Checked Out

by Elizabeth Spann Craig

  Luna nodded, tilting her head and considering the cat. “You know, I can totally envision that for him. And I like it better than some male literary names I was mulling over: Hemingway, Tom Sawyer, Queequeg, or Kafka.”

  I resisted making another face at Queequeg and Kafka. “I did think Heathcliff might be cute, but the cartoon strip sort of took over that one, didn’t it?”

  Luna said, “That sounds like the best one so far.”

  “I’ll run it by Wilson when I have a chance,” I said. “Although I got the impression he didn’t so much care what name we choose as long as it’s soon.” I glanced at my watch. Breaktime was over, but I realized Luna had been on her own most of her first day and that Wilson, although a good boss in many ways, probably hadn’t thought to check in with her much. It was a tribute to Luna’s aura of equanimity and confidence that I hadn’t even realized this. “How is the first day going so far? What kind of impression do you have of the library?”

  She grinned at me. “It’s perfect, I promise. Really, I appreciate that you keep checking in, but you asked me earlier.”

  “Just wanting to make sure you still feel good about the library closer to the end of the day. I’d hate to have you scared off on day one.”

  “No worries! It feels homey and cozy and safe. It’s the kind of place where families come every Saturday to check out books and magazines and music for their kids. The folks are nice, they’re mostly courteous, and there are always people in here and things to do. What’s not to like?” asked Luna.

  I nodded, feeling a little relieved. After the chaos of the last few months following CeCe Appleberry’s abrupt departure as children’s librarian, it was good to have this immediate feeling from Luna that she’d found a good spot to stick around in. I could definitely handle the children’s section and the storytimes, but I’m not going to say I was the best candidate or that the extra work wasn’t tough to juggle.

  “That’s great, Luna. Please just grab me if you have any questions or problems. And now my breaktime is over, so I’d better run.”

  “Sounds good. And hey—I wanted to thank you again for taking over for me for storytime this morning. I’m really sorry I was late. I thought I’d work late tonight to try to make up for it,” said Luna.

  I shook my head. “There’s no need to do that, Luna. Wilson sure doesn’t expect it. And there won’t be a lot of folks here on a Saturday night.”

  “I know, but I feel bad. On my first day, too! I have a container of antibacterial wipes in my car and I thought I’d go through and wipe down all the toys in the children’s section. And maybe the board book covers, too. Who knows what kinds of germs might be lurking on that stuff?” she asked with a lopsided grin.

  “Seriously, Luna, you should probably go home to see about your mother,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’ve already checked in with her and she has a lady from church dropping by to bring her a meal and visit for a bit, so I’d only be in the way while they talk about knitting and quilting. No, I think it will be fun to do a little cleaning. There’s something really satisfying about it. How about you? Got any plans for tonight?” asked Luna, temporarily abandoning her grotesque salad for the glazed honeybun.

  “Just a meal with a friend of mine,” I said.

  Luna raised her eyebrows. “A date?”

  I made a face. “I don’t think there will be any dates for a while. No, this is just takeout with my old college professor. I want to hear how his discussion with Burton went.”

  After work, I picked up the food and headed over to Nathan’s house, a one-story brick house with a beautiful yard. Although Nathan had retired, he definitely hadn’t chosen to withdraw from the community. He took long walks with his adorable Yorkshire terrier, Mr. Henry, speaking with neighbors along the way, visited the library regularly and took the occasional class there, and was involved with his church.

  He beamed at me when he opened the door, his white hair, as usual, slightly askew. There was a tiredness in his eyes today, though, which wasn’t ordinarily there. The diminutive Mr. Henry peered around Nathan, barking bravely at me. “So good to see you, Ann! Where should we sit . . . inside, or outside?”

