A Murder in Helvetica Bold Read online

  A Murder in Helvetica Bold

  Thistlewood Star Mystery #1

  Jessa Archer

  Archer Mysteries

  Contents

  ✰ Chapter One ✰

  ✰ Chapter Two ✰

  ✰ Chapter Three ✰

  ✰ Chapter Four ✰

  ✰ Chapter Five ✰

  ✰ Chapter Six ✰

  ✰ Chapter Seven ✰

  ✰ Chapter Eight ✰

  ✰ Chapter Nine ✰

  ✰ Chapter Ten ✰

  ✰ Chapter Eleven ✰

  ✰ Chapter Twelve ✰

  ✰ Chapter Thirteen ✰

  ✰ Chapter Fourteen ✰

  ✰ Chapter Fifteen ✰

  ✰ Chapter Sixteen ✰

  ✰ Chapter Seventeen ✰

  ✰ Chapter Eighteen ✰

  ✰ Chapter Nineteen ✰

  ✰ Chapter Twenty ✰

  ✰ Chapter Twenty-One ✰

  ✰ Chapter Twenty-Two ✰

  ✰ Chapter Twenty-Three ✰

  More Cozies from Jessa Archer

  Sneak Peek: Palatino for the Painter (Thistlewood Star Mysteries #2)

  About the Author

  A Murder in Helvetica Bold

  A teacup, a diary, and a body at the foot of the stairs...

  When Ruth Townsend’s job and marriage both end abruptly, she heads home to the mountains for a fresh start. Nine months later, she has a new hobby, good friends, and a potential new romance--but only two dozen subscribers to the weekly newspaper she’s intent on reviving. What she needs is a good mystery...but nothing ever happens in sleepy little Thistlewood.

  Then Edith Morton is found dead at the bottom of her staircase. Her son and the sheriff both assume that the old woman jumped, but a shattered teacup and eerie passages from Edith’s diary about a dark-haired boy lead Ruth to believe there’s more to the story. Was Edith simply a victim of dementia, or did someone push her over the edge? Ruth is too curious not to keep digging, but her investigation is unearthing secrets someone spent decades trying to hide.

  Can Ruth find out who killed Edith Morton before she or someone she loves becomes the next obituary in the Thistlewood Star?

  ✰✰✰

  Don’t let Jessa’s next release be a mystery to you. Sign up for Jessa Archer new release alerts (via email newsletter or Amazon) on JessaArcher.com.

  ✰ Chapter One ✰

  I held my breath, pointing the binoculars toward the tiny flash of yellow-orange. A golden-crowned kinglet, maybe? It would help to have a picture to compare later with ones online, and I mentally cursed myself for not investing in binoculars with a built-in camera. This pair had been a spur-of-the-moment purchase, though. I patted my pockets for my phone to take a picture before remembering that it was in my purse and most likely dead. Back in Nashville, the thing had been practically glued to my hand. I was surprised how little I’d used it since coming back to Thistlewood.

  Okay, then, I thought. Birdwatching is supposed to be about living in the moment. I’ll just watch the little guy. You don’t have classify everything you see, Ruth. Just breathe deep. Enjoy the morning.

  Despite the slight chill, that was an easy thing to do. I’ve always loved this time of year, when the trees begin dressing themselves for spring, with tiny, wistful buds of green popping up here and there. I just hoped they weren’t being too optimistic. Like most mountain villages, Thistlewood has been known to get a killing frost in early spring. But after a long, hard winter, maybe a bit of optimism was in order.

  And it had been a long, hard winter, not just for the trees, but for me. The slower pace had been a good thing, all in all. After leaving Nashville, I’d needed some time to heal. To find out exactly who I was and what I wanted.

  Thinking about Nashville still brought a hitch to my throat. Not tears, like it had for the first few months, but more of a bittersweet feeling—warmth, nostalgia, and just a touch of anger and regret. I’d had a life there. A good one, I’d thought. But that was water under the bridge—nine months and one husband ago. At forty-nine, on the razor’s edge of fifty, Ruth Townsend was starting over.

  Something warm and furry joined me on top of the picnic table wedged into the corner of my small deck. Cronkite, who everyone says must be at least part Maine coon cat given his size, usually came out with me first thing. He likes to bird-watch, too, although I suspect it’s for an entirely different reason.

  This morning, however, Cronkite had been curled up in bed with my daughter, Cassie, who was visiting for the week. I figured I had another minute, tops, before he swatted at my binoculars to remind me that breakfast had not yet been served. So I shifted slightly to the left and leaned forward across the railing to get a better look at my feathered friend.

  But it was too late. Cronkite must have spotted the bird, too, because he let out a throaty yowl. The little bird took wing, disappearing into the faint rays of orange and gold spilling across the tops of the eastern mountains.

  I lowered the binoculars. “You scared him away, Cronk.” I expected him to respond with his usual air of self-satisfaction. But when I looked down at the cat, his gray-and-white coat was standing on end, as if he’d taken a bath with the toaster. And he wasn’t staring at the spot where the bird had been. His eyes were fixed on an entirely different location at the edge of the woods.

