Death In The Stacks: An Elinor & Dot library mystery

by Linda S. Bingham

  From his investigating, Jeffrey had learned things about his housemates he wouldn’t otherwise have known. He knew, for example, that a stealthy tread on the stairs at midnight meant that Sara was sneaking out to see her boyfriend. He could watch her leave from his window at the front of the house. He admired the way she let her VW roll down the hill to the highway before popping the clutch to start the engine, a skill she had learned when the starter went out.

  Sometimes spying led to the questioning of assumptions he didn’t know he had, for instance, that his father slept with his mother in the big bedroom at the back of the house. Actually his father rested his head on a cot in a decked-over portion of his shop where he had his drafting table and a window unit air-conditioner. Downstairs was a toilet and shower. Jeffrey had learned this truth about his parents as he did most things, by accident. One morning before sunrise he had taken up his post in the stairwell hoping to hear enough unguarded conversation between his parents to find out if they knew about Sara’s slipping out. Instead, he heard his father come through the back door to start coffee. At first he assumed that his father had gotten to his shop early, but when it happened again, Jeffrey set up an experiment to prove that his parents slept apart. He wondered if Sara knew.

  Ordinarily, young people prefer not to think about their parent’s sex life. But learning the truth about their sleeping arrangements made him wonder if he really understood adult sex. How could people conceive children without being in bed together? Did parents, after having the children they wanted, stop doing it? His sister, two years older, might’ve known the answers to these questions, but he couldn’t ask.

  His parents gave off other confusing signals, too. His mother, who insisted on very little else, made them dress up and go to church on Sundays. She worked at the church and insisted they look “presentable.” She meant “normal,” he thought. Maybe the other people you saw in church, shiny-faced and wearing their best, were also trying to look normal. Beth’s father was the mayor and he made them go to church, Bethany said, so people wouldn’t suspect her mom was a pill-popper. One time Bethany swiped some tablets and invited him to skip class and take them with her, get high. Jeffrey did not get high. He went to sleep, and Bethany left him curled up on a gym mat. He missed his bus and had to hitchhike home.

  When school started, Jeffrey would be a freshman, attending classes in the same building where his father taught. Mr. Faulkner, the band director, had assumed that Jeffrey would give up the trombone to take his father’s beginning woodshop class, but Jeffrey said he would stick with band. Faulkner had laughed and said, “I guess you get all the shop you need at home.” And Jeffrey didn’t tell him that his father had never tried to interest him in woodworking, or, for that matter, any of the skills at which he was almost legendary.

  Mathew Calender was known as an outdoorsman. He kept the freezer full of venison, squirrel, rabbit, and fish. He canoed the rivers and prowled the mountains. He could survive on almost nothing and needed few comforts, even at home. He had built a rustic cabin on Big Bear Mountain and spent as much time there as he could. He had never invited his family to the cabin. Once, when Jeffrey was still in grade school, their mother had packed a picnic lunch and drove them up the mountain “to surprise Daddy.” He was surprised, all right, and not in a good way. Jeffrey could tell that his mother was hurt and embarrassed at how cold and unwelcoming he was. She passed the whole idea off as Jeffrey’s, and Jeffrey knew better than to speak up for himself. They never went again.

  But a person can’t be great at everything. Mathew Calender, deft and capable with wood in his hands, able to operate power tools, navigate the twists and turns of the Kiamichi River, find his way through the hills and hollers of Big Bear Mountain, couldn’t grasp the basic concepts of using electronic devices. It was almost comical to see his big hands fumble and poke at a small screen. Jeffrey supposed it was like being illiterate or color-blind, something you couldn’t help. Confident in his own realm, father and son pitied and scorned one another.

  Today, Jeffrey waited for his sister to vacate the bathroom they shared and go back to her room. He heard her flounce down the hall, gave her time to settle in, then followed the scent of hair products to her door. He could hear her on the phone with her friend Liz, something about cheerleading. Ah, she was ditching practice and getting Liz to cover for her. What was she up to? Jeffrey pressed his ear closer.

