Late Checkout

by Carol J. Perry

  I looked at Kit-Cat clock. “This may turn out to be a long story. Come downstairs with me. Pizza guy always delivers to the Winter Street door and I like to be there so the doorbell won’t disturb Aunt Ibby.”

  The three of us, River, O’Ryan, and I, walked down the wide staircase to the foyer. The cat stationed himself at the long window on the right side of the door while River and I sat together on the hall tree seat. I avoided looking at the mirror. “When you read that card, the Wheel of Fortune, I’d just been researching a man named Larry Laraby.” I told her about Laraby’s sports show at WICH-TV, and how he’d managed successful sports collectibles shows right up until he’d died in his home—surrounded by books on the floor.

  “Uh-oh,” she said. “That’s almost like the way the dead man in the library was found, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right, and I’m sure my research on Laraby explains why my interpretation of the cards is so different from yours. Of course I don’t know the first thing about actually reading cards, but I’d like to know if you think my thoughts mean anything.”

  “Every thought means something. Let’s see, I talked about the Sphinx, the Typhon, Hermes, and the four fixed signs of the Zodiac. Right?”

  “Right,” I said, “and to tell you the truth I barely even heard what you said about each one. Especially the Zodiac part.”

  She frowned. “Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius. What else could it be?”

  I couldn’t help smiling at her confusion. “Uh, how about the Chicago Bulls, the Detroit Lions, the Philadelphia Eagles, and the Los Angeles Angels?”

  “Sports. I’ve never thought of it that way. Actually, there’s nothing wrong with your reading at all. You know, I get a call once in a while from one of those Fantasy Football people. If the Wheel of Fortune card ever turns up for one of them I think I’ll use your method.”

  “So, it does make some sort of sense?” Before she could answer O’Ryan tapped at the window with one paw, signaling the arrival of Pizza Pirate and dinner. I stood, still avoiding looking at the mirror, unlocked the front door, paid for the pizza, added the tip, and we three headed back upstairs. I wondered what River would think about my versions of the Sphinx, the snake, and the jackal-headed thing.

  Once back in the kitchen I glanced at the Lucite table with the lone Queen of Wands card in the center. I plopped the pizza box onto the counter, opened the cover, and put two paper plates and a plastic wineglass and a can of Pepsi beside it. “Help yourself,” I said, finding the corkscrew in the junk drawer, retrieving the wine from the refrigerator, and opening the bottle. “Tonight we’ll recycle instead of washing dishes.”

  We pulled up two stools as O’Ryan positioned himself between us. River reached for the un-pepperonied side and took a slice, while I took one from the other side and shared a round, spicy little delicacy with the waiting cat. (I know. I know. It’s not exactly good for him, but we don’t do it often.)

  “Okay then.” She poured the wine. “What about the rest of the Wheel of Fortune?”

  Between bites and sips I managed to give her an abbreviated version of the evil snake, the half-hidden leg on the jackal thing, and the wise Sphinx-library. She listened silently, nodding occasionally, smiling at my Arizona Diamondbacks analogy.

  When we’d finished our dinners, put the leftovers in the refrigerator, cleared away our paper and plastic debris, and turned on Mr. Coffee, we returned to the kitchen table with the waiting tarot card at its center.

  River bowed her head. “May the powers of the stars above and the earth below bless this place and this time and this woman and me who are with you.” She shuffled the deck and extended it toward me. Silently, I cut it into three piles and River began to lay the cards on the table in the familiar pattern.

