Due or Die

by Jenn McKinlay

  The forecast was not good: bitterly cold temperatures, gale-force winds and lots of snow. They were supposed to be open for a few more hours, but if this was just the start of it, she didn’t want her staff to have to drive home in this weather.

  She quickly called the town hall to see if the mayor was available. She would close the library whether he approved or not, but she thought it wise to get his okay.

  “Mayor Henson’s office, this is Judy,” his secretary answered.

  “Hi, Judy, it’s Lindsey Norris at the library; is the mayor in?”

  “Yes, he’s just debating whether to close the town offices for the day. Horrible storm coming, you know.”

  “I do; in fact, I was just calling to ask if I could close the library.”

  “Hold one moment,” Judy said.

  “Sure,” Lindsey said. No sooner were the words out than Muzak began to play in her ear. It was a slicked-out version of the Beatles’ “Let It Be,” and in her opinion, they should have.

  “Hi, Lindsey,” Judy came back on the line. “The mayor says go ahead. Whiteout conditions are predicted, and he says it’s not worth anyone getting stranded in this.”

  “Thanks,” Lindsey said. She hung up the phone and went over to the circulation desk. Ann Marie glanced up from the cart of books she was fine sorting.

  “We’re going to close early,” Lindsey said. “There’s a nor’easter coming.”

  Ann Marie gave her a wide-eyed look. “Oh, no, the last time we got hit with a storm like that, the power went out and I had to keep all of my perishables out in the snow. Never did find my whole fryer chicken until the thaw hit a few weeks later.”

  Lindsey blew out a breath. She turned to assess the library. Other than Edmund, there was a mother with two children in the kids’ area, two computer users and a couple of teens looking over the DVD collection.

  Lindsey cleared her throat and raised her voice to be heard throughout the room. “Due to the weather, the library will be closing in fifteen minutes. If you need to call for a ride, please come and use the phone. If you’d like to check out materials, please do so in the next few minutes.”

  She saw Edmund appear from the stacks carrying several novels. He strode purposefully to the circulation desk, and Lindsey was glad he’d been able to find something.

  “I’m so glad you came in today,” she said. “I didn’t realize it was going to be this bad and I’m not sure the mayor’s office would have remembered to call us.”

  “I think this storm snuck up on us all,” he said. “No one expected a tropical cyclone and an Arctic cold front to collide, but they have.”

  “It can’t be worse than the blizzard of ’78,” Lindsey said. “I was only a year old, but my parents still talk about how ice coated the trees and the snow drifts were higher than the house.”

  “Yeah, and people got stranded in their cars for two days,” Edmund said. Then he wiggled his eyebrows and added, “And the baby rate boomed nine months later.”

  “I have two cousins who arrived nine months later,” Lindsey said with a laugh.

  “You know, this storm is going to put a crimp in our lunch date,” he said.

  Lindsey felt her face get warm at the word date, which was ridiculous. He’d invited both Carrie and her. It wasn’t as if he was asking her out.

  “That’s all right,” she said. She tried to make her voice sound casual, but it still seemed to come out a bit higher than normal. “I don’t think Carrie will be able to make it for a while.”

  He handed his books and card to Ann Marie for checkout and gave Lindsey an understanding nod. “I heard about what happened with her husband. Is she okay?”

  “She’s getting through it,” Lindsey said.

  “Do the police have any leads?”

  “I really don’t know,” she said.

  She glanced at Edmund. He reminded her so much of her former fiancé, back before he turned into a two-timing jackass. Edmund was smart and charming, and she felt an immediate kinship with him, probably because she had spent her entire life around academic types and he definitely had the Ivy League stamp upon him.

  A thought occurred to her and she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ask. “Listen, do you know Marjorie Bilson?”

  Edmund took his books back from Ann Marie and began to wrap his scarf about his neck again. Lindsey thought she saw his jaw tighten, but when he spoke, his voice was neutral. “She seems quite taken with my uncle.”

