Murder Miscalculated (19 page)

Joey’s eyes widened, and he started to get up. “Agent? Nobody told me anything about feds getting involved.” He glared at me. “I trusted you, Kid.”

It was my turn to try. “Like Lynn said, Joey. Don’t worry. You trust her, don’t you?”

Joey nodded.

I continued. “Agent Cochran here is trying to figure out who killed Zager and why. He’s not after you.”

“You promise?”

Cochran nodded and then crossed his heart. “I promise.”

That seemed to satisfy Joey, and he went back to his food.

“I thought you said they brought you food?” I said as he finished his second bowl of chili.

“Only two times a day, remember?” countered Joey with a logic I couldn’t fault.

“What else did they ask you?” asked Lynn. “Why did they beat you?”

“I guess they didn’t believe me. They wanted to know if I was working with The Kid and if he was working for someone else.” He put a hand to his shoulder and rubbed it. “They worked me over pretty hard, but nothing they asked made any sense to me, and I told them that. I guess they finally believed me.”

Earlier this evening they had tied Joey’s hands, put him back in the car and headed back to the city. Joey grinned. “But I fooled them.”

“Each day I pretended to be weaker than I was so that by tonight they had to drag me to the car. They did a piss-poor job of tying my wrists, giving me too much slack.” He held up his hands, and we saw the angry welts and bloody abrasions. Barbara went to the sink and brought back a fresh wet washcloth.

“I knew what they planned to do. It’s the look they get in their eyes and the way they don’t look at your face. They were going to get rid of me.” He went on to tell of the drive into the city and to the dock area. Joey had waited until the car was moving slowly between the wharves before making his move.

“There was one guy driving and one guy in the back seat with me. I pulled up my legs and jammed them into the guy next to me as hard as I could.” He took another pull from the bottle, finishing it. “I think I broke a few of his ribs ‘cause I heard him wheezing.”

Then he threw his bound hands over the driver and got him by the throat. The driver lost control of the car and it crashed into the brick wall of a dock building.

“The airbags popped out and that stopped the driver from doing anything long enough for me to get out of the car and start running. I think I heard the driver running after me, so maybe I didn’t choke him as hard as I thought, but I was far enough away that I lost him.” After that Joey had taken back alleys and side streets to The Book Nook.

“You and Lynn told me you would help me.” He gave a lopsided grin. “I guess I need help.”

I thought about it. “What do you think, Cochran?”

Cochran nodded. “Let’s keep him here for now.” He turned to Lynn. “If that’s okay?”

Lynn looked up at the ceiling as if visualizing the rooms above. “I think that pretty much fills the place, doesn’t it, Barbara?”

Barbara laughed. “Oh, no. This is nothing. We used to put four or five to a room back in the old days of the protest marches. Of course, people have to be willing to share rooms.”

A quick glance at the faces of Max, Cochran and Joey told me the answer to that question.

“I think we’ll put out the No Vacancy sign,” I said.

Junior chose that moment to emerge from wherever he had hidden himself when Joey arrived. He took a minute to take inventory of who was present, then hopped into Max’s lap.

With his wrists and knuckles cleaned and bandaged, Joey accepted another large piece of cornbread while the rest of us tried to make sense of his story, but all we could agree upon was that the situation had just become more complicated.

Once he’d had his fill of food, I made Joey comfortable on a cot upstairs in the room where I had been practicing with the dressmaker’s dummy, then headed back down to the store.

Max found me there a few minutes later.

“Son, I understand Lynn told you that this Dom DeMarco fellow and I have made our peace.”

I glared at him. “Yeah, a couple of days ago from what I understand.”

Max put his hand on my shoulder. “The thing is, Kid—you still don’t mind if I call you that, do you? Everyone else seems to.”

I sighed. “No, that’s okay.”

Max smiled. “Thanks. The thing is, Kid, I’m really enjoying myself. I haven’t had such a good time in a coon’s age. I’ve been on this book tour for months, putting up at hotels made out of glass and all looking the same from one city to another.”

