Chance of a Lifetime (11 page)

“Nope.” Rick smiled, deciding George belonged in a fifties mystery movie. All muted plaid and wrinkled. “I’m just taking my morning nap. How are you today, Mr. Hatcher?”

“I’ve been busy all morning. I’m not sure if there has been a sudden mass craving for rare books or if it’s the curiosity of the crime scene, but people wander through my store and then ask if they can leave out the back door. I hope you’ve no objection, but I point out the bloodstain you left on the broken concrete. Your blood made a nice-size puddle. One woman almost fainted when she saw it.”

“I don’t mind. Glad I can offer a boost to your business.” Rick almost added that at least he was good for something.

The old guy smiled. “I only wish the sheriff had drawn an outline of where your body landed, you know like they do in the movies. I even thought of drawing one myself, but she might consider that tampering with evidence or something. Would have made a nice addition, though.”

“I could go down and model for you.”

“Oh no, no.” He waved his beefy hands in front of him.

Rick rested his head back on the couch arm. “Well, thanks for checking on me. Let me know if I can be of any help with the tourists.”

George Hatcher didn’t seem in any hurry to leave. He leaned against the desk. “You know, Rick, before you moved in, this place had been empty for ten years. I’ve had many a customer in the bookstore swear she heard movement from up here, footsteps, talking, that kind of thing.”

“It was probably from Liz’s office next door.”

“Oh no. Once, a lady traveling through town heard about it and came up asking if she could see this office. She was a friend of the woman who reads palms in my place on Wednesdays. Her stepsister, I think, but that’s neither here
nor there. Anyway, the woman claimed she could smell ghosts haunting a place. She had me get a key and show her this office a year before you moved in.”

“Did you tell Liz this?”

George shook his head. “I didn’t want to scare her and I figured it didn’t matter since she rented the office next door, but when she talked you into opening, I knew I’d get around to telling you sooner or later. I’m so sorry it was later.”

Rick sat up. “Are you telling me that you think a ghost sawed those steps because I rented his place?”

George bobbed his head. “Strange things have happened, and that lady, the friend of my palm reader, swore she smelled visitors from the hereafter right in this very room.”

“No way,” Rick said.

The bookstore owner didn’t look offended. “The woman smelled brimstone and cheap cigars, so we all know what kind of ghost haunted this place. If I were you, I’d think about relocating.”

“I think I’ll hang around just to irritate the ghosts for a while.” Rick got the feeling that this conversation they were having would be repeated to everyone who walked into the bookstore.

“Suit yourself, but if you’re ever in trouble, stomp three times and I’ll come running. This place is built so poorly I swear I can hear a mouse cross your office.”

Rick thanked the bookstore owner and said he’d be down to talk if he ever saw any sightings.

By the time Hank made it back, Rick had managed to make it to his desk and pull out a few files. As he packed his reading for the night, he found a letter amid the scattered mail on the corner of his desk. Rick slit it open, hoping one of his overdue accounts had sent a payment on work already done.

A single word was glued together from scraps of newspaper pasted on a blank piece of paper.
Leave
, was all it said.

Rick handed it to Hank. “I think it’s from a cigar-smoking ghost.” When Hank raised an eyebrow, he told him all about the bookstore owner’s theory.

Hank carefully slid the note and envelope in a folder and said he’d take it over to the sheriff’s office. “Alex will know what to do with this,” he said.

“It’s not really a threat, just a hint at a direction.” Rick didn’t even think it was a bad idea. Maybe he should leave and go to work for some big law firm in Dallas or Houston. Only problem was he’d never wanted to live anywhere but Harmony.

They were halfway down the stairs when Hank’s cell and the fire alarms in the bookstore went off at the same time.

Rick motioned for him to go on as he continued his slow progress down the steps. A fire would be far more exciting than watching him move down the stairs.

Hank took the steps two at a time, dropped the box of files in the bed of his truck, and ran toward the bookstore.

By the time Rick made it to the ground, he could hear a fire truck blaring toward him and see smoke coming from behind the building. He moved cautiously into the bookstore. The place looked deserted. No fire, but he could smell something burning.

Three steps later, Rick saw flames beyond the open back door. He was halfway through the store before he realized that the dump of trash that was burning was his car.

F
RIDAY

E
MILY WORRIED ABOUT THE FIRST MEETING OF THE WRITERS’
group as if it were a grand reception. Tiny brought the cookies over at noon when the bakery closed. She talked on and on about how excited her sister was to be part of a writing group. Tiny thought they should invite the paper to come out and take a picture. “After all,” she’d said, “this is history in the making.”

The alcove in the back of the second floor was circled with stained-glass windows and tucked far enough out of the way to seem private. An old rug covered most of the floor in the little room that Emily always thought might have been a lady’s morning room. There was plenty of space for ten chairs, but she only set up six. She put the cookies on one table and a stack of books on writing on the other.

At exactly seven o’clock, the would-be writers started arriving. First came Zack Hunter, in probably the cleanest of his stained clothes. He carried a battered old briefcase
that appeared to stretch his arm with the weight of paper stuffed into it. After saying hello, he sat down next to the table of cookies.

Next Martha Q Patterson and George Hatcher rushed in out of the cold. They must have met in the parking lot, and by the time they reached the second floor, Martha Q was telling him her life story. “I’ve thought of writing my memoirs. At first I planned to make each one of my husbands a chapter, but after some thought, I may make each a volume in a series, except, of course, my fourth husband. He’d be more a short story, if you know what I mean.”

