by Sara Daniel
Four hours later, Zelda called right on schedule, listing out the four suspicious cars parked on their street. He grinned, enjoying the thought of Becca struggling through her usual exercises because he’d kept her up so late—however innocently.
No sooner had he hung up than Mrs. Parker called. His smile widened. Maybe Becca was right. He really did have a flair with the blue-haired set.
“The library, Officer. There’s water all over, and I’ve fallen.”
His grin faded at the librarian’s troubled greeting, and he shoved his feet into his boots. “Do you need an ambulance?”
“I’m not hurt, but I can’t get up.”
“Okay, don’t try. I’ll be there in two and a half minutes tops.” Heart racing, he sped through town, shaving a minute off the time estimate in his determination to make sure no one died on his watch. The moment he stepped into the library, his boots squished on the soggy industrial carpet, carpet that had been completely dry yesterday afternoon.
“Back here,” Mrs. Parker called faintly.
He saw her then, lying on the floor outside the restroom at the back of the building. As he ran toward her, the water no longer simply saturated the carpet. It had formed a standing pool. Mrs. Parker lay in a good two inches in the doorway to the bathroom.
“Oh Connor, bless you. The toilet just keeps running. What an awful mess. All the books on the lower shelves are going to be ruined. I imagine it’s been going all night. I should have checked the bathrooms before I locked up. This is all my fault.”
“It certainly is not your fault.” He cursed himself for not checking the place better when he’d left with her, then pushed the thought aside. Mrs. Parker needed action, not self-recriminations. “Now, listen, I want you to hold onto my forearms. I’m going to get you off the wet floor.”
“Watch your footing,” she warned. “I thought I could stop the toilet myself, but this floor is so slippery. I caught myself on the doorframe as I fell, but I wore these silly little heels and they slide so much I can’t stand up. With my arthritis, I don’t even think I could get up if I took them off.”
Making a mental note to subtly suggest she trade in her high heels for granny shoes, Connor lifted the old woman in his arms, carrying her toward the front desk. “I’m going to set you in the chair for just a moment while I shut off the water.”
“No, no, I’m soaked. I don’t want to get the chair wet too.”
He didn’t give a rat’s behind if they ruined the chair, but he wanted Mrs. Parker calm, so he continued walking, carrying her straight to his squad car.
“I’ll get your seat wet,” she protested, as he approached the vehicle.
“I look forward to it. You’re going in the backseat, so the people who did this can sit on a wet cushion when I arrest them,” he said grimly.
“You don’t think the toilet just malfunctioned?” Mrs. Parker asked with wide eyes.
“I hope it did.” He’d been willing to roll his eyes at a bike rack prank. Vandalism at the expense of his elderly population became a different matter entirely.
He wrapped Mrs. Parker in a blanket and then sloshed back through the library and turned off the toilet water at the pipe. A moment later the overflow stopped and the clear liquid lapped at the top of the bowl. The edge of something plastic waved beneath the ripples at the base of the bowl. Not a malfunction.
He clenched his jaw, then opened his phone to give Matt a wake-up call. He tried not to jump to conclusions about the teenage boys hanging out in the library at closing time on a Friday night. They certainly hadn’t shown the slightest inclination in checking out a selection of reading material for the evening.
On the other hand, they hadn’t used the bathroom as far as he knew, and they’d left before Connor. He’d circled the building all evening for evidence they might return. He hadn’t seen Toby, Nick, Otto, or even their cars anywhere around town. He had no reason to suspect them over anyone else.
Right now, Connor could only blame himself. He’d failed to protect his residents from harm.
When he failed, people got hurt. Sometimes, they died.
His fault.
Chapter Five
Toby walked through the living room just as Becca flipped off the music on the final stretch of the morning. She glanced at the clock to make sure she didn’t have the time wrong. Nope, at six o’clock on Saturday morning, her seventeen-year-old brother happened to be awake and fully dressed. She needed a backhoe to get him out of bed on a school day.
“Hey, you’re up early. Can I fix you some breakfast? I have enough eggs to make omelets.”
He shook the cereal box at her.
“Well, if you’re looking to make a little money, Jake has an old rowing machine he’s trying to figure out how to put together. I’ve printed some instruction for similar items I found online to help him, but you’re better at mechanical stuff than I am.”
“I already have a job today. That’s why I’m up. Matt called.” He opened the refrigerator and pulled out the milk.
“What kind of job?”
“Clean up something.” He shrugged.
Becca, along with the rest of the ladies, looked to Veronica to fill them in. “He was sleeping soundly when I left,” Veronica said with a shrug. Tucking her blond hair behind her ear, she picked up her phone. Her face fell as she looked at the screen. “There’s a problem with the library bathroom, and it’s overflowing with water, likely all night. Oh no! Mrs. Parker slipped and fell when she came in this morning.”
Becca gasped in unison with everyone else. Toby’s spoon clattered to the floor.
“Is she hurt?” Becca asked.
“Sore and completely distraught about her beloved library, but it doesn’t sound like she broke anything,” Veronica said, texting rapidly.
