Publishable By Death by Andi Cumbo-Floyd (free books to read txt) đź“•
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Mart and Rocky came running and stopped short as soon as they could see over my shoulders. “Oh my word,” Rocky said.
I took a deep breath and reached for my phone just as Mart said, “Isn’t that the reporter who was here the other day? The rude woman?”
With a few more steps, I was at the body. I leaned down, and sure enough, it was Lucia Stevensmith. “Maybe we shouldn’t call her rude anymore,” I said to Mart. I was trying to lighten the mood, but really I just wanted to cry. Someone had died in my store on my opening day.
Within minutes, Sheriff Mason had arrived with a new deputy named Williams. The sheriff was beloved in St. Marin’s because he was absolutely no-nonsense when it came to police work, but also super funny. When the high school football team had won the State Championships back in November, the sheriff had organized the townspeople to line the road into St. Marin’s with scarecrows holding each players’ names, and when they reached the town square, there was a huge banner that said, “Catamounts are no scaredy cats” hanging in front of a huge, stuffed mountain lion pinning down a tiny “rebel” soldier that represented the mascot of the team they’d just beaten. Mart had said that was very “on brand” since the African American sheriff was also known for “having a conversation” with anyone who thought it fitting to hang a Confederate flag in his town. “Maybe it is heritage, but it’s a heritage of hate,” he’d said in a local newspaper. I pretty much loved him for that.
When he and Officer Williams, a petite, almost tiny, black woman who looked like her utility belt might drag her to the ground at any moment, showed up in the back room of my store, I let out the breath I hadn’t even been aware I was holding. The sheriff took a very close look at Stevensmith’s body and then escorted us out of the room before saying, “Probably not the opening day attention you were hoping for, huh, Harvey?” He gave me a wry grin and then dispatched Williams to call the coroner before guiding me to the café to get my statement.
“You okay?” he asked as we sat down.
I nodded, grateful for his kindness. He’d been by a few times, just to say hello and let us know his staff was keeping an eye on things as we got the shop started. I had appreciated his attention and already felt like he was a friend.
“Okay, so just tell me what you know.” His voice was soft and encouraging.
“Not much to tell,” I began. “I went in the back room, and there she was.” I told him about my morning, about when I arrived, in as much detail as I could remember, hoping that something would help.
Mason nodded and made a few notes. Then he sat back, took a long sip of his cappuccino with extra foam, and said, “One of the things we’ll have to figure out is how she got in. I know there’s a back door off the garage, I mean café, right? I expect you keep that locked.”
I nodded. “Of course.” I tried to remember closing up the night before, but I had been so tired that I only remembered getting home, eating cereal for dinner, and collapsing into bed. “But it’s been a busy few days. Let me check.”
I walked back past the storeroom, the sheriff close behind, to the half-glass back door that opened onto a small parking lot and turned the handle. It opened right up. “Oh no! I must have forgotten to lock it.”
The sheriff stepped around me and looked closely at the door jamb. “Nope, looks like someone credit carded it.”
“That’s actually a thing people can do? I thought it was just on TV shows.”
“Actually a thing. Pretty easy, too, on a door like this at least.” He turned to the storeroom door. “Let me show you.” The sheriff took a grocery store discount club card out of his wallet, turned the simple tab on the storeroom doorknob, and pulled the door shut. Then, he took the card, slid it between the door and the jamb, and worked it down until he was at the latch. Then, he wiggled the card a bit, and the door popped open. “See. Pretty easy.”
“Glory! Alright, I’m having a deadbolt put on that backdoor right away.”
“Good plan. I’ll ask Williams to check for prints – not that it’s likely we’ll get much that’s usable – and then you can call your alarm company. I might go with a full-on security bar if I were you. It would keep the door locked but also let you know if someone tried to sneak out of the store from the back. Should be easy to do before the end of the day.”
“Thanks.” I looked at my watch – 7:45. I was supposed to open in fifteen minutes. I let out a long sigh of disappointment.
Mason looked at me and smiled. “Don’t worry, Harvey. It’ll only take the coroner a minute to load out Stevensmith’s body, and then no one will be the wiser. After all, she was our only reporter. No one left to tell the story.” He winked.
I laughed hesitantly. “Some people might think you’re a little flippant about a death, Sheriff.”
He frowned. “Never. But then, it’s not going to bring her back for me to be overly serious is it.” A smile crept into the corner of his mouth. “Besides, we don’t want to hurt business in our newest shop here in town. I’ll do my best to keep this quiet until this afternoon.”
“Oh, thank you, Sheriff. I mean, I don’t want to hinder an investigation or anything, but if there’s no harm in keeping things quiet . . . “
“Actually, it might be a help. As soon as word gets out, everyone will have a theory. This will give me a few hours to get a handle on things before the entire town starts in on my cellphone.” He tapped the smartphone holstered opposite his pistol. “Now, how about another of those cinnamon rolls while we wait?”
By the time we closed the shop at seven p.m. that first day, I was some dazzling combination of exhausted and exhilarated that had me smiling nonstop, but also very much in need of a comfy chair and an ottoman. Mart locked the front door, and I collapsed in the chair-and-a-half by the fiction section, curling my feet up under me and dropping my head back on the overstuffed cushion.
“That was A.MA.ZING.” Mart said as she slumped to the floor against the bookshelf next to me. “There must have been 1,000 people through here today.”
“1,312 to be exact.”
“You were counting?!”
I held up the silver counter-clicker I’d picked up at an office supply store when I’d visited Salisbury last week. “I come prepared.”
“Love it! So over 1,300 people. Wow. No wonder we’re so tired.”
“Tired doesn’t even begin to cover it. I still can’t believe I have my own bookstore.”
“Not only that, but Catherine Clinton signed her books AND agreed to come do a book event for you in April. That’s huge.”
“It is . . . but not as huge as finding a dead body in my back room.” I was so excited that Clinton was coming to sign, but all day, I’d kept flashing back to the image of Lucia Stevensmith’s lifeless body. It had been a great grand opening day . . . but a tainted one. I hadn’t liked the reporter, but I was still sad that she had died – and horrified that someone had killed her, killed her in my shop.
Mart sighed. “Right.”
The sheriff had come by late in the day to say the coroner had ruled the cause of death to be a blow to the head by something cylindrical.
“The reporter in the storeroom with a candlestick,” Sheriff Mason had said with a terrible English accent, and I hadn’t been able to keep from laughing. I sounded a little hysterical to myself. The fatigue and double-adrenaline shot of the grand opening and the murder had started to fray my nerves.
“I don’t think there’s anything shaped like that in my store,” I said,
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