Dead Between the Lines (3 page)

“That’s a gross generalization,” objected Yale Gordon, a thirtysomething physician’s assistant. “Is that your personal experience? Or perhaps you’ve studied the subject and have proof to back it up.”

“A bard doesn’t need proof.” Quistgaard’s tone grew even more condescending.

When he ignored the raised hand of Veronica “Ronni” Ksiazak, the owner of the local B & B, she stood up and stated, “Your opinion of women and their place in society is also quite evident in your writing.”

“Yes, it is.” Quistgaard stared at her. “And nothing I’ve experienced here tonight has changed my mind about either women or small towns.”

“And nothing you’ve had to say here tonight has changed my mind about you.” Ronni raised her chin. “I’m just sorry I wasted my money buying your book.”

“It always comes down to money with women like you,” Quistgaard said with a sneer. “Any author worth his salt doesn’t sell his talent for mere money. He writes for the sake of the art, not for cash. I’m not a genre hack.” His lips twisted; then he said almost to himself, “Money is a necessary evil, but how that money is earned is what adds to an artist’s prestige. Any other procurement of income should remain unspoken.”

Ronni looked over at Mrs. Zeigler and asked, “Why
did
we choose him?”

“Mr. Quistgaard sent me a letter saying that he was a local author and requested to speak to our club.” Mrs. Zeigler turned her gaze to the poet. “The sample of your poetry that you sent was quite different from what appears in your book. Why is that, Mr. Quistgaard?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Quistgaard brushed past Mrs. Zeigler, grabbed a glass of wine from the table, and mocked, “As a poet, I address various topics. Surely you didn’t expect all my poems to be about puppies and rainbows.”

“Perhaps not,” Mrs. Zeigler replied, joining him in front of the refreshments. “But shouldn’t your writing be strong enough that even if the reader doesn’t agree with your point of view, he or she finds the work compelling enough to overlook any objections?”

The rest of the group had risen to their feet, gathered around the duo, and were avidly watching the exchange between them.

“Are you saying my writing isn’t gripping?” Quistgaard chugged his chardonnay, grabbed the bottle from my hand, and poured himself another glassful. “It’s clear from all the inane questions, you people have no concept of great poetry. I should never have come here. I thought I’d finally found readers who would discern my talent now that I’d written something on which I could proudly put my name.”

He opened his mouth to continue, but snapped it shut when a man who looked familiar but whom I couldn’t place scowled at him, then got up and walked away.

“This clearly isn’t a group that can appreciate my brilliance.” Quistgaard took another swig of wine, swallowed, and said, “But I still expect my honorarium.” He held out his palm, muttering something about this being the last time he’d ever need to beg for money.

“Certainly.” Mrs. Zeigler placed an envelope in his hand. She didn’t appear at all flustered by his diatribe. “I’m sorry you feel we disrespected your work. We certainly didn’t mean to offend you, but the purpose of our club is to discuss both what we like and what we don’t like, as well as to try to understand what we’ve read.”

Sniffing loudly, Quistgaard clanked his glass down on the table and strode out of the alcove, muttering, “Philistines.”

I started after him to escort him to the front door, but a group swarmed in on the refreshment table and I lost track of where everyone went.

By the time I finished serving the crowd and checked the store, Quistgaard had disappeared. However, several others were milling around the store, and I herded them back to the craft alcove, all the while trying to figure out what had happened.

Did book-club speakers generally storm away from a meeting like that? I certainly hadn’t expected to have to deal with a third ticked-off male this evening. The two in my private life had been more than enough for one day, thank you very much.

Shrugging, I put on my shopkeeper’s face and made sure everyone was happy. At least none of the encounters had ended in bloodshed. To me, that was one for the win column.

C
HAPTER 3

“W
ho scraped the salt off your pretzel?” Birdie demanded when I trudged into the living room and threw myself on the couch.

“Nobody.” It was nine-thirty exactly, and I’d had to channel my inner drill sergeant in order to get the Stepping Out Book Club, or SOBs as I now called them, to leave the store. “It’s just been a long and weird day. The guest author stormed out of the meeting.”

“Sweet Jesus!” Gran was sitting in her favorite chair, watching a rerun of
Law & Order
. “What on God’s green earth made him do that?”

“I’m not sure.” I eyed Banshee, Birdie’s ancient Siamese, who was scrutinizing me from the protected position of Gran’s lap.

While I loved animals, Banshee was less a cuddly kitty and more a bloodcurdling beast. Hostilities between the cat and me had commenced the day he ate my pet gerbil, and there’d been no sign of a cease-fire in the ensuing twelve years. He relentlessly attacked me from the tops of bookshelves and around corners, and I retaliated any way I could.

“I knew that group would be nothing but trouble,” Birdie
tsk
ed, puckering her mouth so tight her face looked like an albino raisin.

“Really?” I got off the sofa and headed toward the kitchen. “Why?”

