Arsenic and Old Books

by Miranda James

“The bag?” Once again the mayor appeared at sea. “I’ve had it for some time. I picked it up years ago at a college reunion. Why do you ask?”

  “We found one like it, with that same emblem on it, in the street near Dr. Steverton,” Kanesha said. “It was larger than yours. It was also empty, although there were traces of something that had been inside it. We’re going to have it examined thoroughly, of course.”

  “This gets weirder by the minute,” I said.

  “Marie and I were at Sweet Briar together,” the mayor said. “It’s no surprise she had a bag with the crest on it. But why did she have it with her then?”

  “That’s what we aim to find out,” Kanesha said. “I’m hoping the trace evidence inside will tell us. Your Honor, do you know if Dr. Steverton has any family that we need to contact?”

  Mrs. Long shook her head. “As far as I’m aware, no, she didn’t have any close relatives. The college may have more information for you.”

  “I’ll be checking with them,” Kanesha said. “You mentioned you talked to Dr. Steverton last night. Can you tell me about that conversation, and when it took place?” She pulled out her notebook and a pen.

  “Your Honor, would you like some water? Or something else?” I asked. Mrs. Long looked a little wan to me.

  The mayor shook her head. “No, thank you, Mr. Harris.” She turned to Kanesha. “I’ll do my best, but it really was a brief conversation.” She paused for a moment, her brow wrinkled. “It was around ten thirty, I think. To be honest, I was a bit irritated with her for calling so late, because I was getting ready for bed after a long and tiring day.”

  “Did she want something in particular?” Kanesha asked when the mayor paused.

  “I was so tired by then I could hardly concentrate,” the mayor said. “Marie had a habit of jabbering away without giving a person time to think, much less get a word in edgewise. When she slowed down a bit, I could finally figure out what she was talking about.” She shook her head. “She kept asking me if I thought the diaries were worth as much as fifty thousand dollars. I told her I had no idea, and then I asked her why she wanted to know.”

  “What did she say?” Kanesha asked.

  “She just kept going on about a reward, and how that might get them back. You can afford it, Lucinda. She must have said that ten times. Surely they’re worth that much to your husband and son. She also said that several times. She sounded excited, and I got tired of listening to her. I didn’t even get a chance to tell her we’d found another volume of the diary.” She sighed heavily. “I finally told her I’d think about it. I had to hang up on her, because then she started on about maybe the diaries being worth even more than fifty thousand.”

  I knew Marie Steverton had pinned her hopes of tenure on the diaries and was no doubt desperate to get them back. How—and why—did she come up with such a crack-brained scheme? I couldn’t imagine that the thief took them in hopes of extorting a reward for returning them. That was crack-brained as well.

  Then another thought struck me. What if Marie had stolen the diaries and then hit on the plan to extort money from the Longs?

  I glanced at Kanesha, but as usual I couldn’t read her expression. I felt diffident about mentioning the idea in front of the mayor. I would broach the subject to Kanesha later in private, if she didn’t bring it up first with the mayor now.

  “Did you think more about the idea of a reward?” Kanesha asked.

  “Frankly, no,” the mayor said. “I think Marie was drinking when she called me. That fast talking was usually a sign of it. She would go on these binges sometimes when she was upset or worried and start calling people. When she sobered up she didn’t often remember making the calls.” She shook her head. “So I figured she would have forgotten about such a foolish idea this morning.”

  “Do you think it was possible she took the diaries herself?” Kanesha asked. “Do you have any idea whether she needed money badly?”

  Mrs. Long stared at the handbag in her lap for a few moments. When she raised her head, she said, “I suppose it’s possible. But I find it hard to believe Marie would do such a thing. As to whether she needed money badly, I really have no idea. She never approached me for money before.” She focused on her handbag again.

  “I have to consider all possibilities,” Kanesha said. “Can you think of anyone who had a grudge against Dr. Steverton? Someone who intended her harm?”

  Mrs. Long shook her head. “The good Lord only knows how Marie could rile people up. She never learned the value of tact and diplomacy. That cost her a number of jobs, I’m afraid. But I can’t see anyone being angry enough with her to run her down in a car.” The mayor looked wan again.

  I couldn’t blame her. I found that mental image unsettling myself. Poor Marie Steverton, I thought. A painful way to die.

  “Thank you for your time, Your Honor,” Kanesha said. “Now, about the diaries that have been returned.”

  “That is just as hard to believe as someone wanting to kill Marie,” the mayor said. “Why take them and then bring them back less than twenty-four hours later? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Kanesha said. “Until we find out who took them and who returned them, we won’t know what the motivation was. The problem at the moment is, I need to take them as evidence. They’ll need to be examined for anything that could answer our questions. Obviously, Mr. Harris here wants them safely back in the archive as soon as possible. I wondered whether you could talk to some of your contacts and see if the state crime lab can make them a priority.”

  The mayor looked troubled. “I hate to see the diaries go anywhere, but obviously I understand the need to have them examined. I know a couple of people in Jackson who might be able to help.” She stood. “I’ll see what I can do. For now, at least, Mr. Harris can work on the fifth volume.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, Your Honor, where did you find it?” I thought it odd that all five volumes weren’t together when she made the first discovery.

