Hardcover Homicide E-Book

ACF Bookens

• Herausgeber: ACF Bookens
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Nail guns have always terrified Harvey Beckett, and now she knows why.

Harvey loves sharing the parking lot of her bookstore with the hardware store across the way, but when an unruly customer is killed in the lot one night, she begins to wonder if the men who own the store are responsible. A few inquiries and a bit of spying later, and Harvey and her best friend find themselves with nowhere to run.

Will the killer be caught before the two women are silenced forever?

Leseprobe

HARDCOVER HOMICIDE

ST. MARIN’S COZY MYSTERY

BOOK 9

ACF BOOKENS

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Harvey and Marcus’s Book Recommendations

Free Story

Also by ACF Bookens

About the Author

1

The view outside the window of my bookstore, All Booked Up, was stunning. A light fog was just lifting from the street, and the rows of sugar maples that lined the sidewalks were brilliant in their gold/orange/red glory. Along their bases, their shed leaves were creating mosaics of color, and it looked like children had colored autumn all along our sidewalk.

It was my favorite season, and I was here for it – especially since my friend Rocky had whipped up the perfect pumpkin latte in the café she ran inside my shop. She didn’t believe in artificial flavors for anything, so she and her mom had concocted a delicious syrup of pumpkin and vanilla that gave the drink its signature flavor and kept it from being the run-of-the-mill mixture that people bought in all the chain stores. I had to hold myself back from having more than one a day. It was so good.

It was a Tuesday morning, new release day, and while my assistant manager, Marcus, and I had gotten most of the displays ready after close last night, I was still at work early to fuss and ogle the new books. They made me so happy.

I was most excited, though, about the huge display we’d made in the window for Alix E. Harrow’s newest book, A Spindle Splintered. I had become a huge fan of Harrow’s work because of the way she wove fantasy and magic and the strength of women in her earlier books, and this novella was equally amazing with its retelling of the Cinderella myth with a twist of women’s empowerment.

But the best part was that Harrow was coming to read from her new book here at my store on Saturday as part of her book tour. My friend Galen, an Instagram influencer of the best sort, had secured the attention of Harrow’s publicist, and when he’d suggested my shop as a great venue, complete with a new reading area and stage, the date had been set. I’d been waiting two months for this, and I was fairly abuzz with excitement.

It was going to be the first event in my newly expanded store. My parents had generously financed the construction, and with my friends Walter and Woody in the lead, the project had been done in record time and even better than I could hope. The addition had let me expand my fiction section as well as add in a dedicated reading stage where I set up a display for the days when we didn’t have events but that easily converted to a place for a podium or two arm chairs for a reading or conversation.

The guys had left the brick exposed around a huge plate-glass window just behind the stage, and my friend Elle, flower-grower extraordinaire, had put in a window box that took advantage of the west-facing sun and kept the space green and colorful all year long. The seating area in front of the stage was kept open with reading chairs when not in use, but my friends Cate and Mart and taken it upon themselves to collect old dining chairs so that we could have eclectic but comfortable seating for events.

Beyond the window, we had left a small alley between my shop and the hardware store next door, and in front of the addition, Walter had managed to create two parking spaces for those customers who wanted to run into either store without the trouble of parallel parking. The two brothers, Hugo and Horatio, who ran the store, were thrilled with all of the arrangements, and despite the fact that they lost several prime parking spaces for their shop, they’d been nothing but supportive.

In fact, beyond the plate glass window, they’d commissioned one of the artists from the art co-op that Cate ran in town to paint a book-themed mural of a little girl floating in a cloud with a book in hand. It was beautiful and so kind of them.

Now, though, I had to finish my opening chores, quit fiddling with Harrow’s gorgeous book, and complete the final marketing items for the event on Saturday. Galen had volunteered to take on the ticket “sales” since we had limited space in the store and knew the demand would be high. He had managed to sell-out in two days, and now we were simply offering the last remaining seats to the people who came into our store and entered a drawing. Today was the day I would draw the names for the six remaining chairs, and I couldn’t wait to call the winners.

But first, the store. I prepped the register and did one last walk-through to be sure everything looked tidy and cozy, and then I turned on the open sign, unlocked the door, and greeted my first customers, an older couple with silver hair and the most lovely walnut skin. They were looking for travel books about Iceland, and I escorted them to the travel section while asking about their trip.

“It’s for our fiftieth wedding anniversary,” she said. “The trip of a lifetime.” She smiled at her husband, and he winked at her. I left them at the shelves and walked back to the register with a smile that only got wider when my phone dinged with a text from my boyfriend, Jared.

