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

by Jenn McKinlay

  Her theory that it was Dylan who killed Robbie was shot full of holes and, frankly, she was relieved. She’d hated thinking that Dylan might have had something to do with it.

  Then again, was Violet right? Was Sterling exacting revenge on her and the show to destroy her because he knew it would hurt her and Charlene?

  And, of course, there was always Harvey Wargus. Lindsey knew he hated both Violet and Robbie. After all, they had ruined him. But if he had murdered Robbie, wouldn’t he do the same to Violet? Why would he have tried to harm Lindsey? That made no sense unless he was working for Sterling and Sterling was calling the shots. If it was Sterling, he was apparently more interested in hurting Violet than he was in killing her.

  Heathcliff sat on the couch and watched while Lindsey made a cup of decaffeinated tea. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was missing something.

  She curled up on the couch, snuggled Heathcliff and sipped her tea. It wasn’t long before he rolled onto his side with his head hanging over the edge of the couch and began softly snoring.

  Lindsey rubbed his soft fur while she pondered the events of the past few days. She’d missed her little fur baby while she’d been busy with the play, and she made a mental promise that she would take him for a nice long walk tomorrow morning to make it up to him. She was so grateful to have Nancy and Charlie to help her raise her boy.

  This made her thoughts shift to Violet. It must have been a huge relief to her to have people like Robbie fill in the father gap while she was raising Charlene on her own. She thought about her visit to Charlene on the island and realized that for her to walk away from work and hole up on her island, she must be taking Robbie’s loss pretty hard. She’d certainly seemed awfully grief struck when Lindsey had visited her.

  The whole thing made Lindsey want to call her own father and thank him for being there, always, no matter what. Her mother, too, for that matter. They were her foundation. They were academics at a small university in New Hampshire. They had fostered her love of books and learning. Without them, she couldn’t even imagine what her life would be like.

  She drained her tea and rinsed her cup out in the kitchen sink. She heard her cell phone chime from the holder she’d put it in to recharge.

  She glanced at the clock. It was well past midnight. Who would be calling her this late? The hopeful flutter that it might be Sully launched inside of her before she could squash it.

  Probably, it was a wrong number. A drunk dialer making a booty call seemed likely given that the bars were just closing. She glanced at the display, but didn’t recognize the number. She figured it was better to answer it than to have them keep calling all night.

  “Hello?” she asked.

  “Lindsey?” the voice asked. She didn’t recognize the male voice.

  “Yes,” she said. “Who is this?”

  “A friend,” the voice said.

  “I don’t recognize your voice,” she said. She kept her tone frosty. “Who are you?”

  “Someone who cares about what happened to you tonight,” the voice said.

  Lindsey listened very closely. She thought maybe the voice was familiar, but why wasn’t he identifying himself? He had to have something to hide. Was it a reporter who’d heard about her fall? Or worse, was it Sterling Buchanan or one of his minions?

  “I’m fine,” she said. Her voice dropped from frosty to subzero. “Unless you tell me who you are, this conversation is over.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” the man said. “Sleep well.”

  The caller hung up, and Lindsey felt a chill sweep over her body from head to toe as she stared at the phone. She didn’t like feeling as if she was being watched, especially when there was a killer out there.

  What if the caller had been the same person who shoved her and they were just calling to let her know in a very sick and twisted way that they knew she was fine and that they would be coming for her again?

  Okay, that’s just stupid, she told herself. Whoever had pushed her was out to stop the show, not harm her personally. It could just as easily have been someone else who got pushed. But then, who was her caller and why had he called?

  She went into her recent calls and looked at the number again. She decided to call it. Even if no one answered, if it rolled over to voice mail, she would know who it was. After eight rings, an automated voice repeated the number and asked her to leave a message. She ended the call, feeling even more creeped out than before.

  She put the phone back in the charger and then checked all of the locks on her windows and doors. No one was after her. No one was watching her or so she kept telling herself.

  She had just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been anyone who had been up in the balcony. The caller probably was a reporter. When she had told him she was going to hang up, he had probably thought better of pursuing his line of questioning.

  Now she knew why Emma had been so annoyed with the media. They really were a ruthless bunch.

  She got ready for bed and climbed in between her flannel sheets. She switched out the light, and a few minutes later she felt the telltale dip on the foot of the bed. Heathcliff made a few circles and then collapsed onto the fleece blanket she kept on the end of the bed just for him.

  She had thought she’d drop right off to sleep but no. Every time she felt the woozy, fuzzy lull of oblivion begin to overtake her, a creak or a groan from the house would cause her eyes to snap open and stare into the darkness.

  The phone call had put her more on edge than she’d expected. She could hear Heathcliff’s even breathing. She tried to mimic him but it was no use. Finally, she reached down and pulled his fleece blanket up the bed until Heathcliff was beside her. She absorbed his dog warmth through her heavy covers and finally, she fell asleep.

  • • •

  It was opening day for the show, and the library was abuzz with nervous jitters. Beth had brought coffee and doughnuts from the bakery in the general store, so all of the staff members were overcaffeinated and oversugared. Lindsey would have loved it if it sped up shelving and check-in, but instead, it seemed to make everyone hyper and unable to stay on task.

