Brought to Book

by Barbara Cornthwaite

  Kim sighed. “That girl.”

  “I know,” said Deirdre. “She doesn’t learn very well.”

  Kim settled the dispute between the boys, making them work together to load the dishwasher and giving them an extra chore to work on besides. Josh came home with Houdini and started the card game with Mia, and Ed took Deirdre to her friend’s house. Peace descended on the household. Kim made us both a cup of tea and led me over to the dining room table to work on plans for the Fun Day.

  “First, tell me about this theft. All I know is that a valuable manuscript was taken and you are the star witness.”

  “I don’t know about ‘star witness’ but I was the one who noticed that the manuscript lying there in the glass case was different than the one that had been there before.”

  “And who is the policeman assigned to the case?”

  “Detective Mason.” I tried to sound nonchalant.

  Kim smirked.

  “Ok, now what is this about the Fun Day?” I said before she could make any disturbing comments. “You said it was going to be a treasure hunt.”

  “Well, that’s the theme. But it’s not quite like a scavenger hunt. That was the original plan, but when it came down to it, ‘find a pinecone’ was going to be too easy and ‘spot a woodpecker’ might be too hard. And we didn’t want families picking rare wildflowers or anything. So we’ve modified it. The families will follow markers to different stations, where they’ll have to complete a challenge as a family team and earn a ticket. I think there will be eight different stations. You’ll be at one of the stations, explaining what the families need to do and giving them their ticket at the end of it. There’ll be two helpers at each station, in case of emergencies. You know, like if someone gets hurt or lost or something.”

  “Just how dangerous is this stuff supposed to be?”

  She laughed. “Not dangerous at all. It’s just an abundance of caution. And then when the challenges are all completed, you can help serve the food—there’s supposed to be a cookout with hotdogs and hamburgers.”

  “And what will you do if it rains?”

  “We’ll keep going with the challenges—which reminds me, have an umbrella and a rain jacket in your car—and we’ll move the dinner to a few different houses. We’ve divided up the families into three groups, and each one can go to a different house where we’ll just cook hamburgers on the stove and boil the hotdogs. Not as good as a barbeque, but better than no food at all. Hopefully we won’t have to do that—we’ll only move to that plan if it’s really pouring rain and we can’t light a fire at all. We have some canopies we can put up for people to eat under if it’s only a light drizzle.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Now, my job is coming up with prizes we can give out. They can’t be too expensive, obviously, and they can’t all be the same. We thought we’d give prizes for all kinds of things, so that every family had a real chance at winning something. We need to keep it under about four dollars apiece.”

  “Baked goods? Or homemade mixes for baked goods? That would be a lot faster and easier than baking them up ourselves.”

  “I like it! What else?”

  “Homemade bubble solution and wands?”

  In half an hour we came up with a dozen nice-but-cheap items we could use as prizes.

  “I’d better get home,” I said. “I have class to teach in the morning, and I have to write a letter to Matt’s family, telling them that I’m going to offer the journal to the Wilkester Museum. They’ll probably hate me for it, but I refuse to try to make money off the book by selling it, and I also refuse to be party to a continuing lie by suppressing it. So I don’t have much choice.”

  “I’ll pray they take it well,” said Kim she walked me to the front door. “One more thing…Jason wanted your phone number. I gave it to him.”

  “Oh!” I stopped walking.

  “Are you ok with that?”

  I sighed. “I guess so. I mean, you could hardly refuse to give it to him after I said he wasn’t a definite no.”

  “Exactly.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t look so tragic. It’s a good thing, right?”

  “I just don’t want to start anything if it isn’t going to work out.”

  “Sorry. There aren’t any money-back guarantees. Just take the next step.”

  After class the next day, I went to the bookstore to do the writing of the letter as well as grade the final papers for the English 90 class. I was going to miss this place, I thought as I let myself in and flicked on the lights. Whatever happened, I wouldn’t be keeping it as my private office and that was what I loved it for. If I was leaving this career behind, it was nice that I’d had a little bit of time at the end to do my work quietly, surrounded by books—always my favorite place to be. I stopped in the middle of the open area. Something was different. The desk chair, now. It wasn’t in the same position I had left it in, I was sure. I always pushed it in to the desk and it was not only pulled out but turned sideways.

  Silly, I thought. Must have just forgotten. I went over to the desk and noticed some papers lying there—the one on top of the stack was the inventory list of the books bought from the Wilkes estate. I was positive I hadn’t left it there. It ought to have been in the file drawer at the back of the store.

  If there’s one thing I have learned from watching crime dramas, it is that the plucky heroine only gets herself into trouble by exploring a building she assumes is empty to look for clues. For all I knew there was someone lurking in the bookshelves. I spun around and almost ran out of the store and back to my car. With the engine on and the doors firmly locked I got out my phone and called Todd’s number. I held my breath as it rang.

  “Detective Todd Mason,” said his voice.

  “Hi, this is Katrina. Katrina Peters. I’m at the bookstore. I think someone was in there. Maybe still is in there.”

  “Get out of there right now.” The intensity in his voice was unnerving.