  Now I could hear it, too. There was a crackle of underbrush, and then a black bear came bounding into the backyard. My breath caught, and I froze, hoping not to startle him. The bear—no longer a cub but not fully grown, either—looked up, and our eyes met.

  Remy. I smiled down at him. You’re back.

  The bear, who had gained at least thirty pounds during the past five months, turned his head sideways, examining me every bit as much as I was examining him. Was he thinking that I’d added some weight over the winter, too?

  Cronkite, in his official role as guard cat, hissed a warning.

  “Shh. It’s just Remy. You’ll scare him off.”

  Cronk ignored me and hissed again, although he seemed a bit less certain about his authority now than he’d been back in November, when his weight and the cub’s had been roughly on par. Remy never made it onto Cronkite’s very short list of approved visitors, despite spending the better part of a week as a guest in our shed. I’d actually thought the cub was a large rat when I saw him the first time, huddled in a back corner. That’s why I named him after the main character in the movie, Ratatouille.

  On closer inspection, I’d discovered that my intruder was not, in fact, a giant rodent, and that his leg was caught in a piece of concertina wire some fool had left in the woods. Remy was about the size of a poodle back then, and I’d been worried he’d bite if I tried to untangle him. I’d called the local vet and left a message, since she was out. Then I’d bundled up in several layers of winter coats to protect my arms, topped off with barbecue gloves that came clear to my elbows, and went back out to see what I could do. Remy seemed to sense that I was trying to help, and while he winced and whined a few times, he never once snarled.

  The vet had finally shown up a few hours after his leg was free. She applied some antiseptic but said that the only thing to do at that point was to stock that corner of the shed with food and water and leave the door open so that the little guy could leave when he was ready. Each time I went out to check on him, I was constantly looking over my shoulder, terrified that the mama bear was going to come crashing out of the woods, assuming I was the one who’d hurt her cub and, as I’d eventually discovered, killed her mate. Even though I’d learned online that black bears never attack in defense of their cubs—that’s a brown and grizzly bear trait—I was still on edge. There’s an exception to every
rule. What if I’d stumbled upon the one black bear cub with a stereotypical angry mama?

  And Mama Bear was watching. I’d seen her a few times from the kitchen window, keeping a close eye on the shed. But she never approached. Remy’s leg healed steadily, and he proved himself to be a bit of a clown when I stopped by the shed to check on him. Then, one morning, I’d awakened to find him gone. This was the first I’d seen of him since then.

  I’d been a little worried about him during the long winter months. That was kind of silly, I guess. From everything I’d read, he’d been cozied up inside a cave with his mama, sleeping in until spring.

  The bear was still watching me. Maybe he was looking for food? I hated the idea that he might be hungry and was torn between tossing him something and the knowledge that it’s never wise to feed the bears. Remy might not hurt me, but he could easily have friends and family out there.

  A third, much louder hiss from Cronkite finally broke through the bear’s trance. Remy’s head jerked toward the cat, then he slashed back into the underbrush and disappeared.

  “Way to go, Cronk. Are you proud?”

  Cronkite did look quite pleased with himself. He pushed through his cat door, marched to his bowl, and stared directly at me.

  “Right. Breakfast. I’m on it.”

  As I opened the cat food, I looked out the windows to see if Remy was still lurking in the underbrush. But he was gone. I kind of hoped he’d stop by again sometime, but I was also glad my deck was a good fifteen feet up from the gently sloping ground below. Maybe it would be best if Remy stuck to the woods. It had been nice to see him, though. Nice to know that we’d both survived the long winter.

  I glanced down at my watch. Six thirty on the dot. The temperature was still in the lower forties. Not exactly freezing but not parade-around-in-your-skivvies weather, either. I took a sip from my coffee—now tepid, just the way I like it—and stashed my binoculars in the hall closet. Those newspapers weren’t going to deliver themselves.

  The Thistlewood Star has been the town’s weekly newspaper for generations. I began helping Mr. Dealey set the type when I was thirteen, long before he could legally put me on the payroll. Instead, I was paid in books. New books, used books, even comic books. When I got to high school, my English teacher, Lucy McBride, urged me to work on the school paper, but it was little more than a gossip column. Instead, I continued at the Star, where Mr. Dealey let me do some actual reporting. By the time I left for college, I had nearly five years of newspaper experience, something few incoming freshmen could claim.

  Mr. Dealey continued running the Star on his own until he died five years ago. The paper had always hovered on the edge of being profitable, and the equipment was so antiquated that few people knew how to use it. As a result, the presses literally stopped when Mr. Dealey died. My goal since returning to Thistlewood has been to get the paper back on its feet. It will never make me rich, but between what my parents left me when they died—this house and a modest savings account—and my early retirement from the News-Journal, I really only needed the paper not to lose money for very long.

  And, at some point, I hope the paper becomes profitable enough for me to hire a kid to do the deliveries, and maybe even teach her or him to set the type or write a few stories, like Mr. Dealey did with me. It would be nice to pay it forward. But when that day comes, I suspect I’ll miss walking the route, stopping to chat with subscribers as they head off to work, and sometimes even stumbling upon an idea for a story.

