Adam and Evil (An Amanda Pepper Mystery)

by Gillian Roberts

  “The other library users will be grateful,” he said without looking up.

  “My own book, I mean. I left my own paperback. Henry James. Turn of the Screw. I’m hoping it hasn’t been reshelved.”

  “Shelved. If it’s your book, it never was on our shelves, so it really couldn’t be reshelved.” His nose was nearly on the puzzle as he wrote another word.

  Did he have any idea what roiling wretchedness he was messing with? “Forgive my syntactical and lexical errors,” I said. “I’m having a really bad day. But on the other hand, you aren’t going to win any gold stars for helpfulness, either. Did you notice that this desk is placed so as to be convenient for people to ask questions? And twenty across is wrong.” I couldn’t see the clues, his answer, or the numbers, but I didn’t care.

  His sudden smile nearly obliterated the memory of his officious nit-picking. I realized he might have been trying for humor. I also once again realized he was cute. Arrogant, but cute. I should have appreciated his gentle wordplay, and normally I would have. “Check lost and found,” he said. “If whoever cleared the decks noticed that there were no call letters on the spine, it might be there.”

  He spoke gently, but the intellectual and professional chasm between us had widened. I was a dolt who thought a book was a book was a book, and he was a trained professional, a Dewey decimalian. “Turn of the Screw,” he said. “A James fan, are you?”

  I shrugged. “One of my students is writing a play based on it. It’s her book, actually. Annotated. The basis of her script. That’s why I have to find that copy.”

  “That’s what they all say. It’s not for them, it’s for a friend.”

  He squinted at me, then pulled glasses out of his vest pocket, put them on, and looked at me again. “I know you! Pepper, right? You were here with your class yesterday. Sent me into the men’s room later on.”

  “I didn’t think you remembered me.”

  “Nearsighted,” he said. “Very. Too lazy to put on the glasses, but otherwise—of course I would have remembered you! I must have seemed—sorry I was so flip. I’m not actually here. Well, of course, I am, physically, but only waiting for a friend. It was supposed to be a few minutes, but it’s been…no excuse for my answering you badly, as you now know. Of course I’d remember you, that valiant soul trying to generate excitement for rare books and seeing only bored kids. Poor you.” He was on the verge of another smile, but before it could truly bloom, it dimmed. “Awful, what happened to Emily Fisher.”

  I hadn’t wanted to get back into this, just wanted the book.

  “We’re all heartsick. She hadn’t been here long, but all the same…”

  “She seemed quite knowledgeable.”

  He nodded and stood up, making this feel less an official Q-and-A. And at close range, I saw the stain I’d known would always be on his ties. A bachelor, I decided with clichéd assurance.

  “A quick study,” he said. “Smart. Noticed and remembered everything. Loved books and libraries, and was really motivated. Almost too much so—like this was her whole life, and maybe it was. This place was definitely her haven. At least when her husband wasn’t doing his serpent-in-her-Eden act.”

  “He came here?”

  Labordeaux nodded. “Checked up on her.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Apparently he didn’t think she was earning enough. Maybe his support payments depended on her income, and God knows we aren’t overpaid. He insisted she’d chosen to work here so she could bleed him dry—that kind of thing. He sat in the cafeteria with her at lunch, badgering her. Everybody could hear, which he knew, as if he were playing to a jury.”

  Ray Buttonwood sounded worse and worse. Emily’s recent life was like the childhood nightmare of being sucked down the drain. “Do the police know who did it?” God knew when Mackenzie and my paths would cross again, and whether, at that time, he’d tell me anything about this case.

  “That boy,” he said. “That crazy boy. Your student, isn’t he? Very sad. Nobody’s been arrested, if that’s what you mean. Can’t find him, as I understand it.”

  I refused to insert Adam’s name into my questions. “Do you have any idea how whoever did it could have disappeared so quickly? Is there a way out of that balcony? I remember it being closed off, understandably, so that there isn’t easy access to the rare books. But that also makes getting away…how could somebody do it?”

