The Library: Where Life Checks Out

by Carmen DeSousa

  “Sweetheart,” her mother appealed in her saccharine voice, but Ashlyn slammed the door on her phony endearment. She wasn’t her sweetheart; she was barely her daughter. Her mother had dragged her from one beauty pageant to another, always looking for fame and fortune, since she’d missed her chance. She’d given Ashlyn her maiden name, the name she’d chosen to keep when she’d married because she thought she’d be famous.

  Her mother had asked Ashlyn if she’d been proud of her for giving her a name that was suitable for a Hollywood star, Ashlyn Allan. At sixteen, Ashlyn was finished with her mother traipsing her around and showing her off. One day, Ashlyn just screamed at her, insisting that she would no longer be her mother’s Barbie doll. Her mother had lashed back at her that it had been her fault that she’d not made it in Hollywood and that she owed her.

  It wasn’t Ashlyn’s fault. Heck, her mother hadn’t even had her until she was twenty-eight. But she blamed the end of her career on her. Well, she blamed it on Ashlyn’s father first, and then she blamed it on her only child.

  Ashlyn’s father had been forty years her mother’s senior when she met him. He’d been a high-level exec at MGM, and her mother had believed that he could make her a superstar, albeit he never promised to do that. In fact, he retired right after they married, thinking his new bride would want to settle down.

  Her mother had no intention of settling down according to her aunt who confided the entire sordid affair to Ashlyn when she was old enough to understand it. Her aunt had also let it slip how utterly appalled her mother had been when she realized she was pregnant, but then quickly apologized and backtracked her statement, saying she’d just been upset about a movie role she’d lost.

  After that, her aunt said Laura had driven her husband crazy, insisting he find her another starring part. Ashlyn’s father died of a heart attack before her first birthday, and unable to get any work in Hollywood, her mother had taken her hefty life insurance payment and moved back to Pennsylvania.

  Ashlyn breathed in the brisk fall air as she lingered along the hedge, her hands gingerly caressing the fluffy blossoms of the buttonbushes bordering her grandmother’s property. Her heart filled with contentment as she watched the monarch butterflies searching for nectar from the white fragrant flowers that looked like ping-pong-ball-sized pincushions. She loved to retreat to nature, forgetting all the worries in the world—her world.

  Her eyes delighted on the array of gold, orange, and even purplish leaves and blossoms that covered the property. She obviously inherited her love of gardening from her grandmother. Ashlyn had filled a notebook with all her favorite ornamental bushes and flowering trees.

  Now that Mark had proposed, she thought she might be able to see her dream of a beautiful home come to fruition—a real home, the type of household where the mother and father sat down at the dinner table with the children. The type of family that genuinely enjoyed staying home on a Saturday morning and working in the backyard together. Love. True love. For their life and one another. Of course, in order to be free of her past, she had to face it first. She refused to live a life of secrets, and she refused to lie to her baby.

  Ashlyn reached out and pulled down a long stalk covered with red and gold leaves. She dug through the foliage, looking for the cluster of yellowish pods with brown spots. The shrub rewarded her with several of the sticky and fuzzy fruit that contained the sweet, earthy hazelnuts. Based on the outer leafage, the nuts needed a few more days to ripen, but as her grandmother had shown her, she could just toss them in a box and they’d ripen within a few days.

  After a few hours with nature, Ashlyn wandered back to the house, hoping her mother had taken a nap or gone to the store. She opened the back door as quietly as possible and then tiptoed through the parlor, as her grandmother had called the formal area that welcomed guests into her home.

  Ashlyn peeked through the diamond-shaped glass in the entry door and thrilled at the fact that her mother had left the house. Good riddance. It’d give Ashlyn time to think.

  She hadn’t made the long and tedious trip up here to be with her mother; she’d come to Erie to be with her grandmother. Well, her grandmother’s home, a place where she had a few good memories of her childhood.