Gran followed, elbowing me aside as she grabbed a couple of pot holders from the drawer. “Those people have too much time on their hands if they can waste it yakking about some darn fool poems.” The heavenly aroma of mozzarella and pepperoni drifted up to me as she opened the oven door and took out a round pan.

“At least I made a nice profit from the evening.” I hadn’t eaten since one o’clock, when I’d wolfed down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while continuing to work the register, so my stomach was growling too loudly for me to be able to concentrate on coming up with a really good rebuttal.

“You worry too much about money.” Birdie slid the homemade pizza onto the tabletop. “We’ve always managed to squeak by.”

“With the property tax increase on both the store and this property, and having to pay for my own health insurance, I need to make sure you and I are okay financially.” I quickly gathered dishes, silverware, and napkins, then poured a glass of iced tea for myself and popped the top of a can of Miller Lite for Gran.

I didn’t add that I wanted to avoid having to sell off any more of our land. We lived on the ten remaining acres of the property my family had settled in the 1860s. My grandfather’s death fifteen years ago and my father’s incarceration twenty-four months later had forced Gran to begin selling off the parcels surrounding the old homestead in order to pay the taxes and support us. Foot by foot, my heritage had been traded for our survival, and I couldn’t bear to lose another inch.

“I know you just want to be fiscally . . . uh . . .” Birdie hesitated, a slice of pizza poised near her mouth as she struggled to complete her thought.

“Responsible,” I supplied. Her doctor had said it was best to provide the word she couldn’t recall rather than let Gran become stressed trying to come up with it. What I couldn’t understand, and the gerontologist hadn’t been able to explain, was how she could remember a less common word like
fiscally
but not an everyday word like
responsible
.

“Right.” She flipped her long gray braid over her shoulder and said, “But we’ll be fine, and you should be out having fun on a Friday night, not working.”

Uh, oh.
What was this about? “This is a once-a-month meeting.” I bit into my pizza, then paused to savor the hit of oregano and crushed red pepper. “Besides, I usually spend my Friday nights here with you, and I don’t see you going to happy hour at the bars.”

“For me, at seventy-five, happy hour is any hour I spend aboveground,” Birdie said. Then with a sly look in my direction, she added, “You spend too much time with me. You need to get out more. Go on a date.”

“Oh?” What was she up to? Maybe I should have poured myself wine instead of iced tea. “What makes you say that all of a sudden?” She’d been fairly quiet about my love life, or lack of one, during the past month. “Does the fact that a certain deputy U.S. Marshal is back in town have anything to do with your sudden interest in my social calendar?”

“So, did Jake come by to see you today?” Gran beamed. “When he stopped here”—she sipped her beer—“I told him Noah Underwood had called to see if you were due home after work, and even though I told him I had no idea, I figured that rascal was probably planning on asking you out, so Jake had better hustle his buns over to the dime store right away.”

“They both dropped in for a few minutes,” I admitted, then muttered to myself, “So, that’s how Jake and Noah just happened to be there at the same time.”

“Are you going out with Jake tomorrow? Remember I’m taking an overnight casino bus trip with Frieda, so you don’t have to worry about me being alone.”

Jake was the grandnephew of Birdie’s old high school flame, Tony Del Vecchio, and she and Tony were bound and determined to see me married to Jake. I was pretty sure they were trying to live their own interrupted romance through us. Despite my questions, Birdie had never fully explained what had happened when Tony went MIA in Korea, and she’d abruptly married my grandfather. And because I didn’t want to cause her any more pain, I hadn’t pressed the matter.

To avoid getting her hopes up about Jake and me resuming a romantic relationship, I was tempted to deny that I was seeing him the next evening. But Shadow Bend was too small to keep it quiet. I doubted we’d go all the way into Kansas City, the nearest place we could be together without running into someone we knew, and I sure as heck wasn’t inviting Jake into my empty house. We had way too much chemistry for that to be either a smart or a safe move. Which meant we’d most likely go someplace where we’d be seen by one of Gran’s cronies, who would tell her we’d been together.

After chewing and swallowing, I said, “As a matter of fact, Jake and I are getting together tomorrow night. But . . .” I held up my hand. “I’ve decided that with him living in St. Louis, it’s best if we don’t continue dating. We can be friends, but that’s it.”

“Right.” The smirk on Gran’s face belonged on a teenager, not an octogenarian.

Sighing, I didn’t argue with her. She’d find out soon enough that no matter how hot things were between Jake and me, any future we might have had if he’d stayed in Shadow Bend wouldn’t stand up to the geographical distance that now separated us. With our busy lives and demanding careers, a four- to five-hour drive each way would make it impossible for us to forge and sustain a serious relationship. And I wasn’t interested in being his sleepover buddy whenever he strolled into town.

“What are you wearing?” Birdie asked, breaking into my reverie. “How about that pretty pink dress you bought for that date he had to break last month?”

