I ran out of time and energy on Sunday evening, so when Lu dropped off Tuck’s “Mason for Sheriff” sign I slipped it behind the counter for Monday morning. When I came in about Noon, as scheduled, Marcus had already done his magic with both the sign and a display around it. He’d hung Tuck’s sign off to one side of the display, prominently but not absurdly so, and at the top of the window, he’d made a banner that said, “Good Cops/Bad Cops” with an arrow from “Good Cops” pointing down to Tuck’s sign. It was lovely.
The books around the signs were perfect, too. He had displayed The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale, Mindhunter by John E. Douglas, and Richard Scary’s A Day at the Police Station among other titles that both supported police officers and critiqued them. It was a thoughtful display, one that didn’t laud police officers as perfect or glamorize their tough jobs but that also brought up what I knew Marcus and I believed to be real needs for reform in policing, reforms that Tuck not only supported but had also started to implement in his position.
I knew we’d get some flak for some of the titles from the people who hung the “blue line” flags outside their houses, but honestly, I didn’t care. Another perk of running my own business was that I could sell and display what I wanted, as long as I was ready for the blowback.
On the other side of the store, Marcus had picked up where I had left off the night before with my tree display. Cate had created a lovely, simple tree trunk and branches from some craft paper and a little paint, and then she’d hung photographs – her medium of choice – of tree leaves all around the branches. Then, I’d tucked book holders into the branches.
Now, Marcus had filled all those holders with the books I’d picked out and some more he’d found on our shelves including The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben and a couple of wonderfully illustrated picture books. The contrast between the two windows was stark – with the police display being sparse and largely monochromatic because of the covers and this one feeling sumptuous and lush with all the greenery. When I stepped outside, each window felt captivating in its own way, and I was sure we’d see an uptick in sales of these titles immediately.
It had apparently been quite a slow morning because not only had Marcus, with the help of Rocky, gotten the displays up, but he had also taken the time to make a list of the titles in each window as well as other related titles. Then, he’d made copies of those lists and placed them on a small table next to each display. Finally, he’d ordered at least one copy of every book on the list so that we’d have them the next day if someone asked for a particular book. It was a brilliant bit of marketing on his part, and I was grateful for all his work.
“Did you let Tuck know about what you’ve done?” I asked Marcus as he petted Taco behind his ears and made him groan.
“No, I thought you’d want to show him. It was your idea.” My assistant manager was far too humble.
“Well, I’m going to tell him it was your idea because it was, and a brilliant one at that.” I took out my phone and texted Tuck to ask him to come by, and then I sent Lu a similar text, knowing she might be too slammed to come for a few hours. Lunch was always her busiest time.
But surprisingly, they both came in a few minutes later, arm in arm. Tuck was in jeans and a polo, and Lu had a flowered skirt. Clearly, neither of them was working today. “Good for you for taking a day off,” I said as I hugged both of them at the same time.
“We needed a break, and Watson has things handled at the station.”
I giggled a little. “Does he ever call you Sherlock?” I quipped.
Tuck rolled his eyes. “You are too bookish for your own good, Harvey.” He grinned. “I left my pipe at home.” He turned back to the front window. “That display is amazing, Harvey. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me; thank Marcus. He did it.” I pointed toward my assistant, who was helping an older man select a presidential biography. “I hope it’s okay.” I was suddenly a little nervous that we might have overstepped or made things difficult for Tuck.
Lu reached out and squeezed my arm. “It’s more than okay. This is exactly the kind of platform that Tucker is running on, right?”
Tuck nodded. “You know I’ve been making some changes in how we do things here, and this display highlights that in just the right way. I couldn’t critique other police officers, but between you and me, I think we need a major change in how we do things. This display captures that but doesn’t have to come from me.” He smiled again. “Thank you, sir.”
Marcus stepped up from behind me. “You’re welcome.” The two men wandered over to the window as they talked about which titles Marcus had chosen and why.
“He seems a little better today,” I said.
Lu nodded. “He is. It helps that he found Joe Cagle last night.”
“Oh, wow. Great.” I wanted to ask about four hundred questions, but I knew Lu wouldn’t tell me anything. She was very cautious about sharing things about Tuck’s work and for good reason. Too much chatter could really compromise an investigation. “I hope that what Cagle said was helpful.”
“It was,” she smiled and then moved me toward the café. “Now, let’s get some coffee.” It was clear that she and I would not be talking about Cagle any further just then.
We got our decaf drinks and sat down at the café table nearest the register, just in case Marcus needed me to ring someone up, and I enjoyed the companionable silence with my friends for a few minutes.
But then she said, “I was wondering if you wanted to help me with a fundraiser at the library.”
The statement was so out of the blue that it took my brain a minute to catch up. “A library fundraiser? Are they short on money?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea, but I figure more books can’t hurt, right?” She avoided eye contact with me, so I knew something was up. But I trusted my friend.
I nodded. “Right.” Her points were solid. Every library could always use more funds, but this looked like more than just a general fundraiser. “But there’s more, right?”