  Her grandmother had left her some boxes when she passed, and she’d never gone through them. She figured this would be as good a time as any. Sifting through the musty attic as she’d done when she was a child, trying on the old outfits and hats would be fun.

  Ashlyn climbed the stairs to her grandmother’s room inhaling the smell that never went away. No matter how many bowls of potpourri or scented candles her mother spread throughout the house, the old place smelled like her grandmother. Actually, she assumed it smelled like her great, great-grandmother, since it went back that far. An old outhouse even still sat in the backyard. Though it was no longer an outhouse; one of her relatives had filled it with dirt in the early part of the century.

  She couldn’t quite place the scent of the abode. It just smelled of wood and years of cooking, but it always smelled like home.

  Unlike newer homes that had a pull-down staircase to get to the attic, the stairway that led to the third floor—fourth if you counted the basement—was a narrow passage through a doorway at the end of the hallway that led straight up. The attic wasn’t really an attic, in the sense that it was just space between the ceiling and the roof; instead, the rectangular room stretched the length of the house with a window on either side. The low A-shaped ceiling above her head held nothing but cobwebs and rafters, so the only light was by way of lamps and light from outside. It was spooky, but a sanctuary at the same time.

  Ashlyn dragged the large box with her name scribbled across the top under the half-moon-shaped window. The leaded beveled glass cast an intricate spiderweb pattern across her treasure chest of memorabilia, sending a spine-chilling sensation over her skin for no apparent reason. Yeah, she’d lived through a ghostly situation once, but she’d never seen anything supernatural before or after. Even now, she wondered if she hadn’t just seen some sort of distortion.

  She’d asked her grandmother to leave her several things that she knew her mother wouldn’t appreciate, but she wasn’t sure what else she’d stuffed inside the cardboard box.

  As soon as she opened the top closure, Ashlyn jumped and almost hit her head on the low ceiling as a tiny black spider darted over her hand. She laughed as she willed her heart to slow.

  “Get out of here,” she said softly, shooing the innocent creature away. She’d never been afraid of spiders. They served a purpose, her grandmother had told her. “Without spiders,” Mémé had said, “the world would be over-run with insects, and our food crops would be decimated within months.”

  Still, Ashlyn carefully ventured back into the box. Regardless of the fact that they were necessary, she didn’t want an entire family of arachnids traipsing over her. She’d deal with them, but they needed to keep their distance.

  Her grandmother had wrapped every item in the crate in fabric, scraps of material she’d had left over from her sewing, Ashlyn was positive. Her grandmother had made all her curtains and slipcovers for years, even some pajamas Ashlyn still had tucked away in her bureau at home.

  Old photo albums and vinyl records filled the box, along with books. Lots and lots of books. Some, she was certain, were first editions worth a fortune. She no longer cared about money as she used to, though. Between Mark’s ventures and her new career, they would be quite comfortable, more than comfortable actually. More money just meant more problems. Her mother had plenty of money after her father had died, and it hadn’t provided her happiness. Fame was what her mother craved.

  Thankfully, Ashlyn had no desire for fame or fortune. She ran her hands over her belly, full of life, wondering if her mother felt the joy that she did with the tiny person growing inside her. Yeah, the father was a moron, but that wasn’t the baby’s fault. And if Mark still wanted to marry her after she’d run off from him, she’d be stupid not t
o jump at his proposal. She’d always known that he’d make a great husband, and now she was convinced that he’d be a wonderful father too.

  Funny how just being in her grandmother’s home could help her understand that all she wanted was a loving husband and a healthy son. She’d make sure next time they talked, he understood that just because she asked for time before they set a date didn’t mean she was second-guessing marrying him. She’d just been worried about her unborn child.

  She un-wrapped another book at the bottom of the box. The simple blue-pebbled cover with a gilt-stitched title The Joy of Cooking across the top greeted her. The spine was missing, exposing the stitched binding. A sticky residue where her grandmother or maybe a further ancestor had tried to hold it together marked the bottom of the antique cookbook.

