The Spook in the Stacks

by Eva Gates

  “You never told me you wanted that,” Greg said.

  “Why would I? You’re as bad as Grandfather, the way you always brush off any interest I try to show in it.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “I’m sure you’re more than capable of being in charge,” Theodore said.

  “I don’t much care what you think, buddy,” Greg said.

  “I don’t believe I was speaking to you.”

  I lifted one hand. “Leave that for now. What happened yesterday?”

  “I went upstairs,” Julia said. “He was studying a map when I came in, and he said that its excellent condition proved that the Lighthouse Library knew how to care for old papers. He told me he’d made his decision. He would be giving his full collection, and the funds to care for it, to you, Lucy. To the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library. Ironically, much of his decision was because Charlene’s credentials had impressed him, as well as her previous work at the Bodleian. He didn’t think I, his granddaughter, capable of assuming the responsibility, but it was Charlene’s profession, so somehow he’d overlook that she’s also a woman.”

  I didn’t feel as joyful at the news as I would have yesterday. Jay Ruddle had made no formal offer to the library, and we couldn’t stake our claim on a casual comment. Not that we’d want to get into a fight over his estate, in any event.

  “I asked him to reconsider,” Julia said. “To let me run it. He called me a … foolish girl and told me his mind was made up. That’s when he ripped my necklace out of my hand and yelled at me. I left. For heaven’s sake, I didn’t kill my grandfather. The collection isn’t that important to me. I told Detective Watson. I don’t think he believed me.”

  Chapter Nine

  Julia burst into tears. Her cup crashed to the ground, spraying coffee and shards of white porcelain across the floor. She leapt to her feet. “I didn’t do it! I didn’t. I need to get out of here. I need time to think. I’ll walk back to the hotel.”

  She fled. Greg and Theodore shoved their chairs back.

  “Let her be,” I said sharply. “Julia needs to be alone. She has a lot to process. A walk will do her good, and it’s not far to the Ocean Side. It must be tough enough to have her grandfather die, never mind that the last words they exchanged were angry ones.”

  The two men stared at the bakery door for a long time, and then they slowly settled down. They perched on the edge of their chairs, looking much like Charles when he was getting ready to pounce. The muffins and breakfast sandwich lay on the table, abandoned.

  “Goodness,” Theodore said.

  “No wonder the police had questions,” Greg said.

  “It’s preposterous,” Theodore said.

  “Ridiculous to think Julia would kill her grandfather,” Greg agreed. “They were devoted to each other. More like father and daughter.”

  “They’ll find the real killer shortly, and Julia will be in the clear.”

  “Very soon.”

  I wasn’t so sure. That Julia went into the library, argued with Jay, and a short time later he was found dead, looked mighty bad.

  “I need a ride back to the police station for my car,” I said. “Teddy, let’s go. Greg?”

  “Might as well,” he said.

  “What about our expedition to the Wright Brothers Memorial?” Theodore asked. “Do you think Julia still wants to go, Lucy?”

  “Leave it for a while,” I said.

  The drive back to the police station was no less perilous than the one to Josie’s bakery. From the front passenger seat, I had an even better view of close calls and narrow escapes. Greg leapt out of the Neon before it had come to a full stop. He did not bother to say goodbye.

  We watched Greg get into the Escalade and drive away. “Take some advice from a woman,” I said to Theodore. “Don’t hover. Give Julia some space. If she doesn’t want to go for an outing, don’t push it.”

  “I don’t like that man. That curator. He’s up to no good.”

  “Teddy, you can’t say that.”

  “He’s only interested in Julia for her money.”

  “What makes you think she has money? Just because her grandfather was wealthy…”

  “I suspect she’ll inherit, don’t you? She’s his only living relative, and he must have been worth quite a bit.”

  I leaned back in my seat. Unwittingly Teddy had voiced a good reason for Julia to have murdered Jay Ruddle. She seemed quiet and unassuming. She seemed to have been fond of her grandfather. Was it possible all that was nothing but a pretense? Did she want control, not only of the collection but the rest of his money as well? Had she had been prepared to wait until the inheritance came to her over the course of time, but the announcement of his intention to give away his historical documents inspired her to act?

