Death In The Stacks: An Elinor & Dot library mystery

by Linda S. Bingham

  “Did you notice the time?”

  “We were so busy… It might’ve been when I went to the car to fetch my turban for Story Time. I took it home to sew one of the earrings back on,” she explained.

  “It had to be at the end of the day. Somebody would’ve seen her if it happened earlier. Her car must be in the west lot. I wonder someone didn’t notice it over the long weekend.”

  “Maybe they did. I don’t know what she drives. Do you?”

  Elinor sighed. “No, of course not. What are we doing, Dot? Go get DeWayne. Looks like the library’s going to be closed a while longer.”

  *****

  Elinor didn’t remember driving up High Street to Kate’s house. But here they were, she and Dot, seated at Kate’s kitchen table, being served big glasses of iced tea. Kate sat down to join them.

  “She was such a strange old woman,” Kate said with a glance over her shoulder to make sure the kids were not listening.

  “Only strange in that she was solitary and seemed to be content that way,” Elinor said.

  “Perfect job for somebody who prefers to work alone,” Dot said.

  “Some kind of nurse, wasn’t she?” Kate asked.

  “Home health nurse,” Dot replied. “When Rusty Crownover fell off his tractor, Eula Wyckham came to the house and put him through his physical therapy exercises. She must have family, though. That’s what she did at the library, used our high-speed connection for genealogy work.”

  “Probably didn’t have Internet at home,” Kate said.

  “We’d better mention that to DeWayne,” Elinor said. “He’ll be going through her house. For all we know, she has a family.” Struck by a thought, she caught her breath.

  “Oh, don’t do that to me,” Dot said, putting a hand over her heart.

  “She had a laptop, Dot! I remember once showing her how to log on to our wi-fi.”

  “Okay,” Dot said cautiously. “What’s so heart-stopping about that?”

  “Where is it? Where’s her laptop? She was face-down on the keyboard of the library’s #3 public computer.”

  Kate looked sick. “You’ll have to get rid of that keyboard.”

  “Maybe it was there and we just didn’t notice,” Dot said. “Under the desk or at her feet. Or maybe in her purse.”

  “Dot, we’re librarians. We stood there looking at that poor murdered woman for two or three minutes. There wasn’t even a purse. And no laptop computer, unless she actually had it in her lap.”

  Dot seemed less certain of her own powers of observation. “They say witnesses don’t remember well under stress.”

  “But, Aunt Elinor, you don’t know if she always brought her laptop to the library.”

  “It stands to reason, Kate, if she was doing research, downloading materials and so on, taking notes, she would want to do it on her own machine.”

  “Good point, Elinor,” Dot said. “Anyway, we can look it up.”

  “Look up what?”

  “Look at the browsing history of #3. If she used our computer, whatever websites she visited will be listed.”

  “Surely DeWayne will think of that,” Elinor said.

  “That knucklehead. I never could get him to understand fractions. You know what’s really heart-stopping?” Dot said.

  “Shush,” Elinor said. From the living room, the bickering of siblings Enid and Gary over whose turn it was to control the TV channel underscored Elinor’s warning.

  Dot lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper. “Whoever killed Eula Wyckham was in that library with us on Saturday.”

  “You kids go outside,” Kate shouted. The front door slammed and stillness fell over the house. But it wasn’t the indoor children going out; it was oldest child Steve coming in.

  “Aunt Elinor, DeWayne and Daddy just pulled up outside. They’re looking for you.”

  *****

  Guy Pettibone had just put a Ford pickup on the rack and was heading down into the pit to change the oil when the klaxon ringer on the shop phone sounded above the ambient roar. He swore under his breath and climbed back out to grab it.

  “Guy’s,” he barked into the receiver. “Yes, ma’am. Open till five. I can take you if you get over here in the next thirty minutes. Sorry, can’t do a state inspection today. I’m shorthanded. Yes, ma’am.” He hung up and headed back into the grease pit.

