Page 6 of Murder on the Page

Her eyes were moist. I checked her pulse. It was weak.

“Auntie!” Tegan rounded the counter, chest heaving. “Is she okay?”

I nodded. “Marigold, smile.” She did. “Raise both arms.” She complied. “Say ‘I love books.’ ” She repeated the words.Phew.She hadn’t had a stroke. I said, “Have you been drinking enough water?” People often forgot to keep hydrated.

“I had tea.”

“I’ve told you before, that doesn’t count. I know others have warned you, too.”

“You’re too bossy,” she said, and winked.

“I’m cautious.” The manager at the Eatery had required us to take hours upon hours of emergency training. The instructor who’d led my group reminded us often that tea, coffee, and soda were never substitutes for water. “Tegan, stay with her. Hold her hand.”

Tegan obeyed.

I raced into the mini kitchen in the stockroom, filled a glass with water from the faucet, and returned just as a middle-aged woman was entering through the front door.

“Wow, what a place!” the woman raved as she spun in a circle and took in the shop. “Such high ceilings and so many books. And the entryway on the street is so whimsical”—she twirled a finger—“all fitted out with plaster-of-Paris book pages. Very clever. Oh, gee! Is that entire section devoted to classic mysteries? I love Dorothy L. Sayers.”

“Sorry, ma’am, we’re closed!” I yelled.

“But the door was ajar.”

“Closed for a medical emergency,” Tegan explained. “Come back tomorrow. Thank you.”

I returned my focus to Marigold and asked if she could sit up. She said she could. I carefully slid an arm around her slender torso and propped her in a sitting position against the counter. “Any bruises? Broken bones? Twinges?”

“No. I think I slumped. I didn’t crash.”

I’d heard a pretty substantialthudover the cell phone and doubted a slump could’ve caused the noise, but I didn’t press. She seemed alert. I held the water to her lips and she sipped. “I should call Noeline.”

“No, don’t bother her.” Marigold had confided once that when she and her sister were growing up, she, being the eldest, had acted like a mother hen to Noeline. Heaven forbid the tables turn and Noeline baby her.

“What’s going on?” a woman hooted. I recognized the voice. It was Vanna, Tegan’s older half sister. No one else onearth had such a piercing tone, something akin to a crow squawking or a crane whooping. “Auntie? What happened?”

She rushed toward us, the tautness of her silver-gray pencil skirt preventing her from taking long strides. The matching peplum jacket didn’t help. How she moved around a kitchen in clothing like that was beyond me. Perhaps this was the outfit she wore to pitch her business to local shops. With her strawberry-blond hair secured in a fashionable knot, her eyes outlined heavily in black, and her lips daubed with ruby-red lipstick, she reminded me of an exotic bird. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d put on lipstick. I was a lip-gloss kind of girl.

“Out of the way, Allie.” Vanna tried to gracefully lower herself to the floor, but her four-inch heels threw her off-balance.

Honestly, four-inch heels? The town’s sidewalks were brick and uneven. I steadied her by the shoulder.

Vanna thanked me curtly and said, “Let’s get you to your feet, Auntie.” She seized her aunt’s wrist.

“No!” I restrained her. “Your aunt needs to remain seated to get her bearings.”

“Isn’t that exactly like you, Allie, forcing your will upon others?” Vanna sniffed and rose to her full height.

I flashed on one of my least favorite characters in all of literature, the eldest Bingley sister fromPride and Prejudice.She was persnickety and rude.

“Hello?” a woman said from the front of the store. “What’s all the hoopla? Isn’t the tea tomorrow, or did I mess up on the calendar? Is it today?”

I peeked around the counter. Noeline Merriweather sauntered to us, wrapped in a belted white coat and matching boots. She wore a handsome indigo-blue scarf looped around her long neck and was sporting a new hairdo. A bob. All my life, I’d only seen her with long, wavy hair. The shorter hairdo suited her. It was flirty.

“You didn’t mess up, Noeline,” I said. “It’s tomorrow, Saturday, but your sister had an incident.”

“An incident?” Noeline skirted the sales counter. “Sis!”

“She’s fine,” I said.

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