“Sidney was one of my best customers.” Lu’s eye were shining. “I want to do something to honor him. He was a good man.”
“He was,” I said. Every time someone said that to me, I wished I’d taken the time to get to know him better. “I’d be happy to help. What did you have in mind?”
“Oh good. I was hoping you’d say that because I already talked to your mom this morning.” She grinned, and I sighed.
“Of course you did.” And as if on cue, the bell over the shop door rang, and my mother walked in like she was entering a red carpet gala. Of course, my mother always walked that way. Her poise was impeccable, which is one of the many characteristics that made her a stellar fundraiser. She’d done this kind of work for years when my dad ran his company in Baltimore, and now that she was here in St. Marin’s, she’d already made quite the reputation raising money for organizations big and small in the area.
Mom sat down and took my hand. “Luisa has told you her idea?”
Total Mom move there, to assume I’d said yes, but then she knew me and that I was always in for a good cause. “We were just getting to that,” I said as I turned to Lu.
“I was thinking we could have a food truck fair in the library parking lot,” Lu said with glee. My friend wasn’t someone who exuded delight. She was usually warm-hearted but a little reserved. Today, though, I could almost imagine her clapping her hands like a little child with a new toy might.
“Exactly. We’ll do up the parking lot with lights and borrow some picnic tables. I thought the library could open their book sale up again, and we’d ask all the vendors to donate a portion of the proceeds,” Mom added.
I could picture it, and it sounded lovely . . . and if I could picture it, Mom had already gotten all the details worked out in her mind. And I knew from experience that as simple as this sounded, my mother would want to go whole hog on the event.
“I think that sounds amazing. When are we thinking?” I braced myself because Mom did not do long timelines for these kind of things.
“Friday night,” Lu almost shouted. She really was excited.
I took a deep breath. “We have four and half days to pull this off. Can we really do this? And isn’t Friday night a big food truck night over in Annapolis?”
“That’s the beauty,” Mom said without even a second’s hesitation. “Lu has already contacted ten trucks who usually sell over there on the waterfront, and they’ve agreed to come here.” She stopped talking, and I could see big caveat coming.
“How many people do we have to guarantee we’ll bring out?” I took a deep breath while I waited for them to answer.
“A thousand,” Lu said quietly.
I poked my fingers into my eyes as I tried to get my mind around the fact that we had already committed to bring out a thousand people in a town whose entire population was just over eleven hundred. I sighed, shook my head, and said, “Okay. I’ll contact Galen and ask Marcus’s mom to get out a special newsletter tomorrow. What are you two doing for marketing?”
Mom pulled her purse off her lap and took out postcards. The front side featured an artistic rendering of Lu’s own food truck, and the back had all the details of the event. “We’re distributing these here in town and all the way over to Easton.”
I took a card and held it up. “Cate did these for you?”
“One of her artists did.” Mom smiled. “Stephen and Walter are coordinating the vendors with Lu’s help, and Lucas is baking his brains out so we have lots of cupcakes to sell.”
“So I was the last to know?” I wasn’t sure why that bothered me so much. This wasn’t my gig after all, but it did.
“Only because we wanted to be sure we had everything in place before we asked you to do one more thing for us,” Mom said, squeezing my fingers tight. “Are you still in touch with Laura Lippman?”
I groaned. “Yes, but five days is very short notice—”
Mom interrupted me. “I know, but she lives over in Baltimore, right? It’s not that far, and maybe she’d like the chance to do something casual and fun.”
I sighed. “Alright. I’ll ask. But don’t bank on that, and please don’t advertise it until we have details worked out.”
“No problem. We’ve just told everyone there will be a special guest, so we can make that anyone we want.” Mom was so optimistic, but I could just imagine a thousand people being markedly disappointed if I was the special guest, as it seemed might be likely if Laura wasn’t available.
I had been fortunate enough to meet Laura Lippman at a mystery writers conference a few months ago. We’d hit it off in the restaurant one night and had stayed in touch casually. And by casually I mean that I liked her posts on Facebook, and once in a while she liked something I shared about the store. It wasn’t exactly a deep and robust friendship.
But I knew Mom was right. Adult people could always say no to anything they didn’t want to do, and so I got onto Messenger and sent Laura a message. “Any chance you’d be up for a small-scale charity reading for our local library this Friday?”
I was not expecting an immediate reply, but the three dots that meant she was typing came up almost instantly. “I’m in town and have no plans. Where and when?”
I stared at the screen for a minute then quickly typed a word of gratitude and all the details, using the card Mom had let me keep since I didn’t even know the details myself yet.
“Great,” she replied, “And before you ask, no honorarium necessary if I can stay at your house.”
I took a deep breath. “Of course,” I typed, trying to sound all casual. “Home-cooked breakfast on Saturday morning.”
“Perfect. I’ll come in about two on Friday. Text me the address.” She included her phone number and a smiley emoji.
