Publishable By Death - Andi Cumbo-Floyd (ebook reader wifi .txt) 📗
- Author: Andi Cumbo-Floyd
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Walter said, “Ooh, now this is getting good. Is she a suspect?” He looked at me.
Part of me wanted to say, “How should I know?” but the honest part of me nodded. “I think maybe she is.” I told them about the flowers in the window of her shop, and a tiny glimmer of something important passed behind my eyes too quickly for me to catch it. I made a mental note to come back to that idea.
“So now we have three suspects? Max Davies, Divina Stevensmith, and Eleanor Heron,” Mart said with a bit of mischief in her tone. “The plot thickens.”
I caught Stephen and Daniel exchanging a worried look and didn’t know whether to be put out or pleased that everyone was bonding so well. “What?!” I said to the pair.
I saw a little pink moved into Daniel’s cheeks as he avoided looking me in the eye. Stephen couldn’t get off so easy though as I grabbed his cheeks and made him look at me, just as he’d done to me in the café earlier. “What?!”
“Just last time you snooped into a murder . . . ”
“Wait, what happened last time? There was a last time?” Daniel looked from me to Stephen and back to me again.
I let out a hard sigh. “Yes, and it all ended fine.”
“True. But you almost died.” Stephen could not keep his mouth shut.
“That may be a bit of an exaggeration. But anyway, that’s another story for another time.” I was desperate to avoid any talk of my life back in San Francisco. Too much baggage there to foist on a guy I could really like. I didn’t want to scare him off. “We have a murder here, now, and it happened in my store. That makes it personal.”
“Now, there’s a question,” Walter said as he got up to grab the pot of decaf coffee. “Do you think the person planned the murder for your store? “
“No, definitely not. Stevensmith wasn’t hit in my store. She just came to hide there.”
Stephen took a long sip of his scalding hot coffee and asked, “But did she come to die in your store on purpose?”
I shuddered. “I certainly hope not.” I looked down at the hand-thrown coffee mug that I’d picked up in a little pottery studio when Mart and I had taken a weekend trip to the Shenandoah National Park over the winter. “But I hadn’t thought of that. Is that possible? Can someone with a serious head injury think that clearly to pick a specific place to die?”
Daniel put his hand over mine, and I felt all the blood rush to my face. It didn’t help that Mart, Walter, and Stephen all kicked my leg at the same moment. “I expect she just happened to be close by, saw the back door, and hid anywhere she could. She probably didn’t even know where she was.”
I resisted the urge to pull my hand away from Daniel’s. I loved the feel of it there, but I didn’t love the way my friends were ogling our hands. I stayed still and smiled at him. “Thanks. I expect you’re right.” I gave his fingers a little squeeze and then slid my hand into my lap. “That does beg the question, though. Where did she get attacked?”
Mart was up before I finished my exhale following my question. “Let’s go find out,” she said as she handed me my scarf.
“What?” I looked down at the blue knitted band and back at my friend. “What?! No. We aren’t going to try to find where the murder happened. Not at nine o’clock at night. No.”
But I could see that Walter had already slid on his leather bomber jacket, and Stephen was easing his chair back from the table. Only Daniel and I were still sitting there, and even he looked like he wanted to get up.
“I see I have no say here. Alright, let’s go.” I wrapped the scarf around my neck and pulled on my peacoat. We gave Mayhem and Taco the hamburger that Stephen and Walter had cooked just for them and headed toward the door. I was bringing up the rear so I could lock the door behind us, but Daniel lingered back and turned to me just as I reached the door
“I’m in for whatever adventure this is, but I want you to be careful, okay?” His eyes were soft, and the gentleness of his voice almost brought me to tears.
“Okay. I will.” I smiled. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Then, he took my hand and squeezed as we went out the door.
The night was crisp and clear. In our part of town, the streetlights were few and far between, so we could see thousands of stars overhead. The cold air and the starshine made us all a little playful as we skipped and laughed our way back to Main Street. Daniel and I opened the front door and disarmed the alarm at the back of the shop while Stephen, Walter, and Mart headed around back from the outside to take a look at the parking lot. We were just about through the store when I heard Mart exclaim, “Oh no.”
I ran the last few steps only to find the back door wide open, the security bar popped free from the door jamb.
“Holy crap,” Walter said. “It looks like a bear tried to take your door off.”
Daniel knelt down and looked closely at the door jamb. “Only if a bear uses a crow bar.”
“A crow bar?” I knelt down and looked. Sure enough, there were scraps and dents in the metal door frame. Someone had pried the door open and forced the security bar loose.
“Clearly, someone desperately needed a copy of John Grisham’s new book immediately,” Stephen said wryly. Then, he looked at me and said, “You have insurance. It’ll cover this.”
I nodded. “It will, but why would someone break into my bookstore? And why didn’t the alarm go off?”
“That’s an easy one,” Mart said, holding up some wires that had been pulled out of a box on the wall.
“Seriously? The alarm company put the junction box for your system on the outside of the building?” Daniel sounded angry. “Tomorrow, I’ll talk with them. Tonight, let’s just get this secure and call the sheriff.”
I couldn’t help but smile when he looked at me and said, “I mean, if that’s okay with you, Harvey. It’s your shop. This just makes me so mad.”
“I think that’s a good plan. But while we’re back here, we might as well do what we came to do.” I tried to sound confident because I really did want to look around, but I could feel my heart at the back of my throat.
Stephen acted as if he was holding a magnifying glass up to his eye. “I’m on the hunt for clues.”
“Okay, you guys look around. I’ll go inside and call the sheriff.” I started for the door, but Walter grabbed my arm.
“Maybe you should stay out here. We don’t know that whoever did this is gone.” Walter said as he handed me his cell phone. I made the call, and then we all stood close together in the back parking lot until Sheriff Mason arrived in a cruiser with Deputy Williams in another car close behind him.
We told him what we’d found, and the deputy took some photos and then dusted for prints. Meanwhile, the sheriff took us all inside and had me look for anything that was missing. “I know you may not notice if a particular book is gone—”
Mart interrupted him. “Oh, Harvey will notice.”
I nodded. “I straighten the shelves every night. I should be able to see any gaps.” I took a quick lap around the small shop, but I didn’t notice any books missing. I was just heading back to the café to let the sheriff know when I saw that the storeroom door was ajar. I was certain I’d shut it when I closed the store.
I got Daniel’s attention, and he and the sheriff came over. I pointed at the door.
Mason looked at the door and then back at me. “Again?” He let out a heavy sigh and used his boot to push open the door.
The lights were on, but other than that – I always turned them off; I couldn’t afford any extra pennies on the electric bill – nothing looked out of place. “Looks fine,” I said when the sheriff looked my way again.
“Okay. Humor me, though, and take a walk around.” He looked at Daniel. “You’ll stay with her?”
“Of course,” Daniel said with a firm nod.
I had to duck behind a stack of boxes to hide my grin, and when I did, I saw a small puddle of water. I looked up to be sure the ceiling wasn’t leaking and breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t see any drops. Roof leaks are expensive. “Daniel, would you mind taking a look?”
He came over from the door, and when I pointed, he laid a gentle hand on my back as he bent down to study the water. I felt my heartbeat quicken.
“Water?”
“Yeah, but not from the roof I don’t think.”
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