Good Morning, Sunshine, it said. I could hear his voice in my head as I read the words, and I thought of him, in his police cruiser before he left for work, taking the time to write me.

Good Morning, Moonshine, I replied.

The phone rang almost immediately. “I like that,” he said. “And you know my affinity for the apple pie stuff.”

I laughed. We’d thrown a potluck dinner at his house a couple weeks earlier, and Cate’s husband, Lucas, had brought over some apple pie moonshine. It was so delicious and so high in proof that all of us were a little tipsy by the time our sausages had come off the grill, and Jared was a bit more “gone” than the rest of us. He’d had a little trouble serving the food without spilling it, in fact. “I do remember,” I said. “I also remember your hangover the next day.”

He groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

“Still on for lunch today?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he said. “See you then.”

I put the phone down and watched the customers come in to browse or pick up one of Rocky’s amazing drinks or pastries. Despite being two years into owning this store, sometimes it still felt like I was in some incredible dream, where everything I wanted in life has come true.

Today, though, that dream was interrupted when Taco, my Bassett Hound, decided to yak up the grass he’d eaten on the walk to work all over his raised dog bed on the stage. Fortunately, most of the customers were far enough away or weren’t keyed into the gross sounds of a hound heaving, and so I was able to clean everything up without much attention. Taco, of course, had immediately gone back to sleep on Mayhem’s dog bed before I even got the cleaning done, and now the two pups were snoring loudly side by side.

I gave the hounds some fresh water, placed a couple of treats near their water bowl for when they woke, and turned around to see my friends Walter and Stephen heading my way, large mugs of Rocky’s delicious drinks in their hands. “Oh, hi! I didn’t know you were coming in.”

“Neither did we,” Stephen said as he hugged me and then smiled at his husband. “We decided to come into town to get some flowers from Elle, and then everything looked so beautiful that we had to walk around. And of course, if we were going to walk anywhere, it was here.”

Walter was looking over my shoulder at the stage and smiling.

“It really looks amazing,” I said as I turned to stare with him. “Everything I hoped for and more. That planter box and the steps you all built around the edges of the stage so that it can also act as a reading amphitheater for kids – brilliant.”

“That was all Woody’s idea. He’d seen you crammed into the children’s section with two dozen kids at your feet. He thought this might give you more space and bring in even more young customers,” Walter said. “I think he’s probably right.”

“I know he is,” I said as I glanced at my phone. “Storytime is in an hour, and I already have forty kids signed up.”

Stephen laughed. “Want some help with wrangling?”

Walter shot Stephen a surprised look, and I laughed. These two men were decidedly and clearly childless by choice, so it was a bit out of character for Stephen to want to spend time with not just a couple children but a few dozen.

“What? You know I’m trying to get Harvey to bring me on as part of her marketing team. Got to get in good with the boss?” Stephen said with a wink at me.

“Oh,” I said with genuine surprise. “Really? You want to work for me?”

Stephen blushed. “Well, yeah. I’m trying to get a small-business marketing agency started here. Had I not told you?”

I flashed back through our last conversations in my mind, and I honestly couldn’t remember him having mentioned it. “I’m sorry. So much has been going on, I must have forgotten.” I scrunched up my face and said, “I’m a horrible friend.”

“Oh, Stephen, let the woman off the hook,” Walter said with a stern stare at his husband. “He’s teasing you, Harvey. He is starting a business, but he only decided two days ago.”

Stephen laughed. “Got you, though.” He smiled. “I am interested in helping, though, Harvey, with both the kids and the marketing. Pro bono of course.”

“I’d love the help, but I will pay you. This is your livelihood, and I believe in paying people for their work.” I was adamant about that. Too many people, especially creative people, get asked to do their work for free, and I wasn’t about to contribute to that culture of thinking creativity and art aren’t real work. “Can you write up a proposal for me – mostly for my accountant – and then I can see what we can do?”

Stephen grinned. “Absolutely, but really, Harvey, don’t feel any pressure. Your dad and I have talked a bit, and between his new business and mine, we think we might have a pretty good partnership there.”

“Oh, I love that, too,” I said. My dad had recently launched a consulting company to guide small businesses like mine as they decided whether or not to grow. He already had three clients, two of whom were local businesses, and I knew that once word got out he’d have clients from DC to Baltimore. “You’ll make a great team.”

“I think so, too,” Walter said. “Now, what do we need to get ready for the horde of young people who will arrive.”

