French Polished Murder (32 page)

It was a little nerve-racking, too, because when you are out back, trying to help someone find the book they were looking for, the register is completely unprotected. Anyone could get into it or take out money and what could you do about it?

I was thinking of that as I finished ringing up the sale for the man I thought was the last customer of the previous batch, when I saw someone move at the back of the store.

This shouldn’t have been alarming, but it was. After all, customers wandering around the back of the store is normal, part of the wonders of capitalism. Only the person back there now—it looked like a tall man in blue jacket and pants—seemed to be trying not to be seen. In fact, he seemed to be trying to hide in the area where mother had put a little curtain to conceal the shelves containing the plastic dishware and such that she sets out when the bookstore hosts a signing.

I really wished I was not alone, but then I reminded myself most people doing secretive things in the bookstore were trying to shoplift, or maybe deface one of the books. Very few people came into a bookstore to murder the owner, much less the clerk.

The worst thing that people can say about mysteries is that they don’t read them because they’re too violent. Unlike fantasies, those who write or sell them have never been accused of being witches who must die.

So I took a look to make sure the new batch of customers weren’t coming up the walk to the store, and then I went to the back, hesitantly. Closer up, it was clear the man was wearing some sort of uniform, like that of a repairman, and that he had a cap of the same color as his pants and jacket jammed down on his white hair. “Sir,” I said. “Sir, is there any way I can help you?”

The man turned around, and said, in a surprisingly high, well-bred voice, “Yes. You can die.”

I was so shocked by the words that it must have taken me several seconds to recognize the well-bred features of Miss Diane Martin.

By that time she had a gun out and was pulling the trigger.

You don’t know the abilities you have till you need
them. If anyone had told me I could see a finger start to squeeze the trigger of a gun and throw myself sideways fast enough to avoid the bullet, I’d have told them they were insane. But that’s exactly what I did and, while she took more shots at me, making books fly all around, I managed to stay out of their way, mostly by crawling on the floor and rolling.

But this strategy had its limits. I had my cell phone in my pocket, but I couldn’t get to it while I was crawling and listening for her steps. Her steps. She was walking around. Which meant that Old Julius had been right and that it had been her who had come to his store to copy a key. My key.

I had a sickening feeling that she had gone to the house earlier, that she hadn’t found me there, and that she had come to the store, maybe intending to ask Mom and Dad if they knew where I was. And she had found me.

There was a lull in the firing. I wondered if she was reloading. I knew virtually nothing about guns. Not that I thought they were repulsive, or had any objections to them—at least when I wasn’t unarmed and at the mercy of a crazy woman holding a gun—but because like forensics and my parents’ other favorite subjects, I’d heard so much about them from the moment I could listen to anything, that I had found myself unable to take the subject seriously.

Damn,
I thought as I crawled behind a further set of bookshelves.
Now I will die because I don’t know if she’s reloading. If she’s reloading, I could charge her.

I looked around and realized I’d cornered myself in a cul-de-sac formed by bookshelves and the innermost corner of the store. Trapped, like a rat. One of the slower rats, like Rat Face. I could hear her approaching. She wasn’t firing, probably because she had figured out where I was.

Except . . . Except that behind me was the door to the powder room. Now, if you’re thinking that by going into the powder room, I’d simply manage to trap myself even more, behind a very small door that bullets could pierce, in a tiny room, where bullets would ricochet, you’d be absolutely right . . . except for one thing.

My parents were unable to comprehend the concept of any corner of the bookstore being devoid of books. Hell, they were unable to think of any corner of the house—any house—being free of books. So the powder room—which was, in fact, a full bathroom, had a large, sturdy utility shelf in the space where the tub had been piled high with the sort of books that my parents also had up front in the free bin. That way if a light-fingered customer came out of the bathroom with a book shoved down his pants or up his shirt, they wouldn’t have lost anything. On the other hand, if a customer came out of the bathroom complaining of the lack of good reads, they would direct him toward the books that were for sale.

I’m not sure how often it worked, but I was sure about the utility shelf, which was rated to take three hundred and some pounds.

I stood up, and quickly slipped into the powder room, locking the door behind me. Once inside, I clambered up the shelf like a cat, trying to make no noise and refusing to apologize, as Pythagoras would have.

The top of the shelf was almost at the ceiling, and I wedged myself behind the row of books Dad had piled on it, hoping that any bullets ricocheting wouldn’t hit me.

I took the phone out of my pants and dialed Cas. No answer.

A bullet came through the door, and shattered a mirror—seven years of bad luck. Another shot, and there went the lightbulb. Another one I could hear hitting the floor.

My captor wasn’t talking. I wanted her to. I called Nick. No answer. I called Ben.

“Dyce,” he said. Sounding almost bubbly happy. “I’m just waiting for the doctor to come and discharge me so I can go home.”

“I’m in my parents’ bookstore,” I said. “And Diane Martin is shooting at me.”

I spoke as low as I could, to avoid helping the old lady get a fix on me, but of course, she heard my voice and knew I was still alive, so she took another shot.

“Holy fuck!” Ben said. “Someone is shooting.”

“Yes, Diane Martin. I need help and I can’t get Cas or Nick on the phone.”

