Book Club Bloodshed (14 page)

Missy stopped at Noreen’s house right on time. Of course Noreen was running late.

Missy waited patiently for her friend to come out of her house. Sitting there behind the steering wheel, she reflected on everything that had happened. Part of her still couldn’t believe it. Only a couple days ago, Noreen had been set to go to trial for the murder of Anne Baxter. Since then she’d been completely exonerated.

Finally Noreen came out of her house. Only five minutes late today, which actually was an improvement.

“Hey.” Noreen jumped in and gave her a hug.

“You look better.”

Noreen nodded. “I finally got rid of jail hair and jail face.”

Missy laughed and put the car in gear. She headed for the bookstore. They were both on today.

“Ruby Kellogg,” Noreen said. “What a little bitch.”

Missy shook her head. “I never, in a million years, would have thought it.”

Tyler had arrested Ruby and her fiancé that night, and Missy hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to him since. She had no details yet even though her theory had been correct.

Missy had been wanting to talk to Noreen about something else ever since she’d been released, but it hadn’t seemed like the right time. Now that they had a few minutes, she figured she could at least broach the subject.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Noreen knew exactly what she was talking about.

“It was a long time ago, not that that’s an excuse. It was the summer you didn’t come home from college. Tyler came home unexpectedly, it was because his Dad had that heart attack. Remember that?”

Missy did. She’d only heard about the heart attack after the fact of course. Tyler hadn’t called her. If he had, she would have come straight home from her job at the coffee shop to be with him. Tyler had a great relationship with his parents and almost losing his father was a difficult blow. But when he hadn’t called her personally, she’d let her pride get in the way.

“Anyway, he was home and I was home, and we were both just not ourselves.”

“Was it just sex?” Missy asked.

Noreen took a long time to answer. “I want to say yes. But honestly, it’s never just sex. You know?”

Missy did.

Noreen continued. “We were together less than a month. We talked a lot. I was kind of drifting at college. Okay, not kind of. I’d totally lost my way and had no idea what I wanted to do. He was there for me, and I was there for him.”

“How did it end?”

Noreen swallowed. “It just kind of ended. We didn’t need to put too fine a point on it. We both knew what we were doing was temporary.”

Missy nodded. She knew Noreen was telling the truth. She thought back to that year she’d stayed at college for the summer, between sophomore and junior years. She remembered thinking that Noreen had been distant, slow to respond to her emails. Now she knew why.

“You could have told me.”

“It was over as quickly as it started and…we didn’t purposely
not
tell you. I don’t think you and Tyler were even speaking at that point.”

“You and I were,” Missy said.

Noreen nodded. “I deserved that. The God’s honest truth was I didn’t know how to broach the subject with you. After awhile, it didn’t seem to matter anymore. It was over so quickly and…I’m sorry, Miss. I should have told you.”

She nodded, accepting the apology then looked at her friend.

“It was a long time ago, Noreen. Let’s forget about it.”

“Thank you, Missy.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence to the bookstore. Missy pulled into a full parking lot. Brett hadn’t opened yet because it was still a few minutes shy of nine. But there was a crowd outside.

“Oh here we go,” Noreen said.

Missy laughed. “It’s your turn this time. If you’re lucky, you can hold a press conference in the back.”

The same thing had happened to Missy when Albert Switzer had been murdered. Customers flocked to the store to see her because she had been a suspect. Now it was Noreen’s turn.

They got out of the truck and the crowd converged on Noreen.

“See you inside,” Missy said.

“Oh no, you don’t!” Noreen pleaded.

“I think I’ve done my part,” Missy said. “You’re on your own.”

Missy headed for the entrance, where Brett was waiting for her with a sour expression on his face. She didn’t understand. She would have expected him to be happy about all the customers.

“Missy, we need to talk.”

“Sure. What is it?”

“Inside.”

She followed him back to his office and he shut the door. She felt cramped in the tiny space.

“I’ve gotten a few complaints about the store being closed while I was away and about your customer service.”

Missy felt her stomach bottom out. She had a horrible feeling that Brett was going to fire her.

“I shut down for a few hours the one day—”

“And you were late the next day.” Brett pursed his lips a moment. “I know I said you could close in the middle of the day for a little bit, but it sounds like you took advantage of that and then were late the next day. And someone also complained about your service.”

Missy told herself to calm down. Relax. Brett was right. But she had a good reason for all this.

“Brett, I was…you know what I was doing last week…if I hadn’t then—”

“Noreen might be in prison by now. I understand that. You chose your friend over the store. I get that. But this is my store. It’s all I have. And I’ve done everything in my power to keep this thing going and keep two people on. I’ve told you before we’re struggling. I can’t afford to lose customers at this point. I’m going to have to make some difficult decisions soon.”

Missy said nothing. If he was going to fire her for helping Noreen, then to hell with him.

Brett let that hang in the air for a moment.

“Brett, I’m sorry. But you’re right. I chose Noreen over this bookstore. And if you have to do something about that, then I’ll certainly understand.”

For a moment he didn’t move. Then Brett slowly nodded and drew in a big breath before speaking.

“Well, I’m having trouble making ends meet and paying two full-time employees.”

“Fire me, then,” Missy said. “Keep Noreen.”

He held out a palm. “I won’t fire you outright like that. You’ve been a good employee over the years and I’d be a jerk if I didn’t recognize that.”

Brett leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on his tiny beer belly. He looked up at the ceiling.

