St. Marin's Cozy Mysteries Box Set Volume III

  Volume One

  St. Marin’s Cozy Mystery Box Set

  Volume 3

  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

  Chapter 14

  Harvey and Marcus’s Book Recommendations

  1

  If I hadn’t owned a bookstore, I’d probably have become a librarian. I loved books that much. Today was my weekly day off from my own bookstore, All Booked Up, and while I had luxurious plans to prepare my garden spot and maybe even get a few seeds in the ground, I was now at the library.

  Basically, my trip into town for breakfast tacos at Lu’s truck had gone a bit awry when I’d needed to avoid Max, a man I had been sort of dating, a little, maybe . . . for a bit but now just didn’t want to date at all. I hadn’t yet told him that because, to be honest, I was a coward. We hadn’t really even gotten started, but what we had done was flirt a lot and I wasn’t really ready yet to flirt with anyone. Not after my last break up. Rebounds were brutal, and I needed to tell Max where we stood. But like I said, a coward.

  So when I’d seen him coming up the street toward the taco truck, I had ducked down a side-street only to come upon the library on the day of their annual book sale. I did not need any books. I had a whole store full of them, for goodness sakes, but I don’t know any true bibliophile who can resist a library book sale. After all, the proceeds do two acts of good – they get us books, and they help other people get books.

  Thus, there I was inside amongst long folding tables full of boxes of books that were loosely grouped by genre. I’d been thinking about reading more thrillers lately, inspired by the police officer who leads a thriller book group in one of my favorite books, The Storied Life of AJ Fikry, and so I was trying to figure out which Mark Dawson book was the first in his Beatrix Rose series when two of my favorite people in the world, Stephen and Walter Hitchcock-Arritt, stopped across the table from me and stared until I looked up from the back cover I was reading.

  “Oh good, we thought you’d fallen asleep with your eyes open,” Stephen said. “That good, huh?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Actually, I’m just confused.” I held up The Dragon and the Ghost and The Angel. “Mother or daughter?”

  “Mother, of course. Go with the original,” Walter answered without hesitation. “Then, you can look forward to seeing if her daughter is as bad-ass as she is.”

  I smiled. “And you like to pretend you’re all high culture. Clearly, you’ve read these.” I gestured toward the ten titles I’d laid out in front of me. “Maybe I should just get them all?”

  Stephen picked up a paper bag from a stack nearby, came around the table, and dropped all ten Dawson books in the bag. “It’s a whole bag of mass markets for three dollars. Go wild, Harvey.”

  I laughed and dropped in a few more titles before following my friends toward the counter to pay. “You two here for a bargain? Or were you detoured from tacos by your own cowardice, too?”

  Stephen winced. “Still avoiding Max?” He sighed. “Do you want me to tell him?”

  Walter and I both shouted “No!” at the same time and then cringed when every eye in the not-so-quiet library turned toward us. I raised a hand of apology and then turned to Stephen. “This is not seventh grade. I can break up with my own boyfriends, thank you very much.”

  “So he was your boyfriend?” Stephen said. “Does he know that?”

  I dropped my bag on the counter, pulled a five out of my wallet and told the teenager behind the desk to keep the change. Then, I turned to Stephen and stuck out my tongue. Clearly, this wasn’t seventh grade; it was second.

  Once the men had paid, I pointed toward a back corner. “Feel like pretending we’re back in college and having a study group so we can gossip?” I was all about regressing apparently.

  They looked at each other. I knew Stephen was always game for a good story, but Walter could be more a “take the high road” guy. Today, though, he must have either wanted a good tale or saw something desperate in my expression because he smiled and led the way back.

  I picked up the conversation about Max as soon as we all sat down. “That’s part of the problem. We hadn’t really had a discussion about what we were to each other, so I don’t want to presume that he was thinking we were dating, if he wasn’t. But if he was, then I definitely need to say something official, right?”

  Walter sighed. “Did you go on a date? Like where he took you somewhere other than his restaurant?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did he ask you if you’d like to ‘go steady’ or whatever people say these days?” Stephen asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Did you sleep with him?” Walter asked with a big smile.

  “No, of course not.” I sighed. “Okay, so we weren’t dating. But then, how do I tell him that I don’t even want to continue what we didn’t really start?” This had been bugging me, and I really hoped my friends could give me advice. They’d been married for eight years and had dated six before that. They were the most solid couple I knew besides my parents, and I needed their wisdom.

  Stephen took my hand. “When was the last time you talked to him?”

  I sat back in the chair and thought. “Three weeks, maybe.”

  Walter laughed so loudly that a toddler in the children’s section next door shushed him. “He knows, Harvey. You don’t have to say anything.”

  “Oh, but that feels rude,” I said.

  This time, Stephen’s cackle actually echoed. “Ruder than not talking to him for three weeks. His restaurant is just up the street from your store. You can’t possibly think he’ll consider it coincidence, do you?”