  “Beth, what are you doing?” Lindsey asked.

  Beth had dragged a ladder out of the supply cupboard and was dusting off the tops of the bookshelves.

  “Cleaning,” Beth said.

  “I can see that,” Lindsey said. “Let me be more clear: Why are you cleaning up there right now?”

  Beth bit her lip and looked down at Lindsey. “I’m nervous. You know I always clean when I’m nervous.”

  It was true. When they had roomed together during graduate school, Lindsey had found Beth scouring their oven in the middle of the night in an attempt to manage her nerves over final exams.

  “I appreciate your anxiety,” Lindsey said. “But do you think you could clean something closer to the ground? It won’t help the play if you fall and break something.”

  “Oh, good point,” Beth said. She carefully climbed down the ladder. “Speaking of falling, how are you feeling?”

  “I’m fi—” Lindsey had been about to say fine, but she thought better of it. “I’m okay.”

  “Just okay?” Beth asked.

  Lindsey studied her friend. Her big eyes were sparkling with bright-eyed optimism. “What are you talking about? What’s going on in that brain of yours?”

  27

  “Nothing. Well, I just thought maybe you and Sully . . .” Beth trailed off. “No?”

  Lindsey thought about the moment last night in front of the police station when she had almost kissed him. She felt her face grow warm, but she refused to acknowledge it.

  “Why would Sully and I . . . ?” she began but Beth interrupted her.

  “Because it was such a daring rescue,” Beth cried. “There you were dangling off the balcony. Everyone wa
s yelling and panicking and then Sully came dashing up the aisle with the mattress. He threw it down and then told you to let go and you did. And just like that, he scooped you up and carried you out of harm’s way.”

  Beth clasped her hands together over her chest. She looked like a character right out of a Marion Chesney Regency novel.

  “More like he shoved me and then fell after me,” Lindsey said. “Not to quibble.”

  Beth gave her an exasperated look. “That man saved your life.”

  “I know,” Lindsey said. “But that doesn’t mean—”

  “Oh, come on,” Beth said. She looked like she wanted to strangle Lindsey. “How can it not mean that he still has feelings for you?”

  Lindsey stared at her friend. Did it mean that? She was afraid to hope.

  “So, are you really nervous for the performance tonight?” Lindsey asked in an abrupt change of subject. “How nervous? Throw-up nervous?”

  “Okay, that’s mean,” Beth said. “You know I’m nervous.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lindsey sighed. “I just don’t want to talk about Sully and me and whatever is or isn’t happening, which I have no idea about anyway.”

  Beth considered her for a moment. “All right, I forgive you. And yes, I’m throw-up nervous.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Lindsey said and gave her friend a sympathetic hug. “You’re going to be fabulous. No worries.”

  “I don’t know,” Beth said. “Everyone is really wigged out. We don’t even know if Dylan will show up and play Puck or if his parents will forbid it. Poor Violet; if I were her, I’d have had a stroke by now.”

  “Violet is a pro,” Lindsey said. “She’ll be okay, and the play will be great. You’ll see.”

  “Hey, you two, have you noticed that Milton is always here?” Ann Marie, one of their part-time employees, stopped beside them. She was pushing a truck full of new titles to be shelved.

  “Well, he does teach chess club and he’s on the board,” Lindsey said.

  “Oh, I know he’s always been a regular,” Ann Marie said. “But now, it’s the two of them all the time.” She jerked her thumb in the direction of the circulation desk.

  Ms. Cole and Milton were standing across the desk from each other speaking in low voices, but Lindsey recognized the cadence as being the particular iambic pentameter verse of Shakespeare.

  “I imagine once opening night is behind them, they’ll settle down,” Lindsey said.

  “I don’t know,” Ann Marie said. “Performing in the theater brings people together.” She gave Lindsey a meaningful look. “For that matter, working behind the scenes brings people together, too.”

  “Oh, no.” Lindsey shook her head. “Don’t you start.”

  “Start what?” Jessica Gallo, their other part-timer, asked as she joined them.

  “Nothing,” Lindsey said. She gave Beth and Ann Marie a look. “And I do mean nothing.”

  Jessica glanced at the three of them and shrugged. Then she turned to Lindsey and asked, “So, as to the rumor about you and Sully getting back together, would you care to confirm or deny?”

  “Oh, good grief!” Lindsey rolled her eyes. “‘Upon my tongue continual slanders ride . . . something, something, I forget . . . Stuffing the ears of man with false reports.’”

  “King Henry IV,” Jessica said. “Nicely played, even though you forgot the middle.”

  “So, no confirmation then?” Ann Marie asked.

  “No,” Lindsey said.

  Jessica and Ann Marie exchanged a look before they went back to their stations.

  “But if there was something to report, you’d tell me, right?” Beth asked. “I mean, I’m your best friend.”

  “Yes, I’d tell you—maybe,” Lindsey said.

  “Nice.” Beth gave her a withering look.

  Lindsey said nothing. Did she still care about Sully? No doubt. But she couldn’t deny that she had been surprised to find that her feelings for Robbie had been deeper than she realized.

