Free At the Stroke of Madness by Alex Kava Page A

side enterprise. In fact, she worried that the coffee bar would be a distraction. That it would bring in the gossipmongers who would rather make up their own stories than purchase one off their shelves.
    But Rosie had been right. Again. The coffee crowd had been good for business. It wasn’t just that they cleaned them out of the daily New York Times and USA TODAY. There were the magazine sales, and the occasional paperbacks that got picked up on impulse. Soon the regular coffee drinkers—even the mocha lattes with extra whipped cream and the espresso addicts—were browsing the shelves and wandering back into the store after work and on the weekends. Sometimes bringing their families or their friends. Okay, so foot traffic hadn’t been such a bad thing, after all.
    Yes, Rosie had been right.
    Actually, Lillian didn’t mind admitting that. She knew Rosie was the one with a head for business. Business was Rosie’s forte and books were Lillian’s. That’s why they made such excellent partners. She didn’t even mind Rosie rubbing her nose in it every once in a while. How could she mind when she was allowed to revel in her own passion every single day of the week? But Mondays were the best, like having Christmas once a week. Christmas sitting in a crammed, dark storage room, soothed by her cup of hazelnut coffee and armed with a box cutter.
    Opening each box was like ripping into a precious gift. At least that’s what it felt like for Lillian, opening each new shipment of books, pushing back the cardboard flaps and taking in that aroma of ink and paper and binding that could so easily transport her to a whole different world. Whether it was a shipment of eighteenth-century history books or a boxful of Harlequin romances or the latest New York Times bestseller, it didn’t matter. She simply loved the feel, the smell, the sight of a box of books. What could be more heavenly?
    Except that this Monday the stacks of ready and waiting cartons couldn’t keep Lillian’s mind from wandering. Roy Morgan, who owned the antique store next door, had raced in about an hour ago, breathless, ranting and raving and talking crazy. With his face flushed red—Lillian had noticed even his earlobes had been blazing—and his eyes wild, Roy looked as though he would have a stroke. Either that, or he was having a mental breakdown. Only Roy was probably the sanest person Lillian knew.
    He kept stumbling over his words, too. Talking too fast and too choppy. Like a man panicked or in a frenzy. Yes, like a man who was losing his mind. And what he was saying certainly sounded like he had gone mad.
    “A woman in a barrel,” he said more than once. “They found her stuffed in a barrel. A fifty-five-gallon drum. Just east of McKenzie Reservoir. Buried under a pile of brownstone in the old McCarty rock quarry.”
    It sounded like something out of a suspense thriller. Something only Patricia Cornwell or Jeffery Deaver would create.
    “Lillian,” Rosie called from the door of the storage room, making Lillian jump. “They have something on the news. Come see.”
    She came out to find them all crowded around a thirteen-inch TV set that she had never seen before. Someone had slid it in between the display of pastries and the napkin dispenser. Even Rosie’s coveted antique jar that she used for the pink packages of Sweet’n Low had been shoved aside. As soon as Lillian saw the TV, she knew. First a coffee bar, now a TV. She knew that whatever was happening would change everything. Not for the better. She could feel it, like a storm brewing. Could feel it coming on like when she was a child, and she had been able to predict her mother’s temper tantrums before they started.
    On the small TV screen she saw Calvin Vargus, her brother’s business partner, standing in front of the petite news reporter. Calvin looked like a plaid railroad tie, solid and stiff and bulky but with a silly boyish grin as if he had discovered some hidden treasure.
    Lillian