George Hatcher, the used-bookstore owner, didn’t even look like he was listening to the owner of Harmony’s bed-and-breakfast. He waited until Martha Q took a seat and then sat as far away as possible. She didn’t take offense but simply talked louder. In her bright red jogging suit and rhinestone-studded tennis shoes she would have been hard to miss in a crowd of hundreds.

“I can’t stay long tonight,” she yelled. “I have to get to bed early so I can make the drive to Dallas tomorrow. I sure don’t want to miss anything being gone a few weeks so I asked my lawyer to sit in for me and take notes.”

“We’ll save you copies,” Zack offered. “I got a copy machine right next to my cash register at my store.”

Geraldine Edison rushed in, apologizing for being late as she joined the conversation. “I wanted to run copies in case we read our work tonight, but when I turned on the bakery lights some man drove by the window looking for doughnut holes. When I told him we didn’t open until seven
A.M
., he said he’d wait.”

Zack Hunter licked the icing off a cookie and commented, “Some folks are addicted to sweets. Especially those powdered-sugar doughnut holes. I started out one summer with a dozen a morning habit and before I knew it I was buying grocery bags full. I even kept them in the freezer just in case morning didn’t come soon enough.”

Martha Q looked at Zack like he just admitted to being
on drugs. She gathered her things and moved over one chair so the baker could have the seat next to Zack.

Geraldine took a deep breath, wiggled into the open place between Zack and Martha Q, and apologized again.

Everyone nodded as if voting to excuse her. Zack Hunter finished off his third cookie and told her how fine he thought they were. Geraldine’s round apple cheeks blushed.

Next came a man in his late twenties who introduced himself only as Peter. He was tall and thin, with the look of an English major about him. He asked if he could sit in.

When Emily said yes, he asked if he could smoke his pipe.

She said no, but he kept it in his hand. She decided he was the only one of them who looked like a writer.

Emily stood and welcomed everyone, then began with what she thought would be solid ground rules to set. “Anyone can read as many as ten pages of their work. All comments are to be positive and helpful. No one has to read to stay in the group.”

When everyone agreed to the rules, she added, “The rest we’ll make up as we go along.” She tried to smile. “Now, who would like to read first?”

Peter raised his hand and the group began.

His story was about a dog that had been orphaned during the World War II bombings in London. The dog roamed the streets cussing at God for the horror he saw. It was a dissertation on social unrest.

When Peter finished, Emily asked if there were any comments.

Geraldine said she loved it and that she could almost believe she was there. Zack agreed, though he wasn’t sure he understood the true depth of the work. George said it reminded him of a great work about a roach in New York City, then took a moment to pass out ten-percent-off coupons for his bookstore. Martha Q said she didn’t think dogs talked, but if they did, they wouldn’t cuss. “But cats”—here she straightened like an expert—“they do cuss, so you
might want to consider changing the dog to a cat, and while you’ve got the eraser handy, maybe the Wars of the Roses would be better.”

No one agreed or disagreed with her, so after a long pause, Peter politely responded, “I’ll think about your suggestions.”

This seemed to make everyone happy, and to Emily’s surprise, they all began talking at once about which war would be best. No one mentioned the cat/dog conflict and she thought that was for the best.

Everyone took a break for coffee and cookies while Emily stepped out to check on how things were going downstairs. She’d asked Pamela Sue to come in to cover the desk. Though the library had two employees, Emily didn’t feel like it would be fair to ask them to work at night since, after all, they never had.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw Pamela Sue knitting at the desk. Only a few of the usual Friday night crowd were around. All looked quiet.

“How’s it going?” A voice from behind her made her jump.

Emily turned to see Tannon sitting in his usual chair by the newspapers. “Fine. Good, actually.” She almost added that he was early. He rarely made it in before eight thirty. “Is something wrong?”

“No. I just thought after you finish I could take you out for supper. You could tell me all about the writers’ group.”

“That would be fine, but you don’t need to worry about me,” she said, wishing she could think of a reason not to go, but in truth it might be nice to talk about the meeting.

“I’ll be here when you’re finished.” To her surprise, he frowned and lied. “I can’t wait to hear what everyone’s writing.”

She laughed. “I’d better get back.” Then, just to torture him, she added, “I’ll tell you every detail over dinner.”

The second person to read was Geraldine. She was writing a romance set in Washington, D.C., right after the Civil
War. “There’s no hidden meaning or at least I haven’t found it. I just wanted to write a love story and thought the Civil War would make a good setting. It begins the day after Lincoln died.”

With that she passed out copies and began. By the third page, her heroine was in bed with one of Grant’s captains and she had no idea how her character’s undergarments got off her lovely, well-rounded body.

When she finished, Martha Q slapped the woman on the back and proclaimed her writing grand. “Only, honey,” she added, “underwear never just disappears—we just wish it would. You did a good job of the writing. I could believe I was right there in the sheets with the handsome captain.”

Peter said it was interesting and Zack Hunter asked if she had any pages that they could take home and read ahead.

Since they’d all now lived through a war and love scene together, the group seemed to relax. They talked about writing as if they’d all been hidden away writing for years and thought they were the only ones in town doing so.

The odd mix of people bonded. When Zack read the first chapter of his mystery, everyone joined in to help him with the plot. He had a body at a train station but no clues. For a few minutes, clues were flying around the room like popcorn at a G-rated movie.

At nine, Emily broke up the group. Zack shoved the last two cookies into his pocket and everyone hurried downstairs still talking.

When she reached the desk, she saw Tannon smiling. “It went well?”

“It went well,” she confirmed, then realized Tannon was behind the desk and not in front of it. “Where’s Pamela Sue?”