  Reviving the Star had been slow going, but I was making progress. As of the previous Friday, when I’d received two new subscriptions, my regular readership now officially numbered in the dozens. Twenty-four subscribers and nearly fifty additional copies sold at local stores. Not too shabby for two months’ work.

  What we need is a good mystery, I thought as I stood up. Something to get the tongues wagging and the papers flying off the shelves. Of course, in a sleepy little town like Thistlewood, that was about as likely as snow on a clear August day.

  After I fed Cronk and rinsed out my coffee mug, I began looking for my cell phone. Service is crappy at best in most parts of town. If you want to get in touch with someone, it’s often better to hang out at Pat’s Diner. Most people stop in there on a daily basis during the off-season. Even during the summer when the town is flooded with tourists, we’ll often drop by for takeout if the line isn’t out the door. The food is decent, and the place has a classic 1950s diner vibe, with red leather booths, personal jukeboxes at your table, and framed vintage photos that I’d assumed were stock photography until one day when the owner’s mom had been in a particularly chatty mood. She spent the better part of an hour telling me which Thistlewood citizens—past and present, almost none of whom I knew—were in the pictures.

  My phone finally turned up at the bottom of my purse and, as I’d suspected, was dead as the proverbial doornail. I stashed the phone back in my purse along with a charging cable and was almost to the front door when a voice called out from the staircase, startling me so badly that my heart jumped track.

  “Good grief, Cassie! You scared the heck out of me.”

  “Well, good morning to you, too, Mom.” She grinned, running a hand through her tangled mass of short dark curls. Those curls are one of the things she inherited from me, although mine lacked the deep purple highlights Cassie was currently sporting. I’d learned not to get too attached to any particular shade where my daughter was concerned. The colors changed like the wind.

  “Just didn’t hear you come down, that’s all.”

  While I’d grown accustomed to it just being me and Cronkite in the mornings, it had been really nice having Cassie home for the past few days. The house was going to feel empty when she went back to Nashville. Her work kept her there most of the time, and it was nearly a four-hour drive. But the distance had a silver lining, too. We’d both been taking each other for granted a bit. I hadn’t fully appreciated the luxury of being able to see her anytime I wanted. Now, on weeks like this one, when she had time off and was able to make it down for a visit, we made the most of every moment.

  She sat on the bottom step with her arms clasped around her knees. “Where are you headed?”

  “I have papers to deliver. The citizens of Thistlewood must have their breaking news.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Breaking news in Thistlewood is someone’s dog jumping the fence.”

  “Occasionally,” I said. “But we can’t take that much excitement every week. Best to stick to things like the monthly town council meeting and whatever new items Pat adds to the menu at the diner.”

  “Be still, my beating heart. You don’t need to bother with the papers, though. I made your deliveries after I picked them up from the printer.”

  “All of them? Last night? Where did you get the addresses?”

  She snorted. “You’re kidding, right? You have that list on the front desk. Or maybe I should call it a shrine. Eternal Thanks to Our Beloved Subscribers.”

  I laughed. “It does not say that.”

  “Anyway, it took me a half hour, tops. It would have been even less if not for that one house out in the boonies.”

  “Well, thank you,” I said, trying to keep the slight note of disappointment out of my voice. I appreciated the gesture, but I also kind of enjoyed my early-morning delivery walks. That wasn’t so true in the dead of winter, but the weather was nice this morning.

  “Consider it an early birthday present,” Cassie said. “Is there coffee?”

  I placed my purse back on the small table by the door. “Yes. But it’s cold by now. I’ll make a fresh pot.”

  Cronkite had just settled into his corner by the sliding door, no doubt checking to be certain Remy the Wonder Cub didn’t wander onto his turf again.

  “We had a visitor this morning,” I said to Cassie. “Remember the bear cub I told you about? I spotted him while I was out on the deck.”

  Cassie glanced out the door. “Is that normal this time
of year?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure. I was glad to see he wasn’t limping. Looks like he didn’t suffer any permanent damage from the injury.”

  “Did you get a picture this time?”

  “No,” I said. “Didn’t even think about it. Besides, my phone is dead.”

  “Again?” Cassie kneeled down and scratched Cronkite behind the ears. “Good thing you were here, boy. Protecting the house like a big brave kitty.”

  “Oh, he did his job, all right. Scared the poor little guy right back into the woods. So, what’s on your agenda for today?”

  “I don’t know. Probably hang out here for a while and then stop by the library. If I’m going to be here for a whole week, I’ll need something to read.”

  “You don’t have to stay your entire vacation, you know. I do understand if you have more exciting things to do than hang out with your mom in Thistlewood.”

  “It’s not such a bad place,” she said. “A little tame in the winter, but I had a lot of fun when I used to visit in the summer. And you can’t get rid of me that easily. I want to be here for your birthday.”

  “Ugh.” I finished putting the coffee on and left the machine to do its work. “No one wants to be reminded that she’s turning fifty. You get enough of a reminder simply looking in the mirror.”

  “Yep, fifty is so old,” Cassie said with a grin. “But getting old is better than the alternative, right? And you’re still beautiful. I’m not the only one who thinks so, either. I saw the way Ed Shelton looked at you last night.”