The Bookshop on Autumn Lane (14 page)

A half hour later, with more women wandering in from next door, I knew I had lost my argument for trashing everything.

In the center of it all was Kit. Smiling and making small talk about interesting books and magazines. It dawned on me again: He was just too damn nice. I was burning to know what a man like him was like when his barriers were down. I pictured him in bed . . . with me.

I fanned my face.

I knew he was tired of their silly questions. In fact, if I didn't see the way a muscle in his jaw tightened whenever Marva asked him about the royal family, I would have thought he was having the time of his life. He let her talk on and on about absolutely nothing. I studied Kit. He wanted to avoid the ladies earlier and now he was sweetening them up. He was acting like a phony.

I should be flattered. At least he wasn't that way with me, I thought as the day clouded over.

“Y
ou're not killing her good enough.”

“What?” It was Mary Conrad's third attempted murder and she still couldn't get it right.

“Like this.” Flo took the knife, smeared more ketchup on it, and raised it over her head. “Get mad and let her have it.” She slashed the knife through the air and slammed it into the gut. Intestines spurted out of an open wound. “There!”

The corpse screamed and sat up. “Hey!”

“Sorry, Bridgette.” She had five inches of padding and another two of her own personal padding to cushion the blow. But Bridgette was not happy with the messy innards made of spaghetti.

“Did that hurt?” Flo asked.

“No, but it scared the bejesus out of me!”

Flo shook her head. “You have to stop screaming, Bridgette. This haunted house is for the kids, not you! Every time we add another prop you run around screaming like you've never seen a haunted house before.”

“I haven't!”

“Then what the blazes are you doing working this one?”

“I want to help. And Marva promised I could be dead so I wouldn't have to see anything. But being stabbed is scary.”

Flo jammed the knife into her palm. “This is made of rubber. I can barely feel it.”

June Krueger popped her head up over the partition. “Trudy! We need you over in the insane asylum.”

I resisted the urge to point out that I was already in the insane asylum. Besides the zombie zone, where Flo, at the ripe age of eighty-three, led the undead, there was the bloodsucker's bedroom, headed appropriately by Regina Bloodworth, who kept trying to change the theme to “sexy vampires” so she could wear her favorite costume. An eccentric older woman named Addie Adler created the terrifying clown corner. She kept missing the point of making the clowns scary. She refused to add sharp teeth and red eyes to the clown corp. Instead, she wanted the clowns to learn how to juggle. I had yet to meet the woman in charge of the witch's wing, but everyone said she was the nicest woman in Truhart. She owned the Amble Inn.

The insane asylum was run by who else? Marva O'Shea.

I drew back the curtain and entered the land of the crazies.

Marva pointed at a small armchair made of two-by-fours. “Joe hasn't made this electric chair right.”

Joe stood at the table saw, frowning at his wife. “I cut it exactly like you told me. So if you don't like it, blame yourself. I followed your measurements.”

“There's no way you followed them. That chair looks like it was made for a pygmy.”

Joe dropped a two-by-four on the floor. “I've had it. You wanted me to help and I helped. But all you've done is criticize me. I've got three dishwashers and an oven to look at this afternoon and I'm late already.”

Marva waved him away. “Then go.”

Joe looked at me and said, “Feel free to shove her behind in the chair if she keeps acting this way, Trudy. I'll be happy to flip the lever!” He stomped away and ignored Marva's angry huff.

“He's such a baby.”

I picked the two-by-four off the ground and took my measuring tape out of my tool belt. “Do you want it the size of a regular chair?”

“Bigger. Like a throne.”

I pulled a pencil out of my pocket and pictured a chair the perfect size for our local royalty, Kit. While I measured and marked the wood, I imagined him sitting on the electric chair at my mercy. My imagination took a turn and once again I was overheating.

Kit deserved punishment for getting me involved in this project. Everywhere I turned, flustered women told each other what to do. A few people left in tears. More than a dozen had done nothing more than stand in the corner and gossip.

But truthfully, I was having fun.

