“Think about it. Twelve years ago, Beth would have been about four years old. Bradley is twelve now, so he was only an infant, maybe even a newborn.”
Liss had a hard time accepting what Sherri was saying. Angie was as honest as the day was long . . . wasn’t she? “Maybe she just decided to change her name. People do. And you can call yourself anything you like. Plenty of people use pseudonyms.”
“Angie is a bookseller, not an author. Besides, this isn’t just a case of calling herself something else part of the time. She created an identity for herself under what has to be an assumed name. If she changed it legally, there would be a record somewhere. So far, nothing has turned up. I hate to say it, Liss, but this development makes both the fire and Angie’s disappearance look very suspicious.”
Liss leaned back, feeling gobsmacked. She didn’t like any of the possibilities that sprang to mind. Picking the least alarming of the lot, she said, “Maybe she’s in the witness protection program.”
“Maybe.” Sherri looked doubtful. “But I think information can be shared with local law enforcement in a case like this one where the fire is likely to have been set.”
“Even if the arson is somehow connected to Angie’s past and she and the kids have already been given a new set of identities?”
“It’s not like they’d have to tell me where they are.”
Liss sent her a skeptical look. She’d never had the impression that federal agencies played well with others.
“It’s not a subject I know a lot about,” Sherri admitted, “and there are other, more likely possibilities. What if Angie changed her name to hide a criminal background? Or she could be running away from an abusive husband.”
Liss frowned. “She mentioned a sister-in-law once.”
Sherri went on alert, reaching for the small spiral notebook and pen she kept in her breast pocket. “Did she give you a name?”
“I don’t think so.” Liss racked her brain, trying to remember exactly what Angie had said. It had been a casual remark made several years earlier. “Angie just said her sister-in-law was taking care of the shop and babysitting Bradley so Angie wouldn’t have to be in two places at once. It was the weekend of that mystery convention you just mentioned. Angie was at the hotel, set up to sell books in the dealer room. The Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium’s tables were right next to hers, and we were spelling each other for bathroom breaks. She took over so I could attend a couple of the panels, too, and I held the fort while she went back to the bookstore to host a signing by the guest of honor.”
“You never met the sister-in-law?”
Liss shook her head. “Never even caught a glimpse of her, but someone must have been working at Angie’s Books that weekend, as well as keeping an eye on young Bradley.”
“I’ll check into it, but knowing what we do now, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that Angie invented her.”
“What would be the point of leading me to believe she had family?”
“What was the point in creating a new identity for herself?”
“I suppose,” Liss mused, “that the bookstore might have been closed. I’d have had no way of knowing, since I was at The Spruces. But someone still had to look after Angie’s son.”
“Beth?”
“Beth was in the dealer room with us, helping her mother.”
“Bradley could have been at a friend’s house,” Sherri suggested. “Maybe Angie asked Patsy to look after him. Or Gloria Weir. I’ll ask around.”
“I hate this!” Liss exclaimed. “This suspicion. I like Angie.”
“Cheer up. Maybe the sister-in-law will turn out to be real, after all. If so, she’ll know where to find Angie and the children. You’re certain Angie didn’t mention a name?”
“Positive.” She sent Sherri a rueful look. “And the more I think about it, the more I realize that Angie never talked about her past.”
Sherri heaved herself to her feet. “I’ve got to get going. Now that it’s almost certain we’re dealing with a case of arson, I need to talk to everyone who showed up to watch the bookstore burn. Some sickos who set fires for kicks like to witness the results of their handiwork. With luck, I may be able to locate a witness who saw someone acting suspiciously during the fire.”
“Everyone I noticed looked appalled.” Liss rose to follow her friend to the door.
“Did you spot anyone you didn’t know?”
Liss frowned. “There were a couple of men I had never seen before, but one of them turned out to be a guest at the hotel. He came into the Emporium yesterday with his wife.” She shrugged. “You can hear the fire siren as far away as The Spruces. I wouldn’t be surprised if several guests decided to come down and take a look at the action.”
“I’ve never understood why people do that,” Sherri grumbled as she opened the door, setting the bells above it jangling. “They’re a damned nuisance. If they’re in cars, they slow down to gawk at traffic accidents. On foot, they crowd in at fires and crime scenes. Sometimes they even try to sneak in past the police tape to get a closer look.”
“There was one of those.”
Sherri swung around in the doorway. “One what?”
“A gawker trying to get closer. Ask Mike Jennings. He yelled at the guy.”
“Thanks,” Sherri said as she finally made it onto the Emporium’s front porch. “I’ll do that. It probably won’t amount to anything, but at this stage I can’t leave any stone unturned.
* * *
“Just who do you think you are?” Dolores Mayfield shouted.
The librarian’s loud, strident voice reached Liss when she was halfway up the wide flight of stairs that led to the second floor of the municipal building. Like most small town libraries, the one that served Moosetookalook had a limited budget. It was only open three afternoons and one evening a week. A few minutes earlier, Liss had put the BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES sign on the door of the Emporium and scurried across the town square, anxious to pick Dolores’s brain. The librarian was the most inquisitive woman in the entire county, and Liss hoped she would have some notion of where Angie and her children had gone.