“Poor thing,” Agatha moaned. “Just a few months ago she moved out of the farmhouse to get away from broken pipes and water flooding, and now it’s happening again. She’s going to need some company today. I’ll go over right now.”
“I’ll send breakfast from the diner,” Pauline chimed in.
“What if it’s not an accident?” Rochelle asked darkly. “What if someone did it on purpose because they wanted to hurt Mrs. Parker? What if we have a real criminal in town?”
Becca’s breath caught in her throat. She and Connor had driven by the library a half dozen times last night and never noticed anything suspicious. Well, she’d seen Simon walking extra-fast down the sidewalk, but she couldn’t imagine why her manager would break in to the library. Maybe to pick up a book he hadn’t gotten there in time to check out. But to purposely vandalize the place? She couldn’t imagine it.
Who else could have done it? Surely, Jake would have been breathing hard if Fetch had gotten loose and run wild through the building. And how could a dog turn on a faucet? The possible explanations becoming more farfetched, she refocused on the conversation around her.
“If a real criminal is in town, Connor will find him or her and put a stop to it,” Veronica said confidently. “In the meantime, we all need to support Mrs. Parker and do what we can to help make the library useable again.”
“Last night she mentioned her arthritis is bothering her,” Becca said. “We definitely need to pitch in and make sure she doesn’t try to do more than her body can handle.”
“When did you see her last night?” Rochelle asked.
“Right before the library closed. Connor and I stopped by.”
“You were out with Connor?” Pauline asked, eyebrows raised as if Becca had announced a major news break.
“Not like that.” She caught Veronica’s eye, remembering their discussion. Her intimate conversations with Connor and the intense moment when he’d dropped her off gave credence to the relationship theory. She certainly shouldn’t have kissed him. How could she not give him the wrong idea when her own body shouted yes? “I participated in a ride-along on his patrol.”
“Did you see anything suspicious at the libr
ary? Who was there? Maybe we can sleuth it out right here,” Rochelle said.
Becca’s stomach churned, as she watched Toby take his cereal bowl to the sink and disappear down the hall. Would Rochelle be so eager if she knew her son was one of the first people she’d have to name along with Toby and Nick? “I only observed. I’ll leave the sleuthing to Officer O’Malley.”
She couldn’t expect Connor not to question her brother at the expense of the safety of the town. Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse between her and Toby, an abyss opened in front of her.
No, Toby was a good kid. He had no reason to vandalize a library. She ought to have more faith in him. She’d promised her mother she’d take care of him, and she’d honestly tried. Some days she even thought she was doing okay. She needed to cling to hope.
The exercise group lingered, speculating about the trouble, until she had to rush to get to work with no time to swing by the library and see firsthand what had happened. Instead, she settled for the steady stream of gossip coming through the checkout line.
“Milk cartons and bubble wrapped stuffed down the toilet pipe,” Harriet said, waving a head of lettuce. “A malicious prank. I said to Larry, ‘you get those criminals and teach them a lesson they’ll never forget.’ They hurt an innocent old lady. At her age, they could have killed her.”
“You mean they’re planning to charge the culprits with attempted murder?” Rochelle asked from behind her in line.
Terror bloomed in Becca’s heart, knowing she’d briefly mentally associated Toby with the vandalism. Only vandalism. He never would have set out to purposely hurt an old lady. Her hand trembled as she keyed in the code for the lettuce and pushed the total key.
“Well, I don’t know what charges Connor has in mind,” Harriet said, pulling a bill out of her wallet and handing it over. “But if he wants my advice, I think he should do it.”
Becca counted out Harriet’s change and handed it back with the receipt, then moved on to Rochelle.
“I can’t believe we’re talking about murder in Kortville,” Rochelle said. “I’m going to lock my door tonight, and I’m going to tell everyone at the diner they should too.”
“Good idea,” Becca murmured, her head beginning to throb. “Tell Otto to stay inside also.”
As soon as she’d been given the nod to take her lunch break, she jogged the two blocks to the library. Large rolls of discarded carpet lay on the ground outside. A hand-written sign in the window proclaimed the building closed for maintenance.
“You can’t go in there,” someone called from behind her, as she approached the door.
She glanced back and caught sight of a Kortville police uniform, but the voice hadn’t belonged to Connor. She turned all the way around. Larry faced her wearing a deputy badge he’d no doubt pulled from the cabinet himself.
“I just came to talk to the people doing the cleanup,” she said. Specifically Toby.
“Doesn’t matter. You still can’t go in. But I do have some questions for you, Becca Sanders. Witnesses spotted you entering and leaving the library just before closing yesterday evening.”
She opened her mouth and then closed it. On the heels of Harriet and Rochelle’s gossip, she felt one step removed from being accused of trying to murder Mrs. Parker. She didn’t know whether to shrug him off because of how ridiculous the scenario had become or refuse to answer until she’d retained a lawyer.
“Lay off, Larry,” Connor said, jogging out of the building to stand next to her. “If your witnesses are credible, then you know Becca came and left the library with me. And if you’re harassing her because you resent me for treating you like the disruptive bystander you were at the accident scene last night, take your frustrations out on me, not her.”
Larry’s face flushed.
