On Borrowed Time

by Jenn McKinlay

  “Are you sure Jack didn’t kill him?” Stella asked.

  “Yes!” Lindsey said. She couldn’t believe that Stella would even suggest such a thing.

  “It could have been an accident,” Stella said.

  “He was strangled,” Lindsey said. “That’s not an accident.”

  Stella shrugged. Again, Lindsey wondered if she had a bit of the woman-scorned thing going on.

  “Did Jack say whether he recognized either of them?” Tom asked.

  “No, but he suspected they were looking for him,” she said. “What should I do? Since Antonia lied to me and there is no crazed husband, do I go to the police with this?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Tom said.

  Lindsey glanced at him and saw he was looking through her office window out into the library. She followed the line of his gaze. Detective Trimble and Chief Plewicki were approaching.

  “Oh, they’re here,” she said. “How convenient.”

  Knuckles rapped on the wooden door, and it was pushed open before she could issue an invite.

  Chief Plewicki strode into the office and stopped short, surprised to see two people already there. Detective Trimble was right behind her, and he stopped just shy of slamming into Emma.

  “Lindsey, if we could have a moment of your time,” Emma said.

  “Absolutely,” she said. “But first there are some people I’d like you to meet. Chief Plewicki, Detective Trimble, these are my brother’s work associates, Stella McQuaid and Tom Jarvis.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Emma said. She gave Lindsey a confused look. “So can you spare a minute?”

  “Actually, I think you’re going to want to talk to them,” Lindsey said. “If you have an ID on the dead man, they may be able to help you further with it. You see, we think he was after my brother.”

  “Your brother?” Detective Trimble asked. He looked bewildered but Emma nodded as if suddenly Lindsey was making more sense.

  “You’ve been holding out on me,” Emma said. Her brown eyes looked disappointed, and Lindsey felt an uncomfortable twist of guilt squeeze her insides.

  “Sometimes in the name of justice, full disclosure has to wait,” Lindsey said. Emma had used the same line on her once.

  She did feel bad about not telling Emma everything, but there was a time in the not too distant past that Emma had not disclosed certain information to Lindsey for a very good reason. Of course, Lindsey was a librarian and not a cop, but still.

  Emma gave her a small nod, letting her know that her point had been grudgingly acknowledged.

  “Explain,” Trimble said. He was obviously not at grudging acceptance yet.

  Lindsey told them about the day the body was found. How Jack had been in the room and then he was gone and a body was there. She explained about Jack escaping while the two men fought. She noted that Emma was looking unhappier by the minute but she pressed on. When she got to the part about Jack being taken by Antonia Murroz, Emma could obviously not contain herself any longer.

  “And you didn’t tell me?” Emma cried. “A citizen was in danger in my town and you didn’t tell me?”

  “Technically, when he was taken, he was on the water so he wasn’t really in town,” Lindsey said.

  Emma was not pacified and Detective Trimble looked as if he was seriously thinking of charging her with impeding an investigation.

  “Listen, the woman who took my brother made it very clear that I was to tell no one,” Lindsey said. “And Jack said the same. I was not about to put him in danger for a man we can’t even identify.”

  “Juan Veracruz,” Emma said. “We were finally able to run him in an international database and the name Juan Veracruz popped. He works for a Vincent Carrego, who—”

  “Owns a coffee company in Brazil,” Stella said at the same time as Emma. “He is rumored to be a part of the commodity cartel with the Murroz family.”

  “Cartel?” Detective Trimble perked up at the word.

  “Yes, but for coffee, not cocaine,” Stella said.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Tom said. “Why would one of Carrego’s men be looking for Jack?”

  “My guess would be trouble within the cartel,” Emma said. She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest. “But it’s only a guess, since I am so light on facts.”

  Stella took over this portion of the conversation. She explained about their consultant business and how Jack had been hired in a freelance capacity to go to Brazil to help them promote the new type of coffee plant.