  “Not at all,” Mrs. Long said. “I was curious about the trunk Beck found the others in, and I had a little time after dinner. So I went up to the attic and dug around in it a bit more. I discovered there was a false bottom in the trunk, and this fifth volume was in it.”

  “I wonder why it was hidden and separated from the others.” I stared at the tote bag. Could this fifth volume be the reason there was such interest in the diaries in the first place? Did it contain the elusive secrets that lay behind this whole bizarre situation?

  SEVENTEEN

  I decided I was a little too prone to flights of fancy not grounded in fact. There was no telling who originally placed this one volume in the false bottom or what the motivation was. Because of everything that had occurred in the past couple of days, I was overthinking this.

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” I said. “This volume will be stored safely in the more secure room next door when I leave tonight.”

  “Excellent,” Mrs. Long said. “Now I really have to be on my way. I’m already late for a meeting.”

  Kanesha added her farewells to mine. Once the mayor was gone we sat again.

  “Are they going to do anything about the lock on this door?” Kanesha asked.

  “I’m sure they will now,” I said. “I think they ought to put cameras up here, too. Probably nothing like this will ever happen again, but it sure would be nice to have the added security.”

  “I’d be willing to bet Chief Ford has already mentioned that to your boss,” Kanesha replied. “This building is way overdue for a security makeover.”

  I tried to keep the bitterness out of my tone when I spoke, but I doubt I was successful. “Yes, it is overdue, but the college administration has different priorities. If it were something involving the football team, you can bet it would have been addressed long ago. A piddly little thing like an archive with rare or irreplaceable
documents doesn’t rate beside a sports team.”

  Kanesha frowned. “You’d think they’d get a better return on their money on the field, if they’re spending so much of it on sports.”

  Our college football team hadn’t had a winning season in three years now, and the alumni were not happy. The administration kept shifting money to scholarships for athletes in an attempt to lure gifted ones to Athena. So far it didn’t seem to have worked all that well.

  “You’re right about that,” I said. Time to get this conversation back on track. “I’ll pack the diaries in a box. I’m sure you don’t want to wait until I make new boxes for them.”

  “No, we don’t have time for that.” Kanesha nodded. “Use those cotton gloves, and touch as little of the surfaces of the books and those boxes as possible. I doubt we’re going to find any fingerprints, but you never know.”

  “I’ll be careful.” Her instructions irritated me a bit because by now, I thought, she surely ought to realize I knew enough to be careful. I found an empty box in the supply closet and brought it back, along with the four large manila envelopes the mayor had used to contain the diaries before.

  I slipped each book into an envelope with great care, then sealed the metal clasp on the envelope and placed it in the box. When I finished, I said, “I’m going to pray that the techs at the crime lab will be that careful as well.”

  “The mayor will see to it,” Kanesha said. “She knows the right people to make sure of it, even though she didn’t sound all that confident talking to us.”

  “Okay,” I replied. I really hated to see the diaries leave my office again, but I knew it had to be done. “You know, we got sidetracked right away with the sudden reappearance, and then the mayor coming in with her surprise. You never did ask me what you wanted to know about Marie.”

  “I hadn’t forgotten.” Kanesha settled back in her chair. “Take me through any encounter you had with Dr. Steverton during the past couple of days.”

  I took a moment to marshal my thoughts. Then I launched into my recital of events. There was an interlude of about three minutes when Kanesha’s deputy arrived to pick up the four diaries. Once he left with the box, I resumed my narrative.

  Kanesha did not ask questions until I finished. I appreciated that about her. She was patient and listened, rather than interrupting and perhaps making me forget something.

  “I’ll be interviewing Ms. Grimes sooner rather than later,” she said. “Obviously she and Dr. Steverton were at cross purposes with each other.”

  “Yes, they were,” I said. I recounted my experiences with Kelly Grimes, the ones that didn’t directly involve poor Marie. “She impressed me as being as eager as Marie to get hold of the diaries. Did you search her house?”

  “Apartment,” Kanesha said. “We did and turned up nothing. Based on our searches, I had to conclude that if either woman took those diaries, they managed to hide them real well. Maybe in another location.”

  “What about Jasper Singletary?”

  “According to his campaign manager, he was at a meeting in Jackson at three o’clock. He made it back to Athena around ten last night.” Kanesha shrugged. “I have an appointment with him at ten thirty this morning.” She checked her watch. “Twenty-five minutes from now.”

  “In order to be in Jackson for a meeting at three, he would have to have left Athena no later than one,” I said. “If he left Jackson around eight he could make it back here by ten, I suppose.”

  “Yeah, I’d worked all that out myself.” Kanesha stood.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Bad habit of thinking aloud.”

  “Sure,” Kanesha said. “I’ll probably come back to you with more questions after I’ve dug a little deeper into all this. In the meantime, if you find anything pertinent in that diary, let me know.”

  Diesel meowed and a moment later I felt a paw on my shoulder. I could hear Kanesha’s boots on the marble stairs as she descended.

