Murder Between the Covers

Chapter 16

“There are two people in the large stall in the women’s rest room,” the woman said. She was forty-something, with the look of a no-nonsense mom. “One is a teenage boy about fourteen. The girl is about the same age. You can’t miss them. The boy has blue hair.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Helen said. “You shouldn’t have to put up with that.”

The mom shrugged. She seemed immune to teenage folly.

Anyone who believed bookstores celebrated the life of the mind didn’t know about the bathrooms. Weird things happened there. People got naked. People got crazy. People had sex and drugs in the stalls. They pried open shoplifted CDs and buried the packaging in the rest-room trash. Public bathrooms were the bane of a bookseller’s existence.

Helen spotted the kid when he came out into the store a few minutes later. He was all nose and bones, with hair the color of blueberry Jell-O. His plump girlfriend was dressed in black with dead-white skin and bug-blood nails. The pair left. That problem took care of itself, Helen thought.

But it didn’t. Half an hour later, Blue Hair and the girl in black were back, heading for the bathroom.

“Oh, sir,” Helen said loudly. The boy stopped.

“This time you might want to use the men’s room,” she said.

Blue Hair’s face turned bright red. His girlfriend giggled.

He made a U-turn and walked out the front door, the snickering girl following. Helen didn’t think he’d be back soon.

Twenty minutes later, another woman was up at the cashier’s desk. She had gray hair in a short sensible cut and wore a comfortable blue cotton dress. She looked smart, practical, and in charge. A nurse possibly, or a teacher. She said, “There’s a man in the women’s rest room. He’s in the handicapped stall.”

“Skinny kid with blue hair?” Helen said.

“Preppy in a pink shirt. I got a good look at him through the space in the door. He’s about twenty-five, sandy hair, wearing khakis, boat shoes, and no socks. I didn’t see a knife, gun, or other weapon, and he wasn’t talking to himself.”

The woman knew her Florida crazies. “Thank you for handling this so well,” Helen said. The woman gave a short nod, like a superior officer acknowledging a sergeant, and marched out.

Helen paged Brad, and it was several minutes before the little bookseller came up front, loaded with books. He steadied the towering stack of slush with his chin.

“Brad, watch the register, please,” Helen said. “There’s a problem in the women’s bathroom. Some preppy in a pink shirt is hiding in a stall.”

“At least he’s dressed,” Brad said. “Last week, I got the naked guy drying himself in front of the men’s-room hand dryer, holding his own wienie roast.”

The bookstore bathrooms were at the top of a long corridor. At the other end were the steps up to Page’s office.

That section was roped off and had a PRIVATE—NO ADMITTANCE sign, but it was easy to step over the flimsy barricade. Helen saw the pink-shirted preppy in the hall, on the wrong side of the green velvet rope. He was coming from the direction of Page Turner’s office.

“Excuse me, sir,” Helen said.

“Do you want something?” he said, as if Helen were the one trespassing. He had blond hair and a built-in sneer.

“A woman reported that a man answering your description was lurking in a stall in the rest room,” Helen said.

“The old biddy needed glasses,” he said. “I’m here in the hall. And I’m not lurking. I’m lost.”

“You’re in a restricted area.”

“I made a wrong turn,” the preppy sneered.

“Maybe you’d better show me some identification.”

“I don’t have to do anything of the kind.”

“No, you don’t. You have another choice. I can call two strong booksellers and they can hold you here until the police arrive. Then we’ll charge you with trespassing.”

The preppy reluctantly pulled out his wallet. Instead of a driver’s license, he produced a picture ID that said he was Harper Grisham IV, legislative assistant to State Senator Colgate Hoffman III. Were all those Roman numerals supposed to intimidate her? And why was that name familiar?

“You’re a little far from Tallahassee,” Helen said. “So why don’t you go back where you belong?”

“Gladly,” he said. Helen wanted to wipe that sneer off his face. Instead, she stood in the doorway and watched Harper the preppy stroll through the store. He walked at a stately pace, as befitted a future political mover and shaker.

Finally, the preppy prowler was gone.

An hour later, Gayle was at Helen’s register. She was not her usual cool self. Her blond hair stuck out at weird angles. Her black turtleneck was dotted with packing lint. She was definitely upset.

“Page’s office has been broken into,” she said. “I’ve called the police.”

“Did they get anything?”

“I can’t tell. I noticed the break-in when I took the last cash pickup to the safe. The office lock was jimmied. I’ve never seen such a mess. The place is ransacked. Astrid has been through so much, and now she’ll have to deal with this.”

“Why? I know she’s the owner, but you know what’s there better than she does.”

Gayle ran her fingers through her hair, and sent her bangs up in more spikes. “I thought the police made a mess, but that was nothing. Papers are tossed all over the floor. The file drawers are open. The couch is slashed.

Things are broken and overturned. The locked video cabinet door was bashed in, too. I guess someone didn’t know the police took all the videos. Either that, or the thief wanted it to look that way. There’s a lot of damage.”

“I caught a guy in the back hall about an hour ago,” Helen said. “I have his name. He’s a legislative assistant to State Senator Colgate Hoffman III.” As soon as she said the name out loud, she knew why it was familiar. The thought rocked her.

“Why would a senator’s assistant break into Page’s office?”

Helen knew, but she couldn’t say why. Peggy had starred in the missing video with the senator’s late son.

The women’s rest room was right next to the rope barricade. Someone must have come along when the preppy prowler was trying to break into the office and he ducked in there. It was the closest hiding place.

The store was soon overrun with police. Helen expected the evidence technician and burglary detectives. But she didn’t expect to see Homicide Detective Clarence Jax. He spent most of the afternoon with Gayle, while she tried to figure out what was missing. Helen rang up the customers and gave vague answers to their curious questions about the police.