  As carefully as she could, she opened the cover, anxious to see if it was a first edition, and if so, the date it was published. “Oh, wow!” she shrieked. “1931!” Even in its current shabby condition it was worth a fortune. Not that she’d sell it, but it’d be great to have a first edition of such a popular book in her office.

  Unable to resist, she delicately flipped through the pages, smiling at the illustrations sketched inside. Pots and pans, utensils, and other kitchen accessories embellished the headings of each section. As she skimmed across the segment of soufflés, she smiled at the penciled drawings that resembled her buttonbush blossoms she’d been admiring earlier.

  A faded note in the margin beside a recipe for pot roast stopped her meandering. Our first meal. The penciled words could have been from her great, great-grandmother who would have been in her forties in the thirties, or her grandmother could have written it in the fifties. But what if Edda had scribbled it?

  A shiver swept down Ashlyn’s arms at the thought that the woman she’d never met, the woman who’d watched over her somehow, had written this about the man whom she’d thought she would marry.

  But then a man nobody knew had murdered her great-grandmother, Edda, in 1934 at the age of nineteen after she’d had a baby. She hadn’t been living here; she’d left the baby with her mother while she’d worked in Edenbury. But she certainly came back here. More than likely her mother had just packaged up her few belongings after her death.

  Nervous at the thought of delving deeper into the secrets of the past, Ashlyn’s hands broke into a sweat, but she persisted, knowing she owed her great-grandmother that much. After all, Ashlyn’s ex-boyfriend had tried to murder her, and somehow, she was certain that her great-grandmother’s ghost had saved her.

  One by one, Ashlyn turned each yellowed page, hoping another clue would present itself. Her heart skipped a beat when she came to the dessert section.

  Tucked between the brittle and stained pages was a picture. A black and white image of a man. No name, just a date, 1929. Five years before Edda’s murder. Edda would have been fourteen, but her fiancé, the father of her child had been away for a few years, her grandmother had said. Could she be holding the graduation picture of Edda’s fiancé, Ashlyn’s great-grandfather, a man who may have gotten away with murder?

  CHAPTER SIX

  She watched as the thief once again pawed through the books, ever searching. It’d been years, and she’d thought that the murderer would have forgotten all about her family, but evidently seeing Buck had reopened old wounds, dredged up old secrets. But Buck hadn’t known anything.

  “What did you do with it, Jessica?” the fiend shouted at the ceiling. As always, she tried to recognize the voice, but voices didn’t sound the same here. Each word came through individually as a slow and fading echo, as if the sound had passed through several chambers in a massive cathedral. “I know it’s here.”

  She couldn’t help but wonder if she should answer, but that would be too easy. Hiding and taunting had always been more fun. Watching as the paranoia tore at her assailant’s sanity had provided a modicum of redemption.

  When she’d first arrived here in her current condition, the murderer had come to the library constantly. But since Buck had disappeared, so had any concern for an arrest, she supposed. As years earlier, the coward’s face had been shielded in some ridiculous ski mask, even though there were no security cameras in the library. She’d spent decades waiting, but had never been able to confirm the murderer’s identity. Her only guess was that someone had recognized Buck and had returned to silence him once and for all.

  Her anger bubbled to the surface. She’d been content to stay here, but hoped that one day she could leave. She glided to the cabinet that housed the microfilm, the only area the villain had yet to check. It wasn’t there; she’d moved it years ago. If only she could remember where she put it, maybe she could get the right person to stumble upon it.

  Just for fun, she decided to put on a show. She concentrated on the tiny boxes, hoping they were light enough. One by one, she lifted the paper boxes, allowing them to levitate, then threw them at the murderer.

  The weakling took off in response, screaming at the ceiling, “Leave me alone.”

  She blocked the door the best she could, causing the masked intruder to shiver while passing through her. That was all she could do. Toss around a few light objects, cause someone to look over their shoulder at a sound or a flash of light.

