by Jeff Abbott
Going in was a little harder than I thought it would be. My hand froze as I reached for the door. Beta’s bludgeoned face, eyes wide open in death, wasn’t waiting in there for me this time. But I couldn’t erase her easily from my thoughts. I made a concerted effort and instead of Beta’s battered head, I saw Shannon’s bloodied face. My fingertips massaged my eyes. Too much death, too much suffering for one little town.
I heard the door open and Candace was there, wrapping her arms around me. “You okay?” she breathed against my chest.
“Yeah. God, what a week,” I said, then chortled nervously. My own laughter sounded tinny in my ears. We put arms around each other and walked into the library together.
The air had the same dense quality about it that Beta Harcher’s house had. I told myself that it was just from the library being shut up for two days, not death lingering in the air like some foul fog. The old air-conditioning system sputtered and cranked away, but it hadn’t yet dispelled the foreboding, pressing atmosphere.
She’d brewed coffee, in the only brewer we had—back in the room where Beta’s body had lain. I set my notebook on the counter and I went back there. The tape outline was still down, etching where she fell. I didn’t know if I was yet allowed to pull the tape up, but I did, yanking it up violently. I wasn’t about to velvet-rope this section of the library and charge a quarter a peek. I felt mad—mad that Beta had hurt people, mad at what I’d been through, mad that Shannon was lying near death, even mad that little Josh Schneider got an awful early introduction to what death meant. Candace watched me, waiting for me to talk.
“If Eula Mae killed her,” I finally said, “that means Beta died for $10,000. I never thought of a life in monetary terms.” I realized I was lying as soon as I said it. I’d thought of how much money Mama would need to live her limbo existence over the next twenty years. I closed my eyes, feeling more anger and shame. I got up, poured coffee, and went back to my tiny office. I sat down and Candace sat across from me. She was watching me with a concern that made me uneasy. I wondered—not for the first time—what it would be like to kiss her. Instead I coughed.
“I suppose we should reshelve and check in books in the drop slip,” I said, attempting to sound professional. “Doesn’t look like we’re going to get any takers today.”
Candace shook her head. “’Fraid so. I felt creepy when I got here, and I didn’t know how long you’d be at the station. So I called some of the regulars. Old Man Renfro and Gaston Leach both said they’d be over shortly.”
“Followed, undoubtedly, by the town curious who’ll want to tour the death scene. Shall you be the docent or shall I?” I said. I sipped at my coffee. I kept thinking about Eula Mae, in jail and accused of murder and attempted murder. Something niggled at my mind, something in all this that didn’t fit. I thought of Matt Blalock and simmering hatred. I thought of Ruth Wills, an accusation of poisoning that didn’t stand up. I thought of Hally Schneider, who had been right about a secret connection between Beta and Eula Mae, yet still seemed awfully nervous for an innocent bystander. I thought of Bob Don, who seemed to want to help me and fought violently with Beta less than a week before her death. I thought of the Hufnagels, and how their church wasn’t good enough for Beta’s ambitions. And I thought of my mother, her presence on Beta’s list still unexplained. Billy Ray thought he had his woman now, but I wasn’t convinced.
I went over to the local-authors shelf. Eula Mae was currently the only Mirabeau resident with fulfilled literary aspirations, and her collected works sat in a row. I plucked her first novel from the shelf; the copyright was in Eula Mae’s name. I’d thought for a moment that if it was copyrighted under the Jocelyn Lushe pseudonym that Eula Mae would have had an easy out; no one could have necessarily accused her of lying. But it wasn’t so. She’d claimed each book as her own. I replaced The Rose of San Jacinto on the shelf and went back to Candace.
“There’s still $25,000 that was in Beta’s savings account that didn’t come from Eula Mae,” I told Candace. “So where the hell did that come from? She embezzle from the Girl Scout cookie fund?”
