Alice’s sequined clutch buzzed on the formica tabletop, and everyone around the table stared at it.
A couple of hours had passed since she’d discovered Vince’s body, and Chief of Police James Sapling, Jr. had gathered Alice, Bunce, and Kris in a booth at the local diner. As Kris had mentioned, the place was called What the Dickens Diner, and on the walls hung framed illustrations from Charles Dickens’ books. The one by their booth was of Oliver Twist asking for another serving of gruel.
The baby-faced chief of police and Bunce sat on one side, with Kris and Alice on the other.
All four stared at the clutch, waiting for the buzzing to stop.
Finally, silence.
“Let’s begin,” the chief of police said.
Alice’s knowledge of police procedure came mostly from books and episodes of Law & Order, but she was pretty sure this wasn’t the right way to do a police interview.
“Shouldn’t you be questioning us individually, Chief Sapling?”
“Jimbo.”
Alice wasn’t sure what that meant. As the chief of police checked a little book he had by his side and scribbled on a notepad, she looked to Kris and Bunce for help.
Across the formica table, Bunce was busy perfecting his frown. Kris, who sat next to Alice, whispered, “He prefers Jimbo. Chief Jimbo. Chief Sapling was what everyone called his dad.”
His dad? Did this mean that the role of police chief was handed down from father to son in Blithedale?
And what was that book the chief of police consulted every two minutes? He closed it and Alice got a glimpse of the cover: The Police Chief Companion: 21 Days to Killing It On the Job.
Her first impression—that Chief Jimbo wasn’t your usual, stereotypical gray-haired chief of police, and that it was nice to see a younger man in the job—suddenly took on new meaning. He was an inexperienced kid.
“Nothing in the book about that,” he said. “Besides, Miss Hartford, this is a single cop town. We have to be efficient. Nobody’s got any secrets here, especially not in a simple case like this.”
“Look, I saw someone,” Alice said. “I saw—”
Chief Jimbo held up a hand and smiled. “Hold on. We may be efficient, but we also have to wait our turn. That’s only polite.”
He glanced from person to person, and finally settled on Bunce. “Mr. Bunce, why don’t you tell me what happened?”
Bunce proceeded to complain about how he’d had to deal with Vince that morning as well as a whole string of menial tasks. “Owning that business has been a curse from day one. Twenty years of torture. And now this. I’ll be glad to sell the damn place to the Oriels and finally retire.”
He explained how Kris had come to the bookstore to fetch him for a meeting at the diner with a couple named Mr. and Mrs. Oriel who were interested in buying the bookstore. Alice remembered that Kris had mentioned them.
“And you met this young lady, too,” Chief Jimbo said. He was far too young to refer to Alice as young lady.
Just then Alice’s phone rang again, her clutch buzzing.
“I did,” Bunce said and gave Alice a disapproving look. “But she stayed at the bookstore while Kris and I came over here.”
“So you didn’t see Vince’s accident?”
Bunce shook his head.
Next Chief Jimbo asked Kris to recount what she’d seen. Her story matched Bunce’s perfectly, only she added a bit more detail about first meeting Alice, sharing how worried she’d been to see a woman in a wedding dress, obviously in a state of distress. She turned to Alice. “I should’ve stayed and made sure you were all right. Maybe if I hadn’t been so busy with the sale, this tragedy wouldn’t have happened.”
“Which brings us to you, Miss Hartford.”
“I arrived at the bookstore around noon,” she said.
“And where were you coming from?”
“From the city.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“From church.”
Chief Jimbo blinked. Then stared down at his notepad, his cheeks turning red. Alice noticed that he wore no ring. “Guess we don’t need more details on that,” he mumbled. Then said, “All right, tell me what happened in the bookstore.”
Alice proceeded to summarize what had happened, though she simply said that she’d sat down in a reading nook to read, leaving out the details about the red door and her hideaway and the connection she felt to Blithedale Books. She had no desire to share her story—that was between her and her mom.
“Then I heard a loud crash. It startled me. I accidentally kicked open the door.”
Chief Jimbo raised his eyebrows. “The door to the bookstore?”
Alice hesitated. “I mean, I kicked out, startled. And nearly tripped someone. They ran past me.”
“Who was it?”
“I didn’t see.”
Chief Jimbo wrote something on his notepad, ending his scrawl with a flurry.
“Well, thank you all for your testimonies. You’ve been so helpful.” He smiled at them all, getting a smile back from Kris and a sour frown from Bunce. “I’ll be in touch if I need anything from you. Miss Hartford, do you have an address I can reach you at? Or a phone number?”
He stared at the sequined clutch on the table. They all were. It was buzzing again.
“I’ll be staying at a hotel,” Alice said. “And here’s my number.”
She rattled off the numbers. Then added, as she continued to ignore her phone’s insistent buzzing, “Although, if you need me urgently, maybe call the hotel. I don’t always answer my phone. Except, I don’t know which hotel I’m staying a yet.”
Chief Jimbo smiled. “Pemberley Inn. It’s the only one in town.”
He scooted out of the booth, gathering up his book and notepad. In the process, he knocked over a coffee cup. The black liquid sloshed onto his pants.
“Oh, shoot.”
He grabbed a napkin and dabbed at it. His uniform, Alice noted, already had a long yellow streak down the front. A mustard stain, no doubt.
“When will you know more about what happened at the bookstore?” she asked.
For a moment, he looked confused. He balled up the napkin and tossed it on the table. He opened his book, flipped through the pages, and said, “Well, first, we secure the scene and document everything. That’s done. Then we notify the coroner. Also done. Interviewing witnesses. Done. So, really, there’s just preparing the report. Then there’ll be a funeral and we can all—” He gazed off in the distance, a sailor who’s relieved to see land. “—move on with our lives.”