“That’s all for now, Missy. I just wanted to share that feedback with you.”

She didn’t move. Missy had been expecting to get fired, but Brett hadn’t gone that far, leaving things open-ended.

“Brett, I’m sorry about last week.”

“But you’d do it all over again if you had to.”

She was about to say yes, absolutely, positively. But then thought better of it. He already knew the answer, and by voicing it she was just rubbing it in his face. He’d shown considerable understanding by not firing her. There was no reason to pollute the relationship.

“I’d try to think of other ways around it. Maybe next time I’ll call Mom and see if she can fill in. She needs more hobbies in her life.”

Brett almost smiled. “Alright. Matter of fact, looks like we’re going to have a busy day again. Maybe she could come in this afternoon?”

Missy smiled. She hadn’t been serious, but now that she’d put it out there. “I can ask.”

For the next four hours straight, Missy and Noreen couldn’t leave the two cash registers. The checkout line was so long that it began to snake through the store, making it difficult for people to actually shop. Eventually Brett got the idea to open the back door and fed the line through that. Missy didn’t get to see for herself but later Brett was able to take a picture (he was going to put it on their website, which was updated once every six years), and the line of people flowed out from the back of the store, around to the front, down the sidewalk, all the way over to the other stores. The parking lot was an absolute zoo and more than a few times Missy heard the angry blare of car horns as drivers jockeyed for position. By the time Missy and Noreen could take a breather and get off their feet, many of the bookshelves were half-empty, prompting Brett to frantically go into the back in a desperate attempt to restock before the next fabled tsunami of customers.

“Take a break,” Noreen said.

“How nice of you.”

“No, you just look like you can barely walk. What’s the matter with your legs?”

It wasn’t just her legs, it was every part of her body that moved. Missy was still sore from the WiredFit workout, though she was tempted to go back tonight…Anyway, she didn’t feel like explaining that to Noreen.

“Thanks,” she said.

Noreen smiled. “So we’re even now?”

Missy laughed. “Nice try. You’re still in the hole. Big time.”

Noreen snapped her fingers in mock disappointment.

Missy came out from behind the desk, moving like Frankenstein’s monster she was so stiff. Outside, the day was heating up. Spring was right around the corner, her favorite season of the year.

She didn’t see Tyler Brock coming. His voice surprised her from behind.

“Melissa.”

“Tyler.”

He watched her move. “Did Ruby and John hurt you that bad?”

Missy laughed. “No, this was the work of Anastasia Monroe.”

“Oh right.” He smiled and his face turned red, like he was embarrassed. “I did hear about that.”

“You heard about that? How?”

He shrugged. “Word travels fast in the police station. Especially when transparent yoga pants are involved.”

She wanted to
die
. And would have, if he wasn’t smiling like he enjoyed the thought.

Missy asked, “Speaking of the police station…who did Trudy Shaw see pick up Anne Baxter that night at the grocery store?”

Tyler grunted. “One of our guys responded to a call. Anne was reviewing the books at the end of the month and thought she heard somebody come into the store after hours.”

Missy nodded. “And what’s going to happen to Ruby and John?”

“Ruby offered a full confession.” He shook his head. “John is an accessory after the fact, and we’re trying to get him on attempted murder also.”

“How can you do that?”

“Because he was planning on killing you.”

Duh. “Oh.”

“I just can’t believe it. I remember Ruby from when you babysat her.”

And like that, a beautiful, fresh memory came back to Missy. She hadn’t thought of the evening in question for a long time. But there was one night where Missy had been babysitting Ruby and Tyler had surprised her with a visit after the girl had gone to bed. He wasn’t supposed to be there, so Missy forced him to sit outside with her on the porch. Up until that point, she had always liked him but suffered from invisibility syndrome. Or so she thought. That night Tyler admitted to always noticing her. They hadn’t started dating right away, but that night had been the start of something much, much bigger. How could she have forgotten that happened while she’d been babysitting Ruby?

When she came back to the present, his eyes had
that look.
He knew exactly where she’d gone in her mind. He’d probably gone there too.

“So she really killed Anne Baxter because the woman was going to leave a bad review on a book she self-published under a pen name?”

Tyler nodded. “It actually wasn’t the first time.”

“What?”

They started walking in no particular direction. She fell in step with him as they crossed the parking lot.

“Ruby had written five books under various pen names. Her dream was to be a writer. Anne maintained that book review site where she accepted requests. Ruby approached her, through email and under her pen name of course, and requested a review on one of her other books. Anne blasted it, completely tearing it down, to the point where Ruby actually unpublished it. According to Ruby she had been seeing slow, but steady sales on the book, but once Anne got the proverbial ax out, that book died, along with that pen name.”

“But Ruby approached her again?” Missy said, in total disbelief.

“Yes. Under a different pen name. She wanted to change Anne’s mind about her writing. She said all authors are bipolar, one minute they’re the best ever, and the next they’re suffering from sheer panic, thinking they’re no good. Ruby craved that validation from a tough reviewer like Anne, but she didn’t get it. Anne destroyed the next book as well, completely eviscerating it. According to Ruby, her sales immediately dried up. Apparently, one star reviews on Amazon can kill a new writer’s career if they don’t have hundreds of glowing reviews to offset them.”

“Oh my God.”

“So Ruby tried a new name and new genre with this book. She thought this time maybe Anne could see the light if they talked about it at the Book Club and heard others express their opinions, but it became clear pretty quickly that Anne loathed the book and would write another scathing review.”