Authors: Donna Andrews
I tucked in both boys more neatly and then, feeling slightly less guilty, I returned to the ground floor and trudged down the long hallway to our library.
Chapter 19
Of course, the library wasn’t really our library at the moment. Call it our once and future library. When the Evil Lender had issued their eviction notices, Ms. Ellie, the librarian, and a small army of townspeople had packed up all the books, computers, furniture, periodicals, microfiche—in short, the entire movable contents of the building. The original plan was to store them in our barn until the evacuation was over. Then Randall Shiffley had made Michael and me a surprising offer: if we agreed to host not just the boxes but a living, breathing library until such time as the town regained control of its buildings, he would donate the labor to build our dream library—we only had to pay for the materials.
We had jumped at the opportunity. Some previous owner of our house with serious social aspirations and a much larger bank balance than ours had added on a two-story wing containing an enormous ballroom with a music room on one end and a sunroom on the other. We’d set up Michael’s office in the music room, let Rose Noire use the sunroom to overwinter her organic herbs, and had been planning to convert the ballroom to our library when we had the money.
When Randall made his offer, our library contained half a dozen ancient Ikea shelving units, a few bits of thrift shop furniture, and forty or fifty boxes of books for which we didn’t have enough shelf space. A little daunting, walking into the room and wondering when—or even if—we’d ever manage to build the library of our dreams.
Now it was built. Sturdy mission-style oak shelves ran the entire perimeter of the room, interspersed with paneled oak doors and wide-silled oak window frames. A little interior balcony ran around three walls of the room, giving access to the upper story of books and creating delightful reading nooks on the ground floor level. The fourth wall was balconyless but contained a brass ladder attached to a rail that let anyone without too great a fear of heights reach the books.
It was perfect—except that it was filled with the county’s books instead of ours, and separated from us by a locked door for which Ms. Ellie, the town librarian, held the key.
Occasionally, during a bout of insomnia, I’d steal down to Michael’s office, peer through the French doors into the library, and pretend it was all ours again. If I sat at just the right angle, so I couldn’t see the circulation desk, I could usually manage it, provided Ms. Ellie had turned off all but the night lights, so the Dewey decimal numbers on the spines of the books weren’t too obvious.
Tonight, though, the library was very much a public space. I knocked at the locked doorway that divided our part of the house from the library. And then, after Ms. Ellie let me in, I waited impatiently while she checked out books for the last few patrons and gently but firmly shooed a group of high school students out the public entrance, which led through Rose Noire’s sunroom greenhouse.
“Eleven o’clock,” Ms. Ellie kept repeating. “Closing time.”
“But why can’t we just stay a little while longer?” one of them whined. “We still need a little more time to finish our school project. Couldn’t Mrs. Waterston just lock up after we finish?”
“It’s July second,” Ms. Ellie said. “You’ve got till school starts to finish that project, and if you’d spent the last several hours working on it instead of texting people, maybe you’d have finished by now,” Ms. Ellie said. “And Mrs. Waterston has too much to do to babysit you.”
The teens slouched out, and I gave silent thanks once again that Ms. Ellie was so fierce about keeping our lives and library business separate. Left to my own devices, I might not have resisted the kids’ guilt trip.
“I don’t see why you keep the library open till eleven anyway,” I said.
“We only do it on the days when we don’t open till noon,” she said. “I enjoy sleeping in a couple of mornings a week. I assume you’re here for the Steering Committee meeting.”
“I’m here for the pizza,” I said. “If the rest of you can manage to have a Steering Committee meeting before I fall asleep with my face in the pepperoni, I will happily participate.”
Ms. Ellie shook her head, but she cleared a space on the large central table and set down some paper plates and a stack of pizza boxes from Luigi’s. I helped myself and took one of the semicircle of armchairs facing the table.
“Iced tea?” Ms. Ellie asked.
“Please.”
“Did Michael tell you about the vermin we shooed away today?” she asked over her shoulder as she headed for the small refrigerator behind the checkout desk.
“Vermin? What kind of vermin?” I glanced at my feet, half-expecting to see something crawling around them.
