The Miss Fortune Series: Overdue (Kindle Worlds Novella) (9 page)

The note included Lila Rose’s private cellphone number, with an invitation to call at any time. I ripped open the envelope and took out three sheets of lined notebook paper, filled with her hand writing. I glanced at the pages. “Where’s the Nickel and Dime Café?”

Gertie sighed. “In her head.”

Ida Belle took the pages from my hand and examined them. “These look like pages from a novel.”

Gertie pointed to the note. “And you’ll notice the mailman’s name is Jack, not Andy. As far as I know, none of the postal workers in Sinful are named Jack.”

“And I bet there’s no Andrea Marston in Sinful, either.”

Ida Belle handed the pages back to me. “Never heard of her.”

“So our little surveillance at the roller rink tonight was all for nothing?”

Gertie shrugged. “I think she got the people in her novels mixed up with the people of Sinful. But, what the heck, it got Ida Belle and me back on skates. That was fun.”

I could feel my shoulders drooping. I had been so sure Lila Rose held the answers. How could I have read someone so wrong?

“Don’t feel so bad,” Ida Belle said. “Even Carter believed her enough to spy on Andy.”

“But I’m a trained CIA operative. My life depends on me trusting my gut. And my gut told me Lila Rose was onto something. Am I losing my touch?”

“No,” Ida Belle said, shaking her head.

But I saw the glance she gave Gertie. Tinged with worry.

Gertie brushed my shoulder. “I have half a chocolate cake at home. I could go get it and we could drown our sorrows in sugar.”

I shook my head. “No, I think I’ll just go to bed and rest up for tomorrow. It’s my last day at the library and they have extended hours. I volunteered to stay late and close up.”

I waited on the porch until Gertie and Ida Belle drove away. Once inside I fed Merlin, popped open a beer and stared at the manila folder sitting on the kitchen table. Though the pages were obviously from one of Lila Rose’s novels, I read them. There were no numbers on the pages, so I had no idea what went before or after. But I had an odd feeling while I was reading. A familiarity, perhaps. As if I somehow knew Jack and Andrea, the cunning main characters of the three-page sample.

And once again my gut was telling me that Lila Rose was onto something.

I wanted to shoot the clock. It was one of those old round ones, mounted above the double-door entrance to the library. Gertie had been right. This place had sharp acoustics. And the ticking of the minute hand was working my last nerve.

That old clock was a constant reminder that no matter how much I wished for it, time wasn’t going to speed up. My stint as Sandy-Sue, Librarian, was over when the ticking clock said it was.

TICK.

And the clock now said I had three and a half more hours before the library officially closed at eight o’clock. I glanced over at Lucy sitting at her desk.

“Pretty empty tonight, huh?”

She looked up and gave me her typical stinkeye. “Shhhh.”

“I thought since it was so empty that maybe I didn’t have to whisper.”

She rolled her eyes, got up from her desk and walked over to me. “For your information we’re not empty,” she whispered. “CJ Banks came in while you were taking your break. As long as we have one patron, I expect my staff to maintain proper library vocal levels.”

My Heart Will Go On
, the theme song from
Titanic
, began to play softly. Lucy quickly pulled her phone from her pocket and answered it, walking several feet away from me for privacy. “Hello,” she whispered.

I tried not to listen in. Hard not to, though, as the library acoustics delivered every word to me.

“Oh, dear Lord!” she whispered into the phone. “I’ll be right over. Thank you, Celia.” She ended the call, worry etched on her face.

“Something I can help with?”

“The doghouse in my backyard caught on fire.”

“Fire?”

She nodded. “Luckily Celia lives next door and put it out with her hose. Thank the Lord my dog, Sonnet, wasn’t in it at the time.”

“How could that have happened? Did someone set it on fire?”

Her eyes narrowed as she whipped her head in my direction. “I don’t know. Did someone?”

“Are you blaming me? I was here the whole time.”

“Of course I’m not blaming you. But in the three days you’ve worked in this library we’ve had one murder and now a fire. Celia was right; you’re bad luck. I’m going home to go check on things.”

She made a quick trip to the break room for her purse and lunchbox and stopped by my desk before leaving. “Try not to destroy the library while I’m gone.”

