The Whispered Word Page 4

  Estella pointed at the pond. “She’s floating in the middle of that scummy water. You can’t miss her. I’m sure you don’t want us back over there. We might trample a clue or something.”

  “Thank you for your consideration, ma’am.” The sheriff replaced his hat and touched the brim in deference. “Most people aren’t as savvy.” After issuing orders to his deputies in low murmurs, he turned back to the women. “Would you ladies mind waiting in your car while we take a look at the pond?”

  “Not at all,” Estella said coquettishly.

  Nora knew Estella was just being her usual self, but she didn’t think now was the time to start flirting with the new sheriff. Apparently, neither did June.

  “Let’s get away from these bugs,” she said. “And those dogs! Lord have mercy! Why don’t their owners get them inside?”

  The four friends returned to June’s Bronco. They waited in relative silence for a good twenty minutes before Deputy Andrews appeared.

  June rolled down her window.

  “The sheriff would like to take your statements in town,” he said and made to leave.

  “Hold on,” Hester called from the back seat. “Is it Amanda? Is it her body?”

  Andrews hesitated. “We’ll need a positive ID before we can say for sure. But my guess is that it’ll end up being Mrs. Frye. I mean, she left a note.” He looked at Hester and dipped his chin. “See you at the station.”

  The women watched him walk away. His phrase about the note sat in the car like an extra passenger.

  Finally, June spoke the word that everyone was thinking. “Suicide?”

  Estella dismissed this with a flick of her wrist. “Who’d kill themselves in that god-awful pond? There are less nasty ways to do the deed than that.”

  June frowned at her in the rearview mirror. “Nora and I found an empty bottle of painkillers in the kitchen. I doubt that poor woman wanted to end up in that water. But somehow, she did.”

  Everyone fell silent again.

  June turned the car on and released a heavy sigh.

  Nora fastened her seat belt and gazed out the window. The same shadows she’d seen earlier had spread around the woods behind Amanda’s house, creating an undergrowth of soupy darkness. Soon, the dark would rise into the leafy canopy. From there, it would stain the entire sky like a bottle of spilled ink.

  “What did you mean back there, Nora?” June asked quietly as she put her car in gear. “In the kitchen, you said that something wasn’t right. What did you mean?”

  Nora turned away from the dark woods and looked at her friend. “The book. Amanda wouldn’t have done that to her book. I don’t care if it was her last day on earth. That woman would never break a book’s spine.”

  Chapter 3

  Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

  —P. J. O’Rourke

  “I don’t get it,” Estella said. “What book?”

  Nora told Estella and Hester about the empty bottle of pain pills and the book sitting on Amanda’s kitchen counter.

  “The book is a hardcover,” Nora went on. “There’s a certain way to break in a hardcover before reading it for the first time. Basically, you set it down on its spine and open one cover at a time while holding the pages together with one hand. After that, you allow a few pages near the front to open. Then, a few pages toward the back. You repeat this process, slowly and gently. It allows tight or unforgiving bindings to be broken in without damage.”

  Hester said. “I don’t open my books that way. Does anyone?”

  Nora shrugged, even though Hester was sitting behind her and might not catch the movement. “Collectors do. So do particular readers who don’t want their book pages falling out because the bindings have been ruined. I guess Amanda was both a collector and a particular reader. The book in her kitchen was covered with the same protective plastic as the books in her living room. I didn’t have much time to study them, but I think her books are worth something.”

  “Except the one in the kitchen,” June said. “That thing looked like it had been stepped on. It was spread-eagled on the counter and the pages were mashed and crumpled. I don’t know if you noticed, Nora, but there was a pinkish stain on the counter. I only saw it when I got right up on the pill bottle, but it reminded me of the stain left from cutting a fresh tomato.”