The voice yelling back at Dolores belonged, unmistakably, to Jason Graye. “Who am I? I’m one of your duly elected selectmen, that’s who!”
Liss hesitated only a moment before she pushed open the glass door with the library’s hours etched on the outside and went in. The combatants were so intent on their quarrel that neither of them noticed her arrival. She’d planned to interrupt, but one look at their faces changed her mind. She decided it would be better to stay off their radar until she figured out what was going on, or until Graye finished venting his spleen and left.
Taking advantage of their intense concentration on each other, she ducked into a convenient row of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. This gave her a prime view of the action—all she had to do was peer through the space between the books at eye level and the underside of the shelf above.
Graye barely topped five-foot-ten and was, if not overweight, at least badly out of shape. He compensated by pushing into Dolores’s personal space, his thin lips pursed and jaw outthrust. Red-faced and seething, he looked ready to explode. “I’m doing you a big favor to warn you ahead of time!”
“Some warning!” Dolores didn’t back up. Instead she leaned toward him until they were nearly nose to nose. Hers was needle-thin. His resembled the beak of a hawk. “You’ve already decided to close the library.”
Liss’s gasp of surprise and dismay gave away her presence.
“Who’s there?” The small, rimless spectacles Dolores wore improved her vision to 20/20. She had no difficulty spotting Liss’s hiding place. “Come out of there, Liss Ruskin. What do you mean sneaking around in my library?”
Liss felt heat rush into her face as she emerged from the shelter of the shelves. Dolores could give a school marm lessons when it came to putting miscreants in their place. “I, uh, didn’t want to disturb your, uh, discussion.”
Dolore
s snorted, but her attitude softened. “How much did you hear? Do you know what this moron wants to do?”
She did, and the very thought appalled her. She forgot her embarrassment at being caught eavesdropping and rounded on Jason Graye. “How can you even think of closing the library?”
“This is none of your business, Liss.” He was at his huffy, arrogant best. “Stay out of it.”
“It certainly is my business,” she shot back. “It’s the business of everyone who uses this library. This public library,” she added for emphasis.
“Exactly. The word public in public library means it’s run with public funds, which we can no longer afford to throw away on such trivialities.”
“Trivialities? Would that be just the books?” Liss asked in acid tones. “Or do you mean the computers, too?”
The library provided two computer workstations at no cost to library patrons. For many in this rural area, the library computers were their only access to the Internet. They came in to send and receive e-mail and do research, to look for jobs and apply for them, to file income taxes, and to put ads on Uncle Henry’s to sell the things they no longer used.
The terminals weren’t the only amenities tucked in among the heavily laden bookshelves in two large rooms that took up almost all the space on the municipal building’s second floor. There were microform readers, too, and a large vertical file cabinet where Dolores hoarded her collection of newspaper clippings on subjects of interest to residents of the town.
Graye was still on his high horse. “We have to make up for lost revenue somehow, especially now that the parade has been canceled.”
Liss’s jaw dropped. “You’re the ones who canceled it.”
A wave of one hand dismissed that quibble. “The fact remains that the town is strapped for money. After you and your aunt were evicted from our work session, we came up with several new plans to make up the deficit. My only regret is that we didn’t think to close the library in time to implement that action in the current fiscal year. As things stand now, this waste of space is fully funded until the end of December.”
“Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,” Dolores muttered under her breath.
Graye turned away from Liss to glower at the librarian. At his most brusque and condescending, he added, “I don’t know what you’re complaining about, Dolores. You’re plenty old enough to retire.”
The look she leveled at him should have turned him to stone. Color high, hands on narrow hips, she answered him in a voice dripping with contempt. “You are lower than pond scum, Mr. Selectman. It is a great pity that you were not drowned at birth.”
Jason Graye laughed.
Liss could have told him that was not a smart thing to do.
Dolores had always been a prima donna, presiding over her domain with the air of a queen holding court, albeit one who was always willing to help a library patron find what he needed. She prided herself on being in control of both her environment and herself. Until today, Liss had never thought to see the other woman give way to rage. She stepped quickly out of the way as Dolores advanced on the man who dared suggest closing her library.
Lifting one hand, she jabbed the brightly painted nail on her index finger in Graye’s direction. Had it been a knife and she’d thrown it, it would have penetrated what passed for his heart. “You will regret this action, Jason. You think I’m powerless to stop you, but I’m not.”
“Ooh! I’m so scared.” He held both hands in front of him in mock terror. Then he straightened to his full height and glared at her. “It’s a done deal, Dolores. Accept it.”
With that parting shot, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the library.
“You don’t deserve to live!” Dolores shouted at his back.
Liss said nothing until the sound of Jason Graye’s descending footsteps faded away. “I’m sure there’s something we can do to stop him, Dolores. The library is too important to the town to let the board of selectmen close it down.” To Liss’s mind, it was irreplaceable.
“Not as important as money.” Dolores let her bitterness show. “Do you know what they want to do with this space?”
