Delicious and Suspicious (23 page)

Big Ben’s mouth dropped open. He quickly turned up the volume on his hearing aids. After opening and shutting his mouth several more times, he said “Not going to drink anymore? Is that what you said? Have you suffered a stroke?”

Buddy shot him an offended look. “I certainly have not. But it’s hard to reconcile my religious beliefs with my indulgence in alcohol. I’ve given up drinking for God.”

Big Ben struggled to recover. “In that case,” he said slowly, scratching the side of his face with a long finger, “I think you’d better relieve yourself of temptation. I’ll be happy to take your entire collection of alcohol-based beverages from your pantry.”

Buddy glared at him. Morty was chuckling beside them both. He said, “Hey, she’s gone, Buddy. You can drop the charade now.”

Buddy hissed at Big Ben, “I am certainly
not
going to divest myself of my wine collection. You get that thought out of your head right now.”

“Well, then, I’m confused. I’d appreciate it if somebody would fill me in,” said Big Ben with great dignity. “There’s obviously been a romantic development that I’m not privy to.”

Buddy ignored him; instead, he motioned Lulu to the booth. “Lulu, what can you tell me about Leticia Swinger?”

Lulu seemed to be fumbling around in her memory. “Well, now, let’s see. I’ve sat down and talked with her quite a few times. Very nice, pretty black lady, in her late seventies. Widowed. I do believe someone mentioned to me that she’s the star soloist at . . .” she frowned, trying to remember the name.

“The Eternal Crown of Our Blessed Savior of Memphis,” finished Buddy in a gloomy voice.

Lulu nodded, thoughtfully. “Not a church with a big reputation for enjoying alcohol.”

“Oh, I see,” said Big Ben, crowing. “You’ve got yourself a new lady friend. And she’s a gospel singer, at that! Now you’ll be toeing the line from now on. Surrender those bottles.”

“Hey, I want in on that, too,” protested Morty. “I even promise to keep them closed and give them back to you after you’ve wooed her enough so that consumption of alcohol doesn’t matter anymore.” He reconsidered. “Well, most of it I’d keep uncorked. I should get a little something for my trouble, though.”

“She’s awfully pretty,” said Lulu. “And I’ve seen her walking to church on Sunday mornings wearing the most beautiful hats. And,” she added in a confidential tone, “she certainly has been in here a whole lot more than usual. She must have discovered that this was your hangout, Buddy.”

A flush spread over Buddy’s face as Big Ben and Morty gave whooping laughs. “All right, that’s enough of that. We’ll see. I do like the lady a lot. Maybe I can squirrel away a couple of bottles to keep at home and outsource some others to y’all’s tender care. I’m just working up to asking her out.”

“Lulu, she’s not seeing anyone, as far as you know?”

“Not as far as I know. What kind of date are you planning?”

“Something nice and quiet. Maybe I’ll cook a simple meal at home, and we can sit out on the porch and eat.”

“Sure would be a lot nicer,” mulled Big Ben, “with a chilled bottle of wine.”

 

 

Although it took longer than Lulu planned, she was finally able to pull away from Aunt Pat’s and go check on Mildred. First she drove over to the bookshop, knowing that sometimes Mildred stayed there late to work on her book or to read for a while. Lulu often wondered if Mildred just didn’t completely lose track of time. She didn’t have anybody waiting for her at home, so she became completely absorbed in life at Mildred’s Secondhand Book Shoppe. Lulu was no fan of putting a “pe” at the end of “shop” but had so far been able to refrain from sharing that bit of information with Mildred.

The bookstore looked dark as she drove by, so Lulu went to Mildred’s house. Lulu raised her eyebrows. The house was dark, too. Now Lulu entertained fanciful visions of a depressed and frightened Mildred alone in the dark. Lulu pulled into her driveway and marched to the front door. She rang the doorbell. And again. No answer. Lulu rapped loudly on the front door. No answer.

Lulu tried the doorknob and to her surprise, it turned. Lulu clucked. Wasn’t Mildred supposed to be a poisoned-pen-letter recipient? Locking her door would certainly help prevent unwelcome company. Lulu ignored the thought that maybe
she
was unwelcome company. Lulu called, “Hello? Yoo-hoo! Are you in here? It’s Lulu.”

