Read It and Weep (A Library Lover's Mystery)

by Jenn McKinlay

  “Are you that desperate to have my sloppy seconds, Lola?” Kitty asked. “How pathetic.”

  Lola snarled and launched herself at the other woman. Before she reached her, Sully jumped forward and snatched her up around the waist while Ian blocked Kitty from engaging.

  “Enough! Take them outside to cool off,” Violet ordered.

  “I don’t need to—” Kitty began, but Violet gave her a menacing look that made her close her mouth in midsentence.

  “Go,” Violet said.

  Everyone watched as Sully took Lola out toward the back door and Ian led Kitty out the front.

  “Come on, let’s see if you can stand.” Violet gestured for Lindsey and Beth to help Robbie up.

  Lindsey took his right while Beth took his left.

  “Upsy daisy,” Beth said.

  Robbie put an arm around each of their shoulders, and together they got him up on his feet. He gingerly put weight on his left leg. Lindsey saw his mouth tighten, but his arm on her shoulder was light.

  He took a few steps forward and Lindsey and Beth walked with him. He gave them both a quick squeeze and released them.

  “Thank you, my lovely angels of mercy,” he said. “I think it’s just going to be bruised.”

  Violet was watching him and said, “I want you to have it checked by a doctor.”

  “Will do,” he said.

  “You might want to keep it elevated, and ice it to keep the swelling down,” Beth said. “I think we have some ice in the machine in the concession stand.”

  “Excellent,” Violet said. “Could you get him an ice pack, Beth?”

  “And, Robbie, for the rest of tonight’s rehearsal, you are chair-bound. Milton, could you grab a chair from backstage?”

  Lindsey watched Robbie wince as he took a step in the direction of the side of the stage. She hurried over and took his arm and draped it over her shoulders.

  “You really shouldn’t push it, you know.”

  He looked at her and his face cleared and his dimples deepened when he grinned at her.

  “How do you know I wasn’t just using my prodigious acting skills to see if you cared?” he asked.

  “You wouldn’t!” she said.

  “Wouldn’t I?” he asked.

  He looked at her and for a second Lindsey was sure he could see all the way into her soul. She blinked and looked away. Then she shook her head and laughed.

  “You are the only man I’ve ever met who would use an injury as an opportunity to flirt.”

  He winked at her and Lindsey felt her face heat up. She was not going to succumb to his charm, she told herself, even as she realized that she genuinely liked Robbie as a person.

  “Probably, you should sort out your wife-girlfriend situation before you try to add any more women to your life,” she said.

  He sighed. “I’m not very good with the closure portion of relationships.”

  “Clearly.”

  He looked at her and grinned. “But I’m unrivaled at beginnings.”

  Milton arrived at the side of the stage with two chairs, one for sitting and one for leg propping. As Lindsey helped Robbie into a chair, Beth arrived with the ice pack.

  As Lindsey stepped away, she saw Sully had returned without Lola and was watching her with a frown. She felt a flash of guilt and then shrugged it off. Helping an injured man was nothing to feel guilty about.

  As she went to leave the stage and go back to her worktable, Robbie grabbed her hand and raised the back of it to his lips.

  “Thanks, love,” he said.

  Lindsey felt her face heat up again, but only because she knew that Sully was watching them. She glanced back to where Sully had been standing, but he was gone.

  When she turned toward Robbie, she saw a twinkle in his eye and said, “You like trouble, don’t you?”

  8

  “Me?” he asked. He blinked his green eyes innocently at her.

  “Yes, you,” she said. She was not buying what he was selling.

  Violet had rolled up his pant leg and was about to put the ice pack on his leg. When Lindsey glanced down at the knot forming on Robbie’s shin, she didn’t have the heart to be too mad at him. He could have been seriously injured.

  Lindsey left Robbie to Violet’s ministrations and went back to her donkey to see how the drying process was going. When she got back to the table, she found the mask crushed as if someone had hit it repeatedly with a fist.