“Relax,” she said. “Two-legged vermin, and they’re gone now. Two men who claimed they’d been sent to do an assessment of the house.”
“Sent? By whom?”
“That’s what I asked, and they tried to put me off with some vague answer about government business. Which means, of course, that the Evil Lender sent them. They didn’t have any kind of paperwork—none they’d show me, anyway—so I sent them on their way with a few sharp words. As did Michael when they knocked on your front door. And to think I once described that boy as mild-mannered.”
She chuckled. I managed a slight smile, but my stomach clenched.
“What do you think they were really here for?” I asked.
“Who knows?” She set a glass of iced tea carefully in a coaster on the table beside me and patted my arm. “Psychological warfare, no doubt. But wanting to buy your property doesn’t give them the right to send out assessors. And if they don’t know that, I’m sure your lawyer will enlighten them.”
“I should tell Festus about them.” I reached for my cell phone.
“I already did. He said he’ll deal with it. Eat your pizza while it’s hot.”
Fortunately, she hurried off to do something else without noticing that I wasn’t following orders. The news about the so-called assessors had unsettled my stomach. Was it just an accident that they showed up today of all days? Cousin Festus regularly assured us that he was very optimistic about foiling Evil Lender’s plot to appropriate our land for their golf course and condominium project. But I wanted more than optimism—I wanted certainty. What if the Evil Lender knew something Festus didn’t? What if—
No sense borrowing trouble. Festus said he’d handle it. And if he couldn’t—well, we’d worry about that when it happened.
I took several deep breaths and several sips of tea and waited for my stomach to settle. I was biting into a slice of pepperoni and sausage thin crust when Dad bustled in.
“Ah! Pizza!” he exclaimed. “Of course I shouldn’t.”
I didn’t even try to argue.
“Nice,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the pizza or the library, which he was studying as if he hadn’t seen it before. Well, he probably hadn’t since Randall’s company had installed the new lighting Mother had donated—elegant mission-style wall and table lamps whose amber shades cast a warm glow over everything. Dad was leaning back in his armchair, craning his neck to see the ceiling.
“Beautiful.” Definitely the room, not the pizza. “Of course, you’re going to need massive quantities of books to fill it.”
Not the first time he’d said this. I suspected he was plotting huge expenditures at the Caerphilly Book Nook and all his favorite new and used bookstores once the library was ours again. In fact, I only hoped he waited until then.
“We have massive quantities, remember?” I said. “In boxes, in the attic.”
“Not this massive,” he said.
“I’d rather wait until we unpack them before we start planning on deliberately adding to the herd,” I said. “They breed in captivity, you know—I’m sure when we open up the boxes we’ll have books we don’t even remember owning. And when we finally do get the library back, it could be the one moment in my lifetime and Michael’s when we actually have enough shelves for all our books. We want to savor that.”
Dad frowned, but didn’t press the subject. Then again, he knew he could make inroads on all that empty space with his presents of books for the boys. I hoped they turned out to be readers, since Dad had already given them an extensive library, including every Caldecott or Newbery Medal-winning book ever published. Now he was hunting down all the children’s books that had ever won a National Book Award, an Edgar, an Agatha, a Nebula, a World Fantasy Award, or any one of a dozen other honors.
“Evening, everyone.” Randall strolled in, helped himself to pizza matter-of-factly, and leaned against the table, ready to call the meeting to order.
“Awesome!” Rob bounced in. “You got a supreme!” He transferred three overloaded slices of his favorite pizza onto a plate that would probably have given way under the weight if he hadn’t set it on the table, plopped down on a nearby chair, and dug in. Ms. Ellie smiled indulgently and put the stack of napkins within reach.
“Good evening.” Chief Burke entered and slumped into an armchair.
“I asked the chief to join us, under the circumstances,” Randall said.
“There’s pizza,” Rob said.
The chief shook his head.
“Minerva would have my hide if I put even a bite of pizza in my stomach at this hour.” And he winced slightly, as if the day’s events had already been a little hard on his digestion. “Maybe we could get this started? It’s been a long day.”