  The murderer charged out the door. “Forgive me. I’m sorry.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When Mark arrived at the library the next day, he found Mrs. Davis on the outside bench crying. She’d been crying so loudly that she’d nearly bounded over the back of the bench when he stooped in front of her.

  She threw her hands over her chest. “Oh, Markey! You scared the bejesus out of me.”

  He resisted smiling, but wondered how he’d startled her, since he hadn’t been silent coming through the gate. His police-issued black combat boots were quiet with their thick soles, but still, he’d rushed up the walkway when he saw her crying, praying she hadn’t found another dead body. Of course, he didn’t know that she hadn’t found a body, but he assumed that if she’d stumbled upon another murder, it would have been her first words.

  “What happened? Are you okay?” he asked once she caught her breath.

  Mrs. Davis pursed her lips to hold back her tears and nodded. “I’m fine. Just upset. They came back.”

  Mark sat down beside her and she immediately leaned against him, making him realize why she’d chosen Captain Davis as a husband. She was smart and strong, but like Ashlyn, she had a soft side. She must have liked that Captain Davis was tall and strong—and a cop. The same aspects Ashlyn had told him she appreciated.

  Ashlyn had confessed that she’d always thought she needed to meet a wealthy man to take care of her financially, as her mother had insisted. But after what happened with her ex-boyfriend, she’d said she realized she was quite capable of taking care of herself financially. What she wanted was someone to take care of the monsters in the world and hold her when she needed to be held.

  Mark was happy to do both, but assured her he’d be willing to take care of her financially too if she decided to stay home once the baby was born. That part she’d declined, insisting that she could manage her career and being a mother. Mark had no doubt; Ashlyn would be a great mother.

  Once Mrs. Davis’ hitched breathing subsided, Mark patted her hand, encouraging her to talk to him. “What happened?”

  “Oh, Markey. The same thing. Only this time, they went through the microfilm cabinet.” She dropped her head. “I just don’t understand how they’re getting inside the building.”

  “Is it possible they’re inside before you lock up, and then they take off when you’re not looking?” he asked.

  Her head bobbed. “I guess anything is possible.”

  Mark stood up and offered her his arm. She gripped his arm and pulled herself up, allowing him to escort her inside. He stopped just inside the front door and pointed to the security system. “Set the alarm.” She did as he requested and then he walked her directly to her office. “Lock your office
door. I’m going to have a look around. He may have slipped out already, but he may still be here, and I don’t want to spook him into thinking he needs a hostage.”

  Mrs. Davis nodded and closed the door behind him. He waited for the click and then called Captain Davis on his cell.

  “How’s it goin’, Waters?”

  “Not good, Cap’n. Looks like there was another break-in. I locked your wife inside her office, and I’m going to have a look around, but I need to get a team out here. I know Mrs. Davis doesn’t want us scouring the library for evidence, and I think fingerprinting would be a waste of time since there are thousands upon thousands of prints here, so at least we won’t have black dust everywhere. But whoever’s doing this is looking for something, and I’d like to find it first.”

  “Margaret will understand,” Captain offered. “Do me a favor first, though. I know you said you locked my wife in her office, but I’d like her home. Tell her I said so. I’m on my way. I have a few things I want to check on as well.”

  “O...kay, Cap’n.” Mark hung up the phone, slightly confused. Why on earth would Davis feel the need to be here? Did he not trust that Mark could handle an investigation on his own?

  Mark continued to sweep the area with his eyes, his gun held close to his body in case he saw a threat as he touched Townsend’s name on his phone screen. He ignored Tim’s disrespectful ‘Yeah?’ as an answer, knowing it bothered the older man that Mark was his superior. They’d discuss it later, though. They had a job to do.

  “Call Roland and get over here,” Mark demanded. “There was another break-in at the library and we need to find what they’re looking for.” Mark hung up without waiting for a response, then knocked on the door marked ‘administration only’. “Mr. Davis said to escort you to your car, Mrs. Davis.”