“The old lady? Impossible. Don’t move. I’ll—I’ll do something. Your parents’ bookstore?”

“Yes. And it is her.” But he had already hung up. It occurred to me that he’d arrive too late and I’d be dead and then no one would believe Diane Martin had killed me. It would be the perfect crime simply because being old and frail would protect her from suspicion.

So I burrowed farther behind the books, and I said, “Please stop. Why are you shooting at me?”

“Why not,” she said. “You wouldn’t listen. You wouldn’t stop. I gave you a perfectly good story, but you wouldn’t believe it.” A shot bounced off the cement block walls. “Why wouldn’t you believe that my brother killed Mama and that man?”

“Because you told me you slept in the love seat,” I said. “You couldn’t have. There were pictures of it in the file. Jacinth had been sorting papers there. There was no room for a person to sleep.” Hah! Once again my subconscious came through! That’s what had been bothering me about her story. I could hardly wait to tell Cas. If I wasn’t dead, that is.

My reward was a scream of rage and another shot that—judging from the explosion of ceramics, and the sudden gurgle of water had hit the toilet tank. “They sat there,” she said. “And they talked about how they would go back East, or perhaps to Australia. Taking me with them, as if they were doing me a favor. My brother could stay in Goldport and live the life he’d been accustomed to, but me, they were going to take with them, to be the daughter of a couple with no antecedents and no connections, to be nobody like the miner’s daughters that my mother was so fond of feeding. They said that they would take the bare minimum of money to buy boat passages for all of us. They talked of raising sheep!” She shot again.

I remembered the girl at the end of Agatha Christie’s
Easy To Kill
, who had found the best way to prolong her own life was to make the murderer talk, and that the best way to make the woman talk was to flatter her. I’d read about a million mysteries, but Agatha Christie stayed with me, maybe because they were the books my father had read to me when I was a toddler, or maybe because she understood murderers. Like her hero, Miss Marple, she understood evil. She once said that all murderers were horribly lonely. They had killed. They had broken the ultimate human taboo. And if they got away with it, they couldn’t talk to anyone about it.

Imagine killing when you were just a little girl, then living with that knowledge all your very long life. If I was going to die, I had to leave behind some proof of what Diane Martin had done, so long ago.

I dialed my home number, waited till the machine picked up, then said in a trembling voice, “You must have been very clever,” I said. “To have been able to kill them, when you were only eight years old. And get away with it.”

Bitter laughter answered me, but no shot. She wanted to talk, I realized. “Few children could have done it,” I said.

“Oh, yes, but I was always gifted. Far smarter than my brother. Or Mother. I was like my papa. I loved him and she was going to leave him for that—nobody. I remembered that a few weeks before when the workman had been preparing a room for the new baby, that our nurse-maid told us to be careful about the green wallpaper that was being stripped away. She said that the glue could be dangerous—that is was poison.

“Jacinth Jones had wallpaper in his living room, too. I said I was tired and wanted to lie down. Then I tore some strips from the wallpaper, and brought it back to the kitchen, hidden in my pockets. They were still talking, trying to figure out exactly where they would get the money for everything. I told them I couldn’t sleep, and asked if they wanted me to make coffee. I’d done that for them, during their meetings, before, when they were talking about their charities.

“I put the strips in the pot and I boiled them with the coffee and then I ran home and told Papa, just like I told you. Only I didn’t say anything about Edward, because my father knew Edward, and Edward was a scaredy-cat. He would never have followed Mother out of the house. Papa realized what had happened. He covered things up, but afterward he stopped me from marrying, stepped in and claimed I was an invalid and suffered from a nervous disorder.”

“So you got away with it,” I said. “But why would you sacrifice it all now, just to . . . to get me? They’ve found the bones. You know that, right?”

“Oh, yes. John called from the hospital to tell me. He thought poor Papa had done it, he was afraid I’d have a shock. I—a shock.” She laughed again.

“But you know there is going to be an investigation. By coming after me this way, you’re only giving them reason to believe you did it. And it will destroy what life you have left.”

“Life! Hah! My stupid nephew is selling my house from under me, and putting me in some place filled with imbecilic old people. What is life to me?”

And she started shooting. Again, and again and again, until—like a miracle, like deliverance, like all the best things in the world rolled together—I heard sirens. Ambulances, fire engines. Police cars. My relief was so great I almost fainted.

No more shots rang out, but I wasn’t sure I was in the clear till there was a tap on the door, and two male voices clamored, “Dyce!” at once. “Dyce, are you okay?”

It was Ben and Cas, and I opened the door and fell into Cas’s arms as Ben leaned against the nearest bookcase.

I was too relieved to be able to make much sense of the paramedics strapping a still form into a carrier, but I said, “She . . . she killed herself?”

“No. She collapsed when we came in,” Cas said. “She fell, had a seizure, and was gone.”

The paramedics hadn’t covered her face and as the stretcher went by, her piercing blue eyes seemed to look at me with disdain. I shuddered, while Ben squeezed my shoulder, the way he does when he’s too overcome to speak.

At that moment my parents came back. I heard a box of books drop on the counter and then my mother’s voice, “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Why is there water pouring out the front door?”

“You know Sherlockia!” Father said. “You’re lucky she didn’t set fire to the store.”