Asphyxiation under the Asters

A Lola, Iris & Archie Mystery

By K. B. Thomas

All Rights Reserved

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I was never meant to be anyone’s Watson. I wasn’t even an Arthur Hastings. Those two were British Army, mustachioed, male. Not to mention willing foils. I am female, with a bit of heft and height certainly, but not at all martial. 

Foil perhaps, but ‘willing’ is a point that could be debated. 

As a chronicler I am also deficient. When writing out the details of this summer, the only date and time I can remember without having to consult a calendar is August 15. 1:00 pm. 

I remember that date precisely because I’d invited Detective Matthew Noonan to meet me at Bubba ‘N Blu’s for sweet potato pie. Sweet potato, of course, because it was his favorite. 

I paid $50 to the dessert chef at Bubba ‘N Blu’s to make the pie. I have described this chef before as quixotic; earlier in the summer, when I’d first made the request, he had refused. He was young, perhaps twenty-two, and idealistic. His forearms were tattooed with whisks and wooden spoons. He was an ingredient purist, a pastry artiste, and he argued that the time for sweet potato was in the fall, not at the end of summer. 

Berries, he insisted. Blueberry, raspberry, strawberry; that was where the action was.

Lola, who lives up the hill from me on Briarcliff Road, would not let the matter rest. 

“What are you going to do, Cassie?” she challenged me, “wait until Leap Year to ask the detective to eat pie with you? Get in there and get it done.”

Lola was somewhere between sixty-five and seventy – she would never say for certain – tall and thin with hennaed hair, augmented lips, and a few strategic nips and tucks here and there.

That summer she was enrolled in a two month real estate course, working towards her license, and had become terribly focused on closing the deal. 

This was in the aftermath of what my neighbor Iris, Lola’s sister, had titled The Case of the Counterfeit Sister, which involved a purported half sister, pharmacological trade secrets, and my laptop. 

Archie, Iris’s Schnoodle, had discovered a body under the camellias at Iris’s house at the bottom of Briarcliff Road. Lola’s house was at the top, Iris’s was at the bottom of the looping cul-de-sac. My house was at the half-way point, mashed between the two.

Physically, Iris was very different from her sister Lola. Iris had let her hair go grey and gravity do its job. She was prone to wearing second hand sweatshirts and jeans with elasticized waistbands, and would not hesitate to walk from her house to mine in blue terry cloth slippers if her feet were too swollen for her Hush Puppies. 

Lola and Iris shared an attitude towards reality and reason that might be called ‘charming’ by some, or ‘whack-a-doodle’ by others. 

The upshot of all of this is that Iris, inspired by the bloodless corpse of a haemophiliac found under her camellias, decided to live her dream and stop merely reading mysteries and start writing them. 

Which was where all the trouble began. 

************************************

The pie was worth every penny. Detective Noonan and I were seated at a picnic table in the shade at the edge of the Bubba ‘N Blu parking lot. Birds were singing in the treetops. The wind was from the southwest, which was fortunate, because the hot-dip zinc galvanizing facility near Trinity was to the north of us. 

It was a lovely afternoon and I was enjoying myself; you would think that I bribed dessert chefs to create certain pie specials for certain men every day of the week. 

“I have to thank you, Cassie,” said the detective between forkfuls of pie. “I haven’t stopped here for pie since, I don’t know – last November?”

Here’s the thing about the detective. I really liked him. He was good to look at. Tall, with classic Irish dark hair and sapphire blue eyes. A bit over 50, he was not much older than myself, divorced and the father of two daughters who were still in high school.

My neighbor Iris supplied this information. I can’t say that the information was unsolicited. I solicited it. By that I mean, I had poked around, obliquely hinted, then straight-up asked. She was on good terms with him and had loaned him several books from her personal collection, which she never would have done if he hadn’t met her approval.

What else? He was smart, but not at all condescending. He liked dogs. I hadn’t felt this way, this comfortable, with a man since –

His cell phone rang. “Sorry,” he said, or at least I think that’s what he said, around a mouthful of pie. 

I gazed at the blue sky, at the meandering bees in the daylilies, the little line of ants marching just below our picnic table while he listened to the caller’s preliminary statement. 

“It’s for you,” Detective Noonan said, handing me his phone. “It’s Iris.”

A sour feeling, mixed with apprehension, swept through me. Iris had my phone number. I also knew that Iris was at her writing group that afternoon. Her accelerated, goal-oriented, focused, mystery writing group. 

“Cassie?” Iris said, sounding very goal-oriented and focused. “I didn’t call to talk to you. Give the phone back to the detective.”

“It’s for you, actually,” I told him, handing the phone back. 

“This had better be worth interrupting my lunch,” he replied.

It was. 

************************************

Iris had called from an address off Old Durham Road. In that neighborhood the trees were towering, the lawns thick and lush, the money old and beautifully patinated. I followed Detective Noonan’s unmarked Ford Interceptor in my silver, second hand Honda, and parked under the shade of an ancient magnolia. 

The house was sited well back from the street. It was a sprawling mock Tudor with gable roofs, a trio of chimneys, mullioned wood framed windows and a clear glass front door with stained glass sidelights. There was a flagstone pathway from street to house and a driveway of bricks laid in a herringbone pattern, lined with glazed pots of blooming hyssops and trailing nasturtium. 

An ambulance sat in the drive, two marked patrol cars behind it. 

I expected the detective to tell me I had to stay behind but he didn’t stop me from following. The entry hall was high ceilinged, dark and cool, with cherry wainscot on the walls and furnished with a Queen Anne table in highly polished mahogany. 

A policeman was blocking the entry into the living room; another stood down the hall at the kitchen passage. 

“Where’s Iris?” I asked, surprised at how anxious I felt. 

With a nod from the detective I was escorted through the living room, past a formal dining area, and into the library. 

The room was at the rear of the house and faced out onto the lawn. Sunlight played at the tall windows. Deep, upholstered chairs were scattered about the room and a long table stood in front of the fireplace. Two of the walls were lined from floor to ceiling with built-in bookcases, trimmed with fluted molding and filled with leather bound tomes.

Gathered in front of the fireplace, a group of strangers watched my entry with interest.

Iris appeared at my side. “Is the detective here?” she whispered. Only then did I notice how quiet everyone in the room was. 

There were two men and four women, including Iris. Of the two men one was older, perhaps sixty, with the heaviness that comes from too much good food and wine that can no longer be walked off by eighteen holes of golf three times each week. The other was quite young, maybe twenty-five, wearing drainpipe trousers and a black t-shirt. His red hair was cropped close and there was the slightest fuzz of unkempt whiskers on his face. 

Two of the women were in their late fifties, nicely dressed in slacks and blouses. One had long, dark hair and an odd, dark complexion. She was very thin. She was standing, her hand on the shoulder of the other, who was sitting in a chair. The woman sitting was dabbing her eyes with a tissue. She was lightly complected and wore her hair in a pageboy; a thin black headband kept her bangs swept back from her face, which was as simple and uncomprehending as a cow’s. 

The third woman was really a young adult, perhaps eighteen or nineteen. She was tall and slender and was dressed in a much-laundered black t-shirt and black jeans. Her shoulder length hair was dyed a muddy shade of purple, and she wore too much liquid eyeliner. I wondered if she was trying to look like Barbra Streisand circa 1966, or Cleopatra as played by Elizabeth Taylor.

This, then, was Iris’s mystery writing group.

Iris led me over to a window seat. 

“I’m so glad they let you in to see me,” she whispered. “There’s been an accident.”

I could hear the soft, murmured reassurances the woman with the dark hair was heaping upon the blond. 

“That’s Anne Dixon sitting in the chair,” Iris explained. “She’s the one who brought the cookies. She writes western-themed mysteries.”

“The lady with her?” I asked, because I didn’t know what a western-themed mystery was.

“Valencia Barrett. She owns Reunion House Antiques downtown. She’s the one who should be sitting. She’s having stent placement surgery soon.” 

Iris apparently thought it important that I understand what type of mystery each group member was working on. “Valencia’s writing a mystery series that takes place in antique shops. Each victim is killed by an item in the shop. The first book is called Murder is Antiquated. She has a finished outline for the next, Gilty Witness. Gilt as in a thin covering of gold paint, not the criminal kind.”

“Oh,” I said. “How imaginative.”

“Very formulaic, if you ask me,” Iris said. 

I took it that ‘formulaic’ was frowned upon. 

“The young lady with purple hair?” I asked, looking again in her direction.

“Jade Honeywell,” Iris replied, and I must have made some sort of face because she added, “That’s the name we use for her here in the group. She insists. It’s her nom-de-plume. She’s writing a time travel mystery with far too many characters. It’s cluttered, but original. Lord knows where she’s going to be able to sell it. We keep telling her to have pity on her readers but she can’t seem to stop throwing more characters on the pile.”

I took it that ‘original’ was also a problem. 

Iris smiled with genuine affection. “I like Jade. She works in the chain bookshop by Panera’s in our part of town. She’s the one that showed me the flyer about this writing group.”

“Who are the gentlemen?” I asked. 

“Young and unshaved is Miles Duffy. He writes mysteries, I suppose, but he’s got to put mathematics into everything. His plots read like word problems. You know: the train leaves the station at eight am and the body is found at nine oh four… Also, his hygiene isn’t all we could wish for. I’ve always thought that when the right and left hemispheres of the brain work at the same time the results can be unfortunate.

“The man brooding near the fireplace owns this house. J. B. Scott. Old money. Probably new money, too; I’ll bet he’s got gobs of it. His writing project has been unfinished for years.”

“He’s got writer’s block?” I asked.

“Of a sort. He knows what character is going to be bumped off, but he can’t decide who did it. He works backwards, as some say Agatha Christie did, writing the whole book and then rewriting to make the least likely person the culprit, you know, fixing details so the whole thing is airtight. He and Valencia dreamed up this ‘accelerated and goal oriented’ group together. They’re business partners.”

Iris looked around the room, counting on her fingers. “Katie Koster isn’t here. She’s giving her statement to the police. She asked us if we minded if she went first, because she visits her father over at Ferndale every day. He’s in memory care and she wants to get there before he starts sundowning.”

“That’s understandable,” I said. “What type of mystery does she write?”

“I’d call it ‘nuanced noir.’ Her stuff this past month has been fantastic. She’s got a dynamite detective and fabulous plot. There’s atmosphere and great dialogue. She’s on track to finish her first book and win the ‘Shows Most Improvement’ award.”

“Then there’s Mildred, of course.” Iris briefly held her hand over her heart in a gesture of sorrow. “Mildred Olive Witherwax. She’s dead, on the floor in the conservatory. I saw her there. Under the aspidistra.”

“Dead! I know you said there’d been an accident…”

“Yes. It’s a shock to all of us.”

“Is Anne over there crying because – were they close friends?” I asked. 

“Oh, no. None of us could really stand Mildred. She always made you feel as if her being in the group was a favor on her part, sort of a sacrifice of her precious time. She’d signed with an agent three weeks ago and couldn’t talk about anything else. It was always ‘Ariel just phoned’ or ‘I must return Ariel’s call’.”

“I take it Ariel is the agent?”

“You guessed it. Anne is terrifically upset because Mildred ate a half dozen of her cookies and then fell over dead. Which is why I wanted you here, Cassandra. You and Detective Noonan. As a private citizen he reads and appreciates mysteries – he has borrowed several of my Ngaio Marsh –  and has certain sympathies, but as a paid public servant I fear that his imagination will be held in check. He’s going to need our help.”

“Iris, don’t tell me -”

“Mildred Olive Witherwax wrote mysteries that take place in a bakery and every victim is murdered with a baked good. Scones. Cakes. Cookies.”

What Iris was saying was awful, on many levels.

“Enough about my day, sweetie,” she said. She nudged me with her elbow. “You and the detective. How was the pie?”

************************************

Detective Noonan, by that I mean the public servant portion of him, didn’t buy what Iris was trying to sell him. 

“We can’t jump to conclusions, Iris,” he counseled. “The cause of death is too important to get wrong.”

The first to be summoned from the library, Iris had kept a grip on my hand and pulled me along with her. 

We were in a tiny room off the kitchen which had probably once been the maid’s quarters. A small table and two straight back, uncomfortable chairs were the only furniture, placed there by the police so they could use the room for interviews with the occupants of the house. 

Iris sat across from the detective and I stood, leaning against the wall near the closed door. Iris was the first person Detective Noonan asked to interview; Katie Koster had given a statement to a sergeant earlier and been allowed to leave.

First, the detective asked Iris to describe what happened, and when.

“Jade had just finished reading out loud the pages that she brought today for critique. Her detective time travels, you see, and I get confused, so I was paying a lot of attention while she read. At about 11:30 Mildred’s phone rang, or vibrated, rather, because we have to mute our phones while we’re in session. If you ask me, phones shouldn’t even be allowed in the library while we’re working,” she stated vehemently. 

“Anyway, Mildred got up and excused herself and I thought she went to the conservatory to call her agent but now it seems that she made a detour into the kitchen, ate some of Anne’s cookies, stepped into the conservatory and died. We missed her after a quarter of an hour so I volunteered to check on her, and there she was, stone cold under the aspidistra.”

Iris had a large canvas tote with her, the type PBS sends you if you give a certain amount of money during their pledge drive. She took out her phone and array of pens, mostly black ball point and colored thin line markers, a stack of index cards held together with a rubber band, and a packet of typed papers stapled together at the upper left hand corner. 

“Mildred Olive Witherwax.” The detective quickly read through rough notes made by the officers who had first arrived at the scene. “Caucasian. Female, 45 years old. Divorced.”

Iris nodded in agreement with each of these facts. “‘Termagant’ is the word you’re looking for,” she offered.

Detective Noonan’s pen was poised and ready. “Tell me whatever you can think of about her that might be of interest.”

Iris quickly detailed Mildred’s recent acquisition of an agent. “Her agent, Ariel, was going to represent three books: The Cat in the Kitchen Cupboard; Buttercreamed and Bludgeoned; Mince, Mix & Murder. Every murder in her series is committed with a baked item.”

The detective scribbled a few lines. “The murderer is never the most likely suspect,” he said. 

“In books,” Iris agreed. “In real life it’s always the most likely suspect. Which is no fun at all.”

“Let’s say Mildred Olive Witherwax was murdered. Though this could easily be a death by natural causes – I never judge before I get the autopsy report,” he cautioned us. “Who would want Mildred dead?”

“Everyone,” Iris replied. “The entire writing group. She should have taken our initial ‘congratulations’ about her success and then shut up about it.”

“She’s not bragging now,” I pointed out. 

“Aside from the Ariel annoyance,” Iris continued, “Mildred was snooty about plotlines. She and Miles Duffy had heated words on the subject every time they were in a room together. Plus, Mildred hated Anne Dixon’s western themed mysteries. She kept haranguing Anne to scrap her ideas and start over. Mildred never did see the fine line between critiquing and bullying.”

“Tell me about the other people in the group,” the detective said to Iris. 

She gave him the same brief synopsis that she had given me, but for the detective she wrote details for each person on an index card which she then slid across the table to him.

“This is the method I use to keep all of my characters straight,” she told us. “It’s a tip I found in ‘Up to the Hilt’, a mystery writer’s magazine.”

“Does the group use this house for every meeting?” he asked. 

“Can you blame us? It’s gorgeous. We’ve each paid to be in this group and the house is part of the appeal. The food, too. We bring things to share, of course, to make things friendly, but J. B. makes sure there’s a spread laid out for us.”

I thought of Anne Dixon, crying in the library. She had brought cookies.