  I blushed and felt my throat tighten. “When you put it like that . . .”

  “It’s fine, Harvey. Just stop avoiding him. Treat him like a friend, and it’ll all be normal soon.” Walter stood and took my hand. “Now, come help me pick out some large print mysteries for our neighbor. He’s on a budget, but he loves books. I come every Saturday to get a few for him.”

  We wandered the tables that stretched across all the more open spaces of the library, and in the mystery section, I loaded Walter’s arms with large print titles that I thought his neighbor would love given his preference for traditional mysteries. We found a real boon when I saw the entire set of Hamish MacBeth books by M.C. Beaton. “He’ll love these. They’re quaint and fun, but not too cozy or soft,” I said.

  “And no violence. He says he’s had enough of that in his life,” Stephen said as he joined us, his own stack of titles under one arm.

  “Nope, no violence.” I smiled and dropped the rest of the titles into Walter’s bag. “I just want to go see what they have in nonfiction. I’ve been craving a great nature book. Meet you at the counter?”

  The two men nodded as I moved toward the quiet front corner of the stacks where the nonfiction books were shelved and the titles for sale were set out accordingly. No one else was back there, which wasn’t surprising. Just like in my shop, and probably in every book space in the world, people were almost always most interested in romances, thrillers, mysteries, and fantasy books. Nonfiction got the attention of some readers, especially if they wanted to learn a about a particular subject, and some readers only picked up nonfiction because they didn’t find the escape into a fictional world to be their cup of tea. But far more peo
ple read tons more fiction than nonfiction. It was simply the way of readers.

  Mostly, I was a fiction reader, too. I loved to disappear into a world I didn’t know for myself or tag along with a character who navigated something like my life but in a whole new way. From time to time, though, I did want something that stayed in the world I knew, even if I’d never experienced it for myself. But I wanted more than just information. I wanted to be swept up in the language. Creative nonfiction usually did that for me, and so I scanned the boxes on the tables for titles by Tracy Kidder or Mary Roach, two of my favorite authors.

  I was just reaching for a title by Erik Larsen, Devil in the White City, when I tripped over something on the floor. I stepped back and bent down, expecting to see a box of books. Instead, I saw a foot in a well-worn brown loafer.

  When I bent further and looked under the table, the very still face of a man stared up at the table above him. He was about fifty with a pinkish complexion and an impressive walrus-style moustache. He wore khaki trousers and a sweater vest over a white, button-down shirt. If I hadn’t already recognized him, the outfit alone might have made me guess he was a librarian.

  He was, in fact, the head librarian, Sidney Scott. I’d known him ever since I moved to St. Marin’s. He’d been pleasant enough to me, but he had a reputation for being kind of a dictator when it came to library fines and book condition. A customer once told me he demanded payment from a toddler who returned a board book that had peanut butter on it. He wasn’t everyone’s favorite person.

  I got down on my hands and knees and crawled up to his face, but I could already tell he was dead. He wasn’t breathing, and when I checked for his pulse, I didn’t find one. I made my way back out from under the table and sat on the floor for a minute to get my head straight.

  I stifled my impulse to shout for help both because I didn’t want to have a crowd gathered around the man’s body and because the rules of quiet in the library were engrained in me. I didn’t want to leave the body either. I didn’t see any signs of foul-play, but I’d unfortunately come upon enough bodies to know that looks could be deceiving. Plus, if he’d just had a heart attack or something, he’d have fallen into the middle of the library floor, not stuffed himself under the table.

  Quickly, I texted Walter and Stephen and asked them to let the librarians know there’d been an accident in the nonfiction section. “Then come, please.”

  My friends were there in seconds, and as soon as they saw my face and Sidney’s feet, they blanched. “He’s dead?” Stephen asked as he sat down beside me and put his arm around my shoulders.

  “Dead for sure.” I sighed and then dialed the sheriff. “Tuck, we need you at the library. Sidney Scott is dead.”

  * * *

  When Sheriff Mason Tucker arrived a few minutes later, I was sitting at a table near the front counter with a cup of hot tea that one of the librarians had brought me. Walter had offered to stand guard near the body just to keep unsuspecting patrons from wandering over. He made up some story about a water leak to keep them away.

  Mindy Washington, the young librarian who was, unexpectedly, now in charge, had made a quick decision to allow everyone in the library to stay so as to avoid panic or too much gossip, but she’d asked the children’s librarian, Lucy, to lock the doors and linger nearby to let patrons out without a fuss. I thought that was a stellar idea.

  I adored Mindy, partially because she seemed to love books as much as I did but also because she had this quirky sense of style that I kind of wanted to copy and might have but I feared that a middle-aged white lady with wild hair might not be able to pull off the sleek but unique look of a twenty-five-year-old black woman. Today, she was wearing wide-legged trousers with a silk floral blouse in many shades of pink, but instead of dress shoes, she had on pink Converse sneakers. She looked professional and comfortable all at the same time.

