The Coloring Crook

by Krista Davis

  A cluster of people arrived at that moment.

  Eric said, “Sorry, ladies. I’m going to have to ask you to step outside so they can collect evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?” asked Veronica.

  “Evidence of what happened to Dolly.”

  The newcomers said hello to Eric as they passed us and started their work in Dolly’s apartment.

  When we walked into the foyer, Dolly’s tenants were clustered on the stairs, watching in horror.

  Eric motioned to them. “Everyone follow me, please?”

  He led the way out to the sidewalk.

  Priss bawled. She pulled the sash tighter on her silky pink robe. Edgar removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He wore a gray T-shirt and jeans as though he had thrown them on in a rush.

  “Florrie!” cried Olivia. “What happened?”

  “I’m so sorry. Dolly died. She left her purse at the bookstore. When we brought it to her, she was on the floor.”

  “I saw her eyelids move,” said Veronica.

  “Are you sure she’s dead?” Priss ran to the gate and gazed at the house. “Maybe she’s alive but not able to move? I’ve heard about that happening.”

  “I’m sorry, Priss. I don’t think so. We were hopeful, but . . .” I wanted to join her at the gate, but Eric asked her to move away so the investigators could get in and out.

  “Nooo,” she sobbed.

  Edgar appeared to be stunned. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “She was so happy this afternoon.”

  “Who will call Maisie?” asked Olivia.

  The words were barely out of her mouth when Eric asked who Maisie was.

  “Dolly’s daughter.” I introduced him to everyone. It wasn’t like a social introduction, though.

  He took each of them aside and asked them questions. When he was through, he joined the rest of us. “I gather Dolly wasn’t married,” he said. “How many children did she have?”

  “Just the one daughter,” said Olivia. “Can we go into Dolly’s apartment? She kept Maisie’s phone number on her desk.”

  “Sorry, I can’t let you in there yet. I’ll look for it when the evidence technicians are through.”

  “What’s Maisie’s last name?” asked Eric.

  “Cavanaugh. Just like her mom,” said Olivia.

  Priss sniffled as she said, “Maisie was engaged once very briefly, but it didn’t work out.”

  “I don’t understand,” blubbered Veronica. “If she died from a heart attack, what are they looking for?”

  Eric wrote a note to himself as he answered her. “Sometimes there’s a cause of death that isn’t readily apparent. An injection site, for instance. And sometimes insurance companies ask for information after a death. So we have to be thorough.”

  We watched silently as they brought Dolly’s body out of the brownstone on a gurney. I felt as though we were already part of a funeral procession as we followed Dolly’s gurney to the waiting ambulance.

  The evidence technicians were still at work. Eric told us to remain outside, but he entered the building.

  Neighbors began to collect and ask questions. Tears flowed from everyone. Dolly had been much loved.

  Eric finally returned. “Thanks for your help. You can all go home now. They’re still working in Dolly’s apartment, but they’re done with the foyer. I found the phone number, by the way. I dread making this call.”

  Olivia dabbed her nose with a tissue. “Don’t sweat it. Maisie wasn’t close to her mother.”

  We said good night to Olivia, Priss, and Edgar, before setting off on foot with Eric.

  “We don’t need an escort, Eric.” Veronica pulled her cross-body bag over her head.

  “I don’t mind. Besides, it’s two in the morning.”

  I gasped. “It didn’t seem like it took that long. Poor Dolly. It’s such a cruel twist of fate for her to die right before life would have gotten easier for her.”

  “It’s so unfair,” wailed Veronica. “Which just goes to show that we should all live each day as if it’s our last—because it could be.”

  Eric waited until Veronica was safely in her car and pulling out of the estate driveway before walking me to the front door of the carriage house and kissing me. “Are you going to be all right? I go through this a lot, but I usually don’t know the person. It must have been a big shock to you.”

  “I can’t quite grasp that Dolly is gone. Just a few hours ago she was fine and happy.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t stick around. I have to file my report.”

  “No problem. I’m sure you still have a lot of work to do.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Veronica and I are supposed to meet our parents for brunch before work. In the evening, maybe?”

  After one last long kiss, I shut the door. Through the window, I could see that he waited to hear the bolt drop in place before he walked away. Cops! They saw danger everywhere.

  My cat Peaches yawned as she stretched.

  “Hungry?” I asked.

  She moseyed over to her bowl and looked up at me sleepily.

  I filled the bowl with beef cat food. “Sorry about the late dinner.”

  She didn’t seem too upset about it.

  I changed into an oversized T-shirt in the colors of the rainbow that said, Color your cares away! I returned to the kitchen and contemplated a stiff drink. Wasn’t that what people did when they’d had a rough night? It didn’t appeal to me, though. I fixed myself a mug of steaming English Breakfast with milk and sugar, and curled up on my sofa with my sketchbook. What had Dolly said? She was blessed with beauty. Drawing Dolly’s face was simultaneously sad and cathartic for me.

  As I drew, I realized that her face was quite oval, not round as one might have thought. Her likeness came together well, and I realized that she hadn’t been boasting. She must have been beautiful when she was young. Except for her few extra pounds, she had been remarkably pretty in her sixties as well.

