Of Mice and Murder
Of Mice and Murder
Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries, book 2
Steffanie Holmes
Bacchanalia House
Copyright © 2019 by Steffanie Holmes
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, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
From the Author
Nevermore Bookshop 3
Other Books By Steffanie Holmes
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To all the book boyfriends
who keep me up at night.
“There are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops.”
– George Orwell, Bookshop Memories, 1936.
Chapter One
“How does it look?” Morrie yelled from his precarious position atop the wooden ladder as he held the painting of a rampaging Godzilla cat terrorizing a town filled with fleeing mice against the dark paneled wall above the staircase.
“Like the entrails of one of Grimalkin’s eviscerated mice,” Heathcliff growled.
“Meow,” Grimalkin echoed from her perch on Heathcliff’s shoulder.
“Hey,” Quoth pouted. He sat on the bottom step, his black hair hanging over his face, draping him in shadows. “I worked hard on that painting.”
“Ignore Heathcliff, he’s no bloody help.” Morrie steadied himself against the wall as the ladder wobbled. “Mina, your thoughts?”
“I think that ladder doesn’t look structurally sound.”
Morrie gritted his teeth as his arm muscles strained from holding out the canvas. “I’d like to remind you that I’m risking my beautiful neck up here for your genius plan. We don’t have to hang Quoth’s paintings all over the shop—”
“Fine. Move it over two inches so it's centered on the panel.”
Morrie leaned out, his arms stretching the last inch. I nodded and he reached for his hammer and—
Something warm streaked across my boots. A tiny white shape darted up the staircase and along the frame of the ladder. A twitching nose sniffed the air as the mouse surveyed its next move.
“Yeooow!” Heathcliff moaned as Grimalkin’s claws dug into his shoulder. She launched herself across the room, flying up the staircase and landing on the bottom rung of the ladder just as the mouse darted up Morrie’s trouser leg.
“Help, it’s in my trousers!” Morrie lurched forward, hopping from foot to foot as he swung the painting at his leg. The ladder wobbled across the step and lurched toward the edge of the staircase.
“Morrie, watch out!” I yelled. Morrie leapt off the top of the ladder just as the leg went over the edge of the step and the whole thing crashed down the stairs. The painting flew from his hand and sailed through the air.
Feathers flew in all directions as Quoth transformed into his raven. He darted out of the way just as the ladder slid over the bottom step. I sucked in my breath.
Quoth soared overhead and captured the frame between his talons just before it hit the ground. He flapped his wings and set it down against the wall.
The mouse streaked past him. Grimalkin bounced back down the stairs and bounded after it. Quoth stuck out a talon to capture the critter, but the mouse slipped through his grip and disappeared under a shelf.
Grimalkin’s front paws slid on the floorboards. She howled as she skidded into Quoth, sending the pair of them tumbling across the room in a furious ball of fur and feathers.
I raced up the staircase, my heart pounding as I wrapped my arms around Morrie, who was still frantically beating at his trouser leg.
“Get it out, get it out, get it out!” he howled.
“It’s gone.” I grabbed him under the arms and hauled him to his feet, surprised to feel wet patches under his arms. Is James Moriarty, criminal mastermind and eminent mathematics professor, afraid of a tiny mouse?
It appeared so. Morrie buried his face in my neck. “It had little scratchy legs,” he whispered into my hair.
“Don’t be so dramatic. Where’d it go?” Heathcliff wrenched Grimalkin and Quoth apart.
“Into the stacks. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. It’s just a wee mouse.” I wiped a strand of hair out of Morrie’s face. His lower lip quivered, and it was totally adorable. “Judging by the row of tiny trophies along the perch over the door, Quoth and Grimalkin will make short work of it sooner or later.”
“That was no mere mouse,” Heathcliff growled. “He is the White Fury, the Mouse of the Baskervilles, the Demon Mouse of Butcher Street.”
“Now who’s being dramatic?”
“Didn’t you read the paper?” Morrie slumped onto the front step, folding his hands over his long legs. “This little fellow has been doing the rounds of all the shops in town, chewing his way through power cords and ductwork, terrifying customers, creating health code violations. It looks like the blighter has decided to take up residence in our shop. I don’t like this. I don’t deal well with vermin.”
“A mouse made headlines in the Argleton Gazette?” Four years in New York City had made me forget the insanity that was village life.
“Not just the headlines. Front page.” Morrie winced as he pulled himself to his feet and dusted off his trousers. “These trousers are contaminated now. I’ll have to throw them away, and they cost four hundred pounds.”
“You have four hundred pounds to spend on trousers?” I don’t think I’d ever had four hundred pounds in my life.
“Forget his bloody trousers. Look what you’ve done to my shop!” Heathcliff folded his arms and glared at the ladder, which had smashed a wooden panel and left a long scratch along the balustrade.