  Closing her eyes for a moment, Nora envisioned the view through Amanda’s kitchen window. There’d been several nightshirts or housedresses, Nora couldn’t tell which, pinned to a clothesline in the backyard. Closer to the house was a cracked concrete birdbath that probably hadn’t held water in years. There had also been a small garden. A raised bed featuring some wilted plants. Nora remembered seeing supports for bean and tomato plants. She also remembered the aluminum pie tins Amanda had placed around the perimeter of the garden to ward off pests. The tins, which dangled from wooden stakes of various heights, turned and twisted in the air currents, catching glints of sunlight until there was no light left to catch.

  “The rest of the room was very clean,” Nora said. “She even had laundry drying outside. The only untidy place was near that book in the kitchen.”

  Estella released an exasperated sigh. “I don’t see why a mashed book raises doubts about her suicide. It sounds to me like Amanda had nothing left to live for except books. I’m sorry to say this in your hearing, Nora, but books aren’t enough. The woman in that pond had no money, no family, and was suffering from chronic pain. She probably swallowed the pills and decided to read while waiting for them to kick in. When they did, she dropped the book and leaned on it with all her weight before stumbling outside.”

  “She stumbled all the way to the pond?” June asked wryly. “It’s not exactly close to the house. That’d be quite a feat for someone on the brink of death.”

  “I’m just saying that she did this to herself, as sad as that is,” Estella said. “Who’d want to kill Amanda, other than the people she regularly irritated? What would happen if we all went around killing those who annoyed us?” Since no one replied, Estella pressed her point. “Okay. Let’s say that Amanda’s books are her most valuable possessions. Did it look like any of the books were missing, Nora?”

  “I noticed an empty space in the cases in the living room, but the missing book was the one we saw in Amanda’s kitchen.”

  June shot her a quick glance as she paused at a four-way stop. “How do you know that it came from the living room?”

  “It was the second book of a trilogy by Philip Pullman,” Nora said. “There was a space between the first and third books on Amanda’s shelf. The Subtle Knife is the second book in the His Dark Materials series.”

  Silence followed Nora’s explanation. Each woman seemed to be lost in her own thoughts until June pulled into the lot shared by the sheriff’s department and the DMV.

  As June looked for a spot, Hester said, “That title sounds like a murder weapon. I read Pullman’s The Golden Compass. I loved that book, but I haven’t tried any of his other books.”

  “The Golden Compass was originally called Northern Lights,” Nora said. “The third book is The Amber Spyglass. There’s actually a fourth book in the series now, but Amanda only collected the original trilogy. She seemed to like trilogies. She had several of them.”

  “In that case, I hope she’s with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” said Estella with unusual solemnity. “Anyway, I was just trying to say that the only thing of value in Amanda’s house was left untouched. Her books. Which is why I think it’s safe to assume that she made the decision to end her own life. It’s horrible, but there’s nothing mysterious about it.”

  With Estella’s words ringing in their ears, the women filed into the sheriff’s department and took turns giving their statements to a female deputy.

  Like Sheriff McCabe, the deputy was a new hire and a welcome sight to the members of the Secret, Book, and Scone Society. The former sheriff had made it perfectly clear that he believe
d a woman’s place was in the home. Therefore, it was a marked improvement to see not one, but two women sporting the brown and khaki uniforms and wearing utility belts weighed down with gear as if they’d been born with them encircling their waists.

  By the time the four friends left the sheriff’s department, it was truly dark. There was no light left in the sky. Not even starlight. Clouds covered the moon, and the shadows from Amanda’s woods seemed to have fallen over the entire town.

  “I know we’re not in the same mood we were in when we left to deliver our kindness totes, but the people we chose still need what we have to give,” June said.

  Nora smiled at her friend. “Then let’s do what we set out to do.”

  On the way to the first stop, Hester decided to ring the doorbell.

  Estella looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I thought you were just going to leave the bag and go. What if they release the hounds or reach for their shotgun?”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Hester said. “I want to be sure they get the bread. We have raccoons in town too. I think I have a whole family living in my garbage cans.”

  At the first house, the doorbell chime caused a chain reaction. On the other side of the door, a little dog started yipping and the porch lights came on before Hester had a chance to jump back into the Bronco.

