“I have to go,” she told her friend, giving her a hug. “I know it’s a very long shot, but I’m still trying to talk to people about getting an injunction to study these squirrels.”
Livvy tried to smile. “Thank you, Kate. I know you’ve done everything possible. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here at one, if not before,” Kate promised.
Twenty minutes later, she was home again, speaking with a representative of the Center for Biological Diversity. The man already had a file with her photographs that he had received from the wildlife agency. The last fellow with whom Kate had spoken apparently had attached a “Red Alert” Post-it note to the file to let the CBD know that time was of the essence. Still, the man was aghast when he realized that the building where the squirrels lived truly was to be demolished the next day.
“I can make some calls right now,” he said. “Let me see what our attorneys can do. I’ll be in touch.”
When Kate hung up the phone, Paul was standing in the kitchen, grinning. “If that library can be saved,” Paul said, “I have absolute faith that, somehow, you and the Lord will pull it off.”
Kate smiled at him, although she still felt terribly worried. “I guess we’ll know this time tomorrow, won’t we?”
“We will,” her husband said. He took her hands. “Let’s pray.”
After a few moments of listening to her husband’s comforting dialogue with God, Kate wandered back to her studio again while Paul went out to weed. Although she hadn’t thought she could do it, Jeremy’s squirrel sun catcher would be done by Tuesday if she worked on it some more today and Monday, and she was quite satisfied with the way the piece was going. She was not satisfied at the thought of how she was going to get the gift to the child when his mother was probably trying desperately to avoid Kate.
Unfortunately, now her mind was careening in about a dozen directions as the next day’s demolition looked more likely by the minute. Lack of concentration could be a deadly error, both for her and for the piece she was creating, so she put away her tools and went to find Paul.
“How do you feel about a Sunday drive?”
“Where to?”
“Pie deliveries,” Kate said. She needed to get out of the house again. Worrying herself sick until the next morning wasn’t going to help anyone.
It was a pleasant day for a drive, and having Paul accompany her made the trip more relaxing and fun.
They dropped off a pie for Clifton and Ida, and another for Joshua Parsons, and stayed a bit at each home to visit. On the way back, they stopped at a little antiques shop that Kate had been eyeing and checked out a gorgeous walnut Victorian settee with a needlepoint cover in unbelievably good condition. Unfortunately, the price was just as unbelievable.
“Besides,” said Kate, “we downsized for a reason. No sense in filling our home up again.”
When they returned home, the message light on their answering machine was blinking. Kate punched the button and listened to the man from the Center for Biological Diversity. He invited her to a meeting he had set up with a federal official from the US Fish and Wildlife Service at nine the next morning in front of the library. He asked Kate to return the call only if the time did not suit. She would make it suit, she decided, although she still needed to fit in a trip to the courthouse to check out the library deed for herself.
“Yes!” She pumped her fist in the air and hopped up and down. “Progress at last.” But almost immediately, she calmed herself. “I can’t get too excited about this,” she told Paul. “It’s very likely that it’ll be too late to save the library using the squirrel method.”
“So why are you meeting them?” he wanted to know.
“Because as long as that building is standing, I have hope,” she said. “And because even if it doesn’t help the library, these animals still may be an endangered species, and I have to do everything I can to protect them. If we can’t stop the demolition, we need to try to save the squirrels at least. I’m hoping the wildlife experts will have some thoughts on how to trap them quickly.”
“And if you can’t stop the demolition tomorrow,” Paul asked, “will you feel that you tried your very best to save it?”
Kate was quiet for a moment. “I believe I will,” she said quietly. “But it will be difficult to accept.”
As she walked toward the kitchen to start dinner, something struck her. She’d been so down in the dumps about wasting time because it was Sunday, and as it turned out, it had been a productive day after all.
“Thank you, Lord,” she murmured. “You provide even when I doubt.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
At nine o’clock Monday morning, Kate walked toward the library after parking her car along Main Street. She was very conscious that in a mere four hours, the library would be demolished, and her heart was heavy.