Gayle was her capable self the next time Helen saw her.

The punk-stress spikes were gone. Her black clothes were lint-free. She was a gunslinger in Doc Martens.

“Nothing’s missing,” the manager concluded. “Whoever did it trashed the place. I think it was a pissed-off staffer.

But Detective Jax wants to hear about your preppy prowler.”

Jax peppered her with questions that made Helen feel like she was lying, even when she wasn’t. “And you actually saw the senator’s aide in the women’s bathroom?” he said. Did he think she was making that up?

“No, I didn’t. A woman customer reported him there.”

“Do you have her name and number? Do you have a description of her?”

“I didn’t take her phone number. She was about fifty, on the chunky side, short gray hair. A sensible-looking woman.” Helen hoped that would make Jax believe her.

“Did she pay for a purchase by check or credit card? We could find her that way.”

“She didn’t buy anything,” Helen said. “She reported a strange man in the women’s bathroom and I went back to investigate.”

“And then she left? Without buying anything?” Helen thought she heard more skepticism in his voice. “Did you see this man in the rest room?”

“No, he was in the hall, in the restricted area.”

“Did he say why he was there?”

“He claimed he was lost, even though he’d have to step over a velvet rope with a PRIVATE sign on it.”

“Did you see him near the office door? Did he have anything in his hand?”

“No. He was coming from the direction of Mr. Turner’s office, but I didn’t actually see him touch the door. He didn’t seem to have anything with him.”

Because he didn’t find anything, Helen thought.

“What was his demeanor?”

“Arrogant,” Helen said.

“But he didn’t seem furtive or guilty?” Jax said. “He didn’t appear to be hiding anything?”

“No, I asked for identification. He showed me his legislative assistant’s ID, as if that was supposed to impress me. He left when I asked him.”

“So at the time, you didn’t think his actions were suspicious enough to report him to the police?”

“No,” Helen said. “That was before I knew about the break-in.”

“Well, we’ll talk to him,” he said.

He doesn’t believe me, Helen thought. She wanted to scream in frustration. She knew why the preppy prowler was in Page’s office, and why he could brazen it out. He didn’t find the video with Peggy and the senator’s dead son.

He came away with nothing. Helen wondered if the ambitious little twit was acting on the senator’s orders, or if he thought he could advance his career with a timely burglary.

But Helen couldn’t mention the video to Detective Jax.

Yes, it would explain why the pink-shirted prowler was in Page’s office. But it would also give the police an even stronger motive for Peggy to commit murder.

There was only one good thing about the break-in: It proved Peggy was innocent. She was in jail when it happened. For the first time, Helen felt hope.

Detective Jax stopped by the bookstore the next day. He flashed his badge and his smile at a woman waiting in line, and stepped up to Helen’s cash register. Once again, he had those aggressive movements, that fiery red hair and air of righteousness. Jax had arrested her friend for murder, but Helen recognized a man who believed he had done the right thing.

“Mr. Harper Grisham IV says he was never in your bookstore. He produced two witnesses who say he was on the beach with them in Fort Lauderdale all day.”

“And you believe that?” That preppy scum had lied.

“They all have sunburns,” Jax said.

“This time of year, you can burn in ten minutes. He was here. Why would I make up that story?” Helen could feel her rage building. The angry heat rose out of her core and seemed to travel up her spinal column.

“He says you’re politically motived. You’re a liberal trying to hurt Senator Hoffman’s chances of reelection.”

Another lie, even more outrageous. Her anger level was rising. “I never laid eyes on him before I found him wandering the bookstore hall.”

“Maybe he is lying,” Jax said. “But you’re not telling me the whole truth, either. You’re holding back something about this prowler. I know it. I want to know what it is.”

Helen pretended to be interested in her cash register keys. Mentioning that video would sign Peggy’s death warrant.

When she thought she could talk without her voice shaking, she said, “You’ve got to reopen Page Turner’s murder investigation. This break-in proves Peggy was innocent.

She was in jail when it happened. She couldn’t have done it.”

“The break-in has nothing to do with Page Turner’s murder,” Jax said. “The investigation is closed. Ms. Freeton killed him. I can’t investigate a case that’s going to trial. It’s over.”

Red rage surged up and boiled over in her brain. It was the same rash anger that destroyed her St. Louis life. “Your mind is made up,” she said. “Don’t confuse you with the facts. You’d rather send an innocent woman to her death.

Tell me this, Detective Jax. Why would Peggy kill that man and leave his body in her bed?”

“Because her brains were fried on coke. People who use drugs don’t make sensible decisions. And she does use drugs. We have her on tape.”

“Not anymore. She’s clean. She was framed. But you’d rather railroad an innocent woman, because you need that case cleared. Page Turner was an important man. Peggy’s not important. But she is my friend, and she didn’t kill him.”

She regretted her outburst instantly. She waited for Jax to lash back. Instead, he picked up a delicate gift book from a counter display, What Is a Friend? Its cover was garlanded with pink ribbons and roses. He coolly paged through its flowery sentiments.

“Loyalty to a friend is a beautiful thing,” he said, holding up the book. “But some loyalty is misplaced. I can’t see a nice woman like you being friends with a coke dealer.”

“No,” Helen protested, but that small word didn’t seem strong enough to ward off the ugly accusation. The thought made her sick. “Peggy may have used it years ago, but she never sold cocaine.”

“That’s not what I heard,” he said. He tossed the open book on the counter and walked out.

Helen picked it up and read the page: A friend is someone who can tell you anything—and everything.