  She had amazingly symmetrical features. Her large eyes seemed too happy when I drew them, but that was how I had known her. They matched her bubbling personality. Through it all, the four husbands and the struggle to make a life for herself and Maisie, she had remained cheerful and optimistic.

  I doodled the shape of the scrap of paper she had held at the time of her death. Was she holding on to it while someone ripped it away from her? Or had she fallen while looking through the book and accidentally torn the page? I itched to see the scrap again. Could a scientist tell what had happened by the way the margin had been torn? Probably not. A tear was a tear.

  I paused to sip my tea and when I began to doodle again, I found myself drawing Jack Miller’s face. With all the excitement about The Florist, I had nearly forgotten about Jack.

  It was his sharp jaw that I recalled most vividly. Thick walnut-brown eyebrows topped serious hazel eyes that canted down just a bit at the outer corners. I had trouble getting his nose right, but his thick hair was easy.

  It had been a strange day. I wondered if he had made it home okay.

  I finally drifted off, only to be awakened by the telephone at four in the morning. In my entire life, I had never received good news from a phone call between midnight and six a.m. Immediately alert, I seized the phone and said hello.

  Chapter 6

  The voice on the phone said, “This is Steve Goolsby from Goodwinkle Security Systems. The alarm on Color Me Read is going off. We have notified the police.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much.” I hung up and dialed Professor Maxwell’s number as I ran upstairs, limping just a tad from the bruise on my leg. I was holding the phone with one hand and pulling on a pair of pedal pushers when his elderly butler Mr. DuBois answered in a very grouchy tone.

  “Do you know what time it is? Of course you do. You have a hundred clocks.”

  I slid a blue short-sleeved top over my head. “The alarm is going off at the store. I thought Professor Maxwell should know.”
I rushed downstairs, holding the phone to my ear. Peaches recognized my panic and ran along with me as I dashed through the carriage house.

  While I popped the top on a can of cat salmon and dumped the contents into Peaches’s plate, I realized there had been a long silence from Mr. DuBois. “Hello? Are you there?”

  “I am, but Maxwell is not.”

  To Peaches I whispered, “I’ll be back later, but I don’t know when.”

  Still on the phone, I grabbed my purse, and locked the door behind me.

  “Okay. No problem. I’ll have to handle it. Where is he?”

  “Miss Florrie! How many times do I have to tell you that I do not gossip?”

  I was too worried about the store to laugh. Mr. DuBois loved to gossip. Maxwell had recently rekindled his relationship with his ex-wife. She often stayed over at the mansion. “I’m sure Jacquie knows where he is.”

  “I doubt that. Jacquie is off at some romance writer convention in Las Vegas. I’m quite concerned about Maxwell. I don’t like him staying out all night. It’s not like him.”

  While I would have been happy to learn more, it just wasn’t the right time. “When he comes in, tell him what’s going on.” I said goodbye and hung up. And for the second time in twelve hours, I did my best to run. The streets of Georgetown were still sleepy. Few houses had lights on yet. I hadn’t run an entire block when I slowed to a rapid walk, which probably was about the same speed as my inept running had been.

  I tried to calm myself by thinking Professor Maxwell had probably arrived at the office in the middle of the night and simply forgotten to shut off the burglar alarm. He hadn’t done it before, but it was certainly possible.

  I heard the alarm blaring as I power-walked closer. When I rounded the corner and saw two police cars parked in front of the store and no sign of the professor, those hopes faded fast. A uniformed officer casually walked toward me. “Are you the manager?”

  “Yes. What happened?”

  “We got a call from your alarm company. The front door is locked.” The name on his uniform said Petrocelli.

  “That’s odd. Unless”—I hated to even imagine this possible scenario—“the owner arrived and something happened to him so that he couldn’t turn off the alarm.”

  The officer looked at me askance. “I doubt that. Not many people would arrive at their place of work this early.”

  “He does. Professor Maxwell doesn’t seem to have an internal clock.”

  Another officer joined us as we walked up the few stairs to the entrance.

  When we reached the top and I pulled out my key, Petrocelli said, “I want you to unlock the door, but you stay out here on the sidewalk while we go inside. Understand?”

  “No problem.” I had no desire whatsoever to encounter a burglar. I unlocked the door for the officers and scampered down to the sidewalk.

  Petrocelli opened the door. The two officers entered Color Me Read.

  I waited outside with adrenaline pumping through me. I reasoned that the burglar had probably left as soon as the alarm blared. There was nothing to be nervous about. He was probably long gone.

  To see above the awning that ran across the front of the building, I backed up as far as I could go without stepping into the street.

  The beams of flashlights flicked by the display windows on the first floor as the officers swept the building. Seconds later, someone ran out the front door. I moved closer, thinking it was a cop, but he or she wore a ski mask that covered his face.

  I shrieked in surprise and shock. Those ski masks were some kind of scary! The person looked straight at me for what must have been seconds but felt like minutes. He turned right and hightailed it along the sidewalk. I yelled, “He’s running down the street!”

