Book Club Bloodshed (2 page)

Within ten minutes, the Grove City library parking lot filled up with police cruisers, two ambulances, and a swarm of civilian vehicles. Missy had been the one to call nine-one-one. The operator had asked for details, and since Gloria was beside her and appeared to be in shock, Missy had been forced to go outside to describe the scene. At least Noreen and Ruby had gone with her.

Anne Baxter’s body was on its side. She must have been on her cell phone or texting, because the phone was on the ground next to her, though by now the screen had gone dark. If it was a call, it must have dropped.

The back of her head looked funny to Missy. Her hair was a darker shade of brown back there, and Missy knew right away it was blood. She described what she saw to the nine-one-one operator, who asked if Anne was dead. Missy told her yes. She’d seen that glazed look in a pair of eyeballs before, and not too long ago, when she’d discovered Albert Switzer dead in his own living room strangled minutes before she got there.

The operator then told her to move away from the body and not disturb anything, reminding her she was inside of a crime scene. Missy didn’t need reminding. She stepped backward, as if to retrace her steps. Noreen and Ruby did the same thing.

As she stepped away, Missy tried to spot what had done that to the back of Anne’s head. She didn’t see any weapons on the ground, but there were several pipe stands and hard, heavy materials near Anne. She remembered Ruby telling them about the work the county was doing to the building. It had plumbing issues.

Ten minutes later, the police had set up a perimeter with yellow Police Line tape. Missy was still outside with Noreen, who was working on her third cigarette in a row. She smoked when she was really worked up, like right now. Noreen didn’t know where Ruby had gone.

“God, I’m shaking,” Noreen said.

She wasn’t kidding. Missy watched as her friend held out an arm. It trembled like she was in the middle of an earthquake. It reminded her of noticing the same thing about Ellen earlier. Her hand had been shaking when she’d returned from the break the Book Club had taken. Had she killed Anne? It would explain the shakes Missy saw, it was her adrenaline either kicking in or continuing. Had she fought with Anne outside, activating her fight or flight response?

Missy glazed right over the obvious question facing her. Noreen was shaking right now too. Had
she…
no, that was ridiculous. Noreen was tough and fearless, but she wasn’t vicious. Unless they’d gotten into a fight and accidentally Anne had hit the back of her head on the pipe stand.

Missy scanned the parking lot to see how the others were holding up. Gloria Campbell was crying into her husband’s shoulder. Ellen Stein was sitting on top of an old bicycle rack, staring at her feet. Ruby was pacing back and forth at the far end of the parking lot. Missy figured she was worried about her job. Her boss had okayed the use of the library for the Book Club after hours and looked the other way when it came to the wine, but now she’d probably have to do something about it.

Trudy Shaw had one of those wine bottles on her person. She was drinking right out of it. Her husband rubbed her shoulder but Trudy seemed not to notice him.

Alison Breckmyer stood alone, talking to one of the cops who was directing traffic away from the library. Out of everybody, she seemed unfazed by what had happened. But that made a sort of sense. She was new to Grove City and had zero history with Anne Baxter. To her, what had happened was probably little different than hearing about a murder on the news.

Missy hadn’t put her amateur sleuth hat on yet. She was still in shock. But thinking about it, the other six women were
all
suspects.

“This is bad,” Noreen said. “This is real bad.”

She smoked the cigarette down to the nub and went to light another, but Missy grabbed her wrist.

“Are you okay?”

Noreen shook her head. Her usually pretty hazel eyes were red-rimmed and worry lines etched into her face.

“They’re going to think I did this, Miss.”

Did you?
She didn’t ask the question. “Did you see anything?”

“No. I knew she’d gone that way. I didn’t want to be around her so I went the other way.”

“Did anybody see you?”

Noreen thought about it. “I don’t think so.”

“Nobody else was outside?”

“I heard some voices, but I went to the far end of the lot to blow off steam. I wanted to walk, catch a smoke, and cool down.”

“Did you hear an argument or anybody fighting?”

“No. But like I said, I went to the far end of the lot. If Anne was on the other side of the building, I wouldn’t have heard anything.”

Missy nodded. Noreen was right. She wouldn’t have heard anything. Still, it was pretty poor luck that Noreen hadn’t seen any of the other women while she was outside. They could have confirmed her whereabouts and excluded her from the suspect pool immediately.

“Don’t give me that look,” Noreen said.

“What look?”