“Everyone paid to be in the group?” Detective Noonan asked. “Is that a common practice?”

“Sometimes,” hedged Iris.

“How much?” I blurted out. Iris had never mentioned this detail before.

“One thousand dollars each. Except for J. B. because this is his house. And Valencia Barrett paid less, because she and J. B. are the sponsors of the group and they handle the administrative details.”

The detective beat me to the next, obvious line of questioning. 

“What ‘administrative details,’ Iris?”

“Oh, you know, the application to be in the group, and whatnot. We’re very professional. We have rules, of course, especially about being absolutely quiet when the group critiques your pages. J. B. or Valencia can kick us out if we don’t behave. Also, we have to bring new writing to each meeting. We have to produce.”

She dug through her tote bag again and handed another packet of papers to the detective. “Here’s a copy of my application paperwork.”

I moved so I could read over the detective’s shoulder. 

“You had to write an essay?” I asked. 

“One to three pages on why I wanted to join this group,” she said. “I also had to provide an outline of what I was going to work on during the sessions.”

The detective flipped through the papers once, then again. 

“You had to give your address and driver’s license number. Is that usual?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. This is the first group I’ve ever been in. I don’t blame J. B., though. This house is full of beautiful antiques. He bought a lot of them from Valencia’s shop. He can’t just let people in here two days each week and not know who they are.”

“It’s thorough,” he replied. “What’s this part for?”

I looked at where he was pointing with his pen. The heading read: Medical Conditions / Known Allergies

Iris craned her neck to see. “Oh, that’s a list we had to fill out for J. B. because we’re on his property. We all have medical conditions, except for Miles and Jade who are too young to suffer from anything worth listing. 

“The allergy list is because of the food. Like I said, we eat well here. Once we even had lobster.”

Iris hadn’t listed any known allergies. I knew that her sister Lola was sensitive to mango; an unfortunate discovery made when Lola was dieting and overdid it with fruit smoothies.

“What allergies did Mildred Olive Witherwax have?” I asked.

Iris leaned forward, conspiratorially.  “Mildred was allergic to peanuts.”

“If she was allergic to peanuts she would have an epi-pen, wouldn’t she?” Detective Noonan asked.

Iris nodded. “You’ll most likely find it in her handbag. In the library. Where she left it when she skedaddled to make her phone call.”

“But certainly if you were served peanuts she wouldn’t eat any of them,” I reasoned.

“Peanuts, yes. But what’s the second most popular cookie in the world, after chocolate chip?” Iris asked.  “Peanut butter. What type of cookie is Mildred’s first victim killed with at the ‘Tart About Town Bakery’ in her first book? Peanut butter.”

“Who knew this?” the detective cut in. “I mean who knew about her allergies? Only you and J. B. and Valencia?”

“Oh, no. All of us knew. Otherwise what’s the point of filling out an allergy list?” 

Here Iris wrote “Anne Dixon” at the top of a blank index card. Underneath:

Motive ✓
Means ✓
Opportunity ✓

She slid the card across the table to Detective Noonan. He added it to the small stack Iris had written out for him earlier. Then, he did something that made me want to take the leftover sweet potato pie that I knew was carefully wrapped in foil in his unmarked SUV and give it to someone more deserving. 

He wrote on a clean index card: “Iris Maclean”

Motive ✓
Means  ✓
Opportunity ✓

and added it to the stack of suspects.

************************************

By the time Iris and I left the house the police had removed that afternoon’s spread of bread, cold cuts, fruit salad, cookies and cake to be analyzed at the lab, as well as the chilled bottles of chardonnay and pinot grigio. Iris insisted that she and I rendezvous at a sandwich shop not far from J. B. Scott’s house on our way home so she could ‘fortify’ herself. 

We sat at a table next to the front windows and watched the late afternoon traffic.

“I should have gotten this to go but I’m starving,” she said, unwrapping a roast beef and horseradish sandwich with chopped lettuce on rye. “Archie is going to be bursting at the seams when I get home.”

Archie, of course, was her sidekick, her schnoodle: miniature schnauzer and miniature poodle mix. I often walked him for Iris. He was perpetually happy and fluffy, and looked quite dapper in the plaid bow tie Iris clipped onto his collar for special occasions. 

I sipped my iced tea. “You’re pretty calm for a person who is on the list of suspects.”

Iris heard the anger in my voice. “Don’t blame the detective. He’s just doing his job,” she said. “He has to dig until he finds the truth. There’s nothing about the truth that’s going to harm me.”

“I’m still mad at him,” I said. A lot of sweetness had gone out of the afternoon, and the pie.

She picked up a pickle and nibbled at it. “A body in the conservatory,” she said. “Six suspects in the library…”

“Seven,” I corrected. “Don’t forget to count yourself.”

“Seven, then. Each of those suspects is a writer; they lie for fun, at least on paper. Each is a writer of mysteries, which means that they are people who spend all their time thinking of ways to commit murder. Detective Noonan doesn’t appreciate what he’s up against.”

“Wait,” I said, counting on my fingers. “Sorry. Only six suspects were in the library. Katie Koster gave her statement and then left to go visit her father.”

The faint sound of Buddhist temple bells interrupted us. Iris dug around in her tote bag to find her phone.

“This is interesting,” she said, reading a newly arrived text. “It’s from Anne, sent to the whole writing group. Look.”

I used ALMOND butter
Police are searching my kitchen see you next mtg
CJ has new sdkc

“What does she mean?”

“She’s saying she made the cookies with almond butter, not peanut. The police are looking through her pantry. She’s upset, but not so upset that she’s going to skip the next meeting or drop out.”

“What’s a ‘sdkc’?” I asked. “Do you understand that?”

Iris put her phone down and sighed. “‘Calamity Jane has a new sidekick’ is my translation. Calamity Jane is Anne’s detective.”

“Really?” I asked, trying to imagine how that worked. 

“I know. It’s horrible stuff,” Iris said after working her way through more of her sandwich. She wiped a bit of mustard from her mouth with a paper napkin. “Jane Austen. Oscar Wilde. Even Abraham Lincoln has been resurrected in books and made to sniff out murder.”

I said nothing, having no idea if Calamity Jane as a detective in the Old West was ‘formulaic’ or ‘original.’ Perhaps it was both.

Iris tidied the sandwich wrapper and napkins and gazed out the window. “If there were peanut butter cookies in the kitchen, how did they get there?” she asked. 

“Why would Mildred eat them?” I wondered. “I mean, besides the fact that she had left the room to supposedly talk on the phone, not to raid the kitchen.”

“She was supposedly on a diet. That’s the other subject she talked about nonstop, aside from her agented manuscripts. Cassie,” Iris said. “What’s the only thing you can think of when you’re on a diet?”

That was easy. “Food.” 

“What would you do if a whole roomful of your peers knew you were on a diet and you suddenly found yourself alone with platefuls of cookies?”

“Sneak some.”

Iris looked at me. By that I mean she looked at me, tilted her head, and sized me up from toe to top. It made me uneasy. 

“Cassie,” she said. “I have a plan. ‘The game is afoot.’”

“People always ascribe that saying to Sherlock Holmes,” I observed, “but Conan Doyle cribbed it from William Shakespeare.” I had taken more than one course on Shakespeare in college. I felt moved to defend him.

“Oh, you’ll do,” Iris said, smiling at me. “You’ll do well indeed.”

************************************

Of course I objected to Iris’s plan. Even before she told me what it was. She got around me, easily, by slouching a bit as if she was worn out with the cares of the world, walking slowly to her car – adding a slight limp and shuffle of her left foot that I’d never noticed before – when we were ready to leave the sandwich shop. 

Then, around five-thirty, she and Archie walked past my house, up the hill. Slowly. This time Iris shuffled her right leg – she had forgotten which one was supposed to be troubling her – and never once looked in my direction. 

Even so, I went to the kitchen cupboard and got down the box of Friendli-Bones I keep there for Archie’s visits. The box was only a quarter full, so I put “Friendli-Bones, Mixed Flavors” on my shopping list. 

At six there was a knock on my front door. I stiffened my spine and resolved to rebut any and all of Iris’s advances. 

It was Lola.

She and I were just about the same height when she wore her beige mule sandals with the two inch heels. She was dressed casually in a turquoise cotton calf length peasant skirt, sleeveless white silk top, chunky matching gold bracelets and necklace, and an oversized turquoise ring on her right index finger that matched her skirt. A brightly colored straw beach bag with leather straps hung over her arm.

She held up an unopened pack of 5×8 inch index cards and several Sharpies in a gesture that set her chunky bracelets clinking.

“Ready for our study session, Cassie?” she asked. 

I was prepared to resist Iris, not Lola. I followed her to my kitchen.

After my ersatz half sister, Morgana, pleaded down the charges she was facing for stealing pharmacological secrets from my laptop and waived her right to trial, I had decided I didn’t want to be a medical transcriber any longer. I was now enrolled in an online class to learn how to create indexes for books. 

Which was like moving, Lola had commented, from the desert to somewhere dry. 

She moved the box of Friendli-Bones from the table to make room for her index cards and pens. She took a book out of the straw bag; it was thickly tabbed with multi-colored post-it notes peeping from the top and fore edge. 

Real Estate Essentials Volume 1: The Basics

Lola opened the cellophane on the new pack of index cards with a shellacked fingernail. “I read about this flash-card study aid in ‘The Lockbox: Opening Doors to Wealth,’ the Realtor’s bi-monthly magazine,” she said. “Let’s give it a try.”

I had a vague memory of Lola, perhaps two weeks earlier, suggesting that we study together. I should have known our study session would be at her convenience and consist of her curriculum, not mine.

I reached for the tea canister but Lola said, “It’s summer, Cassie. Think beaches and swimming pools. How about a Corona with a lime, or Dos Equis?”

There were several short juice glasses in the cupboard. I had a few bottles of grocery store sale ale at the back of the fridge. I took a sharpie from the table, marked two glasses like so:

XX

and poured.

When life gives you Lola, improvise.

We both got to work writing real estate terms on index cards, with short definitions on the reverse. 

“No need to go all the way through from ‘Absolute Net’ to ‘Zoning’,” Lola declared. “My goal is to get at least to ‘Due Diligence’ tonight.”

That sounded reasonable, until I saw the list of terms that began with ‘A.’ 

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve got another pack of index cards in my bag.”

“Did Iris and Archie walk by your house tonight?” I asked. 

“They did!” she said. “Iris stopped to talk for a bit and she said that she had asked you to do her a favor, but you said ‘no.’”

“Umm,” I said, writing the definition for Alienation Clause on the back of a card. 

“I told her that I didn’t blame you. You’re trying to start a new career. You’re under a lot of pressure. You can’t be drawn into some crazy plan just because someone dropped dead at Iris’s writing group today.”

“She told you about Mildred Olive Witherwax, then.”

“Yes. It’s fabulous. Iris’s writing group is going viral online. I mean the news about her group. Talk about luck! That man who runs it just had a million dollars of free publicity dropped in his lap.”

I wrote Amenities on a card.

“No, I’m wrong,” she said. “Two million dollars of free publicity. There are a few people in my real estate class I wish would drop dead. Anyway, you can’t be blamed just because you want to have your own life. You have to set boundaries, as well as daily goals, if you want to succeed.”

“That’s a lovely ring,” I said, wanting to set a boundary around discussing my life and my success or failure. Admiring any part of Lola’s person or personal adornment was a tried and true method of diversion.

“Isn’t it?” she said, holding out her hand for ease of appreciation. The elongated turquoise oval covered half of her finger. “It’s a poisoner’s ring.” 

Of course it was.

“I think the Italians invented it. The Medicis. They didn’t let anyone stand in their way of success.”

“That’s an original point of view,” I replied. “Are you interested in Italian history?”

“Oh, a bit here and there.” She demonstrated how the turquoise stone was hiding a hinged top. Beneath was a small receptacle with enough space for perhaps two Tylenol, or a dash of digitalis.

“You can get these as a brooch or pendant, but I think it’s much more functional as a ring. More of a range of motion,” she said, holding her hand over my glass and pretending to pour the contents into my beer to demonstrate.

We made it to ‘Days on Market,’ ominously known as ‘DOM,’ and Lola decided she’d had enough for one night. I escorted her to the front door, expecting to find Iris and Archie on the front porch, but no one was there. 

An hour later Detective Noonan called, to thank me for the pie. I let the phone ring three times, not wanting to seem too available. Yet available enough to take the call. Which made three seem like just the right number. 

“Studying?” he asked. I had told him of my intent to change professions. “I can call tomorrow.”

I should have been working on my own career change, formatting section headings, sub-entries and cross references. After helping Lola I found I didn’t have the willpower.

“What do you think about when you’re on a diet?” I asked him. 

“I never diet,” he said. “Dieting ruins the metabolism. I work out. I eat healthy. Mostly. Why, are you regretting the pie you gave me?”

“Oh, no. You’re very welcome. It was nice to see you this afternoon. Before the call about the body in the conservatory, I mean.”

Nice to see you this afternoon? Wasn’t I mad at him for lumping Iris in the list of suspects? 

“Maybe someday we can have lunch together without a 10-55 call,” he was saying.

“Sorry, you’ll have to -”

“A 10-55 call means ‘coroner’s case.’ Tends to change the mood.”

“Detective Noonan, I’m worried about -”

“Matthew,” he said. “I’m not on duty. You can call me Matthew.”

“I’m worried about Iris. She paid that man one thousand dollars to be in a writer’s group. What other money is he going to take from her?”

“One of the lieutenants is checking the Better Business Bureau. The police can handle this, Cassie. Let us do our jobs.”

“Yes. I just -”

“Tell Iris the same thing. Don’t interfere.”

I scowled at the phone. I was mad at him. 

“Goodnight, Detective,” I said. “Thank you for calling.”

Not only did he consider my friend Iris a suspect in a horrible murder, he was also dictating what I could and could not do.

“Honestly, Cassie, you can call me by my given name,” he replied.

“Goodnight, Detective,” I said, and hung up.

************************************

The next morning I called Iris and said that I would help with her plan. She and Archie immediately came to my house with a small stack of books and magazines. The books were by Edgar Wallace, Elizabeth Daly, Vincent Starrett and Josephine Bell. 

The magazines were pulps, in horrible condition. The paper was yellow and brittle and some of the covers, printed in color with graphic scenes of murder-about-to-happen, had detached from the stapled bindings. The magazines were each in their own see-through plastic bag.

We were short on time, Iris said, and I had to get up to speed.

“I expect you’ll only have to go to three or four meetings,” she said. “But they’re all-day sessions, and you’re going to have to have your own pages to share. I’ll take care of that, but you’ll need to be ready to read to the group.”

The thought of reading out loud made me sick to my stomach.

“They’ve already seen you with me so there’s no point in pretending we don’t know each other. I’ll say that I’ve been mentoring you or some other literary touchy-feely bunk and we’ll have no trouble.”

“What about J. B. Scott?” I asked. “Don’t I have to fill out an application?”

Iris pulled an impressive bit of cash from her back pocket and plunked it on my kitchen table. “We’ll give him this when we turn it in. I’ll fix it with him tomorrow.”

I was about to protest but she held up her hand. “No pay, no play,” she said. “Get over it. Now, do you remember the pen name I gave you?”

“Mary Westmacott,” I said. Iris insisted that I use a nom de plume.

“Why do you want to be in our group?” she asked, quizzing me.

“Because I’m a skilled writer and I’m ambitious. I believe in my success,” I said, repeating word for word the answer Iris had written out. 