No answer except from the birds that said, “Hi there! Hi there!”

Lulu could smell something she assumed was Mildred’s supper cooking. She walked into the kitchen. Sure enough, the Crock-Pot was burbling away. Lulu peered at it. Why would she have put the Crock-Pot on high if she wasn’t going to be home any earlier than this? Lulu lifted the lid off the Crock-Pot. Eww. Whatever sauce she’d put in there had clearly not been enough. The chicken, at least that’s what Lulu assumed it was, had completely dried up along with whatever sauce was in there. Lulu made a mental note not to stay for supper if Mildred asked her. She turned the pot off.

“Mildred?” She did a quick search around the house but didn’t see her anywhere. Her little house was perfectly tidy, not a frill out of place. But no Mildred to be seen.

So it was back to the dark bookstore. Again, the thought of a frightened Mildred worried Lulu. This time she parked on a side street and walked inside the store.

The bookstore had always felt sad to Lulu. There were lots of yellowing books that had grown musty through the years, and Mildred was sort of a musty person herself. She definitely had regular customers who spent hours perusing the stacks of books, so the store always survived. And there were books everywhere—the shelves were floor to ceiling, and there were rolling stepstools on every aisle. There were also books in baskets, books on the sales counter, and books in every available space. Mildred sometimes greeted customers but sometimes not—depending on how wrapped up she was in the book she was reading or writing at the time.

“Hello?” called Lulu. She had to be there—the door was unlocked. And Mildred was more likely to forget to lock her house up than the bookstore. The bookstore held all of her most prized possessions.

Again there was no answer. The darkened bookstore had an ominous aura. Shelves of teetering books loomed over her. Swallowing down her fear, Lulu looked for the light switch. The store was getting dimmer with the setting sun. There was a switch by the door, but it didn’t seem to work. Then Lulu noticed that Mildred apparently preferred lamps for lighting. She turned on a small desk lamp. Lulu noticed other lamps farther into the store and walked down a dark, book-lined aisle to turn them on. Suddenly two hands grabbed her roughly from behind and slammed her to the floor. Before she could even cry out, something hard hit the back of her head, and she pitched into blackness.

Lulu slowly came to. Her head throbbed, and waves of nausea wafted over her as she carefully sat up. She scrambled to collect her thoughts over her pounding headache. Was she still in danger?

She managed to push herself off the floor, which wasn’t easy since she was lying on her face and unused to push-ups. She didn’t immediately see her pocketbook, so she looked around frantically for a moment. Then she saw that her purse was right under her knees and remembered that it had been hooked around her arm as she’d walked into the bookstore. She opened it and rifled through. Her phone, car keys, and cash were still in there. Lulu frowned. She hadn’t been mugged.

Had Mildred done this to her? Maybe she’d thought that Lulu was the person who’d written her the threatening letter. It had been dark in the store. Perhaps she’d been terrified and, acting in irrational terror, had clubbed Lulu over the head in self-defense. And, knowing Mildred, she was totally horrified. Lulu bet that was probably what had happened.

What
had
she been clubbed with? Lulu looked around her and saw a huge, leather-bound copy of
The Sound and the Fury
. Great. Taken out by Faulkner. Well, she supposed she should consider it an honor. If it had been a graphic novel or something, then she really would have felt insulted.

Finally Lulu felt strong enough to get to her feet. She pulled herself up with the help of the bookshelves and managed to stand. After taking a couple of steps, she felt her knees giving way. She stopped and held tight to the bookcases again to regain her strength.

She listened carefully to see if she could hear the old wooden floors creaking as someone else’s weight bore down on it. But she really had the feeling that she was the only person in the store. Lulu wasn’t sure how much time had passed while she’d been unconscious. It couldn’t have been too long, though, because it wasn’t much darker in the bookshop than it had been.

“Mildred?” she called. There didn’t seem any point in being quiet since the bad guy clearly knew where she was, anyway. It’s not like she’d gotten very far. “It’s Lulu,” she added, on the off chance it was Mildred who’d walloped her. She had no desire to be mistaken for an intruder again. “Are you here? Listen, it’s no big deal if you accidentally knocked me out.” Like hell, thought Lulu. But they could discuss that part later, after Lulu was feeling better and was more like her old self again. “I just came over to check on you and make sure you were okay.”

