Publishable By Death by Andi Cumbo-Floyd (free books to read txt) đź“•
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I looked around, saw an empty bucket, and turned it over as a seat. I needed to sit down. “Does she know that you suspect her?” I had about five thousand other questions, but I figured she’d get to the answers soon enough, now that she was talking.
“I imagine she does now. I shouldn’t have intervened back there, at least not that way, but I didn’t want her ruining this day. It’s so beautiful, and you worked so hard.” She looked up at me, and I could see the tears in her eyes again.
I reached over and took the bouquet from her and slipped it into a vase full of water on a small table beside her. Then I slid my bucket closer and held her hands. “Oh, Elle. So the articles Cate saw?”
She let out a raspy laugh. “I wondered if that’s why you all had come back in that day. Yeah, I was doing a little investigating, following a hunch. That day you came to ask about the flowers, I’d seen Divina back behind your shop, poking around. I asked her if she’d lost something, and she said she’d dropped a pair of scissors. We looked for a while but didn’t find them. It was only when I got back here that I thought to wonder why she’d had scissors near your shop. That got me thinking.”
I shook my head. Divina had pulled the same thing on us the previous night. I told Elle that story, and we sat quietly for a while. “The articles were research then, but not about Lucia. About her mom.”
“Right. I was trying to figure out why Divina would kill her own daughter, but I didn’t see anything that made sense.” She studied her fingernails. “Then, when Deputy Williams got killed, it suddenly felt really unsafe. I mean, if she could kill twice . . . “ She looked up at me with shock.
“I know just what you mean.” I leaned back on my bucket and stretched my back. “Okay, but now we need a cover story, something that makes sense of what you just said to Divina, something that will get you out of her cross-hairs.”
Elle nodded. “Or at least be believable enough that other people will think that’s what we’re fighting about. I can’t be sure, but something tells me that Divina just wants to keep her secret from going public. Maybe she doesn’t care that I know?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. But maybe we can be sure, too.” I stood up and paced around the cooler and then struck on something. “What if I went over there and told her you felt terrible about accusing her, that you thought she was trying to steal the attention away from Deputy Williams with her donation.”
Elle looked skeptical. “Do you think she’ll buy that?”
“Maybe. I mean I think I can convince her. She’s so private and this donation is so out of the ordinary—” I stopped mid-sentence because I just realized something. “She feels guilty.”
“What?” Elle asked.
“She donated her work of art because she feels guilty about killing Deputy Williams. I’m sure of it.” I headed toward the cooler door. “That makes perfect sense.”
Elle trailed after me. “It does, but we still don’t know why she did it.”
She was right. Motive still wasn’t clear, but I imagined Sheriff Mason could make more sense of that. But first, I needed to be sure Elle was safe.
I gave her a quick hug, told her to come by the shop when she closed up for the night, and that we’d make a plan from there. Then, I headed to the co-op in the hopes that I’d find Divina in her studio.
The kid with the gauges in his ears was still on duty, and when I told him I was hoping to see Ms. Stevensmith, he didn’t bat an eye and took me right back to her studio. “She doesn’t usually like to be disturbed.” He said it with casual ease, as if it didn’t matter to him if artists needed privacy or not. Given the circumstances, neither did I.
I knocked lightly on the door and then tried the knob. It was open, so I stepped in and saw Divina with her scissors working at her counter. She glanced up and then went right back to work.
“You heard about the incident on the street?” she said quietly.
“I did. I actually heard the incident.” I took a deep breath and dug deep for my best sincere voice. “Are you okay? You seemed pretty upset.”
My acting must have worked because she put down her scissors and laid her hands on the waist-high counter in front of her and sighed. “That Max Davies pushes my buttons. Can’t let anything go.” She winced at her own words, but I couldn’t very well ask why. “One review in that newspaper, and he was after Lucia all the time. My daughter was not a kind human being. I’m not denying that. But his escargot is kind of chewy.” She let out a breathy laugh, and I relaxed a little.
I said, “Yeah, he does seem kind of incensed about something from, what, a few years ago.”
She looked up abruptly then. “Well, time doesn’t heal all wounds, my dear. But this wound of Max’s, it’s pretty petty.” She came around the desk, and I double-checked to be sure the scissors stayed behind. I was glad to see them on the counter. “Sit.” She pointed to two club chairs covered in red fabric at the edge of the studio.
I made my way over, being sure to keep myself between the door and Divina, even though I felt kind of silly. She sure didn’t come off like a cold-blooded killer, and right now, she just seemed sad.
“I just talked to Elle,” I almost whispered.
Her eyes darted to mine and narrowed. “Oh? What does she have to say for herself?”
The energy in the room had changed just like that. It was suddenly colder, sharper in here. “She’s sorry for accusing you of trying to steal the attention away from Deputy Williams. She really is.”
Divina turned her head to look at me from the corner of her left eye. “Oh, right. She is? Well, that’s good.” I could hear the hesitation in her voice, as if she was waiting to hear more.
“I explained that you’d donated the piece and had wanted to stay out of the limelight as much as possible, that you’d even insisted on not being a part of the fair directly because you really wanted to keep the focus on Deputy Williams.” Divina was nodding and looking at me. “I told her your donation wasn’t about you at all, but about taking care of your community.”
She smiled then. “Thank you, Harvey. That’s exactly it. If anything, I’d like to have donated the work anonymously. Maybe I should have done that, but sometimes,” she looked past me toward the door of the studio, “sometimes, we just need to put our names to things, claim our responsibility for them. You know?” She kicked her eyes back to me.
I felt like something was being said that wasn’t being said, but I wasn’t about to ask. “I do know. Absolutely. Anyway, I just wanted to come as an emissary for Elle, who feels so terrible that she was too ashamed to come talk to you herself. I hope you’ll forgive her.” I stood up.
Divina stood with me. “Of course. Some slights need to be overlooked.”
I faked a laugh that I hoped sounded more real than it felt. “Like chewy escargot.”
“Exactly.” She held the door open for me as I left, and when I looked back, she was still watching me. I shivered.
Back at the shop, Cate and Lucas’s sales were winding down as they tended the shoppers of the last few dozen books. I caught Cate’s eye as I passed, pointed inside, and said, “When you can. No rush.” She must have read something in my face because she handed the copy of Black Book, a collection of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography, back to Lucas and followed me inside.
As we passed the café, I waved to Mart, who left the wine table to follow us. I gave Daniel a quick wave, too, and asked Marcus to take over the register for a few minutes. Then, the four of us huddled in the back room while I told them about what Elle had found, what I suspected about the reason for the art donation, and my conviction that Divina Stevensmith was our murderer.
With the facts laid out like that, no one disagreed. “Nice work, Harvey,” Daniel said, “but now, it’s time to call the sheriff.”
“Wait.” I could hear the anxiety in my voice. It felt really important to me to figure this
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