  He was silent for a moment. “There are doors. You didn’t notice because they’re for staff only, or as separate entrances for special receptions. Or you could take the elevator, up or down. Go up to the cafeteria, and from there, down the stairs to the theater section, although that’d be pretty much a dead end. Or you could go out on the roof terrace, even though it’s not allowed,” he continued. “But if you’ve just murdered somebody, no-admittance rules probably don’t intimidate you. You could hide in any of those places and leave later. Or hop on the elevator and be down and out before anybody arrived. There was that lag time. And nobody out there except poor Emily, and she was beyond telling.”

  “I guess you could hide by staying right where you were. I mean, going back to some part of the Rare Book Department. Hide in plain sight.”

  “Like in ‘The Purloined Letter,’ which would be appropriate given our Poe collection.” His expression combined both appraisal and approval of me. Maybe even something more. “With the number of people who are in here on legitimate—or at least ordinary—pursuits, nobody’d notice, long as the killer looked normal. And we have a wide spectrum of what passes for normal in the library, given our street people looking for a warm dry place, and our usual revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries researching how they are going to tear up the world. Pretty much anything goes. Is that what you’re saying? Interesting. Very interesting.”

  “More or less.” I had a queasy and pleasantly surprised sense that we weren’t really talking only about the murder. That we were, in fact, doing a peculiar, library-colored, postmodern variation on “Hi, what’s your sign?”

  “That crazy boy who did it, do you know where he is?” Terry Labordeaux asked me. “Do his parents? Have you spoken with them? Has he gotten in touch with you?”

  “No, supposedly, no, and why would he?”

  “He must be scared. Disoriented. I mean, who’d take you in if you’re mentally ill and a killer? I keep thinking about him.” He shook his head, as if bewildered by the idea of Adam.

  “I don’t know that he’s the killer,” I said.

  “That’s nice. Protecting your student. Bighearted.”

  We were back to using a murder as grounds for flirting. “About my book?” I gently prompted.

  He looked puzzled, then smiled again. “I nearly forgot. Henry James, of course. I’ll walk you there as soon as—”

  “If you’ll just point the—”

  He waved at a small man rushing toward us, wispy hair haloing him. “Sorry,” the new arrival said. “Sorry, sorry. The tires—”

  My buddy waved his words away. “No problem at all. I’ve had charming company.”

  Definitely a mating dance happening here. I wished I knew if I wanted it to continue.

  He turned to me to make an introduction, then stopped and produced that grin again. “Never did get your full name,” he said. “I think we’re beyond the Miss Pepper stage, aren’t we?”

  “It’s Amanda.”

  He looked as if nowhere on earth did there exist a more splendid first name. “Amanda, meet Sandor. Or, Amandor, meet Sanda.”

  The little man’s hand was damp with either the rain or his haste. “I’ve been stuck in the worst—don’t even ask.” As I hadn’t, we let it go at that.

  “And yesterday, you told me to call you Terry,” I said. “Short for Terrence?”

  “Short for the never-used-and-don’t-start-now Alastair. My Scottish grandfather’s name. Try having a French-Scots combo. Too many jokes about cheap wine.” After explaining to Sandor why, after waiting for him, he wasn�
��t going to stay with him, we walked down a flight of stairs.

  “I hate to keep asking questions that are none of my business,” I lied, “but do you happen to know who found the—who found Emily Fisher?”

  He stopped walking and looked at me with gold-brown eyes and a solemnly set mouth. “Unfortunately, I do. I found her.” He took a deep breath, his eyes focusing backward, on twenty-four hours earlier. “I ate late. Been working on the Fraktur—” He saw my frown of confusion. “The Pennsylvania German folk art collection. Lost count of time, and so I ate lunch after everybody. I got off the elevator and there she was, with the alarm going off, and—”

  “How awful for you.”

