Publishable by Death Read online

  “Walter and Stephen still asleep?” I asked as I handed Mart her mug.

  She nodded while she took a long, smooth sip. “Jet lag.”

  “Jet lag and wine,” I said with a smile.

  “The best combo.” Mart and I clinked our white, ceramic mugs. “Alarm company will be over later this morning, and the insurance process is started. I’ll keep an eye out for the tech when they arrive.”

  I thanked my best friend and caught her up on my conversation with the sheriff until the two customers arrived at the counter with a few books each. I complimented their choices – the new Rene Denfeld, an Alice Hoffman title, Jesmyn Ward’s latest, my favorite novel ever, Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, and a fun YA fantasy novel called Supernatural Reform School. I liked their eclectic taste and told them so, then glowed when they said they’d definitely be back and would tell their friends over in Annapolis about the shop.

  Before the bell could even stop ringing over the front door, Mart was jumping up and down and holding my hands. “You know who that was, right?”

  I looked at the door and the back at my friend. “Who? One of those women?”

  “Not just one of those women. Michiko Kakutani – the book reviewer for the New York Times.”

  “Oh,” I knew I was supposed to be impressed, but I didn’t know why. “She’s a big deal, I guess?”

  Mart slapped a palm to her forehead. “You are impossible. She’s the biggest deal. If she mentions your bookstore anywhere, it’ll be huge.”

  “Well, then I hope she tells all her friends.”

  Mart shook her head and headed to the café for a latte refill. A few moments later, I heard Rocky shout, “Michiko Kakutani was here?” Guess she was a big deal.

  While I was still googling Kakutani and considering what residual boon her visit to the shop might be, I caught a glimpse of Marcus riding down the sidewalk and rushed out to catch him. “Marcus!” I called his name down the street, but he didn’t slow. So I jogged – something I try to avoid doing unless being chased – and shouted more loudly. This time he stopped and pulled an ear bud out of his ear before turning back toward me.

  “Oh, hi Ms. Beckett. I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you. You okay?”

  I was out of breath, and I imagined my face was flushed since even climbing a flight of stairs could bring the color to my cheeks. I made a commitment to do a little more than stroll the neighborhood with Mayhem over the next couple of months. “Yes, I’m fine. Sorry. Just wanted to catch you and see if you might have time to do a bit more work for me.”

  He smiled. “Oh yeah, I’d be happy to. What do you need?”

  “Well, someone broke into my shop, and I need a little help fixing the door and doing some painting. Is that something you’d be comfortable doing?”

  “Absolutely.” He sounded eager, almost excited, and I wondered, again, about his story. “When do you need me?”

  “When are you free?”

  He paused and a sad look passed over his face, but then he met my gaze again and said, “Anytime, really. I’m, uh, between projects right now.”

  “Alrighty then. This afternoon? Come by about noon, and I’ll hook you up with a sandwich, too. It’s the least I could do for bringing you on so suddenly.”

  His smile grew. “Sounds like a plan. See you soon.”

  I turned back to the shop and wondered how I might get Marcus to tell me about himself. There was something I didn’t know about that young man, and it felt like it might be important for me to know it.

  Stephen and Walter came in about eleven looking well-rested and ready to work, and since Mart was handling alarm repairs and the insurance and Marcus was going to do the clean-up and painting on the door, I asked if they could help me by sorting the stock room. It had been creeping me out that everything was still in the same place as when Stevensmith had been killed, and the sheriff said I could go ahead and move things.

  The guys were oddly enthused by the idea. Walter asked, “So do you want everything organized by color or alphabet?”

  I cringed. “By alphabet. I’ve never understood bookshelves organized by color. I mean they look pretty, but I would never be able to find anything.”

  Stephen nodded, but Walter said, “You verbal people will never get us visual folks. I never remember who wrote a book, but I can tell you what the cover looked like in perfect detail.”

  “He can,” Stephen agreed, “but since most of the folks will not know these books and, thus, can’t know the covers, I think it’s best to follow the expert’s lead here.” He gave me a wink, and they headed to the back.

  I spent the next hour paying bills and trying to wrangle my budget. I was doing okay, but not as well as I’d dreamed we might. Maybe that Kakutani person’s visit would be a little burst of press? Fingers crossed.

  I was just about to head over to the café and see what Rocky might be able to make Marcus for lunch when the bell rang, and I looked over to see Taco making a beeline for a table of customers that included a toddler who was gladly sharing his scone with Mayhem. Taco was not about to be left out of that action.

  I followed his trail back toward the door and saw Daniel. He waved and headed over. “Mart said you had help today, so I wondered if I could steal you for the afternoon?”

  I looked toward the back of the store where Mart, Stephen, and Walter were huddled together watching. I took a quick peek to be sure they didn’t have a tub of popcorn for their feature film.

  “Um, sure,” I said turning back to Daniel. “Looks like things here are under control. Let me just grab my coat.”

  I walked briskly toward my friends, who didn’t even have the decency to scatter and pretend they hadn’t been watching, and hissed as I walked by, “You three are ridiculous. Mart, you told him to come by? What is this, junior high?”

