“Good,” he said again. “That’s helpful. Anything else?”
I closed my eyes. Thought about those moments in the stacks. “No,” I said. “Nothing else.”
He let go of my hands and stood. “Thanks, babe. I’d better get back up there. We’re bagging the books one at a time. Then the CSI team will take over. Tell your aunt we’re all being careful.”
“I will.” I looked back toward the front door where two men I recognized as members of the library board had just been admitted. My aunt hurried to meet them. “Looks as though Aunt Ibby and I will be able to leave soon,” I said. “Library brass just arrived.”
“I should be through here before midnight,” he said. “Still okay with you if I come over? I’ll bring ice cream.”
“An offer I can’t refuse,” I said. Dave unhooked the velvet rope once again and Pete started up the stairs while I approached the main desk where my aunt and Tyler were in animated conversation with the two new arrivals.
One of the men pointed toward the top of the stairway, where a stern-faced uniformed officer stood in an almost military posture, while my aunt gestured toward the front door. The second gentleman had joined Tyler behind the checkout desk, where, with earnest expressions, they appeared to be viewing the security monitor beneath the high counter. I joined the group as unobtrusively as I could, with a polite nod of recognition directed toward the library board members.
Aunt Ibby smiled brightly in my direction, grasping my elbow and pulling me toward her. “My niece, Maralee Barrett, is our newest volunteer,” she said. “It was she who discovered the poor soul—up there.” She faced the staircase, tipping her head back, looking up. “A thoroughly disconcerting experience as you can imagine. I’m sure I speak for my niece and Ms. Dickson as well as for myself when I tell you how relieved we are that you gentlemen are here to represent the library’s interests in this most unfortunate event.”
The two nodded in unison. “We came the moment we received your call,” said one, “and I’ve spoken with Police Chief Whaley. He’s filled us in on what’s happening here.” The other man moved from behind the checkout counter and shook Aunt Ibby’s hand. “Good job, as usual, Ms. Russell,” he said. “The library is fortunate to have you on staff.” He shook Tyler’s hand and mine in turn, thanking us for our “clear-headedness” and “bravery.” Within minutes, we’d been politely dismissed with the promise of phone calls from the board as soon as the time for the official reopening of the library was determined.
“I’ll bet Pete will have most of the mess cleared up by morning,” my aunt said as night security guard Dave—who was to remain on duty as usual—let the three of us out the side door onto the broad wooden platform, where a wheelchair ramp and a short flight of stairs led past the book drop to the parking lot.
“I agree,” I said. “Pete’s part of it may even be finished by midnight.” We walked with Tyler to where her Volvo was parked near the back fence, waited until she was safely on her way, then climbed into the Buick. The visor over the passenger seat was still in the pulled-down position. I slammed it back into place so forcefully that I drew a puzzled glance from Aunt Ibby.
“Oops. That must have looked strange,” I said. “Just before we went into the library I saw a . . . something . . . in that mirror. Didn’t want to risk seeing it again—or another one. There hasn’t been time to tell you about it until now.”
“I’m listening.”
“It was a foot—a foot wearing a shoe. It was sticking out from under a bookcase.”
“Oh, my dear! Then you came inside and found the very same thing upstairs in the stacks!”
“Well, no. It wasn’t the same at all. I mean it wasn’t the same foot. The vision foot wore a shiny black shoe. The one in the stacks had a blue sneaker on it. The socks were different too.”
“My goodness. That means . . .” She looked over at me. “What does that mean, Maralee?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I can never be sure about these things. The visions can show the past, the present, or the future. Pete told me there was a recent local break-in where books were thrown around, so maybe somebody is still out there, looking for a certain book. No one was at home during that B&E, and apparently nothing was missing. What if whoever is looking for something doesn’t find it? Does that mean there’ll be another body found beside a bookcase? Hope not. I’m going with past though,” I declared. “I think the mirror-foot belonged to Larry Laraby.”