The bells above the front door jangled, and from my office I saw Old Man Renfro and Gaston Leach come into view. I couldn’t have conjured up a more unlikely pair. Old Man Renfro always wore a threadbare suit; he must’ve had a whole armoire of them. Snowy white hair topped his dark, wise face. He was retired from the post office and when he had tired of reading people’s addresses, he’d ended up spending his days at the library. It would not be unreasonable to guess he’d read everything in the library at least once. Even the children’s section, reading them to his several grandchildren. According to what I’d heard, he’d attacked the shelves methodically, moving through the Dewey decimal system as if it were a grocery list and devouring every book. His real name was Willie, but every one called him Old Man Renfro.
Gaston Leach was what every kid in high school aspired not to be. He was a gawky youth that might one day, the charitable among us said, turn from ugly duckling to swan. We could only pray he’d develop some social skills to go along with any external improvements. He had a mind I’d have killed for and a face I’d have committed suicide over. His parents apparently had little concern for Gaston’s ability to interact with others, because they sent him out in tacky clothing the dead wouldn’t wear and bought him eyeglasses with lenses that could double as drink coasters. Not to mention the pairing of his first name with his last. His thick mop of black hair fell in a bad cut across his forehead. Today he was resplendent in too-long gray trousers that hung low on his bony hips and a shirt with a nauseating orange plaid. Never failing to accessorize incorrectly, he held up his pants with a western-style brown belt and wore black shoes. He’d missed being cool by several feet today.
“Glad to see y’all are back open,” Old Man Renfro proclaimed. “Well, Miss Harcher did manage to close the library for a while, but not in the way she thought she would.”
Gaston was less philosophical. “The new McCaffrey come in while y’all were closed?” he demanded, turning those powerful lenses on the new-arrivals bin.
“No, Gaston,” I said, having no idea. I hadn’t checked our mail drop, but I didn’t want to get into another long discussion with Gaston about the relative merits of the science-fiction selection at the Mirabeau Public Library.
“Oh,” Gaston muttered, high-beaming reproachfully at Candace. She must’ve bribed him to come over. Apparently the idea of being supportive of folks he saw every day was an alien concept. That couldn’t be right, I thought. Gaston explored alien concepts every day, what with his reading list. Old Man Renfro took Gaston by the elbow and steered him to a chair in the periodicals section. Candace and I followed.
“Candace says that there’s been a shooting, and that Eula Mae has been arrested for that crime and for Miss Harcher’s murder,” Old Man Renfro said. His voice was a carefully modulated tenor. He was one of those gentlemen who is very careful about how he speaks, because he’d grown up in a house where it hadn’t mattered and he’d made a conscious decision to be correct. If his voice was any deeper he could’ve subbed for James Earl Jones.
I nodded. “So I guess I’m not under suspicion any more. But I can’t believe that Eula Mae is some calculating plotter.”
“Having read her books, neither can I,” Old Man Renfro agreed with a tad of asperity.
“Yes, Eula Mae’s strong suit has always been characters,” I retorted. I didn’t feel picking on Eula Mae’s writing skills was helpful at this critical time.
“Her character hasn’t always been above reproach,” Old Man Renfro said, turning his own wordplay, “but I find it hard to believe Eula Mae would willingly hurt another person, much less a young woman she didn’t know.”
“What’ll happen to Eula Mae’s cats when she’s in jail?” Gaston wondered. “Maybe she’ll donate them to science.”
“Gaston, dear, I’ll take care of her cats, don’t you worry.” Candace patted his arm, looking a mite gr
een.
“I only know what I read from Sayers, Christie, and Hammett.” Old Man Renfro tented his fingers across his face. “But if Eula Mae was going to kill someone, I don’t see her swinging a baseball bat or firing a gun. I think a nice, quick poison would be her choice. Not to sound morbid, but I don’t think Eula Mae would want to see someone die at her feet. She would much rather spike their iced tea with something that would not act immediately, get out, and leave their final sufferings to her overactive imagination.”
I opened my mouth and shut it again before flies made it a home. He was absolutely right.
“What I don’t get is why Miz Harcher was even in the library when she got killed,” Gaston interjected, wiping his nose without benefit of facial tissue. “She didn’t even like this place.”
I quickly explained Junebug’s theory that Beta had intended to incinerate this den of evil. Old Man Renfro’s eyes hardened, and Gaston wheezed with dismay at the thought of all his unread Anne McCaffreys, Piers Anthonys, and André Nortons that would have gone up in smoke.
