“Which scared me. But it didn’t make me have more money,” said Louise.
“So you decided to get rid of her. Because, again, the blackmail would never have stopped.”
Louise didn’t say anything. She continued her firm hold on the gun.
“The doors were unlocked, and you killed her with whatever was close to hand, which was apparently a heavy doorstop. Then you hid her body so she wouldn’t immediately be found, to help give you time to get away. As for me?” I paused so I could swallow. My throat was so dry. Where was Burton? Surely, he didn’t turn off his phone at night or at dinner, did he? Weren’t small-town police always available?
Louise’s voice became higher pitched and louder. “As for you, I’m really disappointed. Now who’s going to recommend library books for Sadie and Lynn? And what about my book club?”
I put my hands up in a calming gesture. “Louise, there’s no need for that to change. Luna or I can keep showing Lynn and Sadie good books. The prison library has a program that links to our library . . . but you know what needs to happen next. You can’t go on like this, killing people to cover up your crimes and Sadie’s accident. You need to turn yourself in. Besides, Burton is on the way. It’ll be the perfect opportunity.”
Louise’s voice grew even icier. “You had to snoop around! I saw the old newspaper article you were looking at when I was checking out books. You figured out it was Sadie, didn’t you? And you weren’t going to shut up about it, either. I don’t have a choice. I’m not doing this for myself, Ann. You know I like you. I’m doing it for my daughter and for Lynn.”
Suddenly there was a voice somewhere behind Louise. “Mom?”
Louise blanched and whirled around. “Get out of here, Sadie!”
Apparently, there was something about the tone of Louise’s voice. Or perhaps it was the threatening motion she was making toward me with the gun when she turned back around. Regardless of what it was, it made Fitz the Library Cat furious. He leapt off the nearby shelf and directly at Louise’s shoulders with a hissing screech.
Louise shrieked in surprise and whirled around, trying to throw Fitz off. This made Fitz dig his claws in even more to stay on. I stared at the determined expression on the cat’s face as he clung to Louise. Then, remembering Burton’s excellent self-defense class at this very library, I reached up and used the heel of my hand to strike Louise in the front of the neck.
Her eyes opened wide, and she stumbled to the floor where I quickly disarmed her by kicking the gun away and then scooping it up. Fitz hopped off Louise’s shoulders with a disgusted expression and trotted off while I trained the gun at her.
Sadie, who had not heeded her mother’s instructions, ran up to us and crouched on the floor next to her mother. “Mom? What’s going on? I saw your old car here when I was dropping off books at the book return. You’re not even driving anymore. What are you doing here? Why does Ann have Dad’s old gun?”
I said in a low voice, “Your mother knows all about your accident and what happened to Elsie.”
Sadie’s face turned as white as her mother’s. “No—what? Mom, tell me what’s going on.” Her voice was hoarse and her eyes were pleading. But whether Louise was avoiding telling her daughter that she was a murderer or whether she was still silenced from my strike to her throat, she said nothing.
“You didn’t do anything, did you, Mom? You didn’t do anything stupid?” Sadie’s expression was horrified.
“Where’s Lynn?” I asked urgently, not wanting the toddler to witness such a scene. Not wanting her to have the nightmares I’d had.
Sadie said in a dazed voice, “At a preschool friend’s house for pizza.”
I fumbled with my phone, wanting to give Burton a follow-up call. But I didn’t have to—the library doors opened, and I heard Burton calling sharply for me.
“Here!” I said. “I’m here in the stacks.”
When Burton rounded the corner of the tall shelf, his eyes widened at the sight of Sadie and Louise on the floor with me holding a gun on them. “Who do I need to take with me, Ann?” he asked, eyes narrowed in concern as he looked at me.
I said tiredly, “Both of them.” He quickly pulled out his handcuffs and snapped them on their wrists and then took the gun away from me. Sadie was silently crying.
He studied Louise’s face. “Does she need an ambulance?” he asked me.
I shook my head and leaned against the shelves. I was starting to feel a little unsteady, myself. “I don’t think so. I used one of your self-defense moves on her, though.”
Burton gave me a crooked smile. “Which one?”
“The heel of the hand to the throat,” I said gruffly.
“Good job!”
“She was distracted at the time,” I said. “Fitz was really the hero of the whole night.”
Burton shot me an apologetic look. “Yeah, sorry about that. I was dealing with a car accident near the interstate and couldn’t get away.”
