Verse and Vengeance

by Amanda Flower

  I woke up the next morning before dawn breathing easier. I hadn’t known until that new morning what a weight my secret put on my shoulders. There were no more barriers between Rainwater and me. I felt lighter, and then I remembered Jo. The girl was still missing, and there was still a killer on the loose, most likely trying to find her. I had to find her first.

  Whitman was on my nightstand. Still wearing my pajamas, I picked it up and carried it into my living room. I sat on the couch and started to read, hoping the answers would become clearer. I thought of the line of poetry Redding had left for me again. “All truths wait in all things.” But what were the truths when it came to Redding’s death?

  I kept reading, and when I looked at the clock again, it was after ten. Charming Books should have been open by now. I dashed into my bathroom and got ready.

  By the time I ran down the spiral staircase, I saw the front door of the shop was already open. Faulkner sat on his perch by the front window, ready and able to greet shoppers with a verbal insult or a line of poetry. Which one he would use really depended on his mood. Nine times out of ten, though, he fell on insult.

  “I opened for you today, Violet,” my grandmother said, coming into the main room of the shop from the kitchen. She had a teacup in her hand, and she wore a butterfly scarf around her neck.

  “You should have woken me up.” I rubbed my eyes. “I was up reading and lost track of time. You should have knocked on my door.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’ve been up late so many nights dealing with Redding’s death that I thought it was high time I pulled my weight around here.”

  I shook my head. “Grandma Daisy, you have always pulled your weight. You took care of this shop long before I moved back to the village.”

  She held up her teacup. “Maybe so, but I believe I’ve been so wrapped up in this museum that I have been shirking my duties here.”

  “You have responsibilities. The village needs you.”

  She patted my cheek. “And none more important than you. Besides, there isn’t much I can do at the village hall while it’s in disarray. The rain did a real number on the foundation, and Vaughn said no one should go in there until he’s sure it’s stable. I can work on mayoral things remotely.” She shook her head. “Despite everything, I still believe that this museum will be the crown jewel of the village when it’s done.” She handed the teacup to me. “For you, dear.”

  I sipped and found that she had made my favorite English breakfast tea.

  “You’re going to need your strength if you are going out there to find Jo.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Don’t you think I would know that’s what you were planning to do today?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  She took the teacup from my hand. “Then go, girl.”

  I left the bookshop a few minutes later, going to the only place I thought I might find someone who knew where Jo was.

  I rolled into the parking lot of Bobby’s Bike Shop, and the owner greeted me at the door. “Ready to trade in that old thing for a hybrid? They ride like a dream.”

  “No, not yet.” I removed my bike helmet.

  He grinned. “It was worth a try. I am having a sale on helmets.” He looked at the violet-painted helmet in my hand.

  I hung my helmet on the handlebar of my bike. “My grandmother made that for me. No matter how much I might look ridiculous wearing it, I can’t get a new one.”

  He laughed. “I can respect that. If you aren’t here to buy something, it must be about Jo.”

  I nodded.

  He sighed and rubbed the back of his head. “I knew you would come back, and I have been struggling with what to do when you did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You had better come inside.”

  I followed Bobby into his shop, which was one giant room full to bursting with bikes and bike parts. Bicycles even hung from the rafters above our heads. Bobby wove through the bikes to the back corner of the store, where there was an oil-stained drop cloth on the vinyl flooring. On the cloth was an upside-down bike, clearly in the middle of repairs. It had no spokes in its wheels or tires. The seat was missing, too. Bobby kneeled behind the bike. “I found this beauty sitting on the lawn in front of one of the swanky houses in the bird neighborhood. It’s amazing what rich people will throw away. This bike can be as good as new with a little TLC.”

  The bird neighborhood was the expensive artist colony in Cascade Springs. Rent there started in the thousands per month.

  He turned the pedal closest to him and watched as the chain click-clicked forward and then caught and stopped.

  “You know where Jo is.” It was a statement, not a question. I felt odd looming over him while he worked on the bike, so I perched on a nearby stool.

  He shook his head. “I knew where Jo was a day ago. I don’t know where she is now.”

  “Where was she hiding?”

  He tried to turn the pedal again. It wouldn’t give. “I let her stay here.”

  It was what I’d expected him to say. “She came to my shop last night.”

  His eyes went wide. “She did? Is she all right? Was it before or after the storm? I was worried about her being out in that.”

  “During the storm,” I said. “She had been hiding in the park.”

  “I’m not surprised to hear that. I haven’t heard from her in at least a day. I’m glad to hear that she was all right.”

  “Why did you help Jo hide from the police?”

  He sighed. “I see myself in her. We have a lot in common in our pasts.”

  “What do you mean?” I set my feet on the high rungs of the stool.

  “I was a kid who got in trouble too. The only attention I ever got was from getting into trouble. I thought after some time that’s who I was. It wasn’t until I was sent to juvenile hall that I got scared straight. I didn’t want something like that to happen to Jo. At the core of it, she’s a good kid who’s made some bad choices.”