  He looked at me appraisingly, as if he wasn’t sure I was being honest. Then, satisfied, he nodded. “The alarm,” he murmured, as if surprised. “Why didn’t I realize it sooner? There’s a wrought-iron gate on the balcony. Real heavy ornamental stuff. It covers the opening to a staircase—a grand staircase like the one downstairs. It was closed off for security reasons. There’s a small notice on it that an alarm would sound if the gate were opened. That’s been hypothetical until now. Nobody ever opened the gate—I don’t even see it anymore. It’s part of that wall, but that must be what happened. He opened the gate, the alarm started, he shut the gate, and it kept going.”

  “You’re saying that’s how the killer got out.”

  “Makes sense, doesn’t it? Unless there was a Tarzan jump off the balcony, can you think of any other way out?”

  “The elevator?”

  He looked at me so intently, I felt uncomfortable, although I knew I was supposed to feel flattered and appreciated. “Kind of risky, isn’t it?” he said. “They are notoriously slow to arrive.”

  I nodded. “He might have bumped into you, coming down from the cafeteria.”

  He slapped his forehead. “Damn—I’ve been so…well, whatever…this is embarrassing. I forgot to get the key, or the security guy.”

  “For what?”

  “The lost and found. It’s not exactly an official place, just an office where people toss found objects. And it’s locked.”

  So we turned and ascended the flight of stairs, which once again would have been several flights in a building where one story wasn’t actually several stories high. “Till now,” Terry said, “I didn’t associate the two events. I thought the alarm was a whole separate thing, a false alarm set off by Louie.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Louie Louie. That’s his actual name, he swears it. He’s an advocate for the homeless, which would be fine. You know, we have issues with people trying to use this as a dorm or public bathhouse, and things aren’t always sweetness and light. Patrons had become nervous about using the rest rooms for fear of who or what they’d find…we had to do something. But we worked it out—until Louie declared himself their advocate.” We’d reached the security guard at the back of the entry hall, and after some discussion and some obvious conflict about leaving his post, he gave Terry the key to the room that served as a lost and found. We started down the stairs again.

  “Is Louie homeless?” I asked.

  Terry shook his head. “But I don’t know why not. Looks like he could be. He’s long-haired and bearded, always needs a trim, and is definitely a little off. Also, he’s here almost every morning the same time I get here, as if this is his job.”

  The bitch man?

  “But he obviously sleeps and eats well. I assume he’s a trust baby.”

  “That’s what I always meant to be,” I said. “Where did I go wrong?”

  “Same place I did.” Terry had a world-class smile. “Picked the wrong parents. Mine forgot to feather my nest. Do you think it had to do with having not one extra feather?”

  “They probably pay Louie to stay away from them,” I said. “They probably pay him out of shame for giving him that name.”

  “They should pay us, too, then. For coping with him. He is forever preaching, railing, making as much noise as possible. Doesn’t think there should be rules, guidelines, exclusions. And of course,” Terry said, “since being reasonably quiet in the library makes sense, to assert his rights and his distaste for rules, he makes noise.”

  “Apropos of nothing?”

  Terry nodded. “Scares everybody to death, and what are we supposed to do? What crime did he commit? Disturbing the peace usually requires more than a whoop or a scream. And the times he’s been escorted out, he’s called the press and we’ve gotten more bad PR as oppressors of the oppressed. Easier to live with the idea he’ll freak us out now and then. So yesterday, when I heard the alarm… it’s actually ironic, I guess.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Well, if indeed this time the noise was about Emily, because of her—at least, because of her death, she and Louie… Emily had a fierce streak when she thought something wasn’t right, and she wouldn’t let go of it. You could call her stiff-necked, prone to high moral dudgeon, and she thought Louie Louie was wrong. They bumped heads almost from day one.”

  We reached a glass-paneled door near the men’s room. Finding what had been lost didn’t seem a high priority at the library, and I worried about the odds of my seeing that book again. Rather than face Lia and say I’d lost it, I would be forced to commit hara-kiri.