  I thought about Julia the first time I met her. I remembered the tenderness she had toward her grandfather, the obvious love between them.

  I didn’t believe Julia killed Jay Ruddle.

  I glanced at my friend’s unattractive, innocent, love-struck face.

  If I could do anything to help Julia—and Teddy—I would.

  * * *

  When I got back to the lighthouse, I was pleased to see that no police cars or forensic vans remained in the parking lot. They must have finished whatever they needed to do.

  The library was dark and quiet. I switched on every light as I passed. I normally love the library, any library, when it’s empty. The peace, the solitude, knowing that I’m surrounded by centuries of great literature, the breadth of history, the evolution of human thought. But today it seemed, dare I say it, almost sinister. The room was not precisely as I’d left it—the printer sat on the wrong side of the desk, the wingback chair was pushed against the mystery fiction shelves—but neat and tidy. No evidence remained to show that a murder had been committed not far from this room and that police officers had been tramping all over everything. A gravestone lay on the circulation desk, reminding me that next week was Halloween. The holiday decorations were still in place, but rather than fun, they were moody and menacing, as was the Rebecca MacPherson with its grinning skeletons, tattered sails, and shattered hull.

  Get a grip, I said to myself. Charles had not appeared to greet me. I rattled my keys and called out.

  “Meow.” The big Himalayan strolled into the room, his tail high, his ears up, his gait swaggering. If he could talk, he would have said, “And where have you been, young lady?”

  I laughed. Simply having Charles in the library made the shadows recede and the aura of menace disappear. He jumped onto the shelf beside me, and I gave him a hearty pat.

  What were we going to do about Halloween? It didn’t seem at all proper to continue with a celebration of the spooky and the undead, no matter how tasteful (and isn’t that an oxymoron), in light of what had recently happened here. But Ronald hated to disappoint the children, and he’d been creating a big buildup to Wednesday’s events. Not to mention the adults also looking forward to their party.

  I went upstairs, and Charles ran nimbly ahead. I stood at the window of my Lighthouse Aerie for a long time, looking out over the marsh, across the highway, to the beach and the ocean beyond. Clouds were building in the southeast. Poor Theodore, who wanted nothing more than to be regarded as a respected book collector and literary scholar, and instead, with his Harris Tweet suits, plain glass spectacles, lingering aura of cigar smoke, and fake English accent, was little more than a joke. This week, I’d seen another side of Theodore: the smile on his face when he looked at Julia, the way the light lit up behind his eyes when she spoke. His gentle kindness to her and his deep concern at her fate.

  Julia seemed like a good match for him. She was as quiet and serious as he.

  And then there was Greg. Hard to imagine what attracted the handsome, sophisticated Greg to a woman like Julia. Other than her grandfather’s money, that is.

  Which, now that Jay was gone, would probably soon be Julia’s money.

  Was it possible Greg
killed Jay, expecting Julia to inherit?

  That seemed pretty far-fetched. They weren’t married, didn’t even seem to be a couple. Was he romantically interested in her, or did he simply not want Theodore to be? How voluntary was Greg’s leaving Jay’s employ anyway? Maybe, unlike what we’d been told, he was being pushed out. Did he want to keep the job and believed that if Julia was the owner, she’d let him stay on?

  I gave my head a shake. I was letting my imagination run away with me, looking for reasons for Greg’s guilt because I was on Teddy’s side in the wooing of the fair Julia.

  Still, the fact remained that Jay had been murdered. If not Greg, who else might have wanted to see the end of Jay Ruddle?

  As much as I might not want to think about what had happened here yesterday, the thought of the fair Julia and her two suitors brought it all back. Why did this keep happening to me? Why did I keep finding myself dragged into murder investigations?

  I dropped into a chair and ran everything that had happened yesterday through my head.