  Sara wasn’t very good at covering her tracks. Too stupid to memorize but one password, she used it over and over, allowing the brilliant spymaster that he was to keep up with her digital life. Sara maintained a number of profiles and carried on virtual affairs with a changing cast of characters. Lately, someone who called himself “StefanR” wanted “Esme” to let him send her a bus ticket to Cleveland for a face to face. Esme claimed she wanted to meet him, but one thing after another kept her from doing so. “Esme” was eighteen and a real looker, in fact, a dead-ringer for a certain teen celebrity whom StefanR, strangely enough, didn’t recognize. Generation gap! The door opened suddenly and Jeffrey almost fell into Sara’s room.

  “Jeffrey, mind your own business!”

  “I am minding it.”

  Sara slammed the door in his face. Downstairs, he took a plum from a bowl on the kitchen table and wandered into the bedroom his parents pretended to share. From a bedside drawer he took out a spiral notebook his mother used to work on her lottery picks. It was always fun to try to crack her little code. This week it was too easy. She had started out with his birthday, then multiplied the digits by three and picked every third one. Three was her favorite number, but she favored certain other combinations, too, her “magic” numbers. She was superstitious about a lot of things. If three cars passed in a row, all the same color, she would recite under her breath, “String of three, break my knee. One in five, saints alive.” If a black car turned at the intersection ahead of her, she would turn right to avoid being the next car to cross its path. She would pretend that she meant all along to run by the post office or the bank. She liked to sneak away to the Indian casinos and try to beat the odds that were weighted so heavily against her. Sara had said to their father one time, why do you let her do that? And Mathew had said, we all have our bliss.

  Jeffrey opened the back door and walked across to his father’s shop. The big rolling door was down, but Mathew didn’t lock the side door. It was hot and stuffy and dark in the shop with the bay shut. The canoe his father was making lay upside down on sawhorses. Lathes, drills, routers, rotary and band saws lined the wall. Wood shavings curled in the corners and the resiny scent of wood mingled with dust, sealants, and machine oil. Jeffrey stuck his head in the bathroom and noticed that the bar of soap was beginning to crack from lack of use.

  He climbed the ladder stairs to the decked-over portion of the shop. The cot was folded away, pretending to be unused, a quilt and pillow tucked inside. The drafting table, placed to take advantage of the light coming through the only window on this floor, held a set of shop drawings rendered somewhat crudely in thick lead pencil, as if handling an instrument even that fine was a challenge to Mathew Calender’s large brown hands. Jeffrey studied the drawings, checking the figures, noting the meticulous geometry. His father would take deep pleasure in the craft that he had designed and was taking shape below. We all have our bliss.

  It was even hotter in the attic. Jeffrey turned to climb down, noticing as he did so that a beam of sunlight glancing off a plastic T-square on his father’s drafting table illuminated a dusty cubbyhole on the wall above his head. His father had installed shelving in even this out-of-the-way space to store cans of paint and stains. Something had been shoved into one of the cubbyholes, something wrapped in burlap. Probably some tool his father rarely needed and wanted to keep clean. Jeffrey climbed back up to the top rung and reached for the burlap. The object was heavier than he expected. Seating himself in the opening between shop floor and attic, legs dangling, Jeffrey unwrapped the folds of burlap and was astonished to
find his mother’s Dell laptop. His first thought was, what idiot would store a computer in this heat? His second thought was, why would my father hide Mom’s computer?

  The sound of an engine alerted him to the approach of a vehicle. Good grief! It was his father’s Suburban. Hastily rewrapping the laptop, Jeffrey thrust it back into its niche and tumbled down the stairs. He ran into the house and met his sister in the kitchen, a look of dismay on her face.

  “It’s Daddy. I was about to leave.”

  “So, leave. It’ll take him a while to put his stuff away.”

  “Duh! He saw my car. I have to stay and talk to him now.”