  Beth and Mary joined her at the table as she picked up what was left of the mask and turned it over in her hands.

  “What happened?” Beth gasped.

  “At a guess, I’d say someone beat the hell out of it,” Lindsey said. “Probably, I should be grateful that it isn’t my face.”

  “But who—?” Mary began and then she broke off. “Oh.”

  “Oh?” Beth asked.

  Mary looked at Lindsey and asked, “Wife or girlfriend?”

  “Could be either, but I think Ian took Kitty out this way, so my guess would be that Ian left her and Kitty came back in and exorcised some misguided rage on Nick Bottom’s donkey head,” Lindsey said.

  She glanced at the stage, where Violet was directing Robbie, who was still sitting, Ms. Cole and Milton through their parts in Act IV. She didn’t have a good feeling about what had happened with Robbie. And she really didn’t have a good feeling about what someone had done to her mask. Was it a warning? Were both incidents warnings? Or was she just being paranoid?

  A movement in the shadows of the entrance of the theater caught her attention. Whoever was back there was carefully making their way to the door. If this was Kitty and she thought she was going to slip out after destroying Lindsey’s work, she had another think coming.

  “Hey!” Lindsey shouted and she ran across the theater. “Stop!”

  • • •

  The person in the shadows jumped and broke into a run. He was running flat out toward the emergency exit when he ran in front of a light that illuminated his particular body type: short and droopy. It was theater critic Harvey Wargus.

  He slammed through the emergency exit before Lindsey could reach him. When she shoved through the door out into the cold night air, the alley was empty and she had no idea which direction he had run.

  “Damn it!” she said.

  “Who was that?” Beth asked as she pushed through the door after Lindsey.

  “Harvey Wargus, the critic,” Lindsey said.

  “But what’s he doing here during rehearsals?” Mary asked.

  “I don’t know, but I doubt that it bodes well for Violet,” she said.

  There was a reason that Harvey had been skulking around the theater. She knew he hated Violet and Robbie. Could he hate them enough to try to shut down the production by hurting Robbie?

  “We need to tell Violet,” Mary said. “She needs to be warned that he’s been spying.”

  “But why would he?” Beth asked. “What could he possibly get out of watching us rehearse?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll get something out of it,” Lindsey said. “And it won’t be pleasant.”

  Violet took the news that Harvey had been in the theater better than Lindsey thought, but then again, it could be Violet’s skill as an actress that kept her from showing any emotion in front of the cast and crew.

  “Run your lines,” she directed the cast. “I need to make a call.”

  Lindsey could feel Robbie watching her but she pretended not to notice and retreated to her worktable, where she decided to clean up her supplies for the evening. She did not have the patience to mold chicken wire again. It would have to wait until tomorrow.

  After all of the hullabaloo, she just wanted to go home to her dog, Heathcliff. A nice walk and a hot cup of tea would put her right and hopefully make her forget about the angry wife, her smashed work,
the skulking critic and the frown on Sully’s face.

  • • •

  Lindsey was up early the next morning. Heathcliff, a snuggler by nature, let out a grunt when she pushed the covers off and stepped out of the bed.

  “Come on, lazy bones,” she said. He stretched his furry black body across the bedspread and let out a tongue-curling yawn.

  When she had gotten home the night before, she’d been too tired to go for a walk and so had played fetch with him in the yard instead. This morning she wanted to make up for it by taking him on a nice long walk before she left for work.

  She had a hankering for a pumpkin-raisin muffin at the bakery, and it was giving her sufficient motivation to get moving.

  Lindsey tied her long, blonde hair in a sloppy knot on top of her head, slipped on her workout clothes and sneakers and clipped Heathcliff’s leash to his collar. Together, they jogged to the center of town. The small grocery store had its own bakery, which had patio seating outside. Lindsey found an empty table in the corner and tied Heathcliff’s leash to one of the chairs.

  Mr. and Mrs. Kendall, a retired couple, were seated at the next table. Mrs. Kendall held out her hand to Heathcliff, who immediately rolled over onto her shoes and offered his belly for pets.