  “You okay, Harvey?” she asked as she sat down next to me. “You’re kind of staring.”

  I blushed and tore my eyes from her shoes. “Sorry. I was just admiring your shoes.” I groaned. “That sounds awful given that Sidney is dead.”

  She put her hand on mine. “Thanks. And it doesn’t sound awful. It sounds like coping. I’ve been pondering the slice of lemon meringue pie I brought for lunch. We all have to distract ourselves whatever way we can.”

  I squeezed her fingers and smiled. “Thanks. You okay?”

  She nodded. “I just don’t understand why someone would want to hurt Sidney.” She shook her head. “I mean he was kind of a jerk sometimes, but only about library fines. Otherwise, he kept to himself. He was happier that way, I think.”

  I thought I knew what she meant. I’d invited Sidney to the shop for author readings and events, but he’d always declined. He was supportive and often set up displays in the library that related to what I was doing in the store so that his patrons could participate if their budgets or other things kept them from buying books at my shop. But I got the distinct impression that groups of people were not his favorite thing.

  Stephen and the sheriff came back to meet us, and Mindy and I both stood. Tuck and I had become good friends, and I was always glad to see him, even under these circumstances. But I knew this was going to be a hard day for him because he always took murder cases very seriously, especially since we seemed to have far more than our fair share of them in our tiny town. I knew Tuck would never say this, but it was also an election year. So if he wanted to keep his job, he had to be on the top of his game for everything, especially a murder.

  “Show me, Harvey,” he said with a nod.

  I stood and smiled down at Mindy and was glad when Stephen sat down beside her. She seemed like she was handling things really well, but I knew that might just be a façade or that the reality might hit her out of the blue. It was good she not be alone.

  I led Tuck back through the stacks to where Walter stood like he was part of a military parade. He had apparently taken his role very seriously.

  “Thanks, Walter,” Tuck said. “If you could wait with Stephen and Mindy after Deputy Watson clears the library. I’ll need your statements.”

  Walter nodded and moved back across the library.

  Tuck bent down, looked at Sidney, checked his pulse once again, and then sighed heavily. “Oh, Sidney.” When he stood, he ran his hand over his shaved head and said, “He was just like this when you found him?”

  I nodded. “I only touched him enough to check his pulse. But he wouldn’t be under the table . . .”

  “No, someone put him under there.” He looked up at the ceiling and let out a long breath. “The coroner is on his way.”

  I studied my friend for a few moments while he took notes on the room. He had circles under his eyes, and his dark brown skin, which usually glowed because of his meticulous regimen of sunscreen and moisturizer, looked a little gray. He was tired, very tired. I told myself that I needed to stop and see him and his wife, Lu, later today, just to see how they were doing.

  When Tuck finished his preliminary examination of the scene, we headed back up to the front desk where Mindy, Walter, Stephen, Lucy, and Deputy Watson waited. Tuck asked Lucy to come with him, and Watson interviewed me in the children’s section. Then, they did the same “separate and question” routine with Stephen, Walter, and Mindy.

  Given the look of frustration on Tuck’s face after he finished his interviews, it seemed like none of us had told him anything useful. Whoever had killed Sidney had been quite stealthy. Somehow, that made his murder seem all the more unnerving, a feeling that got much stronger when Tuck and Watson began a careful search of the building to see if the killer might still be hiding inside.

  When they had walked away, Walter said, “Don’t you think the killer would have slipped out when Watson cleared the library earlier.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Mindy said. “That’s what I would have done.” She blushed. “Not that I did—”

  I put my hand on her arm. “I know
just what you mean. No one suspects you.” I meant what I said, even though I knew it technically wasn’t true. Anyone in the library, including Walter, Stephen, and me, was a suspect.

  “Watson took everyone’s names and numbers as he escorted them out of the library,” Stephen said. “Maybe they figured that would be enough.”

  “Couldn’t someone have just given false information?” I asked.

  “If so, that would tell the police something wouldn’t it?” Mindy suggested. “Although, how would the police find them if they gave false information?”

  We all stood and stared at our hands for a minute as if we were too shy to note that our police department, our friends, might have made a really serious mistake.

  I was just about to suggest that we didn’t understand the ins and outs of police work when I saw a white man in a long coat run down the hallway toward the front door with Tuck right behind him. I rushed over to see what was going on and looked down the hall just in time to see the man punch the other police deputy who was guarding the door and dash off into the tree line with Tuck right behind him and Watson coming soon after.

  “Maybe they don’t need the contact information for the killer after all. Looks like they just need to catch him,” Stephen said.

  I sighed. The day had just gotten far more complicated.

  2

  Unfortunately, despite how fit and fleet of foot our police officers were, the man in the long coat eluded them, and when they came back to the library, they were winded and angry, both of them. “How did he do that?” Officer Watson asked as he bent over his knees to get his air back.

  “He must know the town because we lost him down an alley,” Tuck said as he looked at me. “Near your shop, actually.”