  I knew his backyard was a mini nature preserve, so I immediately voted for outside. He took the bag of takeout from me, grabbed some bottled waters from his fridge, and led me and a happily trotting Mr. Henry to his back patio. We sat at a small table that looked out on flowering azalea bushes, miniature magnolias, and a collection of bird feeders. Mr. Henry gave me a doggy grin and gazed with interest at me with his bright button eyes.

  While we ate, Nathan talked about what he’d been doing: the book club he’d joined that he was now leading, the puzzle books he’d been devouring since he’d discovered how much he enjoyed cryptograms, and the fact he’d made a lady friend in town at church and was enjoying getting acquainted with her. He seemed determined not to mention Roger Walton or the chief of police while we were eating.

  Once we’d eaten most of our food, Nathan said quietly, “Now I suppose I should tell you how my afternoon went.” He hesitated and said, “First off, tell me how you ended up involved with Roger.”

  Chapter Nine

  “I NEVER EVEN HAD THE chance to meet Roger, actually. You see, I have a patron named Emily,” I started out.

  Nathan interjected, “An older lady? Emily Walton?”

  I smiled at him. “That’s right. I forget sometimes how many people you know in Whitby. You can put all this in context better than I could by trying to explain the backstory.”

  He sat back in his chair, forgetting the Chinese takeaway for a moment as he thought. “Nice lady. Something of a busybody. She and I were on a committee together at the Presbyterian Church . . . a history of the church for its sesquicentennial and bringing in all sorts of Whitby history, too, of course, since those things would have been intertwined. She wanted, I think, to be helpful, but she wasn’t very.”

  “How did she try to help you?” I asked.

  He returned to the carton of takeout and pushed his noodles and broccoli around a little with his plastic fork. “Oh, the usual way, of course, with the project we were working on. But more than that. We started talking about our retirements. Well, Emily hadn’t actually been a professional, but she had her deceased husband’s investments and is on a fixed income like I am. She started talking about her brilliant nephew and how much he had helped her to grow her capital.” His voice took on a distinctly bitter tone toward the end. Mr. Henry nuzzled his leg, and he reached down absentmindedly to pat him.

  “Burton is an interesting fellow,” he said absently.

  “Yes, I thought so, too. I think he’s going to fit in well here because he’s trying so hard to get out in the community,” I said.

  Nathan gave a small smile. “Of course, I had absolutely no idea what he was doing here. It caused quite a commotion on my street. All the neighbors were gaping. Everyone could see he was heading straight for my door.”

  I chuckled. “That must have been embarrassing. I guess you could tell everyone it had to do with needing to get your license plate registration updated or something mundane like that.”

  “Are you kidding?” asked Nathan with a twinkle in his eye. “I’ve eaten all the extra attention up. I’m surprised we don’t have a crowd at my door asking questions even now. And the older ladies around here thought it was all very gritty-sounding.” But the tiredness I’d noticed in his eyes were now etched around his mouth. He was more worried than he’d let on.

  I raised my eyebrows. “That you were being questioned as part of a murder investigation?”

  “Exactly.” But the word murder did make him solemn. “And I’m sorry you were questioned, as well. I’m imagining they’d want to make sure your relationship with Roger wasn’t somehow part of his death.”

  “The thing was that I didn’t even have a relationship with him. And the more I find out about Roger Walton, the happier I am the date didn’
t happen. But yes, the initial questions definitely had to ascertain that fact.” I led him through my arrival at the house, my conversation with Burton, and the time I’d spent with Roger’s sister.

  When I’d finished, I tentatively asked, “What did Burton say? Did you get the feeling you might be a suspect?”

  Nathan said dryly, “Oh, I very much got the feeling I might be a suspect. I guess the chief had been talking to other employees at the investment office. Apparently, more than one of them mentioned my name.” He sighed.

  “I’m delighted you didn’t have to have that first date or any other contact with him, because I thought Roger was a thoroughly bad sort of guy. But you’re so astute that you’d have figured that out right away after having wasted only part of an evening with the man,” said Nathan.