  “Hurry!” Estella cried.

  The second Hester was back in the truck, June pressed her foot to the gas pedal and the Bronco peeled out, leaving rubber tire marks on the asphalt. The four friends chortled with relief.

  The rest of the stops were uneventful. There were no dogs and the other recipients responded to the doorbell at a much slower pace.

  “They’re probably loading their shotguns,” Hester said, examining a fresh constellation of bug bites on her arm.

  By the time June returned to the parking lot behind Miracle Books, they all felt better for having delivered their anonymous gifts.

  Despite this, Nora didn’t ask her friends in for decaf coffee or tea. She didn’t want company. She wanted to be alone in her tiny house.

  Of course, she couldn’t be alone. She had a guest.

  Abilene was a very quiet person, but her physical presence intruded on Nora’s space. Especially her headspace. Abilene hadn’t been with Nora for a week, and Nora was already looking forward to the day the young woman moved on. Or at least, moved in with someone else.

  When Nora entered the tiny living room of Caboose Cottage, she saw its tiny cast-iron woodstove, the coffee table with built-in storage, and the sliding bookshelves that concealed her television. She didn’t see Abilene. The house was silent and still.

  In the kitchen, Nora found a note from Abilene saying she’d gone out for a walk. Next to the note were two pastries under a tent made of toothpicks and plastic wrap. Nora pulled off the wrap and stared down in delight at a pair of book-shaped puff pastries. One book was topped with a sprinkling of cinnamon. The other was dusted with confectioner’s sugar. Nora wondered if Hester had made the pastries and forgotten to mention them to Nora.

  Recently, the two women had decided that Nora should add a special pastry to the Miracle Books menu. Hester would bake the item and Nora would split half the profits with her. However, these weren’t the pastries Hester had baked as a test run. Those were much smaller and had included lines of text made of chocolate sauce or jam.

  Nora raised one of the book pastries to her nose. She smelled apples. The pastry was heavy, and she realized that Hester had injected the pastry with a fruit filling. Unable to resist the aromas of butter, apples, and cinnamon, Nora took a bite. And another.

  She moaned in delight. It was like eating a hand pie, but the golden-brown dough was lighter, flakier, and butterier than any piecrust Nora had ever tasted.

  She was just wiping her mouth with a paper towel when Abilene appeared, holding the flashlight Nora kept in the cupboard below the kitchen sink.

  “Did you like it?” she asked, her expression eager and a little anxious.

  Nora nodded. “It was delicious.”

  “The other one’s filled with chocolate,” Abilene said, smiling with pleasure. “Hester let me experiment when I finished my other work. She said that, if you approved, I could bake a dozen of each flavor and deliver them to the bookstore before you open. She also said that she’d send the smaller book pastries with the writing on top.”

  After what Nora had witnessed earlier that evening, discussing pastries with Abilene was a welcome relief. “I’d love to add these to my menu,” she said. “My regular customers will be so pleased. They’ve always hinted that it would be nice if I offered an accompaniment for their coffee or tea. Now, they’ll have something truly unique. I might even gain new customers after people post photos of these edible books on social media. What do you think?”

  Averting her eyes, Abilene mumbled, “I don’t know much about social media.”

  “But you’re of the tech generation,” Nora teased. “And you’re the only twentysomething I’ve met who isn’t constantly checking their smartphone. Do you own one?”

  Abilene shook her head.

  For some reason, Nora found this unusually curious. Also, she’d used the term twentysomething to see if Abilene would state her exact age. To Nora, she looked closer to seventeen than twenty anything, but Abilene hadn’t taken the bait. “Have you ever used a cell phone?”

  Shaking her head again, Abilene picked up the piece of plastic wrap from the counter and twisted it around her first three fingers. She was clearly agitated.

  “It’s refreshing to know that a person can survive without one,” Nora said airily. She didn’t want to spoil the mood Abilene had created with her surprise pastries. “Hester’s my youngest friend, but she doesn’t walk around with her eyes glued to her phone. Nor does she take it out during meals. So many people do that these days. They sit together, but spend the whole time focused on their phones. Why do they bother meeting if they’re just going to ignore each other?”