  Lindsey nodded as they walked toward the front doors. Good, then her erratic behavior might not be such a surprise.

  “Has she done anything—how can I put this?”

  “Crazy?” Edmund offered.

  Lindsey bit her lip and nodded.

  They paused before the doors, causing the remaining patrons to go around them on their way out into the whirling scene of white.

  “I can’t say there’s been anything specific,” he said. “But I do know that she calls and texts him all day long. So far, he hasn’t complained, but I do wonder if he tried to put a stop to it, if she would turn on him.”

  “Yikes.”

  “I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that,” he said. “Maybe if we do get snowed in with a power outage, she won’t be able to charge her phone and she’ll have to stop calling.”

  “So, she’ll chill?” Lindsey offered, unable to resist the pun.

  Edmund broke into a wide grin and said, “In a word.”

  They stood smiling at one another and then Lindsey said, “Well, I’d better help close up. Thanks again for coming in. Your timing was excellent.”

  “No problem,” he said. The doors whooshed open behind him, but he ignored them as he said, “I’ve noticed you usually ride a bike to work, do you need a ride home today? I’d be happy to wait.”

  “She has a ride home,” a voice said from behind him.

  Lindsey glanced over Edmund’s shoulder to see Sully standing there in his thick navy coat, looking as bland as the blankets of snow beginning to cover the cars in the parking lot.

  CHAPTER

  14

  BRIAR CREEK

  PUBLIC LIBRARY

  Edmund spun and glanced at Sully. “Oh, well, very good, then.”

  Sully held out his right hand. “Mike Sullivan.”

  Edmund clasped his hand briefly. “Edmund Sint.”

  Neither of them smiled, and Lindsey got the distinct feeling they were measuring one another like two dogs trying to decide if the bone was worth the fight. Utterly ridiculous.

  “Are you about ready?” Sully asked her.

  “Almost, I just need to get my things and set the alarm,” she said.

  “No, problem I’ll wait,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Edmund glanced between them and then gave her a small smile. “Be safe in the storm and we’ll have to reschedule our lunch date for when the roads are clear.”

  “Sounds good,” she said. She could feel Sully watching her, and she knew her face had just flamed hot.

  Edmund gave her a mischievous grin and left the building, whistling into the snow.

  “I’ll meet you out back,” Sully said. He turned and followed Edmund out.

  Lindsey stood there staring for a second, wondering whether she should be flattered or offended. Finally, she decided that she was relieved that when she had seen Sully again, she hadn’t keeled over with embarrassment. She supposed she could thank Edmund for that. He had provided a nice buffer.

  “Hey, boss, you coming?” Ann Marie called from the workroom.

  Lindsey shook her head and went to gather her things.

  Ann Marie met her at the back door with a knowing smile.

  “So, it looks like you have two admirers,” she said.

  “No, no.” Lindsey shook her head. “Sully is just a friend and Edmund is very nice, but I don’t know that he’s interested in me as anything more than a librarian.”

  Ann Marie rolled her eyes. “Oh, puleeze, I saw thei
r faces. They both looked like Cupid came down and shot them in the butt.”

  “I’m so not talking about this,” Lindsey said. “And don’t say anything to Beth or she’ll start matchmaking and you know how that goes.”

  Ann Marie grinned. “What? You didn’t like that sad parade of guys she trotted in front of you when you first moved here?”

  “I know she meant well, but I wasn’t even ready to think about dating,” Lindsey said.

  “And a guy who still lives with his mother and is obsessed with alien abductions didn’t work for you?” Ann Marie tsked. “Imagine that.”

  It was true. When she first moved here, Beth had so wanted her to like Briar Creek that she brought forth every single male she could find in a parade of losers that still lived in infamy to all who worked in the library and had been witness to the freak show.

  “How about that guy who smelled like rancid olive loaf?” Ann Marie said. “He was a keeper.”

  “You can stop now,” Lindsey said.

  “Or how about the one who wanted you to be a mother to his twelve-year-old daughter?” she added. “With his receding hairline and potbelly, now he was a catch!”

