Nipped in the Bud (12 page)
Care to tell me if you killed Bud while wearing that white sweater?
Better not to say anything until I came up with a motive. I slid the books and my card across the counter then reached for the boxes.
“What are you doing?” she snapped. “Those are for another customer.”
“I know. Lisa Winkle. We’re together. Thank you for getting them for us.”
“I didn’t get them for
you
. I got them for Lisa.” Her voice skated higher with each word.
“Hey, Lisa,” I turned and called out in a library whisper-shout, “can you come over here a minute?”
“
Shhh
, you’re disturbing our patrons.” Stacey’s tone reminded me of my eighth-grade math teacher. I piped down like I did in math class, where I fought to comprehend why letters were ever introduced into a subject where numbers should rule.
Stacey busied herself checking out my Nancy
Drews
, and I thumped my fingers on the counter to keep from speaking. Thankfully, Lisa slipped a tall picture book onto the shelf then joined me at the counter. I rolled my eyes over the two-faced librarian and nudged Lisa toward the desk.
She furrowed her brow at me then smiled at Stacey and tugged the boxes off the counter. “
Stacey,
thanks for getting these so fast. I can always count on you to be helpful.”
Stacey sent a starlet smile back at Lisa. I’d never seen this side of the woman—a side that would melt most men’s hearts on the spot.
Not at all
librarianish
, if you asked me.
“You’re welcome,” she said with genuine warmth coloring her voice. “I can’t wait to see those precious girls again.” She handed the books to me and her smile faded. “Please be sure you keep the newspapers in order. I don’t have the time or the workforce to clean up after you.”
Lisa wound through displays of gardening and canning books and the reference section until she reached the back corner. I followed close behind, stopping to admire one of my favorite gardening books.
“You see?” I said when I caught up to her. “That woman is out to get me.”
Lisa shrugged. “She was kind of mean to you. You must have done something to her.”
I chose not to argue. I would never win with Lisa in this mood. She set the boxes on a table in front of the rack of current newspapers and magazines.
“Did you see what was on her chair?” I asked.
“No. Should I have?”
“A white sweater.”
Lisa shook her head. “You are so far off base. Why on earth would Stacey want to kill Bud?”
“I don’t know yet, but he was her boss.”
“
Oooh
, that’s a reason for murder if I ever heard one.” She grabbed the top box and moved to a table by the magazines.
I wanted to point out that Stacey had closed the library around the time Bud was killed, but I didn’t think I’d get very far. I kept quiet and took the other box. “Let me know if you find anything.” I sat with my back to her to keep from making faces over her comments.
As we worked, the room remained quiet.
Library quiet.
If I hadn’t heard the occasional pages of the newspaper rustling, I might have peeked at Lisa to see if she kept her eyes open. Knowing the sooner I finished this task the sooner I could go to lunch with Adam, and as
a bonus find
the killer, I plowed through the papers. I found council minutes, lots of them, but nothing in the reports raised a red flag. I neared the bottom of my box and the bottom of my hope in locating a clue. Lisa came over and slapped the current week’s edition of the
Serendipity Times
in front of me.
Disappointed, I sighed and looked up.
“Seriously, Lisa.
Why can’t you help me here? I thought you were going to look in the old files, not read today’s paper.”
“I did both. I didn’t find anything in the box, but you’re going to want to read this.” She stabbed her finger at the headline on page one.
I
da
C
arlson
D
ies
, S
uicide or
A
ccident
?
I picked up the paper. “Ida Carlson. Why do I know that name? Ida Carlson? Wait, oh yeah! Velma told me she was one of the people involved in this mess.”
“Good job, Sherlock.” Lisa rolled her eyes and sat next to me. “She owned a house by the factory. I remember her fighting for some sort of reprieve from the factory’s noise. They refused, and she seemed to give up. No one ever really saw her much after that.”
I scanned the story. Six months ago, Ida’s daughter, Nancy Kimble, had her mother declared insane and moved her from Serendipity to
Hillsboro
, where
Nancy
could care for her. Last week,
Nancy
found her mother on the floor of her bedroom with empty pill bottles scattered across the room. No one could prove it wasn’t an accidental overdose, but
Nancy
believed her mother killed herself. She went on to say, if her mother’s death was intentional, Bud
Picklemann’s
decision to bring the factory to town was the driving force behind her insanity and the desire to end her life.
I finished the story and looked up at Lisa, satisfaction swelling my chest.
“Finally, a concrete motive.
Nancy Kimble had every reason to want Bud dead. Now all I need to do is prove it.”
“And now, enjoy the best of Through the Garden Gate with your beloved host, Paige Turner.”
“Hi, Paige, this is Chirpy in Salem. My wife and I love to listen to birds singing outside our windows and found your advice about attracting hummingbirds very interesting.”
“Oh, yes, Chirpy, I bet you’
ve added red flowers to your garden, and you’ve planted all sorts of nectar rich flowers, since it is really the sweet nectar that brings the hummingbirds into the garden.”
“Right, we did all of that, and we even put out fresh drinking and bathing water every day.”
“Well, it certainly sounds like you’re doing everything right. So what is your problem?
No hummingbirds yet?”
“You nailed it. We’re so disappointed. After your show, we couldn’t wait for those birds to sit in our trees and hum away in harmony to our singing friends. But we’re spending all of our time chasing away stupid little birds that just flutter around, taking up the place where the birds that hum would be. What can we do?”
