“I can’t make promises.”
“Of course not.” Jo waved her hands. “I understand.”
I rose to my feet, collecting my empty coffee mug for another refill. “First, I’ll need some supplies.”
“Like what?” Jo followed me into my kitchen.
“Laptop, paper, pencils, and my emergency bag of chocolate-covered peanuts.” I couldn’t handle stress without it.
“Are you going to share?”
“Of course.”
“Okay. And then what?”
“We start with one of the many things librarians do best.”
“What’s that?”
I pulled the bag of chocolates from my hideaway bin. “Research.”
“We’ve been going in circles for almost two hours.” Disgusted, I dropped my pencil on the writing tablet. The top sheet was almost filled with notes. “What do we have?” Feeling the onset of a sugar high, I nudged away the bag of chocolates. Jo and I had started on our second pot of tea.
“We don’t have much.” Jo sounded as frustrated as I felt. The foot of her right leg, crossed over her left, tapped a frantic though silent beat. “Fiona talked a lot while we were planning the signing. I hadn’t realized until now that she hadn’t really said anything substantive.”
“Her social media’s a void. There aren’t photos of family or friends.” I once again clicked through her Facebook photo albums. It was a desperate move. I wasn’t going to see anything I hadn’t seen before.
We’d been able to navigate her Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages because Jo had connected To Be Read’s social media accounts with Fiona’s while they’d planned the signing. Fiona had posted photos of herself at author conferences and workshops, as well as book fairs. There were pictures of her with other published authors and images of her book cover.
“Maybe none of her friends or family had wanted their pictures on the internet.” Jo scanned the notes we’d taken.
Through scrupulous digging online, we’d learned Fiona had been born in South Carolina forty-one years earlier. Most of her past remained a mystery. Where had she gone to school? Why had she relocated to Georgia? Did she have living relatives?
“Why was Betty at the signing?” I asked. Jo was Southern. If it was a regional thing, I figured she could explain it to me.
She made a humming noise. “I’d wondered about that too. Maybe she came because of her son.”
It still didn’t make sense. “Fiona married Buddy Hayes only six months after moving to Peach Coast.”
“Talk about your whirlwind romance.” Her tone was dry. “She blew into town and broke up a marriage.”
Not wanting to judge Fiona, I brought the conversation back to the signing. “Imagine you’re Betty. Would you attend Fiona’s signing?”
Jo shrugged her slender shoulders. “Maybe Betty’s moved on.”
I couldn’t imagine moving that far on. It would be like changing time zones. I clicked through more photos. “Fiona had posted a lot of images of her book cover. She must’ve been excited.”
“She was, and I was happy for her. But she was obnoxious about it all.”
“I can understand why.” I pointed to Fiona’s posts on the computer screen. “She was getting fantastic advance reviews for her book from reputable sites: Publishers Calendar, Suspense/Mystery/Thriller Magazine, Librarians Periodical.” I was especially impressed by that last one.
“That’s one of the reasons I was happy for her. But it didn’t give her license to be a witch to me and my team. She pushed back the event so we could include her book.”
“I can understand that too. If she’s going to act as a liaison between her group and your store, she should get something out of it for her time and trouble.”
“I agree. That was the least objectionable thing she did. I’m working my way up.” Jo shifted on her seat to face me. “She made demands on the store as though I worked for her.”
“I’d have a problem with that too.”
“She wanted to approve all of our publicity materials. She said her book had to appear first on the listing because it was being released by a big publisher. Her words, not mine.”
I blinked. “That’s the kind of information we need, not this sanitized social media stuff.” I waved my hand at my laptop. “If we’re going to find the motive for her murder, we need to learn who Fiona really was.”
“How do we do that?” Jo looked hopeless.
“By talking with people who knew her and knew about her: associates, friends, family. But they may not want to speak with us. You and I are outsiders—”
“A New Yorker and a Gator.”
I ignored her college football reference. “We need someone on the inside who can give us validation with the locals.”
Jo and I had our epiphany at the same time. “Spence.”
Chapter 6
“We should let the deputies do their job.” Spence’s baritone voice came through my cell phone Sunday afternoon. Jo and I had him on speaker. “The deputies can’t build a case against you, Jo. There isn’t any evidence linking you to Fiona’s murder.”
“The deputies are using the fact that she was killed in my store to link me to her murder.” Jo blinked rapidly as though struggling against tears.
Her fear was a tangible presence between us. My heart was breaking for her. What would she tell her team on Tuesday? How would she answer the inevitable questions from well-meaning—and in some cases, purely nosy—neighbors? I could imagine her stress and anxiety. Putting myself in her place, I was even more committed to doing everything I could to help, including persuading Spence to help us.
“Fiona’s murder occurring in your store isn’t enough to bring a case against you to court.” Beneath Spence’s easy Southern speech, I heard the pinging of metal on porcelain. It sounded like he was stirring a spoon inside a mug. The hushed voices in the background must be from the portable radio that stood on his kitchen counter. I recalled the room from the few times
