Murder off the books, p.1
Murder Off the Books, page 1
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2023 by Tamara Berry
Cover and internal design © 2023 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by Monika Roe/Shannon Associates
Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
Excerpt from On Spine of Death Chapter Two
About the Author
Chapter One
Gertrude’s corpse lay at an unnatural angle on the floor of the Paper Trail bookstore. Her pale skin glowed eerily under the lights, her deathly pallor made starker by the winged liner that circled her eyelids like a burlesque raccoon. No one in the store could discern the cause of her death, but it was obvious to any trained eye that—
“Ouch. I think there’s a rock under my hip. Wait a sec.”
The corpse wriggled, shifted, and dislodged a pebble from beneath the waistband of her torn black jeans.
“Never mind,” she said as she popped the rock into her mouth. “It’s just a jelly bean.”
“Gertie, don’t eat that,” Tess cried, but she was too late. Her teenage daughter had already swallowed it. “And stop fidgeting so much. You’re supposed to be dead.”
“If she keeps eating pieces of candy she finds on the floor of the bookstore, she will be dead,” murmured Nicki, hoisting a box of books on her hip as easily as if lifting a baby. Tess couldn’t help but be impressed. She knew from experience that a box of thirty hardback copies of her newest release, Fury under the Floorboards, was no light burden. At a little over four hundred pages, it was her longest book yet.
It was also her most successful book yet, even though it wouldn’t technically hit the shelves until tomorrow. According to her publisher, presales were through the roof—or rather, through the floorboards. Ever since an elusive serial killer had been captured and arrested after decades-old bones had tumbled through this very floor and onto Tess’s head, the entire world had been holding its breath in anticipation of her fictionalized version of events.
“Maybe we should conk Gertie over the head before the launch party tomorrow night,” Tess mused as she watched her daughter’s continued attempts at finding a comfortable resting spot. “For authenticity’s sake. If she’s supposed to look like a corpse, she can’t keep moving around.”
Now that Tess was looking closer, she didn’t think anyone had ever appeared less dead. Not even the veiny blue makeup along the side of Gertrude’s temples could counteract her healthy, blooming glow. Ah, to be fifteen again. Before gravity had taken hold, back when skin cells regenerated themselves without the aid of hundred-dollar face cream, when she could pick up candy off the floor and suffer no more ill effects than—
“Gertie! Stop eating those.” Tess nudged her daughter with her foot. “What’s the matter with you?”
Gertrude sat up and popped another jelly bean into her mouth. “I’m hungry, that’s what. You promised me dinner at the hotel restaurant. How much longer is it going to take to get everything set up?”
Tess looked to Nicki for the answer. She’d wanted to hire an event planner for this—the grand opening of her new bookstore and launch party for the latest installment of her Detective Gonzales series—but Nicki had insisted she could handle it. The tall, willowy librarian not only ran a local bookmobile program, rambling along in a blue truck that covered every nook and cranny of this rural Washington county, but she also happened to be an undercover FBI agent investigating a money-laundering scheme along the Canadian border. At this point, Tess was pretty sure the woman was superhuman.
“That depends…” Nicki consulted a clipboard on the top of the box. “Gertie, you have all the canapés prepped for the party tomorrow evening, right?”
Gertrude gave her a mock salute as she bounced up from the floor. “Aye aye, Captain. Most of it only has to be popped in the oven before it’s ready to go. I still need to assemble the sushi, but we’re having the tuna specially flown in tomorrow so it’s fresh.”
“And the fancy journalist you paid for is coming in on the same flight, right?”
Tess took instant umbrage at this. “I didn’t pay for the journalist. He contacted me of his own volition. He wants to follow me for a week to get a good look at my writing process. It’s for a feature.”
Nicki leveled a look at Tess over the top of the box. “But he’s staying with you?”
“He specifically requested it! He said it helps him get a personalized look at my life.”
“The same week you’re launching your latest book and opening a bookstore?”
“It was the only opening he had in his schedule!”
“When the town also happens to be teeming with fans, movie executives, readers, and every other living being who could feasibly be called a member of the Tess Harrow Fan Club?”
That was taking things too far. “It’s not my fault I draw a crowd. I’m very popular these days. There’s even a murder podcast about me.”
“Ohmigod, Mom.” Gertrude sighed as she finished scanning the bamboo floor for other signs of rogue candy. The floor was brand new, courtesy of the renovations that had transformed the old hardware store into a boutique bookshop, but Tess wouldn’t have eaten anything off it. Especially since she couldn’t remember buying jelly beans at any point in the past six months. “The podcast isn’t about you. It’s about solving murders that the police haven’t been able to figure out.”