“It’s too fancy for a Saturday night in Shadow Bend.” I got up and started to clear away our dishes. Sadly, there were no leftovers to put away. While Birdie had eaten her usual two slices of pizza, I had polished off the remaining six. Stress eating was something I had to watch. I was okay with being curvier than magazines and movies implied I should be, but I didn’t want to gain so much weight that I’d be forced to buy new clothes—mostly because I couldn’t afford them.

“How about—”

“Actually,” I cut her off, “I’ve already decided on dark jeans and a black tank under my blush pink cropped jacket. I have those Jimmy Choo nude pumps and my pink Miu Miu purse, which will pull the outfit together.”

Although I had sold most of my designer clothing, especially the suits, when I quit my city job, I had kept the shoes, since I was reasonably sure the market for used footwear was limited. Hanging on to the purses had been an act of pure indulgence. But if the time came when I absolutely needed the cash in order to keep Gran at home with me, I’d sell them in a heartbeat.

And, yes, I’d been thinking about what to wear when I saw both Jake and Noah. Even if I didn’t view either occasion as technically a date, I still wanted to look good. So sue me.

As we finished cleaning the kitchen, Gran made a few more efforts to tweak my wardrobe. First, she suggested a skirt instead of jeans; then she recommended a bustier instead of a tank top. I vetoed both, having neither a bustier nor any plans to lure Jake into bed.

By the time the dishes were done, it was after eleven and Gran and I retired to the living room for the late-night news. We had just sat down and some sports jock was yammering about the Royals’ starting lineup, when I heard music playing from my purse.

It was Boone St. Onge’s ringtone, so I jumped up, hurried into the hallway, grabbed my cell from my bag, and said, “Hey, B. What’s up?”

Boone was my other best friend. He, Poppy, and I grew up together, and except for the years when we were off pursuing higher education—college for all three of us, then grad school for me and law school for Boone—we had remained in Shadow Bend.

“Sorry to call so late.” Boone took a breath. “But I need a favor.”

“No problem,” I assured him. “As long as you’re not in jail again.”

“Thank God, no!”

Last month the police had arrested Boone when one of his clients had been murdered. It had been a harrowing experience for him, and he still hadn’t fully recovered from the ordeal. I hoped that by teasing him about it, the whole episode would lose its power to upset him.

“Well, that’s a relief.” I walked into my bedroom and closed the door so our conversation wouldn’t disturb Gran. “What’s up?”

“A friend of mine from California called a few minutes ago and invited me to go on a cruise with him.” Boone’s voice rose in excitement. “His girlfriend got a part in a movie and had to back out of the trip at the last minute, so he offered me her ticket.”

“That’s sounds great.” I sat down on my bed and took off my shoes.

“Since I don’t have anything pressing in the office this week and I really need a vacation after what happened with Elise, I said yes. It leaves Sunday, so I’m flying out tomorrow.”

“Terrific.” I hoped he’d come back his old lighthearted self. “What do you need from me?”

“Cat-sitting.”

Along with his freedom from incarceration, Boone had also acquired a cat—Tsar, the murdered woman’s Russian Blue.

“Can’t you board him?”

“No.” Boone’s tone was adamant. “He’s just now getting over the trauma of being homeless after Elise’s death. Boarding him would be cruel.”

“You know I’d love to take care of such a sweet kitty, but I’m afraid Banshee would eat Tsar as a midnight snack if I brought him into the house.” I paused, trying to think of an alternative. “Could I stop by your house once a day to feed him and clean his litter box?”

“Uh-uh. Tsar’s therapist says he needs to be around people and shouldn’t be left alone for extended periods,” Boone explained. “I even take him to my office so he doesn’t feel abandoned.”

“Really?” Since when were there kitty psychologists?

“Hey,” Boone broke into my musing. “How about if you keep Tsar at your store? Lots of shops have pets, and you’re there as much as you’re home anyway.”

After several minutes of protesting, during which Boone assured me that the feline loved people and would not try to run out of the constantly opening door, I finally agreed to babysit Tsar at the dime store. We arranged for Boone to deliver the cat the next afternoon on his way to the airport.

After clicking off my cell, I walked back into the living room to tell Gran about Boone’s upcoming trip, but she had evidently gone to bed, because the television was dark and her chair was empty. I decided to hit the sack, too, and turned out the lights. As I was making sure the front door was locked, the house phone rang.

Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was almost midnight. Who in the world would be calling so late? Boone would have rung back on my cell. And small-town etiquette prohibited phoning after ten, so it couldn’t be any of Birdie’s friends.

Feeling my chest tighten, I hurried into the kitchen, intent on answering before the ringing woke Gran. Anxiety made me a little breathless as I snatched up the receiver and said hello. And when I heard the chief of police’s voice on the other end, I felt dizzy.

Chief Kincaid’s next words made me sick to my stomach. “Devereaux, we need you to come down to the dime store right away.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll explain when you get here,” he said. “See you in fifteen minutes.”

He hung up before I could ask any more questions, but as I put my shoes back on and drove into town, visions of fire and burglary danced through my head. Damn, I hoped I’d paid that last insurance premium.