  “I did. I mean, I’m out in my car now. I got scared.”

  “Where is your car?”

  “The college parking lot.”

  I could hear him draw a long breath. “Ok. Sit tight till I get there.”

  It was only five minutes until his car pulled up alongside mine. We both got out.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said. “But I didn’t know what to do.”

  “No problem. Are you ok?” His eyes searched mine in a way that reminded me of Sheila’s hero Edward. All the detachment from our previous meetings was gone.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I was just rattled. And it may be nothing…”

  “Why don’t you explain exactly what happened?

  “Ok. I unlocked the door and went in. When I saw the desk, the chair was pulled out and turned sideways. I thought that was weird because I always leave it pushed into the desk. I thought I might have just forgotten this once, but then I saw a stack of papers on the desk that I know I didn’t leave there. And I turned around and came straight out.”

  “All right. You stay here while I go check it out.”

  “Here’s the key,” I said, handing it to him. “One of the locks is automatic when the door closes. I didn’t bother with the dead bolt.”

  “Thanks,” he said, taking the key.

  “Be careful.”

  He grinned. “Always am.”

  I sat back down in my car and prayed for him. Shouldn’t he have waited for backup? He came back ten minutes later. I jumped out of the car when I saw him.

  “What happened?”

  “It’s empty now. Do you want to come with me and see if anything else is out of place?”

  We walked together back to the store.

  “Ok, you said your chair was in a different position than you left it, and those papers weren’t there. Anything else?”

  I looked at the desk. “I don’t see anything else different here.” I walked around through the store, looking at all the shelves.

  “Look,” I said po
inting. “See how these books here and there are pushed all the way in? Frank had all the spines of the books aligned with each other right at the edge of the shelf. It kept him from having to dust the front parts of the shelves. Someone took them out and then didn’t align them perfectly afterwards. They’re pushed in a little too far.”

  Todd nodded. “I can see that. Is there any reason why those particular books should be pulled out?”

  I tugged several of them out all the way and looked at them. “The only thing they have in common is that they’re some of the older books in the store.”

  “Are those the most valuable books in here?”

  “Well, kind of. But they aren’t that valuable. Not more than a couple hundred dollars at most. And they didn’t even take them.”

  “They might have been looking for one particular one,” said Todd.

  “I wonder which one?”

  Todd just shook his head. “You really need a security system.”

  “I’d install one if I was going to keep it, but if I end up going to PNG next year I’ll probably be selling the place in a month or two, and it seems like that’s something the new owner should do.”

  “PNG? Papua New Guinea?”

  I nodded. “To teach at a mission school. But I haven’t decided yet.”

  “I see.”

  He stood there looking at me for a moment. I felt like he was searching my face for some kind of clue. I began to feel awkward.

  “Well, I’d better get going. I was going to do some grading and writing in here, but I feel a bit nervous about it now.”

  “Totally understandable. And I think we ought to go over the place for fingerprints. This is still the scene of the murder, and if someone broke in here it could be over something related to that. Nothing seems to have been taken, but I think it still merits investigation.”

  “I think you’re right,” I said. “Is there any progress on finding the stolen manuscript?”

  “Some,” he said. “We found out that the locks were picked.”

  “Is that good news or bad news?”

  “Bad news in that we’re probably looking at a professional criminal, which means they’re going to be more careful than your average opportunistic thief. There weren’t any fingerprints in the special collections room that were any help.”

  “Meaning that he or she wore gloves?”

  “Probably so.”

  We walked back toward the desk. I looked at the papers without touching them. “It’s odd that the inventory from the Wilkes estate should be out,” I said. “Why would someone want to see what books were bought from there?”

  “Unless it was someone from the Wilkes family who know that more secrets about their family might be hidden in the books that came from the old man’s collection.”

  “True,” I said. “That family seems to be up to their eyeballs in deceit. Yesterday I heard that Kelsey Wilkes is grounded for saying she was out with her cousin Matt every week when she was actually out with her boyfriend.”

  Todd had been looking at the spines of books on the bookshelf, but at that he turned to face me.

  “Kelsey Wilkes? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. She’s friends with Ed and Kim’s daughter Deirdre. Kelsey couldn’t come over to do her history project with Deirdre yesterday because she’s grounded for saying she was out driving with her cousin Matt every Tuesday when it was really her boyfriend.”

  “Well,” said Todd after a moment, “I think Matt’s alibi for the murder has just been busted.”

  Chapter 12

  All I heard in the next couple of days was that Matt had been questioned again. I assumed that if he had been arrested I would have been told, but there was really no way of knowing.

  That was finals week. I was deluged under a sea of final drafts as well as the American Lit final exam. When I wasn’t on campus I was at home, reading myself cross-eyed. My goal was to get everything graded by the last day of the semester. Then, I told myself, I could give my mind over completely to deciding what to do with the rest of my life.

  That is not to say that certain thoughts didn’t come creeping in between the ill-constructed sentences I was trying to focus on. If I did go to PNG for the school year, what would happen if I didn’t like it? I would finish out the year, of course, but it was doubtful my old job as an adjunct professor would still be there for me if I moved back to the U.S. I could probably find another job at a different college, but that would mean a move, and the thought of starting over again in a different area was daunting.