She disappeared out the back exit.

I settled back in my chair to continue reading the book CJ Banks had given me on my first day on the job when a text came in from Ida Belle.
Myrtle said Waddell’s bank accounts showed regular deposits of hundreds and thousands. My sources say no gambling debts in over a year.

All day long, while I was playing librarian to a near-empty library, Ida Belle and Gertie were chasing down leads, however slim they might have been. With gambling debts out of the way, that cleared several possible suspects. But that then begged the question: what was Waddell doing to get money? Aside from Lila Rose, most people said Waddell hadn’t been taking on any new handyman jobs in quite some time. What was he involved in? Whatever it was, there was no evidence of it at his house, according to Myrtle who had read Carter’s notes.

My phone rang. It was Gertie.

“I’m on my way to talk to my hairstylist. Thought she might know any dirt about Lila Rose and her daughter, Janice. Who knows, maybe those pills Janice gives her do more than just calm her nerves.”

“Why would she try to kill her own mother?” I asked.

“Maybe she’s trying to slowly get her mom so sick that she can be declared her guardian and have power over all the new books Lila Rose has been writing. It’s just a thought. So how are you doing?”

“I’ve been reading the second book in the
Pancake Junction
series for the past three hours.”

“CJ Banks’
Pancake Junction
?”

“Yeah. I finished double checking the reading habits of the patrons in the library the day Waddell was murdered. Nothing unusual there. I figured the time would go faster if I read a book.”

“I haven’t read it. Do you like it?”

“The writing’s good, except that Misty Breeze is an incompetent sheriff. I’m in the middle of a chapter now where she finally makes the connection between the tainted syrup and someone dying from poisoned ketchup at the roller rink food court.”

Gertie laughed. “Roller rink? He put a roller rink in his book?”

“Yeah. Complete with an aging Roller Derby queen. It’s weird. I lived in Sinful six weeks and nobody mentions a roller rink. Then in the span of twelve hours I find out you and Ida Belle were former Roller Derby queens, I actually skated at a roller rink, and now I’m reading a reference to one in CJ Banks’ book.”

And then it hit me.

“And Lila Rose said she put a roller rink in one of her books too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. She mentioned it yesterday. I think you and Ida Belle are also characters in the book.”

“I’ve read all of Lila Rose’s books and don’t recall a mention of a roller rink. Must be one of the ones she hasn’t published.” She paused. “But I don’t doubt she’d put us in another one of her stories. She’s had us in several of her books. Her last
PB&J Mystery
cast Ida Belle and me as the leaders of the local coven.”

“She made you witches? Are you sure she patterned them after you two?”

“Oh, yes, she described us to a ‘T.’ She always used Sinful residents as prototypes for her characters. Ida Belle and I were often cast as the evil ladies. We’re not her favorite people.”

Something didn’t feel right. “Doesn’t it seem weird two Sinful authors included roller rinks in their books?”

“Why is that weird? The roller rink outside Mudbug is an institution. Figures it might work its way into both their stories.”

But there was more bothering me, though I wasn’t sure what. I ended my call with Gertie and went back to reading
Pancake Junction
. On page 127 the character of the concession stand worker was introduced. He flirted with Misty Breeze as she questioned him about the tainted ketchup that sickened a member of her force the prior week.

I read a paragraph from the book:

“The health department determined it was from an outside source,” the worker told Misty. “But if you think I’m a bad boy, by all means cuff me, Sheriff.”

Okay, totally lame.

After a few more flirty come-ons from the worker, Sheriff Breeze finished her questioning and left. The concession worker then served another customer a Polish dog and his signature sandwich, the Three-Alarm Dog. To go.

And suddenly my alarm bells went off. That wasn’t the first time I’d read a reference to a Three-Alarm Dog. And the description of the customer was familiar as well. White guy. Just under six foot. Starting to go bald. With a mole just to the right of his nose. This was a description of the author himself, CJ Banks. And when the character in the book spilled a blob of mustard on his shoes my pulse ticked up a notch. The shoes this character was wearing were hi-top tennies. Jungle design.