No answer.

Lulu walked slowly toward the back of the store. She turned on a lamp along the way, which had such an old and dusty bulb that it didn’t really shed any additional light. She remembered there were two little rooms in the back of the store: a restroom and a small storage room. The restroom door was wide open, and Lulu didn’t see anyone in there at all. She pushed open the storage room. She saw a table stacked high with books. She almost didn’t notice the ballet-style flats poking out underneath the table.

“Mildred!” she cried out and hurried over to the motionless body before stopping short. Mildred was clearly dead. There was no need to take a pulse. She had been strangled with her own scarf.

 

 

This time Lulu was more used to the drill as Detective Bryce arrived at the bookstore to interview her. Maybe he was getting worried about her heart after walking in on two dead bodies, but he seemed especially gentle this time when talking with her. This time he had a sergeant offer her a cup of coffee before he questioned her about what she’d seen. They had a paramedic to come in and take a look at her head, but it was decided that there was no concussion, so the paramedic provided an ice pack and some ibuprofen.

“First of all,” said Detective Bryce, “why were you here to begin with? Were you in to do some shopping? It’s after-hours, isn’t it?” His blue eyes were innocently wide.

Lulu guessed there wasn’t any reason not to tell him why she’d come. Mildred was dead now, after all, and whatever her secret had been, it had died with her. She doubted Cherry would get into any trouble simply because she knew Mildred was worried about a threatening note and something she’d seen.

“I was here because I was worried about Mildred. She’d told Cherry Hayes that she’d followed Rebecca Adrian to the Peabody Hotel the afternoon she was killed. Mildred delivered this comeback that she had thought up long after Rebecca had left Aunt Pat’s. But she apparently saw somebody when she was leaving—somebody who shouldn’t have been there. She was very concerned about it. I guess it was someone she knew.”

Detective Bryce nodded encouragingly while his sergeant jotted down notes.

“Then Cherry said that Mildred had gotten a threatening letter. She must have been worried sick or scared to death or both. I thought it might be a good idea to run by and check on her . . . and persuade her to go to the police. She wasn’t at home, so I came by the shop. And, well, you know the rest.”

“Did Cherry have any idea who Mildred Cameron had seen that afternoon?”

“She didn’t seem to. She was worried for Mildred’s safety and also worried about her own, I think.”

Bryce looked thoughtfully at Lulu without saying anything. This kind of tactic drove Lulu up the wall because she didn’t ordinarily have awkward pauses in her conversations. If there
was
an awkward pause, she always filled it with more conversation. She had a feeling Bryce knew this and was waiting for her to prattle on again.

“I
was
going to get Mildred to call you,” she said. “I can’t believe what’s happened to her. The last time I saw her, she was really excited about starting a new manuscript. It was going to be a mystery, and she was planning on doing a bunch of research. I guess she didn’t realize the importance of what she’d seen at the Peabody until she started poking around and somebody didn’t like it.”

“Did you have any idea who might have knocked you out? Their size or gender? Did you smell aftershave or perfume?”

Lulu shook her head sadly. “No. I wish I had. The first I knew that anyone was behind me was when they grabbed me and pushed me to the floor and bopped me on the head. I wish to goodness I knew more than that. And I didn’t even pay attention to the cars that were parked out in the street.”

“What time was it when you entered the store?”

Lulu had to think. “Well, let’s see. When I left, it was probably seven thirty. The lights were out in the bookstore, so I stopped by Mildred’s house first, figuring that she’d closed the shop for the night and gone home. I didn’t spend too long at her house, since she wasn’t there. It was probably eight o’clock when I went back to the bookstore. It was pretty dark by then.” Lulu looked grim. “I guess the murderer was still in the bookstore right after killing Mildred. That’s why you want to know what time it was.”

Detective Bryce’s face was inscrutable. “The medical examiner will narrow down the time of death, too. But, yes, we can assume that you arrived on the scene right after Miss Cameron was murdered. You clearly surprised the killer by your appearance there.”

Lulu frowned. “What I don’t understand . . . well, I don’t understand much about any of this. But one thing I really don’t understand is why the store was dark when I drove by. Was the killer in with her at seven thirty? Or earlier? She meant to come home earlier than she did, I’m sure of it.”