  “Oh no, woman, this is big girl romance. I’m just moving things along. But if you want me to ask him if he likes you later . . . “

  I gave her a death glare. “Marcus will be here shortly. I told him I’d feed him, and then he’s going to repair the door and paint. Give him a bit of cash from the register to get what he needs next door.” Having a hardware store as your neighbor is never a bad thing.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Mart said with a click of her heels and a smirk. “Now, your date is waiting.”

  I shot her another scowl as I rushed back by and then grinned when I saw Daniel patiently waiting. “Taco can stay here if you want.” I looked over at the long, low dog. “Looks like he and Mayhem are content.” Both dogs had found their way onto the very large dog bed I’d placed on the center of the stage in the café and were snoozing butt to butt.

  “Oh, a dog’s life,” Daniel said.

  “You can say that again.”

  We headed out the door and turned down Main Street. “Tacos okay?” Daniel asked as we sauntered along. The weather was perfect, and I was content to let my meddling friends manage the store all day.

  “Sounds great. And actually, if you’re up for it, I have a little research I need to do at the library after.”

  “Research, huh? Why do I think this isn’t book research?”

  I gave him a sly smile and slipped my hand onto his arm. He immediately covered my fingers with his own, and I felt my heart kick.

  After a completely delightful meal of some of the best tacos I’ve ever eaten – I was pretty sure they’d inspired Daniel’s dog’s name – and a lovely chat on a park bench while we ate our food truck meal, I coaxed Daniel over to the beautiful brick library a block off Main Street. “I guess the library is pretty new, huh?”

  “Yeah, the old one had been in a storefront on Main Street, but the town decided to move it and give that space to more tourist-friendly businesses. Not many out-of-towners use the local library.”

  “That makes sense. And this is gorgeous,” I said as we walked into a beautiful, light-filled atrium where the circulation desk sat surrounded by potted plants. “I could work here.”


  “What?! Work for the competition? Never?!” Daniel said with mock awe.

  I laughed. “Actually, I don’t think of the library as competition, more as camaraderie on the quest to help people find books they love.”

  Daniel leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “I like that,” he said. “Now, what are we here for?”

  It took me a while to get my words back after that show of affection, but I eventually stammered that I wanted to look at the old newspapers. Then I said I first needed to use the restroom and rushed off to splash my face with cold water.

  When I came back, Daniel did a wide sweep with his arm and pointed toward the back of the building. “To the microfilm, my lady.”

  I giggled. “Thank goodness they’re on microfilm. I love print as much as anybody, but I’m glad we don’t have to sort through years of paper.”

  The microfilm machines were as new as the building, and with a little guidance from the librarian, we found the older issues of the St. Marin’s Courier and got the first reel loaded to the machine. As I started to scroll, Daniel asked, “So what are we looking for?”

  “Well, I was wondering if what got Stevensmith killed was something in one of her articles.”

  “Ah, I see. So we’re looking for motive then?”

  I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and could see his exaggerated expression of serious interest. “Yes, we’re looking for motive.”

  “So we’re just ignoring Sheriff Mason’s caution?”

  “What caution?” I tried to act blissfully ignorant.

  “The one he shared with me after he came to see you at the store this morning.”

  I harrumphed. “Does no one think I can manage my own life? First Mart, and now the sheriff?”

  Daniel bumped my shoulder. “He’s just concerned and knew I would be, too. I told him I’d keep you close, but that I didn’t think I could stop a force of your nature.”

  I wanted to be annoyed, to be frustrated that everyone was speaking to people about me, but I couldn’t be. It just felt so nice to have people care . . . to have Daniel care.

  “Alright,” I let out a long sigh. “I’ll be careful. Not tell anyone what I’m doing.” I looked around the library to see no one was in this section. “Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough if you let me help.”

  “You’ll need your own machine.”

  “Oh, no I won’t. I’m staying right here. The sheriff said to keep you close.”

  I was going to have to go splash my face again if this kept up. “I can live with that. Let’s get going.”

  The Courier was a tiny paper, but Stevensmith had been there a long time – twelve or thirteen years – and in a small paper, most of the articles had her byline. The majority were run-of-the-mill stuff – coverage of car accidents or local events. But the reporter also had a habit of making statements – like the ones she said to me – that came off as just plain mean-spirited. If I had wagered a guess, I’d say Stevensmith was a woman who had been hurt and was taking out her pain on everyone else.

  Eventually, we caught up to where the microfilm ended, having compiled a stack of fifteen to twenty pages worth of articles where Stevensmith was criticizing someone or something. But we still had the last four years of newspapers to cover online. We headed to a bank of computers, and I secretly hoped that Daniel would want to work on the same screen with me again. When he pulled another chair into the cubicle I chose, I smiled.

  We scanned quickly through the last three and a half years – it was so much easier to read newspaper on a computer screen than on microfilm – and eventually came into this year. I was almost out of weekly issues when I came upon a long article about the Harriet Tubman Festival from the weekend before. Most of the article was just normal stuff – an interview with the founder, a brief biography on Tubman, some highlights of the events around town – but at the bottom of the front page, where the article was featured, Stevensmith had written:

  While this festival is a good tourist event for St. Marin’s, it’s a shame it’s for such an over-lauded person. Sure, Tubman survived slavery, but she was not the only one. Plus, wise students of history will take note that Tubman’s escapades on the Underground Railroad were actually illegal, acts of theft of property. Perhaps we should be revising our history to remember her as the criminal she was rather than as a hero.