I retrieved my backpack from under the desk and pulled out the three-page handwritten pages that Lila Rose had left for me the previous night. Two of the pages appeared to be consecutive, featuring two characters – Jack, the mailman, and Andrea Marston. She was sitting in her car on the driver’s side when he came and knocked on the passenger-side window with his elbow. She reached over and opened the door and he slid in, handing her a Three-Alarm Dog.

From Lila Rose’s handwritten pages, I read:

“How can you eat those things?” Jack asked.

“Oh, you’d be surprised the heat I can take,” she said, unwrapping the sandwich.

I then scanned the pages of the book,
Pancake Junction
. On page 129 of the book there were the exact words I had just read in Lila Rose’s own handwriting. Did she copy them from CJ’s book? And what was the third page that she included, also in her own handwriting? The characters of Jack and Andrea are now on trial for killing the town’s mayor.

I leafed through
Pancake Junction
toward the end and noticed the mayor giving a speech in the last chapter. So, by the end of this book, the mayor was still alive.

Was the third page Lila Rose included, the one where Jack and Andrea were on trial for killing the mayor, a page from a future book in the
Pancake Junction
series?

The mystery was deepening. Did Lila Rose get a hold of CJ Banks’ future pages, or did CJ Banks steal from Lila Rose?

Time to have a little chat with the Pancake Boy himself.

CJ Banks sat at a little desk against the east wall of the library, pecking away at his laptop keyboard. A small stack of what looked to be copies of handwritten pages sat next to the laptop. He was looking at the pages while typing.

He must have felt me approaching because he looked up. Smiled.

“Ahh, Miss Morrow. Don’t tell me the library is closing. I thought tonight was extended hours.”

“Oh, yeah, no problem with that, Mr. Banks. I’m just making the rounds.”

“Good. I have ten more pages to transfer to my laptop, and I’d rather do it here. The baby in the apartment next to mine must be teething or something because it seems every minute she’s awake she’s crying.”

I nodded in support. “I hear you. I can’t work around a crying baby either.”

“Well, I’m closing escrow on a new home along the bayou, so in a couple of weeks, that won’t be an issue.”

“Your books must be doing well, then.”

He smiled. “I’m blessed.”

I pointed to the pile of handwritten pages. “Is that your next book?”

“It is. Book three of
The Pancake Junction Mysteries
.”

“I’m reading the second book now. And loving it.” I made sure to flash him a thumbs-up. I laid it on thick. “I hope you’re going to keep the characters of Jack and Andrea. Their relationship is hot.”

His face beamed. “Then I’m doing my job right.” He winked. “You may be a little disappointed in them in book three, however.” He made a show of looking around the empty library, then leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, “They’re on trial for murdering the mayor of Pancake Junction.”

“No!” I said, making sure my face registered shock.

“And that’s all I’m going to say,” he said, making motions with his fingers as if he were zipping his lips. “You’ll have to read it when it comes out.”

“I can’t wait.” I glanced at the stack of handwritten pages on the desk. Or, rather, copies of handwritten pages. I was sure Lila Rose had all the originals. “I can’t help but notice that you write your novels by hand and type them into your computer. That must take you a while.”

He smiled. “Call me very old fashioned. I find that writing it by hand taps into my subconscious. It works for me.” He held up one page for me to see. “As you can see, this is a photocopy. I keep the originals in a safe in my apartment.”

I noticed on the page he held up that there was a smiley face next to one of the paragraphs. Lila Rose used the same smiley face in the note she gave me last night.

“That’s smart,” I said. “You wouldn’t want anyone to steal them.”

He blinked rapidly. A sign to me I had struck close to home.

“I guess I’ll return to my desk, then.” I turned to leave, then stopped and turned back to him. “Oh, by the way, I love your shoes.”

He looked down at his hi-top sneakers. A jungle scene.

“They’re wild, aren’t they? I had them hand painted several years ago. I know they’re getting frayed, but they’re one of a kind, so I don’t dare get rid of them.”

“Cool.”

I bid him goodbye again and went back to my desk. The plot had just thickened, and it wasn’t in
Pancake Junction
. It was right here in Sinful. I looked back at the clock, wondering if Lila Rose had already eaten dinner. I needed to ask her more questions about her notes, to get a handle on all the players. It was obvious to me that CJ Banks had somehow stolen Lila Rose’s writings, copied them, and published them as his own. But, was he somehow connected to Waddell’s death? And if so, how? Lila Rose had said she saw a man wearing those shoes talking to Waddell, but was this true, or was she mixing up the characters in her book with real life?