  The thought that she would never see his charming grin or the twinkle in his eye when he teased her made her chest feel heavy and tight. She completely understood why Charlene and Violet had cared so much for him. He was an unstoppable force, much like the character Puck that he had played so well.

  “Hello?” Beth waved her hand in front of Lindsey’s face. “Are you in there?”

  Lindsey shook her head. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

  “That Jessica is looking swamped at the reference desk,” Beth said. She gave Lindsey a curious look, and Lindsey knew it was because she was usually much more on top of what was happening in the library around her.

  “On it,” Lindsey said.

  She left Beth with a wave and made her way across the large room to the reference area. She was relieved to have something to do to keep her mind off of Robbie’s death and Sully and whatever had happened between them last night, which she feared had been a reaction to a near-death experience and not a sign that they were reconciling. Then again, Sully never said how he was feeling, so how could she possibly tell?

  “May I help who’s next?” she asked as she stepped in behind the desk with Jessica, who gave her a relieved smile.

  Mrs. Duncan, who ran the local garden center, stepped up to Lindsey’s side of the desk while Jessica helped a man trying to find repair schematics for his car.

  “Lindsey, I’ve got a problem,” Mrs. Duncan said.

  She was dressed in her usual jeans and a flannel shirt over a long-sleeved T-shirt. She had no makeup on, and her brown hair was shoved up under its usual khaki, wide-brimmed hat. Stray wisps had managed to escape, and she had a smear of dirt on her cheek.

  “What’s the problem?” Lindsey asked.

  “I found this is my compost pile at the garden center, and I don’t know what it is,” Mrs. Duncan said. She dug into her large purse and pulled out a glass jar, which she plunked down on the counter.

  “Ah!” The man looking for car repair information let loose a high-pitched shriek and he and Jessica jumped back from the desk.

  Lindsey looked at the jar. Inside was a snake, a very large, coiled-up black snake.

  “Is it dead?” She looked hopefully at Mrs. Duncan.

  “Oh, no, it’s fine,” Mrs. Duncan said. “I snatched him up behind the head and threw him in my pickle jar before he even knew he tumbled out of the bin.”

  “Is that lid on tight?” Jessica asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Mrs. Duncan said. “Not to worry. See?” She picked up the jar and gave the lid another good squeeze to show that it had gone as far as it could go.

  Both the man and Jessica backed away from the desk, or more accurately, away from the snake.

  “I think I have some manuals over here,” Jessica said.

  “Lead the way,” the man said, sounding relieved.

  Lindsey suppressed a smile, and turned to Mrs. Duncan. “Do you have a camera on your phone?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Next time, you might want to just take a picture and bring that in.”

  Mrs. Duncan watched Jessica and the man zip around the corner of the stacks away from them, and she nodded.

  “Got it,” she said. “So, how do we find out what it is and if it’s poisonous?”

  “It didn’t bite you, did it?” Lindsey asked.

  She hoped the obvious answer was no and that if it had bitten her, Mrs. Duncan would have gone straight to an emergency room, but sometimes patrons surprised her. A few months back, they’d had a woman in who was obviously in labor, but she refused to go to the hospital until she checked out several baby name books.

  “No, I’m quicker than any old snake,” Mrs. Duncan said with a laugh. “I just want to know if it’s safe to release it at the garden center or if I should set it free out in the woods.”

  “Al
l right,” Lindsey said. “Let’s see what I have.”

  Lindsey did a quick catalog search. “How does a pamphlet called Snakes in Connecticut sound?”

  “Perfect,” Mrs. Duncan said.

  The computer indicated that it was in the library’s vertical file, which was a large, steel file cabinet full of all sorts of publications just like this one, all filed alphabetically by subject.

  “If you’ll stay with the snake, I’ll be right back.”

  Lindsey stepped out from behind the desk and crossed over to the expanded reference shelves where they kept the vertical file. She pulled out the S drawer and worked her way to Snakes. Sure enough, this pamphlet and two others were nestled in the manila envelope.

  She took it out of its file and thumbed through it as she wandered back to the desk. She scanned the introduction and said, “Well, there are only fourteen species of snake in Connecticut and only two are venomous, the timber rattlesnake and the copperhead, so your odds are looking good.” She handed the pamphlet to Mrs. Duncan. “The authors, Jenny Dickson and Julie Victoria, included pictures of each.”

  Mrs. Duncan flipped through the pages. “Aha! That’s him.” She slapped the pamphlet open on the counter and pointed to a black snake. “What do you think?”

  Lindsey read the caption. “Eastern rat snake.” She continued reading. “But it says here that it would have a white chin. Yours is solid black.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Duncan turned the pamphlet back around and scanned more pictures. “Aha! Now I have it.” She lifted up the jar and stared at the underbelly of the snake. “Yup, that’s it for sure.”

  Lindsey looked at the picture. It was another black snake but this one was called an Eastern racer. “Bluish belly?”

  “See for yourself,” Mrs. Duncan said and she held the jar over Lindsey’s head so she could see.

  “Yes, I think you have it,” Lindsey said. “What are you going to do?”