“I know they have a security camera that records the exterior of the building and the boats,” she said. “It could be that whoever broke into the office and stole his gun is on that footage.”
“Good thinking,” he said. “Don’t you think Emma will want the footage?”
“Yes,” Lindsey said. “Which is why I want to go there and review it first.”
He groaned. “She is going to be so unhappy about this.”
Lindsey nodded. “True, but look at it this way. If we look at it first and find something, we are saving her so much time, and then she can get on with chasing down whoever we find on the video. Really, we’re doing a public service.”
“Well, when you put it like that, how could we not?” Robbie said. He rolled a hand in the direction of the door. “Lead on.”
* * *
• • •
When they arrived at the boat-tour office, Ian Murphy was there. He was reviewing some paperwork with Ronnie, and they both glanced up when Lindsey and Robbie entered. The disappointment on their faces made it clear that they had been hoping for Sully.
“Is he under arrest?” Ian asked. He’d been partners with Sully in the boat-tour business before he’d opened the restaurant with Mary and he still participated in the business.
“No,” Lindsey said. “But he’s definitely a person of interest because of the weapon found near the body. Emma’s keeping him, as she wants him to talk to the state investigators.”
“I say we take his truck and drive it right through the side of the jail,” Ronnie said. “We should just bust him out, get him a bogus passport and send him out of the country.”
“That’s it, no more Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible movies for you,” Ian said. Then he smiled at her as if he could picture her doing exactly what she’d said. Lindsey could, too, and it did not reassure her.
“What can we do to help?” Ian asked.
“Let me review the video from your security camera,” she said. “I know it monitors the exterior of the building and the boats. Maybe we can see who sneaked into the office and stole Sully’s gun.”
Ian shook his head. “I have no idea how to work that thing. Charlie is our guy for the high-tech security stuff, and he’s out on the water, since he stepped in to take Sully’s next tour. He won’t be back for at least an hour.”
“The police might arrive wanting the video by then,” Robbie said.
“You mean they’ll come by and ask if we have a security camera?” Ronnie asked. She looked at Ian and said, “That’s simple. My mama always said when you want to avoid something, play dumb. ‘Security camera? Do we have a security camera?’”
Robbie gave her a small smile. “I see you’ve got some acting chops.”
Ronnie nodded. “You don’t make it into your eighties without learning how to improvise.”
“I have to take the water taxi out to make some deliveries, and I need to pick up Piper Meadows on Horseshoe Island, so I won’t be here,” Ian said. “Can you handle the police if they come, or would you rather close for the day?”
Ronnie gave him a look that would have withered any man with less of a backbone. “I’ve got this. Don’t worry that pretty little head of yours.”
Ian grinned and glanced back at Lindsey and Robbie. “All right. As soon as Charlie gets in, I’ll have him deal with the security camera, and we’ll be in touch.”
“Thanks,” Lindsey said. She glanced back at Ronnie. “Please be careful. Whoever did this is still at large. If they discover there’s a security system in place here, they may come around trying to destroy any evidence.”
Ronnie gave her a blank look. “What security system?”
Lindsey laughed. She had no doubt Ronnie could fool someone with her blank expression, but it was still worrisome.
“Don’t worry,” Ian said. “I’ll push back my run to the islands until Charlie gets here so she isn’t alone, and I’ll stay out of sight if the police happen by.”
Ronnie gave him an exasperated look, but she didn’t argue.
Lindsey and Robbie left the office and made their way back to the library. Lindsey was surprised at Robbie’s silence. He usually had something to say no matter what the circumstances. She glanced at him and saw frown lines bracketing his mouth.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“That it’s highly unlikely that—what do you Americans say?—that this was Grady’s first rodeo,” he said. “Every time I’ve had a stalker who was a significant problem, there was always a victim before me,” Robbie said. “The last one I had was trying to recover from her obsession with Hugh Grant by focusing on me. I like to think I was a step up for her, but I imagine Hugh would argue with that.”
“You think Grady has stalked women before?” Lindsey asked.
“Seems likely,” Robbie said. “He zeroed in on you so fast, and he clearly didn’t think there was anything wrong with his behavior. I’m betting if we dig, we’ll find other victims in his past.”
“And it could be one of them who took the opportunity to kill him,” Lindsey said. She snapped her fingers. “That’s brilliant.”
Robbie puffed out his chest. “I know.” Then he sobered. “Where do we start? I suppose I could talk to his wife.”
“I think we need to stay clear of her,” Lindsey said. “Regardless of our feelings about Grady, she’s grieving, plus you’re dating the chief of police. No matter how you approach it, that doesn’t look good.”
“Agreed,” Robbie said. “You said his hobby was growing roses. Don’t we have a local gardening club? He might have gotten connected with them. Maybe he talked about you or his wife or developed another obsession.”
“I did refer him to the local group,” Lindsey said. “I have the names and numbers of the officers at the reference desk.”
“Let’s go,” Robbie said.