  “Could you walk me through what happened to you?” I asked. “I got a sort of general idea, but it would be helpful to get the whole picture.”

  He sighed and gazed blankly across the backyard. “Well, I had the recommendation from Roger’s great aunt Emily. She’s either quite the cheerleader for her family or else she’s just naïve enough to think they’re all terrific people and gifted in business.”

  I hid a smile. “But you mentioned that he’d successfully invested for her in the past.”

  He waved his hands in the air at this. “Who knows about that? Maybe he put her in something ridiculously safe, or a sure thing. I will say this—the guy was very confident and very persuasive. Looking back on it, I can’t really believe I fell for it.”

  “You’re not saying they were scams, though. The investments?” I took a bite from my egg roll.

  He shook his head. “Oh, no, not in the literal sense. He wasn’t putting my money in some kind of pyramid scheme or something. But it just wasn’t the right fit for me—considering where I am financially with a fixed income. My age should have been a factor, too. And now that I think back on it, and on him, he seemed like a really slick kind of character. The kind of person I wouldn’t trust and the type that I’d see through.”

  I finished off my fried rice and pushed it away from me. “I know what you mean. I’m not usually taken in by those types, either.”

  Nathan said, “I had students like that, you know. They’d try to work their charm-offensive on me at the end of the semester to see if I’d give them some sort of easy extra credit or curve their grade when they’d been goofing off the entire semester, or hadn’t been showing up to class.”

  I smiled. I knew what Nathan’s answer to that would have been.

  He said, “It all made me realize there were probably elements going on in the background. Perhaps Roger was getting kickbacks from the groups he was putting my money in. Whatever it was, it wrecked my finances. I don’t have that nest egg anymore.” He leaned forward, putting his hand on the table earnestly. “I don’t want to give the impression that I’m impoverished or anything. But it wouldn’t be very convenient if I had some sort of health setback and needed to move to a retirement home.”

  He seemed like he wanted to collect himself a little as his temper heated up thinking about it all. I carefully collected the trash and put them into the takeout bags and threw it all away in his cheerful yellow kitchen while he calmed down.

  When I came back moments later, he was his usual urbane, thoughtful self again with more of a filter between him and his experience. And with Mr. Henry sitting happily on his lap.

  “So I lost money. A good deal of it. Bled it out and rather quickly. I went to visit him to see what could be done,” said Nathan.

  I nodded. “In terms of just trying to switch to a better investment or have a plan moving forward?”

  “Both. I wasn’t a business professor, after all. I don’t think my English degrees were going to help me in this situation. And, at the time, I think I was fairly levelheaded about the whole financial disaster.” Then he stopped, soberly appraising this statement and gave a short laugh. “All right, perhaps not. But it wasn’t as if I was heading over to Roger Walton’s investment office to have him executed, or even fired. I was simply angry, anxious, and wanted to give him a piece of my mind.”

  “And apparently you did so?” I asked.

  He pushed away from the circular table we were sitting at and I followed him to some heavily cushioned rocking chairs that were a few feet away. They were a lot more comfortable. I remembered now that Nathan got stiff if he sat in one spot for too long.

  “I did certainly give him a piece of my mind, and then some,” he admitted. “The problem was that even though I set out merely to chastise him and then move on to shoring up other potential investments to make up for the losses, he just so smugly refused to take on any culpability in the matter.”

  I rocked gently in the rocker. I could almost see myself falling asleep in this thing. “I’m playing devil’s advocate here . . .” I hesitated, trying to find the right words.

  Nathan looked at me sideways. “I know what you’re about to say, and you’re right. An investment counselor isn’t technically culpable at all for an investment’s performance. And the investor should always realize there are no guarantees in investing, and the fact is, they might just as well lose their money as make any of it. But I think there were extenuating circumstances here. Roger failed to tell me exactly how risky the investment was, and didn’t indicate it might be inappropriate for me and my station in life. To be fair, I didn’t ask any questions, either. Pure greed moved me forward,” he added dryly.

