Overdue for Murder (Pecan Bayou) Page 7

  CHAPTER NINE

  This week as I entered the library, I had Aunt Maggie along with me. We walked past the accordion-fold door that closed off the children's section and into the library's meeting room. We had a smaller audience tonight but had gained Peter Markham. Pattie was already up front and was gesturing to an empty chair saved just for me.

  Martha Hoffman was looking at her wristwatch and glancing around the room. There were still two empty seats waiting for Vanessa Markham and Edith Martin, the romance writer. Oscar Larry sat in his chair typing furiously into a laptop with an alien sticker glaring at us on the raised lid. Damien Perez sat quietly, examining his fingernails on one hand. With a wary glance from Martha Hoffman, I scurried to my seat next to Pattie.

  "I'll bet you're the one she wanted to be late," Pattie whispered into my ear.

  "At least my presentation takes ten minutes and not three hours," I whispered.

  "Thank God for that," Damien Perez whispered to both of us in his low voice. The three of us laughed, making Martha Hoffman turn around and give us the official librarian "shhhhh."

  Edith Martin came scurrying into the room wearing a red woven scarf, a turquoise blouse and a full printed skirt over boots. She glanced out at the audience and then slid into her seat. She put her hand over her heart as she caught her breath. Martha Hoffman looked out into the main library one more time and then turned back to the crowd.

  "Well, it seems Vanessa Scarlett must be running a little late, so we will go ahead and begin," the librarian said. "Last week we had a detailed discussion about UFOs from Mr. Oscar Larry." He stood up to comment, but Martha gestured for him to take his seat. "Tonight we will hear many more speakers, starting with Destiny Wood, known locally as Edith Martin. She will be discussing her steamy romance novels." Martha Hoffman's voice rose at the end to emphasize the guilty-pleasure aspect of Edith's writing. Miss Ruby and her crowd, who had come back for an encore performance, rustled around in the metal folding chairs. Edith stood and walked to the center of the room.

  "I have written historical romance novels for the last ten years. You may have read some of my books, Victory with the Viscount, Duke of Love or Mistress of the Manor. Tonight, I wanted to read a scene from the novel I am writing presently, London's Man of Trouble."

  She opened a file folder and began to read: "I ran into his strong arms, his muscles bulging as he brought his large hands over my body. I felt a warmth spread through me as I surrendered to his embrace ..."

  Edith went on and on, describing the act of lovemaking in such detail that I noticed many of the members of the audience looking a little hot around the collar. One person I didn't expect a reaction from was Peter Markham. He seemed to be glued to her every word and bit his lip as she described the very throes of passion. Edith was now in full dramatic portrayal of the scene with the back of her hand placed upon her forehead: "Georgina said, yes, yes, yes!"

  "Yes!" Martha Hoffman shouted. "I mean," in a softer voice, "yes, I think that gives us quite a taste of your ... sensual style of writing. Thank you so much. Why don't we all take ten minutes. Maybe some of us need a smoke break after all that ... uh, ten minutes, everyone."

  Pattie stood up. "I brought some of my orange dream cupcakes and left them upstairs on the big study table for everybody." The crowd rose happily to go upstairs for cupcakes. I checked my phone to see that a picture had been texted over to me. Zach looked like he had elephantiasis trying to pull another sock on his foot. "That kid," I said. I walked over to Aunt Maggie and tilted the phone so that she could see the picture.

  "Oh my. I don't think they thought about how stretched out a sock would have to be to go over twenty other socks."

  "Aunt Maggie, they are driving me crazy with this stuff. I wish there was a record they could break without killing themselves."

  "I know, me too."

  "Maggie?" Ruby Green stuck her head in the door. "Come upstairs and get a cupcake before they're all gone. I want you to meet my new beau, Mr. Florence."

  "Be right there." Maggie touched me on the arm. "Why don't you go over to the children's section and find one those record books. Maybe you can find something tame for them to do."

  Not needing the cupcakes, I agreed. "Good idea."

  As I started walking out of the meeting room, Martha Hoffman stopped me. "Are you the reason Vanessa didn't get here for my author's night?"

  "Excuse me?" Why would I have anything to do with Vanessa Markham getting to a meeting?

  "Well, I just asked her husband, Peter, and he said something about the two of you having a fight in the mall."

  "Did he? Well that fight was weeks ago and really wasn't that much of a big deal. I'm surprised Vanessa didn't share that with you. Pattie's cupcake tower collapsed because your BFF Vanessa was the one who messed with the table leg and set her up so she could win with that sorry fish fountain of hers."

  Martha gasped, and the remaining stragglers hurried to get out of the room and avoid getting caught in our argument.

  "How dare you!"