Iris rolled her eyes. “At least say it like you mean it when we’re in the thick of things. I only have one chance to plant an operative. Again. What name do you write under?”

“Mary Westmacott. Do I have to be ‘Mary’? It’s not my favorite.”

“Yes, you have to be ‘Mary.’ It’s easy for me to remember. Plenty of mystery writers use one, and even two different names. It broadens their range for publication.” 

“It’s confusing,” I said. 

“It’s too late to change. I’m going to have copies of your writing made for the group later today. I have to go to the pharmacy this afternoon anyway. I’m out of heartburn tablets.”

Here was Iris’s plan: I would join her writing group, attend a few sessions, then let it be known that I had acquired an agent. 

She was certain this would ‘flush out’ Mildred Olive Witherwax’s killer. 

‘Mary Westmacott’ was the bait.

************************************

If ever I had wondered what it might feel like to be thrown into a pit of vipers, my curiosity was satisfied by attending an all-day writer’s group.

The food, however, was fabulous.

Saturday morning we writers arrived at J. B. Scott’s home at a quarter to nine. Coffee and tea service was ready in the kitchen, along with croissants, both plain and chocolate, danishes, and fruit. There were individual servings of egg baked in puff pastry, with just a touch of paprika. Delicious.

Iris prepped me on writing group etiquette. 

“No food or drink allowed in the library,” Iris warned me, “so you’ll notice we don’t waste our time talking much in the kitchen. J. B. will call a break at ten-thirty, and lunch is served at noon. We have a tea break at three-thirty. The session closes at five. There are two bathrooms on the main floor. The second and third floors are off limits.”

A grandfather clock in the formal living room chimed the hour. 

We each grabbed our tote bags – Iris had given me a black faux leather shopper, complete with Xeroxed copies of Mary Westmacott’s writing to share – and went to the library. 

J. B. closed the library’s pocket doors. 

“I just want to acknowledge,” he began, “the sad demise of our friend Mildred. I would like to observe a three minute period of silence, one minute for each of the books she had completed, out of respect.”

We were silent. Iris fiddled with the hearing aid in her left ear. Miles Duffy tied and re-tied his red Converse. Anne Dixon, who may or may not have used almond butter in her cookies, shredded a tissue, lengthwise. Valencia Barrett, seated next to Anne, capped and uncapped a beautiful antique gold and black fountain pen. Jade Honeywell played with the silver filigree rings she wore on each hand. 

A woman at the back of the room, furthest from the fireplace, sat completely still, her head bowed. She was in her early forties, wore black wire rimmed glasses that sat crookedly on her nose, and her long dishwater blond hair was pulled back into a messy braid. Since I knew everyone else I assumed that this was Katie Koster.

“Right, then,” said J. B. when the three minutes had ticked by. “Let’s get to it.”

“Mildred would want us to forge ahead and produce beautiful prose,” Valencia Barrett said, decisively uncapping her fountain pen. She had a pronounced local accent, very upper crust.

“We have a new member to introduce this morning, and she’s brought some of her work to share,” J. B. said, directing everyone’s attention to me with a flourish of his hand. “This is Cassandra Leigh, who writes under the name ‘Mary Westmacott- Please pass out your pages for critique.”

Everyone mumbled kind words of greeting as I walked around the room, handing out the first four pages of my book, The Mystery at Ashfield House.

Everyone, that is, except for Jade Honeywell, who wouldn’t meet my eyes and grabbed the papers from my hand as though she wanted to fling them to the floor. 

Then the room became so quiet I could hear the creaking of the chairs and the final smoothing of papers and even the soft ‘click’ of Iris’s trusty red pen as they waited for me to start. 

“‘The Mystery at Ashfield House,’” I began. “By Mary Westmacott.”

The voice at the other end of the telephone sounded more like a man’s than a woman’s. In the caller’s excitement it rose in pitch, then fell abruptly, like the roll and swell of ocean waves. 
“This is Callen.”
“Mr. Callen. This is Rosamund Bowen. I am in dire need of your assistance.”

Iris had given me the pages the evening before, and I’d practiced reading them to her until she couldn’t stand it any longer. 

When I finished reading, the group applauded politely – well, everyone except Jade Honeywell applauded politely –  and I gave myself a little mental pat on the back. I rather liked the beginning of The Mystery at Ashfield House. 

“A very nice reading,” J. B. said, then proceeded to tear my work to pieces.

He hadn’t liked my opening, or my characters’ names. He didn’t like how I used the telephone conversation to convey information to the reader. He didn’t like my adverbs, comma placement, or conjunctions. He didn’t agree with the breed of dog I (or rather Iris) had given to the fictional Mr. Callen as a companion. He said the dog should be bigger. Or smaller.

Iris had warned me that I could not say anything while my work was being critiqued. I could make notes, but I must remain silent. I could not rebut, object, or try to explain anything.

J. B. sat back down. I smiled sweetly and unclenched my fists. What might I have felt if I had actually written those pages? Sweated over them? Invested in them my hopes and dreams?

At least that’s over, I thought. 

Then Valencia stood to give her critique. 

She said that she liked the title, then cut into tiny bleeding bits anything left standing after J. B. had gotten through with it. They made quite the team.

Because I was rendered silent by the rules I hurriedly slipped Iris a note:

How many are going to critique?

ALL, she wrote back. 

By the mid-morning break Iris’s effort on behalf of ‘Mary Westmacott’ had been probed, dissected, ground into dust and then grudgingly declared “a fair start.” Anne Dixon liked the name ‘Rosamund’ and Jade spoke up in defense of the dog’s chosen breed. Katie Koster was graciousness itself; she claimed to have enjoyed the dialogue. 

Iris was a bit dismissive of The Mystery at Ashfield House. She didn’t like the pacing, she said. Too slow. 

J. B. announced the first break.

“What time do they uncork the wine?” I whispered to Iris as we left the library. 

“Not until lunch. Stay strong,” she whispered back. 

Everyone went to the kitchen where they worked their way through the remains of that morning’s spread. 

Valencia approached me, smiling. “I’m so happy you could join our group,” she said. She might have been telling the truth. She was so steeped in Southern Charm it was hard to tell.

I found myself waiting in line for one of the two bathrooms with Jade. 

“Thanks for your kind words about the dog,” I said, trying to be friendly. It was clear that she didn’t think much of me. 

“I like dogs,” she said. “Even if they’re just dogs on paper.” She twisted the ring on her left middle finger around and around.

“That’s a beautiful ring,” I said, though in truth I had barely glimpsed it. 

“It’s a moonstone.” She held up her hand so I could see. “I wear it to honor Wilkie Collins. The author, not the man. The man was an absolute bastard.”

“Oh, of course,” I agreed. I would have to ask Iris about that later.

Jade continued. “A little advice? Don’t use a pen name that isn’t original.”

I had forgotten that ‘Jade Honeywell’ was a pen name. 

“Yours suits you very well. What’s your given name?”

“I don’t use it here,” she said, cutting off that line of questioning. “It’s bad enough that I have to use it in the real world.”

I hesitated. Was this not the ‘real’ world?

She continued her warning. “The same goes for plots. They must be your own. We don’t need another cheater in the group.”

“Certainly,” I agreed. “Absolutely.” 

“One is enough,” she said, staring once again at her ring. 

Our conversation ended there. 

The next person whose work was brutalized, spit upon, then thrown to the floor (metaphorically) was Miles Duffy. As we were subjected to his unique plotting, which relied entirely upon the reader’s ability to understand the three types of probability – theoretical, experimental and axiomatic – I wondered what the chances were that I would see the same kind of ring twice in four days? 

I was positive that Jade’s moonstone jewelry was a poisoner’s ring. 

The plot, as is said all too often, had thickened.

************************************

Iris refused to let me list Jade as Suspect #1. 

It was Sunday. Saturday’s writing group had exhausted me, mentally and physically. I slept in until ten. 

Iris and Archie knocked at the front door at ten-thirty. They had brought me a double latte and an egg, cheese, and bacon breakfast sandwich from ZuZu’s Coffee Hut.

I let them in. 

“Absolutely no one would wear a poisoner’s ring, as you call it, to the same venue only four days after a mysterious death if they were the culprit,” Iris said. “Besides, Lola has a ring like that and we don’t assume she’s a cold blooded killer.”

It was a gorgeous morning and we were seated at the table on my back patio. Iris sipped at a small ZuZu’s decaf house coffee. Archie had a Sparkle Dental Bone ™ between his teeth. 

“You said yourself that in real life the culprit is the most likely person.”

“Our most likely person is the least likely,” Iris said. “Jade, by wearing that ring, has made herself too obvious. It can’t be her.”

That logic made me dizzy. I suspected that Iris wouldn’t accept my argument because she liked Jade. 

“There’s something wrong with my pen name,” I told Iris. “Jade said that I shouldn’t use one that isn’t original.”

Iris nodded. “Jade impresses me more and more.”

“Everyone hated my writing,” I complained. 

“The joke’s on them. I stole it from Elizabeth Daly.”

“Jade knows. She warned me not to cheat.”

“Jade can’t know,” Iris insisted. “It was only four pages and I changed all the names, and jazzed up the dialogue.”

Archie worried his bone under the table. 

“Why you enjoy being in that writing group is beyond me.”

“I enjoy the people. Mostly. They are serious about the art of writing mysteries.”

One had been found dead on the conservatory floor and another was probably a killer, but I let that observation pass.

“I like that Jade’s ring is a moonstone,” Iris continued. “That girl has poetry in her heart.”

Poetry. More like poison and daggers. 

“I think you should tell Detective Noonan about Jade’s ring.”

There was no fooling Iris. “Are you mad at Detective Noonan?” 

“I’m not sure if we’re speaking. We had a short discussion on the phone last Wednesday night. He hasn’t called back.” 

“Don’t cut off your one source of official information,” she warned. 

“That’s good advice,” I admitted.

“I don’t give advice. It’s free, but no one takes it. I merely observe.”

“What does Jade have against Wilkie Collins?” He’d been dead for ages. 

“Read his Wiki page, my dear, and then you tell me.” 

She could have easily told me herself, right then, but she was done talking about Jade.

“There’s a brand new white car parked in Lola’s driveway,” she said. She rummaged in her ever-present tote bag for her phone. “We saw it this morning on the way to ZuZu’s, and it was still there when we came back.”

I doubted that Archie had taken notice of a car at Lola’s while he himself was in a car on his way to get breakfast. I decided not to argue the point.

Iris tapped away at her phone’s home screen and then showed me a photo.

“You took a picture of a car parked in Lola’s driveway?” That was a bit intrusive, even for Iris. 

Then I looked at the photo. 

“It’s a Proteus,” I said. “Brand new.” The picture was of the rear of the car, taken from the street. There was no license plate, just one of those illegible temporary tags taped to the inside of the rear window. 

“That’s what I thought. I couldn’t remember the name, though. Aren’t they expensive?”

The Proteus was all electric. I’d read a news article that said there was a two year waiting list to get one, if you could afford it. 

“Lola’s got some fancy friends,” I said. “Probably someone in her real estate group.”

Archie had chewed and eaten the entire Sparkle Dental Bone™. Because I was one of his favorite people, he regurgitated a quantity of it onto my bare foot. 

Iris paused for a moment, then deleted the photo from her phone.

************************************

After Iris and Archie left I opened Hans Wellisch’s classic, Indexing A to Z, and got down to brass tacks. Hans Wellisch and I were in constant company until Tuesday night. By then I felt my brain would burst, it was so stuffed full of main headings, inverted articles and parenthetical glosses.

Iris had been busy, writing her newest chapter of Asphyxiation under the Asters and borrowing liberally from Elizabeth Daly to produce more of The Mystery at Ashfield House.

She and Archie delivered the requisite seven copies of my work to me early Tuesday evening, so I would be prepared for our Wednesday session with the other writers.

“I’ll pretend to be surprised by your very early plot twist,” she said. “‘Mary Westmacott’ is going to be a star.”

I looked through what I had ‘written.’ I had to admit that it was intriguing. 

“Please, Iris, can we announce that I have an agent at the session tomorrow?” I asked. “I don’t know how many more bloodbaths I can live through.”

“All in good time, Cassie,” she said. “When we tell the others about your agent, the setting has to be just right. I want everyone to be absolutely slavering with jealousy. I want Mildred’s killer to find the urge to murder you nothing less than all-consuming.”

I dropped the Xeroxed copies of Mary Westmacott’s newest into my faux leather tote. I suppose Iris could see that I was not enthusiastic, because she changed the subject. 

“Come with us up the street,” she said, clipping Archie’s lead to his collar. “I need to talk to Lola.”

It was a lovely evening, though heavy with humidity. Thunderstorms were in the forecast for the end of the week. I put on a pair of sandals and walked with Iris and Archie up the hill to the top of Briarcliff Road, where Lola’s house stood at the street’s entrance. 

I hadn’t seen or spoken with Lola since she and I had ‘studied’ together, writing out her real estate flashcards. She, too, had probably been busy working to make her career goals come true. 

The eagerness with which I exchanged Hans Wellisch and his world of indexing for Lola was probably indicative of how little I was looking forward to my new career.

The white Proteus was in the driveway. Iris and I stood and admired it. 

Lola opened her front door and scowled at us. “Don’t touch it. The alarm system is very sensitive.”

She was dressed in a zip-in-front berry-red housecoat and her hennaed hair was pulled back and covered with a yellow Hermes scarf. I’m not certain I had ever seen Lola out of street clothes before. 

“Are you feeling well, Lola?” Iris asked. “Cassie and I haven’t heard from you in days.”

Lola raised a manicured hand to her head. “I’m fine. Just a headache from looking at online listings and writing practice contracts.”

“Whose car is this?” Iris asked.

Lola immediately assumed a languid, unconcerned attitude. “Whose do you think? It’s in my driveway.”

“You bought it?” I asked. I didn’t know the intimate details of Lola’s – or Iris’s – finances, but I have to admit I was surprised. “We thought it might belong to someone in your real estate class.”

“If you want to be successful you have to look the part.” 

“We can’t all drive second hand Hondas, Cassie,” Iris said. Iris also drove a second hand Honda. 

“Yes, but -”

“Why is it in the driveway, Lola?” Iris asked, not caring that she interrupted me. “Something that expensive should be in the garage.”

Lola clasped and then unclasped her hands. “I can’t get it in the garage,” she said. “It won’t go in.”

“What do you mean?” asked Iris. “I’m sure it fits. Your red Cadillac fit.”

“I mean, it won’t go in. There’s a sensor, or camera in the front, and it senses the wall and the brakes lock up.” 

“I’m sure there’s a way to override that sensor,” Iris said. “Cassie can help.”

Usually I was Lola’s first choice when it came to setting up her personal tech items. I’d configured her iPhone, fitness watch, iPad, Front Door Genie ™ , dishwasher timer, Dazzle security bracelet, and the ionizing air filtration bedside unit in her bedroom. 

Lola shook her head. “The online manual is 485 pages.”

Iris wasn’t one to give up. “Take it to the dealer, then. Make them adjust the sensor that’s keeping you from putting your own car in your own garage.”

“I can’t.”

“In Heaven’s name, why?” Iris asked. 

“It won’t back up, either,” Lola said. 

“How did you get it here, then? If it won’t go forward or backward?”

“It was delivered. On a flatbed truck. That’s how you buy a car these days.”

Iris stared at the ground and slowly breathed in, then out. In, then out. “May Cassie have the keys?”

Lola took the keyfob from her housecoat pocket and handed it to me. “You need my PIN to start it. I’ll text it to Iris.” She went inside and shut the door. Then opened the door. “Give me that dog. I don’t want him in my new car.”