Noreen folded her arms and jutted a hip out. “I didn’t do this, Missy.”

“Whoa, Nor. I didn’t say you did.”

“You didn’t have to, with that look.” Noreen shook her head. “I can’t believe you seriously think I killed someone. How long have we known each other?”

“Noreen Sullivan, I know in my heart of hearts that you’d never kill anyone. But the police don’t know you the same way I do.”

“Tyler does.”

“You guys were friends, sure, but he doesn’t—”

“No, Miss. You’re not understanding me. Tyler knew me pretty well.”

Suddenly the world was spinning. “What are you talking about?”

Noreen couldn’t hold her stare. “It happened in college…”

“What happened in college! And why are you telling me this now?”

Noreen opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t. “I…”

“Ladies.”

They both started at the sound of his voice. Tyler Brock, chief detective, second in command in the Grove City Police Department.

“Hi, Tyler,” Noreen said.

He nodded at her, then faced Missy. He was dressed in his khaki uniform shirt and dark brown pants. The shirt was taut against his pecs and stretched by his broad shoulders, and it tapered down to contour to his lean waist. Normally the sight of him got her excited, but Missy was still reeling from this latest revelation. Noreen and Tyler had been together…but for how long... and had it been serious—

“Melissa, you okay?” Tyler asked.

“I’m fine, considering. It’s the second dead body I’ve seen in six months.”

He nodded, calm and cool as ever. His eyes drifted back to Noreen. “How about you, Noreen?”

She couldn’t stand still. Her legs were twitching. As much as Missy hated to admit this, Noreen was
acting
guilty.

“Been better.”

Tyler took that in and rubbed his chin. “I need to talk to you both, separately. How about I start with you, Noreen?”

She nodded quickly several times, as if she’d momentarily lost control of her head. “Yes, sure, sound goods, okay.”

Tyler gestured toward the library and they headed inside. Missy hugged herself in the cold night air. It was the middle of March and the nights in Pennsylvania could turn bitter quickly. She knew she couldn’t leave because Tyler would have questions for her, so to keep warm she started walking the parking lot. The other women were still there, either being consoled or by themselves. Missy passed each one and only got a response from Alison Breckmyer, who had given up flirting with the uniformed cop that Missy didn’t even recognize keeping traffic away from the library.

“So that happened,” Alison said. “I can’t believe it.”

“Me either.”

Alison leaned in. “It has to be one of us.”

Missy agreed but didn’t want to admit that. She liked Alison but wasn’t close to her, so she was uncomfortable sharing her thoughts.

But either way, Alison was right.

The library sat on a two-lane road and the next nearest building was probably a quarter mile away. Someone wouldn’t have just happened upon Anne and decided to kill her. Given the relative isolation of the library, it was most likely someone in the Book Club. Unless someone
else
had been planning to murder Anne and plotted out this elaborate scheme to kill her at her Book Club to throw the police off…no, that didn’t work. Who would have planned that? The killer would have had to plan for Anne to wander off alone long enough for them to kill her. And again, if they’d planned it, they would have brought some kind of weapon. No way could they have anticipated forcing her to hit her head on the pipe stand.

Only an insane person would have concocted such a scheme. Since the odds were slim that an insane person would have planned to kill Anne Baxter, that led to one conclusion: one of the women from the Book Club had murdered her.

“Did you and Anne ever see each other outside of the club?”

Alison gave Missy an
are you seriously questioning me
look. “I ran into her probably twice a month.”

Missy knew Alison was already putting a wall up, but she pushed on anyway. “Where?”

“At that big grocery store. What’s it called? Oh, that’s right: Baxter’s. She owns it with daddy, remember?”

Missy pretended to be offended. “Alison, I wasn’t—”

“Yeah, you were.” She shook her head. “Everybody knows about what you did last time somebody got killed in Grove City. The police department spun that story and made you out to be a hero, but everybody knows they didn’t want your help and asked you several times to stay out of it. A leopard can’t change its spots, huh?”

Missy was angry even though Alison was right. She
had
been questioning her.

“Now if you’ll excuse me.” Alison took her phone out and turned away. “From this point on I’ll only answer questions from
real
detectives.”

Missy was getting cold standing around anyway, so she got a move on. After reaching the end of the parking lot, she turned back around. By then somebody had turned all the exterior lights on so the grounds and parking lot were completely illuminated. Through the glass exterior, Missy saw people moving around inside the library also. While she was waiting, she decided to give Mom a buzz.