  Through a filthy window in the closet-sized waiting room, Lucy Childers could follow Guy’s progress under the truck. She had heard the ladies in her fitness class going on about hot Guy Pettibone, how they would take their car in even when it didn’t need anything. Sure, he was handsome in a Heathcliff kind of way, wiry, virile, black hair falling over his eyes. But she would never let such a man touch her, a man with dirty specks on his face from looking up at the undersides of cars, black under his nails, nasty clothes. Lucy shifted her gaze to the television hanging on the wall.

  Her Lexus was next in line, waiting its turn in the broiling sun beyond a pair of open bay doors. Inside the garage, an enormous fan moved the air around, mostly, it seemed, pulling hot air into the building. Guy’s customers had been provided a room in which to wait, outfitted with a small hard-working window unit that barely held its own against the waves of heat bearing down on them from the metal roof overhead. Lucy Childers tried to follow the news on the TV, but its filthy screen offended her, and the roar of the air conditioner drowned out the sound. Her attention wandered to her phone where a text had come in from her daughter Bethany, elliptically arguing her case for going on a car date with this new boy she was crazy about. Lucy tapped out a reply. “Ask him to dinner so Daddy can meet him.”

  My, it was hot! She took a tissue from her purse and, after a quick glance at the fellow sharing the waiting room with her, discreetly tucked the tissue between her breasts to staunch the flow of perspiration unpleasantly dampening her bra. She hated bringing the car in for service, but Patrick had Rotary Club today and said it had to be done. He was so fussy about his everlasting schedule, his lists, those mysterious computer files he kept on people. He said he had to keep track of names, votes, donors, but it had gone way past index cards in a metal recipe box. Every time he came home he disappeared into his little cubbyhole office next to the kitchen and clattered away for hours. She was utterly sick of the way politics had taken over their lives. Being mayor wasn’t even a paid job!

  The customer whose Ford truck preceded her Lexus headed out the door again, this time to make sure Guy topped off his oil correctly. Each trip back into the dim little room canceled out whatever progress the window unit had made and carried the smell of lubricants. Lucy could feel oily grit settling on her face. For heaven’s sake! she wanted to yell. Let the mechanic do his job! It was so crowded and close in that room. So filthy!

  But of course she said nothing. Her husband was running for re-election. She smiled. She gritted her teeth and smiled.

  *****

  Someone had scrawled a note and taped it to the glass entry door advising that the library was closed till further notice. This time, when Elinor entered the foyer from the street, she knew that the faintly sweet odor she had remarked on earlier was of something five days dead in the July heat.

  Police Chief DeWayne Ratliff led the way through a deserted station to his office at the back. Everybody else was probably next door processing the crime scene, she thought. It was unclear which of several roles Shelby Jacks fulfilled, member of City Council, mayor pro-tem, volunteer deputy, or DeWayne’s best friend. Or to put a charitable spin on his presence, maybe he was there in support of Elinor, though she thought not. Their relationship had never been especially warm.

  “Miz Woodward,” DeWayne said, addressing her formally, even though they saw each other nearly every day. “I only want one thing from you right now. And please don’t talk about any of this outside this room.”

  “Certainly,” Elinor said. “You want to know about the back door.”

  “That’s right. The crime lab from Broken Bow is over
there now picking up fingerprints. They’ll need yours and Miz Hardwick’s so they can eliminate them. Who else might’ve used that door? I know you can’t see it from the front desk—I already checked.”

  As if she would lie!

  “No, we can’t see it, and it’s always kind of worried me, the security aspect. But we have to keep it unlocked. It’s a fire exit. Dot unlocked the door Saturday morning as she always does, and locked it back at the end of the day when you were agitating to get out of here. I’m not aware of anybody coming through the back, Saturday or any other time. The front door is more convenient to parking. You may have noticed that over the summer we volunteers park on High Street to leave the shady spots for our patrons.”

  “Did anybody go back inside the library after I locked up Saturday?”

  “Dot and I have the only keys, DeWayne. Yours makes three. We did not return.”

  “What about Tuesday? Where did you park for the parade?”

  “High Street was off-limits and the west lot was full. We parked in back. It never occurred to us to come inside. I regret that. We might have found the poor woman sooner.”

