Buried in a Book (18 page)

TREY KEPT HIS
word and joined us for Sunday dinner. I made one of his favorite meals: barbecued baby back ribs, homemade mashed potatoes, and green beans cooked in bacon grease. While I worked some magic in the kitchen, Trey did his first load of laundry and tidied his room. My mother was delighted by his new show of cleanliness, but to me, his orderly room served as a reminder that he wasn’t
living with us anymore. It took all of my willpower not to beg him to come back home. The truth was I missed him. We’d shared a house for so many years that being in my mother’s place without him felt lonesome.

Still, we had a lovely supper together. Trey regaled us with stories about the goats and boasted a bit about how Jasper was seriously considering Trey’s ideas on rebranding the goat products to make them more marketable. We ate and talked until after nine o’clock, and then Trey pulled a battery-powered lantern out of his backpack and said he had to get going. I hugged him hard and then watched him give my mother a kiss.

“See ya Tuesday!” he shouted as he made his way up the hill.

I stared at his wide shoulders, my heart aching. Would he make the same journey at the end of the summer? Would he forgo a higher education in favor of a bohemian lifestyle? For once, I wished that Althea could peer into the future and put me at ease, but she had already told me that Trey needed to work things out up on the mountain and she didn’t know how long that would take.

I waited until the glow from his lantern faded from view and then crawled into my bed with Marlette’s journal. As I’d done many times that day, I compared the drawings of the girl with the scheming gaze.

Tomorrow would mean the start of another busy week, and I had lofty goals for the next five days. Not only did I plan to fulfill my quota of queries, but I was going to try to find all of Marlette’s hidden niches and figure out once and for all which of my coworkers had a secret that could have led to murder.

And the first name on my list was Franklin Stafford.

I BIDED MY
time at the office the next morning, efficiently reading and responding to queries and all the while keeping one eye on the hallway to see when Franklin left for lunch so I could follow him. I found myself yawning several times and tried not to dwell on the tediousness of my job. Sifting through a myriad of story proposals in the hopes of coming upon a gem brought to mind the work of a prospector who seeks the twinkling of gold in a mess of sand. Still, I accorded each query the attention it deserved, trying to put myself in the place of the hopeful writer who penned it. Thankfully, there were none that found their way into the Agents Beware file this time, but there were no shining jewels, either. Only one gave me pause, and I considered it for several minutes before setting it aside to read again at the end of the day. The query was for a novel about a woman who changes careers by leaving the corporate world to open a cupcake shop and becomes entangled in a murder investigation. I wasn’t sure if it appealed to me because of the succulent recipes, because it was a good, well-written story, or both, so I decided to distance myself and revisit it later.

Stretching my back, I looked up at the ceiling. As if they’d been hovering above me like a cloud, thoughts about Marlette drifted into my mind. I considered what little I knew of the man. Someone out there must be more familiar with his history. He couldn’t always have been the strange, unkempt individual who died in our office. And who was Sue Ann?

Completely distracted from my work, I proceeded to search the Internet, Googling Marlette, Sue Ann, homeless vagrants, anything I could conjure up that might lead to the
smallest nugget of useful information. I discovered nothing. Staring into the hallway, I was trying to think of other search terms when Franklin suddenly walked past my door on the way to the exit. Remembering that his secretive lunchtime excursions made him one of my prime suspects, I slammed the laptop shut, grabbed my bag, and rushed out after him.

When he left the building, he started walking up High Street and through the park. Makayla was right. His movements were furtive and suspicious. He walked quickly, constantly looking around the streets and over his shoulder. He definitely acted like a man with something to hide. Maybe his secret bore a connection to Marlette.

I stayed in the shadows when I could, ducking in doorways and pretending to look at interesting things in the shop windows.

Franklin finally turned onto Walden Woods Circle, the street where my little dream house stood. Perfect. If he caught sight of me, I could just say I was looking at a house I was interested in buying.

We walked past the charming yellow house, and Franklin hustled up the walk of a tidy pink one with blue shutters. A piano-shaped sign was posted on the lawn.
Music Lessons
, it read, and it included a phone number. Could Franklin be taking piano lessons during his lunch hour? But why would he be secretive about that? I hid behind a wide tree trunk and stared at the house.

He did not go up to the front door but walked along the wraparound porch to an entrance near the back and let himself in. When he closed the door, I rushed over to the house and peered very discreetly in a side window, hoping I wasn’t too visible from the street.

I found myself looking into a kitchen, all done up with
lacy curtains in the windows and a vase of flowers on the blue granite countertop. The table was set for two, with wineglasses and bright green cloth napkins folded under the forks. A plate of sandwiches sat in the center.

Repositioning myself so that I could just peer above the window frame, I saw Franklin, caught in the embrace of another man. They exchanged a tender kiss, smiled lovingly at each other, and then sat down at the table and proceeded to eat lunch.

That explained his furtive behavior! Franklin—prim, solemn, conservative Franklin—was gay. His suspicious behavior had nothing to do with Marlette’s murder. He just didn’t want anyone to see this side of his private life.

And I had just wasted part of my lunch hour on a wild-goose chase. I could have been looking for one of Marlette’s hidey-holes. Instead, I was behaving like a Peeping Tom.

I strode off the property in exasperation. Sighing deeply, I stopped for just a minute in front of the cozy yellow house I coveted. If my home in Dunston ever sold, maybe I could scrape together enough money to buy this perfect place.

My stomach grumbled in complaint, so I headed in the direction of Lavender Lane in search of lunch.