  The people from Blacklock College had been at Louise Jane’s lecture. Had they found out that Jay’d made his decision, and he was giving his collection to us? Had they decided they needed to kill him before he made the announcement? Did they have reason to believe that Julia, Jay’s heir, would favor them? Again, it seemed far-fetched to kill someone over a collection of old papers, but some collectors, academic or otherwise, could be total fanatics. A business client of my father had paid almost two hundred thousand dollars for a copy of Beeton’s Christmas Annual from December of 1887, which contained the first Sherlock Holmes story. The man wasn’t rich: to raise the money he had to mortgage his house, sell his wife’s car (without her knowledge), and take his son out of college.

  He kept the magazine, but lost his wife, custody of his younger child, and eventually his home when he couldn’t make the new mortgage payments.

  Who else had been at the library at the time in question? Aside from a hundred or so history lovers?

  Curtis Gardner.

  I’d been present at an altercation between Jay and Curtis at Owens’ restaurant the other night. Clearly there was bad blood between the men. Bad blood on Curtis’s part anyway—Jay had made no attempt to talk to Curtis. Diane and Curtis had sat in the front row for the lecture, but they’d mingled with the guests over refreshments. It would have been easy enough for Curtis to slip away unnoticed.

  Easy enough for Curtis to slip away.

  Easy enough for anyone to slip away. We didn’t have guards watching the guests or logging people in and out of the library.

  It was entirely possible Jay’s enemy had nothing at all to do with the library community. He or she might have snuck onto the grounds under pretext of being part of the crowd and then slipped into the library during the program. Anyone who knew Jay and his interests would assume he’d be in the rare books room. Did that mean our killer knew the layout of the library? Not necessarily. Jay might have told that person where he’d be spending the afternoon and how to get to the rare books room via the back stairs.

  I poured myself a glass of milk, made a peanut butter and banana sandwich on white bread (a childhood favorite from summers at the beach), and settled back at my small kitchen table. Holding my lunch, I opened my iPad, accessed Google, and typed one-handed. I wasn’t getting involved—I was just interested.

  I had no trouble coming up with information on Jay Ruddle. He was a well-known man in North Carolina, with business interests throughout North America. I learned that Jay had been born in Nags Head, where his father had owned a furniture store. Mr. Ruddle Sr.’s store had featured high-quality items, many of them made by North Carolina family businesses. On the premature death of his father, Jay took control and quickly expanded throughout the state and eventually across the country. His business model was vastly different from his father’s. Jay’s model appeared to be to offer the lowest possible prices, drive nearby stores out of business by undercutting them, and then, when the competition had closed, raise his own prices. His stores aimed at the lower end of the scale, and his furniture was described in one business magazine as “shoddy but cheap.”

  Jay’s only son died a number of years ago, leaving him without an heir to take over the business. Two years ago he sold his entire furniture empire to a big-box chain, and the day he turned eighty he retired to devote his attention to his “extensive collection of historical documents.” As part of the deal his stores kept his name, and he got a seat on the board of the big-box chain and was rumored to still be active behind the scenes at Ruddle Furniture.

  I found lots of information on Jay in the business press and some articles on his historical collection, but nothing you might call gossip. His wife had died when the couple was in their fifties, and Jay had never remarried. He didn’t seem to spend his time dining or golfing with politicians or dating actresses half his age.

  His business practices would have made him a few enemies over the years, but I had trouble imagining that he’d agree to meet any of his rivals in the rare books room of our library. Had someone seen him going into the library and followed?

  Someone like Curtis Gardner? Curtis’s father had established a chain of stores catering to the tourist trade throughout the Outer Banks. Today, the Gardner business empire was nothing more than a handful of shops selling made-in-China tourist trinkets and inexpensive beach accessories. Rumor was, so I had heard, that Gardner Beach Wear was in financial difficulties. Everyone knew the red Corvette Curtis drove had been purchased (with unseemly haste) by Diane Uppiton out of what she’d inherited on her husband’s death.