I called Lila Rose’s cellphone. After seven rings it went to voicemail.

I quickly called Gertie. She had barely gotten out a “hello” before I said, “I need you to get hold of Lila Rose and ask her to call me. I tried calling her, but she didn’t pick up.”

“Why do you want to talk to her?”

I explained everything I knew and suspected.

“
Pancake Junction
was one of Lila Rose’s series?” Gertie asked.

“Looks like it. And CJ didn’t have to worry Lila Rose would find out. Everyone knows she stopped reading Louisiana authors. All CJ had to do was change the title so if she accidentally saw it she wouldn’t recognize it.”

“Do you think he has anything to do with Waddell’s death?”

“Not sure yet. But someone had to supply CJ with the pages. Waddell had access to Lila Rose and her house. And the other librarians said Waddell would come in and use the copier. I think he made copies so he could take the original pages back to Lila Rose’s file drawers. But I need to clarify a few things with Lila Rose to piece it all together. For all we know, her daughter Janice could have sold her novels to CJ and killed Waddell.”

“That’s a scary thought,” Gertie said. “If she’d kill her cousin, what’s stopping her from trying to get rid of her own mother at some point?”

“I’m going to call Carter as soon as I hang up with you. I think he needs to know about CJ and the plagiarism.”

“He probably won’t pick up. He got some call about a brawl at the Swamp Bar. He and Deputy Breaux are headed there now. I heard it on my police scanner. Ida Belle and I can swing by and offer you backup.”

“I don’t think CJ Banks suspects that I know anything,” I said. “And we’re not even sure that he had anything to do with Waddell’s death. If you could keep Janice occupied while Ida Belle asks Lila Rose to give me a call, that would be great.”

“Will do. But after we pass on your message to Lila Rose, we’re coming by. CJ Banks might just be a garden-variety plagiarist and not a murderer, but I’d feel better if you weren’t alone with him.”

I hung up with Gertie and went back to my reading. Ten minutes later the door to the entrance opened. It was Mayliss Darby, the contractor who had been working on Lila Rose’s house.
Crap
. I should have locked the doors. In case I needed to confront CJ, I preferred an empty library.

“Oh, my,” she said, approaching my desk. “It’s like a tomb in here. Am I the only one here tonight?”

“Actually, I was just about to close early.”

“Oh, shoot. There’s a book I desperately wanted. You don’t mind if I quickly get it and leave, do you?”

She pointed in the opposite direction of the library from where CJ was sitting and typing.

“Sure. If you can be quick.”

“Five minutes. That’s all I need.”

She hurried to the reference section around the corner. I noted the time on the clock. If she wasn’t back in five minutes, I was going after her. In case things took a turn for the worse, I’d prefer she not get in the middle of it.

“Pssst. Jelly.”

I looked toward the entrance of the library, but saw nothing.

Seconds later I felt a tapping on my shoulder. I whipped around and found Lila Rose standing about six inches away. My pulse pounding in my neck, I jerked back from her.

“Calm down, Jelly. It’s me.”

“Lila Rose! Where’d you come from?”

“The back entrance. The one the librarians use when they leave work. I routinely use the back entrance when I come to the library.”

“Why are you here? I just sent Ida Belle and Gertie over to your house to tell you to call me.”

“I’m here because you told me over the phone you needed my help.”

I shook my head. “We never spoke, Lila Rose. You didn’t answer.”

“Of course we did. And would you please stop calling me Lila Rose. She’s not here tonight. It’s me. Poppy.” She held up a file folder. “I thought I’d bring over the writer’s notes. There’s more I need to show you. Where do you want me to set up?”

My phone rang. It was Ida Belle. I pointed toward the break room. “Why don’t you go back to the break room, next to the women’s restroom,” I said to Lila Rose, who was now calling herself Poppy. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Don’t be long, Jelly. We’ve got a lot of material to get through.”

I picked up Ida Belle’s call as Lila Rose headed to the lounge.

“We’ve got a few problems,” Ida Belle said into the phone. “Lila Rose is missing.”

