Bookplate Special: A Booktown Mystery Part 26

"I pay him better than average, but it's still not enough to make ends meet. I just hope he doesn't quit on me." Angelica handed Tricia a towel. "Dry off, and we'll see if we can't find those papers you're looking for."

Before Tricia could remove her ap.r.o.n, a voice called out from the dining room. "Ms. Miles."

"Oh, no," she groaned, recognizing Captain Baker's voice.

"Which Ms. Miles do you think he's calling?" Angelica asked.

"We'd better both go, although my being here is sure to make him angry--and he wasn't in a good mood when he left my store."

Angelica led the way back to the dining area. "Captain Baker, how nice to see you again." What an actress! She actually sounded pleased to see the man. "Did I tell you my cookbook, Easy-Does-It Cooking, is going to be published on June first?"

"Yes. More than once." He looked past her, and saw Tricia. "What are you doing here?"

Tricia indicated the damp ap.r.o.n still covering her sweater and the front of her slacks. "Helping my sister. She's shorthanded."

"Bull! You came over here to see if those diary pages were here."

"Well, you can rest a.s.sured they're not," Angelica said. "If they were, I'd have seen them in the last four days."

"I did take a peek behind the counter, but couldn't find them," Tricia admitted. "And if I had found them, of course I would have turned them over to you. I want you to find Pammy's killer before someone else gets hurt or dies."

"Do you mind if I have a look?" Baker asked.

"You'd better say yes, Ange. He's already threatened me with a warrant."

He shot a blistering glare in Tricia's direction.

"Of course you can look," Angelica said. "But if you tear the place apart, you're going to put it back the way it was." There was no arguing with that tone.

Baker's hostility backed off a couple of points. "Thank you."

"Why don't you start under the counter?" Angelica suggested. He moved away. "Tricia, I think you should go back to your store now. Thank you for helping me with the dishes." She said it loud enough for Baker to hear her.

Tricia untied the ap.r.o.n and handed it to her sister, making a show of it. "You're welcome. If you get in a jam again, you know you can always count on me."

"I'll hold you to it," Angelica whispered. "And I'll give you a full report the minute he leaves."

Tricia nodded and headed for the door.

"We'll talk later, Ms. Miles," Baker told her again.

Not a threat, a promise.

NINETEEN.

Tricia glanced at her watch. She'd been gone a lot longer than she'd expected--and with nothing to show for it but chapped hands. Another Sheriff's Department cruiser was now parked outside the Cookery, but its driver was inside Haven't Got a Clue--and so was a crowd of customers, with no one to serve them. A chagrined Ginny sat on one of the chairs in the nook while Deputy Henderson grilled her.

Tricia jumped behind the register. It took nearly ten minutes before she'd taken care of those ready to pay and be on their way, before she could finally leave her post to join Ginny.

Henderson slapped his notebook closed. "Thank you, Ms. Wilson. You've been very helpful."

"I don't see how. I told you, I don't know anything."

The deputy nodded to Tricia and headed for the door.

"Are you okay?" Tricia asked once the deputy had left.

Ginny nodded. "But my friends are going to kill me for dropping a dime on them."

Tricia couldn't help but smile at the phrase. Ginny must've picked it up from one of the mysteries in stock--or was she more street savvy than Tricia had believed?

"No luck finding those missing pages?" Ginny asked.

Tricia shook her head. "I didn't think I would." She thought back to her last encounter with Jason Turner. "Only one person I know read those pages. Jason Turner opened that envelope. He read the pages that Pammy mailed to Stuart Paige. But if Captain Baker is still looking for them, Turner must not have told Paige or the rest of his entourage what they said."

"What makes you think they're so important? I mean, if she took them out, maybe she didn't want Paige to see them."

Tricia hadn't thought of that. The references to the baby's father were vague--maybe deliberately so. Could Pammy have concocted the whole diary-blackmail scheme by writing a fake diary?

No. She wasn't that smart.

Could the missing pages point the finger at the real father, making the diary useless as a blackmail tool? That made a lot more sense. Had she destroyed them? Knowing Pammy, that didn't seem likely, either.

"How are you going to get this Paige guy to talk?" Ginny asked. "He doesn't know you. He's got no reason to tell you anything."

"That's true, but I've got nothing to lose by trying." Tricia glanced at her watch. Almost two o'clock. "I hate to keep asking you to cover for me, but--"

Ginny waved a hand in the direction of the door. "Go!"

Tricia went to get her coat from its peg at the back of the store. But first, she made a brief stop in her apartment to pick up something--something that might be the key to getting her inside Paige's hospital room.

The medical center's brightly lit corridors were buzzing with activity. Scrubs-clad nurses came and went, monitoring equipment beeped and buzzed, and as visiting hours were in full swing, people in street clothes seemed to be everywhere.

Tricia thought the hospital might refuse to tell her Stuart Paige's room number, but when she asked at the lobby reception desk, they directed her to the third floor.