As the three of us selected books – themed around fairytales to honor Harrow’s reading – and prepped the coloring sheets I gave out after every story time, I thought about Stephen’s new enterprise, Walter’s growing contracting business, my friend Elle’s expansion, which she was undertaking with Dad’s guidance, and my own store. At a time when downtown communities were struggling but trying so hard to come back and be the center of their towns, ours was well on its way. St. Marin’s had never been short on tourist business in the summer, but now it looked like we might all thrive in the cooler months, too, which was a relief for all of us since it took off the pressure for those four months of warmth.

Story time went off without a hitch, especially since Walter and Stephen seemed to have an unnoted penchant for using humor to wrangle children on their way to wild. And Stephen’s monkey impersonation was actually very high-caliber.

As I rang up the numerous purchases that always came at the end of the hour, Marcus began straightening up the amphitheater. He’d come in as story time started and managed the rest of the store while I read, and I wondered, not for the first time, how I had even made it the first few weeks in the shop without him. He had proven himself to be an amazing manager, but he was, even more importantly in my eyes, an incredible bookseller. He read constantly, he knew how to talk about the aspects of a book that would interest different kinds of readers, and he was enthusiastic about books in a way that even I couldn’t muster most days.

Now, as he picked up discarded juice boxes and stray coloring sheets, I heard him recommend Change Sings by Amanda Gorman. Wisely, he avoided noting that Gorman had spoken at President Biden’s inauguration, just in case the young father wasn’t a fan of our standing president, but he did point out that the rhythm of the words in the book was magical and full of imagery that he thought his young daughter, who stood nearby with the best fishtail braid I’d ever seen, would enjoy.

The man bought that book and two others from me, and when he left, I gave Marcus a big thumbs up. “Nice recommendation,” I said.

“The little girl was humming ‘Puff The Magic Dragon’ the whole time she was coloring. I thought it a likely fit.” He bent down and retrieved a tiny car from beneath a table and tossed it to me for the lost and found. Someone would be in to get that sooner or later, I expected.

When Jared arrived a few minutes later, the store was bustling but tidy, and Marcus was all set to manage things while I stepped out for an hour. “Bring you anything?” I asked him

“Nope,” he said. “Rocky brought me lunch today.” The blush that rose up his cheeks was charming, but I knew the two of them were getting closer and closer as a couple. I expected that there might be a proposal in the works soon, but I was learning to mind my own business and not push. So I didn’t ask.

“See you soon,” I said as I took Jared’s arm, let him scoop up the dog leashes, and headed out the door. Tuesday lunches had become a part of our dating routine, alongside Thursday night dinners at one of our houses each week. We were both people who appreciated a routine, and since I got almost as much pleasure out of anticipating something as I did doing it, the two dates I knew were coming always gave me a kick of joy each week.

“Where to?” I asked as we strolled toward the art co-op at the end of the street.

“Well, I thought maybe we’d do a walk through town just to get our appetites up all the way, and then Lu has promised me something special when we get back to her truck.” Jared beamed at me. He loved giving surprises, and he knew I loved getting them.

“Perfect,” I said and pulled his arm closer to me. “What’s the surprise?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “You always ask that, and I never tell you. What do you think would make this time any different?”

I smiled. “Maybe you’re growing weak under my constant interrogation.”

Jared rolled his eyes. “I’m a police officer, Harvey. I’m trained to resist interrogation,” he said in his best deep voice.

“You’re not a spy, sir.” I laughed.

“How do you know?”

“Touché.”

We strolled along talking about our days and watching the dogs pick up every random scent deposited on the street in the last few hours. As we passed friends, we waved and stopped to chat, and so it was that we spent almost a half-hour walking before we got back to Lu’s truck.

There, the surprise awaited – a full platter of chicken mole tacos with salsa verde, chips, and churros. “Violà,” Lu said. “Just for you; our new special.” She set two tangerine soda bottles on the counter and smiled.

“Oh, I love that you’re adding platters. How cool!” I said as I grabbed the tray with gusto.

“Simpler for me and the customers, and easier to order for take-out, too,” Lu said with a wink.

“I’ll keep that in mind for Saturday,” I said. Part of the arrangement for our author reading was that Harrow would come early for a casual dinner with staff and a few friends and have a chance to get to know some booksellers as well as relax. This kind of thing was something I was trying to build into my author events all the time. I wanted the author to feel connected to our community and my store, not just like they were part of some commodity we were selling.