Inside, the car smelled powerfully of outgassing plastic, high grade leather, and new carpet. The driver’s seat fitted as though it had been designed by a cadre of Italian race car drivers who moonlighted as osteopaths. 

“Normal people,” Iris said as she slipped into the passenger seat, “think that ‘dress for success’ means buying a new suit.”

We were silent for a few moments, taking in the 20 inch monitor that sat to the right of the steering wheel, the panoramic sunroof, the triple stitching on the fawn colored leather interior. Iris flipped down the door of the glove compartment. Inside, she discovered a mini fridge and a zippered leather portfolio that spelled out in ornate gold debossed script:

 Owner’s Manual — Abridged

 “Just in time, too,” she said, opening it and skimming the contents. 

“In time for what?” I asked. I wasn’t smart enough to be suspicious. Maybe my instinct for survival was on the fritz after two and a half days spent studying A to Z of Indexing. 

“Lola is going to drive us to tomorrow’s session,” Iris said. “I have a plan.”

************************************

In the end we did have to sleuth around a bit  to solve the mystery of Lola’s car. 

We read pieces of the owner’s manual and watched five or so YouTube videos on Iris’s phone before I realized the temporary tag taped to the rear window was blocking the field of vision of the rear view mirror. I repositioned the tag. Parking in the garage was a simple matter of moving some gardening tools and flower pots from the back of the garage to the side. 

Sensors satisfied, the Proteus moved fore and aft like a normal car. 

Early Wednesday morning Lola, changed from her housecoat into a business casual cropped jacket, mock turtleneck and tapered trousers, chauffeured Iris and myself to our writing group in style. 

The Proteus did what it was designed to do – turn heads. J. B. walked down the front path from the house to take a look after we had parked. Miles Duffy, who had just arrived and parked across the street, nearly tripped over the curb. Katie Koster, glasses askew and tote bag in hand, stopped on the sidewalk to stare as Iris and I got out of the car. 

Lola, who had agreed to pick us up again just after five, waved and sped off.

“Is that a Proteus?” Miles asked. 

“Oh, yes it is,” Iris replied. “Thanks for noticing.”

Inside, Iris immediately found Anne Dixon and stood talking with her until the grandfather clock chimed nine. 

“You all go into the library,” J. B. told us. He looked harried, tired. “I’m going to wait a few minutes for Valencia.”

Iris and I sat next to each other at the long table near the fireplace. “Strange that Valencia’s not here yet,” she said. “Anyway, I told Anne about your agent. In the strictest confidence. I gave her a business card, too.”

“So everyone will know by lunchtime,” I said. “Good work. Where’d you get the card?” 

Iris handed one to me under the table. 

Lola Cooper 
Properties
“No Dream too Large”™

Lola’s contact details were printed under the schmaltzy “dream” tag.

“You told Anne that Lola is my literary agent? That’s your plan?”

“No one here knows Lola. They’ll think that ‘properties’ means intellectual property. What they do know is that your agent is so successful she drives a Proteus,” Iris said. 

“This is ridiculous.”

Iris put a finger to her lips to shush me. “By the time you leave today someone is going to want to murder you. I promise.”

Anne read first. Ten pages of Calamity Jane following clues in Deadwood. A horse with a lame front leg, whose gait left a distinct trail. A bullet pried from an adobe wall. A torn and bloodied bandana tied to a hitching post outside Nuttal & Mann’s saloon, where Wild Bill Hickok had died. Tearful flashbacks to better whiskey, better times. 

J. B., perhaps piqued because Valencia hadn’t bothered to call, sharpened his knives on poor Calamity (or Martha Jane; Anne wasn’t consistent with the name). He questioned Calamity’s  motives at every turn, he doubted her choice of boots, of britches, of hats. He said he found the flashbacks confusing, but I’d followed them with no trouble. 

Iris volunteered to read next. She had six pages that mixed cute cozy, hard boiled crime, and plenty of blood. A knife, a gun, and a car jack were utilized. Her detective, Samantha Savage, a plucky and attractive widow, spoke four languages – French, German, English and Russian – none of them well. It was part of the fun. A bad pronunciation of “dead on arrival” was a recurring joke between Iris’s detective and the man in charge of the morgue. A burgeoning friendship in the midst of all the gore. 

J. B. blew up. 

“You don’t speak four languages. You can’t possibly know the nuances, the meanings your characters need to express.”

“‘My readers don’t speak four languages,” Iris said, forgetting that she wasn’t supposed to defend her work. “So I hardly see how your point is valid.” 

At the lunch break we all helped to set out the food because Valencia usually did that. J. B. went upstairs to his office to call her. Iris apologized to everyone for speaking when she shouldn’t have. 

“None of us blame you,” Katie said. “He’s a bear today. I think he’s taking Mildred’s death awfully hard.”

“I shouldn’t say it but I’m glad we don’t have to listen to Mildred and Miles argue for a half hour each afternoon. It was such a waste of time,” Anne said, which was a bit awkward because maybe she’d killed Mildred. 

I noticed that no one had brought cookies to share.

I also noticed that Jade and Katie determinedly avoided each other. They didn’t stand near each other in the kitchen, they didn’t queue for the same bathroom, they always sat well apart from each other in the library.

The afternoon session began with me reading the newest installment by ‘Mary Westmacott.’

Callen turned up First Avenue, and suiting his pace to the time allowed him, arrived at the Clayhill mansion just before four o’clock. The trees in the park were now a blur of yellow-green, with bare branches already stark among the dying leaves.
The east gable of the house, three storeys high, rose above the tiled roof of its old two-storey carriage house and stables. In the courtyard was an old black Ford, missing the front fender.
This was the car Callen had searched for. 

J. B., who had joined us just as the library doors were sliding closed, said nothing. A few of the others said the fender should still be attached to the car, bloody and crumpled. Iris didn’t like “had searched for” and suggested “sought.” Jade asked who was taking care of Callen’s dog while he ran around town looking for old Fords.

I hoped Lola had taken Archie out at noon as promised. 

Then Katie read.

Her detective was Kat Blessings. Kat lived on a houseboat on the Thames at Hammersmith, circa 1955. The Irene Adler was the boat, her home and hideout, the name a sweet homage to the Conan Doyle character. An expert with firearms, she’d learned to shoot from her poacher father. She was in love with a minor – and utterly charming – aristocrat. His equal in every way except birth, Kat and her fierce independence captivated me. I loved her wit, her intelligence, her bravery. I could practically smell the tar on the docks and hear the hum of planes over London Airport.

“Smashing, isn’t it?” Iris said to me, caught up in the delightful Britishness of it all. “The use of street names and landmarks is wonderful. She must spend hours doing research.”

Katie received enthusiastic applause. No one had changes to suggest. 

The last to read was Jade.

I felt her pain. Katie’s work was the definition of ‘a hard act to follow.’

Jade’s writing was intricate, like her silver filigree rings. Her time-traveling detective was searching for an oil painting that disappeared and resurfaced throughout the story. Why the painting was moving through time wasn’t clear to me. Jade’s pacing was uneven, her descriptions overly detailed, but her dialogue was bright, distinctive, and witty. 

The applause Jade received when she finished was different from Katie’s. 

Miles spoke first. He wondered if Jade should tone down the “sci-fi bits.” 

Anne praised the dialogue. 

J. B. was seated in his usual spot, an armchair upholstered in green and brown plaid to the left of the library doors. He dropped Jade’s pages onto the low table next to him as if they carried germs. And by germs I mean the bubonic plague, not the common cold. 

“The only mystery here,” he said, “is why you bothered to write it at all.”

It was so quiet I could hear dust settle. 

Iris stood so fast she might have been sitting on a spring. “Out. Get out now,” Iris ordered J. B. “Get out of this room.” She was next to his chair in three quick steps and I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had pulled him up by his ear. 

Anne moved to put her arms around Jade, who was still holding her pages in her hands. Everyone began speaking at once. Miles stood and bumped the long table with his thigh and a half dozen pens dropped to the floor. I kneeled to collect them. 

J. B. sat with his chest puffed up and a smirk on his face. He pretended to ignore Iris. “Completely unacceptable and you know it!” she was shouting at him. 

Such was my confusion and horror that when the library doors slid open and I saw Detective Noonan and two uniformed officers standing on the threshold, I thought that they had come to remove J. B. 

I was wrong.

“Anne Dixon,” the detective said, “I have a warrant for your arrest.”

************************************

When Lola picked us up, Iris insisted on going straight to the police station. The five-thirty traffic was terrible. The fifteen speakers of the Proteus’s sound system serenaded us with soothing music, which was irritating.

“I don’t know how to change the programming,” Lola said after Iris complained. Iris handed me the ‘abridged’ manual from the glovebox. The index had been compiled by someone who clearly loved indexing. Sound System had 25 subentries. 

“Anne Dixon a murderer? She can’t even make her own characters shoot each other,” Iris said, obviously not soothed. “Oh, they talk big but nothing ever happens.”

“‘Traffic influenced audio’,” I read from the manual. “‘The Proteus  will choose music designed to fit current traffic conditions.’”

“I wish it wouldn’t,” said Iris. 

Inside the station we let the sergeant at the front desk know we wanted to speak to the detective, then parked ourselves in the waiting area. Iris fretted. I read the Proteus owner’s manual and Lola opened her iPad and started swiping.

Swipe. “I took photos with my iPad of the flashcards we made,” Lola said. Swipe. “This is so much better. The cards were a nuisance so I recycled them.”

Of course she had recycled the cards. I wondered who else she had conned into wasting their time writing out flash cards for her.

The wait to see Detective Noonan wasn’t long, thankfully. Lola had the habit of whispering the study answers to herself: Must repay delinquent installments. Swipe. Original amortization. Swipe. Collateral. Swipe.

In the interview room Detective Noonan sat at the table, papers and file folders spread out before him. 

“I’ll give you ten minutes. Iris, you know the personalities involved, so I’m willing to listen to any insights. Anne Dixon is being booked on suspicion of murder. Her family has started the bail bond process and I have no doubt that she’ll be back at home tomorrow morning.”

He handed a stapled report to Iris.

“Mildred Olive Witherwax’s toxicology report. Contents of the stomach were the equivalent of two cookies made with peanut butter and three made with almond butter. One banana. Traces of coffee.”

There were police photos of J. B.’s kitchen from the morning Mildred died. Anne’s plate of cookies was placed on the kitchen island, at the end closest to the doorway to the conservatory. 

“Were the peanut butter cookies homemade?” Iris asked. 

“No. Our technicians think they’re ‘Oakley’s Best’ brand. Cheap, full of benzoates and sorbates. Sold in every large grocery chain. Other than having a more uniform size they don’t look all that different from the cookies that Anne Dixon brought from home.”  

The detective handed Iris a group of color photos. “We found packaging for ‘Oakley’s Best Peanut Butter Cookies’ in the curbside recycling at Anne Dixon’s house.”

“Fingerprints?”

He shook his head. “The box had been wiped.”

“The very definition of ‘circumstantial’,” Iris said.

“None of the other food from that morning that was tested contained peanut butter, or any other poison. The lab made a diagram of the plate of cookies. There were two peanut butter cookies still on the plate when it got to the lab.”

“Look how they were placed.” I leaned over the diagram. “These two were hidden in the bottom layer of the pile.”

“If the peanut butter cookies were meant as a murder weapon, Anne couldn’t have been certain that Mildred would eat those instead of the ones made with almond butter,” Iris said. “What were the chances?”

I counted the discs that represented cookies on the lab’s diagram. 4 : 35

“Just about 12%,” the detective said. “Not a very accurate weapon. Still, enough for an arrest warrant.”

“Any one of us could have put those four cookies on the plate,” Iris argued. 

“I think J. B. Scott did it,” I said. “He’s toxic.”

“We’ve interviewed him twice. Mr. Scott has been forthcoming with some information, for example the ‘application paperwork’ of all the group members. He’s reluctant to discuss his fees for the group members or his finances.” Detective Noonan gathered his papers from the table. “I didn’t know writing groups were so lively. It looked like a bar brawl.”

“We’re passionate about the process,” Iris explained.

He turned to me. “I didn’t expect to find you there, but I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Mildred’s death left an opening.”

“Maybe Iris killed Mildred so you could join the group,” he said. “I have to consider all possibilities.”

“I still believe Mildred was killed out of jealousy,” Iris said. 

“Who’s the best writer in the group now?” he asked her. “The one most likely to succeed?”

“Katie Koster. Hands down.”

He looked at his watch. “That’s ten minutes. Just because I asked you both for additional information that isn’t permission to meddle. Let the police do their job.”

Iris was quiet in the car going home. Traffic was noticeably lighter and the Proteus  played acoustic versions of Broadway tunes. Lola sang along; she was a surprisingly talented soprano and sang with confidence. Here was a clue to Lola’s past: voice lessons. 

I read more of the owner’s manual.

We were almost home and Lola and the Proteus were collaborating on selections from Les Miserables when Iris turned to me. 

“There are two things I have to say about what we learned from Detective Noonan,” she said, raising her voice so she could be heard over the somber strings. “One. J. B. Scott is not being cooperative about his finances. Lola is going to help us with that.”

Lola, concentrating on the first lines of I Dreamed A Dream, didn’t pause to ask for details.

“Two. He does not want us to interfere. We don’t need his permission. Like the great Inspector Poirot, I was born to meddle, and meddle I will.”

************************************

Iris phoned at eight the next morning. Jade was being held for questioning at the police station, and Detective Noonan wanted Iris there immediately.

“Now he’s asking for help? Yesterday he told you to stay out of his business. Why the sudden change?”

“He’s knee deep in corpses, that’s why,” she said. “Valencia Barrett was found at six this morning. Dead in the storage room of her antique shop.”

“Oh, Iris. That’s terrible.”

“Yes, it is,” she agreed. She sounded excited, not solemn. “Valencia was stabbed in the neck with a fountain pen.”

The author of Murder is Antiquated and Gilty Witness – this title in outline form only – gone too soon.

“As Poirot says in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, ‘If the fact will not fit the theory, let the theory go.’ I hate to give up my theory – that Mildred was murdered because she’d netted an agent,” Iris admitted. “But this! I have to reassess. Two authors, done in by the same methods that are used in their fiction. You’d have to be blind to not see where this is headed.”

I did see. Iris was going to be ‘done in’ with a tire iron, and if the killer followed the plot of The Mystery at Ashfield House, a deadly encounter with the seeds of the Strychnos Nux Vomica tree was in my future. 

“It would have been impossible for Anne Dixon to kill Valencia Barrett,” Iris said, impervious to the fact that she did not yet know the official time of death, “which means we’re looking for a new suspect. Anne was with us all day, and then spent the night at the police station being booked for Mildred’s murder and waiting for bail. What better alibi than that?”

“Maybe Anne has a twin. One stayed in full view at the police station while the other went to Valencia’s shop and stabbed her.” 

Iris considered this. “I like the way you think.”

She told me that Lola was occupied, networking with her real estate friends. “I asked her to talk to the most petty, gossipy, ambitious and backstabbing people she knows. I want all the dirt on J. B. Scott.”

Lola was going to be very, very busy. 

“You need to come with me to the police station,” she said. 

I needed to get back to the A to Z of Indexing. 

“I can’t see why. Jade doesn’t like me.”

“She doesn’t like you, but Detective Noonan does. No need to pick us up at my house. Archie and I will walk up the hill and meet you at yours.”

************************************

There was a sparse amount of shade at the back of the police station lot, so I parked there. 