“Just another quiet night in Whitby?” I asked. I felt like I needed to keep joking with him or I might start crying—which I definitely didn’t want to start doing. If I started, I might not ever stop.
“For sure,” said Burton, shaking his head.
Louise was starting to lose her stunned look, although she was still quiet. Then her eyes became malevolent as she trained her gaze on me.
Burton saw the look too. He shook his head. “Now you just settle down, here. We’ve got to take you off to jail and start processing you.”
Louise spat out a few choice words to this and Burton shook his head again. Fitz, concerned again by the tone in her voice, came up and rubbed against me to comfort me.
Burton said, “Actually, Ann, is it okay if you follow me to the station? I need to get a statement from you and the state police likely will want to talk to you, too. Can you lock up the library?”
I glanced at my watch and laughed. “I’ll say I can. Now it’s past closing time. It’ll just take me a minute.”
Burton was already leading the women out to the door.
At the station, Burton put a steaming cup of coffee in front of me in a small interview room. “Sorry, it’s all we have,” he said. “But at least the coffee is pretty good.”
I looked ruefully at it. Usually I wouldn’t have caffeine this late in the day, but I had the feeling I wasn’t going to be doing much sleeping, anyway. I might as well drink it as not, although I still wasn’t convinced about the quality of a police station brew. I took an experimental sip and found that Burton was right; it was surprisingly good.
Burton said, “I’m going to tape this and then have you sign off on it. And, by the way, good job, Ann. You kept asking questions and then were even able to get yourself out of trouble when it happened. How were you able to keep her calm and talking while she had a gun held on you?”
I said, “It’s what I do all day at the library. Sometimes patrons who approach me are frustrated as they ask for help and I just calm them down while we talk. But I wish I hadn’t been put in that position to start out with.”
Burton started taping and asked me to recount what had transpired earlier. I told him all of what Louise had said to me. I also told him the anonymous notes had come from Dr. Driscoll, according to Sadie. And that Dr. Driscoll had wanted to warn me away from asking a lot of questions because he was trying to keep an extramarital affair secret.
After I finished the story, Burton said slowly, “So Louise figured you were onto Sadie and she came to the library to silence you for good. All because of that newspaper.”
“Well, it wasn’t a current newspaper. I’d just gotten off the phone with you and went to the archives to see a back issue with this story. I wasn’t sure how I missed it the first time around. I mean, I was aware there had been some sort of fatal accident, but hadn’t caught the details. Louise saw the paper and heard me on the phone with you and drew her own conclusions,” I said.
“And then everything clicked. That she’d been violent
toward Roger and then Mary,” said Burton.
“I think it must have been like a domino effect. She was desperate to keep Roger from turning Sadie in to the police and was concerned he’d keep blackmailing her for years. Then Mary saw the aftermath, and she decided to try to extort money from Louise,” I said.
“Who didn’t have any,” said Burton with a sigh. “Well, it’s all over now. I feel bad for that little girl of hers and for Sadie, too. We’ve called the friends who were watching Lynn and they’re keeping her there overnight until we can alert family. I decided not to drag social services into this tonight.”
I said, “Louise has talked in the past about her other daughter who lives on the west coast. She’s shown me pictures of her before. Apparently, she loves sending gifts to Lynn. I have a feeling Lynn is going to be just fine.”
Burton looked at his watch. “You should get on home and go to sleep. You look absolutely exhausted.”
I sighed. “I am absolutely exhausted. I just know I won’t be able to sleep. Or, if I do sleep, I think I’ll have Louise-inspired nightmares.”
“Then you should relax with whatever good book you’re reading.” Burton snapped his fingers. “And you should pick up your furry friend on the way home.”
“Fitz? But he’s a library cat,” I said.
“Who loves nothing more than to cuddle up with people who need it,” said Burton staunchly. “Make an exception this one time. Or, have a litter box that you keep at home so you can have some occasional sleepovers with Fitz.”
I had to admit the idea was growing on me. Going back home alone to an empty, dark house tonight was not all that appealing to me. I thanked Burton.
“You’re welcome,” said Burton. “The suggestion is the least I can do, considering you solved all my open cases for me in one fell swoop.” He snapped his fingers. “By the way, you might get a call tomorrow from the new editor of the newspaper. He said it was too late to get in tomorrow’s paper, but he’ll run a story on the front page the following day with a picture of Fitz. Considering how the cat helped save the day and all. He wanted get a quote from you for it. I’m sure your boss will love the free publicity for the library. Think the guy’s name was Grayson.”