  “What’s up, boy?” I turned my chair to face the cat on the windowsill. “You want to visit Melba, don’t you?”

  Diesel meowed again.

  “I bet she’ll be here in the next two minutes. You just wait and see.” I knew Melba’s curiosity would be at fever pitch by now. She probably would have seen Kanesha come or go—the mayor as well. I was sure she had already heard about Marie’s death.

  I turned back to face the doorway. One . . . two . . . three . . . I made it to seventeen before she popped up.

  “What the heck is going on around here?” she asked as she took the chair in front of my desk. “Hey, Diesel, come give Melba some sugar.”

  Diesel reached her before she got out the last few words. While she cuddled with the cat, I responded to her question.

  “I found the missing diaries in my office this morning. No idea who had them or why they reappeared.”

  Melba continued loving on Diesel while I told her the rest. As I suspected, she had already heard about Marie’s death. A friend of hers owned a house two doors down from the neighbor who found Marie in the street, and the whole neighborhood was abuzz with the story. Melba’s friend called her first thing this morning to share the terrible news.

  We chatted for a few more minutes about the unfortunate Marie; then I told Melba gently that I was anxious to start work on the one volume of the diary I had available to me.

  Melba grinned at me. “I guess I’d better scoot back downstairs before I wear out my welcome here completely.” She gave the cat a couple more scratches on the head before she headed out the door.

  “Thanks,” I called after her.

  Diesel muttered at me because Melba left. He lost his source of undivided attention, and he was not happy about it.

  “Melba has to get back to work like I do,” I told him. “You be good now and get back up in your spot on the window.”

  He stared at me for a moment before he padded around my desk and climbed back into the window. He continued to make grumbling noises, fainter and fainter, as I focused on my task.

  I extracted the fifth diary volume from the mayor’s tote bag. I would have to remember to return that to her at some point. After a quick examination I determined that this book was in roughly the same condition as the others. Flaky but intact leather binding, with the same issues from the iron gall ink as the previous volumes. Only about half the pages, I estimated, contained writing. The remainder of the book was blank.

  Curious, I checked the first and last entries. Rachel Long had neatly dated each entry, and that was helpful. The first entry had the date of March 9, 1861. The last entry, about two-thirds of the way through the volume, was written on May 17, 1865.

  If I recalled correctly, Rachel started her diary in July of 1854. To judge by the dates of this volume, it must be either the second or third of the five in terms of chronology. I wondered why a middle volume had been secreted in the trunk. I was also curious why she stopped writing in this one before she had filled it.

  I had to resist the temptation to sit there and read it. The answers to many questions could lie within these pages. It would take me a little while to get used to Rachel’s handwriting, but I was confident I could decipher it. I really needed to scan the pages first, however. At least if something happened to this volume, I would have the scans.

  That thought caught me a bit off guard. If word got out about this fifth volume, would the person who stole the others try to take this one, too?

  EIGHTEEN

  Enough with the questions, I admonished myself. This fruitless speculation wouldn’t achieve anything. I needed to focus on the task at hand: scanning the diary.

  Once I had created a good digital copy, I could take the time to read the contents to discern whether anything in the volume had relevance to the current situation.

  The overhead scanner, attached to its own computer, sat on a table against the wall near my desk.
I carried the diary over and turned on the computer and the scanner. When they were ready, I positioned the book and opened it to the first page to scan.

  As the scanner worked I could see the image on the computer screen. Based on the first five pages I scanned, I thought I would end up with an excellent digital copy as long as all the pages were as readable as these.

  My arms tired quickly from the necessity of holding the diary volume in the correct position. I timed myself at roughly sixty seconds per page, and I decided I should probably take a short break every fifteen minutes. At this rate I could probably scan thirty to forty pages an hour. I hadn’t counted the number of pages in the diary that contained writing, but I estimated there were no more than a couple hundred.

  Diesel paid little attention while I worked at the scanning station. He had heard the humming noise it made enough times that it held no further interest for him. He did stir when I took my breaks and went back to my desk to check e-mail. Around eleven thirty, when I sat in front of my computer, a large paw tapped me on the shoulder and a loud meow sounded in my ear.

  I laughed. “Okay, I give. I’m hungry, too. Let’s go home for lunch.”

  The cat slid to the floor and walked over to the doorway, where he waited for me to come attach his harness and leash. I was halfway there when I remembered the diary. I said I wouldn’t leave it in this office when I wasn’t here. I put my cotton gloves back on, fetched the volume, and took it to the storeroom next door. The more up-to-date lock on this door should keep the diary safe until I came back to the office.

  That task accomplished, we headed home for lunch.

  We found a welcome surprise in the kitchen. Laura sat at the table, busily chatting with Azalea. She broke off their conversation to jump up and greet me with a hug. Diesel received scratches on the head and along his spine, and he purred with happiness.

  “This is a pleasant surprise,” I said. “To what do we owe the honor?”

  “I have the afternoon free. No classes to teach, no appointments with students, so I thought I’d come by and visit. I was also hoping I could get Azalea to share some of her recipes with me. Frank is a wonderful cook, but I don’t think it’s fair for him to have to do all the cooking.” Laura grinned.