Iris, who could most assuredly read my mind, sighed. “‘Once more unto the breach,’ I suppose. Cassie, do you think Lola could be a mule?”

Two members of her writing group were recently dead, a third was being detained by the police, and Iris still had the capacity to worry about Lola.

“If you mean someone who carries large amounts of drugs for cartels, no.” Not knowingly, I wanted to add.

Detective Noonan was waiting for us at the door of the interview room. 

“One of our detectives found Ms. Outhouse in her car parked in front of J. B. Scott’s residence this morning at six. That address is under active surveillance. When he tried to question her she was ‘uncooperative’.”

Iris raised an eyebrow. “We know her as Jade Honeywell.”

“Her name is Enid Outhouse.”

Sympathy was written on Iris’s face. “The poor dear girl.”

“We’ve questioned her about Valencia Barrett. It seems Ms. Outhouse had a complicated relationship with the deceased and is reluctant to say much. We checked with her roommate and Enid’s alibi is solid, if the roommate isn’t lying. While she’s not a suspect at the moment, there’s more to learn if she’ll open up. She mentioned that of all the writing group members she likes you, Iris.”

“Were there any weapons in her car?” I asked. How was the murder in J. B.’s perpetually unfinished manuscript committed? Some complicated machination involving a scimitar.

“She didn’t give us permission to search and I’m not willing to ask for a warrant, yet. No need to make the superior court judge cranky. You might be surprised to know that your’s aren’t the only cases I have to solve. Let’s get in there and get her talking.”

To her credit, Iris didn’t remind him that he’d just yesterday cautioned her not to meddle.

He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “You’re the ‘good’ cop,” he told Iris. “I’m the ‘bad’ cop. Cassie, you’re an observer, nothing more. You and Archie keep quiet.”

Jade was seated at the Formica topped table. Under the fluorescents her purple hair looked less the color of a bruise and more a shade of eggplant. She smiled at Iris and Archie but didn’t acknowledge me. 

The room was just big enough for four people and a Schnoodle. Ever since Archie had found the corpse in the shrubbery outside of Iris’s house (see: The Corpse in the Camellias) she’d viewed him as sort of a canine constable and would never think of keeping him out of the fray.

I stood next to the door and held Archie’s leash. 

Detective Noonan took a digital recorder from his suit jacket and set it in front of Jade. He noted the date and time, and the names of everyone in the room. “What we want to know, Enid, is what you were doing outside of J. B. Scott’s house at six this morning. I’ll remind you that I’m investigating the deaths of two people you were in recent contact with.”

Iris nodded. “You must tell us,” she instructed Enid/Jade. Iris made a big show of looking at Detective Noonan with disgust. Her mouth turned down and her eyes narrowed and her brow furrowed. “I won’t say if this cop will plant weapons or drugs in your car, because none of the falsified evidence cases against him have been proved, but if you’re as smart as I think you are you’ll tell him everything.”

Detective Noonan’s mouth twitched at Iris’s portrayal of him as a bad cop.  

Jade scowled. “What would I have been doing, parked outside of J. B.’s house? I was waiting for him to come outside.”

Waiting with a scimitar? I wondered.

“If this is a simple lover’s quarrel, tell us now and you’ll save everyone a lot of time and trouble,” Detective Noonan told her. 

“As if,” Jade said, visibly repulsed. “J. B. owes me money. I signed up people for his writing group and he hasn’t paid. Unless he pays me I’m not going to help him again. That’s what I was waiting to tell him.”

“You could tell him that over the phone.” It was clear that the detective didn’t believe her.

“Not if he won’t answer my calls. I also tried to talk to him yesterday. He wouldn’t speak to me. Except to slag my writing in front of everyone.”

“Did you show the flyer advertising the group to customers at the bookstore?” Iris asked, and I remembered Iris saying that’s how she learned about the group. Jade had shown her a flyer.

“To people that shopped in the mystery section, mostly. It was Valencia’s idea to approach people and tell them the group was ‘exclusive.’ She said it would ‘generate excitement.’ They were planning more writing groups after the summer. They talked about starting a literary agency, too.”

“An agency?” Iris asked. 

Jade nodded. “A bogus one, the type that charges fees for everything. Copies. Faxes. Ink for the laserjet printers. Phone calls to nonexistent publishing houses. They could run that scam for years.”

Detective Noonan took a small spiral notebook from his suit jacket and flipped through a few pages, reading to himself. “You work full time at ‘The Reading Renaissance.’ Your days off are Saturday and Wednesday.”

She looked at the clock on the wall. “I have to be at work at two.”

“I can legally hold you for another forty-four hours without charges,” he said.

Iris gestured as though she had studied acting at the Theda Bara School of Silent Film. Right arm flung out, palm upward, left hand clenched and brought to her throat.

“You will not put this young lady in a jail cell! I won’t stand for it!”

The detective could spar, toe to toe. “Interfere with police business and I’ll lock you in, too. Without your little dog.”

Jade watched him to see if he was telling the truth, and must have decided that he was. 

“I’ve nothing to do with what happened to Mildred and Valencia. If they were whacked it was probably because of greed, or a sick sense of revenge, or jealousy. That’s understandable. But stealing from others, pretending to be a writer, that’s reprehensible. She,” Jade pointed at me, “stole from Elizabeth Daly. If an agent is interested in her work, which I doubt, they’re professionally inept. Even if they do have a business card.”

“Your moral compass is a bit wonky but you know your authors,” Iris told her. “Cassie was working undercover. I’ll explain later.”

Glaring at me, Jade admitted, “If there’s anyone I’d like to murder it’s Katie Koster,” a statement which rendered Jade either our most likely suspect or the most unlikely; I wasn’t sure which. “No one who writes stunted, colorless fiction suddenly starts producing prose like she’s the love child of Margery Allingham and Dashiell Hammett.”

“Her sudden fluidity is suspicious,” Iris agreed.

“I confronted her about it and all she’d say was ‘something just clicked for me’ and we’ve never spoken to each other since. I have a theory, though.”

Detective Noonan wasn’t interested in Katie. “Tell me what you know about J. B. and Valencia.”

It wasn’t much, but all of it tasted of intrigue. Jade had overheard a heated discussion between the two after Saturday’s session. J. B. and Valencia had argued in the conservatory. 

“I waited behind to demand my money. Valencia was upset about Mildred’s death. He wasn’t, as far as I could tell. He was trying to calm her.”

“Did he say anything that made you think he killed Mildred?” Detective Noonan asked. 

“It’s not like he said ‘my plan to kill Mildred was proof of my genius’ or anything. He called her a ‘gift horse’ once, and Valencia told him not to talk like that.”

“What else?” pressed the detective. 

She shrugged. “Nothing. I left the house. I honestly didn’t want to hear any more.”

The detective wrote a few lines in his notebook. “I’m going to release you. Do not leave the state. If I try to get in touch with you and can’t, I’ll issue a warrant for your arrest.”

Jade stood. “Are we done?”

“We’re done.”

“Fine. Which one of you is going to give me a ride back to my car?”

************************************

Archie sat on Jade’s lap in the back seat. I knew that Iris would view Archie’s easily given affection as a character reference, but I wasn’t convinced. 

On the way to J. B.’s house where Jade’s car was waiting, Iris got right to the point.

“What ‘theory’ do you have about Katie’s writing?”

“She’s stealing it. I don’t know what author she’s plagiarizing. I need to do more research.”

“Stay away from her, Jade. Stay out of trouble and if anyone from the police department calls or texts you, answer right away,” Iris said. 

Detective Noonan had told us that J. B’s house was under surveillance for seventy-two hours, but we didn’t spot the unmarked car or operative when I parked to let Jade out. 

Jade got into her car, a third hand – at the least- silver Honda and pulled away without a wave or goodbye or thank you.

It wasn’t yet ten a.m. and I felt completely wrung out. “Let’s get coffee,” I said, pulling away from the curb. “Then I’ll drop you and Archie at home.”

Iris pointed at the intersection of Old Durham Road and Duchess Avenue where Jade’s car was stopped at a red light. “I want to know where she’s going. Follow her, but not too close. Be discreet.”

I followed, discreetly. We passed the fast food mecca at the entrance of Interstate 40 and continued west. Twenty minutes later we were near MLK Boulevard. Jade turned into the parking lot of a two storey apartment complex sited behind a Food Lion and I parked in a fifteen minute space at the post office next door.

The apartment buildings were painted a sickly seafoam green and a truckload of mulch would have brightened the landscaping considerably. A few azaleas, diseased and underwatered, withered next to the metal staircases that led to the second floors. 

Jade walked towards the Food Lion. Ten minutes later she was back, carrying a bunch of flowers wrapped in pink cellophane. She put those on the passenger seat of her car and then went up a staircase and disappeared inside an apartment. 

“Looks like she bought the twenty dollar arrangement of two roses, three lilies and baby’s breath,” Iris observed. 

“Now that we know where she lives, can we quit spying?”

“No one buys cut flowers and then leaves them in a hot car. I want to know what she’s up to.”

We waited another ten minutes and almost missed her when she emerged. She’d changed from her usual black clothes and was wearing white Keds, faded jeans and a white cotton tunic with red embroidery at the neck and sleeves. The heavy eyeliner had been scrubbed from her face and her hair was pulled into two shoulder length pigtails. She looked barely sixteen years old.

This time she drove north for fifteen minutes and led us to the Ferndale Senior Assisted Living and Memory Care Center. 

The buildings at Ferndale sat at the end of a long, shaded drive. White wooden benches were placed at convenient intervals along pathways and on the lawns. The front entry was brick with a gleaming white portico; potted shrubs and ivy gave the place a collegiate air.

I parked as far away from Jade’s car as possible in the general lot next to the main building. She put on a tweed cap and carried the bouquet of flowers. 

“Oh,” Iris said. “This is not good. This is where Katie’s father lives.”

“You told me that Katie visits him every day. She might be in there now.” If Jade was the mystery group murderer, how was she going to kill Katie? “How are the murders committed in Katie’s fiction? Please tell me the methods are complicated and highly improbable.”

“Well, one is drowned in the Thames. There’s no river here, but there might be a pool. Another is bitten by a black mamba snake. I think the residents can have pets, but I doubt they’re allowed to keep poisonous snakes. The third is pushed down an elevator shaft.”

I looked at the buildings. At the rear they were three stories tall. A tall-ish building housing barely ambulatory seniors was certain to be rich with elevators. 

“Go in and follow her,” I told Iris.

“Me? I’m not going in there. They might not let me leave.”

I could have pressed it but I didn’t want to waste time arguing. 

At the front desk I passed a group of women dressed in the latest ‘cruise wear.’ Certain that someone would stop me, I was surprised when no one did. 

There was no way to know which direction Jade had gone, so I wandered the halls. I passed the dining area and beauty parlor and a common room where more women in cruise wear were taking a yoga class. I passed a crafts room where men and women dressed for golf earnestly painted with watercolors. 

I found a bank of elevators and a stairway leading to the second floor. I used the stairs.

On the upper floor the doors along the wide hallways were decorated with family photos and greeting cards and mylar balloons that read “Happy Birthday” or “I Love Grandma” but weren’t inflated. Residents’ names were displayed on large placards next to each door. 

I found Jade at the entrance to the Memory Care Unit. She carried the flowers upright, as if she was purposely hiding behind them. In these hallways most of the doors were open, and I could hear the low murmur of television talk shows and daytime soaps. There were other visitors in the halls but no one I identified as an employee. 

I followed ten paces behind as she turned right down another hallway and then right again. She paused by a certain door and then moved on. When I followed I saw it was marked with the name ‘Henry Koster’ in large letters cut out from bright construction paper. A neat row of family photographs were displayed on the door and the wall next to it.

At the last room in the final hallway, next to the emergency exit, she stopped and stared. She was completely focused on the name and photographs displayed next to the door. I hung back until a group of chatting women, two carrying flowers like Jade’s and the third lugging a Target bag overflowing with pillows and towels, passed me, headed in Jade’s direction. I followed a few steps behind them. Jade paid us no attention at all. 

In the main hallway the ladies stuffed themselves, the flowers, and the Target bag into an elevator and I took the stairs to the first floor and the exit.

Outside, Iris and Archie were waiting discreetly behind a tree near the parking lot. “Archie needed a break,” she said. “What did you find out?”

“Shhh,” I cautioned as Jade walked out of the front door and went to her car. She no longer carried the bouquet. She took off her cap, loosened her pigtails and drove away.

“If she came here to kill Katie she didn’t act like it. She passed a room marked ‘Henry Koster’ and then stopped at a different room in the Memory Care Unit. I’ll bet that’s where she left her flowers.”

“That’s sweet. Who did she give them to?”

“Thomas Garza.” That was the name on the placard next to the open door. Color photos were displayed outside of his room, maybe twenty of them. I’d caught a quick glimpse of a few. Touristy photos, like a group posed at the Eiffel Tower, another with a Beefeater at Buckingham Palace, an oversized one showing two smiling men on the deck of a wooden houseboat among others that chronicled happy moments, now long past.

“Who’s Thomas Garza and why did she disguise herself to visit him? If he’s family, why hasn’t she visited before? It was obvious she didn’t know where to find his room.”

Iris looked at her phone. “No message from the detective. It’s been almost six hours since Valencia’s body was found and no one else has been murdered. Slow day.”

Then I heard the sound of Buddhist temple bells. 

“Just a text from Lola,” Iris said. “I asked her point blank about buying that car and she says she’s leasing it. Also, she wants us to come to her house.”

I suppose I was tired from all the sleuthing and annoyed by having to drive discreetly and fed up with everyone being so mysterious: J. B. and Valencia and their money making schemes; Anne and her cookies; Enid Outhouse aka Jade Honeywell, with her pen name and sudden need for disguise. 

Even Archie, I felt, wasn’t pulling his weight. 

The blameless Hans Wellisch, that doyen of indexing, and the yet unknown Thomas Garza were also figures of distrust and dislike. And Iris? She’d probably bought a bridge from J. B. Scott, or purchased swampland in Florida from him, or invested in his dream of running an emu farm and just hadn’t told me yet.

I was weirdly mad at Lola about her car, and the flashcards she’d so readily dumped into her recycling bin. 

Lola could wait. We were going straight to Wegman’s grocery and deli. I was clearly suffering from low blood sugar if I was upset with Archie.

“Iris, the Proteus company doesn’t have a lease program,” I told her, and I thought of one hundred bad words each for Lola and Jade and even Detective Noonan, who hadn’t appeared on my initial list of grievances but now became a person of interest as I drove away from the Ferndale Senior Assisted Living and Memory Care Center. 

Bad words I was going to have to take back in the next twenty-four hours, because Lola was poised to crack both murder cases, Jade was going to teach a masterclass in the art of detection, and Detective Noonan would soon unearth a motive that was closer to poetry than a crime.

Most importantly, I was mere hours away from persuading Lola to let Archie ride in the Proteus, aided by the judicious use of an index.

************************************

We arrived at Lola’s an hour later, sated after splitting Wegmans deli special, the spicy Italian sub on French bread with Greek pepperoncini. Archie wasn’t allowed in the grocery so Iris waited with him in the car. I bought him a small bag of Daisy’s Decadent Dried Duck ™ dog treats as an apology for my bad mood.

While Iris’s house was a mess of chairs with sagging springs, grandma square crocheted afghans in horrible shades of green and purple cascading onto stacks of paperback mysteries piled high on what-not tables, Lola’s decor could be called “Rented Condo.” Her house was sparsely furnished, with color schemes that ranged between “bland” and “inoffensive.” The red faux alligator iPad case on the arm of the taupe living room loveseat was the only splash of color.