When they walked through the front doors of the library, Lindsey immediately scanned the room, looking for Aaron Grady. She hadn’t realized how jumpy she had become until she remembered that he was never going to sit in this building and stare at her again. She was flooded with relief and then felt horribly guilty. The man was dead, and even though he wouldn’t be there to stalk her anymore, she couldn’t be grateful that he had been murdered.
She stopped by the circulation desk and checked in with Ms. Cole. “Everything all right?”
Ms. Cole studied her over the top edge of her reading glasses. “It’s just as it should be. Are you all right?”
“Getting there,” Lindsey said.
Ms. Cole must have sensed how unsettled Lindsey was, because she nodded and said, “We have things under control out here. Why don’t you take some time to yourself.”
“Thank you,” Lindsey said. “I’ve got some calls to make, and that would be very helpful.”
“Right then,” Robbie said. “I’ll just go make us some tea.”
Lindsey thought that was the best idea she’d heard all day. “Put mine on ice, would you?”
Robbie gave her a look, but Lindsey didn’t care. It was still scorchingly hot outside, and she felt as if she were melting. There was no way she was drinking anything with a temperature below icy cold.
“Savage,” Robbie muttered. He strode toward the staff break room, which had a small kitchenette that he was overly familiar with for a nonemployee.
Lindsey stopped by the reference desk and plucked the card for the gardening club off the Rolodex they still maintained for local numbers. Then she made for her office. She booted up her computer and checked the listing she had bookmarked for local community organizations.
The Briar Creek Garden Club had a bare-bones website. It showed the date and time of the next meeting, a photo album of members’ gardens and a list of the group officers, which matched the one Lindsey already had. There wasn’t much to it, which was most likely because th
e dissemination of information happened in their monthly meetings rather than online. She found a newsletter link and clicked on it. She opened the latest one and discovered that it had all sorts of tips for dealing with the drought. Good to know.
She scrolled all the way to the last page, scanning the letter from the president, the gardening tips and bingo, the new-member introductions. She looked at the profiles, half hoping, half dreading that she would find him listed there. Halfway through the list of seven new members, there he was. In his picture, he wore the same closed-lip smirk she remembered and it made her skin crawl.
Grady. What had been his damage, anyway? She read through his bio. It said that after a long career with Berkshire County in the budget office, he had retired to spend his time cultivating roses. At his wife’s request, they had moved to Connecticut. He’d been married to Sylvia for twenty-eight years, and they hoped to travel the world together after she retired.
They sounded like a perfectly nice and normal couple, but when Lindsey looked at his photo, she didn’t think he looked nice. Rather, he looked creepy and a bit scary.
Robbie entered her office, carrying a mug of hot tea for himself and a glass of iced tea for her. He looked over her shoulder and read the short bio next to Grady’s photo.
“He’s got crazy eyes, doesn’t he?” he asked.
Lindsey toasted him with her glass. “Thank you. I thought it was just me.”
“What have you discovered about him?”
“That he and Sylvia recently moved here from Tollenton, Massachusetts,” she said. She paused to sip her iced tea before she opened a new window on her computer and searched for garden clubs in and around Tollenton. It was a small town on the edge of the Berkshires. The town website made it look like an ideal village with a large town green and a river running through the center of what looked like a picturesque village. When Lindsey refined her search to add roses specifically as a subject of interest, it brought up several listings, but the one that caught her attention was the Berkshire Rose Club. She clicked on the “Contact Us” tab and picked up her phone.
Robbie sipped his tea, watching Lindsey over the rim while he listened.
“Hello, you’ve reached Trudy Glass, the president of the Berkshire Rose Club. I’m unable to take your call right now, but if you leave your name and number, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,” a pleasant voice said.
“Hi,” Lindsey said. “My name is Lindsey Norris, and I’m calling for some information about your gardening club. If you could return my call, I would really appreciate it.” She left her number and hung up, feeling as if the tiny trail she had been following had grown cold.
“Don’t fret,” Robbie said. “She’ll call back. In the meantime, so long as you stay safely here in your office, I’ll go around to our local gardening club and see if anyone has anything to say about Grady. Who knows, maybe he got into a fight with one of them about aphids, and we’ll have a new suspect.”
“Good idea,” Lindsey said. “I think I need to tell our parents what’s happening.”
“Your parents are still visiting his parents?”
“Yes, in fact, they’re headed back to New Hampshire tomorrow. I hate to ruin their last night on the island,” she said.
“Then don’t,” Robbie said. “Listen, we both know Emma isn’t going to keep Sully a second longer than necessary. I bet as soon as the state investigators finish with him, she releases him.”
“I’d agree except for the gun,” Lindsey said. “If the one they found is Sully’s . . .”
“It might not be,” Robbie said. “This is a boating community. There are loads of former navy men around here.”
“Yes, but how many of them had a public argument with Grady?” she asked.
“There’s that logical librarian mind again,” Robbie said. “There’s no talking to you when you’re like this. I still say you should wait before you tell your parents. See if Sully is let out tonight or not.”
“All right, I’ll bend to your optimism.” Lindsey gave him a half smile. She turned back to her desk and then glanced at the clock. “I’m going to have to work late tonight to make up for the time I missed today. Meet me here later after you do gardener recon?”
