Death In The Stacks: An Elinor & Dot library mystery

by Linda S. Bingham

A bullhorn carried a command through the aluminum skin of the RV. “OPEN THE DOOR SLOWLY. PUT YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEAD.”

  Sara started whimpering. “Are they going to shoot us? Is my mother with them?”

  “Hush up,” Guy said. “I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I can’t believe they’d come after me with guns.”

  “For what, Guy? What’d you do?”

  “Stayed too friggin’ long,” Guy said miserably.

  Sara gave up trying to find her clothes and braced for a hail of bullets as Guy eased the door open. He stood framed in the doorway, naked, hands on his head.

  “Oh, for crissake,” DeWayne Ratliff said. “Cover yourself, man. Stand down, team. You can see he’s unarmed. Step outside, Guy. Who’s that in there with you?”

  “A girl,” Guy said, complying. “She’s scared to death. Take me, but leave the kid alone.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Sara.”

  “Come on out, Sara, where we can see you,” DeWayne shouted.

  “No,” she wailed. “You’re going to shoot me.”

  By now two officers had Guy Pettibone handcuffed. “We ain’t shooting,” DeWayne called through the open door. “But you gotta come out here with your hands up so we can see you don’t have a weapon. Come on out, miss. Now!”

  Sara came to the door visibly shaking, a blue sheet draped around her.

  “Hey, ain’t that Mathew Calender’s little girl?” one of the officers said. “How old are you, kid?”

  “Ssssixteen.” In spite of the fierce heat radiating off the screen of crushed car bodies, Sara looked to be freezing to death.

  “Sixteen!” Guy echoed. “I thought you said you were almost eighteen.”

  “Don’t matter,” DeWayne Ratliff said. “Messin’ around with jailbait is the least of your crimes.”

  *****

  “I don’t see anything to suggest somebody used this computer for genealogy research,” Libby Jonson reported. She handed over a sheaf of closely-printed pages. “One user has a bad case of toenail fungus. Another wants to visit either Iceland or Costa Rica. And one inquisitive mind wants to know what Oprah eats for breakfast. Several patrons visited dating sites on the library computer, as opposed, I guess, to their own machine where a spouse might find out. You did say the victim had her own laptop.”

  “I helped her log-on to our wi-fi once,” Elinor said. “I couldn’t tell you what kind it was.”

  “A Dell,” Dot said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “The adaptor I left behind the chair in her living room had ‘Dell’ stamped right on it.”

  “Hmm. So we know what kind of laptop we’re looking for,” Elinor said.

  “Is it missing?” Libby asked.

  “It’s not at her house and it’s not…” She was on the point of saying it wasn’t in Eula Wyckham’s car either, but caught Dot’s warning look in time. “…it hasn’t turned up anywhere else.”

  “Maybe she took it in for repairs.”

  “Or maybe her killer took it.”

  “They’re expensive, but not worth going to the electric chair,” Libby said.

  Dot absent-mindedly corrected her. “Lethal injection. I wonder if DeWayne’s gotten anywhere with that appeal?” A front page article in the Johns Valley Sun that morning had urged anyone with information about the crime to come forward, anonymity guaranteed.

  Elinor, noticing the black-and-white pull up in front of the building, brightened. “Didn’t we just get in a new Patricia Cornwell? I think I’ll step over and see if DeWayne’s read it yet.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Dot cried. “We’re in the middle of something here.”

  But Elinor was already heading toward the foyer. DeWayne was friendlier when Shelby Jacks wasn’t around. Today, she caught him in a very good mood indeed.

  “Hey, there, Miz Woodward. A new Patricia Cornwell? Haven’t read that.”

  “You’ll be the first.”

  “Why, thank you for thinking of me. How’s things over in your department?”

  “We’re checking out more paperbacks than usual from the wire racks out front. Our patrons seem reluctant to go very deep in the stacks.”

  “Well, I expect things will get back to normal soon.” His expression told her that he was struggling to control exuberance.

  “Oh? How so? Has something happened?”

  “Let’s just say we’re making progress.”

