Can't Judge a Book by Its Murder Read online

  “It’s about Wally’s will,” Daisy admitted.

  “What about it?”

  Arlo could almost see the wheels in her mind turning as Daisy decided what to say out loud. “Chloe may have been mentioned in the will, and the attorney wants her there for the reading.”

  “Bill Lansing?” He was the only attorney Sugar Springs had.

  Daisy shook her head. “Joseph A. Cartwright. He’s coming in from New York. Wally always said he wanted his will read before the funeral, and since we aren’t allowed to leave town yet…”

  Arlo hadn’t thought about that. Of course Daisy and Inna would both be suspects in the murder investigation and unable to leave until Mads released them. “I’ll let Chloe know,” Arlo said. “When’s the reading?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon at three. The attorney has rented a room at the inn.”

  Perfect. Now Helen was involved, and if she knew Wally’s attorney was in town, it was a sure bet the others knew as well. Arlo could only imagine. The ladies would probably move their book club meeting to the inn so they could eavesdrop on the reading. She wouldn’t put it past any of them, not even Helen.

  “Thanks,” Arlo said.

  Daisy gave her a hesitant smile, then left the bookstore.

  “I knew it,” Helen said. “I told you a fancy New York lawyer could only be here for Wally’s death.”

  “Pay up.” Fern held out one hand to Camille, who frowned but fished into that huge white bag of hers and pulled out a dollar bill.

  “How did you know he was an attorney?” Arlo asked. It wasn’t like that was necessary information for renting a room.

  Fern looked up, her eyes as innocent as a small child’s caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Google.”

  “I guess if Chloe’s going to the will reading, then Wally’s leaving her something for Jayden,” Helen said.

  Camille gasped. “I forgot all about that boy. Well, not forgot him, but that his father was Wally Harrison.”

  “Wally gave up all legal rights to Jayden a long time ago,” Arlo commented. “He doesn’t owe them anything.”

  “Legal rights be damned,” Fern said vehemently. “When a man fathers a child, he should take care of it.”

  Arlo agreed one hundred percent but had been around enough to know that it wasn’t always the case. Jayden wasn’t the only child forgotten by a parent. Some were forgotten by both. It was one of the things in the world that saddened her most. That and those SPCA commercials that came on late at night.

  She checked the large library clock hanging above the upstairs bookcases. What was taking Chloe so long?

  The door opened and Courtney walked in. A chorus of greetings came from all around as she made her way to the office to store her tiny handbag. It was almost as much of a mystery as Camille’s, except Arlo wanted to know if Courtney could actually fit anything into the tiny pouch.

  Arlo checked the clock once more as Courtney came out, tying her apron behind her back.

  How many times had she looked at the clock? Too many to count. But now that Courtney was there, she wasn’t tied to the bookstore. And now that she wasn’t tied to the bookstore…

  “Arlo?” Helen’s voice floated around her like a warm hug.

  “I’m going to check on Chloe.” How long did things like this take anyway? “Courtney?”

  The young girl nodded. “I got this.”

  “I’ll go with you.” Helen placed her bookmark between the pages to save her place, then set it aside and stood.

  “Brilliant idea.” Camille beamed. She followed Helen’s lead, saved her place, and adjusted her purse for the short walk to the police station.

  Not to be outdone, Fern dropped her copy of Missing Girl and was on her feet in a heartbeat. “Let’s go.”

  “Ladies…” She didn’t want them to cause any more problems for Chloe—and it seemed inevitable now that she was definitely having a problem or two—but she also wasn’t looking forward to walking into the police station alone to whatever news awaited her. She sighed. “Come on.” She waved one arm over her shoulder and smiled her thanks to Courtney.

  The ladies chatted about Jayden, Wally, and Chloe all the way to the station, but Arlo was too nervous to pay much attention.

  She stopped at the double glass doors that led inside and took a deep breath. Sugar Springs Police Station twice in one day. That had to be a record.

  Frances looked up from her place behind the desk as Arlo came in, relief flooding her features as she hung up the phone. “Thank heavens you’re here.”

  “What’s wrong?” Arlo had a terrible feeling she knew exactly what was wrong.

  “It’s Chloe. Mads arrested her for Wally’s murder.”

  11

  That loud buzzing started in her ears again.

  Chloe can’t be a murderer! Have you lost your marbles?

  What in heaven’s name possessed him to do something so stupid?

  This is ridiculous! I demand you release her immediately.

  But Arlo knew the truth of the matter: Chloe looked guilty, even if she wasn’t.

  And by now she had surely told Mads about Wally’s early morning visit. How she had given him the coffee that had been the last thing he had ingested. And by now Mads had remembered all the stories he had heard about Chloe, Wally, and Jayden. It didn’t matter what he knew and what he had been told. There was a big enough grapevine that repeated and re-repeated the stories that a person had trouble remembering what they knew firsthand and what they had heard at the barber shop.

  But what about the earring? That was the one piece of evidence that didn’t fit.

  Arlo marched around Frances’s desk to the closed door of Mads’s office. She wrenched it open without knocking, somewhat surprised to find him alone.