“We’re expecting one more—ah, there he is now.”
Horace sidled into the room murmuring, “Sorry,” and probably would have remained lurking by the door if he hadn’t spotted the pizza.
“Help yourself,” Randall said.
Horace lunged at the pizza and retired to an armchair to devour his two slices.
“So what is it you’re hoping to accomplish tonight?” the chief said.
“Maybe see just how big a problem we have, and what we can do about it,” Randall said. “And I don’t just mean the murder. Though let’s start with that—we know Phineas Throckmorton didn’t do it, because he’s alibied.”
“Mostly alibied,” the chief said. “Rob wasn’t with him at the most critical few minutes.”
“But what are the chances he could actually have done anything in those few minutes?” Randall asked.
“Slender,” the chief said. “But not impossible.”
“Damn,” Randall said. “Of course, even if his alibi was ironclad, we wouldn’t want to reveal it and give away the secret of the tunnel just yet. So what are you going to say if the Evil Lender asks you to haul him out and arrest him?”
“They already have,” the chief said. “And I have already pointed out to them that if we arrested Mr. Throckmorton on the slender evidence we have so far he’d undoubtedly hit the county with a massive false arrest suit that we can ill afford.”
“Excellent!” Randall said. “That should work, even if they start demanding his arrest.”
“They can demand all they like,” the chief said. “I’m not obliged to arrest anyone just because a citizen thinks I should.”
“And they’re not even citizens,” Randall said. “Not of Caerphilly County, anyway. You could mention that if they bother you again.”
“I’ll let you mention it,” the chief said. “Because I told them if they weren’t happy with me, they should talk to you.”
“Wonderful,” Randall said. “Well, it comes with the job.”
“I’m not worried about what to do if FPF demands Mr. Throckmorton’s arrest,” the chief said. “But if they whip the press up to a frenzy, or succeed in convincing state or federal authorities that we’re being negligent in not arresting him, that could be a problem.”
“It’s also my job to keep that from happening,” Randall said. I hoped he really was as confident as he looked.
“And if FPF tries to make us look inept, you might point out that if their security officers had done their jobs properly, we might have a mite more evidence to work with,” the chief went on. “Not a single one of them stayed at his post when the shooting started. If they had, they might have noticed if someone was seen coming from the basement or leaving the building or taking off a bloodstained shirt. But instead, they were all running around like chickens with their heads cut off.”
“So you think there’s a chance the real killer could have fled the building undetected before you secured it?” Randall asked.
“The whole New Life choir could have marched out of the building singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ without those fools noticing,” the chief said. “If someone does put Mr. Throckmorton on trial—and it wouldn’t be any DA who listens to me—I will make sure his defense attorney knows how bad the building security was.”
“As long as they can’t force you to evict Phinny any time soon, that’s one less thing we have to worry about for now,” Randall said.
“I’m surprised they haven’t tried to file criminal trespass charges against him,” Rob said. “You’d have to arrest him if they did that, right?”
I wasn’t the only one who looked at Rob in surprise for a few moments. People tended to forget that before going into the computer game business Rob had managed to graduate from the University of Virginia law school and pass the Virginia Bar exam.
“You’re right,” the chief said finally. “So far, all they’ve done is serve eviction notices. If they’d ever escalated to criminal trespass, I’d have had to do something. But for some reason, they haven’t.”
“I suspect if they had, Cousin Festus would have filed criminal trespass charges against them,” I said. “Hasn’t he already notified them that he considers them trespassers?”
“Because the money that should have gone to Caerphilly went to ex-mayor Pruitt,” Rob said, nodding.
“Could be,” the chief said. “Whatever the reason, I think we can count on Mr. Festus Hollingsworth to fight a delaying action if FPF tries to file criminal trespass charges. But that’s far from our only problem. Frankly, if I don’t solve this murder in the next couple of days, I probably won’t be around to solve it at all. And some of the rest of you may have some difficult legal issues to contend with.”
He stood up and handed Randall a piece of paper.
Randall looked at it and frowned.
“What the devil is this?” he asked.