  “What was that old woman doing back there by herself anyway?” Shelby said, not really expecting an answer.

  Annoyed, Elinor spoke up for old women. “Her name was Eula Wyckham, Shelby. She used the library’s high-speed Internet for her genealogy research. I imagine she chose that carrel because it was more private than the two out front.” She turned back to DeWayne. “And, by the way, Ms. Wyckham owned a laptop. I don’t know if she habitually brought it with her to the library, but if she was doing research for a family history, I would think she would have it with her. Dot and I didn’t see a laptop when we… when we found her this morning.”

  Shelby and DeWayne exchanged expressionless glances.

  “We also didn’t see a purse,” Elinor added. “Very few women go anywhere without some type of bag. I suppose you found her car keys?”

  DeWayne appeared to realize he had let her take the lead in this interview. “Guess you didn’t notice her car parked out there in the west lot for four days,” he said.

  “I don’t know what she drives, DeWayne. You’ll be searching her house, I suppose?”

  The only way to get out of his dilemma was to end it. He rose to his feet, signaling dismissal. “Shelby will run you back to your car, Miz Woodward.”

  She had once stood over him making him write in complete sentences. It was all too easy to reassert that power and he resented her for it. Elinor stood too. Shelby was already at the door signaling his impatience to be rid of her. “I didn’t know Eula Wyckham well at all,” Elinor said. “I don’t know if she had enemies. But it seems like such a vengeful act, how she was killed. Like somebody must have really hated her.”

  “Don’t go there,” DeWayne warned. “This is not one of your little cozies, Miz Woodward. This is true-crime. Random violence. Some low-life tried a door, found it unlocked, spotted a defenseless woman sitting there not paying attention, and cut her throat. Maybe he didn’t mean to do it so thoroughly, right through the jugular, but it’s a cold-blooded killing nonetheless and he’ll get the lethal injection for it in this state. Of course he took off with her stuff. That’s all he wanted. So don’t go spreading rumors. You go round up your book buddies and get ‘em back down here for fingerprinting.”

  *****

  All was not well at Thunderbird Ranch. Judith Weathers prowled the rooms trying not to feel like the last survivor on the island. The house was so large and empty now that a family could move in and she might not stumble across them for days. How could she have let that architect talk her into so much house?

  But, oh, god, how she loved it! Loved how the light played across its surfaces and angles at different times of the day. She had fought as hard and as smart as she knew how, but she was going to lose this house. Somebody else would fill its rooms with beautiful belongings, refresh their eyes with a view of Big Bear Mountain forming a backdrop to lush green pastures dotted with white-faced cattle, take credit for the aesthetic that had created such a magnificent dwelling. Let the peasants yammer about “McMansions” and “gentrification.” Yet, open the house to the public and watch them flock to see it.

  She was being swindled with her eyes wide open and was powerless to stop it. Buck had cheated on her with other women and now he was cheating her out of the one triumph she had achieved in this world, the one accomplishment that was truly her own, the building of a distinctive, no, a unique home. It was all very well to say she would be remembered for three handsome and generally functional children, but really, millions of other women had managed to do the same. Few women could say they had improved upon nature, envisioned a structure that would stand as a legacy for years after the visionary herself was gone. Owners would come and go, inhabit these rooms for a time, update and remodel as tastes changed, but they would be pretenders, unable to claim they had anything to do with its birth. She had one last shot at saving her legacy.

  Setting aside these bitter thoughts, Judith Weathers turned away from the wall-sized expanse of glass in her living room, with its view to the west of terrace and pool, and threaded her way back to the bedroom suite to choose the right shoes to go with her outfit. The black Ferragamo platforms, she decided. She needed to stand tall for this.

  Out on the highway, she kept a lookout for the patrol car that often lurked behind a certain oak mott, radar gun deployed. She never could talk the old fool out of a ticket. Probably paid his salary. Safely past the spot, she opened up the big Lincoln SUV and made up for lost time. At the center of town she turned left into High Street and pulled into a parking space in front of her attorney’s office. Jamming Depot Street, in addition to the usual police cruisers and firetrucks, were several official-looking vehicles, including the highway patrol she had expected to see elsewhere. Something was going on. Betty Blanton would know what it was.