  To get more out of him, she was going to have to give him something. “I noticed that Miss Wyckham had an appointment book in that bag we found.”

  DeWayne motioned for her to close the door and take a seat. She did so. He grinned at her. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask about that.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I think you know why. Martin Deaver was the last patient she called on, and of course, anybody conducting a murder investigation would want to talk to the last person who may have seen the victim. Imagine my surprise when it turned out that you and Miss Snoop had already been there and taken the man some grapes.”

  Elinor did not correct him to say that she and Dot got their information from a vial of blood left in Eula Wyckham’s car.

  “Your nephew-in-law wanted to run you in for interfering with a police investigation,” DeWayne added. “In fact, he was pretty hot about it, especially after Kate told him you went to see the dead woman’s house. But I said, Shelby, that’s fair game. Anybody can look at a house that’s for sale. I don’t think it would help his re-election efforts if he was to have his old auntie locked up.”

  “Thank you. I suppose.”

  “Too bad Shelby doesn’t read more crime novels.” DeWayne picked up the new Cornwell novel and turned it over to look at the jacket photo. “He could learn a thing or two from this lady.”

  “From Patricia Cornwell or any other able researcher,” Elinor said, “including a librarian.”

  DeWayne eased back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “What you got for me, Miz Woodward?”

  “Eula Wyckham had a favorite spot in the library, the carrel where she was killed. You recall that I told you she was doing genealogy research.”

  “Yup. I remember.”

  “Libby searched the browsing history of our #3 computer and discovered that no one has visited any of the more popular ancestry search sites in the last three weeks. Which reinforces my theory that Eula Wyckham was using her own laptop when she was killed.”

  DeWayne waved his hand impatiently. “Meaningless. There was no laptop in the library, her bag, her house, or in her car. Maybe she got rid of it.”

  Elinor handed over the cord Dot had taken from Eula Wyckham’s living room. “You’ll find the rest of it plugged in behind her easy chair. She must have powered it up at home, but she didn’t have Internet there. I think that whoever killed her took that laptop, and knowing what kind of information was on it might help identify her killer.”

  DeWayne shook his head, unbelieving. “Shelby was right. You did tamper with evidence. What am I going to do with you, Miz Woodward?”

  “You’re going to thank me, DeWayne. You had your chance at both crime scenes, the library carrel and the woman’s house, and you missed vital clues.”

  “Who missed vital clues?” he yelped. “You’re the one that hot-footed it up to the Deaver place and missed the one person with a full set of marbles. Old Lady Deaver said that Eula Wyckham was having car trouble and that she wanted to get the car into the shop before the Fourth of July holiday.”

  Elinor settled back in her chair, thinking. “Yet in spite of the urgency she stopped off at the library.” Suddenly Elinor realized why DeWayne was so cheerful. “You’ve arrested Guy Pettibone for killing Eula Wyckham!”

  “His name’s not Guy Pettibone—he got that off a State Farm agent in Arkansas. Guy Pettibone is the only one who knew where she would be. He came in that back door, killed the poor old lady, and would’ve gotten clean away with it if he ha
dn’t been tripped up by his alias. He must’ve taken her computer and car keys too, which is a laugh on us considering he’s the one we called to come tow that thing away.”

  “Dot will be heart-broken.”

  A commotion in the outer room drew their attention to the door, which seemed to implode, leaving Betty Blanton filling the opening.

  “My client wants to know where you’ve got his dad-burned kid, DeWayne.”

  Chapter 6

  Wednesday, July 12

  Two days had gone by since DeWayne Ratliff and what passed for a swat team in Johns Valley made an arrest in the murder of Eula Wyckham. A steady stream of curious citizens had made the pilgrimage out to the edge of town, necks craned, to catch a glimpse of people from the state forensics lab searching the sprawling Donahue Salvage Yard complex, which included Guy’s Garage, and, it was said, a secret love nest hidden behind the hundreds of junked cars.