“Larry Laraby,” my aunt repeated. “Of course. Have you talked to Pete about that case? It was before his time on the force, but maybe he’s heard about it. Mr. Laraby was found under very similar circumstances—even though his death was an accident.”
“Maybe it wasn’t,” I said, recalling Phil Archer’s words. “Not everybody believed that accident story.”
Chapter 8
Aunt Ibby didn’t comment further on Larry Laraby’s death and neither did I. We rode the rest of the way home in companionable silence. My thoughts, naturally, involved the shoes—a shiny black one with a maroon ribbed sock and a blue athletic shoe with a none-too-clean white sock. There was a foot in each of them. Whose?
Pete would know the name of the dead man in the stacks soon, I was sure. But the shoe in the mirror remained a mystery. I figured my guess that it was Larry Laraby’s shoe was a good one. At this point, it was the only possibility that made any sense. I’d tell Pete what I thought anyway, and see what he could come up with.
It was around ten o’clock when we arrived on Oliver Street. (Although our front door faces Winter Street, the garage opens onto the narrow one-way street behind the house.) My aunt activated the garage door opener and pulled inside, moving carefully to a stop when the yellow tennis ball suspended from the ceiling tapped the windshield. She locked the car, rolled the door down, and we stepped out the side door into the fenced yard. “Home again, home again, jiggity-jig,” she recited from the old nursery rhyme, “and see who’s come to meet us.”
O’Ryan strolled toward us on the flagstone path, solar lamps lighting his way past the garden, illuminating his striped yellow coat. He greeted us with a tricky figure-eight maneuver involving one turn around my cordovan-booted right ankle and another around her kitten-heeled tan sandal-clad left one. We followed the cat, who darted into the house via his cat door while I used my key for a more traditional entrance. I clicked on the back-hall light while Aunt Ibby unlocked her kitchen door. O’Ryan had already used a cat entrance into that room as well, and waited impatiently for us, beside his empty red bowl.
“Will you join me for a bite of supper, Maralee?” she asked. “After I feed O’Ryan, of course. I made a lovely chicken à la king early this morning. Just have to heat it up. We’ll have it on sour dough toast, all right? And I have some fresh raspberry turnovers for dessert.”
“Chicken à la king on toast sounds wonderful,” I said. “I’m hungry. But I’ll skip dessert. Pete said he’d come over with ice cream after he gets through at the library.”
“He must think they’ll be finished quickly then.” She poured dry cat food into O’Ryan’s bowl. “That would mean we won’t have to stay closed over the weekend.”
“I guess it means Pete’s part of it will be finished early anyway. The CSI team will still be there and you know how meticulous they are.” I tossed my jacket over the back of a captain’s chair, and set the round oak table with ivy-patterned Franciscan ware in anticipation of my favorite chicken dish. “Pete said to be sure to tell you that they’re bagging each of the books individually and that they’re being very careful.”
“Dear boy. I know he’ll take as good care of them as he possibly can.” She donned a pink apron with “crazy cat lady” printed on it, poured the colorful chicken concoction into a copper sauce pan, and cut four slices from a loaf of homemade sourdough bread. “I like your idea of having a book-cleaning party when we get them back. Maybe I’ll invite some young people from the Salem High Library Corps to help us.”<
br />
“Good idea,” I said, remembering how much I’d enjoyed being part of that careful cleaning process when I was a kid. “Pete asked about that emergency exit up in the stacks. I told him I thought it led to the mansion’s original kitchen. Is that right? I’ve never used it.”
“I should think not. You were frightened enough just being on that top floor, let alone climbing down that dank old staircase.” She smiled. “Yes. It leads to the original first-floor kitchen and out into the little hall next to the side door. Nobody ever uses it except for the fire inspector. It has to be kept clear of obstructions in case it’s ever needed for evacuation of that part of the building.”
“Makes sense,” I said, keeping an eye on the toaster where four slices of toast were about to pop up. I hadn’t been kidding when I said I was hungry. The toaster popped as Aunt Ibby approached the table with a steaming tureen, and the house phone rang. She put the tureen on the table; I slathered butter onto perfectly browned toast and arranged the slices on our plates while she answered the wall-hung phone.