She sat down on a bench near the front door and bowed her head. Lord God, she prayed, I know it’s a big deal, asking you to work a miracle here this morning. But you are a God of miracles, after all. I ask you to bless this special structure and keep it safe. Keep it open and available to the citizens of the community. Stay the hand of those who would destroy it, and replace greed with charitable intentions in their hearts. Amen.
A dark car with government plates pulled into a space along the street, and a man in a conservative dark suit got out.
“Hello,” he said. “I’m meeting Kate Hanlon here.”
“That would be me,” she said, smiling as she offered him her hand.
“Troy Silhouse,” he told her as he returned the handshake. “US Fish and Wildlife Service. All information about species protection goes through our department.”
Another car pulled up, and a second man hurried toward them. “Gordie Connaly, Center for Biological Diversity,” he said, introducing himself to Kate. He grinned as he gave the USFW man a hearty handshake. “Troy and I are already acquainted. Let’s talk about these squirrels. Has your office reviewed the information we sent?”
Troy nodded. “It’s the opinion of my office,” he said, “that further study is needed. There’s a significant chance that these squirrels may represent a new subspecies of flying squirrel that’s undocumented.”
“Woo-hoo!” Gordie clapped his hands. “Now we’re cookin’!”
Troy didn’t look as thrilled. “Even if I’m in time today, this building ultimately is coming down, right? It would be incredibly difficult to move an entire population of animals to a new location, provided we can even learn enough about them in time to make relocation a possibility.”
There was a heavy silence.
Finally, Kate said, “I’m working on saving the building.”
Both men looked sharply at her.
“Permanently?” Troy asked in a skeptical tone.
“There is a possibility,” she said, “that this demolition may be halted for good. I just need time to figure out how to prevent it.”
“When will you know?” Troy asked.
It was a reasonable question. Kate took a deep breath. “I hope to have an answer this morning.” And if the deeds at the courthouse showed what she suspected they did, there would be no need to close the library ever again.
Both men looked surprised. “That,” said Gordie, “would be extraordinarily good timing.”
The quiet understatement made all three of them grin.
“So.” Gordie rubbed his hands together. “What’s our P of A?”
Kate looked at him blankly.
“Plan of action,” Troy translated. “The fact that I understand him means we’ve worked together too many times.”
Kate chuckled. She liked both of these men immensely. If nothing else, they gave her badly needed hope this morning.
“I’ve got some plans to pursue to try to prevent this,” she said.
Troy pointed at Gordie. “Then you and I need to put our heads together and see which judges we want to approach with this. After that, we can come back here and observe
for a while, maybe see some of these squirrels for ourselves.”
Kate directed them to the Country Diner and wished them luck. Just as she turned to go back to her car, she saw Livvy coming toward her. Every line of her friend’s posture radiated dejection.
“Hi,” Kate said softly, putting an arm around Livvy’s waist. Together they turned to look at the library.
Livvy sniffed, holding a tissue to the corner of one eye to absorb the tear gathering there. “Everything’s out. Tosten Glass is meeting me here in a few minutes to do the final walk-through. Yesterday I went through alone and said good-bye.” Her voice caught. “I just can’t believe this.” As she started to cry, she turned and buried her face against Kate’s shoulder.
Kate’s own eyes were brimming now. She had to bite her tongue in the most literal sense to keep from blurting out the attempts she was still making to save the building. She just couldn’t tell Livvy her plans. What if she encouraged Livvy to hope and then things fell through?
She hugged Livvy once more and stepped back. “All right,” she said, dashing away tears. “I have some places I have to go this morning, but I’ll meet you here at one o’clock. Whatever happens, we’ll face it together, okay?”
“Okay. Together,” Livvy repeated.
They shared a brief bracing smile, and then Kate turned toward the Honda. She had to get busy right this very minute.