  Detective Trimble was not impressed. “I still think Norris had something to do with the dead guy. We only have his word secondhand”—he paused to stare at Lindsey—“that there was a second man in there. Why didn’t he come to the police right away?”

  “My brother had nothing to do with Veracruz’s death,” Lindsey insisted.

  “I agree,” Stella said. “We’re economists, not killers.”

  Trimble looked unmoved, but Emma seemed willing to listen.

  “The crime scene techs got several prints we haven’t been able to match. If we run Jack Norris’s, that will eliminate one more and let us focus on identifying the others. That may lead us to the second man.”

  “If there is one,” Trimble said.

  Lindsey frowned.

  “Ms. McQuaid and Mr. Jarvis, I’d like you to come to the station and give statements,” Emma said. “I want to know everything you know about the members of the coffee cartel in Brazil.”

  “What about Jack?” Lindsey asked. “A man called here, the day before yesterday, looking for him. At the time, I thought it was Antonia Murroz’s husband, but now I realize it could have been Vincent Carrego. Maybe he’s looking for Jack because he wants to know what happened to his man Veracruz. He said he’d be in touch. He’s probably the one who tossed my apartment looking for Jack. If Antonia isn’t running from a jealous husband, what does she want with Jack? What’s to keep her from killing him if he doesn’t do what she wants, whatever that is?”

  No one answered her, and Lindsey assumed it was because the answer was not one she would like.

  “When did you receive the call exactly?” Emma asked.

  Lindsey wrote down the date and time, which she handed to Trimble. “Can we try and trace the number?”

  “We can try,” he said. He sounded doubtful. “I’ll bet it was from a throwaway cell phone, but we’ll give it a go.”

  Emma and Trimble exchanged a look that Lindsey didn’t like. She felt compressed with fear as if her skin were shrinking and she didn’t fit inside it anymore.

  “Lindsey, it seems as if your brother got involved in something dangerous,” Emma said. “With two factions of the cartel going after him, I have to figure he’s got something that they both want.”

  “We’ll do everything we can to figure out what it is,” Tom said. He rose from his seat as did Stella.

  “Do you need a statement from me, too?” Lindsey asked.

  “Have you told us everything you know?” Emma asked.

  “Yes,” Lindsey said. She couldn’t help but feel as if it was horribly inadequate and that she really knew nothing at all.

  “Then I think we’re good,” Emma said.

  “Oh, all right.” Lindsey nodded. “You’ll keep me informed?”

  Emma gave her a small smile. “Every step of the way.”

  Lindsey sank back into her chair as she watched them leave. The panic that she had been firmly squashing down was threatening to overwhelm her. She bit her lip and tried to think positive thoughts. Jack would be okay. He was always okay. Their whole life he’d gotten into scrapes and then landed on his feet, only to do something equally stupid the next time around.

  She glanced at the picture of her and Jack that she had on the shelf behind her desk. She remembered when they were e
ight and nine and Jack got the big idea to add sails to their skateboards. They’d cut up a pair of bedsheets without asking their mother, and using tree branches, they had fashioned some spectacular sails. They’d been sailing across the vacant parking lot of the church at the end of their street when their father pulled up in the family minivan.

  He’d been impressed with their aerodynamic skill but not thrilled that it was their mom’s best sheets for guests that they’d sacrificed. Jack had convinced their dad to try it, however, and after one sail across the lot, their dad was hooked. When their mom showed up to call them all to dinner, their dad was the one in the soup, and when Lindsey looked at Jack, she knew that had been his plan all along.

  She tried to work to keep her mind off what the police and Jack’s colleagues were talking about. She hated feeling left out of it all, but she knew she had made herself persona non grata and really didn’t have much leverage to demand to be included.

  At quitting time, she opened her desk drawer and grabbed her handbag out of it. She took her coat off its hook and wrapped her scarf around her neck. She knew it was going to be a cold bike ride home, but she planned to stop at the police station for an update first, so it wasn’t as bad as a straight shot.