“I don’t understand that,” Candace put in. She ran a hand through her lovely, tawny hair and frowned. “Does that mean the killer was here to help her burn down the library?”
“Maybe that’s how the killer lured her here,” I said. “Offering to help her burn down the place she hadn’t been able to censor or close. That would’ve appealed to Beta.”
“And the person must’ve been someone she wasn’t afraid of,” Old Man Renfro added. “Someone it wouldn’t bother her to be alone with.”
“I don’t think she was afraid of anybody,” Candace said.
I thought of that list of names. “I think more folks were afraid of her than the other way around.” I pulled out my notes and flipped to the questions. “I wrote this up after she was killed.” My eyes flicked to Old Man Renfro and Gaston. “There are things mentioned here that aren’t mentioned in the paper. Can I count on y’all’s discretion?”
Old Man Renfro nodded, and him I didn’t worry about. Gaston was another problem, though. Anything he knew about the case, he’d brag about to his classmates in a futile attempt to move up the high school food chain.
“Now, Gaston, don’t go blabbing about what we talk about here. If you do—and rest assured I will hear if your lips start flapping—I’m going to cut back on the science-fiction orders. No new David Brins or Greg Bears. Do you understand me?”
He nodded like a scared addict, afraid that his supply would be terminated. I could almost imagine Gaston stealing TVs so he could hit the used bookstores in Austin to keep the narcotics of his favorite literary pastime available.
I opened the notebook and went down the list of questions. I still don’t know why Beta had made that list of names and Bible verses, but I suspected it had to do with blackmail. She knew Eula Mae had faked her first book, and Eula Mae’s quote talked about an enemy writing a book. Some of the other quotes—such as Tamma’s and Bob Don’s—also hinted at secrets preferably kept. I realized though, I still didn’t have answers to most of my questions. I still didn’t know why Beta was dressed in black (unless it was supposed to be in vogue for nighttime book burnings), why her shoes were caked with mud, and why the killer used the bat in my office. I did know why she was at the library now, but her having a key still bothered me. If Eula Mae had met her at the library to kill her, Beta wouldn’t have needed a key; Eula Mae had one. So why swipe Adam Hufnagel’s key, the one found on her person? I only had the Hufnagels’ word that Beta had taken the key; could they have given it to her, knowing she might burn down the library? Did they still hold a grudge for having lost the censorship fight?
Old Man Renfro looked through my notes, humming. Gaston leaned over his shoulder and I fished out a tissue for him, just to protect Old Man Renfro’s jacket. Allergies are tough here in the spring.
“I hope at the end of our lives, there are no questions,” Old Man Renfro said softly. “I used to think I knew who Beta Harcher was, but I didn’t.”
“Who did you think she was?” Candace asked.
“I’d heard she wasn’t always the paragon of religious virtue she pretended to be,” I added.
Old Man Renfro leaned back. “She was a very pretty young woman. I remember she used to come into the post office when she was young, back in the Fifties; she had a pen pal in Europe. I remember that because those were the only letters I ever remember mailing to Norway. She always seemed to be in a sweet, good mood.”
“Sourness crept in somewhere,” I interrupted. “That Norwegian pen pal send her some pickled herring that stuck in her mouth?”
Old Man Renfro shook his head. “I don’t like to repeat old gossip, especially if there’s no way to prove it. But I guess when you die by violence, you lose all privacy. Your life’s not the only thing your murderer steals from you.” His dark eyes met mine. “There was a rumor, long ago, that she got her religion on a trip to Mexico.”
“Mexico?” Candace said. “She wasn’t Catholic.”
“No, she didn’t get any particular faith,” Old Man Renfro agreed. “But back then, young ladies could get … problems taken care of over the border they couldn’t always get taken care of here.”
Gaston appeared utterly lost, but I swallowed. “You mean she’d gotten in trouble? An abortion?”