“Excellent,” Lu said. “Now enjoy your lunch.” She smiled and moved to the customer behind us in line.

Jared led us over to the bench that sat just in front of my store. It was our usual Tuesday spot, and I loved it because it meant I got to watch people come and go from the shop without doing the work of greeting them.

I had just made my way through my first taco when a loud bang sounded behind me from the alley beside my store. Jared jumped up and ran over because, I expected, he thought the same thing I did: gun shot. But when I followed him to the alley, I was surprised to find that the scene was even more horrible.

A woman lay crumpled on the gravel, and beside her, a bright orange nail gun sat leaning against the wall of my store. Jared knelt down and then looked at me. “She’s gone.”

He had his phone out and to his ear before I could even think of what to do.

Just then, Hugo and Horatio came up the alley, presumably from their back door that opened onto it. “We heard something,” Hugo said just before he dropped to his knees. “Dear God, it’s Catherine.”

2

Sheriff Tucker Mason came over as soon as I called. As he and Jared processed the scene, I walked with Hugo and Horatio to the bench by the street. They were both a little pale, and given that they knew the victim, apparently, it seemed like they might both be in a little shock.

“You guys okay?” I asked as I put my phone back in my pocket after texting Rocky to ask her to bring out a couple glasses of sweet tea, the brothers’ favorite drink.

Both of them shook their heads, and I took a seat between them and took their hands. “You knew her?”

Horatio nodded. “She used to work for us when she was in high school, but we’ve known her since she was a little girl.” Horatio’s voice caught, and he put a hand over his face.

“She grew up in foster care after her parents struggled with addiction. One of her favorite things as a child was to come into the store after school and spend hours pulling on the reels of chains in the back. She loved the sound of them and the feel of the metal going through her fingers,” Hugo added.

I took a deep breath and thought about how I loved the sensation of wind against the back of my neck, especially when I was feeling overwhelmed. I suspected the feeling did something to calm my nervous system down, and I wondered if the same had been true for Catherine. It had to have been so traumatizing for her to go through all that as a little girl.

“Then, when she got older and wanted to work, we helped her foster parents get her a work permit and gave her a job. She was great with customers, and she knew the store as well as we did by the time she graduated.” Hugo’s voice was quiet. “When she went up north to apprentice with a carpenter, we were so proud of her.”

I waited because, clearly, there was more to say here, but the men both looked so pained that I didn’t want to press.

Eventually, Horatio said, “But last we heard, she had fallen victim to the same demons that had grabbed her parents.” He swallowed hard. “We hadn’t seen her in about five years.”

“Six,” Hugo corrected. “She came back just after her twenty-first birthday.” He shook his head. “It was hard seeing her that way.”

Over the years, I’d had friends struggle with addictions of various sorts, and it was never easy to be the person watching, especially if you were someone like me – and, it seemed, like Hugo and Horatio – who always wanted to help. Usually, I found I needed to create some distance between the person and myself so that I didn’t get caught up in enabling their struggle. It was painful for all of us.

I squeezed both of the their hands. “I’m sure she knew you loved her.”

Horatio sucked in a tight breath. “I hope so. I really hope so.”

Jared and Tuck came over, and when they nodded, I stood up. The brothers needed to give their statements, as would I, which meant I needed to step away. I moved over by the door to the shop and thanked Rocky as she brought out the brothers’ teas and delivered them.

“You okay?” she asked as she came back to the shop door.

“Yeah, just sad,” I said. “They’re really torn up.” I tilted my head toward Hugo and Horatio.

She sighed. “Man, those guys are so nice. I hate to see them upset.” She squeezed my arm and opened the door.

“Tell Marcus I’ll be in as soon as I can.”

She nodded and let the door swing shut behind her.

I busied myself by deadheading the marigolds in the planter boxes in front of my store and tried to focus on the fact that Tuck had always solved every murder he’d encountered in our small town, which was probably the only reason most people kept coming back to St. Marin’s. A small town with this murder rate probably wouldn’t still be this much of a tourist destination if people didn’t feel confident in the police presence.

But despite Tuck’s great work as sheriff, he did have his detractors, mostly hateful racists who didn’t like the idea of a black man being the primary law enforcement officer in the town. The campaigns supporting his opponent, Bryan Dooley, were getting more and more hateful, and while no one said anything about Tuck’s ethnicity directly, the appeals to “real” Americans were certainly true to the white nationalism that Dooley purported more quietly.

