The Broken Spine

by Dorothy St. James

  That was something I could never tell her. It’d shock the poor woman to no end.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  As soon as Mama had driven away, Tori ran into the kitchen. She returned a moment later with a plate of the fried okra and a cup of the Grind’s spicy dipping sauce that she’d rescued from the garbage. It was a feast that even my full stomach enjoyed.

  Dewey ventured out from behind the chair. His little black nose twitched as he took in the forbidden scent of fried food. Tori smiled at him and tossed him a piece of fried okra, which he gobbled down.

  “I’m not sure he should eat that,” I said, wondering if I was going to see that okra again . . . on my bed . . . in the middle of the night. “He has a delicate stomach. He’s on a special diet.”

  “According to Mama Eddy, you’re on a special diet too. Let him enjoy himself a little.”

  He settled himself at Tori’s feet, licking grease from his paws and purring loudly.

  “Just don’t give him any more. After living on the street, he panic eats and then throws up. I promise you, it’s a mess that you don’t want to see,” I said.

  “Gotcha.” Echoing Dewey’s movements, she licked her fingers. “This is the stuff.”

  “It is,” I agreed. I ate another forbidden piece of fried okra, dipped in the thick, fatty, high-cholesterol sauce—while only feeling the slightest twinge of guilt about going against my mom’s wishes.

  “Are you going to tell me what really happened?” Tori pointed a piece of okra toward my scratched face. “You haven’t fallen off your bike since you were three years old.”

  I wasn’t sure what to tell her. She probably wouldn’t react well to hearing that her newest boyfriend (and potential next husband) was a thief and maybe also a killer. But at the same time Tori was my best friend. If Charlie was a bad apple, it was my duty to warn her.

  I supposed the best way to do that was to ease into things.

  “Did you give Charlie my phone number?” I asked her.

  She chewed the okra she’d just put in her mouth before answering. “Sure did. He said he found something of yours. Did you leave something in his store yesterday when it was flooding?”

  “I can’t imagine that I did. Has he—?” I started to ask, but she interrupted.

  “You still haven’t told me what happened on your bike.” She used air quotes when she said the word “bike.”

  “Well, that’s the thing. I’m not sure what happened. I think someone was chasing me. I panicked, veered onto a trail, and flipped the bike.”

  “You think someone was chasing you?” She shot to her feet. Dewey darted behind my chair again. “Who? This is serious! Have you called the police?”

  “I did,” I said calmly. “Jace took my statement.”

  “But . . . ?” Tori prompted.

  “But I don’t have proof. Not really. Just these cuts and a bruised ankle and wrist.”

  Tori pursed her lips in thought. “But you have an idea who was chasing you, and why, don’t you?”

  “I do.” I closed my eyes. “It was either Charlie or Grandle.”

  Tori laughed. “That’s what you told Jace?” She laughed again. “You’re lucky he didn’t stuff you into an ambulance and ship you to the state hospital in Columbia for a mental evaluation. Charlie? Sweet, kindhearted Charlie? You think he would chase you? Attack you?”

  “I saw him and Grandle breaking into Duggar’s house.” I kept my eyes closed. I couldn’t bear to see the pain I had to be causing her as I told her the truth. She seemed so fond of Charlie. “Just this morning. They noticed that I saw them and shouted at me. When I rode away, I heard a car behind me. I rode even faster and veered into the woods. That’s when this happened.” I drew a deep breath. “I’m afraid Charlie killed Duggar or he let that friend of his into the library to do the deed for him.” Tori didn’t speak. I peeled open one eye. “Tori?”

  She was standing with her back to me. Her arms were crossed. “I would have expected this from Flossie. She’s the one who thinks every guy I date is the scum of the earth.”

  “I don’t think he’s—”

  “No.” She slashed her hand through the air. “No, you just think he’s a murderer. That’s worse.” She turned around. Tears were glittering in her eyes. “I really like him, you know?”

  I struggled to my feet and hobbled over to her. We hugged. “I know. I liked him too.”

  “Of course you did.” She mumbled into my shirt. “He’s a bibliophile.”

  With a start of surprise, I pulled out of the hug. “Never heard you use that word before.”

  “See?” She laughed through her tears. “He was a good influence. You really think he killed Duggar?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t kill him, but I think he’s involved with what’s going on.” I reached over and handed her the book. “He gave me this on Friday. He said it was a clue.”

  “The Maltese Falcon? I don’t understand.”

  I sat down and elevated my throbbing ankle before explaining everything I had kept hidden from her up until now, including the scrap of material I found in Dewey’s jaw.

  “You honestly think Charlie was at Duggar’s house to steal a dead man’s collection of valuable books? In broad daylight?” Tori scoffed.

  “You sound like Jace.”

  “Well, you have to admit he has a point. It does sound rather crazy.”

  “What about these texts?” I handed her my phone. “Charlie doesn’t have anything of mine. It has to be a ruse to get me to his shop so he can confront me about what I saw.”

  Tori started typing on my phone, her fingers moving furiously over the screen.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  “I’m asking him what he has that he wants to give you. I’m surprised you didn’t already do it. You’re supposed to be the smart one in this friendship.”