He paused and swept his hand around, encompassing all of The Book Nook. “Here I get some great home-cooked food, good company and an adventure to boot.” He lowered his hand and his voice. “How about it, Kid? Mind if I stay just a few more days? I got to be in Chicago the beginning of next week.”

Lynn and Barbara were right. Max did have a certain charm once you got to know him. I gave in. In return he gave me one of his slaps on the shoulder and, as usual, didn’t notice me wince.

“That’s great, son. Now, how’s about you, me and that Cochran fellow grab a few bottles of brew and I’ll tell you about the time Norman Mailer and I got into a fistfight at the National Book Awards.”

Our confident predictions about Doris Whitaker backing off once my cover was blown made sense, were rational, and were based both on logic and our combined knowledge of human behavior. It’s too bad Doris didn’t think the same way. She made her thoughts on the subject known to us the next evening.

It was a welcome quiet evening at The Book Nook. Cochran was out, hobnobbing with his fellow agents. Barbara had already retired to her room. Lynn looked in on her and reported that Barbara was lying in bed with her laptop on, well, her lap.

“I think she’s looking up old schoolmates and friends from when she was young,” Lynn told me as we washed and dried the dishes from dinner. “In the past few days she’s asked me to help her learn to use all kinds of reunion and social web sites.”

Joey was up in his room where he had stayed, except for occasional trips down the hall to use the bathroom. I’d brought him a plate of two lamb chops and couscous and a couple of cold bottles of beer earlier, but I could not entice him from his room.

“Lynn told me to stay here,” he explained, “and I gotta do what Lynn says.”

I was about to tell him that wasn’t true when Lynn called up the stairs, telling me my dinner was getting cold, and I should get the heck down there.

“See?” said Joey.

I saw and went downstairs as I was told.

Max, Candy and  April busied themselves at the table after supper, going through sheets of paper and consulting a map of the country. I listened to their conversation as I dried the dishes. An oversized road atlas was open on the table with bookmarks sticking out from many pages. “I know a fantastic old hotel in downtown Atlanta,” Candy was saying. “It’s central to everything and only a few blocks from the light rail.”

“What about New Orleans?” asked April. “We need to schedule that after Atlanta.”

Max began telling a story about New Orleans. I tuned out the conversation and put the last plate away. Max told great stories, but I had work to take care of in the store. Lynn poured herself some tea and took it over to the table and sat with the others as I left. With Lynn at the table, Max looked like an old tomcat surrounded by his ladies.

The store was quiet as befit the hour. Our only customer, a regular, bought a couple of used Dick Francis mysteries and left. Junior prowled around an old set of
The Encyclopedia Britannica
, circa 1927, rubbing his whiskers against the edges of the heavy volumes.

The bell over the door jingled as someone came into the store. I had my back to the door, scanning the shelves behind the counter for a roll of price stickers I knew I had stashed someplace last week but could not find. I wasn’t being rude. Most bookstore customers like to browse a bit before coming to the counter, but this was not a customer.

“Mrs. Whitaker doesn’t like you, Kid.”

I wheeled around. It was Jeremy. He was wearing a V-neck sweater and slacks. With his conservative haircut he would look right at home at a country club dinner except for the gun he had pointed at me. I swallowed hard.

I tried to look around without showing the panic I was feeling. The counter would offer scant protection, as it was open at both ends. I had a moment of fleeting hope when I saw how small the gun was in his hand. I’m no expert on guns, far from it, but even my untrained eye told me it was a tiny automatic. Unfortunately, my own experience with a gun of that size forced me to recognize it was still quite lethal. I tried to stall for time.

“Let’s see,” I said. “You’re Chad, right?”

The young man sneered. “No, I’m Jeremy. Chad’s lying in bed with a cracked skull.” He licked his lips, then raised the gun and pointed it at my face. “He told me to tell you goodbye.”

I tried to think of another question but came up short. I saw Jeremy’s fingers tighten on the little pistol. In his eyes I could see fear that matched my own.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, son?” Max’s voice boomed from the back room doorway as he pushed through the hanging beads. “Don’t you know those things are dangerous when they go off?”

Max walked right at Jeremy, who turned to aim at him instead of me.