“I can guess.”
“Yes, I suppose that much is obvious. Graye is in real estate, after all. It’s no surprise that he wants to rent out these rooms to bring in revenue. Well, he won’t succeed. I mean to stop him.”
“Good for you. We can pack the next town meeting and convince the board of selectmen to reverse their decision. Closing the library might have financial advantages for the town, but access to a public library should be a basic human right.”
“The others will give up on the idea once Graye is out of the picture,” Dolores muttered, more to herself than to Liss. “Cut off the head and the body dies.”
The bloodthirsty image momentarily startled Liss, but she could understand Dolores’s anger. She was glad she was not in Jason Graye’s shoes. He’d misjudged Dolores badly if he’d thought she’d take a blow like this lying down. Any minute now, she’d be on the phone, rallying public support. Before she could get started, Liss needed to ask her the question that had brought her to the library in the first place.
“Do you have a minute, Dolores? I could use your help.”
It seemed to take the librarian a long time to shift focus. Liss sympathized with that reaction, too. In Dolores’s place, she’d still be thinking up inventive ways to rain down pain and suffering on Jason Graye’s thick head.
Abruptly, Dolores jerked out of her reverie. “Yes, of course. What can I do for you, Liss?”
“I just have a quick question. Do you have any idea where Angie could have gone?”
“Not a clue.” Dolores pursed her lips. “It was most inconsiderate of her to run off like that.”
“You think she ran?”
“Well, she’s not here, is she?”
“When did you last see her?”
“Wednesday.” The answer came promptly, making Liss suspect that Dolores had been pondering the mystery of Angie’s disappearance all along. Either that, or Sherri had already been by to ask her the same question.
“Was she here? If Angie consulted a travel guide or used one of the computers—”
“She passed by twice, once going to and once coming from Patsy’s Coffee House.”
Although the library was open fewer than twenty hours a week, Dolores was on the premises almost every day and some evenings, too, working without pay to keep everything running smoothly. That was not to say she reaped no benefits from her selfless devotion to her job. Dolores was Moosetookalook’s resident snoop. She didn’t miss much that went on in their quiet little village. From the library windows, even though they’d been made smaller some years back to conserve energy, she had a bird’s-eye view of all the buildings around the town square. Liss knew for a fact that she also kept a pair of high-end binoculars in the drawer of the checkout desk.
“It’s a pity you didn’t see them drive away.”
“Angie’s garage faces Elm. Besides, there are trees in the way.” Dolores’s disgruntled voice told Liss that she’d tried more than once to spy on that particular neighbor and been frustrated in her attempts.
“I don’t suppose you know where Angie lived before she came here?”
Dolores gave her a sharp look. “I can find out.”
Apparently, Dolores did not know everything. Liss debated with herself for less than thirty seconds before sharing what Sherri had told her. “The police haven’t been able to find any trace of her before she moved to Moosetookalook. It’s as if she didn’t exist until twelve years ago.”
Dolores took this as a challenge. “They have their sources. I have mine.”
“You’ll tell me what you find?”
The librarian’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll tell both you and Sherri. Now if that’s all, I have a great deal to do besides digging into Angie Hogencamp’s past.”
She started toward her large, old-fashioned desk, its highly polished surface piled h
igh with the books she’d removed from the night drop. Abruptly, she stopped and glanced back, an enigmatic expression on her long, thin face.
“There’s something very odd going on here. I’d never have pegged Angie as the flighty type. She’s not one for strange or irrational behavior, unlike some people I could mention. She’s a good businesswoman and a good mother.”
“She’s a good woman, period.” Liss truly believed that.
“That remains to be seen, given the current situation. You never really know about the quiet ones, do you?” Dolores started to say more, then abruptly fell silent, her brow creasing in thought.
“Dolores? Have you remembered something?”
“What? No. And now I really must get to work.” Her tone turned to acid. “If you recall, I have more on my plate just now than figuring out what Angie Hogencamp is up to.”
“So do I,” Liss said.
It had been considerably more than fifteen minutes since she’d left the Emporium.
Chapter Five
By the time Sherri arrived at Margaret Boyd’s office at The Spruces at one on Sunday afternoon, Margaret, Liss, and Joe Ruskin were already there. Margaret had called this strategy session to plan new events to replace those the town had canceled.
The tea service on the glass-topped coffee table was already in use. Green tea was Sherri’s bet, to keep them alert and energized. Margaret offered chamomile when she thought her guests needed to stay calm.
Liss looked as if she could use the caffeine. Since Sherri had her own bad memories of being trapped in a fire, she suspected her friend hadn’t managed to get much sleep since Friday. Even if Liss had succeeded in avoiding nightmares, she’d probably stayed awake worrying about Angie and the kids and wondering where they were.
Joe sat on the love seat at Liss’s side. He was an older version of his son—a little over six feet tall with the same well-muscled build. He had more laugh lines around his mouth and eyes than Dan did, and more gray at the temples, but if Dan took after his father as he aged, Liss would be a lucky woman.
Kilt at the Highland Games Page 6