“There’s not one real estate agent I asked who would waste their time taking J. B. Scott on as a client,” she said when we were settled. “No one believes he’d get financing. His house off of Old Durham Road is sinking under mortgages so heavy it’s anybody’s guess why it’s not an REO.”

“English, Lola, not your fancy real estate talk,” prompted Iris.

“Real Estate Owned. Repossessed. There’s a balloon payment due in eighteen months. He and Valencia Barrett invested in property together. They own the building where she runs her antique shop, and that’s mortgaged. Sixty percent of the business is hers…”

“Was hers,” said Iris. 

“Forty percent is owned by J. B. The business has problems. She’s got too much inventory so she’s spending money renting storage units for furniture. That’s a cash flow death spiral. Plus, she’s had a run of bad reviews on Yelp. He also put money into a local chain of donut shops. They opened right when everyone quit carbs and didn’t last three months.”

Lola paused and flipped open the cover of her iPad. 

“J. B. invested in crypto currency. The wrong crypto currency. Then his mother died. Her maiden name was Huyler; that family has always been wealthy. Well, her estate was heavily taxed because she couldn’t be bothered to do any estate planning. She probably didn’t believe that she would ever die but then she went under the knife for a brachioplasty -”

“Lola. Focus,” encouraged Iris. 

“The property he owns with Valencia needs upgrades to the electrical and plumbing and the parking lot needs resurfacing. There are also rumors about termites. I did hear that Valencia owes him money, but just as often I heard it said that he owes her money. Who owes what to whom is murky.”

“If his primary cash flow was from our little writing group,” Iris said, “I don’t see how that small amount would help him at all.”

I thought about this. “The question is, does his plan scale? What growth could he expect?”

Lola tapped the iPad’s screen and summoned the calculator app. 

“Let’s say he tripled his business by hosting not just one, but three groups, eight members each. The groups are in session for two months each. With full enrollment at one thousand dollars per head that’s one hundred forty four thousand dollars in a year.”

“Cash,” I said. “No taxes. Not if he doesn’t register as a business.”

“If a bidding war for slots in the writing group starts, people will compete against each other and pay much, much more than the property is worth. Demand has to be high and supply low,” Lola said, applying a liberal helping of real estate economics. “It’s every selling agent’s dream.”  

“Don’t forget the literary agency scam that Jade mentioned. Shame on that man for preying on unworldly, innocent authors,” Iris said, conveniently glossing over the fact that she’d paid him plenty to join the writing group herself, then handed over more cash when I joined.

Lola had one last tidbit to share. “J. B. stands for Jericho Barnabas, in case you were wondering. His father was a Baptist preacher. Very Old Testament.”

Iris congratulated her. “Excellent work. You met and exceeded expectations.”

Lola needed to be updated as to our current body count. “We have sad news about Valencia -” I began. 

The sound of Buddhist temple bells interrupted us. 

“It’s Detective Noonan,” Iris said. “I’ll put him on speaker phone.”

She held her phone out flat on her hand, like an offering.

The detective’s voice was both muted and distorted, as if he was wearing a scarf over his mouth while speaking in a cavern with stalactites dripping overhead. 

“Coroner’s report… Barrett… cause of death…”

“I think he’s at the morgue,” Iris explained. “In the basement. The cell reception is terrible.”

“…stabbing.”

Iris shut off the speaker function and put the phone to her ear. 

“Valencia Barrett was found dead early this morning,” I told Lola, “in her antique shop.” I briefed her on Iris’s new theory about a killer bumping off mystery writers `a la their own fictional methods. 

“Poor thing,” Lola said. “Though I suppose she’s gone to a better place. One without storage fees.”

Iris hung up her phone and sat silent for a moment. She chewed her lower lip a bit, the same way she did when faced with a particularly vexing crossword clue. 

“The coroner has determined that Valencia died of natural causes.”

“She was stabbed in the neck with a fountain pen,” I said, exasperated. 

“Her heart, you know. She wasn’t well,” Iris explained, feebly.

“Fine. If I had a weak heart and saw someone coming at me with the business end of a nib, I might keel over and breathe my last. But the pen was undeniably inserted. Why?”

“A robbery gone wrong?” suggested Lola. 

“A crime of passion?” countered Iris, brightening a bit at the thought. “Maybe an item in her shop was coveted by a collector who would kill for it.” 

Which was exactly the plot of Murder is Antiquated, Valencia’s finished manuscript.

We pondered. I voiced my doubt that Valencia had been done in by a drop leaf table fetishist.

That’s when Lola, bless her usurious soul, said, “J. B. scored a ‘2’ on Divat’s investor intelligence scale,” a non sequitur if ever I’ve heard one. “Divat is in my study group and he writes software,” she explained, “as a hobby. I let him use J. B.’s investment history as a beta test.”

“I take it that a ‘2’ score is dismal?”

“Thoroughly.”

“I suppose on Saturday the writing group will observe one and a half minutes’ silence for Valencia,” Iris mused. “To honor her manuscript and outline. If a completed outline deserves a half minute.”

“You don’t mean that group is going to continue?” I asked. Surely two deaths in one week would dampen the creative process of even the most accelerated, goal-oriented, and focused writers.

Lola ignored both my incredulity and Iris’s naivete.

“Divat’s software program values the variables of education, intuition and luck to rate the investor’s chances of success.”

“We have to keep our eyes on the finish line, Cassie,” Iris said, steely eyed and determined. “Even if Mildred and Valencia won’t be there with us when we cross it.”

“Remember what our father always said about luck, Iris?” Lola asked. “There’s no such thing and we each have to make our own.” 

I stared at her. A theory was forming in my mind, just as mountains formed when tectonic plates pushed against each other, only much, much faster. “Lola, say that again.”

She repeated it for me. “Of course I didn’t mention that to Divat. It would completely ruin his algorithms.”

Had I mustachios I would have twirled them. With aplomb.

“Lola, I need you to Google ‘penalties desecration corpse.’ Iris, you’d better find another writing group because we’re going to put J. B. away for -” I read the iPad screen over Lola’s shoulder, “five to seven years.”

************************************

Two hours later the four of us and Detective Noonan met in the interview room at the police station. 

Lola gave him a synopsis of J. B. ‘s tangled web of financial troubles. “Every good detective cultivates trusted informants,” he said, taking notes. “I don’t know how you dug up so much so fast.”

“As part of my ‘Real Estate for Real People’ course I have a two month trial subscription to REBEL, the Real Estate, Brokerage, Escrow & Licensing database. You know all those papers you sign when you buy a house?” Lola mimicked signing a document. “Like sausages. You don’t want to know what goes in there.”

“I doubt I can use any of what you told me in court, but it’s exactly what I want when we bring him in for questioning. Thank you.”

The detective had also been impressed by my deduction that the fountain pen found in Valencia’s neck had been timorously applied, the steel nib penetrating skin and tissue fully but leaving the grip and barrel clean of blood or tissue. It was neither the stab of a covetous Chippendale collector nor the murderous thrust of a business partner enraged by poor inventory practices and disastrous Yelp reviews. 

The nib in her neck was nothing more than a carefully staged element in a scene designed to capture the imagination of every tv evening news producer, as well as every murder mystery enthusiast in the tri-state area. I was betting our reputations as first class meddlers on it.

“Think of the headlines,” I told him. “‘Mystery Author Dies As She Lived – By The Pen.’ Or, ‘Mutilation Mystery In Corpse Case.’ It’s fantastic publicity.”

Iris added, “Desecration of a human corpse is a felony, as is not reporting a death. We looked it up online.”

“I had to look it up, too,” he said. “But wouldn’t two deaths – keep in mind that the coroner says Valencia wasn’t murdered – be a deterrent to aspiring writers?”

“For poets, maybe. Or literary authors,” Iris said. “Mystery writers won’t be scared away. We’re stalwart.”

“The way I understand the appeal,” Lola said, “is that it’s like one of those hosted murder mystery weekends where you spend thousands to stay in a lovely Victorian B&B and find a body in the shared bathroom down the hall.”

“Our ‘body in the bath’ was real, though she was found in the conservatory,” I reminded everyone. “Let’s get to work.”

Official transcripts from the police interviews from the day Mildred Olive Witherwax expired in the conservatory were piled high at one end of the table. Each index card was inscribed with a name. As the detective read from the transcripts, the appropriate card moved as a chess piece would during a correspondence chess match.

For example, the cards representing Valencia and J. B. were placed in the kitchen at the same time, to prepare coffee and tea just before the writers began to arrive at 8:45 on the day Mildred died. According to Anne Dixon’s statement she and her plate of cookies arrived third, after Iris and Miles. Jade and Mildred were the next to enter the kitchen, pleasant chit chat followed but mostly everyone tucked into the scones and croissants. Katie was the last to show, and in  Anne’s testimony she clearly stated that they ran out of creamer just as she was pouring herself a cup of coffee. 

J. B. went to the pantry to see if there was perhaps an unrefrigerated substitute he could offer, and returned with a pint of hemp milk. 

Following her testimony, I pushed the card representing J. B. down an imagined passage into a small closet next to the pretend kitchen. 

“As a child I played with dolls,” Iris reminisced. “I would make them have afternoon tea over and over and over again, poor things.”

Which was exactly what we were doing, only with index cards instead of dolls, and police transcripts substituting for pure imagination. 

Overlaying Katie’s testimony with Miles’s, we uncovered gaps and inconsistencies. He and Iris arrived in the kitchen, then Jade. J. B. was in the conservatory, watering the aspidistra. The hemp milk was already on the counter, Miles remembered, because Valencia apologised to him for running out of creamer. Anne Dixon and her plate of cookies arrived just as Katie returned to the kitchen from the bathroom down the hallway, past the library. According to Miles, he and Valencia walked to the library together. He said that Jade and Katie lingered in the kitchen, rinsing their coffee cups, and were the last to enter the library that morning.

“We haven’t considered Katie as a suspect,” Iris pointed out. “She could have put the cookies on the plate without Jade noticing.”

“She’s not a suspect in the Valencia Barrett case,” Detective Noonan countered. “I’ve had her under surveillance since seven pm Wednesday evening, just after Anne Dixon’s arrest. If Iris’s first theory was correct and the killer was acting out of jealousy, then Katie was the next obvious target.”

The detective, long on suspects and short on time, was indulging us. I was certain this exercise would reveal the culprit. It had to be the person who was alone in the kitchen after Anne and the cookies had arrived. It had to be.

I was certain that person was J. B. Scott. 

Detective Noonan was not impressed by my amateurish methods. “This is edifying, if somewhat slow. ”

“All I’ve learned is that hemp milk doesn’t have to be refrigerated before opening,” Lola commented.

“Let’s read my statement next,” Iris said. “I didn’t mention hemp milk at all.”

Iris hadn’t noticed the hemp milk specifically, but did state that Jade and Miles had arrived in the kitchen together and were talking about possibly becoming vegan but the croissants contained a lot of butter and Iris was certain that they ate two apiece. 

 J. B. Scott’s statement mentioned his trip to the pantry and the conservatory. He also noted that he went upstairs to his office just before everyone trooped to the library to begin that morning’s session. He said that he rejoined everyone in the hallway and preceded Anne and Valencia into the library.

Which matched their statements, exactly. 

“Damn and blast,” Iris said. “He evades us at every turn.”

“Maybe there’s a second staircase. He could have popped down into the kitchen, planted the Oakley’s Best Peanut Butter Cookies, and then met everyone in the hallway near the library,” I said. 

“A second staircase. What a lovely idea,” Iris said, wistfully. 

Detective Noonan dashed our hopes. “There’s no other staircase and I don’t believe the cookies were hidden behind a secret panel in the hallway, either. Good try, though.”

The last statement to review was Jade’s. 

How delicious would it be if Jade provided the clue that would lead to the arrest of J. B. Scott for Mildred’s murder? Especially after he had refused to pay the money he owed her and insulted her writing in front of everyone?  

The detective read from the file:

I had coffee and talked with Miles, who said he was considering going vegan which he never will. You should see him scarf those egg and paprika things. J. F. C. So I was like oh sure you should it would be great. Like I care what he eats. Valencia freaked out because she forgot to buy more half and half and J. B. had to go to the pantry to check if they had a package of hemp milk. I mean, she’s in charge as much as he is but defers to him all the time. Why? Because he can pee standing up? Mildred and I talked about her agent, Ariel. I was happy for her and all, don’t get me wrong. But even the grapes of happiness start to taste sour after too much exposure. I needed to talk to J. B. and tried to catch him before he went into the library, but Anne and Mildred were ahead of me in the hallway and they followed him into the library, so I never got the chance.

“That’s the end of my beautiful theory,” I said. “Not one testimony confirms that J. B. was in the kitchen alone with the cookies.”

Lola scooped the index cards into one neat pile and shuffled them as if a poker game was imminent. “I don’t see how any crimes are solved. Those testimonies made my head hurt.”

I must have looked as downcast as I felt because Detective Noonan tried to console me. 

“We’re checking with all the businesses near Valencia’s antique shop for video surveillance. Something will turn up. Her own security system wasn’t working.”

“I told you. The electrical in that building is a liability,” Lola said.

“So what do we do now?” asked Iris.

“We wait,” said the detective. “That is, you wait. We’re looking for J. B. right now. He called the precinct desk early this morning to ask for a welfare check on Valencia and that’s the last anyone’s heard from him as far as we know.”

It was almost four in the afternoon. If I had felt wrung out at ten that morning I was now completely mangled. 

We split up in the parking lot. Lola drove off in the Proteus , the detective in his unmarked SUV that was nothing more than a rolling billboard that advertised: Cop Inside, while Iris, Archie and myself climbed into my silver Honda. 

“Go right at the light,” Iris instructed when I pulled out of the lot. She held up her phone to show me a text that I couldn’t read while driving. “We’re going to meet Jade at the book store.”

“Go left, you mean.” ‘The Reading Renaissance’ where Jade worked was in the opposite direction. “You’re completely mixed up.”

“The used book store,” Iris said. “‘Twice Sold Tales.’ It’s off of MLK by the Burger Barn.”

It had been a trying day. “You don’t have to give me food related landmarks all the time. Why are we meeting Jade?”

“Because she says she’s solved the mystery and she has something to show us.” 

“She knows who killed Mildred?” 

“No. She’s solved the Case of Katie’s Poached Prose, but she’s only got thirty minutes for her dinner break. Take a left at We All Scream Ice Cream.”

Iris wanted me to take Manning Road, which meant stoplights all the way, but I knew a route that could get us there faster; I turned east at Taco Bar None, headed north at My Brother’s Bagels, and hoped we reached the bookstore in time to find Jade. 

************************************

Twice Sold Tales was housed in a rickety, two storey brick building wedged between a dry cleaner’s and a wig shop. It was approximately thirty feet wide with a fifteen foot ceiling. It smelled of saddle soap on leather, dust, and Chinese five spice chicken. The floorboards creaked when we stepped inside and a little bell tied to the glass front door jingled. 

“Hello!” called Iris. She walked past the front desk, which was piled high with neat stacks of books, around a low, circular wooden table where someone had made an attempt to display books upright, showing their covers, into the store proper. 

The bookshelves were the very definition of teeming. Brimming, bursting, overflowing; the place was absolutely stuffed with books. They were stacked on the floor, they were crammed to the stamped tin ceiling, they were double shelved on pine planks that bowed under the load. 

Archie and I stayed at the front near the big wood framed windows, which let in the only natural light. An air conditioning unit wheezed in the transom above us. Iris disappeared down an aisle lit by overhead fluorescent fixtures; approximately one in every four bulbs weren’t working. 