  He understood what she was saying. She would be late to whatever it was she was skipping cheerleader practice to do. Mathew had parked in his usual place outside his shop, and the first thing he unloaded was the groceries to bring into the house. Janie worked Saturday mornings. He would know not to expect her. The teenagers greeted their father warily. We sound guilty of something, Jeffrey thought. Striving to seem natural, he offered to pour his father some tea. Mathew had noticed Sara’s outfit, her makeup, probably the reek of her perfume. He pulled out a chair and said that he would like some tea. Sara, taking a cue from her brother, said there was still some banana pudding left. She dished some up and set it in front of him.

  “Are you going somewhere?” he asked her.

  “Just practice.”

  Lying to him about school activities was risky. He was a teacher, after all. He seemed about to say something, but didn’t. Jeffrey didn’t ask about his mother’s laptop.

  *****

  Guy Pettibone was restless. His visitor was late. He drew aside the tiny curtain that covered the window over the miniature sink of his RV to a bleak view of junked cars, piled three deep, an effective screen from the highway. His customers probably didn’t realize that he lived on the premises. Life had taught Guy to dispense information grudgingly. The less the other guy knew about you, the less he could use it against you. The auto salvager, from whom he rented his garage, allowed him to park his RV here for free in exchange for keeping an eye on the yard at night.

  It was no ordinary visitor Guy had let in on this secret, his handy little bedroom steps away from his business. This visitor was dynamite, nitro. Handled the wrong way and this little package could blow up everything. He could wind up in the pen again. Not that he wasn’t used to trouble. Trouble dogged Guy’s heels, rarely letting him stay longer than a year or two in any one place. He had learned to stay nimble, pack up at the first scent of trouble. He should’ve been gone already. He knew she was going to be trouble, but he couldn’t help himself. She was just so darn sweet and fresh, young. He let go the curtain and opened the tiny fridge below it, wanting a beer. No. Not now. No beer on his breath.

  Restless, he slid into the U-shaped eating area, a place that transformed into a bed by folding the table down, then sliding the cushions across to make a mattress. He took out a cigarette and then put that away too. Damn! He wanted something, had a craving for something. Food, drink, sex. He felt restless and at the same time, trapped.

  Why trapped? There was nothing to stop him leaving right this minute. He could pack his tools, hitch up the RV, be out of there in under an hour. Be driving through West Texas this time tomorrow, Arizona the next day. Set up shop somewhere, do it all over again. He wasn’t attached to places. He didn’t belong anywhere, or to anyone. Women and cars drifted in and out of his life. Sometimes a woman started taking ownership, thinking she was owed something, a future. The weight of that expectation was like drowning in sludge. He would suddenly remember a brother he had in another state who wanted him to come work for him. He might carry away a little regret, a few memories, but that woman, like all the others, would melt into a formless perception of a distant past. Cars were even easier to get rid of. Fix ‘em up, sell ‘em. They paid his way.

  But this gig in Johns Valley had turned out different from all the others. He didn’t want to pick up and leave this one. His predecessor, felled by a stroke, had turned over a thriving business to him, more customers than he could handle, more money than he had time to spend. What a hoot to be so damn popular that you could roll along High Street in a friggin’ parade and get applauded for it!

  And there were the women. God, the women! Other men’s women. Older women. Hot young women. And suddenly there was only one. Whoever thought it would happen to him? Here he was, sitting here like a friggin’ wounded deer waiting for the coup de grace. He would pace the floor if there was more of it. He checked his phone again and moved back to the window to tease out an extra bar of reception. Here, behind the iron curtain of junked automobiles, service was spotty. The crumpled cars radiated a fierce heat. He would have to take another shower if he kept sweating like this. The air-conditioner on top of the RV roared like a dragster about to rip from the starting line. You couldn’t hear or see anything going on outside. But turn the damn thing off and the metal box turned into a furnace.

  Pivoting, Guy stepped into the abbreviated bathroom and checked his hair. Almost dry. He took a close look at his teeth and decided he needed a slug of blue mouthwash. He didn’t look 34. Did he? Since he had made his hair black this time, he had made up a past that included coming from Louisiana. Shaved seven years off his age too. He could pass for 27. He had picked the name Guy Pettibone off a billboard on I-40, a State Farm agent or something. Sounded coonass, and the initials matched his real name.