“She’s not missing. She’s right here. And she’s calling herself Poppy and me, Jelly.”

“And she believes it too,” Ida Belle said. “We’re talking to her daughter, Janice, who just broke down and told us all about Lila Rose’s mental state. Her doctors call it a dissociative disorder.”

“Like multiple personality?”

“Along those lines, but not as severe. When she’s stressed out she switches back and forth between herself and the characters in her books. She was making progress in therapy, but then she decided to stop going.”

“So, she really thinks I’m her protégé, Jelly?” I asked, remembering the storyline Gertie had told me.

“Yeah. Mostly she just switches to Poppy, but certain things could make her react as other characters. Characters you don’t want around. And Janice is worried because she can’t find the dog’s fanny pack. Lila Rose must have mistaken it for her own when she left. You can’t let her look inside and find the dog’s tranquilizer syringe. Just keep her engaged as Poppy until we get there and you won’t have problems.”

“What are the other things that set her off?”

“Green wallets, bubble gum and guns. They all played a significant part in Jelly’s murder in her last book. It seems she can’t stop replaying what happened to Jelly. And another thing, when she’s taken on a character’s personality, she sometimes confuses people in real life with the characters she patterned after them.”

“So the person she said was talking to Waddell…”

“Was the mailman. Only he was the mailman character from one of her books. She had the right person, just the wrong universe. So whoever she patterned the mailman after, that’s who was talking to Waddell.”

“The mailman was CJ Banks,” I said. “I read the description of him in her writings. Fit CJ Banks perfectly.”

“I think you were right about him,” Ida Belle said. “I bet Waddell knew about the novels and was feeding him pages.”

“But why would CJ kill Waddell if he needed the pages to continue to plagiarize?”

“Maybe he found someone else with access to Lila Rose’s office.”

“Oh, shit.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Ida Belle said.

“They’ve had a contractor working in her office for a month. Mayliss Darby, and both CJ and Mayliss are here now. And here’s something strange. Lucy had to leave for home because her doghouse was set on fire. Maybe someone wanted me here alone tonight.”

“We’re on our way,” Ida Belle said, hanging up.

“Everything okay?”

I turned to find Lila Rose approaching. “I have all the notes spread out on the table back there, Jelly.”

“Lila Rose, I’m not Jelly. You’re not Poppy. Those are characters in the books you write. But you need to go home, okay? It isn’t safe for you here.”

I thought I heard a noise from the history aisle. Instinctively I went for the gun in my waistband and pointed it toward the shelves, but didn’t see any movement. I relaxed my stance, lowered my weapon, and turned back toward Lila Rose—who swung the computer monitor into the side of my head, throwing me off balance. I stumbled backward and tripped over one of the swivel chairs, landing on the floor. My gun and phone slid from my hand.

“You killed my brother, Jelly,” Lila Rose said in an uncharacteristic gravelly voice.

“What the hell?” When I looked up from the floor Lila Rose was pointing my weapon at me. Crap, Ida Belle had mentioned that a gun was one of the things that made her go into a different character.

“You don’t recognize me, do you, Jelly?” She moved her mouth as if she had a wad of chewing gum in it. “You killed my kid brother, Tooky, and now you’re going to die.”

“Lila Rose,” I said in my most commanding voice. “I’m not Jelly. There is no Tooky. They’re characters in your book. They’re not real. But CJ and Mayliss are real. And they stole your unpublished works and killed Waddell. And they’re in this library. So I’m just going to get up off the floor and you’re going to give me my weapon and we’re going to get you out of here.”

I started to get up.

And that’s when she fired a shot. I felt a slight burning sensation in my right calf.

“Shit!” I reached down and lifted my pant leg. It was minor, just a grazing. Not much blood. But just enough to draw Lila Rose’s attention.

“Oh my goodness, you’re bleeding,” Lila Rose said. The Irish brogue she now spoke told me she had made another switch.

“Yeah, because you shot me.”

Ida Belle hadn’t mentioned blood as one of the things that would make her go into a different character, but it made sense since blood would have factored into the character of Jelly getting shot.

“You’re terminal, Jelly.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s superficial. Just stings like hell. I want you to give me my gun now, okay?”