  I pulled back my wandering thoughts to the paper I was grading.

  “At the age of seventeen,” I read, “William Brown was arrested on one count of aggravated assault and two counts of burglary and was tired as an adult.”

  Tired as an adult? He probably was, with that kind of record…and then it hit me that tired was a typo for tried. I paused to copy and paste the sentence into my student bloopers file.

  My phone rang. It was an unknown number.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Katrina? This is Jason Evans.”

  “Oh, hi, Jason. How are you?” I tried to make myself sound friendly and unconcerned. I had a suspicion that I sounded as panicked as I felt.

  “Fine, thanks. I was wondering…our church is having a concert on Sunday night—it’s a choir that sings a capella—and they’re supposed to be really good. Would you like to come with me and Tori?”

  “Sure,” I said. “That sounds good.”

  “Great! Can we pick you up at six?”

  “Sure,” I said again. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Me too. See you then.”

  I stared into space for a minute after I hung up, wondering how I felt. Looking forward to it? Not strictly true. Or was it? Perhaps it was.

  “I have a date,” I said aloud. It had been a long time since I’d said that. Unquestionably it was a boost to the ego. I picked up the phone to call Kim, who I knew would kill me if I didn’t report this development immediately.

  “No,” I said. “Finish grading first. It will be too hard to go back to it after an hour on the phone with Kim.”

  I put the phone down resolutely, turned my attention back to the paper, and made a note on it that William Brown had probably robbed a delicatessen, not a delicacy. Autocorrect can be a nuisance.

  By Saturday morning I had finished grading everything. I loaded up my car with an umbrella, a rain jacket, bug spray, and the four giant bags of marshmallows Kim had asked me to bring and drove up to the forest in plenty of time to help set up for the Fun Day. Deirdre’s art class would prevent her from coming, but the rest of the Cole family would be there. It was going to be a great day. No school to think about, no one to remind me about murders or thefts, and no potential suitors, either real or imagined. I could give my full attention to the families who were helping kids through foster care.

  When I pulled into the parking lot there were already several cars there and people standing in groups. I scanned them, looking for Ed or Kim, but the only familiar face I saw was Todd’s.

  Wait, Todd? I looked again. Yep, there he was standing in the parking lot dressed in athletic sweats and a t-shirt—a sporty look I’d never seen on him. He was standing with a guy that looked vaguely familiar. I sat in my car and scrutinized the man, trying to place him. I finally recognized him as Detective Ortega. He seemed to be there with a wife and several kids, at least a couple of whom were a different ethnicity. He must be the foster parent Todd had mentioned on our drive into Tacoma. And Todd must have been roped in to help just like I had. There went the idea that I could serve today without distractions. Well, we would probably both be too busy to see much of each other. Maybe afterwards I could find out if anything was going on with Matt Wilkes.

  I spotted the large, cheerful lady that had led the potential foster carers meeting. She had a clipboard and seemed to be in charge. June, that was her name. I went over to her and introduced myself.

&
nbsp; “Oh, yes, Katrina! Kim said you’d be coming. You can put whatever food you brought over there under the canopy”—she pointed vaguely toward a large striped awning with tables underneath. “That’s our command center. Food, first aid, prizes and so on are all there. In about five more minutes I’ll take everyone around to their challenge stations, so just sit tight.”

  The Coles arrived right about then, and I went over to greet them. Mia and I unloaded the boxes of burger and hot dog buns they had brought while Sam and Ben followed us with giant bags of potato chips. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Todd. I saw Ed go over to talk with him and Kim join them. I knew Ed had met Todd before because they had cleaned the carpet together, but I thought this would be Kim’s first meeting with him. Before I had quite decided if I wanted her to like him or not, June had blown a whistle and motioned for everyone to come over to her. Todd saw me and waved. I waved back.

  “Thank you all for coming,” said June. “We have eight challenges set up, and families will all start with a different challenge so that there won’t be a big delay as they wait for others to finish. Now, I’ll read out the volunteers that are going to help with the challenges, and all those people come with me.” She read off about sixteen names including mine and Todd’s. I looked accusingly at Kim, but she shook her head and shrugged her shoulders to signify that it wasn’t her doing that Todd was there. The “challenge supervisors” as June called us followed her in a disorganized mob down the trail.

  The weather was beautiful. The skies were clear and the sun was hot, but under the shade of the trees the temperature was perfect. I breathed in the smell of pine and trod on the carpet of fallen fir tree needles, both sensations contributing to the familiar family-camping-trip feeling.

  Every hundred yards or so there was some kind of activity set up, and two volunteers were left there with instructions about how the challenge worked. When we got to the fourth challenge, the two names that were called out were mine and Todd’s. You’re not surprised, are you? Neither was I. I didn’t know who was responsible, but I was certain it was not random mischance. Someone was deliberately sticking us together for the afternoon. If it wasn’t Kim, it must have been Ed.