“Oh, Missy, I heard,” Mom said by way of answer.

“You heard already?”

“News travels fast. I know you have Book Club there on Wednesday nights and figured you were in the middle of this. Poor girl. This always happens to you.”

“I know.” She shook her head. “Two murders.”

“I don’t mean just the murders,” Mom said. “I mean, whenever something unfortunate happened, it always seemed like it touched you, directly or indirectly.”

“Yeah, well, don’t feel bad for me.” Missy was thinking of Noreen right now. She knew her friend hadn’t killed Anne Baxter. There was just no way. But looking at things objectively, from the police’s perspective, Noreen was the perfect suspect. The two of them had argued last week, then again this week. Both times they’d nearly started fist fighting. And this last argument had happened less than five minutes before Anne was killed.

“Missy, is everything alright?” Mom asked. “You don’t sound yourself.”

“It’s Noreen,” she said. “Even though she’s innocent, the police are going to think she did it and…”

Missy stopped short. It seemed so petty to be thinking about Noreen’s revelation at a time like this, so she decided to drop it. But still, her mind was stuck on that. After all this time, why didn’t she know about Noreen and Tyler’s relationship? And when did…

She forced herself to stop thinking about it.

“Well, if the police wrongfully arrest her, then you have to do something about it, don’t you?” Mom said, as if it were the most obvious fact in the world, like two plus two equaling four. “She is your best friend. Not too many friends like her come along in life.”

“I know.” But Missy was wondering how her best friend had failed to mention that she’d been in a relationship with Tyler Brock of all people
after
high school. Friends wouldn’t keep a thing like that from each other.

“You call me tomorrow morning, dear, let me know you’re alright. Okay?”

Missy smiled. It was good to be somebody’s daughter. As long as Mom was around, she knew she’d always have somebody worrying about her.

“Will do, Mom. And maybe you can finally tell me who you were with the day that Albert Switzer—”

But Mom had already hung up. Missy suspected she’d done it on purpose and tomorrow would pretend like she hadn’t heard Missy talking.

As she was putting her phone away, Tyler appeared. “Hey, Melissa. Ready?”

Tyler led her inside and into one of the reading rooms. It had grey walls and a grey desk and grey chairs and felt very much like she imagined what an interrogation room looked like at a police station.

“So you guys and the library…you must shop at the same furniture store.” She smiled, hoping to lighten the mood.

Tyler didn’t smile. “Let’s get down to business, okay?”

Her smile faded. Tyler didn’t normally come off as brusque. Then again, he was investigating a murder. He didn’t exactly have time to be polite.

“Okay, Tyler.”

“So walk me through your night.”

She sighed. Six months ago she’d had to do this several times when Albert Switzer was murdered. It was a long, boring process. Tonight would be no different. She started with the time she left work to the time she called nine-one-one. Tyler interrupted her a few times to ask clarifying questions and she ended up telling her story twice.

When she was done, Tyler sat thoughtfully in the chair opposite her. Despite not seeing him for a few months and knowing full well he was in the process of potentially reconciling with his wife, Missy couldn't help but feel nervous, excited, and a little flustered around him. She wondered if he felt the same way. He had developed a poker face, courtesy of his job as a police officer for fifteen years. In high school she would have known his moods before he did himself. But right now she couldn’t read his expression. Her best guess? Perplexed.

Tyler was still looking away when he asked his next question. “You didn’t see anybody else, or see anything out of the ordinary?”

“No.”

He puffed his lips out and nodded. Then looked up at her. “What was your relationship like with Anne Baxter?”

“I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.” Missy shrugged. “Especially the recently dead.”

Tyler didn’t take his eyes off her. “I need to know, Melissa.”

She’d always loved how he called her Melissa. In high school, it had been almost an act of defiance, his way of saying she wasn’t just a nickname to him but something different. No one else had called her that.

But when he said it now, the name sounded hollow like it had lost all meaning between them. She was just another suspect (again) on another murder. Instead of being part of his personal life, she was instead just another facet of his job.

“I didn’t care for her.” She shrugged. “That’s probably the nicest way to put it.”

“Why not?”

“You’re really going to make me count the ways?”

He nodded.

She sighed and looked down. Missy hated speaking ill of anybody. Her parents had repeatedly drilled that lesson into her head from a young age. If you didn’t have anything nice to say, you’d better not say anything at all.