  When Abilene shrugged, Nora could see that this topic wouldn’t bring her any closer to her guest. “Hester learned to bake by reading cookbooks. Did she tell you that?”

  “Yes,” Abilene said.

  Nora was struck by Abilene’s formality. She didn’t make noises of assent or say yeah, or sure. It was always yes.

  “Is that how you learned to bake too?” Nora pressed. “Or did someone teach you?”

  Another shrug. “A bit of both.”

  Seeing that it was futile to pry, Nora gestured at the remaining pastry. “I’ll save that for tomorrow. By then, I hope I’ve come up with a clever name. If you have an idea, let me know.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Nora woke to a second note from Abilene. This one read, When I was making these, I thought of them as book pockets. I don’t know if that works, but I thought I’d tell you. I’ll deliver the trays after nine.

  Nora liked the name very much.

  As she waited for her coffee to brew, she studied the note. Abilene’s cursive looked like an example from a handwriting workbook. She was so different from other young women her age. She’d never used a smartphone, she was a skilled cook, she loved to read, and she wrote in perfect cursive. She also spoke with the formality of one completely unfamiliar with slang.

  Was she raised by technophobes? Nora mused while sipping coffee out on the small covered deck of Caboose Cottage. Did she escape from a cult? Was she someone’s prisoner? Is that why she’s so pale? And what about all her bruises? And her malnourishment?

  The hospital bracelet Nora had seen on Abilene’s wrist was long gone. Gone with the bracelet was the information printed on it. Information like Abilene’s full name.

  Examining the note left by her mysterious houseguest reminded Nora of another note. One written by Amanda Frye.

  “I know a certain deputy who drops by a certain bakery for breakfast,” she said to Hester later that morning. “Did Andrews mention Amanda’s note?”

  N
ora had Hester on speaker so she could update the chalkboard menu at Miracle Books.

  “Actually, Jasper just left.” There was a slight pause. “It feels so weird to use his first name. It shouldn’t, but it does.”

  Nora was happy to hear the giddiness in her friend’s voice. Hester had very little experience dating, but Jasper Andrews was a good man and Nora trusted him to treat Hester well.

  “Jasper.” Nora tried the name out. “I like it, but I’ll keep calling him Deputy Andrews. So did he say anything about the note?”

  “He told me exactly what it said.” Hester sounded sad. “I have nothing left to live for. That’s all she wrote.”

  Nora rolled the stick of chalk between her thumb and index finger. A powdery film turned her skin ghost white. She looked out the ticket agent’s window at the bookshelves and thought about what Amanda had written. Could a person’s existence be reduced to a single line? Amanda Frye, who always had so much to say, had reduced her entire vocabulary into a sentence of seven sorrowful words. The note’s brevity made Nora feel mournful.

  “I expected more detail,” Nora said. Though she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off about Amanda’s death, she pushed the thought aside. She didn’t know Amanda intimately. She’d been a customer. That’s all. Seeing her twice a month hardly made Nora an expert on the woman.

  But the book . . . a nagging voice in Nora’s head whispered.

  “Where was the note found?” Nora asked Hester.

  “It was in the kitchen. Inside the front cover of the book,” Hester said. “That’s all Jasper told me—other than Mrs. Frye’s son is on a flight from Chicago. He’s coming to identify her body. Didn’t you say that she complained about her son? That he never visited or contacted her?”

  Her son’s lack of communication had been one of Amanda’s constant gripes. “Yes. She said she made every sacrifice a mother could make for his benefit and that he repaid her by moving away as soon as he graduated from high school. He never returned. Not for holidays. Not for illnesses. Not for any reason.” Nora had heard the complaints about Amanda’s son so often that she could repeat them verbatim. “She also said that he made really good money, but even though he knew she didn’t have a dollar to spare, he never gave her a cent. She was angry at him, she was disappointed in him, but she obviously missed him being in her life too.”