  “Why did they fight?” I asked as he opened the office door. Lost objects, including a large blue drum, which seemed as if it would be hard to lose, waited to be reclaimed from atop chairs or on the floor. There were no shelves, nothing designed for the waiting-to-be-found, none of the organization I’d expected.

  “I’ll look,” Terry said, moving into the room. I got the feeling I wasn’t to enter the inner sanctum, so I waited by the entrance. “Emily wasn’t used to his commando raids and he scared her half to death first time he pulled one. She retaliated—called the cops, chewed him out, burst into tears. The works.” He inspected the top of a row of lockers while continuing his running narrative. “It was on the evening news, and I have to say that for once, we didn’t necessarily look bad. Here was this tiny woman crying, and this nutty-looking, wild-talking so-called advocate. It didn’t hurt that one of the homeless women hugged Emily and told her to stop crying. On camera. Made Louie more fanatical. He came after Emily, harassing her until she was on the verge of getting a restraining order. Which would have been useless. When you’re nuts and the cops have a couple or three other things to do, to keep calling every time Louie Louie is spotted in the public library… Instead we reached a truce. He’d hang around in the lobby but not go after her the way he was.”

  “But he was here yesterday, and I saw him stop her. I didn’t know who he was then, or who she was, but I heard him call her a bitch. And say she thwarted him.”

  “He has a fine vocabulary.”

  “Do the police know about Louie?” I was grasping at anything, and starting to feel paranoid myself, imagining Emily-enemies everywhere—her sister, her soon-to-be ex-husband, Louie Louie. But not Adam. No. Not even if the killing had been on the balcony, from which it was logical to assume Adam’s scarf had fallen.

  “I have no idea what the police do or don’t know,” Terry said. “They asked me what I’d seen. Didn’t want anything beyond that. I told them about finding her, and I pointed out the book bag on the landing, and even then, they acted like I had exceeded my bounds. They would have seen it themselves. So I shut up.”

  He slowly turned, double-checking all the shelving. This didn’t bode well for Lia’s book.

  “Do you know whose bag it was?” I asked

  His attention was still focused on the shelves. He shook his head, then walked toward me, his expression mournful. “It isn’t here. I’m so sorry. But you know, somebody might still turn it in, so why don’t you give me a number where I could reach you, and I’ll check every day.”

  I might have said no need, but there was a need, even though I wasn’t sure why he really wanted that number. “Easiest thing would be to call the school. Philly Prep,” I said. He loo
ked disappointed, verifying my suspicions that he wasn’t really motivated by the missing book. “They’ll get the message to me.”

  “Can I atone a little?” he asked. “Buy you a cup of coffee? Do you have time?”

  I hesitated.

  “Didn’t mean to give too glamorous an idea of what I had in mind,” he said quickly. “Upstairs—the cafeteria—a cup of coffee? I could do with a break and,” he checked his watch, “it’s still open.”

  “Well, then, sure.”

  On the elevator ride up, he asked discreetly and I discreetly conveyed the idea that I was “somewhat involved.” I heard my own voice qualify Mackenzie with that “somewhat” and realized in that instant that I wasn’t one hundred percent sure how ecstatic I was about my unavailability. A man like Terry would be around when you needed him. I couldn’t imagine there were many library emergencies, overtime, extra shifts. Plus, he listened. And he was, if not a C.K. Mackenzie type all-round knockout looker, sufficiently attractive in his own way. And with a smile that made the rest not matter.

  As for those ties—it was obviously a case of his bad eyesight. Not some character flaw.

  The elevator passed the Rare Book Department’s floor. “Mind if I meet you back up here in two minutes?” I asked as we reached the cafeteria on the top level. “I’d like to look at that landing where Adam was.”

  He kept the elevator door open with his hand and looked startled. “Well—sure, but why?”

  “Is it still open? The Rare Book Department?” I asked.

  “Till five every weekday.” His voice went flat, without interest, as if this were a question he was too frequently asked. “The elevator won’t stop on that floor after the department’s closed, so yes, it’s now or never.” Then he paused, and looked at me with renewed enthusiasm. “Do you want an escort?”