The door to Paige's room was open. She stepped inside. He lay on the bed, which was cranked up to a semi-sitting position. Eyes closed, he looked pale, and older than he had a mere six hours ago.

"Mr. Paige?" Tricia called softly.

The door to the private room's bathroom opened, and a figure stepped out. "What are you doing here? Get out!" Turner ordered.

"Jason?" came a feeble voice from within the room.

Tricia looked back to the rumpled figure on the bed. Paige's eyes were now open.

"I'm sorry, sir, but you have an unwanted guest."

Turner grabbed Tricia's elbow to usher her out.

"No, let her come in," Paige said, his voice weak.

Turner let loose, and Tricia tiptoed into the room.

"Please, sit down," Paige said, indicating the chair next to his bed.

Tricia took the offered seat. Why was it hospitals provided only uncomfortable chairs for visitors? She clutched her purse on her lap, unsure of what to say. Paige solved that problem.

"You were at the Food Shelf's dedication. And at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast this morning."

"I'm sorry I arrived too late to hear most of your speech."

His smile was weak. "I don't think you missed much."

"I don't know--a new dialysis center could be a boon for Stoneham."

"It will certainly be a boon to dialysis patients in the tristate area. A press release went out earlier today. It'll be on the news tonight, if you're truly interested."

Which explained why Russ had attended this particular Chamber meeting.

"And you are?"

"Tricia Miles. I own the mystery bookstore in Stoneham--Haven't Got a Clue."

"And do you?" he asked.

"Do I what?"

"Have a clue?" He leaned back against his pillow. "Jason has told me about the diary and the pages your friend sent to my office. Now you'll want to know about my relationship with Marcie Jane Collins--everybody else does."

Tricia swallowed. The woman who'd died when Paige had crashed his car into Portsmouth Harbor. "Did she have your baby?"

He blinked. "That's a new one. Everyone else wants to know about the night she died."

"I read the story on the Internet. M.J. died about a year after she gave birth to a child. A child she apparently gave up for adoption. Was it your child?" she asked again.

Paige sighed, looking even more tired.

"Sir, you don't have to answer this woman's questions. You don't even have to put up with her being in this room," Turner said.

Paige waved a weak hand to quiet his employee. "It's going to come out eventually. I'd rather tell my story to this young lady than to a TV reporter."

"Sir, we can issue a statement. There's no need to--"

"Jason, why don't you go get a cup of coffee and leave us alone for about fifteen minutes?"

Turner looked ready to protest, but nodded. He backed up. "I'll be just outside if you need me," he said, then turned and left the room, closing the heavy door behind him.

"He's very protective of me," Paige said.

"I can see that," Tricia said. Fifteen minutes wasn't much time, and she didn't want to waste it. "Had you ever met Pammy Fredericks?"

Paige shook his head. "I never saw the woman, but Jason tells me she called our offices several times. She mailed us some papers, asking for money or she'd reveal something about my sordid past." The ghost of a smile crept across his lips. "As if anything else could be as embarra.s.sing as what everybody already knows."

"You were saying about your--" Had the woman been his friend, lover, mistress?

"M.J." He smiled. "She liked being called that. Like in the Spiderman comics."

"What did the papers Pammy sent you contain?"

"According to Jason, nothing. At least nothing with my name on it. Just ramblings about hooking 'him.' "

Tricia opened her purse, took out a folded piece of paper, and handed it to him. He took it, fumbled to straighten it out on his lap, and gave a shuddering breath.

"That's her handwriting, all right. Where did you get this?"

"Pammy hid the diary in my shop. I made a copy of it before I handed it over to Captain Baker of the Sheriff's Department."

Paige nodded. He pointed to the date in the top left corner. "See this? At the time the diary was written, I was out of M.J.'s life--had been for at least a year or so."

"Yes, I understand you two had broken up for a while."

He looked at her through narrowed eyes.

"I read several accounts of your colorful past online," she explained.

He shook his head, perturbed. "I wasn't very stable in those days. I drove too fast--drank too much. She worked on my father's clerical staff." He was quiet for a moment, lost in thought. "After we started going out, Dad grew to love her. He hoped she'd straighten me out. Sadly, she only managed that in death. He didn't know she was almost as wild as I was, which was part of the reason we originally broke up. When we got back together, it was as if that wild streak in her took over. She didn't care about anything. We did a lot of foolish things together. Things I'm deeply ashamed of now." He sighed. "No matter what good I've done these last nineteen years, it will never make up for what happened that rainy night in Portsmouth."

"I read that the police theorized the car hydroplaned."

He nodded sadly. "We'd both been drinking. Truth was, at that point, M.J. drank more than I did. She said it helped her forget."

"Forget her child?"

He looked up sharply. "How did you know?"

"I read most of her diary. M.J. was very upset. I take it the child had birth defects. She called the baby . . . it."

"M.J. made the mistake of having an affair with a married man after we had parted ways--I never did know his name."

"What happened to the baby?"

"It went into foster care. The people who took it in eventually adopted it."