  Lindsey tapped in the alarm code and led the way out the back door.

  “Or that middle-aged pizza delivery guy,” Ann Marie said as they stepped into the cold. “Free pizza for life. Really, you should have at least given him a chance.”

  “The one with fifteen cats?” Lindsey clarified.

  “I think he only has twelve.”

  Lindsey groaned and glanced up at the falling snow. “Drive home safely. If this is as bad as they say, I doubt we’ll be opening tomorrow, but I’ll call everyone and let them know for sure.”

  Sully was waiting at the curb; the hot exhaust from his pickup puffed out the back like a steam engine. Lindsey unlocked her bike and hurried toward the warm cab of his truck, feeling very grateful that she hadn’t embarrassed herself so much that he no longer gave her a lift.

  He hopped out and opened the door for her, and she scooted in while he put her bike in back. She felt the snow that covered her head and shoulders start to melt immediately.

  He climbed back in on his side and they waited while Ann Marie started her car and drove out ahead of them with a wave.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve really been a life saver this past week.”

  “No worries,” he said as he slipped the gear on the steering wheel into drive and set off on the road. “I was in the Blue Anchor helping Ian storm proof the place when Jason Meeger and Candace Collins came in and said the town offices were closing. I figured that meant you, too, and that you might need a lift. In these conditions, you don’t want to be walking or bicycling.”

  “Do you think it’s going to get as bad as they say?”

  Sully was quiet for a moment. She noticed his eyes strayed toward the islands in the bay, and she wondered if he was worried about his parents.

  “It feels like it’s going to get bad,” he said. “I was stationed on a warship in the Barents Sea when I was in the service. We saw a lot of blizzard conditions and this has the same feel.”

  “The Barents Sea? That’s near the Arctic Circle, isn’t it?”

  Sully looked impressed. “Yeah, we were just off the island Svalbard, which is Norwegian. Not many people know where the Barents Sea is.”

  “My older brother, Jack, is quite the globe-trotter,” she said. “He’s the adventurous one of the two of us. I spend a lot of time studying maps to figure out where he is. He was in Hammerfest, Norway, for a summer, and I remember seeing the Barents Sea on the map.”

  “Beautiful area,” Sully said.

  “Do you miss it?” Lindsey asked. “The traveling?”

  “Sometimes,” Sully admitted. “But then I think about it being fifteen degrees below zero in the Arctic or one hundred and six degrees above zero while stationed in the Persian Gulf, and I’m okay with Connecticut.”

  They turned onto Lindsey’s street and a gust of wind buffeted the truck and the snow took on a ferocity that resembled ice bullets and not the whirly twirly flakes that had been falling just minutes before.

  “Looks like you closed just in time,” he said. He pulled up in front of the house, and Lindsey fished her new key out of her bag.

  They put her bike in the garage and he walked her to the porch and waited while she unlocked the door.

  “Thanks again,” she said.

  “Anytime,” he said. “If you need me, just call the Blue Anchor.”

  Another gust of wind whipped around the side of the house and almost knocked Lindsey to her knees, but Sully caught her by the elbow. She stared up at him and saw snowflakes coating his eyelashes and the dimples that bracketed his mouth when he smiled like he was now. She felt that same zip she always did when he was around, and she just couldn’t resist. She leaned up and gave him a quick hug.

  Without hesitation, he hugged her back, and when they separated, she noticed his smile had deepened.

  Then he leaned close and said, “You know, I think I’m glad this storm hit.”

  “Why’s that?” she asked.

  “Because it’s keeping you from dating the wrong man,” he said.

  With a wink, he spun her toward the door and gently pushed her inside, closing the door behind her.

  Lindsey leaned against the door and tried to slow the pounding inside her chest. Did he really say that? Did he mean that? Did he mean it like she thought he meant it?

  It was a good thing she was leaning against the door, trying to get her mental faculties to function, because Nancy’s door opened and a wriggling black ball of fur came at her as if she’d been gone for weeks instead of hours.

