Prose & Poison, page 3
part #1 of Cafe Prose Mystery Series
Piper grabbed a cookie from the tray and slid it in front of me. “This one’s on me.”
Fictional men I could handle all day long. Real ones, however …
* * *
My legs throbbed as I pedaled my baby blue banana-seated cruiser bicycle the four and a half blocks to the end of Black Locust Lane. Two overgrown weeping willows flanked the one-way bridge over a narrow straight of Willow Creek Creek leading to the sprawling property of one Mr. Harold Crawford Ellerton the Third.
This better be worth it, I muttered, remembering the last time I’d stepped foot on his acreage. Graduation party … Patrick’s proposal … my rejection …
It felt as if a million butterflies took flight in my stomach. “Knock this off,” I chastised and gave myself a pep-talk. “You’re Talbot Meadows,” I muttered, coming to a stop on the red brick paved driveway. “You’ve assessed rare materials twelve stories underground in sealed vaults, worked on a supposed witch-cursed book, and done research in the catacombs of France. This is just an old man with a grudge. No big deal. Get in and then get out.”
I parked my bike in front of the gray-stoned Queen Anne mansion. Beautiful, manicured flowerbeds bursting with fall chrysanthemums and violet asters framed the wrap-around porch — my mother’s handiwork. When she wasn’t working her full-time job as the administrative assistant at the Willow Creek Police Department, Mom was town’s most sought-after master gardener. Despite my history with Harold Ellerton, gardening from a wealthy man like him made financial sense for Mom.
I stepped up to Mr. Ellerton’s door. Ever the purist, he’d never upgraded to a doorbell, so I picked up the brass lion’s head knocker and let it fall to its base. Three loud knocks echoed inside the home.
Nothing.
I knocked once again.
More silence.
“Really?” Harold Ellerton had been hard-of-hearing even when I lived in Willow Creek, so I pushed the knocker on the door harder than I’d done before, and this time, the solid door creaked open. “Hmm,” I hummed and tucked a few stray strands of blonde hair behind my left ear.
Although it’d been a while, I knew this house like the back of my hand. I stepped inside the cavernous foyer and called out. “Mr. Ellerton!” He was probably waiting for me in his study. “It’s Talbot, here for our … um … meeting.” I moved through the formal living room to my right and then down a darkened hallway that led to his study in the rear of the grand home.
“Mr. Ellerton?” I repeated, pushing open the cracked door of the study to be greeted by a complete and utter mess. Bookshelves rising eleven feet high filled in the walls surrounding me, but a quarter of the books were removed from the shelves and scattered across the study’s oriental rug-covered floor. Directly ahead of me sat his large mahogany desk with an empty bottle of Bulleit rye whiskey, a shot glass, and a disorganized cluster of paperwork atop. Mr. Ellerton’s oversized desk chair faced the open French doors overlooking the property’s expansive gardens.
And then I saw him. “No!” I cried, spotting an arm dangling from the side of the turned chair. My heart pounded in my chest as I moved toward the arm and found the slumped over body of Harold Ellerton.
I put two shaking fingers to his neck as my breath came out in staccato bursts. “Oh, shoot.”
There was no doubt about it, Mr. Harold Crawford Ellerton the Third — rare book connoisseur, mayoral candidate, and Willow Creek’s resident benefactor — was dead.
Chapter 3
I steadied myself on a half-empty bookshelf to my right, feeling my cookie and latte from earlier coming back up.
Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up.
I swallowed it down and sat in the burgundy velvet chair in the corner by the office door — the farthest place from Mr. Ellerton’s body. I pinched the inside of my wrist, making sure this was actually happening. Ouch. It was. Then I called 9-1-1 and explained there was a dead man at the end of Black Locust Lane.
Now what did Mr. Ellerton want me to see?
Although a bit uncouth to search the room while a dead body rested mere feet away, I slowly walked the perimeter, careful not to touch anything else and strategically avoiding the six-foot space behind Mr. Ellerton’s chair. I’d noted Harold’s extensive collection years ago — but something new caught my eye in the reference section.