  No one knew exactly what the forensics team hoped to find, but Kate had managed to worm a few details out of Shelby, which, in a clandestine phone call to her aunt the night before, she passed along. They were looking for a Dell laptop, she said, a box of latex gloves like the one found at the crime scene, and a knife that might be part of a set that included the thin-bladed murder weapon. Or anything else that would connect Guy Pettibone to his victim. Since Eula Wyckham was said to be studying up on genealogy, speculation was that she had either uncovered Guy Pettibone’s real name and past, or some kind of kinship with him.

  The arrest of a vicious killer, who happened to be their own friendly car guy, was gossip-worthy enough, but add in the salacious details of the bust, a naked sixteen-year-old whose mother was a church secretary and father a teacher at the school—! Well, Johns Valley had never seen anything like it.

  Elinor and Dot left Libby Jonson in charge of the circulation desk while they went up the street to have a bite at the Magnolia Café. Elinor ordered a roast beef sandwich, but Dot, claiming end-of-month poverty, carried her customary brown bag, which today yielded an egg salad sandwich and two knobby tomatoes from her backyard. She ordered iced tea because she had forgotten to grab her Thermos.

  It being Wednesday, the Rotarians were meeting in the banquet room beyond an accordion curtain, forcing the rest of the diners to scrunch up in the coffee shop. Elinor tutted when the rancher behind her jostled her elbow. She was already annoyed with him for trying to impress his table mates with his vast knowledge of the on-going murder investigation.

  “I knew there was something squirrely about that grease monkey,” he said.

  This time Elinor let rip a full-blown “harumph!” and turned in her chair to identify the mixer of metaphors. “I certainly never had him in my class,” she said to Dot.

  “Don’t look at me. I didn’t teach him numbers either.” Dot was still pretty depressed about Guy. “Guess we know who he was sweet-talkin’ that day I caught him on the phone.”

  “Pie’s on me,” Elinor declared. “I’ll have the lemon meringue. Chocolate for you?”

  “Okay,” Dot agreed.

  It was not to be, though. Their waitress, when they finally managed to catch her eye, told them in a rush of words that the Rotarians had cleaned them out of pie. Elinor picked up the tab for Dot’s tea instead. As they waited at the cash register for someone to take their money, the accordion curtain was thrown back and Rotarians spilled into the coffee shop.

  Patrick Allen Childers emerged, clicking away on his electronic device, even as he continued a conversation with a fellow diner. “I’m sure you’re right,” they heard him say. “Oh, hello, ladies. How are things at the library? Keeping that back door locked, are we?”

  “It’s a fire exit,” Elinor said tartly. “We would be in violation of safety regulations.”

  “Well, we can all breathe a little easier now that we’ve got the killer behind bars. And so can the fathers of high school girls,” he added under his breath. He was the father of a teenaged girl himself.

  The librarians had chosen to walk the three and a half blocks to the café rather than drive. Not only were the interiors of their cars hot enough to bake chicken, the Rotarians would have claimed all the parking spaces. They faced a scorching walk back to the library in the just-past-noon heat with few shady spots along the way. The mid-July sky was a pitiless blue. Elinor felt out of sorts, not only from the hot jostling crowd at the Magnolia and not getting pie, but also because the arrest of Guy Pettibone for the murder of Eula Wyckham was somehow deflating, a let-down. It all seemed too easy somehow, as if not enough thought had gone into it. DeWayne had always been guilty of lazy thinking.

  “You know, Dot,” she said. “I don’t know why we’re waiting for a forensic team to crawl through wrecked vehicles looking for a laptop when we could be doing our own genealogy research.”

  “Beg pardon?” Dot said. “You’re not making good sense, Elinor. Is it the heat?”

  “No. I mean, we could be doing genealogy research ourselves.”

  “What, you think you might have a famous relative?”

  “Not my family, Dot. Eula Wyckham’s family. We don’t have to find the actual computer she was doing her research on. We can duplicate her search on any computer. We’re librarians.”

  “You make us sound like superheroes with amazing powers,” Dot said.

  “We do have superpowers, Dot. We know how to look things up. DeWayne has very thin evidence against poor Guy Pettibone. Whatever the man is guilty of, I have the strongest doubt it will turn out to be murder. If he had killed Eula Wyckham, would he stick around waiting to be caught? He lived in an RV. He could’ve picked up and moved any time. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Flight usually indicates guilt,” Dot said.