  If you didn’t tell a woman too much, she tended to fill in the blanks with what she wanted to believe. You didn’t have to lie, really, just agree with her. He never made the first move on a woman. Didn’t have to. Something about the pheromones, one of them had told him once. She loved how he smelled, she said. He pulled his T-shirt away from his body and took a whiff. No amount of perfumed shampoo could ever entirely rid his pores of their automotive association. But women didn’t seem to mind. That Rexie called it an aphrodisiac, his smell. Man, that woman could do things with her legs!

  Was that a car turning in? Damned air-conditioner. He reached up and switched it off so he could hear. VW. He knew car engines, every make and model. With as much dread as relief, he opened the door of the RV and a small blond female flung herself into his arms.

  “Jesus Christ, Sara. I thought you weren’t going to make it.”

  “Daddy came home.”

  *****

  Janie Calender gave Claire Holmes’s open door a courtesy rap before entering and dropping into the chair opposite, notepad and pen at the ready. Saturday may have been a day of leisure for most people, but it was a busy half-day that often ran long for the pastor and church secretary. This particular Saturday in the month was the day they set aside to go over the books.

  “How’s the sermon going? Do you want me to come back another time?” Janie said.

  “No, no, this is fine. I need a break.” Claire Holmes took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She looked tired. She put the glasses back on and picked up a handwritten list. “Okay, first off, how many mouths are we feeding at the Little Rays banquet?”

  “We’ve sold two hundred and fifty—hmmm—two tickets.” Janie looked down at her own list. “Oh, no, strike that. Two hundred and fifty-one. Eula Wyckham won’t be using hers.”

  “Poor lady. I wish I had gotten by for a home visit. She was on my schedule for August. I understand you were related to her somehow, that she left you property?”

  “Came as a complete surprise to me. Betty Blanton said she didn’t have any relatives. I stayed with her for a while when I was a kid in high school. I feel guilty now for not keeping up the relationship, but you know how thoughtless kids can be. We got reacquainted when she started coming to church. And now she’s left me her house. I still can’t believe it!”

  “No one deserves it more than you, Janie. You do so much for this community, and you don’t get paid for half you do. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

  “Aren’t you sweet! I would do it even if
I didn’t get paid.”

  “Well, I intend to ask the board to come up with a little something more in next year’s budget, and I mean that.”

  Janie reached in her pocket and pulled out a tissue to dab her eyes. “Now don’t make me cry.”

  “She must have been close to retirement age,” Claire Holmes reflected, returning to the subject of Eula Wyckham. “She was reaching out to a church family, Janie.”

  “I had the exact same thought, Claire.”

  “Such a strange, sad, almost embarrassing way to die. Attacked in the library by some hoodlum or homeless person.”

  “Just horrible,” Janie agreed. “I was in the library that day myself, making copies.”

  “Good grief! And you didn’t see anything?”

  “Well, I was just at the copy machine out front. The place was packed. I remember seeing several people, Mr. Weathers, Patrick Allen Childers… ”

  “I heard the killer escaped through the back door.”

  Janie shuddered delicately. “I didn’t know they had a back door to that building. I’ve felt creepy all week thinking about how many times I’ve been working here alone with our back door unlocked.”

  “Oh, goodness! Please don’t do that anymore.”

  “Believe me, I won’t.”

  “I’m sure DeWayne Ratliff will make an arrest soon. It can’t be easy to kill someone in a public place, with so many people around, and get away with it. Surely someone saw something. I notice there was an appeal in the Johns Valley Sun this week, asking for anyone with information to come forward.”

  “I’m afraid the only thing on my mind that day was who I might’ve missed selling a ticket to.” Janie signaled a change of subject with a bright smile. “So. Ready to go over those invoices?”

  “Just a couple of items I wanted to ask about. This one, for instance. Four-seventy-nine-forty? I don’t think I’ve noticed that on our expenses before.”