“This is she. Yes, Mr. Bagshaw. What seems to be the problem?” I recognized the name as one of the library board members I’d so recently met. My aunt frowned. “No sir. I most certainly did not. No. I’m positive of that. The last time? The fire inspector checked it a few weeks ago. You’ll see the date noted on the library’s online calendar. Very well. Thank you for informing me. Goodbye.”
Hanging up the phone a bit abruptly, she sat in the captain’s chair opposite mine. “Well, if that doesn’t beat all,” she said. “And you and I were just talking about that very thing!”
I assumed from the mention of the fire inspector that she and the board member had been discussing the stairway running between the stacks and the old kitchen. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“Mr. Bagshaw wanted to know if the emergency door in the stacks was ever left unlocked. Imagine that! As though I’d allow such a thing to happen!”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” I said. My aunt was clearly offended by Mr. Bagshaw’s suggestion.
“I’m sure nobody on my staff would allow it either.” She ladled the hot, creamy green-pepper-and-pimento-accented chicken delicacy onto the toast with a little more force than necessary. “I think the night watchman checks it occasionally, but there’s not been any kind of emergency use of the stairway since they used to have occasional fire drills back during the Vietnam era.”
I glanced up at the kitchen clock while savoring my supper. “It’s almost eleven,” I said. “Pete should be along in an hour or so. He’ll know more about what’s going on. I’m quite sure I heard that door open and close just after I found the man in the stacks. I told Pete about it. There was no buzzer or bell or whatever is supposed to happen when it’s opened.”
“Oh my goodness, Maralee. If someone escaped through that door while you were there, that means . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“I know. There could have been a killer in the stacks at the same time I was. Creepy, huh?”
“It’s not funny, Maralee,” she scolded. “I wonder if any of the cameras caught whoever it was going in and out of the building—by whatever means they used.”
“Well, there are cameras focused on both outside doors. They had to come and go through one or the other of them,” I reasoned.
“True,” she said. “Oh, Maralee. I just had another thought. What if whoever it is saw you coming up the stairs to the stacks? What if they know who you are, and what if they think maybe you saw them too?”
If they saw me, they know who I am. I was wearing a sticker with my name on it.
“I never thought of that,” I said. “And I don’t want to think about it.” It seemed like a good time to change the subject. I didn’t want to hear another word about a killer who might think I could identify him. Or her. “This may be the best chicken à la king ever.” I reached for one more spoonful to cover the last bit of toast on my plate. “Just perfect,” I said. “Can I have some of this bread to take upstairs for toast in the morning?”
“Of course. You say Pete’s bringing ice cream for dessert? Want to take some raspberry turnovers up to your place to go with it?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” I said with a faked smile, turning away from her and trying to cover the very slight nervous shaking of my hands as I carried the dishes to the sink.
Chapter 9
With dishwasher loaded, four turnovers waxed-paper wrapped, and the remainder of the loaf of sourdough bread in a brown paper lunch bag, I kissed my aunt good night and cut through the living room to the downstairs front hall. With the large yellow cat leading the way, I started up the handsome oak staircase to my third-floor apartment.
“Thanks for coming up with me, O’Ryan,” I whispered, bending to pat his head before inserting my key into the lock. “I appreciate the company. Got a little case of the willies.”
The cat looked up with sympathetic golden eyes. Okay, so maybe he had no idea about what I’d said. But O’Ryan’s always seemed to have unerring instincts about human sadness, or loneliness, or fear. Aunt Ibby’s thought about the killer knowing who I was had produced a rush of the latter. This time the cat ignored his special door and entered the kitchen beside me.
Anticipating Pete’s arrival within the hour, I put the turnovers on a plate, loaded the Mr. Coffee with decaf, hung my jacket in the bedroom closet, grabbed a pair of leopard-print pajamas, and started down the hall to my bathroom.