  The first card she turned up was the Knight of Cups—a knight wearing armor, riding a pretty horse, and holding a cup. River saw a man with light brown hair and hazel eyes. She said he might be bringing a message, an invitation. I saw the young Ranger Rob, astride Prince Valiant, and wondered what his message might be. Next she showed me the Page of Pentacles—“a man with black hair with respect for learning and new ideas,” she said. I saw Professor Mercury, no doubt about it. The entire reading went that way. The Six of Cups showed a little boy offering a girl a cup filled with flowers. “Enjoyment coming from the past,” River said. “Happy childhood memories.” I agreed and saw the girl as little Maralee Kowalski, and I knew the memories were of my childhood heroes and heroines. The remaining cards prompted messages like “handling two situations at once,” and “mathematical gifts” and “hidden influences,” the kind of words that can mean anything—or nothing. The last card she turned over was the Five of Cups. That one shows a tall man, wrapped in a black cloak. “He’s wearing the black cloak of despair,” River said. “See the three spilled cups of wine? You may find sorrow in a place where you expected pleasure.” She tapped the card. “Does that make sense? Mean anything special to you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The library has always been a source of pleasure to me. Finding Wee Willie’s body has changed that—maybe forever. That makes me sad.”

  “Don’t be sad, Lee,” she said. “See the two cups left to be picked up? And the little cottage beyond the river in the distance? The river is the stream of the subconscious. There is a sense of loss for you, but there’s something good left for you to discover.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “And I’m glad there’s a river. Makes me think of you.” I poured the coffee. “Let’s talk about you now. And Buck.”

  She colored a little and smiled a shy little smile. “Things seem to be going well in that department,” she said. “Buck doesn’t say much, you know? But we get along really well and my audience seems to like it when he’s on the show to shuffle the cards.”

  Buck is such eye candy they’d watch if he was sound asleep. Aloud I said, “He’s getting to be quite the expert at that. Like a Las Vegas professional.”

  “He’s been practicing. He bought a CD on how to do it from Chris Rich’s shop.” She gathered up her tarot cards and returned them to their silk-padded box.

  “No kidding? I was just at Christopher’s Castle myself—trying to locate Professor Mercury for the anniversary show. Thought Chris might have kept in touch with him.”

  “Had he?”

  “Not exactly. He gave me Jerry Mercury’s business card with nothing much except a website on it,” I said, “but I found him. Or else he found me. Anyway, want to know where?”

  “Sure. I give up. Where?”

  “Today in Mr. Doan’s office. He’s agreed to take part in the anniversary celebration and he’s even going to do his magician act at the Halloween soiree Buffy is throwing for Howard Templeton.”

  “It sounds like fun, but Buck and I both have to work that night. So I suppose Mercury is connected somehow to the sports collectibles show guy? Larry Laraby?”

  “Well, they both worked at the station at around the same time,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Howie’s daddy is a big sports memorabilia collector,” she said. “Didn’t you know that? Howie told Buck that Howie Senior paid a couple thousand dollars recently for a Pete Rose rookie card.”

  “That’s very interesting. I don’t know what it means,” I admitted, “but it’s interesting. Another box to fill in on my imaginary flowchart? Thanks so much for coming over tonight, River. I really needed to talk to somebody about the Wheel of Fortune card. There’s another thing I’d like to ask you about.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I’ve had a few visions lately.”

  “Bad ones?” There was real concern in her voice.

  “Not really. The most recent one was O’Ryan sitting on top of an antique trunk we used to have.” The cat looked up at the sound of his name.

  “Just sitting on it? Where is the trunk? Do you recognize it?”

  “It burned up in the attic fire,” I said. “So it doesn’t exist anymore.”

 
River leaned back in her chair and held both hands up in mock horror. “We’ve had an encounter before with something that should have burned up in that fire! This isn’t another one of those is it?”

  I knew what she meant. That experience had terrified both of us. I promised her that there’d been nothing unearthly or mystical about Grandmother Forbes’s luggage. “It was just an ordinary old trunk full of ordinary old clothes,” I assured her, “but why is O’Ryan sitting on it? What is he trying to tell me?”

  We both looked at the cat, who’d hopped up onto his favorite windowsill, facing outside, roundly ignoring us. “I remember that it’s not unusual for your visions to take a while to make sense, Lee,” she said. “This one will reveal itself. Just be patient. My tarot readings take a while to manifest too, you know. Maybe your answer is in one of those two cups that didn’t spill.”