Out of the corner of my eye I caught the ‘flick’ of a black curtain behind the desk and a young woman with short hair dyed orange was at my side. She was wearing silver ankle boots, torn fishnet stockings and a short dress printed all over with skulls.

“We don’t allow dogs.” 

“This is Archie,” I replied, thinking that would settle the issue. Archie went everywhere, except in Lola’s car. 

“You’ll have to wait outside,” she told us. “Unless he’s a service dog.”

It was 85℉ out there; hotter in the parking lot with the heat rising from the asphalt. 

“Stand down, Dakota.” A man in his early forties emerged from a narrow staircase to my left. Tall and thin with receding hair the color of sand, dressed in Chinos and a blue button down shirt, he looked the very picture of a tired academic who hadn’t made tenure. 

The girl in the skull print dress walked away without another word.

“I’m here with Iris,” I explained. “We’re looking for Jade.”

He went behind the front desk and plucked two books from a pile. “You just missed her. She said Iris would pay for these. Together they’re thirty-two fifty, but I’ll give Iris our industry discount because they’re for Jade.”

So Iris was now buying books for Jade? “Thank you,” I said, because honestly he didn’t look like he should give a discount to anyone; he probably needed every penny.

“Hello, Roderick,” Iris said, returning from her journey through the aisles. “I suppose Jade isn’t here any longer.”

“Hello Iris.” He lovingly patted the two books Jade had set aside. “Thirty-two fifty.”

“Before the discount,” I amended. 

Iris stepped up to the desk to examine them. She turned them over, front to back, top to bottom. One was a hardcover, the other a thick paperback with a cracked spine. The dust jacket on the hardcover had obviously been roughly handled and then pieced back together. Parts of it were missing, but what was left had been carefully encased in a clear plastic sleeve. 

“‘Murder Above Deck’ and ‘Anthology of Detective Stories 1978,’” Iris read. “You can’t really be charging nine dollars for this paperback?”

“Eight dollars, ten cents after the discount,” he said. “I’m forgoing the tax because you’re over sixty-five.”

“You mean you’ve figured the tax in and you’re going to pocket it.” Iris examined the hardcover again. “I haven’t read anything by Henderson Nichols since the early eighties.” She pulled some bills from her pocket.

“He was a local boy, you know. Born over at Willardville,” Roderick said. “First openly gay writer from this area.”

“I’m surprised he wasn’t strung up,” Iris said. 

“Got out of here as soon as he could. Sometime in the fifties. He lived in Paris, London, traveled all over. Bookmarks?” 

“No, thank you,” Iris said, waving away the neon green slips of paper printed with the Twice Sold Tales logo and phone number. 

“He died in a plane crash in the Himalayas. Early seventies, I think. Took three weeks to recover the bodies. There was a big spread in ‘Adventure!’ magazine about it. Enjoy the books.”

“Thanks. Tell Dakota she did a nice job piecing this dust jacket back together.”

Iris took Archie’s leash and handed me the books to carry out to the car. The dust jacket art of Murder Above Deck was stylized and garish, depicting an impossibly long legged woman in a bikini holding a high powered rifle at the ready. Fiberglass hulled speedboats plied the water behind her. 

On the back, only the top half of the rear panel remained. The requisite author’s photo was an outdoor shot of two men, smiling at the camera. 

What were the chances I’d see the same photo twice in one day? An enlarged version was displayed outside Thomas Garza’s room at Ferndale.

************************************

There was no shade in the parking lot and the interior of the car was stifling. Iris put Archie in the front seat to be near the air conditioner’s blast. 

“Henderson Nichols and Thomas Garza are linked,” I told her, pointing to the dust jacket. “I don’t understand how, but this photo proves it.”

Iris brought out her phone. “I’ll let Jade know we’ve got the goods.”

“I understand now why Jade wanted ‘Murder Above Deck,’ but the anthology? Is there another photo?”

Iris quickly leafed through the paperback. “No. Just one of Nichols’s short stories, ‘You Can’t See the Lollipops for the Suckers.’ It’s probably his best known work. It’s quite clever, actually. There’s a doctor who wants to be rid of his wife – ”

More Buddhist temple bells. 

“Oh, no,” said Iris. 

I was about to pull out of the parking lot but then my phone pinged. I stopped the car.

“It’s Lola,” Iris said. 

The text on my phone was from Detective Noonan. “‘Lola 10-28.’ Whatever that is. Do you know what that is?” I asked. 

“No. But Lola texted ‘Don’t come to the station. Cesare will bail me out.’ Well. Everything’s perfectly fine, then. This Cesare person will put things right.” 

“Home or to the station?” I asked.

“I hardly know which is which any longer.”

I Googled ‘10-28.’

Possession of a stolen vehicle.

************************************

‘Cesare’ turned out to be Cesare Abano II, the father of Cesare Abano III, and, one can only assume, the son of Cesare Abano I. 

Iris, Archie and I found him – C. A. II, that is – in the police station waiting room. A man in his early seventies, bald, stout, and dressed to the nines. Walking stick, silk hanky in his suit jacket pocket, pinky ring with a diamond inset against an onyx background. He reeked of bay rum cologne. 

He rose to greet us. He was barely over five foot five. I resisted the urge to slouch.

Iris immediately turned on the charm. “You must be Cesare. I’m Iris and this is Cassie, and my dog Archie. Did my sister steal your car?” 

“Such a misunderstanding,” he said. “It’s my son, causing trouble. You see, I bought him the car. It was a bribe. Get good grades, get the car.”

“I’m guessing he got bad grades,” I said.

Cesare nodded. “So I told him, ‘I’m giving that car to the first beautiful woman I see today.’ Did he believe me? No.”

“It’s just good parenting. You have to show them you mean what you say,” Iris agreed.

Cesare put his hand over his heart. “I indulge him. I had him late in life and he is my only boy. Yesterday he reported the car as stolen.”

“The police around here are very efficient,” Iris assured him. “They get results.”

Cesare explained that everything had been sorted out and Lola would be released. He had waited just to meet us and apologize for what had happened. He was going home, he said, to take away his son’s phone, unplug his video games, hide all the television remotes, lock his moped in the garage and drain the pool.

“Another mystery solved,” Iris said after he shook our hands and left. She sat in one of the moulded plastic chairs, Archie next to her, to wait for Lola to be sprung. 

Detective Noonan arrived. “I was on my way home when the desk sergeant texted me about Lola. What can I do to help?”

“It was just a misunderstanding,” I said, and told him about Cesare II and Cesare III. “He gave Lola an eighty thousand dollar car because his son didn’t pass algebra. Do things like that happen to you?”

“Never.”

A female officer opened a double locked door and held it open for Lola. 

“You met Cesare?” Lola asked. “Such a dear man.” She set her handbag on the table with the paper coffee cups and non dairy creamers and rifled through it. “Just making sure everything is still here. Not that I don’t trust the staff.”

“Corporal Hanley was parking your car when I pulled up,” Detective Noonan told her. “I’ll get the keys from him.”

“They were nice not to have it towed when they arrested me,” Lola said. “I think the officers wanted to try it out for thrills.”

“Lola, is Cesare in your real estate class?” I asked. “How do you know him?”

“We met in the grocery store. The fancy one. I was in the pasta aisle and he asked me to get a package of rotini from the top shelf.”

Iris and Archie stood. “In my next life I’m coming back as you, Lola. Let’s go, Cassie.”

Detective Noonan returned with the keyfob. 

“I want to speak with Cassie,” he said. “Alone. Lola can take Iris and Archie home.”

Lola shook her head. “No food or dogs in the car. I’m keeping it nice for when Cesare III improves his GPA.”

We all looked at Archie. He was always immaculately groomed, from bangs and beard to his waggedy docked tail. One thing I liked about Archie was that he smiled all the time, even when Lola equated him with a box of sticky crullers or greasy french fries that might fall under the seats. 

One dog, two cars, three adults. How to split them up so I could have five uninterrupted minutes with the detective?

“The Proteus was designed for dogs,” I said. “Malcolm Malfus, the billionaire who conceived the car, loves them. The interior of Lola’s model is equipped with the Canine Comfort Package.” I closed my eyes to better visualize the index of the owner’s manual:

CANINE – Canine Comfort Package, 214 – 225
Seats, leather, non scuff, 215
Leash clips, locations of, 216
Travel water dish, collapsible, 217
Interior camera; remote viewing of pet; webcam, 218 – 221
Upload photo files to Instagram, Pinterest, 221
Pet comfort & cabin temperature display, 222 – 225
ASPCA, SAE & IEEE Gold Standard Awards, 225
DOG – see Canine

“Non scuff seats?” Lola repeated. “You’re sure? I’d hate for Cesare to have paid for all those extras and then not use them.”

“Let’s go. I’ve got four more pages of Asphyxiation Under the Asters to write before Saturday, and more to steal for ‘Mary Westmacott’ here,” Iris said, pointing at me. 

“‘Mary Westmacott?’” Detective Noonan asked after Lola, Iris and Archie said goodbye. “What’s that all about?”

“It was Iris’s idea that I needed to have a pen name when I joined the writing group. Jade’s the only other person who uses one so I don’t know why Iris insisted.”

“She must have wanted the others to hate you with a burning passion.” He opened the double locked door and steered me through it and down the hall. 

“She was trying to ‘flush out’ Mildred Olive Witherwax’s killer by turning their attention to me.”

“In here,” he said. “This is my office.”

It was the very picture of every policeman’s office seen on television. Blinds at the windows, metal desk, metal filing cabinets, city map on the wall, two uncomfortable chairs facing the desk, one uncomfortable chair behind. I wondered if there was a pint of bourbon in the bottom file drawer.

“I haven’t had time to research my pen name,” I said. “I’ve spent two days in writing sessions, studied A to Z of Indexing, listened to the oral history of J. B. Scott’s calamitous investment career, tailed Jade Honeywell to the Ferndale Assisted Living and Memory Care Center, bought obscure, overpriced books at Twice Sold Tales, learned the secret behind Lola’s car and convinced her to take Archie as a passenger.”

“Agatha Christie,” he said. 

“Thank you. I’m not saying I’m Agatha Christie or anything but the four of us have done some good sleuthing. I’m including Archie in those kudos.”

“No. ‘Mary Westmacott’ is the pen name Agatha Christie used for six of her books.”

I sank into one of the uncomfortable chairs. “Oh my sainted aunt.”

He looked amused. 

“You mean Iris put me in a room of diehard mystery fans, one of whom is a killer and corpse stabber, and gave me Agatha Christie’s pen name?”

“I’m surprised you lived through it.”

“She’s absolutely nuts. She and Lola both. Archie’s the only reasonable one.”

“I doubt you’ll be posing as a writer any longer. J. B. has been found and Detective Keeland is questioning him right now. I wanted to say ‘thank you’ for your help.”

Acknowledgement and appreciation from Detective Noonan? I much preferred that to being told to step back and let the police do their jobs. 

“You’re welcome. Has he confessed?”

“I doubt it. He can say that he didn’t kill Valencia, which is supported by the coroner’s evidence, and refuse to say anything else. Keeland will work on him until his lawyer gets here.”

“Maybe he’ll confess to killing Mildred if he’s scared enough.”

The detective shook his head. “Here’s where I don’t agree with you. Remember that Jade said she heard him call Mildred a ‘gift horse’? He was willing to use the publicity to his advantage, I’m with you there. But he’s not Mildred’s killer.”

My phone pinged. It surprised me; we were pretty deep in the concrete bunker-like precinct building. Reception had to be spotty.

“Don’t look at it,” he said. “Ignore it. Let’s go to Shorty’s. We’ll celebrate the end of  your writing career.”

Shorty served North Carolina pit barbecue, slathered in sauce, with sides of hush puppies and potato salad. Three layer chocolate cake was always on the menu. 

Had I been angry with him only a week ago? I turned my phone to ‘silent’ mode.

The text could wait until after dessert.

************************************

I didn’t look at my phone for another three hours, and when I did I was sorry. There were four texts from Lola and one from Iris. 

Who is jaded honeyed and why is she calling me?
Jade 
Did you give her this number?
Does she want to buy real estate or sell it? I’m not licensed yet

Ignore Lola, Iris’s text instructed. I’ll take care of it

“Oh, no,” I said. I was too full of barbecue and cake and too tired for any of this. 

“Iris?” Detective Noonan asked. “Or Lola?”

“Both.” Why was Jade calling Lola? “I think that Jade thinks Lola is my literary agent.”

We were sitting at a long picnic table on the north side of Shorty’s, enjoying the evening as the temperature cooled. 

“Why would Jade think that?” 

“Because Iris told one person in the group that Lola was my agent and word got around.”

“That makes no sense. I believe you, but it sounds crazy.”

“Jade is a very…” I searched for the right word, “stalwart member of the writing group.”

“She’s also not afraid to admit when she wants to murder someone.”

“You don’t think she’d hurt Lola?”

“No. I find her to be exceptionally honest, which is a rarity in my professional life.”

I threw my napkin on the table. “Oh, she’s sneaky enough when it suits her.” I described for him how Iris, Archie and I followed her to the Ferndale Assisted Living and Memory Care Center. 

“Who’s Thomas Garza?” he asked when I’d given him all the details.

“He’s got something to do with Henderson Nichols, certainly.” How many mysteries did he think could be solved in one day? 

I knew the detective read in that genre but I’d never appreciated the depth of his knowledge before. 

“Henderson Nichols? He wrote that great story, ‘You Can’t See the Lollipops for the Suckers.’ It’s been anthologized at least ten times. There’s a doctor, see, who wants to be rid of his wife -”

“Stop. I have a copy in my car. If you tell me the plot, what’s the use of reading it?”

He smiled at me. “Well, Henderson Nichols is long dead. He can’t interrupt us. Do you realize we’ve spent over three hours together and there hasn’t been a murder, stabbing, or theft?”

Underneath all the police detective-ness he was a romantic; it was sweet to mention theft because my fake half sister Morgana had been stealing pharmaceutical secrets from me and that, along with the body I found in Iris’s camellias, was part of the story of how we first met. 

It was a nice moment.

Then his phone lit up with an incoming text. 

“What is it, a murder, stabbing or theft?” I joked.

He showed me the text from Iris.

Theft. 

************************************

Iris summoned both of us to Lola’s. Iris was there, and Jade, and my silver Honda parked in the street behind theirs made Lola’s house look like a chop shop. 

Lola opened the front door when we knocked and walked us to the living room, where Iris and Archie stood sentry over Jade, who sat in an armchair, hunched in a black overcoat. She wore the same tweed cap, white Keds and blue jeans I’d seen her in earlier, and her face was still scrubbed of makeup. She was cradling something in her arms. 

“Now, my dear,” said Iris. “Tell the detective what you’ve done.”

Jade glared at her. “I’ve saved an important manuscript from a fate worse than death is what I’ve done.”

I turned to Lola. “Explain?” 

“I started getting texts and phone calls from this girl just after we left you at the police station. I thought she wanted to engage my services as a real estate agent, for which I am not yet fully licensed. It seems Iris told her I was a literary agent, why I don’t know.”

“She was hoping someone in her writing group would try to kill me,” I said. “Continue.”

Lola pointed a dramatic finger at Jade. “This waif showed up at my door and insisted that I immediately read the manuscript she brought with her and immediately find a publisher. So I called Iris.”

“I gave Anne Dixon one of Lola’s real estate business cards,” Iris said, “the day Anne was arrested. Anne took a photo of it and texted it to some – but not all – of the writers in our group.”