  “You wanted a simple apology,” I said.

  “I wanted my money back, but that obviously wasn’t in the cards. And I wanted an acknowledgment from Roger that he’d screwed up in pushing me into the fund. And perhaps a statement from him agreeing that playing the market was practically akin to buying a lottery ticket or gambling . . . that it could be extremely dangerous in terms of losing nest eggs.” He sighed. “I might have been a little unreasonable.”

  “And did he offer any sort of apology? Express any regret at all? Solace?” I was beginning to like Roger less and less. Perhaps this episode was going to put me off dating for even longer than the last bad date I’d had, over a year ago.

  “None. And his attitude was just so cocky. He could only shrug and say that was just the nature of investing. Plus, he was trying to hurry me out of there—get rid of me. I figured he had some sort of big investor coming in right after me; one with deeper pockets,” said Nathan. He looked broodingly across the backyard as we rocked. “I talked to his boss and complained about him.”

  “Did that do any good?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I doubt it. They probably mentioned it to him, but might have been rolling their eyes about me at the time. And, on my end, the more I thought about it, the angrier I became.”

  I said, “But this was a little while back, wasn’t it? I mean, the former employee who mentioned it isn’t even working for the investment firm now. It wasn’t as if it happened last week. Why would the police think you’d suddenly decide to murder your investment counselor over it now?”

  He was quiet for a few seconds and then said with a sigh, “Because I recently blew up at him in public.”

  I made a face. “Ah. That makes sense then. And ‘public’ for the town of Whitby means everyone knows about it. I’m surprised it didn’t make the front page of the newspaper.”

  He laughed. “Only because it was a big news day for the paper. They were covering the local fishing competition. I can’t say I’m not ashamed of myself. I never remember having this much of a temper. The truth is, I’d spent much of the night before awake—worrying about money. That’s such a horrible way to spend a whole night, if you’ve never done it, and I hope you haven’t.”

  “So you were sleep-deprived when you saw Roger out and about?” I asked.

  “Right. I was picking up lunch at the deli and he was in there. I snarled at him. Then I even gave him a little shove when he looked as if he might be laughing at me. Of course, it was during the
busiest time of the day for the deli and everyone in there was watching us. That’s probably why the chief is focusing on me. Not only did Roger’s coworkers tell him I’d been upset about the bad investment, but the folks who work at the deli likely told him about my confrontation with Roger.”

  He looked worried and I’m sure I looked the same. This wasn’t good. “Did the police ask you where you were last night?” I asked slowly.

  “They wouldn’t have been doing their jobs if they hadn’t,” he said in a light voice. “I don’t have a wonderful alibi, unfortunately. I was out and about yesterday evening. I could have done it. I’m strong enough, although the police said it wouldn’t have taken as much strength as you’d have thought.”

  The thought of the skewer made me shiver, and I nodded. “I don’t think they’d have written you off as too weak to be able to commit the crime.” We rocked for another few moments and I said, “Do you have any sort of idea who might have wanted to do Roger in?”

  “Besides me?” he asked wryly. “I’m afraid not. The only person I knew with a connection to Roger was his great aunt, and she was singing his praises and finding him clients and blind dates! No, I didn’t know Roger well, and was happy to keep it that way.” He scratched Mr. Henry behind his ears. He gave me a sideways glance. “Now, Ann, I know you’re not going to want to hear it. And I hate sounding like all those people trying to give you dating advice.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “I think I know what’s coming.”

  Nathan said, “It’s just that you’ve buried yourself in the library. It’s not good for a young person like yourself. You’re spending what little free time you have with old fogeys like me.”

  I said lightly, “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  His expression was serious as he said, “Ann, I’m just saying maybe you should stop running away. Try getting over this fear of intimacy. I’m not only talking about romantic relationship, either. Maybe make a friend—besides me.”