  I tried to grab the phone away from her. But she held it high in the air.

  “I don’t think I’m smarter than you,” I cried.

  “Of course you don’t. There. It’s sent.” She tossed me my phone. I stared at the text message, wondering why I hadn’t thought of it myself. I mean, it wasn’t as if I was going to his shop alone. I was sitting in my house with Tori, asking him an innocent question. What harm was there in that?

  A few minutes passed before my phone chirped.

  “What does it say?” Tori demanded. She tried to read the screen over my shoulder.

  “He says he has my water bottle.” Attached to the text was a picture of it sitting on a table in his shop.

  “That’s the one I gave you.”

  “I thought I’d lost it on the trail,” I said just as my phone chirped again.

  “He says you dropped it in front of Duggar’s house,” Tori said as she read the new text over my shoulder. “That doesn’t sound like a man who is trying to hide a crime to me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  If you knew otherwise, I don’t understand why you didn’t explain that to Tori,” Flossie complained the next morning. The library had been open for about a half hour. I’d just finished getting Dewey settled in the basement bookroom and had come upstairs to the café. Many of the regulars were milling around the new bookless facility like lost sheep.

  “Here’s a tablet, Mr. Talbot.” I handed one of my favorite retirees from the lake house district a brand-new reading tablet that residents could check out. “You’ll be able to download your favorite historical biographies onto it.”

  “And then what do I do with it?” He grimaced at the thin device.

  “You read the books.” I smiled at him, putting on a brave face despite the pain I felt for all of my poor lost readers. After he walked away, I turned back to Flossie.

  “I tried to tell her. Tori is smitten. The only person who can change her mind about Cha
rlie is Charlie himself,” I said as I gathered the teaching materials I kept in the circulation desk’s large bottom drawer. “But he was doing something fishy at Duggar’s house yesterday, and I don’t trust him.”

  The Monday morning Mom and Tot program was about to start, and the library was swarming with little ones. Anne looked as if she was about to pull her purple-streaked hair out as she darted here and there, warning the little kids not to touch this keyboard or not to pull on that cord.

  Was it wrong of me to find it entertaining?

  Probably.

  “Charlie texted that he’d return my water bottle today,” I said after swallowing my urge to laugh at Anne’s discomfort.

  “He’s coming here?” Flossie blurted out. “And you’re going to let him?”

  I shushed her and then glanced worriedly toward Mrs. Farnsworth’s closed door. She’d come in this morning, growled at both me and Anne, and then closed herself in her office. I didn’t want to do anything to upset the poor woman further.

  “This is a public building. He said he’ll try to arrive during my lunch break.” I hadn’t discouraged him. Actually, I’d done just the opposite. I’d encouraged him to come. I wanted to see him. I wanted to take a peek at his leg to look for the telltale scratches Dewey had left there. I wanted to catch him in his lie and expose him for the criminal he was.

  Okay, I admit it. Yesterday at Duggar’s house, he wasn’t chasing after me with deadly intent. They were only trying to point out that I’d dropped my water bottle. And yeah, I had gotten hurt because I’d overreacted. But that didn’t mean he was the good guy in this story.

  Charlie had warned me to keep as far away from Grandle as possible. Seeing them together was most definitely a red flag.

  It still was.

  At least the swelling in my ankle and wrist were nearly gone this morning. I barely limped as I walked toward the kids’ area, which used to be the fiction section.

  “It’s time to begin.” I waved for the moms and kids to follow me. Anne heaved a loud sigh of relief as the little ones that had been bedeviling her bounded toward the brightly painted room filled with soft cushions, boxes of toys, and, of course, computers. No books.

  Yet.

  As the librarian in charge of children’s programing, I planned to fix that as soon as possible. I might have failed to convince Duggar, who’d been dead set on clearing out every piece of printed material from the library. Whoever took over his position as town manager would see things differently. I would make sure of it.

  Flossie rolled alongside me into the new room.

  “I’ll be done with the children’s program in about two hours,” I told her. “There’s something I need to research before Charlie arrives. Will you be around?”

  “I’ll be . . .” She hesitated when she saw the fashionably perfect Sissy Philips hurrying toward us with her three tots in tow. Two were three-year-old twin boys and a third, a little girl who had inherited Sissy’s dainty, slightly upturned nose, was just learning to walk.

  Sissy’s platform sandals click-clacked angrily against the terrazzo floors.

  “You know where I’ll be. Good luck with all those kids,” Flossie said before rolling away faster than I’d seen her move in a while.

  Sissy, yes, the same high school Sissy who’d stomped over my papers, stopped directly in front of me. She wove this way and that as her little ones tugged on her arms. She looked at me with pleading eyes.

  “Has the world gone crazy?” she drawled. “When I asked where the board books were, that new librarian tried to hand my Joey an electronic tablet to use. Is she insane? Didn’t y’all hear? Doctors are telling parents to keep our children away from screen time, not that you’d know. You don’t have children. I can’t set Ashley up in front of a tablet. For one thing, she wouldn’t sit still for it. And besides, the last thing I want to be teaching that girl of mine is how to use one of those things. She’s already trying to get her hands on my phone enough as it is.”