I looked for something to throw at Jeremy or to hit him with, but the only objects of any size on the counter were a few heavy paperback books. I stared longingly at the stack of Max’s heavy hardcover books in the center of the store.

But Max had something with which to hit Jeremy. He brought his fancy walking stick down across Jeremy’s wrist with a crack. I heard the gun go off, and it fell to the floor. Jeremy, sobbing with pain and clutching his wrist, ran from the store. The front door banged against the outside wall with the force of his escape. Something touched my foot. It was Junior, taking shelter behind the counter. Relief swept through me.

Max had a foolish grin on his face. I tried to thank him for saving my life as Lynn, Candy and April came tumbling out from the back, asking what had happened.

I gave a quick rundown.

“Do you think we should call the police?” asked Lynn as she put her arm around me.

Max looked to be in shock at what had happened, as he had yet to move from where he stood. April and Candy were on either side of him, looking up at him with undisguised admiration.

“I don’t think we need to.” I said.

“No,” said Max in a surprisingly mild voice. “No need for the police, but a doctor might be in order,” and with those words his legs slowly buckled, and he sagged to the floor.

“Oh, my God. He’s been shot!” said Candy and pointed to the stream of blood that was leaking at an alarming rate from his pant leg. Lynn took her cell phone from her back pocket and called 911 while the rest of us clustered around Max.

I went over to the armchairs and brought back two throw pillows. April took them and put them under Max’s head. Candy sat cross-legged at the other end of the supine Max and placed the foot of his injured leg in her lap.

“We have to keep it elevated,” she said to no one in particular.

I tore his pants leg away from the wound. My fingers became wet with Max’s blood. I started to wipe them on my own pants and then used Max’s. What the heck, they were already ruined.

The wound was mid-thigh in Max’s left leg. Although the blood had soaked his pants leg, there weren’t any arterial spouts of blood, and I took that as a good sign.

Lynn reached the emergency operator, knelt next to Max and described the wound.

“Get a dish towel from the kitchen,” she instructed me. “We need to hold it against the wound and keep pressure on it.”

I hurried into the back room. Joey was coming down the stairs.

“What’s all the commotion?” he asked.

I told him what had happened while I fetched a dishtowel from the sink. It was the one I had used to dry the dishes not so many minutes ago. Joey went with me back out into the store.

Lynn took the towel, folded it and held it tightly against Max’s leg.

“Hey, Kid.”

Max had a goofy grin on his face. “Remind me never to do something like that again.”

I told him I would, should the occasion arise.

Junior peeked his head out from behind the sales counter and walked over to Max when he saw him lying on the floor. Max scratched him behind the ears.

Lynn put hand on Joey’s arm. “The police are going to be here in a few minutes.”

He seemed reluctant to leave.

“Go ahead, son,” Max said to him. “I got three pretty ladies taking care of me. I’ll be fine.” About that time we saw red and blue lights outside.

“Okay,” said Joey as he edged back through the beaded curtain, “but I’ll be upstairs if you need help.” Joey was clearly someone who didn’t like being left out of the action.

Said action increased tenfold in the next five minutes. Police and an ambulance crew swarmed into The Book Nook at the same time. For a moment I thought a fight was going to break out between the two teams as each tried to show they were in charge.

“Boys! Hey! Let’s focus, shall we?” called Max in a voice more powerful than I thought he could manage, given the circumstances. Evidently it took quite a bit out of him, as his face paled, and he laid his head back on the small pillow.

His shout did the trick, though, and soon he was on a stretcher being carried from the store with all of us following. I worried there would be some contention between Candy and April as to who would ride in the ambulance with Max, but that was solved before it started. Both Candy and April climbed into the back with the stretcher.

The door closed seconds later, and the ambulance took off. Its siren sounded long after it disappeared around the corner and headed down Oak Street to Mercy hospital. Only minutes after it all began, Lynn and I found we were standing by ourselves on the dark street outside the bookstore.

Back inside the store we found two uniformed police officers trying to make sense of what had happened. I’m afraid I didn’t help much with the scant answers I gave. I wasn’t certain just how much I could say. I certainly couldn’t tell them that a rival pickpocket had shot Max.