  The cops must not have heard me over the alarm that was still ringing.

  I backed up to the street again and waved my arms in case one of them looked outside.

  The second-floor windows were tall French doors that opened to a tiny balcony that ran the width of the building. They were dark, as were the windows on the third floor.

  Suddenly, one of the French doors on the second floor opened and someone stepped out. Thinking it must be a police officer, I yelled, “He went that way!” And I pointed to the right.

  The person jumped onto the awning, slid off it, and landed feet first in a squat. He was dressed all in black, definitely not one of the officers. I couldn’t see his face. He touched the sidewalk briefly to stabilize himself and took off running.

  It happened in a matter of seconds. I ran up the stairs to the front door. Remaining outside, I yelled again. “They’re out here!”

  Over the blaring alarm, I could barely hear footsteps on the bookstore stairs as Petrocelli ran down. I stepped aside and pointed in the direction the people had gone. Even with the showroom lights of the stores that lined the street and the prominent streetlights I couldn’t make anyone out. They had disappeared into the night.

  Petrocelli jogged along the sidewalk but he was too late. He trudged back to me, calling in on his radio. I hoped another squad car in the area might intercept the burglars.

  When he put his radio away, he said, “Come inside and turn off that blasted alarm.”

  I entered the bookstore and gazed around in horror. The burglars had done a number behind the checkout counter. All the special orders that were waiting to be picked up now lay haphazardly on the floor. They had torn a framed poster off the wall that said Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.—Mark Twain.

  “I would assume that your visitors don’t have a sleepy conscience,” quipped Petrocelli.

  He watched while I punched in the code. The sudden silence was almost deafening after the blare of the siren.

  “Stay out there where you were while we finish,” said Petrocelli. “We need to make sure there wasn’t anyone else.”

  It irritated me not to have my watch on. How could I have skipped putting it on? I estimated that it only took them another ten minutes, though it felt like hours before they appeared on the stoop. Petrocelli asked, “Would you please come inside?”

  I returned to the store and walked to the middle of the mess behind the checkout counter. “It doesn’t look like they tried to break into the cash register.”

  “How can you tell?” asked Petrocelli.

  “They were pretty brutal with everything else, but there aren’t any scratches or obvious attempts to break into the cash register.”

  “Don’t touch anything. We’ll need to check for fingerprints.”

  I nodded and stepped into the parlor. The furniture hadn’t been slashed or turned over, but the cushions were on the floor. They didn’t come to destroy the store. They hadn’t come looking for cash. They had been looking for something else, and I thought I might know what it was.

  I turned to Petrocelli. “I think they may have been looking for The Florist. It’s a rare book. The woman who discovered it . . .” I paused, unsure how to phrase what had happened to Dolly. Should I say she was murdered? They hadn’t decided that for sure. I kept it simple. “The woman who found the book is now dead.”

  After that, of course, it seemed prudent to tell them the whole story.

  Petrocelli stepped away and made a phone call.

  The other officer smiled at me. “It’s probably just a coincidence.”

  Really? I didn’t think so. What kind of burglars ignored the cash register and ripped cushions off a sofa in a store? I didn’t think for one minute that they were hoping to find loose change that had fallen out of pockets. Nope. Those guys were looking for something. Something that someone would have hidden. I wondered if they had torn apart the rare book room on the third floor. With any luck, they hadn’t known that we had a rare book room or maybe they hadn’t made it up to the third floor before the cops arrived.

  I peeked into the children’s book room. It was in surprisingly good shape, which I thought supported my theory.

  Then i
t dawned on me that while I didn’t live that far away, it must have taken me at least ten minutes to get to the bookstore. I whipped around. “When did you arrive?”

  The cop looked at me in surprise. “Just before you did.”

  “So those guys heard the alarm going off and were willing to hang around anyway for ten minutes?”

  “The pros figure they’ve got a couple of minutes.”

  They figured right. I guessed they might have been walking up the stairs or checking the basement when the police cars pulled up. “You didn’t have your siren on?”

  He shook his head. “Not for something like this. We thought it might be a silent alarm and didn’t want to scare away the perpetrator.”

  I guessed that made sense. Still, it had to take some very serious guts to search while an alarm was going off and everyone was being notified. I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate. It did explain, however, why they were so sloppy. There wasn’t time to do anything but run through the store slinging things around.

  “Did you check the basement?” I asked.

  The cop looked annoyed.

  Thankfully, at that very moment, Eric dashed into the store. He grabbed me by the upper arms and looked into my face. “Are you all right?”

  I couldn’t help smiling. He looked so sincere. “I’m fine. I was at home asleep when the alarm went off. How did you hear about it?”

  He took a deep breath. “I was at home asleep, too. But I got a call from the station. Something about a connection to Dolly’s death.”

  “That’s my fault. I think the burglar was searching for The Florist.”

  I explained my reasoning to Eric but the whole time I talked, I could see the cynical expression on the other cop’s face.

  “So,” said the other cop. “Some old lady died, and you think that someone broke into your bookstore in search of her book? Sheesh.”