Proof of Murder (Beyond the Page Bookstore Mystery #4) - Lauren Elliott Page 0,53
to pull up her big-girl pants, stop feeling like the suspect for a moment, and stop thinking about how she could prove her innocence. Now wasn’t the time to think of all the what-ifs. She needed to concentrate on what had to be her main priority, and that was keeping Paige employed and her shop open. It was less than a week until the first official cruise ship was scheduled to dock. Fingers crossed, she’d still be here and not rotting away in some prison cell.
“If you want to work back here,” Addie said, her gaze surveying the boxes, “sorting through these, maybe you can select the books you think we can sell and just jot down the titles and publishing information. Then when you take them up front to shelve, give me your list and I’ll enter them into the inventory records on the computer.” Addie smiled when she glanced over at Paige, whose nose was already stuck in a box. “If we work together, it might not take too long to get through all these.”
“What do I do with books I don’t think we can sell? Do you want me to put them aside for you to look at?”
“Naw, you know as well as I do what our customers like. I trust your judgment. Just start another box for them. We can donate them to the school annual book drive or something.”
“Sounds good.”
Paige didn’t waste any time delving into the first box as Addie headed to the front of the shop to look after business. For the next few hours her plan clicked along like a well-oiled machine, and by five o’clock closing Addie and Paige high-fived each other when the last customer left for the day and Paige had shelved the last of the new books. Addie locked the door behind her assistant, flipped the door sign to CLOSED, leaned her back against the warm, sun-kissed glass door, and gazed longingly at the coffeemaker.
She wondered if she could reach it, after no sleep last night. The prospect of placing one foot in front of the other long enough to make fresh coffee and then walk to the back room was daunting, but she was resilient and motivated. She had to prove to Marc that his evidence against her was completely wrong and to find equally as strong evidence proving her innocence. What’s a few more hours without sleep?
She shook out her arms and hands to wake herself up, launched herself off the door, made herself a cup of coffee, and then went to the back room. She tugged the covering from her blackboard mounted on the wall. “Hello, old friend, where do we start today?” she said, staring at the blank surface of the board.
“Problem: police evidence points to me. Solution: figure out who else it points to.” She picked up a piece of chalk and scribbled the word Suspects. Then she wrote Kalea under it. As much as she didn’t want to believe it—her cousin was at the top of her list because she appeared to have left town without a word and there was the whole thing about the gloves and emptying her purse onto the table—Addie stabbed the chalk, marking an exclamation point after Kalea’s name.
Then she added Blake. After all, she had witnessed the argument between Charlotte and him and could see that there was no love lost between them. There was also Charlotte’s assistant, slimy Robert Peters, who hadn’t kept his feelings about his overly demanding employer private.
Addie examined the names she’d written and then drew a line from Kalea to Garrett Edwards, Blake’s nephew. Kalea had canceled their dinner to meet up with him, so as far as Addie knew he was the last person her cousin was in contact with before she disappeared. Is he part of the theft? He probably knew about the books, and he had access to the house. She wasn’t sure about him but decided that, for now, his name would stay. She tapped the chalk on her hand.
Think, Addie, who else knew about the books or had access to the library? Bingo! She almost shouted as she jotted down Philip Atkinson. He was at Hill Road House and had been in her store and even insinuated that he knew the missing books had been swapped for reproductions.
“Okay, now I have a starting point, but what do I know?” She paced in front of the board, occasionally glancing sideways, shaking her head, and pacing some more.