  “I know. I know.” I held up my hand and said in a calming voice, “We’re working on fixing that.”

  Most of the board books and picture books for our youngest visitors had been shipped off with the books that were sold to a national reseller. Only the older books that were deemed out-of-date or useless were boxed up for the landfill.

  Taking books from the boxes that were going to be sold had felt too much like stealing. I would never take money from the library. However, I did manage to salvage some of the older picture books for the secret bookroom. Not that I would tell Sissy that. I wouldn’t trust her with Mama Eddy’s banana pudding recipe, which wasn’t all that good. Sissy hadn’t changed since high school. She’d just expanded her gossip range to include the entire population of Cypress.

  Even now she was bending toward me to whisper something I was sure I didn’t want to know about a fellow member of Cypress society.

  “Have you heard about Jace?” Her hot breath tickled my ear.

  I jerked away from her. “I’m sure I don’t want to hear whatever you have to say.”

  A tiny lie.

  I wanted to know.

  Good thing she’d never listened to me. “He’s going to lose his job.”

  “No, he’s not. I have to go get set up.”

  She followed me with those little kids of hers trotting along beside her. “I heard how you think he’s been cozying up to you. Just like he did in high school.” She tut-tutted.

  “He is investigating a crime. I was one of the witnesses.” I unfolded an oversized poster board with a photo of a fuzzy caterpillar.

  “Did you know he told me that he doesn’t think Luke is guilty?” She tut-tutted again.

  “He told you? He discussed the case with you?” Why did I not believe her? Oh, yeah, because lying and causing trouble has always been her favorite hobby.

  Her grin turned predatory. “You didn’t think he’s been coming around to visit you because he actually liked you, did you?” She gasped as if in distress.

  I rolled my eyes. “Let’s all take our seats,” I called out. I then turned to whisper to her, “I know why he’s been coming around. And it’s really none of your business.”

  “Oh, that’s so sad. You really do think he finds you attractive.” She shook her head. “He thinks you’re guilty.” Her voice was too loud. “He’s willing to do anything to prove it, because if he doesn’t, he’s going to be fired for repeating past mistakes and all just because that stupid police chief is starting to think that Jace is actually romantically interested in you, a key witness and former suspect.”

  “Please, let’s take our seats,” I said, my voice even louder. A couple of the young mothers were staring at me with their mouths gaping.

  “But of course Jace is wrong to waste his time with you,” Sissy said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, as she walked away to take a spot near the front of the room next to one of her friends from the high school cheerleading squad. “Even if you’d wanted Duggar dead, it’s not like you would have had the courage to do anything about it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  After that bumpy start, the Mom and Tot program went better than I’d expected. Several of the moms who’d been coming to the library program for years now and thought of me like an honorary auntie to their children rushed up afterward to show their support. I helped them navigate the new children’s room. I set up a few of the older children on the computers and showed them how to play the educational games. I handed a few of the younger toddlers electronic tablets that Anne had loaded with nothing but picture books.

  Everyone seemed happy, even Sissy, who kept looking over at me and smiling in her sly, I’m-better-than-you way.

  I smiled back at her. And finger waved.

  Without waiting for her reaction, I twirled on my heel and made my exit.

  I had a thief to confront.


  * * *

  • • •

  The first thing I noticed when I returned to the circulation desk was that the light in Mrs. Farnsworth’s office had been turned off. In the middle of the day? That was worrying.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Anne, who had been covering the circulation desk for one of the part-time assistants. I nodded toward Mrs. Farnsworth’s office door.

  “She came out with her purse and blasted past me like a rocket.” She shook her head. “I wonder if she’s losing it. She’s in her eighties, isn’t she? The library is changing. Not just here. Libraries all over the country are changing. Don’t you think she needs to retire?”

  And put Anne in charge? “No, I can’t imagine this place without Mrs. Farnsworth. I don’t think anyone can.”

  Anne refused to back down. “Well, this library is changing, growing. Perhaps the people in charge should change too.”

  “Do you know where Mrs. Farnsworth has gone or not?” I asked, my voice sharp. I was not going to fight with Anne. Not now. Not today.

  “I . . . I think she . . .” Clearly, Anne didn’t know where the head librarian had gone or why. And it was just as clear that she hated not knowing something.

  I hated not knowing too. I returned the toddler program materials to the bottom desk drawer before marching toward the back stairs. I needed to find Flossie. I’d barely made it a few steps when the noise level in the new café flared. If Mrs. Farnsworth had been here, she would have been shushing like mad.

  The loudest of the group were the café employees. They were behind the counter arguing. I stomped over to them. “What’s going on?”

  Both of them continued shouting at each other and at me.

  I shook my head. “I can’t listen to you when you’re loud like this. Stop arguing and get back to work. When you’re ready to talk without drama, you are welcome to come and find me. If you cannot work without the racket, you’ll have to go home.” The two men didn’t answer. They simply stood there gaping at me. “Do you understand me? Get. Back. To. Work.”