“What are you talking about? They mention me all the time.”
Nicki laughed. “Yeah, as the bestselling hack who hacks people up to get a story.”
“One time. They called me that one time before my publisher shut them down.” Tess grabbed her purse, her expert eye running over the bookstore one last time. After six months of hard work, a deadline to meet, and way more murder than any woman should have to encounter in her lifetime, it was finally done. She’d always said that giving birth to Gertrude had been the greatest accomplishment of her life, but getting the Paper Trail up and running was a close second. She had no idea how Nora Roberts made owning a bookstore look so easy. “Besides, that’s what this party is all about, remember? We’re making murder fun again.”
Gertrude snorted. “Just don’t hang that on a sign above the door, and I think we might get away with it.”
Tess did her best to ignore the wave of anxiety this remark brought up. Throwing a murder-themed party as a way to entice customers into her store wasn’t the most traditional way of going about things, but there was a lot more at stake than peddling a few books. Ever since she’d been pulled into not one but two recent criminal investigations, her writing career had taken off in ways she’d never anticipated.
The book sales and movie deals? Fantastic.
The staggering advances her publisher was dangling to keep her happy? Keep ’em coming.
The fact that she was starting to earn a reputation as someone who put her friends and family members in harm’s way for the sake of a story? Not exactly the look she was going for.
One online journal had called her the Black Widow, despite the fact that her ex-husband was still very much alive and kicking. Murder Mary had been the term coined by another journal, this time in reference to Typhoid Mary, a person Tess didn’t enjoy being comp
“Imagine if America’s beloved Murder, She Wrote heroine had been cast as a frumpy soccer mom who wouldn’t know a good subplot if it bit her on the a—”
Tess had stopped reading after that. She could handle being compared to serial killers, but her subplots were amazing, thank you very much. And Gertrude hadn’t played team sports a day in her life.
In an effort to counteract the negative press—and, okay, to show that she wasn’t nearly as frumpy as some of the Associated Press photos made her look—she’d decided to throw a party so charming that not even the hardest-hearted journalist could resist. Tomorrow morning, the bookstore would open its doors for the very first time. Tess would spend all day signing books, after which everyone was invited to attend a murder-themed party, with cupcakes that oozed fake blood and sushi made to look like grotesque body parts. Everyone would eat and drink and be merry, all under the watchful eye of the journalist Tess had—okay, fine—paid to be here. The plan was practically foolproof. As long as everyone avoided eating floor jelly beans, she was sure the event would be a success.
It would be a new stage in her life—hers and Gertrude’s both. With the bookstore opening in town, they were putting down real, lasting roots. The kind that would outlive a few bestselling novels, that would boost the local economy in ways everyone would benefit from.
Not even Typhoid Mary could boast of having such an impact.
“Relax, Mom,” Gertrude said, as if sensing the sudden trend of Tess’s thoughts. She bumped her mother lightly with her hip. “We’ve been planning this thing for months. As long as you feed me before I pass out from malnutrition, we have nothing to worry about.”
Tess could take a hint when it was pouting up at her. Carefully locking the bookstore behind them, Tess ushered her daughter and her best friend down the quaint, old-fashioned main street that led to the hotel.
The town of Winthrop was nothing if not dedicated to its Wild West theme. Every other storefront boasted a false front and rustic wooden slats, and she’d designed the Paper Trail to match. Some people might think it strange to live and work in a tourist trap with fewer than five hundred residents, but Tess wasn’t one of them. There was fresh air, a decent school district, and all her favorite people in the world.
In fact, as long as bodies stopped mysteriously cropping up everywhere she turned, she might even call it perfect.
Chapter Two
“Dahling, there you are!”
As soon as Tess walked into the restaurant attached to the hotel, every instinct she had warned her to flee. That voice was a herald of doom, the death knell to all her hopes and dreams, the one thing—outside of a fresh corpse—that had the power to break her.
And if there’d been any mistaking who it belonged to, Gertrude’s sudden shout of “Grandma!” would have been sure to tip her off.
Tess felt as though she were watching the scene unfold from underwater—or, at the very least, through a thick plate of plexiglass that held the water at bay. Either way, the imminent threat of drowning was present.
“How many times have I told you not to call me that? Call me Bee like everyone else. Grandma makes me feel so old.” Despite the stricture, Bernadette Springer opened her arms to engulf her favorite—and only—grandchild in an enthusiastic hug. She met Tess’s eyes over the top of Gertrude’s head, her expression bland. “Well, dear? Aren’t you going to tell me you’re happy to see me? And introduce me to your friend?”