  She left her office and found both Sully and Robbie waiting for her. They stood leaning on either side of the circulation desk, looking like a matched set of badass. Lindsey figured if someone was watching her, they were definitely going to be discouraged by her entourage.

  “Hello, boys,” she said. “I figured you two would have worked out a rotation by now.”

  “Yeah, we have a little problem with that,” Robbie said.

  “Neither of us trusts the other to be alone with you,” Sully said.

  “So you’re stuck with the two of us,” Robbie said.

  “Well, you can declare yourselves off duty,” Lindsey said. “I’m headed over to the police station.”

  The men exchanged a look of surprise.

  “You went to the police?” Sully asked.

  “No, they came to me,” she said. Her tone was rueful. “But you’ll be happy to hear that I told them everything.”

  “Well done,” Robbie said with obvious relief. “What brought you to your senses?”

  “My brother’s colleagues in Boston have come to town with new information,” Lindsey said. She told them about the cartel and Antonia not being married as well as the theory that Jack had stumbled into something he shouldn’t have.

  Sully gave a low whistle, which caused Ms. Cole to give him a quelling glance, which made Robbie smile.

  “That’s not all,” Lindsey said. She told them that the dead man had been identified, and it didn’t look good for Jack to have disappeared just before the man’s death with no other witnesses to the second man.

  “That is a nasty pickle,” Robbie said.

  “I just wish I knew where Jack was right now,” Lindsey said. “I wish I knew if whatever he discovered was enough to get him killed. He sounded so reassuring on the phone, teasing like he always did when we were about to get in trouble . . .”

  Lindsey thought about her last conversation with her brother and frowned. Had he been joking with her? He’d referenced their favorite book as kids, A Wrinkle in Time. She’d assumed he was trying to make light of what happened, but what if he’d been trying to leave her a clue?

  “Oh, man, I just thought of a thingy I have to do before a meeting with the mayor tomorrow,” Lindsey said.

  She turned and tossed her purse back in her office and shrugged off her coat and tossed it into the small room as well. She hooked a hand through each of their elbows and half led, half dragged them to the door.

  “You two are just the sweetest of the sweet,” she said. “But it looks like I’ll have to work late. Tell you what, I’ll call Nancy or Charlie for a ride so you don’t have to come back here. Great. Awesome. K’bye.”

  She all but shoved the two men out the sliding door and then spun on her heel and raced into the young adult reading section. Beth had been building a corner of the children’s area into a sweet teen hangout space with video games, manga and loads of music, magazines and DVDs. Lindsey frequently wished she’d had a space like this when she was a teen. It was, in their words, epic.

  She hurried over to the fiction shelves and searched for the book Jack had mentioned by the author’s last name. Please do not let it be checked out, she thought. She dove into the L’s and followed them to L’Engle. One copy of A Wrinkle in Time was on the shelf, and she grabbed it and hurried back to her office.

  Jack had said, “Don’t worry. It’s not like I’ve been taken to Camazotz—” just before he’d been cut off by Antonia.

  Camazotz was the dark planet mentioned in the novel, and when Lindsey and her brother were little, they used to play in their parents’ walk-in closet, locking themselves in with the lights out and pretending it was Camazotz and “IT” was trying to control their minds. In their game, one of them was always controlled by “IT,” and the other had to perform a daring rescue to save them.

  So why had he mentioned it? Was it a clue? Had he just been trying to put her at ease by referencing their favorite book? Or was he being held in a closet somewhere? Lindsey felt tears of frustration well up in her eyes.

  Where are you, Jack? What’s happening? What did you get mixed up in? Around and around the questions pummeled her brain.

  Lindsey rubbed a hand over her eyes. She had to get a grip and pull it together. She thumbed through the book. Had Jack scribbled a note in it somewhere? The librarian in her didn’t even care about damage to materials if it meant she could find her brother.