  As I read those words, I gasped. Stevensmith had gone after a long-dead woman who had saved countless people from the horrors of slavery. “I can’t even believe someone would say that . . . about Harriet Tubman.”

  “Too bad Harriet Tubman’s ghost doesn’t carry that gun she owned,” Daniel said quietly.

  “I hear that. Why would someone say such awful things?”

  Daniel just shook his head while I pressed print.

  As we walked back to the shop so I could close up for the night, I asked, “Want to come over tonight and help me piece together the suspect list?”

  Daniel took my hand and squeezed it. “I wish I could, but I have a standing date on Thursday nights.”

  “Oh.” A date, huh? I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “With the dog groomer.” Daniel squeezed my hand again. “I have to get Taco’s nails trimmed once a week or it sounds like someone is dropping tacks all over the floor whenever he walks. It’s his weekly Puppy-Cure.”

  I laughed. “Oh my. I didn’t take you as one to port your pooch to the doggy spa.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, yet, Harvey Beckett. A whole lot.” He winked.

  7

  That night, after I’d filled Mart, Stephen, and Walter in on my lunch with Daniel in the excruciating detail that they demanded, the four of us clambered down to the floor around our coffee table and started reading the articles Daniel and I had copied. We’d each read an article and highlight anything that felt “murder-worthy” with our assigned color – I had insisted I have blue because it was my favorite – and then pass it on.

  The task was made incessantly more difficult by Aslan’s persistent laying on each stack of paper in succession. Someone new to cats might have tried to relocate her, but I was a seasoned cat owner and knew that such tactics only deepened feline resolve. So we simply slid the paper out from under her when we needed it and allowed her to place her girth on the next stack.

  After an hour or so, we’d ended up with four articles that felt vicious enough to warrant murder. One was the review that Max Davies was obviously so bitter about, one was the Tubman article. The third was a note about a local tractor show that Stevensmith had called “degenerate” while also describing the people who brought their tractors as “hillbillies who wouldn’t know their arses from their exhaust.” And the final article insulted a high school English teacher who had spent thousands of her own dollars buying books for a Little Free Library on campus so that the students could have easy access to reading material. The Library had been vandalized, and the act had broken the teacher down to tears, which prompted Stevensmith to say she was a weak-hearted woman who should know better than to do more than was required in her government job.

  “This woman was a piece of work,” Stephen said when he’d read the last article. “I kind of want to kill her myself.”

  “Daniel and I said the same thing. She was a really horrible person.” I couldn’t believe someone would put such awful things in print.

  The doorbell rang, and I jumped up with my wallet to pay for our pizza. We’d been so engrossed in our research that we’d all forgotten to eat.

  When I opened the door, I was surprised to see Cate and Lucas at the door, pizza box in hand. “You were not the pizza delivery people I was expecting.”

  “No?” Cate grinned. “We were coming by to see your friends – did they mention that we met when we stopped by the shop earlier today while you were on your date,” she winked, and I shook my head, “and caught the delivery gal at the end of the walk. Our treat.” She handed me the piping hot box.

 
; “Well, thanks. Come in and join us. Plenty for everyone.” I gestured toward the door and followed them up the walk.

  Just as we were about to head in, Cate turned and whispered. “Daniel was practically glowing when I went in to get my oil changed just before he closed. Must have been some date.”

  “It wasn’t really a date,” I said, but I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Uh-huh, I see that.” Cate gave me a wink and went on inside.

  After we all had slices of super-greasy, super-perfect pizza, I caught Cate and Lucas up on what we’d found in the articles. “I stopped reading her stuff a long time ago. Made me too angry, especially when she went after the museum.” Cate’s jaw was set. “No one messes with my man.”

  “Oh yeah, that article was brutal . . . and Stevensmith was wrong—you aren’t a bit bloated, if you don’t mind me saying, Lucas,” Stephen said. “What was her deal?”

  “No one really knew, and lots of folks tried to get her let go from the paper,” Lucas said. “But her articles sold subscriptions. A lot of the people who summer here kept a subscription online just so they could see who Stevensmith would slam next. A classic case of sensational journalism if ever there was one.”

  I took another slice of pizza and proceeded to peel the cheese off and eat it with my fingers while I pondered. “But if everyone knew she was hateful, why would it still make someone mad? I mean, she was pretty much pissing off people who knew better than to read what she said anyway, right?”

  “True,” Cate said, “but people still got mad. Anytime someone says something demeaning about you, it stings, even if you know you shouldn’t take it personally.”

  I thought of Max Davies and how bitter he still was about that review from five years ago. She’d been pretty hard on Elle Heron, too. And that poor English teacher. Cate was right. Lots of people had a reason to dislike Stevensmith. “But does it sting badly enough to kill her? I mean you have to be either hopping mad or really angry for a really long time to commit a murder, don’t you?”