  I leaned back with a groan. This was useless. Almost anyone could have snuck into the library unnoticed and slipped out again to mingle with the crowd. Julia had. She’d told her friends she had to go to the restroom, and instead had gone to the rare books room, where she argued with her grandfather, leaving her thin gold chain clutched in his fingers.

  I had to admit, things looked bad for Julia. I couldn’t bear to think what it would do to Theodore if she was charged, never mind convicted and sentenced.

  I shut my iPad. I was not going to get involved. Not this time.

  Still, it might not hurt to ask a few questions.

  I checked my watch. Almost time to meet Josie, but enough time to make a few calls first.

  “What’s up, Lucy?” Butch Greenblatt asked.

  “Nothing much,” I said. “Your people are finished here, and I’m at home. If you’re working, I can call back.”

  “Nope. Enjoying a day off. If your eyesight is really good, you might be able to see us. Steph’s waving.”

  I leapt to my feet and reached for the powerful binoculars I keep on the shelf by the window. I love to watch the seafaring world go by, and from up here I can see a long way. The wind was high and the sea rough, but several people were on the beach, walking or fishing. Two tiny figures looked to be jumping up and down and waving their arms. I laughed. “I see you!” I waved back.

  “What’s up?” Butch said.

  “Thursday night there was a minor altercation at Owens’ between Curtis Gardner and Jay Ruddle. Nothing came of it, and Curtis left peacefully. But I was wondering if there were other similar incidents involving Jay Ruddle.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  I took a breath. “Jay made enemies over his years in business. Then he came back to the Outer Banks. I’m just wondering.”

  “Don’t get involved in the murder investigation, Lucy.”

  “I didn’t say I was doing that.”

  “You don’t have to. Oh, all right. You won’t let this go until I give in, so I might as well give in so Steph and I can continue our walk. Watson’s been doing some checking into the man’s past, and you’re right that Ruddle wasn’t popular around here. He ruined a lot of family businesses, made himself a ton of money, and then upped and left. But most of that happened a long time ago. A very long time ago.”

  “People, Bankers in
particular, have long memories.” Bankers was the affectionate name used for people born in the Outer Banks. “Thanks, Butch.”

  “Have a nice walk.” I hung up and then made another call.

  “Theodore Kowalski speaking,”

  “Hi, it’s Lucy.”

  “Lucy! What have you learned?”

  “Calm down. I haven’t learned anything.”

  “Oh.”

  “I do, however, have an idea of a way you can help.”

  “Anything!”

  “Jay Ruddle is a Banker, born and raised. He got his start in business in Nags Head, running his father’s furniture store.”

  “That’s common knowledge, Lucy.”

  “It wasn’t common knowledge to me, and that’s why I’m calling you. Bankers have long memories, or so I’ve been told. Jay made some enemies in his climb up the ladder of success.”

  “So?” he said.

  “So, I’m wondering if one of those enemies saw the chance for revenge. And took it.”

  “You want me to investigate? Good thinking, Lucy. I’d be happy to help.”

  “Try not to be too obvious,” I said, thinking that was unlikely to happen. “Ask around a little bit. Listen in to what people are saying about Jay’s death. Think back to yesterday afternoon. Did you see anyone who was an old rival of Jay’s at the library?”

  “My mother might remember Jay Ruddle,” Theodore said. “I’ll start with her.”

  “Great. Where are you now?”

  “I’m … uh … at the Ocean Side Hotel. In the … uh … parking lot.”

  “Teddy! Don’t hover. Women don’t like that. Too much attention can cross the line into creepy.”

  “I’m here to ask Julia if she’s ready to go to the Wright Brothers Memorial.”

  “You asked her. The offer is out there. Leave her to answer in her own time.”

  “If you say so, Lucy. How will she let me know when she’s ready to go?”

  “She’ll call you or send a text.”

  “But she doesn’t have my number.”

  I rolled my eyes. Charles yawned. Poor Theodore. Like Ichabod Crane, a fool for love. And equally hapless. “I’ll handle that,” I said. “But only if you promise me you’ll go home and stop hovering over her.”