Ah. So he wasn’t a DJ but an editor. But I felt a pleased warmth at the thought of speaking with Grayson again—girlfriend or no girlfriend.
Burton paused for a second, looking thoughtful. “Hey, I was thinking about spending more time at the library.”
“Always a sentence I love to hear,” I said, grinning at him. “What prompted this flash of genius?”
Burton reddened a little bit. “Oh, I don’t know. I want to do more reading than I’ve been able to do in the past year or so. It’s also a public gathering place, so it’s a great spot to introduce myself to members of the community.” He paused. “That sort of thing.”
I nodded. I had the feeling it might also have something to do with a tattooed and pierced coworker of mine, but if he wasn’t ready to talk about it, there was no point in going there. “Sounds like a good idea,” I said.
A few minutes later, I left the police station and climbed into my car. As I was passing the library, I hesitated, and then pulled into the parking lot. I took my keys out and unlocked the door. I grinned as Fitz bounded sleepily over to stare at me and then flopped on his back and purred.
I got one of the extra, unused litter boxes that a patron had donated and a container of kitty litter and stuck them in the car.
We also had a carrier. Actually, our breakroom and a couple of closets were starting to be taken over by Fitz donations, but right now I was grateful for it. I pulled out some kitty treats and tempted him into the carrier.
He really didn’t need tempting, though, as he casually strolled in as if he took rides in the car every day. I heard thunder rumbling in the distance on the way to my house.
When we got home, I set up his litter box, some water, and fashioned a little bed for him out of an old, soft blanket. I thought maybe Fitz might want a little space. After all, he’d spent all day in the library on people’s laps. He was a cat, after all.
But when I finally climbed into my bed with an old Nancy Drew book, rain pouring on the roof outside, he jumped up on the bed and curled up against me, purring that big purr. And suddenly, I felt as though I might be able to fall asleep, after all. And this time, without nightmares.
About the Author:
ELIZABETH WRITES THE Southern Quilting mysteries and Memphis Barbeque mysteries for Penguin Random House and the Myrtle Clover series for Midnight Ink and independently. She blogs at ElizabethSpannCraig.com/blog, named by Writer’s Digest as one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers. Elizabeth makes her home in Matthews, North Carolina, with her husband. She’s the mother of two.
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I LOVE HEARING FROM my readers. You can find me on Facebook as Elizabeth Spann Craig Author, on Twitter as elizabethscraig, on my website at elizabethspanncraig.com, and by email at [email protected].
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Did you know my books are available in print and ebook formats? And most of the Myrtle Clover series is available in audio. Find them on Audible or ITunes.
Interested in having a character named after you? In a preview of my books before they're released? Or even just your name listed in the acknowledgments of a future book? Visit my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/elizabethspanncraig .
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I’d also like to thank some folks who helped me put this book together. Thanks to my cover designer, Karri Klawiter, for her awesome covers. Thanks to my editors, Judy Beatty and Zoe Nightingale, for all of their help. Thanks to beta readers Amanda Arrieta and Dan Harris for all of their helpful suggestions and careful reading. Thanks, as always, to my family and readers.
Other Works by Elizabeth:
MYRTLE CLOVER SERIES in Order (be sure to look for the Myrtle series in audio, ebook, and print):
Pretty is as Pretty Dies
Progressive Dinner Deadly
A Dyeing Shame
A Body in the Backyard
Death at a Drop-In
A Body at Book Club
Death Pays a Visit
A Body at Bunco
Murder on Opening Night
Cruising for Murder
Cooking is Murder
A Body in the Trunk
Cleaning is Murder
Edit to Death
Southern Quilting Mysteries in Order:
Quilt or Innocence
Knot What it Seams
Quilt Trip
Shear Trouble
Tying the Knot
Patch of Trouble
Fall to Pieces
Rest in Pieces
On Pins and Needles
Fit to be Tied (2019)
The Village Library Mysteries in Order (Debuting 2019):
Checked Out (2019)
Memphis Barbeque Mysteries in Order (Written as Riley Adams):
Delicious and Suspicious
Finger Lickin’ Dead
Hickory Smoked Homicide
Rubbed Out
And a standalone “cozy zombie” novel: Race to Refuge, written as Liz Craig
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