  “Go get your coffee, dear,” she said to Lindsey. “I’ll keep an eye on your baby for you.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Kendall,” Lindsey said. She turned to Mr. Kendall and asked. “Did you read the new Clive Cussler yet?”

  “Is it in?” he asked. The eyes behind his bifocals sparkled with new-book joy.

  “Just came in last week,” Lindsey said. “Shall I put your name down for it?”

  “Yes, please,” he said.

  Lindsey strode into the bakery knowing that Heathcliff was in good hands. She bought a coffee, her pumpkin muffin, and a water and doggie bagel for Heathcliff. She also picked up the local weekly paper, which had just come out today. It stuck mainly to the local events, but she always liked to check and see that the library was well represented.

  Lindsey took her seat and chatted with the Kendalls for a few minutes about their dogs before they took their leave.

  Lindsey sat with her feet up on the opposite chair, sipping her coffee and nibbling her muffin while Heathcliff gnawed on his bagel under the table. The sun was warm and the breeze was cool, making it a glorious autumn day.

  She flipped through the paper, pausing when a picture of the front of the theater appeared in the upper-right-hand corner of page three. The headline yelled in bold letters: Briar Creek Community Theater Doomed! Lindsey frowned and then gasped when she saw that the byline was credited to none other than Harvey Wargus.

  Diva Violet La Rue has no business directing a puppet show, never mind a community theater production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream . . .

  Lindsey continued reading, but the article just got worse. Wargus called both Violet and Robbie has-beens whose best days were long past, which was fairly ridiculous given that Robbie was barely pushing forty. He then went on to criticize the town, the theater, and the rest of the cast and crew for their shoddy showmanship and severe lack of skill and talent. The only good thing Wargus could say about the production at all was that it would, as all plays do, end.

  The back door of the bakery opened and shut, but Lindsey was too busy rereading Wargus’s vitriol to look up. She sat, engrossed, when the sound of a raised voice grabbed her attention.

  “I’d like to beat him with a rolled-up newspaper,” a voice said.

  Heathcliff growled from below the table, and Lindsey immediately reached down to scratch his ears and soothe him.

  Lindsey glanced over her shoulder to see Milton Duffy and Ms. Cole taking a table across the patio from hers. He was carrying a tray loaded with coffees and muffins, and she had a rolled-up copy of the Briar Creek Gazette in her hands.

  Lindsey felt her jaw drop. Milton and Ms. Cole? At least that explained Heathcliff’s reaction. He and the lemon were not fans of one another.

  “Now, Eugenia,” Milton said. “You can’t let him get to you. He’s a critic. You know what Kurt Vonnegut said about critics?”

  “Yes.” Ms. Cole sighed. “I believe it was something to the effect that ‘Any reviewer who expresses . . . loathing for a novel is preposterous. He . . . is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.’ But Vonnegut was talking about novels, not plays.”

  “Yes, but can’t you just see that little butterball Wargus dressed in armor going after a sundae with his pen?” Milton asked and grinned at her.

  To Lindsey’s shock and amazement, Ms. Cole actually chortled. “I can!” she cried. “You’re so right. We should just ignore him, but if he comes into the library again . . .”

  Her voice trailed off, and Milton patted her hand and said, “You’ll be the consummate professional that you always are and not let him get to you. Besides, the best revenge will be to put on the show of a lifetime.”

  Ms. Cole heaved a put-upon sigh and nodded her head. “You’re right. Shall we run our lines?”

  “I’d love to,” Milton said.

  Lindsey wondered if she should go over to their table and say hello. Normally, she wouldn’t have given it much thought, but the relationship between her and Ms. Cole was a delicate one, and she didn’t want to do anything to make it more awkward than it already was.

  Still, she didn’t want to be rude to Milton, either. Then again, if they hadn’t seen her, and it was pretty clear that they hadn’t, was it being rude to leave them to their rehearsal? She thought not. As a few more people came out onto the patio, Lindsey took the opportunity to slip away unnoticed.