The third row of shelves sat back in the stack farther than the other ones, and the shelving itself sat higher, allowing room for books of a larger size. A 1771 set of three-inch-wide leather-bound books with the signature claret Encyclopedia Britannica emblem stuck out. Could that be the material he spoke of? Not it, I decided. The last first edition set sold at auction in 2016 for a mere seven thousand dollars. With the kind of money Harold Ellerton had, his latest investment was surely worth much, much more. I drummed my finger on the side of his desk and looked from the mess on the shelves to the floor to the desk.
Wetness began to well in the corners of my eyes as the reality of this situation hit me, and I noticed a tissue box rested on the other corner of the desk. As I reached for a tissue, a bright white piece of stationary tucked between two newspapers folded to the crossword puzzle section caught my eye. I moved closer to get a better look at the initials scribbled at the top of the white sheet in haphazard cursive letters.
T.M.
“T.M.?” I asked aloud. Talbot Meadows? Mr. Ellerton was most definitely expecting me here today. Did he leave this for me to see? To take?
Once I saw what rested to the right of the letter, I realized the note was, indeed, intended for me. “Mom’s phone,” I said to nobody but myself.
Before I could ponder the situation any more though, a voice startled me. “Talbot?” echoed through the wood-beamed hallways.
My heart beat in my throat. “In here.” My words came out strained.
Without thinking I grabbed the note with my initials and my mother’s phone and tucked them into my back jeans pocket.
I turned just as Chief Kevin Homestead bounded in the room.
“Hello, Talbot,” he said tersely.
“Kevin.” I matched his cool tone. Great. Yet another resident of Willow Creek who claimed I broke his heart. Kevin and I were acquaintances throughout high school — took a few of the same classes, ran track together, participated in a variety of clubs. And then he had to go and ruin our friendship by professing his love for me the same exact evening I broke things off with Patrick. Talk about bad form. Mom tells me, to this day, how he asks about me.
“Now what do we have here?” Kevin’s hands rested strongly on his belt.
I laced and unlaced my fingers together. “Well,” I started, “Mr. Ellerton asked me to assist him in appraising a new rare material acquisition, and when I got here he was …” I couldn’t say it, pointing toward the hand sticking out from behind the chair. “You know.”
Kevin bent over Harold Ellerton’s body, feeling no pulse for himself and then stood. “It’s Old Man Ellerton,” he spoke into the walkie-talkie on his left shoulder. “Dead. Call Randy to confirm COD.” He rolled his eyes. “You’re here for what, four hours, and trouble’s already finding you.”
I placed my hand on my hips. “If you think I had something to do this, then you’re grossly misinformed,” I huffed.
Kevin threw his head back and laughed. “Calm down, Talbot. It seems like a pretty open and shut case we have here anyway.”
I tilted my head to the side. “What do you mean?”
Kevin gestured toward the body. “Well, Mr. Ellerton was old, his heart wasn’t too strong, and there’s absolutely no sign of foul play. I’m sure Randy will agree this was a natural cause of death.”
No sign of foul play? “But what about the mess?” I gestured to the books and papers strewn all around the room. “I’m no detective —“
“You certainly are not,” he cut in.
I squinted my eyes at him. “As I was saying, doesn’t that usually indicate some sort of struggle?”
“Sometimes it does. But it looks like Mr. Ellerton excited his heart with too much of that whiskey over there.” He pointed to the empty bottle on the corner of Harold’s desk and then continued. “Went into cardiac arrest, and, in a panic, made a mess of his office.” He shrugged. “Maybe he was searching for something.” He tilted his head to the side. “I’ve seen it before. When Mrs. Carson on Pine had her stroke, she tore the bedding from bed, overturned a desk, and emptied every single drawer in her dresser. Turns out she was searching for her late husband’s wedding ring. Her daughter told me Mrs. Carson thought it’d bring her closer to him in the afterworld if she had it when she died.”
That didn’t make a ton of sense, but now didn’t feel like the right time to question it.
“We’ll know for certain once the autopsy comes back, but I’m telling you, Talbot Meadows, this man died from natural causes.”