“It wasn’t me,” Morrie protested. “It was the mouse!”
“Meeeoooow!” howled Grimalkin.
My temples throbbed. Just another day in Nevermore Bookshop.
The shop bell tinkled. Heathcliff frowned as the sound of clomping orthopedic shoes signaled the arrival of an elderly customer. These were his least favorite types of customers, after children and Millennials and everyone else.
Heathcliff was the only shop owner I knew who wished customers would just leave him alone. We’d been getting a steady stream through the doors ever since I started working at Nevermore Bookshop, but I blame that on the recent murder in the Sociology section. Even though the police solved that crime over a month ago (with a little help from Heathcliff, Morrie, Quoth, and myself), the villagers still made a beeline for the upstairs room where it had taken place.
 
; Believe it or not, a murder during my first week on the job had so far been the least of my problems. It turns out the murder victim was my ex-best friend, Ashley, and since I’d been one of the people to find the body, the police were convinced I’d done it. Luckily we’d managed to clear my name and got a dangerous killer locked behind bars.
It also turns out that my new boss and his two flatmates are actually the fictional characters Heathcliff, James Moriarty, and Poe’s raven, Quoth. And the bookshop I’d loved since I was a kid was no ordinary bookshop – it was plagued by some kind of curse, had a hidden occult book collection, and had a room that moved forward and backward in time.
And then, because my life wasn’t already crazy enough, I sort of… slept with Morrie. Well, there wasn’t much sleeping happening. He’d taken me hard against one of the hallway bookshelves. My cheeks reddened just thinking about it. Ever since then we’d been doing it everywhere we could – in the storage room, on his perfectly-made bed, on Heathcliff’s chair in the living room. My body tingled just thinking about Morrie’s hands sliding over my skin. My life may be insane, but it had never been more perfect… except for the tiny, unresolved issue of me not wanting to be with a master criminal, and of Heathcliff kissing me, and Quoth declaring he had feelings for me, and me not knowing which of them to choose…
Oh yeah, and I was going blind. That was also a thing.
Quoth fluttered away to greet our customer while Morrie scrambled to right the ladder. Heathcliff slouched back to his desk and slid his muscled frame into his chair, flipping open a book in front of him with a heavy thud.
I guess I’ll help the customer, then. I turned to see who’d come through the door.
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Ellis!” Mrs. Ellis was the hilariously horny old biddy who used to be my school teacher. She’d encouraged my love of reading, always giving me books far above my level, usually featuring muscled men and swooning women on the covers in various states of undress. She’d retired years ago and now lived in a small flat above the chippy across the road, which suited her perfectly as it gave her the ideal vantage point to eavesdrop on conversations in the street and gather all the village gossip.
“Hello, Mina, dear.” Mrs. Ellis wrapped her arms around me in a motherly hug. I sucked in a mouthful of hyacinth perfume and tried not to gag. As I pulled away, a pair of beady grey eyes met mine from over Mrs. Ellis’ shoulder.
The eyes belonged to a sour-looking woman in a fuchsia-pink suit, complete with matching handbag and hat. She leaned against a crutch and peered down at me through a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.
“That’s a provocative outfit for working a retail job,” she frowned, sweeping her judgmental gaze over my body.
I smoothed down the front of the t-shirt I’d screen printed the night before. It read, ‘I like big books and I cannot lie,’ with the OO’s in the word BOOKS strategically angled across my chest. Morrie and Quoth thought it was hilarious. Heathcliff didn’t seem to have noticed it yet. “What do you mean, ma’am?” I asked, all sunshine and innocence. “I’m declaring my love of the written word.”
“It implies you’re sexually excited by books, like some kind of perverted lesbian,” she sniffed.
“Oh no,” Morrie called from the top of the stairs. “I can assure you, she’s a big fan of the cock.”
Mrs. Ellis snickered. She squeezed my hand. “I knew you’d land one of those handsome beaus, dearie. Tell me, is he long and lean in all the right places?”
My face flared with heat. Could the floor just swallow me now?
The woman’s face turned beet red. She called up the staircase. “Young man, that is inappropriate language in front of your elders, and you—”
Sensing a lecture coming on and Heathcliff’s anger sizzling in the background, I jumped in. “Ma’am, I’m sorry about my friend, and my t-shirt. I’m happy to help two such lovely young ladies with your book-buying needs.”
Mrs. Ellis tittered. Her companion didn’t look nearly so amused, although she did brush an invisible speck of lint from her shoulder.
“Oh, dear me, where are my manners. Mina, this is my dear friend, Gladys Scarlett. We’re on the Argleton Community Fundraising Committee together.” Mrs. Ellis beamed, clutching Gladys’ hand. “Don’t mind her. She approves of provocative outfits and beautiful bookish men, don’t you, Gladys? She’s just a bit under-the-weather today.”