  “You mean the stealing.”

  “You know about that?”

  I nodded. And while I hadn’t truly counted the free coffees at the campus as stealing, her “gifting” of free beverages did in fact deprive the campus of income.

  “I’ve been trying to help her, and she’s been doing so well too, ever since she started working for me, but I’ve noticed in the last few months she has been more guarded again. Secretive. I know from my own troubles that it was a sure sign she was falling back into her old ways.”

  “What happened over the last few months?” I asked.

  He removed the gears from the bike and laid them on the drop cloth. “She’s been calling out from work more often. She’s been jumpy. She seems to be always looking over her shoulder. When I asked her about it, she told me that she was fine, only stressed out about school. When the semester was over and she didn’t seem to get better, I knew something else was going on, but she still wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

  I wrapped my arms around my waist. I wished Jo had been comfortable enough to trust me. I could have helped her too. I wondered if my relationship with Rainwater was what had kept her from trusting me like she had Bobby.

  “Did she come to you for help after the race?”

  He spun the gears on the bike in front of him.

  “Bobby, Jo’s in danger. Please tell me what you know.”

  He sighed. “She did. She told me that she was in some kind of trouble. She didn’t say what it was. This was before I knew Redding was killed. I didn’t know anything about that.”

  “What did you do for her?”

  “I offered her a place to stay, like I told you. I said no one would be at the bike shop because it was closed for the race, and all my customers were in the race besides. I gave her a lift back to my shop.”

  “So that’s why you weren’t around after the bike race.”

  He nodded. “I didn’t even get out of the car when I dropped her off here. I had to get back to the rac
e.”

  “Was she here after you learned about Redding?”

  He nodded. “I told her the police were looking for her and asked what she had done. She bolted after that. I regret my questions now. I should have handled it differently.”

  “Did she ever come back to the bike shop after that?”

  “No. She was here only one night as far as I know.” He held the chain up to the light and examined it. “I know that she left because she wanted to protect me. She didn’t want me to get in trouble too. She left me a note telling me that.”

  “Do you still have the note?”

  He sighed.

  I cocked my head. “Can I see it?”

  He frowned and then stood up. He opened the drawer of a tool cabinet and pulled out a scrap of paper. “It’s not much.” He held it out to me.

  I took the note from his hand. In hasty cursive, it read,

  Bobby

  Thanks you for help. I had to leave. It’s not safe for me to be here. I’ll be fine. I know how to take care of myself.

  The note wasn’t signed, but I had no reason to doubt it was from Jo. “The police need this.”

  “You can have it,” he said.

  “I can give it to them, but they will want to talk to you about it.” I folded the note as carefully as I could and put it in my pocket.

  “I know,” he said with resignation, and knelt in front of the broken bike again. He put the chain back on the drop cloth. “Like I said before, she’s a good kid, even if she’s made some really bad choices in the past.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police or me any of this before?” I asked, holding on to the stool with both of my hands on either side of my legs.

  “I thought maybe that she killed him. I didn’t want to believe that it was possible, but it is possible, and I didn’t want the repercussions for her. If she killed him, I knew she would go to prison, and I didn’t want that. I thought it would be better if she could get away. I’ve made mistakes too. That’s why I left Atlanta all those years ago. I had to get away and start in someplace new. After a while, I ended up here in Cascade Springs, and I never looked back. I was hoping that Jo would leave and find her own Cascade Springs. Although I would miss her, I thought that was what was best for her.”

  I realized that Bobby cared about Jo a lot. Her saw her potential and didn’t want her to ruin her life. I didn’t want that either, but if she’d murdered Redding, didn’t justice have to be served? I mean, there were crimes, and then there was the deed of actually taking a life …

  I shook my head as if to chase the thoughts away. I couldn’t believe she had killed him. It just wasn’t possible. Because if she’d killed him, did that mean she’d killed Bryant Cloud too? And if that was true, where had she gotten the gun to shoot Danielle’s ex-husband?

  “Where else might she have gone after leaving the bike shop? Do you know any of her friends? Did they ever visit her in the shop?”

  He shook his head. “No, Jo is a loner.”

  I nodded. That had always been my perception, too. “What about her brother? He’s in Cascade Springs working on the village hall. Would she have gone to him?”

  He replaced the gears on the bike and picked up a can of oil and oiled them. It reminded me of the tin man oiling his joints in The Wizard of Oz. He looked up from his work. “I doubt it. I never got the impression that she was close to anyone in her family. She told me once she and her brother grew up in the foster system. They were separated and didn’t reunite until she was eighteen and out on her own.”

  My heart broke from hearing that. No wonder Jo had a problem with authority like the police.

  “Bobby, I want to help her. I don’t believe she killed Redding, but I do believe she knows who did. We have to protect her from that person. The only way to do that is to find her.”

  “If she knows who killed him, she never told me. I told her not to tell me why she needed to hide. The more I knew, the harder it would be to protect her.” He replaced the chain back onto the bike’s gears. His hands were covered in oil.