  Chapter 31

  River stayed until nearly eleven o’clock. We finished the pot of coffee, along with a sleeve of Girl Scout cookies I found in the Red Riding Hood cookie jar. There was no more discussion about visions or murder. Just girl talk—about clothes and boyfriends, office gossip—like was Wanda still dating that guy who used to be a Chippendale dancer? Later O’Ryan and I accompanied my friend to her car, wished her a good night, and walked back together along the lighted path to the house. After she’d left I heard another car drive past. Slowly. A green Subaru? I resisted the urge to look.

  Once upstairs, O’Ryan headed straight for the bedroom. I followed and changed into comfy cotton pj’s. O’Ryan did his usual turnaround trick and plopped down at the foot of the bed. Not quite ready for sleep yet, I padded back to the kitchen, pulled three fresh index cards and a pen from my bag, and put them on the table where the tarot cards had been. On one card I wrote, “Howard Templeton Sr. is a collector of sports memorabilia. (Pete Rose rookie card—$2000?)” I stared at it for a moment, then put it face down on the table and picked up another. On the second card I wrote, “O’Ryan on an old trunk.” I don’t always record my visions—don’t have to. They’re pretty unforgettable—but this one made even less sense than most of them.

  Why was O’Ryan sitting on a trunk that had burned up in the attic fire years ago? There’d been nothing of value in it—just old “too good to throw away” clothes that had belonged to various long-ago relatives. I put that card on top of the first one. Guess I could ask O’Ryan what it means. I looked toward the bedroom, decided against waking him, then laughed at myself for thinking the cat would seriously answer my question.

  I’d just picked up the third blank index card and looked at it, deciding whether any of River’s tarot reading needed to be recorded, when my phone buzzed. Pete? I don’t usually expect to hear from him on old-timers’ hockey game night.

  “Hi, Pete,” I said. “How was your game?”

  “Good. We won. Listen, babe, do you think your aunt might still be awake?”

  “I’m pretty sure she’s not,” I said. “All her lights are out. Why? Is anything wrong?”

  “No. Nothing’s wrong exactly. I stopped by the police station on my way home and a question about the library security cameras has come up.”

  “Is it something urgent? Should I wake her?”

  “No. It’ll keep. Just something weird on the tapes.”

  “Weird?” Reporter brain kicked in. “How so? Is it anything I can help with?”

  “I don’t think so. Did Ms. Russell ever mention something being wrong with the time stamps on the cameras? Or the cameras themselves?”

  “She’s never mentioned it to me. Why? What happened?”

  “Well, I told you about the bearded guy who comes into the library through the front door, goes into the kids’ section, and up the stairs to the stacks.”

  “Yes?”

  “We’re sure now he never came down the stairs. We’ve checked every bit of video from the security cameras. So how did he get out?”

  “You don’t think he could have used the emergency exit?”

  “Forensics says the alarm is still fully armed. Nobody could have left without that thing clanging up a storm. Besides that, there were no fingerprints that didn’t belong there on either side of the door.”

  That can’t be right. “But Pete, I’m quite sure I heard a door open and close while I was up there.”

  “Remember? You didn’t mention it when I first asked you about it.” He was right about that. I hadn’t remembered any sound at first. It was only when I’d closed my eyes and tried to put myself back there in that frightening place that I’d heard—thought I’d heard—a door.

  “Oh, Pete. I’m sorry. Maybe I gave you some bad information. You know, between the visions and my being afraid of the stacks in the first place—and finding the dead man—I could have been wrong about the sound. It’s actually a lot more likely that whoever killed him just walked down the stairs and out the door and the cameras somehow didn’t capture that part.”

  I’d certainly prefer that explanation. Then I wouldn’t be worrying about a killer thinking I’d seen him. I thought of something else. “What about the man little Pamela saw in the old kitchen?” I asked. “How did he get in the library in the first place?”

  “Yeah. That’s just one more reason we think the cameras may be faulty. It’s an old system. Practically antique.” I heard him sigh. “Gotta be something wrong with the cameras—or else the damned place is haunted!”