  As she strolled back to her house to change and get ready for work, she thought about last night’s rehearsal. Who had smashed her donkey head? Probably Kitty. Was Robbie all right? And what was the deal with Lola? She seemed to think she and Robbie were still together while he was pretty clear that he had cut her loose. And why did Lindsey care, since she had no interest in dating anyone right now? Right?

  She thought about Sully and sighed. Why was it so complicated with him? She knew that she cared for him, and she suspected that he cared for her, but he never said so, which made the whole situation impossible. She didn’t want to spend her life trying to guess how someone was feeling.

  When they had first gotten together, it had been she who announced her feelings for him. At the time she had felt quite bold and daring and had been relieved when he had said that he liked her, too. But when her ex had shown up trying to win her affections back, an impossibility rivaled only by turning iron into gold, Sully had done a full retreat and dumped her. Fine.

  She thought she’d handled the dumping pretty well. She didn’t cry—in public—and she had gone about her life exactly as it had been before she’d started dating him. The unfortunate thing was that she missed him—really bad.

  She loved that he was well read and they could talk about anything. They both loved old movies and hanging out at the Blue Anchor with their friends. He’d even begun to teach her how to sail a boat.

  She glanced down at the dog trotting happily beside her. She knew that even though Heathcliff couldn’t say it, he missed Sully as well. Okay, maybe she was projecting there, but she didn’t think so.

  When she arrived back at her house, she found Nancy and Charlie standing on the front porch. They each had steaming mugs of coffee, and Nancy was reading to Charlie from the Briar Creek Gazette. Lindsey had no doubt about which article Nancy was reading.

  When Heathcliff caught sight of them, he barked and strained at his leash. Lindsey unclipped him so he could go and greet two of his favorite people. As soon as he was free, he broke into a run. He jumped up on Charlie first and then Nancy. They both paused to pet him, and he wiggled and wagged and then raced back to Lindsey.

  “Good morning,” she said as
she stepped onto the porch. She held up her own copy of the paper. “How did you like the Wargus article?”

  “I didn’t,” Nancy grumped. “I thought he was writing for a fancy-schmancy paper owned by that Buchanan fellow. What’s he doing writing for the Gazette?”

  “The editors probably figured he’s a big name and it would draw advertisers,” Charlie said. “It’s all about the mighty dollar, man.”

  Charlie was a struggling musician who worked seasonally for Sully. By mutual agreement, he and Lindsey never talked about his day job. Charlie was a good, hardworking guy in his early twenties with long, stringy black hair and a varied collection of tattoos and piercings all over his body. Lindsey liked him, even when the band practices he held in his apartment made her furniture rumba across the floor.

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” she said. “If the Gazette can turn the community theater production into a scandal sheet for the next few issues, they’ll be sure to lock in new advertising.”

  “I can’t say that I blame them, with newspapers closing everywhere, but still, I hate seeing Violet’s name in here,” Nancy said.

  “Unless it drums up enough interest in the play to get more people to attend,” Lindsey said. “They can prove Wargus wrong with sold-out shows and an amazing performance.”

  “You’re right,” Nancy said. “That’ll shut up that horse’s ass.”

  “Whew, go Naners,” Charlie said. He held up his fist and they exchanged knuckle bumps.

  “Will you be there tonight to work on costumes?” Nancy asked Lindsey.

  “Yeah, I have to re-create my donkey head,” she said.

  “I’ll help you,” Nancy offered.

  “No, I’ve got it,” Lindsey said. “It’s sort of become a personal challenge now.”

  Nancy nodded. “I understand.”

  “Of course, if Robbie’s wife comes near my stuff again, I might need you for an alibi,” Lindsey said.

  Nancy rubbed her hands together. “Oh, Charlie and I could come up with a good one, don’t you think, Charlie?”

  “We could always say you were off getting a tattoo,” he offered.