  "Listen, Martha, I don't know why Vanessa isn't here. Why don't you try calling her? I'm sure she must be on your speed dial." I pushed past her, taking a deep breath. I knew this lady didn't like me, but blaming me for Vanessa's no-show seemed a little out there. Why would Peter point to me as the reason his wife was tardy? Didn't he know where she was? That was a truly strange marriage, especially with him visiting hotels in San Marcos and her hanging out with the vampire hunter. I thought I had had a bad marriage. They were both such physically attractive people, but inside all that beauty was another matter.

  Trying to put Martha's accusations behind me, I headed to the accordion doors of the children's section. I could smell fresh paint as I came to the closed-off area. There was a sign out front on a wooden easel announcing wet paint. I slid open the door and flipped on the light. The walls glistened with a fresh white coat. I jumped for a second when I saw a humongous monster that I recognized from the pages of Where the Wild Things Are perched in the corner of the room. That thing was so big it had to frighten small children.

  The nonfiction section was near the back. I walked through the brightly colored beanbag chairs in orange, blue and green and searched for the nonfiction sign hung high on the wall. On one of the waist-high shelves was a large stuffed mouse perched on a piano bench sitting in front of a toy-sized grand piano. In front of this display was the book The Mouse Who Played Piano. The mouse and the piano were set up to look just like the cover of the book with everything but the lit candelabra. The children's librarian had probably decided it was too dangerous to light candles around the kids.

  I took a step forward, still looking at the display, and then tripped over something on the floor. I scrambled off the object, and it took a second before I realized I had tripped over a someone lying on the floor. The candelabra missing from the mouse book display was placed on the back of a head of blonde hair. The person, a woman, was rolled over, face down on the carpet. I picked up the candelabra, checking to see if the person was conscious. I barely recognized Vanessa Markham from the streams of blood running down the front of her carefully made-up face.

  "Vanessa." I shook her gently. "Vanessa, can you hear me? It's Betsy Livingston." Her eyes were open, but they didn't move toward me. In fact, they didn't move at all.

  A scream shattered the quiet from behind me. Martha Hoffman stood with her trembling hands up to her mouth.

  "You killed her! You killed Vanessa Scarlett!"

  CHAPTER TEN

  In only twenty minutes, our author night at the library had changed from an evening filled with literary endeavors to an evening filled with criminal activity. Once Martha Hoffman screamed at me, most of the upstairs came rushing down to see what had happened. Being a policeman's daughter, I started dialing 911 and then tried to keep everyone back. Peter Markham came running in and grabbed Vanessa and held her in his arms. I noticed that Edith Martin, Damien Perez and Pattie had broken through to the fron
t of the crowd and were now standing near the edge of the plastic curtain. Damien placed his hand over his mouth, and I heard him utter something under his breath. Edith, too, seemed stunned as she pulled her red shawl around her and shot a glance toward Vanessa's husband, Peter.

  George Beckman was the first officer to show up on the scene. "Don't you worry, Betsy. I called Judd, and he's on his way," he said, putting his arm around my trembling shoulders. The crowd attending the lecture had been relegated back to the meeting room, except for me, Martha Hoffman and Peter Markham. After peeking over at the body, George began to tape off the scene from the folding door to the wall.

  My father came in and ducked under the crime scene tape. Not wanting Danny and Zach to be around a homicide, he sent my Aunt Maggie to the parking lot, where the boys waited. She would drive them back to my house to wait for me. My dad surveyed the scene briefly and then came to me and took my hand. "Are you okay, Betsy?"

  "I'm fine, Dad. I'm the one who discovered the body."

  "What were you doin' in here?"

  Martha Hoffman stood up. "That's what I'd like to know. This part of the library was off-limits to our visitors. When I noticed the sliding door was open and was attempting to close it, I saw Becky here leaning over Vanessa with the candelabra in her hands. She must have just finished pounding her in the head just before I arrived. We all know she had it out for our dear Vanessa."

  "That is not true." My voice pitched into a squeal, probably not the best tone to use when claiming one's own innocence.

  "Yeah, well do the police know you told her off in front of God and everybody in the mall and wrongly accused her of trying to ruin Pattie in the Creative Cooks contest?"

  My father looked at me. Of course he knew. George Beckman's eyebrows raised a bit as he learned of my mall incident.

  "The part about her trying to knock over Pattie's cupcake tower is true, and yes, I told her so," I said. "The part about me pounding her in the head with a candelabra is not true. I came into this section to find a world record book for the boys, and that's when I discovered Vanessa Markham."

  My father took out a small pad and pencil from his pocket and faced the increasingly hysterical librarian. He scratched his head as he started trying to put the framework of the crime scene together. "And how do you know Vanessa?"

  Martha Hoffman sobbed into a tissue. "This was Vanessa Scarlett, author of Girl Meets Fifth Avenue. She was the hottest author in Pecan Bayou."