Becca felt herself warming too but for an entirely different reason. Connor had defended her. True, he had absolute proof. He didn’t have to trust her to prove her innocence. Still, having him come to her defense filled her with a warm glow.
Despite Connor standing up for her, Becca never entered the library or saw a glimpse of Toby, but at least the store gossip in the afternoon centered on the damage and the cleanup efforts.
As she drove home, Jake called to let her know he planned to tackle the rowing machine if she was interested in lending a hand. Pulling into the driveway, she glimpsed Toby entering the house. This would be a perfect project to do together. She hurried after him before he closed himself in his room. “Do you have plans for tonight?”
“Going to bed. I’ve been working all day, and I’m wiped.” Indeed, he looked as exhausted as he sounded.
She gave up the idea of convincing him to work on Jake’s rowing machine. “It looks like you need it. Make sure you eat something too. I’ll start dinner right now. I picked up the day old sugar cookies with the blue sprinkles that you love for dessert.” She waved the plastic tin.
Eyes lighting up, he ripped it open and stuffed three cookies in his mouth at once.
“Yeah. I’m glad I worked so hard to teach you manners,” she murmured. “Listen Toby, this thing with Mrs. Parker really has me worried. Tell me honestly what you and your friends were doing in the library last night.”
“You already know we were looking stuff up on the computer,” he said, his words muffled by the cookies.
“Here’s what I know.” Becca lay her hand on his arm, her heart aching. Her mother never would have let Toby skate by on half-truths and evasiveness, but she hadn’t inherited Mom’s parenting magic. “You were pretending to research for a science class you’re not taking. Within hours, an act of vandalism caused a huge amount of property damage and nearly seriously injured a frail, old woman.”
“So you assume I did it? Thanks for having so much faith in me.” He wrenched his arm free.
“I don’t know what to think,” she said. “I hope you didn’t do it. But first you were seen next to the bike rack before it mysteriously moved, and now you were at the library hours before vandalism was discovered there. What do you think makes a sensible explanation?”
“You should be thankful no one got hurt and all this stuff is happening over the weekend, so I can earn extra money working for Matt,” Toby said, his gaze defiant now.
“I don’t care how much money you earn. I want you to be safe, and I expect you to make good, responsible choices.”
“I’m telling you I didn’t do anything wrong,” Toby shouted at her. “You’re blowing everything out of proportion. You don’t even care what I want to do with my life. All you want is to be able to leave.”
“Toby, that’s not true,” she whispered. But she could no longer meet his eyes. What if it was? For months she’d only thought about her life after she left Kortville. She’d had to force Toby to fill out the college applications last fall, just like she now tried to force him to return his acceptance form. Every time he mentioned wanting to work for Matt instead of going to school, she dismissed his plan as misguided.
College was his opportunity to do something more, something bigger. He should feel lucky to be the first in their family to have the chance. With only a high school diploma, she’d lived the narrow choices life in a small town afforded her. Toby deserved more. She’d sacrificed so he could have more.
“Leave and live your own life, and I’ll live mine. I’m almost eighteen. I can take care of myself.” He walked into the bathroom and slammed the door, the lock clicking behind him.
Becca stared at the door until it blurred before her eyes. If Toby was responsible for the vandalism, the only explanation was that she’d done such a poor job raising him he’d made a desperate cry for help.
…
Connor wasn’t sure if Toby would keep their breakfast meeting on Tuesday morning. He even found himself conflicted over whether he wanted the boy to show. How could he mentor his prime suspect and still consider himself neutral enough to perform his role as police chief? On the other hand, this weekend’s development
s had added a new layer of urgency to the term “at-risk.” As a mentor, he had a responsibility to keep Toby from slipping down the other side of the law.
Toby walked in the door, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Connor breathed a sigh of relief as the boy shuffled toward the doughnut rack.
“What kind do you like?” Connor asked, waving his hand at the selection.
“Uh, jelly.”
“My favorite too.”
“Hey Toby, Becca and I missed you Saturday night,” Jake said as he handed over two paper plates with the confections.
Becca had been with Jake? Connor clenched his teeth, trying to contain his feelings of possessiveness. A brush of lips across his cheek did not give him any right to claim her or to assign it added meaning. And her interaction with Jake likely had been of the friendship variety if they’d “missed” Toby’s company.
“What happened Saturday night?” He concentrated on keeping all traces of jealousy from his voice as he exchanged the doughnuts for cash.
“We were assembling the rowing machine I salvaged from the junk yard. Well, we didn’t really assemble it. Becca mostly explained how it was supposed to work once it got fixed up and I decided maybe I’d try walking instead.”
“Guys,” Toby warned, “never get Becca started talking about exercise. She’ll never stop.” He took his doughnut and strolled back to Jake’s small seating area.
Jake handed Connor his change. “Just so we’re clear. I’m going to get her talking about exercise a lot because I need to hear what she has to say. I expect you’ll be doing the same just to hear the sound of her voice.”
“I’m that freaking obvious, huh?” Connor shoved the coins in his pocket in self-disgust.
Jake merely shrugged. “Nobody likes to hear the person they want to be with is hanging out with another man, so I’m telling you up front Becca and I have a strictly friends and business relationship.”