Old Man Renfro nodded. “That was just the rumor that swept through town, but I don’t think anyone really believed it. My sister told me she’d heard it from a lady who cooked for one of the Harchers’ neighbors. Of course, Beta started going to church on pretty much a twenty-four-hour basis and I guess that rumor died, like most do.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going to go chasing thirty-year-old shadows on rumor.”
Gaston scanned the list again. “Her shoes were real muddy?”
“Caked with it,” Candace answered.
“Maybe her car broke down again,” Gaston offered helpfully.
“What d’you mean?” I asked. “You working for Triple A now?”
Gaston sniffed. “Naw, I just saw her car last week, out on the dirt road that goes out to the east side of Bavary. Late last Wednesday night I was coming back from my D and D game—”
“D and D?” Old Man Renfro asked, sounding as though he thought Gaston was engaging in kinky hobbies with Bavary housewives.
“Dungeons and Dragons,” Gaston explained with a sigh. “It’s this really cool game where you pretend to be a fantasy character and you have adventures—”
“Thank you, Gaston, but you said you saw her car?” I wasn’t in the mood to hear about Gaston’s latest escapades as a slayer of dragons and saver of virgins.
“Oh, well, yeah. See, I wasn’t really concentrating on the road because I was mad I hadn’t killed the Black Druid with my enchanted broadsword when I could’ve and I was wondering if I’d have a second chance next week—”
“Gaston,” I interrupted again. “I’m sure Tolkien fans will be in a mad dash to buy your adventure when you get it all written down, but where did you see Beta’s car late at night?”
He looked hurt behind those thick lenses and I felt bad. I squeezed his bony shoulder. “Sorry,” I said, “I’m just a little jumpy.”
“As I was saying,” Gaston began with great dignity, “I was concentrating on my poor strategy in the game. I nearly ran her car down. She was barely parked on the shoulder. I knew it was her car ’cause it had all those Jesus bumper stickers on it.”
I nodded. Beta had driven an old Ford Tempo with enough religious bumper stickers on it to look like a scout car for a Billy Graham revival.
“Anyhow, I stopped, because I thought her car must’ve broken down and it was awful late—around eleven. I got out, but she wasn’t in the car. I called out her name, but there wasn’t any answer. I figured someone else had picked her up and she hadn’t come back for the car yet.”
“Where on the road was this?” I asked.
“Not too far out of town,” he shrugged. “Maybe a couple of miles
, no more. Near the Blalock farm.”
“Isn’t that interesting?” I said to Candace.
“I was sort of glad she’d gotten picked up,” Gaston continued. “She didn’t like me.”
“Well, Gaston, you did speak out very eloquently against censorship when she tried to—” I started, but Gaston shook his head. Fortunately no grease flew off.
“No, that’s not it. I go to the Baptist church. She heard about the kind of books I like to read and the role-playing games I like to play. I tried to get some of the other youth-group kids interested in playing one that doesn’t even involve swords and sorcery on a retreat, and she chewed me out good!” Gaston said, the picture of wounded innocence. “She said they were Satanic and evil. Of course she didn’t know that Bobby Jay Tumpfer and Lila Duke were sneaking into each other’s rooms during that whole trip. And all I wanted to do was play a game!”
“Hey, Gaston, was this the trip to Lake Travis that Beta chaperoned?” I asked.
“Yeah, she and Mrs. Hufnagel went with us. It rained, so there wasn’t much to do ’cept listen to Miz Harcher preach at us.”
“Sounds like she was warming up for her church with y’all,” I muttered. “Anything else happen on that trip?”
Gaston thought. “No, we were all just trying to figure out when Bobby Jay and Lila were going to get caught and what old Beta would do if she caught ’em. And nobody really picked on me too much during that trip.” It seemed a fond memory for him, and he paused. “Oh, well, that was the trip that Hally’s daddy’s camcorder got stolen.”
“A camcorder?” I asked.
“Yeah, one his dad loaned him for the trip. He left his room unlocked or something and somebody took off with it. There were a couple of other youth groups there, too, so I suppose someone from one of them took it. It never did turn up and Hally was awful upset.”
A missing camcorder. Beta had checked out a book on using camcorders. Had she swiped it and not gotten the instruction manual at the same time?