Besides creating weird props and working with my hands, something I absolutely loved, the ladies were treating me differently. When they saw how easy it was for me to construct scary scenery and heard my ideas for enhancing the haunted house, they began to treat me with respect. I didn't let it go to my head, of course. I was still an oddity they hadn't figured out. But I was useful now. Every now and then I caught Marva and Flo looking at me as if I had grown a new head. They were curious. They had me pegged when I was on my side of the wall. But here I was, in the loony bin right with them.

“And don't forget to add straps and ties at the hands and feet.” Marva was still talking. “We want this to be the scariest feature in the whole haunted house.”

“This is for people over sixteen, right?” I asked.

“Mature viewers only!” Marva said. “We're going to have a tent outside for the little tykes.”

“Good idea!” Everyone was getting into the theme so much that I was beginning to understand how serial killers got started.

I pulled out a scrap of paper and began to trace a chair.

I drew Marva a rough sketch. I had worked on almost every haunted room in the store, but something about the asylum fascinated me.

Marva looked over my shoulder. “Is his lordship coming by today?” Kit's request to lose the title had caught on with everybody except Marva.

“He says he's busy in the bookshop.”

“Why doesn't he ever come and see our masterpiece?”

“I don't know. Don't ask me . . .” My voice trailed off.

The ladies asked him over each day but, for the past week, he kept making excuses. It suddenly occurred to me that I may not be the only haunted soul in Truhart.

* * *

I popped my head in the bookshop. “Time to eat, Professor.” His head was buried in one of the boxes of papers he had pulled down from the attic yesterday.

He started to say something and I put my hand up. “You owe me lunch after getting me involved in the nuthouse next door.”

“In a little—”

“Even Shakespeare ate!”

It was a nice day and I made Kit take the long way to Cookee's. We passed by Doc's and I shooed a black cat off Lulu's hood. “Must be Doc's cat.”

Kit patiently listened to me explain all the ways I had nurtured her over the past few years. I left her with a fond caress and a silent promise to return soon.

When we finally sat down in a booth, Mac announced he had a surprise for me. “Wait till you see what I found on the internet.”

Twenty minutes later he placed a mushroom risotto with squash in front of me. “Locally harvested,” he said proudly.

I was majorly impressed with his expertise. It was delicious. I tackled the dish with gusto. Meanwhile, Kit picked at his fries and stared across the street at the bakery.

“Something bothering you?” I angled around to see what he was looking at. Hay barrels. A few skeletons swinging from a post. A stuffed dummy wearing a monster mask.

“Does that bother you?” He was confirming my suspicions.

“Huh, what?” he said, bringing his eyes back to me.

“The Halloween decorations. Do they creep you out?”

“Yes . . . I mean, no!” A guilty expression passed over his face and he put the bun back on his burger. “It's a bit odd to me how people get into this gruesome holiday.”

“Uh, if I remember correctly, the tradition started in England. So don't blame us.”

“Scotland and Ireland, to be exact. We had almost obliterated the holiday with Guy Fawkes Night, but thanks to the Scots and Irish, it's back in vogue now.”

“I don't know about the history behind it, but it's fun to be scared, don't you think?”

“No.”

I remembered Marva's complaint that Kit wouldn't visit and thought about his reaction to the decorations. I should have realized it sooner.

Kit was afraid.

He watched Truhart transform from sleepy-town to haunted-town with an obvious lack of appreciation. Well, well. He gave me a hard time about my aversion to books. Hypocrite. He had his own issue.

If he expected me to accept the idea of selling books, he was going to have to accept Halloween. Come to think of it, Kit was as nervous around Halloween as he was around me. Every time I teased him about kissing me he adjusted his glasses and changed the subject. I knew he wasn't immune to me. He watched me when he thought I wasn't looking. He had responded to me by the lake. There was no way it was my imagination. But there was one way to prove it.

An idea formed as I ate and I couldn't get it out of my mind.

It involved me and Kit and an electric chair.

* * *

“Relax. It's all fake, nothing is going to hurt you.” I held his hand as we walked through the carnage of fake corpses and creepy things.

“I am relaxed,” Kit said.

“Then why is sweat rolling down your neck? It's sixty degrees in here.”