  “I don’t think she told anyone, which might be even worse for her. If she is the only one who knows the identity of the killer, all the killer has to do is kill her to get clean away.”

  Bobby sat back on his heels. I could see the wheels turning in his head like the gears on the many bikes in his shop.

  “Please, Bobby. I care about Jo too. I just want her to be safe. She can’t run from whoever she’s so afraid of for the rest of her life.”

  “There’s one more place that she might have gone. It was the place she talked about the most since she started acting strangely.”

  “Where?”

  “The village hall.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  As I rode back to the village on my old bike and wearing my ridiculous helmet, I debated telling Rainwater what I knew before going to the hall. In the end, I decided against it. I thought that if Jo was there, she was much more likely to speak to me alone.

  River Road was quiet. There were a few tourists in the village, and it was near lunchtime. My stomach rumbled. I hadn’t stopped to eat breakfast that morning.

  My footsteps echoed in the hall. I looked around the wide-open rotunda, taking care not to step into the hole in the floor. If I was hiding in this building, where would I go? Not the rotunda, that was for sure. I could see every inch of it from where I stood. I wouldn’t go into the hole, either. It was too creepy and too dirty. I glanced at the plastic sheet that led into the part of the building that would be the museum. That’s where I would go.

  Before I entered the museum, I heard the click, click, click of heels on the curved marble staircase. “What are you doing here? Your grandmother isn’t here,” Bertie said.

  “I know that. She’s at Charming Books.”

  The secretary came at me at a brisk pace. “She should be here. The village budget is in a crisis because of this museum that she insisted we build. It’s been a disaster from beginning to end.”

  I stared at her. It wasn’t her words that caught my attention; it was the garnet necklace hanging from her neck. The same necklace I had found in the museum the day of the race. “Where did you get that?” I pointed at the necklace.

  She wrapped her hands around it. “I’ve had it for years.”

  I frowned. “Did you lose it recently?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “How did you know?”

  “When did you lose it?” I asked.

  “The day before the race. I was so distraught, but not a soul seemed to care because they were so caught up in Daisy’s great plans for the village. A whole lot of rubbish, if you ask me.”

  “Where was it when it went missing?”

  “I had it on my desk in my office, and it just disappeared. I assumed one of those terrible bike people nicked it.”

  “Did you tell Grandma Daisy?” I asked, wondering why my grandmother hadn’t mentioned that the necklace belonged to Bertie.

  “Why would I tell Daisy? She thinks the people involved in the museum and her precious fund-raisers can do no wrong. I know she has been trying to push me out. She doesn’t include me in meetings. She claims that she doesn’t need someone to take minutes—she’d rather have Councilman Connell click on his laptop and record the whole event. She doesn’t need me. Why would I talk to her at all?”

  I pressed my lips together. I knew my grandmother thought she was being kind to Bertie by not including her in anything to do with the museum, since it upset the secretary so much.

  “Who else was there? I assume Bobby from the bike shop.”

  She nodded. “And that girl who works for him. I do not like facial piercing at all. The only place earrings should be is in your ears.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “There had to be at least a dozen volunteers, plus Vaughn. Your grandmother can’t say enough good things about him. In her eyes, he can do no wrong.” She snorted.

  “Vaughn is Jo’s brother. The girl with th
e piercings.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t have known it. The pair of them didn’t even talk to each other at the meeting.”

  “And one of these people took your necklace?” I asked.

  “It had to be one of them. I was heartbroken to see it was gone. It’s very precious to me. It was a gift of my late husband. I didn’t move it, and there weren’t any others in the mayor’s office that day. I may not care for your grandmother, but I would never accuse her of stealing.”

  “How did it come back?” I couldn’t help but think this necklace was in some way related to both Redding’s and Bryant’s murders, but I didn’t know how.

  “It just appeared. It was right in the middle of my desk two days later like it had been there all the time. I know that it wasn’t there before. I looked everywhere for it.”

  Someone had put it back on her desk, but why? And it had been after I’d found it. So they stole it from me to return it?

  She shook her head. “You tell your grandmother that she will have no luck running me out. She may have term limits, but I don’t.” With that, she spun on her heel and marched out of the hall.

  I watched Bertie go and felt confused. Why would someone take the necklace, hide it in the museum, and then return it? And what had happened to it after it was in my pocket? Was it really connected to Redding’s and Bryant’s deaths like I suspected or just a strange coincidence?

  I shook my head. I would worry about the necklace later. I had to find Jo. I pushed the plastic away and stepped into the museum. “Jo?” I called.

  There was no answer.

  “Jo, I want to help. I just spoke to Bobby, and he told me how he helped you. I want to be there for you too. I know you’re scared.”

  There was a squeak that sounded like a sneaker’s tread catching on the marble.

  “Jo, please stop running! This has gone on long enough.”

  There was another squeak, and then she appeared from around the ceiling support. Tears were in her eyes. “Violet, I’m scared.”