  “Arlo.” He didn’t seem surprised to see her. It was almost as if he had been sitting there waiting for her to storm into his office. He was seated behind his desk, one booted foot crossed over his other knee. He loosely held a pencil in one hand as he lightly bounced it against the wood of his desk, eraser end down.

  “You have made a big mistake,” she said on one long rush of air.

  “I have?” More pencil drumming.

  “Huge,” she said. “And now you have to let Chloe go.”

  “I wish I could.” His words sounded sincere enough, but they weren’t at all what Arlo wanted to hear.

  “She’s innocent. She doesn’t even own diamond earrings, much less ones that are three carats.”

  He frowned and his pencil tempo increased. “I have a lot more evidence that fits. The earring…we don’t even know if it was left there by a previous tenant—”

  “In Sugar Springs? Please. Only Judith Whitney has that kind of money here and we all know she would die before she would surrender a diamond that big.”

  A deep crease marred Mads’s forehead. The pencil bouncing stopped.

  Poor choice of words on her part.

  “Mads,” Arlo tried again. “You and I both know that Chloe isn’t capable of murder.”

  He shook his head sadly. “Everyone is capable of murder.”

  What a cynical way to look at life.

  “You know what I mean.”

  He sighed, tossed the pencil onto his desktop, and stood. The yellow no. 2 rolled to a stop before toppling over the far edge. “I do, and I’ll tell you what else I know. Ground up death cap mushrooms were found in the coffee cup Chloe gave Wally that morning. The morning he told her he wanted to forget the legal document he had signed ten years ago and visit with his son. We know that Chloe has been having a little bit of financial trouble—”

  “Who hasn’t?” Arlo was barely aware of the book club ladies and Frances clustering around the office door. Mads had to have seen them. He saw everything. But he ignored them and continued. “Her father
is about to lose his business.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me?” Arlo whispered.

  Mads shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t want to worry you.”

  It wasn’t like Arlo had any funds to help. Her entire life savings, along with a hefty loan, were all wrapped up in Books & More.

  “Money troubles don’t make her a murderer,” Arlo said.

  Mads tipped his head to one side. “Did you know she was part of Wally’s will?”

  Arlo nodded slowly.

  “With a number-one bestseller under his belt, Wally has the kind of money that can make a difference in her parents’ situation. And since Jayden lives with them…”

  “Can I see her?”

  Behind her, a chorus of pleas to do the same rose from the book club ladies.

  Mads held up both hands. “Okay. Okay. One at a time. But you only have about five minutes. The transport vehicle to Corinth will be here soon.”

  A round of protests went up from the book club.

  Arlo pinned Mads with her hardest buy-the-book-or-get-out look. He didn’t seem fazed. But she plowed ahead anyway. “Why would you take her all the way to the county jail?”

  “She has been charged with murder.” It wasn’t much of an explanation.

  “You and I both know she’s not guilty. I don’t even know why you arrested her,” Arlo said. Maybe if she continued to say those words, they would sink into his thick skull.

  “Evidence.” The word was clipped, hard and cold, like shards chipped from an iceberg.

  “Evidence my—”

  “Arlo!” Helen, the ever-diligent godmother, interrupted from behind.

  Arlo turned back to Mads. “Fine. Arrest her. But don’t send her to the county jail. She doesn’t belong there.”

  She could almost see his resolve cracking. “What am I supposed to do with her?”

  “Release her on her own recognizance?”

  “It’s not up to me.” Mads crossed his arms and puffed out his chest. He seemed to grow two feet across. It was an intimidating pose and he knew it.

  “Then keep her in a cell here so she can be close to her family.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, so she continued. “She’s not stupid. She’s not going to try to escape. Let her stay in the holding cells.”

  “I can’t keep her there indefinitely.”

  “A week or two then.” Just long enough for Arlo to figure out who really killed Wally.

  She wasn’t sure where the idea came from, but there it was.

  She had read plenty of mystery novels in her lifetime, from Encyclopedia Brown to Sherlock Holmes. She might not have police skills, but she was smart. Mads had all this training and still didn’t know Chloe was innocent. How much good could all those police schools be anyway, if someone like Mads couldn’t figure out that Chloe wasn’t capable of murdering Wally Harrison? She simply wasn’t strong enough to topple him out the window.

  Another thought popped into Arlo’s head. Chloe wasn’t strong enough to kill Wally…unless he was already weak and dying. Then she would only have to push him forward and use his own weight to do the rest.

  But had he been sick? How long did Amanita poisoning take? She had no idea. There was another project for Camille and her beloved Google.

  “Ten days,” he finally said. “But you’ll have to feed her.”

  “What?”

  “We aren’t set up to have long-term detainees. She’ll need three meals a day, and I can’t provide them. So if you want her to stay, the five of you”—he pointed a sweeping finger at them—“will have to make sure she eats.”

  “Deal,” Frances said immediately.

  “I’ll do supper,” Helen said. “I’ll already be cooking for the inn, so it’s no bother to make a little bit more.”

  “Good. Good,” Frances said. “And I’ll be here for lunch so I’ll bring in some for her.”