There’s nothing like a nice hot shower on a cool fall evening to relieve tension, so before long I felt the day’s anxieties beginning to wash away. Worries about Howard Templeton taking my job gurgled down the drain. Memories of finding a body aren’t so easy to purge, but the knowledge that professionals had taken over made it easier to accept. But thoughts about some unknown killer knowing who I am—maybe even where I am—especially while standing naked in a shower was way too reminiscent of a famous Hitchcock movie. I shut off the water, toweled off, tossed my clothes down the laundry chute, pulled on my pj’s, and hurried back to my cheerful kitchen to wait for Pete.
I turned on the kitchen TV and caught the tail end of Buck Covington’s late newscast. He ran my standup, reminding the audience of the importance of calling the number scrolling at the bottom of the screen if they’d observed any unusual activity in the vicinity of the main library. “If you see something, say something,” he intoned, then using a happier voice, reminded viewers to “stay tuned for Tarot Time with River North.”
O’Ryan always knows when Pete is about to arrive. He knows which door he’ll use too. It was a few minutes after midnight and I was watching a commercial for Halloween party decorations when the cat raced down the hall to the living room and out into the back hall. I followed and stopped at the big bay window overlooking the backyard. Pete’s Crown Vic pulled into the driveway, and I saw O’Ryan, in the golden glow of the solar lamps, run along the flagstone path to greet him. Pete, with a brown paper bag tucked under his arm, followed the cat to the back door. I felt myself relax then, almost as though I’d been holding my breath for hours.
I unlocked the living room door, stepped out into the hall, and started down the twisty staircase, running into Pete’s arms on the second-floor landing. He pulled me close, not speaking for a long moment.
“Hey,” he whispered, “that’s quite a welcome.” He put his right hand under my chin and tipped my face up toward his. His kiss was gentle. “You okay?”
I shook my head. “Better. Now that you’re here.”
He put a finger to his lips. “Let’s not wake your aunt.” He put an arm around my waist, holding the paper bag with his other hand. He was right. The second-floor landing is just outside Aunt Ibby’s bedroom. Together we tiptoed the rest of the way up to the third floor and through my open living room door. O’Ryan was already there, pretending to be asleep in his favorite zebra-patterned wing chair.
Pete closed the door, carefully locking it, kissed me again, then, smiling, backe
d away. “We’d better put this ice cream away before we melt it completely.” I followed him down the short hall to the kitchen. He put the ice cream into the freezer while I turned on the coffee, muted the TV, and put our New Hampshire Speedway mugs and two Fiestaware bowls onto the Lucite kitchen table.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I said.
“Yeah. I could tell.” He frowned. “You’re frightened. Why?”
There was no point in pretending that I wasn’t. Anyway, we’ve been together long enough that we don’t play games. I told him what Aunt Ibby had said about the killer seeing me.
He nodded, his face serious. I knew right away that he’d thought of the same thing. “Here. Sit down, babe,” he said. “We’ve got this under control. We’ve ID’d the body. He has a record and he has some shady associates. CSI has the library video and we’ll have pictures by tomorrow morning of everybody who went in and out of the place.”
I sat in one of the Lucite chairs and O’Ryan climbed up onto the windowsill behind me. “What was he after, Pete? Why all the books thrown around?”
“We don’t know that yet,” he said. “We’re going to check with the homeowner who had the break-in I told you about. See if those folks knew the victim.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “Do you know about the Larry Laraby case? It was very similar to this one.” I saw the beginning of a tiny smile playing around his lips. Pete always thinks it’s funny when I say “case.” He calls me Nancy Drew sometimes when I do it. This time I didn’t care. I could tell by his expression that he didn’t know about Larry Laraby’s death. “I think this might be important,” I told him. “It could help to explain the books.”
I poured coffee into both of our mugs and he began serving the ice cream—half vanilla (his favorite), and half chocolate (mine). “The name—Larry Laraby—is familiar for some reason.” He paused, ice cream scoop in mid-dip. “But I don’t remember any Larry Laraby ever being associated with police business.”
Late Checkout Page 4