“I've been moving books all day. That's hard work.”

“You haven't moved a single book in the last half hour.”

“Hmmph.” He almost tripped on a skull. “Why am I here again?”

“I'm giving you a private tour so you can conquer your fears. Most of this is just papier-mâché and flour.”

The majority of Truhart was at the football game. But we had both declined to go. It was a windy night and light rain mixed with snow didn't make the prospect appealing.

Kit surveyed the room. “You've done a great job. If I were watching
Macbeth
I'd give you a standing ovation.”

“Thanks. But that's not the only reason I dragged you here. I need a little help with something.” I bit my lip. Ever since I had started cutting and hammering the electric chair, I had been obsessed with one thing: Getting Kit in it.

“Don't tell me. You're finally going to bury me for suggesting you help the Triple C's out with the house of horror.”

“Close.” We were in the corner of the room. I pulled back a curtain. Kit expelled a deep breath. I don't know what he expected, but it was just a wooden chair and a white sheet. We hadn't added the scary asylum people or the blood yet. Even then the effect wasn't complete without the flashing lights and the scary soundtrack I was helping Flo create.

“So, this is just a chair?”

“It is,” I said. “But it's going to be an electric chair.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to sit in it.”

Kit arched an eyebrow. “That's all? You've been begging me to come here all evening and you just need me to sit down?”

“Yes.” I smiled. “I need to make sure I have the right measurements. And you can relax and forget your fears at the same time.” Only the fears I was thinking of included the fear of me.

He stood over the chair and put his hand on the backing, testing it for sturdiness. “Looks fine to me. Let's go.”

“Not so fast, Professor. I need to know it's the right size.”

“Then can we go?” He turned around and slowly lowered himself into the chair. “All good?”

I walked around him in a circle, picking up some of the materials I had procured earlier today. “It seems like it's the right size. How does it feel?”

“Shockingly comfortable.” He clasped the end of the armrest with his hands.

“Humor. That's the way, Professor. Now you're relaxing.” I took a piece of thick cloth and tied it around his wrist. “See. This isn't so bad, is it?”

“All I need is a good book and a hot toddy.” If he only knew.

Pulling out a pencil, I marked the correct spot on the wooden frame and knotted the material. When I finished I stepped back. His chest rose and fell and his breathing was erratic.

“Now the other side.” I took another long scrap of cloth and did the same with Kit's other hand. “And the feet.”

I could feel Kit's eyes on the back of my neck as I knelt down and tied his ankles to the frame at the bottom of the chair. “No, that's too low. Hold still. Let me readjust this one.” I tied the length a little closer to his calf than his ankle.

Sitting back on my heels, I tilted my head and studied the electric chair with Kit sitting in it. His mouth was open and his cheeks were flushed.

He wiggled in the chair. “Trudy . . .”

“How do you feel?”

“Shocked.”

“Do you like it?” I ran my tongue across my lower lip.

“I'm warming up to Halloween. But—”

I put my finger in the air. “For once, don't think, Kit. We both need to tackle our fears.” I pulled my hair out of its bun and shook it out. “It's getting hot. Hmm. I should probably place something across you to make sure you can't get away.”

I ran my hands across his chest. “I'm tired of you getting away from me.” He watched my hands and his nostrils flared.

“What can I use to keep you right here in this chair, Kit?”

“You.” His eyes were glazed. My seduction plan was working.

I straddled his lap and let my lip run across his collarbone. “Are you going to be good? Or am I gonna have to make you beg?”

“Beg?” His voice was hoarse. I ran my hands in his hair and kissed him. He tasted like toasted grain and delicious man. He strained against the bonds and arched his back trying to get loose.

“Ah, this is what I need.” I unbuckled his belt and slid it off him. Then I backed away and wrapped it around his middle and secured him to the thin post at his back.

I stepped between his legs. “What are you going to do now, Dr. Darling? Respect me?”

“Maybe we should forget about respect,” he croaked.

I leaned forward until my lips were almost touching his. His eyes widened. I raised my hand and traced a light line from his jaw to his collarbone. Slowly, I unbuttoned the first few buttons on his shirt.