“I chair the committee, thank you very much,” Gladys Scarlett corrected her.
“Yes, of course. Gladys is very involved in the community. She’s on all sorts of committees; I forget which ones are which.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Gladys,” I held out my hand and the old woman shook. She had a firm grip. “I’m Wilhelmina Wilde. I used to be one of Mrs. Ellis’ students—”
“Wilde?” Mrs. Scarlett’s eyes lit up. “Are you any relation to our Oscar?”
“Um, I don’t think so.” My heart skipped a beat. My mum ran away from home when she was sixteen to be with my dad, who abandoned her shortly thereafter while she was pregnant with me. She still didn’t talk to anyone in her family, and I’d never met any relatives. “I don’t know anyone by that name—”
“No, no, no, Oscar Wilde, the great Victorian writer and provocateur. We studied The Picture of Dorian Gray in the book club last month, didn’t we, Linda?”
“We certainly did. Although I must admit, it wasn’t as vulgar as I expected.”
“This month’s choice should be more to your taste,” Mrs. Scarlett declared. “It’s one of the most banned books in America since its release in 1962 because of its vulgarity and language. That’s what makes it so invigorating.”
“You’re both in a book club?” I asked, interested.
“But of course! I’m surprised Heathcliff hasn’t told you about it,” Mrs. Ellis was busy scanning the books on the fiction shelves, probably looking for more of her favorite bodice-rippers. “Gladys here has been running the Argleton Banned Book Club for the last year.”
“Banned Book Club? So you read only banned books?” The idea intrigued me. Heathcliff stomped on my foot in an attempt to get me to hurry the conversation along, but I ignored him.
“Yes. It was all my idea. We feel it’s important to ensure that censorship continues to be challenged,” said Mrs. Scarlett. “Each month, we choose a different book that has been banned in some way, and we read and discuss its merits and characters over high tea.”
“We come in every month to collect the books for our members,” Mrs. Ellis waved at Heathcliff. “Mr. Heathcliff is so good to put our requests aside for us. That’s why we’re here, for our six copies of Of Mice and Men.”
“Don’t talk about mice!” Morrie yelled from upstairs.
“He’s a bit sensitive at the moment,” I stage-whispered, loud enough for Morrie to hear. “A tiny mouse ran up his trousers, and he hasn’t been the same since.”
“It wasn’t a tiny mouse. It was enormous, like all things in my trousers!”
“I can see why you feel at home in this shop, Mabel,” Mrs. Scarlett huffed, tapping her crutch against the floor. “Young lady, please tell me you’ve got all six copies. I can’t stand for something else to go wrong.”
Heathcliff dumped a stack of books on the desk. “There. Six copies in near perfect condition. If you find any mouse droppings, you can have the books half-off. Now, can we move this along? This is a bookshop, not a bloody social club—”
“What else has gone wrong?” I asked as I elbowed Heathcliff out of the way to ring up the books.
“We used to meet in the village hall, but some workmen on the King’s Copse development lost control of their earthmoving machine and drove it straight through the wall.” Mrs. Ellis’ face lit up with delight. “So of course the place is in a right state, and Health and Safety won’t allow us to meet there until it’s fixed.”
“We asked about using the youth group room, but some members of the church committee objected,” Mrs. Scarlett declared. “Apparently,
our book club has a corrupting influence on the community. Personally, I think it’s an attempt to oust me from my seat and replace me with that rotten Dorothy Ingram.”
“Well, we are reading books the church considers objectionable,” Mrs. Ellis clucked. “Although how anyone can object to Harry Potter is beyond me. Young Harry never gets his end away—”
“Yes, and how they can object to fine literature and yet support that hideous development is beyond me!”
“Development?” I asked. I’d been out of the loop of Argleton news in New York City. I didn’t know anything about a development.
“Grey Lachlan, a big city developer, purchased the old King’s Copse wood. They’re building a huge housing development behind Argleton.” Mrs. Ellis made a face. “Several houses are already going in on the clear strip between the wood and the village. That’s how the village hall got knocked through.”
“I bet they did it on purpose. It’s a dreadful business, that development. They want to expand right through the old wood!” Mrs. Scarlett tsked. She leaned closer and whispered conspiratorially. I caught the faintest whiff of garlic on her breath. “But we’ll soon be putting a stop to it.”
“How?” I tried to picture Mrs. Scarlett and a horde of formidable old biddies chaining themselves to trees.
“Grey Lachlan may own the land, but if they want to put anything on it, they’ll have to go through the planning process just like everyone else,” Mrs. Scarlett declared, puffing out her chest. “As the head of the planning committee, I don’t intend to allow their modern monstrosities to sully our quaint local vernacular. Argleton is a popular destination for tourists and locals because of its old world charm, and this development threatens that. I’m surprised you’re not more concerned about it.” She glared at Heathcliff. “They’ll drive away your customers!”