  He stood on his back legs and wrapped his paws around Lindsey’s leg as if he was determined not to let her go now that she had come back.

  Lindsey leaned down and ruffled his ears. He licked her hand and she glanced up to see Nancy enter the foyer.

  “He has been looking out the window for you for the past hour,” she said. “I swear it’s like he knew you’d be home early. I heard the town is shutting down.”

  “Yeah, they’re saying it’s going to be a bad one.”

  “Well, I went out to the grocery store this morning and stocked up. I had to throw a few elbows in the soup aisle to get the good stuff, but I should have enough supplies to get all three of us through this storm.”

  “How is Carrie holding up?”

  “Better today. Her son called. He and his sister have been really good about calling her every few hours since she telephoned them and told them the news yesterday. He was on his way down from New Hampshire, stopping in Rhode Island to get his sister, but I think they’re going to have to wait out the storm at her place. There’s no sense in them getting stranded in a whiteout somewhere.”

  “Have the police been by today?”

  “No,” Carrie said as she came out of Nancy’s apartment and joined them. “I think they may actually have run out of questions for me.”

  She was dressed in a thick turtleneck sweater and jeans over fleece-lined slippers. She was pale and looked as if she hadn’t slept, but still, she looked better than she had two days ago when they’d found Markus dead.

  “Well, come on in.” Nancy pulled Lindsey into her apartment. “We’ve got hot chocolate and fresh macaroons and the fire is crackling. If we’re in for a blizzard, we may as well settle in.”

  “Heathcliff missed you,” Carrie said as they followed Nancy inside with the puppy dancing between them.

  “I doubt if it’s me he missed,” she said.

  “Oh, it’s definitely you,” Nancy said. “He gets the same moony look as Sully when he’s around you.”

  “Sully does not look at me that way,” Lindsey said as she unwrapped her scarf and took off her coat and hung them on a hook in the hall.

  “I hate to disagree, but, yes, he does,” Carrie said.

  “Oh, don’t you start,” Lindsey said. She sat on the ot
toman by the fire and Heathcliff—rather, the puppy—sat with her, resting his head on her feet. If there was an award to be given for cuteness, she was pretty sure he’d win it paws down.

  Nancy brought in a tray laden with mugs of cocoa and a plate full of macaroons. If this was blizzard survival, Lindsey felt like she could manage this no problem.

  Then the power went out. Lindsey was in her own apartment, reading in bed, when the lights blinked the first time. The wind had become a steady ferocious roar, and when she looked out the window into the darkness of the night, she felt the nor’easter pressing against the fragile window panes like a peeper trying to get a look-see.

  The puppy had come upstairs with her and had sprawled himself next to her with his head on the neighboring pillow. Lindsey settled back in bed, turned the page of her book and her reading lamp went out.

  Thinking it might be the bulb, Lindsey reluctantly left the cozy warmth of her bed and stumbled across the room to the light switch that controlled the overhead lamp. She flicked it on. Nothing. She tried the bathroom switch. Nothing.

  A feeling of vulnerability swept over her much as she tried to ignore it. She took a deep breath. There was no need to panic. The power would be back shortly; all she had to do was wait it out.

  She thought about lighting a candle but figured she may as well just go to sleep. It was early, but it had been an intense few days and probably she could use the shut-eye.

  She took one step toward the bed when a high-pitched scream out-shrieked the howl of the wind, making Lindsey jump and Heathcliff bark. Snatching up her bathrobe, she pulled it on and rushed to the door. She knew it had to be either Carrie or Nancy who had screamed. She hoped no one had fallen in the dark.

  She had no idea how she could get someone to the hospital in this weather. Then again, Carrie was a nurse, so they were in good hands, unless it was her and she was unconscious.

  The hallway was black. With the power off, it was impossible to make out the stairs. Lindsey reached out with her hands, trying to find the banister. She inched forward slowly, not wanting to slam into it.