“Okay,” I said, hoping he was right, but the feeling deep in my gut told me otherwise. “Well, it was nice to see you, Kevin, albeit these circumstances.”
He growled a low, amused laugh. “Oh, I’ll be seeing you again soon.”
I scrunched my eyebrows together. “I’m not going out with you, Kevin, just as I told you at Christmas, and last Easter, and the Easter before that,” I spoke adamantly. I’ll give Kevin one thing — he sure was persistent in his pursuit of me. It’s not that I’m not attracted to him. His medium-height, muscular stature, dark skin, and deep brown eyes would make any girl swoon. It’s just … well … arrogance doesn’t look good on even the best-looking men.
Kevin puffed out his chest, almost as if he read the comment from my head. “Oh, that’s not what I mean. I’ll be seeing you again to get an official statement.” He smirked. “So don’t make any plans to leave Willow Creek until Monday at the earliest.”
I put up my hands in protest. “But I have work … life to get back to in D.C.”
He took a step toward me. “Well, that big ol’ library of yours will have to run on its own for a few days.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Fine. Is there anything else?”
“Did you touch anything while you were in here? Just in case Charlotte asks.”
I picked at my chipping fingernail polish, a bad habit that tended to resurface when nerves took over. Charlotte Ellerton-Bluebell, the mother of Patrick, probably despised me more than anyone else on the planet. According to her, I’d broken her only son’s heart years ago. And once she finds out I’d just found the body of her father, that will just add fuel to an already flaming fire. Swell. “Well,” I swallowed down the lump suddenly forming in my throat, “Mr. Ellerton’s neck to get a pulse.”
Kevin took notes in a spiral notepad.
I thought a bit more. “And then the edge of the desk,” I admitted.
Kevin lifted his pen. “Anything else?”
I nodded my head side to side. “Oh … and I steadied myself on that bookshelf over there.”
“Okay,” he said, scribbling some more.
I pointed to the velvet chair in the corner. “And sat there to call 9-1-1.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“And the front knocker, and the front door, and the door to his office.”
Kevin rolled his eyes. “Did you have a shot of whiskey too?” he asked, exasperated by my laundry list of items.
I didn’t dare mention the two additional items burning a hole in my back pocket. “That’s it,” I chirped quickly as two paramedics and Dr. Randy Fuller, Willow Creek’s town doctor slash coroner, set up shop. I stepped closer to Kevin as Randy and the other two men moved to Harold. “Do you really think he died naturally?”
Kevin huffed in annoyance. “Do you think you should leave the investigating up to the Chief of Police?”
“And what about the book he asked me to —.”
“Do you need to ask so many questions?”
“Hey.” I put my hands up in protest. “My degree is in research, asking questions is how I make a living.”
“Thank you, Miss Meadows. I’ll be in touch shortly,” Kevin said dismissively.
Thank you, Miss Meadows, I mimicked in the best, deep Kevin Townsend voice as I saw myself out of the stately home.
This was so not how I saw today going.
* * *
“Oh, Talbot! How are you, my dear?” Aunt Tilly said. She greeted me with a piping mug of tea as I parked my bicycle behind the garage.
“How did you kn —.” Oh, of course. “Mom?” I asked, taking the vintage Virginia Rose antique teacup from her hands and starting up the stairs.
“Yes, dear. Kevin called your mother into the office to start working on official paperwork of some sort, and naturally he told her you were involved.”
“Ha! That’s an understatement!” I practically yelled. Gosh, this incident had me in screaming hysterics. I let out a heavy sigh and took a sip of tea, the cup shaking with my hands. “I was more than practically involved. I found Mr. Ellerton, Aunt Tilly. It was …” I bit my lip, willing the tears to stay in. “Terrible.”
Aunt Tilly kissed the top of my head. “Why don’t you freshen up, come on over to your mother’s house, and then I’ll fix up some dinner?”
I leaned against my door. “That sounds gr —,” I started to say, distracted by the solid piece of metal on my butt. Mom’s phone, which reminded me of the note with my initials scrawled across the front. “Uh … sounds great, but I just need to be alone for a while. It’s been a long day.”