  “Arlo.” They all turned to look at her. “Can you do breakfast?” Camille asked.

  Was this really happening? Were they really discussing who would bring Chloe her meals in jail?

  “Arlo?” Helen nudged her arm.

  Arlo pulled herself from her stupor. “Yeah. Breakfast. Got it.”

  “Good,” Mads said. “Now that it’s all settled, get out of my office.”

  “After we see Chloe.” Arlo gave him a bitter smile.

  She hadn’t managed to free her friend, but perhaps this was a start.

  * * *

  The holding cells at the Sugar Springs Police Station were small but clean. There were two of them side by side in a far room of the building. The bars were painted black and chipped in a few spots, the walls a pukey green. A few people had left their mark behind, scratched into the walls. Freddie was here. This sucks. And a few other things Arlo wouldn’t repeat. It was ugly and sad, and for a moment Arlo wondered if there was a failed designer out there somewhere who had come up with the color scheme. Hopefully they had another job now.

  “Arlo.” Chloe rushed to the bars of her cell, her face lighting up with joy.

  “Hey, girl.”

  “I didn’t do it.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I know it looks like I did, but I swear I didn’t. I swear.”

  “Shhh…” Arlo did her best to hug her friend through the bars.

  Chloe pressed her face into Arlo’s shoulder and started to cry.

  “Come on, now,” Arlo said gently. “Mads only gave me five minutes. I don’t want to spend all of that with you crying.”

  Chloe pulled away, sniffed, and wiped her tears with the back of one hand. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” Arlo smiled gently at her friend. “And it’s going to be okay. We convinced Mads to let you stay here for a while.” She didn’t bother to tell Chloe how long. Ten days was an eternity and a drop in the bucket when looking at life without parole for murder.

  “We?”

  “The book club ladies came with me. And Frances.”

  “Frances from the front desk?”

  Arlo nodded. “Mads said you can stay here, and we’ll bring you food every day.”

  “Why?” Chloe shook her head. Arlo knew she didn’t want to get her hopes up. “It’d be easier if they took me to the county jail.”

  “We don’t care about easier, and I won’t be able to focus on finding the real murderer if I have to worry about you all the way over there.”

  “Find the real murderer?” Chloe repeated.

  “That’s right. We’re going to bring you food, figure out who killed Wally, and get you out of jail.” All in ten glorious days.

  “And feed my cat.”

  Arlo smiled. “Of course.”

  A knock sounded on the open door.

  “Time to go.” Mads stood just this side of the doorway.

  Arlo smiled at Chloe. “Be patient,” she said, then lowered her voice so Mads couldn’t hear her next words. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

  * * *

  “How?” Helen asked as they all settled back into the reading area at Books & More. Arlo had expected them to disperse, go back to their homes and lives, but there they sat, drinking coffee from the Keurig and discussing ways to get Chloe out of jail instead of reading or talking about Missing Girl. You know, like a book club should be doing. A normal one anyway.

  “We need to find out who the real killer is,” Camille said in that soft, lilting accent of hers.

  Fern shook her head, obviously annoyed. “Really? We hadn’t thought of that.”

  “I mean to say that’s the only way we’re going to get poor Chloe out of jail. Mads isn’t going to let her go for anything less,” Camille returned.

  “She’s right,” Helen said.

  Those words stilled the air around them as each of the women let them sink in. Fern finally broke th
e silence.

  “I don’t know how to find a killer.”

  “Follow the clues,” Helen said simply. The words held everything and nothing, the secret to the universe and the most useless advice ever muttered.

  “What clues?” Fern was losing her patience. She, of all of them, favored Chloe above everything else. Arlo wasn’t sure why.

  Helen snapped her fingers, then swung her two-toned braid onto her other shoulder. “What was it Sam was saying?”

  “He was talking about the suicide note,” Camille said. “But we know now that it’s a fake.”

  “The killer must have written the note while on the third floor with Wally,” Fern added.

  Which could mean the murderer hadn’t meant to kill him then and pushing him out the window was a secondary plan to poison.

  That was assuming that one person poisoned him, then pushed him to his death. But who would want Wally dead that badly?

  Or perhaps they were dealing with two killers…

  “Arlo.”

  The sound of her name brought Arlo out of her stupor, and she turned to face Helen. “Yes?”

  “Do you have Sam’s phone number?”

  That really brought her back to the here and now. “What? Why would I have his number?”

  “You two were a thing back in the day. So I thought he might have given it to you since he’s been home.”

  “I had a thing with Mads too and I—” Bad argument. “No,” Arlo said as calmly as possible. “I don’t have his number. Why do you need it?”

  “We were thinking about hiring him to find out who really killed Wally.”

  She really needed to pay more attention to the book club ladies if they were going to go off on missions like this. “No. Absolutely not.”

  Fern nodded, as if she had expected as much. “Then it’ll be up to us.”

  “Wait. What?”

  If Arlo had hoped to stop them, she was too late. The ideas flew fast and furious.

  “We need to find our number-one suspect first, then stake out his house.” Helen clapped her hands together.

  “Or her house,” Camille corrected. “The killer could be a woman.”