“Of course,” Robbie said. He finished his tea and rose from his seat. He glanced down at Lindsey and said, “Be careful, pet. When I say don’t leave your office, I mean it. There’s a killer out there, and until we know who it is and why they shot Grady, you’re not safe.”
“I know,” she said. She gestured to her desk. “With all my work piling up, I doubt I’ll be able to leave my office today.”
“Probably for the best,” he said. “And just in case, I’ll have Charlie Peyton pop in to keep an eye on you.”
He left with a wave, and Lindsey reached for her phone but then stopped. She wanted to call Sully to see whether he was still at the police station, but she didn’t. He would be in touch as soon as he could, and pestering him with phone calls probably wouldn’t help.
Instead, she opened up her email and began to answer the messages that had piled up while she was gone. The town had implemented a new customer service model, and Lindsey needed to figure out how to get her staff trained over at the town hall and still have enough coverage to run the library. She wondered whether she could send two staff members and have them come back and train the rest of her employees. She looked at the calendar and noticed with summer vacations in full swing, they were operating with a skeleton crew as it was.
At the thought of a skeleton, her mind flitted back to finding Grady’s body outside the building. She thought about Robbie’s theory that he had stalked other women, and even though she didn’t wish that awfulness on anyone, she was hoping it was true so that they had a bigger pool of suspects to choose from, because there was no denying that at the moment, Sully was the most likely suspect, even though she knew he wasn’t guilty and she knew Emma knew it, too.
She sipped her iced tea, noting the condensation on the glass left a small puddle on the tile coaster on her desk. She wondered when this horrible drought would end. She did a quick check of the weather app on her cell phone and noted there was nothing but sunshine predicted for the next week. She realized she was restless, and knew that the odds of getting any meaningful work done while Sully was still at the police station were slim to none.
Her phone rang, startling her out of her brooding. She picked it up, bracing herself for the possibility that it was a reporter. She had politely declined to comment when they’d called earlier that morning, and she was holding firm to that decision even though a few of them had been spotted outside the building. So far she’d been lucky that they were more interested in hanging around the police station.
“Hello, Briar Creek Public Library, may I help you?” she answered on the second ring.
“Hi, my name is Trudy Glass, and I’m returning a call from a Lindsey Norris,” a woman said.
“Hi, Ms. Glass, this is Lindsey,” she said. “Thanks for returning my call.”
“Call me Trudy, please, and it was no trouble,” she said. “Are you interested in membership?”
“Actually, I’m calling from Connecticut,” Lindsey said. “I’m a public librarian here, and I was looking for some information.”
“Oh, all right, how can I help you?”
“I was wondering what you could tell me about one of your former members, Aaron Grady?” Lindsey asked.
“Aaron?” Trudy asked. “Why, he left us several months ago. Is everything all right?”
“I’m sorry to say no,” Lindsey said. “Mr. Grady was shot and killed early this morning.”
Trudy gasped. “That’s awful. Was it a robbery?”
“We don’t know,” Lindsey said. “I’m calling because, well, frankly we were wondering if there was anyone in the rose club up there who might have had an issue with Mr
. Grady.”
“But didn’t you say you’re at the library? Are you a concerned friend of his?” Trudy asked. “Is that why you’re calling?”
Lindsey blanched at the thought of being friends with Grady. The man had made the past few weeks miserable and not a little scary. Still, going along with it was probably the best way to get information, so she decided to neither confirm nor deny.
“I am definitely concerned,” she said. This was one hundred percent true. “Which is why I’m calling. He was new to Briar Creek, so it seems unlikely that it was someone here. It made me wonder if there was anyone from his prior residence who had an issue with him.”
“I don’t think so,” Trudy said. She sounded truly mystified. “He was always personable. Showed up for the meetings on time, helped out with the fund-raisers—you know, just a pleasant man who kept to himself quite a bit, but most gardeners are introverts. We are happiest when we’re outdoors with the sun on our face and our clippers in hand.”
Lindsey thought of Grady wielding clippers, and the image terrified her. But Grady had been shot—not a gardener’s first choice of weapon, Lindsey was guessing. She thought a solid whack with a hoe to the back of the head would be more likely, or perhaps a shanking with a pair of shears.
“You know who you should talk to?” Trudy said.
“No, who?”
“Chloe Weber,” she said. “She interviewed Aaron for a piece in the newspaper. They seemed to form a fast friendship, but then after the article came out, they had a falling out. One of our members saw Chloe in the grocery store, and she was very upset about Aaron. When I asked him about it, Aaron said she was mad that he had critiqued her article for the paper. He said she was touchy.”
“And which paper would that be?” Lindsey asked. She had the feeling it wasn’t just that Chloe was touchy.
“Oh, this was for the local Berkshire Day,” she said. “It was a very big deal at the time. Chloe followed Aaron around for a couple of weeks, and then she just vanished. Aaron said she was on to her next assignment. He said her article about him and his roses raised her profile enough to get a job at a larger newspaper. Isn’t that wonderful?”
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