Aunt Tilly gave a knowing nod. “Then I’ll just leave you be tonight. I’ll make us a scrumptious breakfast at my place tomorrow morning. Deal?”
Gosh I missed her, even if her idea of scrumptious was under-salted quinoa and kale smoothies. I swallowed. “Deal.”
I opened my door and stepped into the nautical-themed renovated room. Romeo greeted me at the door, his tail wagging as fast as a hand mixer. “I missed you too, boy! How about some dinner?” I pulled a small bowl from the single kitchen cabinet above the mini-fridge and filled it with his chicken doggy dinner. “There you go, my little prince.”
I grabbed Mom’s phone out of my pocket, and with it, the note. Bending over, I wiggled the paper in front of Romeo. “Well, Romeo? Romeo? What do you think it says, Romeo?”
Romeo pushed his head into my hand in response, begging me to rub behind his ears. Of course, I complied.
I gingerly unfolded the piece of stationary and noticed Harold Ellerton’s initials printed at the bottom. The note definitely came from him, but it was the three words scrawled in the same rushed cursive handwriting inside that both intrigued and confused me.
FLORAE SOPHIA SEEKS
“What?” I asked aloud, flipping the note over in my hands. There had to be more to it. “That’s all it says?” Romeo perked up his ears.
I grabbed my tablet from my purse, opened the browser, and typed the three words into the search bar.
Only two hits popped up. One — a book on meditations for non-churchgoing women on Amazon. And two — an article on the metaphorical meaning of the biblical Sophia. No mention whatsoever of the florae part of the note.
“So basically nothing,” I muttered.
I broke the words down myself.
Florae - plants or flowers from a particular region
Sophia - woman’s name
Seeks - to search for
A plant? Harold Ellerton left me a note about a random girl looking for a plant?
Suddenly a knock sounded on my door.
“Who is it?” I picked up a broom next to the bed and armed myself, forgetting I was in the sleepy town of Willow Creek and not in my apartment in midtown D.C. I put the broom back in place.
The person on the other side of the door cleared their throat. “Peter Ellerton. We … um … we met at the coffee shop this afternoon.”
“What’s he doing here?” I mouthed to Romeo, as if he would respond. Didn’t his grandfather just die? Why would he be knocking on my door now?
“Um …” I ran to the small bathroom beside the kitchenette, used my fingertips to fluff my hair a bit, dabbed some concealer on my chin, and then pinched my cheeks for color. “Just a sec,” I yelled, sliding back into the only pair of wedged shoes I’d packed to at least give myself an extra three inches of height.
I took a deep breath and opened the door. “Hi … hi,” I stuttered. Peter looked even better than he did earlier today in a forest green sweater, dark jeans and pair of brown loafers. He just stood there in silence. I didn’t know what to say, so I stuck with the typical and cliched, “I’m sorry about your grandfather. He will be missed.”
Peter ran a hand through his hair that looked dark as pitch in the moonlight and looked toward the sky. “Thank you, Talbot.”
The chilly air cut through my sweater and I crossed my arms across my chest. “Do you want to come in for a tea? Coffee? Wine?” I smiled. “Something stronger given the news you received this evening?”
Peter shook his head from side to side. “No,” he declined. “I only came to admit something to you.”
I stepped backward and into my apartment, wrapping my fingers around the door knob. If he was about to tell me he somehow had a part in his grandfather’s death, I had to be ready to slam the door in his face and call the police. Maybe I should have kept that broom in my hand, after all.
“And?” I asked, my mouth going dry.
Peter’s jaw tensed. “When I met you this afternoon, in Cafe Prose, well … I downplayed how much I knew of you.”
Where was he going with this? “Okay …”
“You see, I already knew a great deal about the Talbot Meadows. I had been doing some estate planning with my grandfather, and he talked about having you to the house to inspect some of his materials for quite some time.” Peter paused and closed the distance between us even more. Whatever he had to say, he didn’t want others hearing. He sighed. “Those officers there now … they’re certain Grandfather’s death was a natural one.” His eyes darted to the garden between my mother’s house and the garage, to the alleyway to the right, and then back to me. “But I think otherwise.”
