurses' station and heading down the hall. The door to Kimberly's room was open, with no deputy on duty outside it. They peeked inside. The TV was switched on, with some decorating program from HGTV playing for background noise. Kimberly sat propped up in bed, her face still alarmingly swollen and bruised, a trail of bloody drool leaking from the corner of her mouth. Artemus Hamilton held a small plastic cup of dark liquid in one hand, and a spoon in the other. A bloodstained cloth lay on the bedside table. On the floor, parked against the wall, was Hamilton's opened briefcase with manuscript pages poking out of it. Angelica's manuscript?
It was Hamilton who first noticed their arrival. "Oh, look, Kimberly, Tricia and Mr. Smith have come to visit."
Kimberly blinked and slowly turned her face toward the doorway. What seemed like eons later, her eyes brightened and her lips parted into a toothless smile. "Tre-ah," she managed in greeting.
Tricia swallowed the urgent impulse to cry. She gave into emotion and surged forward to capture the frail Kimberly in a gentle hug, grimacing as she took in the fetid odor that seemed to surround her. A long moment later she felt a soft pressure on her back and realized Kimberly's free hand was patting her.
She pulled away. "Are you okay, Kimberly?"
A very dumb question.
Kimberly fell back against her pillows and a mix of grunt and laugh escaped her lips.
"She's much better today," Artemus said, his voice faltering, his eyes bright with unshed tears as he gently wiped away the bloody spittle that leaked from Kimberly's slack mouth.
Tricia braved a smile. "Yes, I can see that."
"I goh no teef," Kimberly mouthed, pointing at the stubs of knotted black suture that stuck out at angles from her scarlet gums.
"The dental surgeon came by today," Hamilton said. "He looked at the X-rays, and tomorrow he'll tell us what we can expect for treatment."
What we can expect?
"Kimberly could be eating steak again in just a few months," Artemus continued, his voice breaking.
Kimberly clapped her hands together like a small child, the gesture bringing Tricia close to tears once again. She cleared her throat, swallowing the onslaught of emotion that threatened to overwhelm her.
"Where's the deputy?" Russ asked.
Hamilton glowered. "The sheriff has decided that whatever danger Kimberly was in has passed, and she pulled the guard earlier this afternoon."
"Is that wise?" Tricia asked.
"I don't think so, but she wasn't interested in my opinion," Hamilton said. "That's why I've decided to spend the night. Someone needs to look out for Kimberly's interests."
Kimberly blinked, her brow furrowing as she tried to follow the conversation.
Tricia waggled a finger at Hamilton, who got up from the bedside chair to follow her.
Russ reached over to take the cup of cola and spoon from Hamilton's hands. "Hey, Kimberly, did you ever play dinnertime airplane when you were a kid?"
She looked at him quizzically. He dipped the spoon into the flat soda and waved it back and forth in front of Kimberly's face, her gaze joyfully following.
"Yee-ow, yee-ow," he intoned, mimicking a small aircraft, and gently landed the spoon onto her tongue.
She swallowed and laughed. "A-gah!" she said.
Russ obliged.
Hamilton followed Tricia into the corridor, his hands
plunged deep into his pants pockets, his shoulders slumped. "She's pretty high on painkillers," he said, glancing back into the room. "They're planning to wean her off them in the next couple of days."
Tricia nodded. "I'm so glad she's making progress, but it was really you I came to see."
"Me?"
"I found the woman who wrote the Jess and Addie books."
He frowned. "Why am I not surprised?"
"It really wasn't that hard. But I will
admit I had some help."
"And what do you expect me to do about it?"
"Help me expose Zoe's killer."
"You know who killed her?"
"I'm pretty sure I do. And I'm pretty sure I know why, too."
"He wants a cut of the money."
"She."
He turned, looked back into the hospital room. "And you think this person is the one who attacked Kimberly, too?"
Bookmarked For Death (Berkley Prime Crime Mysteries) Page 23