In the quick exchanges of notes, I’d lost track of Mom and Lu, but when I looked up, they were both grinning. “From the look on your face, I’d say she agreed,” Mom said.
“Yes, she did, and she’s staying at my house.” I’d had the privilege of meeting several famous people, and a few of them had even come for other events here in St. Marin’s. But no one had stayed at my house before. This was going to add a wonderful new level of stress to the weekend.
“Okay, that’s settled, so now we can start promoting seriously?” Lu said. “What’s our fundraising goal again?”
Mom smiled. “I say we go big, especially with a wonderful special guest. Ten thousand dollars?”
“Perfect,” Lu said as she turned to look at me. “What do you think, Harvey?”
I was a bit dumb-founded honestly, but when I got my breath I said, “That’s a lot of tacos.”
Lu laughed. “Yes, yes it is.”
The number of customers in the store had grown while we talked, so after telling Mom and Lu to let me know what else they needed help with, I went back to the floor to help Marcus answer questions and ring up sales. I would have to process the fact that one of my favorite mystery writers was coming to my house another time.
A few sales and a few YA title recommendations to a young man with a wonderful preference for all things Royal, including a deep love of Caraval, and I was delighted to find Tuck in a wingback chair reading The Long Fall by Walter Mosley. Typically the sheriff was much more of a literary fiction man, but I’d recently recommend Mosley’s work as contemporary noir. Tuck had said he’d check it out, and here he was, a man of his word.
I dropped into the chair next to him, and he tore his eyes away from what must have been an exciting scene to look at me. “Lu run her idea by you?” he asked with a grin.
“If by ‘run by’ you mean ‘steamroll,’ then yes.” I sighed. “It’s a good idea, but I do wish we could plan something with a little more lead time at some point.”
Tuck chuckled. “You won’t get any arguments from me on that count.”
I studied my friend for a minute before I said, “Lu didn’t tell me anything except that you found Joe Cagle. I don’t want to pry—”
“Of course you want to pry, Harvey. That’s just who you are. I did find Cagle. He was holed up at a motel outside of town.” Tuck took out his handkerchief and slipped it gently into the pages of the book to mark his place.
“Oh, wow. So he was hiding?” I asked.
“Yeah, but not because he was hiding from me. He was terrified.” Tuck shook his head. “Wasn’t making much sense, but I brought him to the station on the promise that he could stay in the cell with an officer nearby twenty-four seven until we caught Sidney’s killer.”
I frowned. “Cagle didn’t kill him then?”
“I don’t think so, but you know I don’t rule anything out.” He lifted one corner of his mouth as he said his usual refrain. “He’s really scared, like he saw something.”
“He saw Sidney be killed?” I was fishing here, and I knew it.
Tuck sighed. “I’m really not sure. I’m hoping that some good sleep, a good helping of Lu’s food, and a sense of safety will calm him down enough to get a clear statement.” He looked at his watch. “Speaking of which, I should check on him.”
I stood with my friend. “It’s your day off. Can’t Watson handle it?”
“This from the woman who can’t stay away from her own store on her own days off?” He winked. “I’ll just be in there a minute. Assess Cagle’s state.”
Lu came up behind him. “That’s right. One quick stop and then we’re off to dinner and movie. You promised.”
“I am a man of my word,” Tuck said as he kissed Lu’s cheek. “See you later, Harvey.”
I smiled as my friends left and then let the panic over the fundraiser in under five full days rise up until I quelled it with my usual treatments of rapid action and lists.
By the time the store closed a few hours later, Mart was planning a breakfast of champions for Saturday morning, my dear friends Henri and Bear had agreed to take Laura out for dinner before the event on Friday, and Galen and Mrs. Dawson were on top of publicity through their usual channels.
Marcus and I closed up shop, and I headed home with two pups who were eager to sniff and pee on the entire world, it seemed. But a slow, leisurely stroll was okay with me since my brain felt a little overstuffed. I tried to quell my excitement and nervousness about Laura Lippman’s visit by thinking about Sidney’s murder. What I couldn’t quite figure out was why Joe Cagle was so very terrified. He wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet of a person, and physically, he was big and appeared strong. It occurred to me, as I walked, that Tuck hadn’t told me the cause of death, but maybe the way Sidney had died had something to do with why Cagle was so scared. I almost let curiosity get the best of me and texted Tuck to ask, but I remembered it was his day off and thought about how stressed he had been. I let it go.
Mayhem, Taco, and I were just about to turn onto our street when I saw a flash of movement just to my right. I turned, expecting to see one of those very quiet electric cars driving by, but instead, I caught a glimpse of a light blue bicycle helmet and a reflective blue shirt. The bike had been very close, and I jumped back, even though the rider was far past me at that point.
I stared after it for a while, frustrated by their carelessness but also feeling a little tickle of something else – familiarity maybe. But getting all worked up wasn’t going to help, especially since the bike was long out of sight and headed toward downtown. So I gave the dogs a gentle tug and let them lead me on toward home.