  There was nothing. No errant piece of paper wedged inside the pages. Nothing written in Jack’s distinctive blocky scrawl. She paged to the part of the book that mentioned Camazotz. Again, nothing.

  She turned the book over. She looked for anything odd on the cover. The labels were all in place. The paperback book was in perfect condition, despite a little wear on the binding.

  She put it down on her desk and rested her hand on it. Maybe Jack’s words had been just that, words. She drummed her fingers on the cover. Under her ring finger, she felt a ridge.

  She ran her fingers over it. Sure enough, on the back cover there was a tiny little bump. It could be nothing, but she flipped open the book and checked. The square of adhesive that held the book’s RFID—radio frequency identification—tag in place in the book was the only thing she saw.

  The library had switched to the RFID method of checking out a few years before. It was a microchip radio frequency mash-up that replaced the barcode and combined the ability to check out and prevent theft all in one. Ms. Cole had been resistant to the new technology, but Lindsey had been insistent and she noted that Ms. Cole had ceased complaining once the new system was installed and operational. Lindsey suspected that the lemon really enjoyed the antitheft properties of the RFID.

  Lindsey examined the tag. A corner was peeling as if it had been tampered with. Lindsey carefully pulled it back and gasped. Sure enough, tucked under the tag was a micro SD card the size of the fingernail on her pinky and as thin as a piece of poster board.

  Her hands shook as she carefully took it out of its hiding spot. Jack had been leaving her a clue. This card had to be what the cartel members were seeking.

  Lindsey reached for her phone. She had to tell Emma right away. Before she touched the receiver, her phone rang. The noise made her jump and she tightened her grip on the tiny little card.

  “Briar Creek Public Library,” she answered, hoping to get rid of her caller as swiftly as possible. “This is Lindsey, how can I help you?”

  “You’re holding what I want,” a woman’s voice said. It was thick with an exotic accent, and Lindsey knew she was talking to Antonia Murroz.

  “Where’s my brother?” she asked.

  Li
ndsey’s eyes scanned the windows. Where was Antonia? How could she see her? Dread trailed its cold clammy hand up her back to rest on the nape of her neck.

  “He is unharmed—for now,” Antonia said. “If you want him back, you will exchange the micro card in your possession for him. We will be at the pier at ten o’clock. Don’t be late and don’t go to the police or I will have no choice but to kill your brother.”

  The woman hung up and Lindsey realized she was shivering and sweating at the same time. She glanced at the clock. She desperately wanted to go to the police and make this their problem, but that wasn’t an option. She had no doubt that the woman would kill Jack and not even chip her nail polish while doing it.

  Lindsey closed her eyes. She needed to think. The most important thing to do was keep the micro card safe. She took her phone out and popped out her tiny memory card and put this one inside it. She then put her phone in her pocket for safekeeping.

  She figured she might as well help close the library and then she could go to the Anchor and wait until the appointed meeting time with Antonia.

  She rose from her desk and headed out front. Ms. Cole had most of the building shut down while Ann Marie was checking out the last borrower. When that person left, Ann Marie went to lock the door after them.

  Lindsey swept the adult area, the meeting rooms and the bathrooms. She was just rounding the corner to go back to the front desk when a man stepped out from between the stacks.

  He was built big and strong with a thick neck and a square jaw. The woolen cap on his head made him look like a dock worker who would be just as comfortable cracking skulls as he would be unloading barges. Then Lindsey noticed the gun he held. It was pointed at her. His hand didn’t shake, letting her know he was perfectly capable of pulling the trigger with no hesitation.

  She gulped. “I’m sorry, the library is closed.”

  The man frowned at her. He held out one beefy hand and gestured to her impatiently. His voice was thick with an accent much like Antonia’s when he said, “Give it to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lindsey said. Her mouth was dry and her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth. “Did you need something?”