  There was no one in Betty’s outer office. The secretary was probably gone to lunch. Judith could hear the lawyer’s commanding voice booming through the wall. Either Betty was on the phone or she was depriving some client the chance to get a word in edgewise. Little bit too much testosterone there, Judith thought. Thank God she had retained the woman before her husband thought of it. Harvey Pillock’s best advice had cost her friend Myra to lose not only a fine home, but a substantial portion of her husband’s income. That wasn’t going to happen to Judith Weathers!

  “Yoohoo!” she called out. She didn’t set appointments to cool her heels in the outer office. She heard the phone slam and Betty Blanton’s boots hit the floor. The door to the inner office swung open.

  “There you are, Judy. Come on in.”

  “It’s Judith, if you don’t mind. What’s going on down at the police station?”

  Betty Blanton looked surprised. “Now that you mention it, I did hear a siren earlier.” She walked over to the storefront windows and pulled the mini-blinds apart. “Huh! Beats me. Looks like the meat wagon’s carrying somebody off. I hope those nice old ladies who run the library are all right.”

  *****

  Just up the street at the Magnolia Café, Patrick Allan Childers was seated at a table for eight in the banquet room. Dinner plates were cleared, dessert and coffee being served while the speaker tested the slide projector, preparing to share with fellow Rotarians details of his recent trip to Guatemala. Patrick took out his phone to tap in a tidbit he had picked up during lunch conversation. He had perfected the art, he believed, of appearing to listen to people while actually tuned in to nearby conversations. Making appropriate nods and verbal cues all the while, he typed in “PT bridge no, SWL yes.” Later he would transcribe this shorthand into a meaningful addition to his voter database.

  His table companion was going on and on about an ordinance there wasn’t the slightest chance council would pass limiting access to a certain neighborhood that drivers cut through to avoid being slowed by school zones. “I’m sure you’re right,” Pa
trick said, a phrase, he had found, that suited most situations. His phone chirped and he looked down to read the incoming message.

  “Are you kidding me? A body in the library?”

  *****

  It was mid-afternoon before Elinor could finally get away and go home. She was exhausted. She realized, too, that she was hungry. Normally, on library days, as she thought of them, she and Dot brown-bagged it to allow busy patrons the lunch hour to get their library business done. Her little blue Thermos bag was still sitting on top of the microwave in the library office. She wondered if she would ever want ham and Swiss again.

  As she turned into her own driveway, she had to face another regret. Rusty, the former police dog that had shown up shortly after she bought the Old Cooper Farm and lived with her for more than two years, greeting her as ecstatically as a returning hero every time she turned in the drive, had passed on to his reward. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop expecting him to be there, to suffer a pang when her conscious mind told her he never would be again.

  “Well this awful business has gotten you down, my dear,” she told herself. She entered the house through the kitchen and took eggs from the refrigerator to make herself some lunch. The house was hot and she stepped into the hallway to goose the thermostat. That made her think again about the smell she had noticed when she arrived at the library that morning. In the summer it took a long time to cool down the library, especially after a long weekend. City Council kept a strict eye on library expenses, but they didn’t mind buying a new police cruiser for DeWayne to tear around in.

  The house was one Elinor had visited often back in the days when her father, a Presbyterian minister, made home visits. The Cooper sisters were long gone. The old farmhouse had sat vacant until a California couple modernized it, but they had not stayed, and the house was on the market when Elinor moved back from Houston after Bill died. Lately she had begun to think it was too big for one person. Too far from town. She had let Kate’s enthusiasm for her new real estate career sway her. She had wanted Kate to have a nice sale, and she certainly didn’t intend to move in with them as Kate had suggested. She didn’t come back to Johns Valley to be a burden to her niece. Kate had a hard enough life, raising three energetic youngsters, coping with a less-than-faithful husband, trying to find a role for herself beyond motherhood. Shelby had his ranch to run and the vicarious thrills of law enforcement.