I had spent the last month working hard for Tuck’s campaign. Stephen, Walter, and I did some canvassing, and Mart had convinced her bosses at the winery to donate sizably to Tuck’s re-election fund. If the poll numbers were accurate, our efforts were working, and Tuck was pulling ahead. But we all knew these last three weeks before the election in early November were the crucial time.

And this murder could either make or break Tuck’s re-election. I took a deep breath and turned my thoughts to what else I could do to help our sheriff get elected. I was just cooking up a meet and greet plan for next week when Jared touched my arm and startled me enough to make me jump.

“Oh,” he said as he pulled me into a hug, “I’m sorry, Harvey. I thought you heard me coming.”

I laughed against his chest. “I didn’t, but that’s my fault. I was lost in thought.” I looked over to where Hugo and Horatio were again sitting with their tea. “They okay?”

Jared shook his head. “Not really, but they will be.” He pointed inside. “Want to give your statement with a latte in hand?”

I smiled. “You know me too well, sir.”

“And I only hope to get to know you better,” he said with a wink that made my heart skip.

We made our way into the café, and I ordered two lattes before joining Tuck at a table away from other customers. I’d been through this routine enough times to know that Tuck was going to be in professional mode for my statement, and I didn’t want anyone else overhearing what I had to say lest it compromise their investigation.

“So tell me what happened,” Tuck said in his most police-like voice.

I nodded. “I was just sitting on the bench out there, when I heard a loud sound from the alley beside the shop. It sounded sort of like a gun shot, but not quite.”

“Rifle or shot gun?” he asked as he made notes.

“Rifle,” I said.

He nodded. “Okay. Then what?”

I told him about running over with Jared, finding the body, and then Horatio and Hugo coming up the alley from the backdoor of their store.

“You saw them come out the back door?” he asked.

I paused, took a breath, and said, “No. I just assumed.”

He nodded and made a note. “Anything else?”

“They told you they knew the victim,” I asked.

“They did,” he said.

“Okay, then that’s all.” I took a long sip of my latte as Tuck finished taking notes and Jared came back toward the table, hopefully he could come back to boyfriend mode now that the police business was finished.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long. Tuck pocketed his notebook. Jared sat down, sighed, and then reached across the table to take my hand. “You okay?”

“I am. Are Horatio and Hugo okay?” I asked.

Jared shook his head. “I don’t really know. They’re pretty shaken up, or at least Hugo was. I’ll know more after I talk to Tuck about his interview with Horatio.”

I squeezed his fingers and resisted the urge to ask all the questions streaming through my head. He and Tuck had the investigation under control, and my curiosity would only make things more complicated. So I returned to my thoughts about Tuck’s election.

“What do you think about doing a ‘Get to know the Sheriff’ event here at the store next week?” I was having second thoughts because, well, everyone in town pretty much knew Tuck if they wanted to, so maybe the idea was silly.

Jared grinned. “I love that idea. Maybe we could call it, Sheriff Share or something and let people know they can come and share their concerns with the sheriff.”

“Ooh, I like that,” I said. “More about showing how open he is to community feedback and less about sharing who he is.”

“Exactly,” Jared said as he moved his leg against mine under the table. “You’re worried about the election?”

“Aren’t you?” I asked.

He sighed. “I wish I wasn’t because, honestly, does anyone actually think Bryan Dooley can do a better job than Tuck?”

“Of course not. They just think he’s whiter than Tuck,” I said a little too loudly. A couple of customers turned to look at me, but when they smiled, I remembered I was among friends here in my store. No one who shopped at a bookstore where two-thirds of the staff members were black would be willing to listen to Dooley’s racist nonsense.

“And that’s the scariest part, right? It would be awful for Tuck to lose, of course, but imagine a white nationalist as sheriff.” He shivered.

I forced the lump of fear down in my throat and said, “Terrifying” just as I saw Tuck come back through the shop door. “Here comes Tuck,” I whispered.

Jared gave me a wink and pulled his leg but not his hand back.

“Hey Tuck,” I said. “Want a latte?”

“That would be great, but could I get two shots of espresso?” he asked as he stretched his arms above his head. “It may be a long day.”

“Coming up,” I said as I stood and headed back to the counter with the sheriff’s order.

While Rocky made Tuck’s drink, I scooted over to the shop to find Marcus and tell him about the event with the sheriff next week. He was at the register, checking inventory, so I gave him the low-down and asked if he could let Galen know.

“Definitely, and I’ll make a poster, too, maybe change up the window display to a local history thing with Tuck’s poster featured since he’s a hometown boy.” Marcus smiled.