Murder Between the Covers

“Well, well, somebody had a good night,” Margery said.

She looked like a grape Popsicle in a purple shorts outfit that showed off her tanned legs. At seventy-six, Margery had legs most women would envy.

Helen took a big bite of croissant so she wouldn’t have to answer.

Margery sipped her coffee, lit a cigarette, and said, “How’s the investigation going, Sherlock?”

“I think I have a lead.” Helen didn’t mention that everything she found out so far made Peggy guiltier. “It’s Albert.

When I asked him where he was the night Page died, he got angry and refused to tell me.”

“He sounds guilty, all right. Albert the one with the stick up his ass?”

Helen nodded.

“Those are the worst kind.” Margery blew a massive cloud of smoke. “What’s his motive?”

“He’s fifty-six, has an old mother to support, no health insurance if he loses this job, and no prospects for more work.”

“Turner took everything from him. A stupid thing to do.

How will you find out what this Albert was doing?”

“I’ll think of something,” Helen said, licking the last of the chocolate croissant off her fingers. “I’d better get to work. I’m due in at nine.”

It’s like love, Sarah had told her. Just let it happen natu-rally. Well, love had happened last night. Maybe Albert’s alibi would happen, too.

“He’s so vicious,” Brad said. “Do you know what Albert did?” The little bookseller was in the break room, trembling with anger. His color was a dangerous red.

“He showed me this.” He had a magazine, rolled up as if he was going to swat a puppy.

“I didn’t even know it existed.” Brad looked ready to shred the magazine with his bare hands. “This piece of trash makes fun of J.Lo’s... demeans her ...”

“Her what?” Helen said.

“Her derriere! How can they do this to a sweet, sensitive woman?”

He unrolled a MAD magazine. Helen hadn’t read one since she was a kid, but it didn’t look much different. Brad found the offending page with shaking fingers, a satire called “People Who Should Have Won This Year’s Nobel Prizes.”

MAD gave an honorable mention for the Nobel prize for chemistry to “Jennifer Lopez... who in conjunction with Du Pont, developed a synthetic fabric capable of containing her ass.” The cartoon showed Lopez with PASS and DON’T PASS signs on her bulging bottom.

For Brad’s sake, Helen suppressed a smile.

“It’s so sexist,” said the skinny bookseller, whose own rear was flat as Nebraska. “J.Lo is not fat. She’s not like these half-starved actresses. She’s a grown woman with curves.”

“That she is,” Helen said. “If more entertainers were built like her, life would be easier for the average woman.

Brad, this won’t hurt J.Lo. Her fans know better.”

“It’s mean,” Brad said. “I don’t read MAD. I wouldn’t have seen it and it wouldn’t have upset me. But Albert couldn’t wait to show it to me.”

“Albert’s gotten meaner since the store-closing rumors started,” Helen said.

“Those aren’t rumors, sweetie. This place will be history soon.”

It was natural to go to the next topic, Helen thought. As natural as falling in love. “I know Albert hated what Page was doing. No one seems to know where he went that Friday evening. Do you think he killed Page Turner?”

Brad started, then his face lit with a malicious smile. “I know what he was doing that night. I saw him, quite by accident. He swore me to secrecy. He had to. It was awful.”

“Tell me,” Helen whispered.

“That would break my vow. But I can show you. Then I won’t be telling you, will I? Albert doesn’t deserve my secrecy. Not after what he did.”

“When can I see?” said Helen.

“Tonight. He can’t stop himself. He does it three or four times a week. Meet me in front of the store at nine p.m.

And wear black.”

Wear black? What was Albert doing at night? Was he a burglar? A grave robber?

The hands crawled around the clock. Finally, it was nine and she was in black, waiting in front of the bookstore.

Brad picked her up in a rusty little blue car that looked like a running shoe. They chugged into the lot of a chain bookstore. A sign at the door announced, OPEN-MIKE POETRY NIGHT—9:00 P.M. TONIGHT.

“What are we doing here?” Helen said.

“Shhh. Don’t talk,” Brad said. “Sit in the back row on the floor and keep your head down. If he spots you, he’ll bolt.”

About forty black-clad poetry lovers were perched on folding chairs or sprawled on the floor. A young woman with luminous white skin was standing in front of the microphone, reciting her poem in a flat, uninflected voice.

“My milk is the feast of goddesses. My right breast is Juno. My left is Hera,” she droned.

“Aren’t they the same person?” Helen whispered.

“It’s about feelings, not facts,” Brad said. People gave them dirty looks. Brad shut up.

“And from my womb flows Venus and rebellion,” the poet said in a monotone, then stopped. The audience applauded loudly. The poem was over.

A thin man who looked like Ichabod Crane in a beret stepped up to the microphone. He was dressed entirely in black, like a Beat poet of fifty years ago. It was Albert.

Helen hardly recognized him without his stiff white shirt.

He adjusted the microphone and began reading in a high, thin voice:

“Pain.

“Pain.

“Pain is a red scream in my head.

“Pain is a cry in my heart ...”

“Pain is listening to this,” Helen whispered.

“I told you it was awful. Page Turner deserved to die.

The English language does not deserve this torture.”

“Shhh!” someone hissed.

Helen had seen enough. She and Brad scooted to the end of the row and ducked out the back.

“Lord, that was awful,” Helen said. “No wonder Albert didn’t want me to know what he was doing.”

“At a competing bookstore, too,” Brad said. “He’s addicted to open-mike poetry nights. Hits all the bookstores and coffeehouses. Saturdays, he does two. ”

“Why didn’t anyone laugh at his bad poetry?”

“Because they’ll be getting up and reading their own bad poetry.”

“But I don’t understand why a sensitive poet like Albert would read a true crime book called Smother Love. ”

“Isn’t that the one about Darryl Eugene Crow? He’s known as the prison poet. His poetry sounds a lot like Albert’s.”

“Thank you for showing me, Brad. That was painful, but instructive.”

“I want this book, but it’s too expensive.” Muffy the preppy psychic was holding a fat volume called Cooking with the Stars: A Guide to Astrology and Food. She was dressed almost like the preppy prowler in a pink shirt and khakis. The pink made her hair look blond. She was almost pretty.

“Can you buy this for me with your employee discount?”

“No,” Helen said. “I could get fired.”