  My father wrote that down. "And she was most probably hit in the head with that little candlestick thing?"

  Martha continued being the official voice of crime information. "It is the candelabra from The Mouse Who Played Piano. You obviously don't know your children's literature."

  My dad grinned. "I obviously don't. I thought her name was Vanessa Markham."

  Martha looked at my dad as if he were a rough-hewn barbarian. She spoke slowly to him, as she would to a small child. "This is Vanessa Markham, who writes under the pen name Vanessa Scarlett."

  "I see." My dad went back through his list. "So let me get this straight, Miss Hoffman. You are saying you think Betsy here was responsible for killin' Miss Scarlett in the library with the candlestick?"

  I stifled a giggle. It was highly inappropriate to laugh when a human life had just been taken. I heard another giggle behind me and saw Pattie trying to hide it in a cough. Whispers went up behind her as Ruby's crowd, who had snuck in behind Pattie, repeated the joke and then more muffled laughter.

  Martha Hoffman's face turned a deep burgundy as the unintended joke registered in her brain. She walked over to Peter Markham and extended her hand. "Peter, I am so sorry for your loss and for you having to be around people like this. We will get justice for Vanessa."

  Peter stepped slightly back from her and then answered in a whisper, "Um ... Thank you."

  *****

  After the two-man Pecan Bayou police department did its best to get the names and addresses of all of the people present in the library that evening, my dad and George sat down with me. Art Rivera, the county coroner, came in with a stretcher to remove Vanessa Markham's body. As he was wheeling the black body bag away, he stopped for a moment to ponder. "Miss Betsy, weren't you at the last murder in Pecan Bayou?"

  He patted my father on the shoulder. "Seems to me, Judd, you and Betsy are a little overboard on that take-your-daughter-to-work thing."

  "What can I say? She just keeps findin' 'em." As the coroner left, my father turned to me and spoke in earnest."Betsy, if you weren't my daughter I'd be taking you in. You have to look at the facts. You had an argument with the victim that was observed by others. Hell, you had an ongoing feud that was witnessed by half the town."

  "That wasn't my fault, Dad."

  "Sure," he said. "Then there's the sticky little matter of you holding the candlestick when Miss Hoffman the librarian came in."

  "I was moving it so I could see if Vanessa was alive. I was not hitting her with it."

  "You don't think I know that?"

  "Miss Betsy," George said, "did you see anyone, anyone at all, leaving the children's section of the library?"

  "No. Everyone was going upstairs for cupcakes. I was trying to get away from Martha Hoffman, who was accusing me of being the reason that Vanessa didn't make it to the author's night."

  My dad checked his notes. "According to Miss Hoffman, this section had been closed off today because of renovations. She says the painters left at around four-thirty this afternoon."

  "So how did Vanessa Markham and her murderer get in here?" I said.

  George rose from the tiny chair he had been trying to sit in and walked over to the plastic divider. "Lieutenant Kelsey, do you think someone could have walked into the library and snuck into this room? All they had to do was unlock this latch."

  My dad stood up and walked into the main part of the library. "What about the people who were out in this part of the library checking out books? It would have been pretty tough to sneak in here." He turned back toward me, scratching his head."I know you were having difficulties with the woman, but do you know if she had any other enemies?"

  "I saw her fighting with her husband at the Pecan Bayou Gazette."

  He reopened his notepad. "What were they fighting about?"

  "Sounded like she caught him cheating on her."

  "Did they drop a name?"

  "Nope."

  "Okay, that gives us a start," he said.

  "Oh, and I saw her getting pretty cozy with Damien Perez in the mall," I added.

  "Why does that name sound familiar?"

  "Camazotz Chronicles," George said, his voice in awe. "Those are some pretty powerful books. Bella and Edward may be hot in this country, but the Mexican Camazotz are really scary."

  "Huh?"

  "Damien Perez writes vampire books," said George.

  "Oh, that hooey." My father gestured as if sweeping George and his Mexican vampires out of the air. I continued.

  "Well, maybe they were just real good friends, but he seemed pretty hot under his pointy black collar."

  "We'll check that out as well. Art will be calling me in the next couple of days, but we're pretty sure it's going to be blunt-force trauma. It’s unfortunate you were found standing over the body. We might need to be thinkin’ of a lawyer…just in case. I guess I don't have to tell you to stay in town."

  "I'm not much of a flight risk, Officer Judd."

  After being dismissed by the police, I went back to the meeting room to retrieve my things. Pattie offered to stay until I was finished with my interview and then drive me home. She sat there looking at the copy of my book. Martha had straightened out the meeting room and returned the table to the center. I hoped Martha Hoffman had given up on the idea of an author's night.