All of this caused Jade to hug whatever she held under her coat tighter. 

Detective Noonan walked across the room and kneeled next to her. 

“Jade,” he said softly, and I was reminded that he had two teenaged daughters. “Show me what you’ve rescued. Does it belong to Henderson Nichols?”

“He died. He left it to Thomas Garza. They were in love.”

“Thomas is dying. He can’t take care of it anymore, can he?” asked the detective.

Tears welled in her eyes. “He can’t and there’s no one to protect it and Katie’s been stealing from him.”

I thought then that the detective would take the bundle, but he didn’t touch her. Instead, he pulled an ottoman upholstered in narrow strips of beige linen next to Jade’s chair. 

“Would you read some of it to me?” he asked. “I love a good mystery.”

************************************

Jade spent the night in my guest bedroom. The detective declared her overtired and underfed, and refused to take the typed manuscript from her. She slept with it on the bed next to her. Iris and I let Archie sleep at the foot of the bed. We told him he was on double dog guard duty and I’m certain he understood. 

“I’ll request security footage from Ferndale Memory Care Center,” the detective promised me before he left Lola’s house at midnight. “But if Katie befriended Thomas Garza and he willingly let her go through his papers, there’s nothing we can do. Not if she isn’t trying to profit off of Nichols’s unpublished work. Jade will probably be charged with trespassing.”

“What if he doesn’t understand what’s happening, or what Katie was after?” I asked. 

“Then we look at elder abuse law and leave it to the lawyers,” he answered. “It’s infuriating, I know, but we can’t give in to our anger.”

Iris disagreed. She was mad at everyone: J. B. for not paying Jade; Katie for pretending she could write; Jade for spending money on flowers instead of food; Mildred for sneaking cookies when she was on a diet; Valencia for using a pretentious fountain pen when everyone else used a twenty cent Bic. 

Lola, happy to see Jade and the stolen manuscript spend the night elsewhere, locked her front door and shut off the lights before we’d even stepped off the porch. 

In the morning Iris came by with a bowl of Happy Dog™ Kidney & Liver Kibble for Archie and donuts for everyone else. I made coffee, toast, and turkey bacon. 

“Good morning, Jade!” Iris said when Jade emerged from the bedroom at nine and joined us at the kitchen table. 

I nudged a coffee cup in Jade’s general direction. “Help yourself.”

She banged around at the coffee pot for a bit, her back to us. 

“I must understand your methods, Jade,” Iris said. “Come tell us how you did it.”

“I have to be at work at noon,” she said.

Iris pulled the chair next to her out from the table. “Make it quick, then.”

Jade tucked her hair behind her ears. “Katie’s sudden improvement in her writing was suspicious, and her dead-on descriptions of late ‘fifties London… she’s from Pittsboro. How does she know what the East End docks smell like in the morning? Can Archie have some bacon?”

“No,” said Iris, who had saved back two pieces for him in a paper towel.

“I was talking to Dakota about the writing group. I figured she could use some extra money if J. B. would pay her to recruit -”

“The girl who works at Twice Sold Tales?” I asked.

“Yes. She’s got absolutely no people skills. Anyway I mentioned Katie Koster and Dakota said that Katie’s father shopped for mysteries at Twice Sold for years and Roderick sometimes held back the good stuff for him, but wasn’t it sad that he was over at Ferndale now. She wondered what he was going to do with his book collection.”

“Roderick never offered me first pick of the ‘good stuff,’” Iris said. 

“So I got to thinking about Katie’s father and how she spent so much time with him. She told us she went to see him every day. I wondered if he had taken some books to Ferndale when he moved and thought if I could just peek into his room I might get an idea of what author Katie was stealing from. I couldn’t figure out who it was. It wasn’t anyone obvious like Rex Stout or Agatha Christie. ”

“Or Elizabeth Daly,” Iris said. “You caught me with my hand in that cookie jar.”

“That was easy. So I drove to Ferndale and walked through the entire Memory Care Unit and saw the same picture at Thomas Garza’s room that I had seen on the dustjacket of ‘Murder Above Deck’ by Henderson Nichols. Dakota had showed me the dust jacket after she’d put what was left of it back together and put it in a mylar cover. She’s good at that.”

“You look a lot younger without makeup,” I said. 

She smiled. “Right? What employee at Ferndale would kick out a girl who was there to visit a grandparent? I went back last night after work and figured all the patients would be asleep, but Thomas Garza was awake. He thought I was someone named Pamela, but he let me take the manuscript after I told him how I thought Henderson Nichols was a great writer. He wants people to read it.”

She took a piece of notepaper from her jeans pocket and unfolded it on the table. 

“Here’s a list of similarities between Nichols’s manuscript and what Katie read in class.”

Kit Angel   Kat Blessings
Houseboat “Queen of Bohemia”  Houseboat “Irene Adler”
Expert rifle shot     Expert pistol shot
Learned to shoot from policeman father      Learned to shoot from poacher father 
Unrequited love for minor aristocrat Unrequited love for minor aristocrat

“At least she changed the name of the houseboat,” I said, which caused both Iris and Jade to look at me pityingly. 

“Irene Adler would have been the Queen of Bohemia if she had married the Crown Prince of Bohemia five years before ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ takes place,” Iris explained. “What’s the matter, Cassie? You look green.”

I pushed my coffee cup away. “Too much barbecue at Shorty’s.” Specifically, the hush puppies dunked in ‘The Devil’s Own’ hot sauce. 

Jade opened her moonstone poisoner’s ring to reveal a white powder. “This in a glass of water will help.”

I hesitated a fraction of a second too long. 

“Get real. I could have killed you last night if I’d wanted,” she said. “It’s an antacid. Bismuth Subsalicylate. I need it if I eat eggs, and I wasn’t going to pass up those baked eggs in pie crust with paprika at J. B. ‘s house. They’re delicious.”

There was a knock at the front door. 

“Cassie, try Jade’s powder,” Iris ordered. “If you fall to the floor in agony I promise we’ll call 911.” 

It was Lola at the door. She’d brought her own coffee mug. 

“I’m out of beans,” she said, stepping past me. “And creamer.”

“Please, help yourself to some coffee,” I said, following her to the kitchen. 

Jade was at the sink, mixing the powder from her ring in a glass of water. 

“Oh, I have a ring like that,” Lola said, pouring coffee into her mug. “I keep Havelock’s Headache Powder in mine.”

“I wish you had it with you right now. I’ve got a headache that can be seen from space,” Iris said. “I didn’t get four hours’ sleep. All night long that damned Dwarf Palmetto plant next to my bedroom window was scraping against the screen in the breeze. And do you know what?”

“Hmmm,” said Lola, opening the fridge and taking out the container of half and half. 

“It scraped and scraped against that screen and all I could hear was ‘Mildred Olive Witherwax. Mildred Olive Witherwax.’ Over and over.”

I drank Jade’s potion. It was horrible.

“Like Poe’s story, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’” Jade said. “You have a guilty conscience.”

“I do! I feel like I’ve let her down. Jade has saved Henderson Nichols’s manuscript, Valencia is certain to be avenged, but where is justice for Mildred?”

It was true. We’d accomplished a lot, but Mildred’s killer still evaded us. 

I cut a donut in half, hoping the sweet would drown the bitter taste of the stomach powder. Then I cut the donut into fourths and arranged the pieces at each corner of the donut box. 

“Four peanut butter cookies on a plate with, what? Over thirty almond butter cookies. How did the killer know she would eat them?”

 “Four peanut butter cookies, thirty-five almond butter, and eight people in the writing group,” Iris said. “What are the chances? I need a calculator.”

Lola reached over and plucked a quarter of the donut I had cut from the box. “Honey glaze. Not my favorite,” she said, then ate it.

“I think we take four and divide that into thirty-five, then divide eight into that for the percentage,” Jade said. “But I never did well in math class.”

“The chances are so small it’s outside the realm of reality,” Iris said. 

“If you’re serving word problems at breakfast I’m going home,” Lola threatened. “I hate those. ‘If train A left the station at six and train B left at six-fifteen how many miles does train A travel before it collides with train C?’ Who cares? I’d rather fly, anyway.”

“You never could do math,” Iris scolded her. “You didn’t give enough information to solve the problem.”

“How many miles?” I repeated. 

“What about train B? Is there a siding?” Iris wanted to know.

“Lola’s right,” I said, stunned that I hadn’t seen it before. “She’s more than right; she’s a genius. It’s a word problem,” I explained. “It’s all about percentages and probability. Miles.”

Jade was the first to catch on. “Miles Duffy. Math meets murder.”

I pointed at her, then at Iris. “Miles said that on the morning Mildred died Jade and Katie were in the kitchen together, at the sink. Rinsing their cups. I should have seen it then.”

“Jade and Katie avoid each other,” Iris said, taking it all in. “How could they have been the last two in the kitchen that morning?”

“They weren’t.” I took my phone off the charger on the counter and sent Detective Noonan a text.

Miles Duffy killed Mildred
Call when you can & I’ll explain 
The hot sauce was a mistake 

“When is he going to arrest Katie?” Jade wanted to know. “I’ve got to leave for work.”

“What do we do with the manuscript?” Iris asked when Jade had gone into the spare bedroom to collect her things. 

“I don’t know.” I doubted that Jade would part with it, but where was she going to keep it? In her locker in the employee break room at The Reading Renaissance? 

“You said J. B. Scott killed Mildred,” Lola reminded me. She had quietly basked in my praise but was quick to point out that I had made a mistake. 

“Sorry, I’m not depraved enough to think there were two suspects. One was plenty. I’m not like Iris, who enjoys a murder for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

“You know what this is?” yelled Jade from down the hall. “It’s exactly like the plot of ‘You Can’t See the Lollipops for the Suckers.’ Only kind of upside down.”

“Oohhh, she’s right,” acknowledged Iris. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

Jade came back into the kitchen carrying her tote bag and Nichols’s manuscript. “There’s a doctor -”

“-Who wants to get rid of his wife,” I finished for her. 

“So you’ve read it? Pretty great, right?” Jade asked. “You don’t see that last murder coming.”

“He packs a lot in fourteen pages,” agreed Iris. 

A text came through to my phone. 

“Jade, the detective says to leave the manuscript with me,” I said, paraphrasing the text from him. “I’ll hand it over to the detective to keep it safe. You can go to work, home, or the grocery store, but Detective Noonan says he’s going to have to interview you again this week.”

Jade put the grubby bundle – 240 pages in a stained and torn manila envelope – on the table next to the donut box. 

“Thank you all so much,” she said. She knelt and kissed Archie on the nose.

“What is that girl doing going to work?” Lola wanted to know after Jade had gone. “She should be in school.”

I knew that Lola meant high school, because Lola had only ever seen Jade sans makeup, but in a sense she was right. 

“Cesare doesn’t have any spare scholarships he wants to get rid of, does he?” Iris wondered. 

Lola finished off the last quarter of the donut. “Thanks for coffee. My real estate license exam is on Monday, you know, so I’ll be studying all day. Hello, Havelock’s Headache Powder.”

“You need to study, too,” Iris said, getting up from the table. “I’m going to walk Archie. We’ll see you tomorrow”

I didn’t mention that tomorrow was Saturday, our writing group day, and the chance that we would once again meet as goal-oriented, focused writers was slim to none. 

Iris didn’t mention it, either. 

************************************

The siren call of cross-referencing had dimmed. I was inattentive and distracted and had a hard time giving Hans Wellisch my undivided attention. What did I care about main, subheading, and entry arrays? It was a beautiful day outside. Hans Wellisch probably saw blue sky and white castles of clouds and rather than taking a book to read in the shade of a grand old oak, instead hunched over a parchment and scratched out:

Clouds:
Cirrus, high altitude, p. 40 – 41
Cumulus, puffy p. 48
Nimbus, multi-level, amorphous, p. 49 – 52
Stratus, low level, layered, p. 44 – 45

I mean that’s what he would do if he was producing an index guided by alphabetization rather than pagination. Ugh. 

At two on Friday afternoon I gave up. I walked down Briarcliff  Road to Iris’s house and let myself in with the spare key (found under the concrete Meditation Buddha statue on the north side of her house) after she didn’t answer my knock. She was sleeping, having suffered the scratching of the Dwarf Palmetto against her bedroom window all night, but Archie was awake and ready to go. 

We drove to Oakwood Park, just above the UNC Finley Golf Course. There were oaks, and clouds, and picnic tables, along with plenty of scents for Archie to nose around in. 

Detective Noonan met us there. We sat at a picnic table in the shade. I’d brought a thermos of iced tea, water for Archie, and the tote bag Iris had given me.

“I brought this for you to read,” he said, handing me a sheet of paper. “It’s part of Katie Koster’s writing group application.” It was a Xeroxed copy and oriented in a kind of crooked fashion, as if the Xeroxer had been in a hurry.  

My name is Kathleen Traven Koster. ‘Traven’ in honor of the author B. Traven who wrote The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. My father loves his writing that much.
As a child my father had scarlet fever. His convalescence lasted for two years; he was considered ‘delicate’ and had to stay in bed much of the time. He read everything he could get from the small local library, then had the librarian send out to other libraries for more books. He wanted to be a librarian or English teacher but couldn’t afford the schooling so he apprenticed as an electrician instead. 
What I want more than anything in this world is to write an absolutely fantastic mystery and read it to my father, Henry Koster, before he dies. He is 88 years old. He’s in Fernwood. I don’t have much time. 
Please find enclosed my application for your accelerated writing course. 
I look forward to hearing from you –
K. T.  Koster

“Her name is K. T., not Katie.” I looked at the signature again, then slid Nichols’s manuscript from my tote bag. “Take good care of this, please.” 

He nodded. “I spoke with the head nurse of the Memory Care Unit at Fernwood this morning. She said that Henry Koster has been able to have visitors and interact with other patients during the day, but usually becomes vague or confused in the early evening. She told me a lot of the patients are like that, including Thomas Garza. She confirmed that the two men have socialized together in the common room.”

“But if K. T. stole Nichols’s work and read it to her father, it’s still not her own accomplishment.”

“She wanted to give him a wonderful gift and was running out of time. Not everyone thinks analytically when strong emotions are concerned. She started in the writing group with her own material, then discovered Thomas Garza down the hall at Fernwood. Let’s say she saw a rapid means to an end.”

I handed the paper with K. T.’s essay back to him. 

“Detective Keeland questioned Miles Duffy this afternoon. Apparently Miles thought that because Mildred was on a diet she wouldn’t eat any cookies,” he said.

“Is that his defense? Not understanding women?”

“Miles wanted to prove how far-fetched her plots were. It seems there was no malicious intent.” 

“Tell that to Mildred. Why are you looking at me like that?” His head was slightly cocked to the left. Archie did the same when he suspected I might be reaching for a Friendli-Bone or when he spied a squirrel.

“I’m trying to decide if you’re a burden to the taxpayer or a benefit. I’ll leave you and Archie to enjoy the afternoon.” He nodded in the direction of my full tote bag on the table. “Don’t study too hard.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I assured him. “I’ll see you at the party on Monday at Lola’s, after she takes her real estate exam.”

“There’s going to be a party?” 

“What do you think?” I waved and Archie wagged and we watched until Detective Noonan, carrying the rediscovered manuscript, rounded a bend in the path and disappeared from view. I took the worn paperback copy of Anthology of Detective Stories 1978 from my tote bag and opened it to Henderson Nichols’s best known work – so far – and read out loud to Archie:

Everyone in the small village of Tampico knew how much Dr. R. E. Lujan loved his wife.