KATE DROVE TO PINE RIDGE and parked on the town square close to the Harrington County Courthouse. The place was hopping on Monday morning, she discovered.
Kate loved the old courthouse. On the National Register of Historic Places, it was a graceful antebellum treasure that had been used as a Union hospital during and after the campaign of 1863, when Union forces crossed the Tennessee River southwest of Chattanooga, running the Confederate army out of the city.
Kate walked up the wide marble steps to the main entrance and stepped into the expansive foyer. Deputies strode down hallways, people stood around nervously waiting for their court appointments, and other folks rushed in and out of all of the offices that kept the county government functioning smoothly.
Heading down a back stairway to the basement level, Kate followed a long corridor to the deeds office. On the door was a sign that read Register of Deeds. She opened the door with its frosted windowpane and walked into the tiny office, hoping that she was on the right track.
Kate filled out a request form before approaching the registrar at the desk.
“Hi, Mrs. Sedberry. I’d like to see the deed for the Copper Mill Public Library,” she said.
In a slow, methodical manner, Eleanor Sedberry straightened the already perfectly aligned edges of the calendar blotter on her metal desk. She held out a liver-spotted hand. “Let me see your paperwork.”
Kate handed over the form she had just filled out. Mrs. Sedberry adjusted her glasses and glanced at it.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” the woman said, shuffling around the counter and out the door.
Kate knew it would take the older woman more than a minute to find the files, so she settled in a chair for the long wait. The county deeds were housed in a large storeroom on the same floor, but getting there required a meandering trip down a confusing maze of corridors.
Kate looked down and realized that her hands were shaking. What if she was wrong about the notion she’d been considering? Dear Lord, she prayed, if I was wrong about this, give me the strength to be a comfort to Livvy.
After what seemed like an eternity, the moment of truth arrived. Mrs. Sedberry shuffled back through the door toward Kate, an ancient-looking file folder in her gnarled hands.
“This is it. You can look at it, and I can make you copies, but it can’t leave this room.”
Kate hesitated for a moment. The contents of this file could be the difference in whether the town of Copper Mill lost its library today. Slowly she flipped open the file. The pages inside were firmly fastened in place and obviously hadn’t been removed in some time. The document on top was the current deed. Kate’s heart began to pound as she read it.
Just then, the door opened and a clerk came in. Kate glanced up. The clerk was Louisa Pellman.
Louisa saw Kate, and her gaze flew to the file folder Kate was reading.
Kate tapped the file and said quietly, “It’s the library deed.”
Louisa’s face crumpled, and she began to cry.
A FEW MOMENTS LATER, Kate walked up the stairs from the Register of Deeds office with Louisa at her side. She followed signs to the sheriff’s office, reaching it from an inside door rather than the side entrance she normally used.
Rosalie Merriman, the sheriff’s receptionist, looked up from her monitor. “Hi, Kate. What are you doing over here?”
Kate gestured to the person who had come into the room with her. “We need to speak with Sheriff Roberts, Rosalie.”
Rosalie assessed Kate’s grave demeanor instantly. She pushed her chair away from her desk and rose. “He’s in the office today. Let me see if he’s available.”
A moment later, Sheriff Alan Roberts came up the hallway to shake hands with Kate. A stocky man with a Santa Claus belly, Roberts had shrewd brown eyes that were evaluating Kate and her guest carefully. Although he wasn’t fond of civilian involvement in his investigations, he had found Kate to be helpful on a number of occasions.
“Good morning, Kate. How can I help you today?”
“We need five minutes of your time,” Kate told him.
“Sure thing.” He led the way back to his office and held the door wide so the two women could precede him. “I thought you’d be over at the library consoling Livvy today,” he said, shaking his head. “Heck of a thing, tearing down that great old building.”
“Actually,” Kate said, “that’s what we’d like to talk to you about.”