Seated across a small two-person table from Adam, I nearly salivated as the Bakery owner, Donna Davis, set a steaming bowl of vegetable soup with homemade biscuits in front of me. She stepped to the other side of the table and watched Adam move his legal pad out of her way. While our food was being prepared, Adam and I had talked about my discoveries, and he jotted down ideas for follow-up.
Donna placed a large oval plate with a Reuben sandwich and seasoned
french
fries where the pad had been. “Nice meeting you, Adam. Hope we’ll still see you around town once Paige’s name is cleared.” She winked at me then giggled like a schoolgirl and strolled away.
Argh
! People around here never minded their own business. We’d been here for twenty minutes, and Donna had found a reason to make four trips to the table already, each time grilling Adam about his background. While Adam and I brainstormed, I’d moved closer to him to keep our conversation private. Or maybe, if I really thought about it, which I didn’t want to do, I’d scooted closer so that as his head moved under the fluorescent light, I could better see the shifting change in the color of his eyes.
Like they changed now from cocoa to cinnamon as he chewed the first bite of his sandwich.
He swallowed and then groaned with delight. “You were right. This is the best Reuben I’ve ever had.”
I gave up my perusal of his eyes and watched him bite off an extra large chunk. “
Donna’s
sandwiches have been written up in the
Oregonian
a couple of times. On the weekends, tourists stand in line for them.”
“I can see why.” He took another gigantic chomp and looked around the restaurant as he chewed. With each movement of his head, his jaw tightened and his brows furrowed. “Is it always like this in here? People staring at you?”
I grimaced and swallowed a bite of buttery biscuit. “It’s not usually this bad. People are just curious since I found Bud.”
“Paige! Paige,
oh.
. .my. . .gosh!” Both our heads swiveled in the direction of the shrill female voice.
From the doorway,
Uma
Heffner waved sparkly orange fingernails then tottered toward our table on three-inch metallic slides. Her beehive looked skyscraper high from my angle. She wore a formfitting knit top in bright chartreuse and even more fitted neon orange
capris
. Our fellow diners’ gazes followed her clip-clop path across the room.
“This must be just devastating to you.” She slid out a chair and slowly lowered herself, making eye contact with Adam by batting her obviously false lashes. Just when I expected her to latch onto him permanently, she swiveled and clasped my hand.
Fearing her talons, I pulled back. “
Uma
,” I said, “why don’t you sit down?”
“What? I am sitting.” Her face crinkled.
“Oh, you.”
She swatted those nails at me again. “I get it, you’re making a joke. I’m glad you can still joke with all this hanging over your head. Despite what everyone in town is saying, I so know you didn’t kill Bud.” She peered around the room. “Did you hear about Rachel?”
I shot a quick glance at Adam. He was listening, albeit happily chewing at the same time. I shook my head. “What about her?”
Uma
slid closer. “She didn’t cry or even get upset when Mitch told her Bud had been killed.”
“I didn’t hear about that.”
Uma
laid a hand on her ample chest. “Not surprising. You know how people are afraid of her. No one is
gonna
risk getting caught gossiping about her.”
Not me. “I saw Rachel fighting with Charlie. She caught him in the park yesterday right after you let him have it. Think they were arguing about the same thing as you and Charlie?”
“That? Oh no, Rachel isn’t involved in that.” She looked away as if bored.
I couldn’t let her get off without telling me about their argument. “I caught Charlie disagreeing with a lot of people yesterday.”
“Really?
It was the other way around with us. I probably shouldn’t tell you this.” This sentence came out of her mouth hundreds of times a day when she gossiped to her customers as she snipped their hair. She scooted her chair so close I could smell the minty gum she chewed. “You know the company that turned the old school into a hotel?”
Renovations on the school were complete before I moved back, and I’d heard nothing odd about the company that bought the building. Based on her whispering, I was about to. “I’m not real familiar with them.”
She snapped her gum. “
Leever
is their name. Anyway, just this month, Bud arranged for them to buy up all the land bordering the highway. You know that stretch out by the
River Road
where a bunch of us live?”
Bud again?
Adam’s cell chimed, interrupting my fixed attention on
Uma
.
He jerked it from his belt clip and looked at the caller ID. “I have to take this call. Excuse me for a minute.” He rose from the table.
I let my gaze follow his long strides away from us, feeling a sense of loss as he went. Focus, Paige. He’ll be right back, and you have a viable clue just waiting to be unearthed. I turned my gaze back to
Uma
. “I don’t get it. Why would you want to sell your house? Where would you live?”
“That was the beauty of the deal. This company wanted the land, not our houses, for an investment. They would buy us out, and we could stay there rent-free as long as we lived. They would even pay for any upkeep on the houses. Stupid old Charlie was taking his time in deciding. The rest of us were already on board. We’d have our houses, and we didn’t have to pay a stitch of rent as long as we lived there.” She crossed her arms and slumped back in her chair.
This sounded way too good to be true, and like my parents drilled into my head, when it sounded too good to be true, it usually was. I opened my mouth to tell her that, but she continued.
“Without Bud around to help them out, I don’t know what that
Leever
company
will do.” As if she were merely dismissing a bad hair day, she glanced around the room. “Look at that darling outfit Stacey is wearing.”
I followed her gaze. Stacey stood near the counter with an order ticket in her hand. “You know her very well?”
Uma
shook her head. “I do her hair, but she’s a quiet one.
Keeps to herself.”
“Did she know Bud?”
Uma
nodded. “Sure, he hired her.”