Tess could only find it in her to comply with the second request. No one—least of all her mother—would buy the first.
“Mom, this is my good friend Nicki,” Tess said, gesturing at the woman next to her. “Nicki, in case you can’t tell, this is my mother. Call her Bee like everyone else. Grandma makes her feel old.”
“Very funny, Tess,” her mother said as she accepted Nicki’s handshake. After one glance at the librarian, who looked more like Iman stepping off a catwalk than a small-town bookmobile driver, she nodded her approval. “I don’t know why any of you insist on living in this godforsaken town. When Dad died, I’d hoped I’d seen the last of it. It doesn’t improve much with age, does it?”
“Neither do you,” Tess muttered under her breath. Only Nicki heard her, so only Nicki choked on a laugh.
“I didn’t know you were coming for a visit,” Gertrude said as she tucked herself into the crook of her grandmother’s arm, which was clad in a pink Chanel suit that Tess knew well. Her mother had been wearing that suit in some form or another since the sixties. Not the literal same suit, since even her mother’s painstaking care couldn’t make tweed last forever, but one of the replicas she kept on rotation. As Jackie O. would’ve done. “Mom never said anything about it.”
“That’s because your mom wanted it to be a surprise, my pet,” Bee said as she nuzzled her granddaughter’s head. This time, her eyes held a look of stern warning. Tess interpreted that warning as it was intended—namely, to pretend that she had prior knowledge of her mother’s descent upon the town. Bee had never been a communicative parent, especially regarding her whereabouts, but Tess was happy to play along. She and her mother had never seen eye to eye on anything except Gertrude.
According to Bernadette Springer, thrice-divorced attorney-at-law and general pain in Tess’s backside, Tess had lousy taste in men and questionable fashion sense. Her career was a fluke, her personal life in shambles. Nothing she’d ever done had been good enough for the Springer family line…with the exception of bringing into it a child as intelligent and full of life as Gertrude.
“When I heard your mother was throwing a big gala in celebration of her new book, wild horses couldn’t keep me away,” Bee said with another of those stern looks. “She knows how much I love a gala.”
“Gala is an awfully strong word,” Tess said, her heart sinking. Since her mother sat on the boards of no fewer than three national charitable organizations, gala was a loaded term. Emphasis on the loaded. “I’d call it more of a light party.”
Bee arched one of her eyebrows. They were thin and villainous, the inevitable outcome of the over-plucking trend of the nineties, but the style had always suited her. If anyone looked like she planned to skin a pack of Dalmatians in the pursuit of high fashion, it was this woman. “You’ll be wearing a dress?”
“Yes, but I draw the line at pantyhose, so don’t even try.”
Bee conveniently ignored this. “Food?”
“Of course. Gertie is doing most of the catering.”
“Champagne?”
“Technically, it’s more of a sparkling wine.”
Not even this blow could quell her mother’s fervor. “If it looks like a gala and tastes like a gala, then I’m calling it a gala. Now. Where are we having dinner tonight?”
Tess recognized this as the double-edged question it was. Most people would take one look at the scene around them, with wagon wheels arranged artfully on the walls and the mounted animal heads looking them over, and assume dinner would take the shape of a fifteen-ounce steak brought out on the end of a pitchfork. Which, incidentally, was what Tess had been looking forward to all day. Her mother’s distastefully wrinkled nose broadcast what she thought of such a rustic offering.
Fortunately, Gertrude came to the rescue before any lines of battle could be drawn.
“We’re eating here, of course,” the girl said without a trace of irony. “They have the best burgers in town. You can get a regular burger, a buffalo burger, or—if you’re really lucky—one of the chef’s specials.”
“This place has a chef?”
Gertrude giggled and began dragging her grandmother toward a booth near the back. It was located underneath the scraggly visage of an elk who’d long ago lost one of its glossy black eyes. “Well, he’s more of an enthusiastic amateur, but it still counts. If you guess which animal was ground up to make the special burger, you get it for free. I was super close last time. I said ostrich, but it was really yak.”
The look that Bee cast over her shoulder at Tess was one that she planned to store up and protect in her heart for years to come. Save me, that look said. This child of yours is an abomination against nature. Tess only waggled her fingers playfully at her. If her mother was going to start popping up in town unannounced and sporting a haircut that looked like a shellacked helmet from a sixties time capsule, then she could eat an ostrich. Or a yak.