PAUL AND HIS WORK CREW had been shingling Louisa Pellman’s roof all morning. Minus “Jerry Cox,” of course. The man, whom Paul now knew was really Gerald Foxfield, hadn’t shown up since the day Kate had appeared at the job site. At noon, Paul called a halt to the work.
“Today is the day of the library demolition,” he said. “One o’clock. I’d like to be there, so let’s knock off for a while. Can we meet back here at three?”
“I’m going with you,” Eli said. “I have to see it with my own eyes to believe it.”
“Me too,” Sam said. In the end, Joe Tucker and Carl Wilson, the remaining two crew members, decided they’d go along too, and everyone piled into Sam’s SUV.
KATE DROVE BACK to Copper Mill with Louisa in the passenger seat. She followed the sheriff’s cruiser, which led the way. Tears trickled silently down the young woman’s face from time to time.
Finally Kate said, “Why, Louisa? Why would you do this?”
“Gerald threatened me. That’s why he was at my mother’s house the day you saw his blue Caddy. He saw my picture in the paper after it was in that article, and he saw that I worked at the courthouse. He told me if I didn’t help him falsify the deed to the library, he’d see to it that I lost full custody of the kids.” She began to sob harder. “He’s my husband’s cousin, and he said he’d testify that I had...neglected and abused my kids. He said my ex-husband would get them.”
“How could he do that?” Kate asked. “It’s not that easy to prove neglect, and I can’t imagine that he could prove abuse without any physical evidence. Your children certainly wouldn’t have testified to that.”
Louisa looked horrified. “That was exactly why I couldn’t take that chance. I would never let them be put on a witness stand. Their father doesn’t really want them. He just wants to use them to control me. And he’s hurt Jeremy before.” Her voice grew quieter. “I’m afraid he’d hurt them, just like he hurt me.”
Kate thought about the dark circles beneath the young woman’s eyes. Guilt was the reason she hadn’t been sleeping, Kate was certain. Louisa’s children were so well behaved that Kate hadn’t been able to imagine them giving her that much to worr
y about.
Louisa rushed on, words pouring out like a waterfall now that the floodgates were open. “When Gerald started asking me questions about what you were doing, I did tell him that Mr. and Mrs. Jenner weren’t involved. I didn’t want him to do those terrible things he threatened them with.”
“How did you know about them?”
“I was the one who had to slip the notes into her office after Mr. Glass wrote them. I read them. And the same with the one in your purse.”
“Mr. Glass wrote them?” That was a new revelation. Kate had already realized that Louisa had placed the note in her handbag the night the Pellmans had come to dinner. It hadn’t been Eva Mountjoy or anyone else.
“I hated deceiving you,” Louisa said miserably. “You and Pastor Hanlon have been so kind to us. You’ve been so wonderful with Jeremy...and we love the library too. He’s been terribly upset about the demolition.” She buried her face in her hands. “I’m a horrible person.” Then her head snapped up, and her whole body twisted to face Kate. “If they put me in jail, will you take my children? Will you help me keep my ex-husband from taking custody? I’m not kidding about him being violent. He’ll hurt them. I know he will.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kate took one hand off the wheel and clasped it over Louisa’s clenched fist. “I’ll do everything I can,” she said soothingly. “But I can’t imagine that you’re going to jail. You were coerced into wrongdoing.”
“I should have gone to the police,” Louisa whispered. “But Gerald said he had friends in the county police force. I was just so afraid....”
Kate’s heart ached for the frightened young mother. Her mouth tightened. Gerald Foxfield certainly had known every button to push to use Louisa’s fears to his advantage.
She glanced at her watch. Twelve fifty. She was conscious of her heartbeat racing. They were barely going to make it.
SAM GORMAN DROVE PAUL and the rest of their roofing crew into town and parked along Smith Street. Sam couldn’t get very close to the library because Main had been blocked off with sawhorses between Smith and Sweetwater, so the five men got out and walked two blocks to where a crowd had gathered. There were still thirty minutes to go before the scheduled demolition, but word seemed to have spread quickly.
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