“She was a little stuck-up.” Missy grimaced as she spoke. She really hated this, even though almost all the regulars in the Book Club would have agreed with her. “About everything, to be honest. She had this air about her and took herself very seriously. It could be grating. And she was like that about books too. She bashed just about everything we read, everything except what she recommended.”

“Noreen said the same thing.”

She couldn’t get a read on him or what he thought of Noreen. Was she a suspect? “Yeah, well, it rubbed me the wrong way too. You know, I got the feeling that Anne never had a nice thing to say about anybody. I mean, that’s an exaggeration but it seemed that way. She had impossibly high standards.”

“Did you ever see her outside of the Book Club?”

Missy thought. “Sure, at the grocery store every once in awhile.”

“How about the bookstore?” he asked.

She didn’t know where he was going with this. “No, actually.”

He frowned. “She was in a Book Club, but she never came to Books and Crannies.”

“Not recently, no.”

“Not that you know of?”

She shook her head. “Anne preferred hardbacks and new releases. She wouldn’t be caught dead in a used bookstore.”

“She didn’t stop in recently?”

“No.” Missy was beginning to worry. He obviously knew something.

“Were you working last Thursday night?”

Missy had to think about it. Her schedule at the bookstore was constantly shifting. Her boss, Brett, liked to keep things fluid and she, Noreen, and Brett were often trading days as favors.

“I don’t remember to be honest.”

Tyler nodded. “Anne Baxter stopped in the store. Didn’t Noreen tell you?”

Missy felt her blood run cold. Tyler was deadly serious, and she could tell where this was going.

“No, she didn’t tell me.”

He nodded again. “She didn’t tell you that Anne stopped by and they got into an argument?”

“No.”

This was bad.

Really
bad.

She wondered why Noreen hadn’t mentioned anything. It made her look like she had something to hide if she hadn’t shared this information with her best friend. Missy briefly considered lying to Tyler and suddenly “remembering” Noreen mentioning this. She could always downplay it as just a disagreement…

But she couldn’t lie to Tyler. Just couldn’t do it. Even if it put Noreen in a bad light, she couldn’t lie. She just wasn’t made that way. And besides, if her story diverged from what Tyler already knew, he’d know or suspect she was lying to him anyway.

He took a deep breath. “Your best friend didn’t tell you about the fight she had with Anne last week at the store where you both work?”

Missy scrambled for an answer that was both true and painted Noreen in a positive light. “We worked different shifts on Friday, then she was off Saturday, and I was off Sunday…we were both busy and didn’t see each other over the weekend…by the time we had a moment to ourselves earlier this week she’d probably forgotten all about it.”

“Uh-huh.”

Tyler wasn’t buying it. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He looked almost pained, like he was about to do something that disagreed with him. Missy had a good idea what that was.

“Noreen didn’t kill Anne Baxter, Tyler.” She stared at him until he met her eyes. “Come on. You know that.”

“Do I?”

She held out her palms. “I know how bad this looks. They fought here last week, they argued at the bookstore, and then they argued tonight. I understand why you’d be suspicious.”

“So give me a good reason why I’m wrong.”

“Because it’s Noreen.” She put her palms on the table and watched his eyes. They were so blue. There were nights in high school when they’d sat in his car, listening to music, just staring at each other.

He broke the stare first. “Okay, thanks, Melissa. I have what I need.”

She shot out of her chair. “Wait!”

Tyler came to his full height, a couple inches over six feet and stood ramrod straight. “What?”

“She didn’t do this. I know it. And you know it.”

“How do I know it?” He shook his head and started for the door. “She nearly killed the woman in front of the group tonight from what I hear.”

Missy figured it was Gloria Campbell, Anne’s friend, that had characterized the argument that way.

Tyler gripped the door handle.

Missy said, “You know she’s innocent, because you know
her
.”

He was still holding the handle, but he didn’t open the door. He stayed like that for a moment and she swore she saw his entire back go stiff under the uniform.

Missy nodded. “She told me.”

Tyler still didn’t turn around. With his eyes on the door, he said, “That was a long time ago, Melissa.”

“How long?” She couldn’t help it. She felt betrayed. Noreen knew how much Tyler had meant to her. He should have been off-limits to her forever.

“It was…after us.” Finally he let go of the handle and faced her. “One summer during college.”

“What?” Missy couldn’t believe it. How didn’t she know about this?

“Melissa—”

“Nobody calls me that, Officer Brock. Everybody calls me Missy.”

She pushed past him on her way out.