The smell of baking bread inside Catcher in the Rye assaulted my senses the same way it had the first time I visited the sandwich shop. I breathed it in deeply, my mouth watering. Scanning the delectable menu, I chose the Mowgli, a curried chicken salad with mangoes and walnuts wrapped in whole wheat naan. This time I virtuously asked for carrot sticks as the side. Glancing at the card the cashier handed me, I had to smile over being assigned the name of Miss Marple. It seemed fitting, considering my bumbling attempts at figuring out the mystery of Marlette’s murder.
Waiting for my name to be called, I stared out the window. Just to the left of the fire department was Mountain Road, leading to the Red Fox Co-op. I wondered how Trey was doing up there.

“MISS MARPLE!” Big Ed bellowed, disrupting my musings.

I reached for the bag he handed me, and in my best British accent, said, “Why, thank you, kind sir.”

“Hey, you’re the intern at Novel Idea, right? You were Eliza Doolittle last time. I never did catch your real name.”

“Lila Wilkins. Pleased to officially meet you, Big Ed.” I shook his hand.

“I was thinking about you folks at the agency and that poor soul, Marlette. You were asking about him last time. Just last night I remembered something kind of unique about him and was hoping you’d stop in so I could share it with you.”

I felt a tingle of excitement. Sometimes, answers come out of thin air. “I’m still trying to figure out what happened to him. What was it you remembered?” I leaned closer to the counter.

Big Ed pointed outside. “See those birdhouses attached to the tops of the fence posts at the side of the grocery store?”

I craned my neck to look. Sure enough, there was a fence along the side of How Green Was My Valley, painted with a mural of a farm scene. Rolling hills, patchwork fields, cows, corn stalks. And, equally spaced, atop each fence post was a birdhouse shaped like a little red barn. There were six of them in total.

“Those are so cute.” I turned back to Big Ed. “What do they have to do with Marlette?” As soon as I asked the question,
I remembered the purple martin houses in the park and the birdhouse to which Iris had brought me on Saturday.

“He was always poking around in those birdhouses. I saw him stick stuff in them at times, too. Maybe he left something inside them. A clue.” Eyeing the cheesesteak meat on the grill, he quickly added, “It may be that I just watch too many detective shows on TV and there’s nothing to be found in those little houses, but you never know.”

I couldn’t wait to find out. Hurriedly, I thanked him and, holding tightly to my lunch, ran across the street.

The first three tiny barns held nothing except bits of twigs and grass. But when I reached my fingers into the hole of the fourth one, they brushed against something that felt like paper. Carefully, I pinched my fingers together until they caught the edge of the paper and eased it out of the hole.

What I held in my hand was a ragged, yellowed newspaper clipping. Pieces were torn from it—chewed off, it looked like—and in a few spots the ink was smudged. But I could make out the year, 1985, and the byline, Jan Vance. I knew Jan! She’d been a reporter at the
Dunston Herald
and my mentor when I first began my career as a journalist.

I smoothed out the shredded bit of paper as best I could and began reading. The account was disjointed because of all the holes and ink smears, but I could make out the gist of the story.

Wow. Marlette had been accused of demonstrating inappropriate conduct toward a fifteen-year-old girl at a summer camp? The idea shocked me. He’d seemed like such a gentle, unaggressive soul. Still, charges weren’t filed, so maybe there was more to the story. At least now I had a last name for him. And a former profession. But clearly, I didn’t have enough facts to understand everything about what had happened. I needed to talk to Jan Vance. As soon as I got back to the office, I planned to give her a call.

The aroma of curry teased my nostrils, and I suddenly remembered my lunch. Leaning against the fence, I bit into the naan wrap. It was scrumptious. The spicy curry, blending with the tartness of the mango and crunchiness of the nuts, was heavenly.

After swallowing my last bite, I tossed the trash into the bin, and then, just to be sure, I checked the last two birdhouses. They contained nothing, so I rushed back to the office.

Dialing Jan’s number, I composed questions in my mind. My eyes traveled to the pile of queries on my desk. I had to admit that at the moment I felt more like an investigative reporter than a literary agent. Guilt at not focusing on my work started worming its way into my conscience, but before it gripped too tightly, my old mentor answered the phone.

“Jan Vance.” Her voice barked through the receiver, conjuring up her no-nonsense personality as if she were in the room beside me.

“Hi, Jan. It’s Lila Wilkins.”

“Lila! Good to hear from you, girl.” She laughed, her hoarse voice a result of years of chain-smoking.

“How’s retirement? Finished your book yet?” When Jan retired a few years ago, she’d announced she was going to write a novel based on her experiences as a reporter. I hoped I’d get to read it one day.

“The book’s coming along, slowly but surely. What are you up to these days? I heard the
Herald
is making do without your talents.”

“That’s true, but I found a new job pretty quickly at the Novel Idea Literary Agency.”

“No kidding! Are you cold-calling for clients?”

I didn’t know whether she was teasing or not. “Actually, no. Did you hear about the homeless man who was found murdered in our office? Marlette Robbins?”

“That was Marlette Robbins? I did a piece on him years ago, you know.”

Pleased that she remembered him, I continued. “That’s what I’m calling about. I’m trying to find out what happened back in eighty-five. Could you fill me in?”

“Sure. Let me think a minute.” Through the receiver, I could hear her blow out and guessed she was smoking her umpteenth cigarette of the day. “Robbins was accused of molesting a fifteen-year-old girl in his counselor’s cabin at some arts camp. The name escapes me. The girl had gone to him for help with her creative writing project, and apparently Robbins pushed her on the bed and tore off her shirt and bra. The girl ran out before he got any further. Had a ripped bra to prove it.”