  “I’ve never heard about any ghosts there,” I said, laughing. “But let me see if I’ve got this straight. The old woman and the bearded man were wandering around there while Willie was upstairs in the stacks getting murdered. Then there’s the gray-haired man in the old kitchen. Nobody but a frightened kid seems to have seen him.”

  “Seems that way.”

  “Must be the bearded man then,” I said. “I doubt that an old woman would know karate and we’re not actually sure the gray-haired man exists. Pamela could have imagined him—or made him up.”

  “Wait a minute. Karate? What made you think of that?”

  “Rhonda guessed it as soon as they announced about injury to the upper vertebrae near the brain stem. She used to date a karate master.”

  “Chances are she’s right. A quiet, effective way to kill somebody. He probably never knew what hit him.”

  “Do you think Willie found the book they were looking for? You think maybe the man killed him and the woman got away with the book?”

  “No, Nancy.” Patient cop voice. “No, I don’t think anything like that. First, I think the library needs new, up-to-date cameras and a new monitor screen. Then I think a person or persons unknown gained access to the stacks and killed Willie.”

  “Anyway, I’ll ask Aunt Ibby about the cameras first thing in the morning, but you know up until this happened, there probably hadn’t been any reason to check them. There are buzzer alarms on the exit doors that ring if someone takes a book that hasn’t been checked out properly. That—and Dave—is about all the security they’ve needed.”

  “You’re probably right. But how does that buzzer thing work?”

  “Aunt Ibby says it’s just a simple radio frequency technology,” I said. “A piece of special tape—we call it ‘tattle tape’—is stuck inside the book cover. There’s a gadget at the circulation desk that desensitizes it when you check your book out. Simple.”

  “Thanks. Always wondered about that. We’ll send one of our tech guys over in the morning to check all the cameras. That needs to be done anyway. Well, babe, I should let you go to sleep. Getting late.”

  “O’Ryan’s already gone to bed. I’m about ready to join him.”

  “Good night. I love you.”

  “Love you too. Bye.” I picked up the pen and the three index cards and put them on the counter, squirted some glass cleaner onto the table and wiped it. I looked at Kit-Cat. The late news would still be on. Maybe I’d catch my pumpkin-ride segment. I turned on the TV and turned down the volume so it wouldn’t disturb the sleeping cat.

/>   One of Francine’s beautiful nighttime shots of the library loomed on the screen while Buck Covington’s smooth, professional voice narrated. “People in Salem have been paying a lot of attention to this fine old building lately,” he said. “In the midst of the annual Halloween Happenings, where adults and kids alike enjoy being scared by witches and goblins, there’s been a real murder right here in the public library.” Close-up of library window where a cardboard jack-o’-lantern smiled. Nice touch, Marty.

  Buck continued the voice-over. “The Salem police department has asked WICH-TV viewers to help with the investigation. I have two pictures to show you that were captured by security cameras in the library. These people are ‘persons of interest.’ They are not considered to be suspects. The authorities would like to talk with this man and this woman because they may have heard or seen something on the day that William Wallace lost his life in the stacks in the Salem main public library.”

  The person Pete called “the old woman” appeared on the screen first. This was a much better picture than the one they’d shown earlier. Better detail. Close up. She wore a navy blue hat with a little dotted veil covering the top half of her face. I’d seen similar hats on Sundays at Tabernacle Church. There were perfectly round spots of rouge on her lined cheeks. I’d seen that method of makeup on elderly ladies before too. I leaned toward the screen, trying to get a closer look, but she’d disappeared, replaced by a male face—one with a neatly trimmed beard and shaggy brows. He wore blue-tinted glasses.

  “If you recognize either of these folks, call the number at the bottom of your screen,” Buck advised.

  “He looks like a college professor,” I muttered, “and she looks like every cartoon little old lady I’ve ever seen.” I picked up the remaining blank index card and scribbled, “What can be in an old book that’s worth killing a man for?”

  I turned off the TV, picked up my cards—which held questions and no answers—carried them into the bedroom, and joined the cat on the bed.