  “Yes, I’m sure you’re right.” They walked for another block and stopped at the corner of High and Main to wait for the light. “Did you notice that Patrick Allen Childers uses that phrase to make people think he’s paying attention? That’s because he’s so busy thumbing away on his tiny computer he can’t be bothered forming a coherent response.”

  Dot was still thinking about Guy. “Besides, he probably didn’t want to leave Sweet Thang. Why do men like them so young?”

  “Of course, if we find a kinship between Guy and Eula Wyckham, I could change my mind.”

  “I don’t much care any more. I’m over him.”

  “I’m not interested myself in saving the neck of a man who seduced a teenaged girl—”

  “Ho! You don’t remember much about teenaged girls. I’ll bet you anything she went after him.”

  “I know girls that age can be very seductive, Dot. But a grown man should know better than fall for their wiles. The law is very clear about that. No, what I care about is that while the police focus on Guy Pettibone, or whatever his name is, they may be letting the real killer….”

  “Get away with murder?”

  “You know I hate clichés.”

  “I wonder what his real name is?” Dot mused. “And why did he pick the name of an actual person in a nearby state?”

  “Simple lack of imagination, probably. I doubt he expected anybody to check up on him, which is another reason to think he might be innocent. I wonder who did think to check up on him? My money’s on Patrick Allen Childers. He’s an insurance agent himself. Rexie Roberts told me that our mayor is a relentless consumer of tittle-tattle. No telling what kind of notes he keeps on that phone of his.”

  The pedestrian icon lit on the street opposite and Elinor took off, impatient to get back to the library.

  “Slow down, Elinor. You want to give us heat stroke?”

  *****

  “Wyckham, it’s English,” Dot said, looking over the top of her glasses at Elinor, who was scrutinizing her own screen.

  “Yes, that’s clear to see,” Elinor replied. “With a concentration of that name mostly in Canada. Here’s a reference to the name in Missouri. Let me see where that takes us.” After a bit of clicking and scrolling, she found Edna
Haggerty Wickham. “With an ‘i.’ Death notice from September, 1957. That wouldn’t be ours, then. But maybe it’s a relative.”

  “I wonder why Kate didn’t name her little girl ‘Elinor,’” Dot said. “Would’ve been a nice tribute to the aunt who raised her.”

  “Kate picked the name Enid long before she had a daughter. I always gave her books for Christmas, and she loved the Arthurian tales. The classical Enid, you know, was supposedly pure to the point of perfection, and for the most part, our darling little Enid has lived up to her name.”

  “She is a very nice child,” Dot granted. “Doesn’t squirm like some of them at Story Time.”

  “I suppose we could have trouble when she hits her teens.” She was thinking about what had happened in the Calender family, how next week Mathew Calender would have to show up with the rest of faculty to begin preparing for the fall semester. In Elinor’s day, children enjoyed their freedom till after Labor Day. Now classes were offered throughout the summer and the very idea of a three-month vacation was anachronistic. “Well, I don’t see anything particularly interesting about the Wyckham family tree,” Elinor concluded. “Somehow we’re not on the right trail.”

  “I don’t see much to get excited about,” Dot agreed. “Of course maybe she took it back several generations and found out she was related to ancient British royalty or some such.”

  “But how could something that happened that long ago end in our library the way it did? Dot, we have got to find that computer so we know what she was researching.”

  “At least you got DeWayne looking for it. Maybe the forensics team will find it stashed somewhere in those wrecked cars, although, I gotta tell you, I’m not rooting for them.”

  “Guy Pettibone didn’t make my heart go pitter-pat, but I must say he was a likeable fellow. I just hope the hard drive isn’t smashed.”

  “They say experts can get stuff off even a smashed computer.”

  “I’m surprised the state has invested in our little crime this much. I’ve got to leave shortly. Kate wants to show me that house over in Bois d’Arc.”

  “Fancy neighborhood! I’m sure you’ll find something you like.”