Death In The Stacks: An Elinor & Dot library mystery

by Linda S. Bingham

  “I like where I live now. It only seemed isolated and overly large the day I drove home from finding a body in the stacks.”

  “I was pretty shook up, too.”

  “Nobody missed her, Dot. Nobody reported she hadn’t turned up in her usual places. If she hadn’t died, she would’ve driven out to Guy’s Garage…” Elinor paused. “What then, Dot? You’re always dropping your car off out there. How do you get home?”

  “I usually have someone follow me. I asked you to do it once, remember?”

  “I was taking Rusty to the vet that day.”

  “And it was hot as Hades, just like today. You rolled the backseat window down so he could hang his big furry face out in the wind.”

  “He used to sit in the seat beside me when I took him anywhere, sitting up so smart and interested in everything. I miss him, Dot. Poor fellow. But he had a good life. Probably up in his eighties in dog years. Maybe I’ll muster the gumption to tell Kate I don’t really want a new house.”

  *****

  The prank Buck Weathers had pulled on his soon-to-be-ex-wife Judith gave him enormous satisfaction. She had it coming, trying to nail his hide to the barn door, forcing him to largely undo half a century of land deals his father had made. He had dreamed up the ploy the day he realized that Judith was following him, trying to catch him with a woman. Well, by damn, he would lead her to a woman!

  As a resident of Kiamichi Lodge, Buck knew that Rexie Roberts gave massages downstairs in the spa. He had seen her little yellow car parked near the spa entrance. It didn’t take a genius to lay a trail of breadcrumbs to that car and to Rexie, whom Judith was inclined to suspect anyway because of that time he had her come to the house while Judith was away. Sure, hanky-panky was on his mind, but Rexie had proved to be curtly business-like and told him not to call her any more when his wife wasn’t there. He’d have to make it up to her somehow, maybe forgive that debt on the lot she had bought from him.

  Although Buck had won this round, life had taught him to distrust fun that came at another’s expense, even if that someone had cost him the family farm. He had always loved a good joke, early in life practicing startlement on barnyard cats, graduating to tormenting his older sister till she threatened to brain him with her twirling baton.

  Young Buck had reached the eighth grade as ready for a good prank as the next boy. The Weathers weren’t wealthy back then. In fact, like all families who make their living off the land, they worked hard, and even the kids had chores. Still, they were better off than many of their neighbors, considerably better off than some. His bus route ran through a remote valley where shivering kids waited in the cold and dark to be transported not only into town, but into a new century. There were kids in Buck’s class who smelled bad in winter because indoor plumbing was non-existent in their home, or so shoddy it froze up in winter. Once, a teacher had made a kid move away from the floor register because he was stinking up the whole classroom. But the Weathers had instilled in their kids the notion that it was unchristian to draw attention to how much better off you were than other people, bad manners to point out when you got something new.

  Besides a bent for mischief, Buck had another weakness. He loved fine boots and was particularly proud of a pair of Luccheses he got in Fort Worth when his dad took him to the stock show. He had a right to be proud of those boots. He had earned the money himself. In shop class he made a boot rack that would hold a dozen pairs, and he bragged to his sister that he would own a hundred pairs someday. She said that a person could only wear one pair at a time.

  One day Buck and his best buddy John Beaver succumbed to an adolescent compulsion to pull an elaborate prank. Leaving shop class with a can of fast-drying adhesive, they skipped their next class and snuck into the boy’s locker room where they proceeded to glue every shoe to the floor. They were just sorry they couldn’t be there to see boys trying to walk away in those shoes. It would be hilarious!

  Only, it wasn’t. One of their victims got on the bus that evening with his sole flapping. He had ripped his shoe apart trying to free it. Everybody on the bus laughed, but Buck could see that the kid, one of the poor kids who lived back in the valley, didn’t think it was funny at all. Probably the only pair of street shoes the boy owned, and Buck had ruined them. When he and his sister got off at their stop, he let her get way ahead of him while he replayed the scene in the locker room as he and John Beaver, suppressing giggles and working fast, smeared industrial strength glue on the soles of their classmates’ shoes. The locker room reeked with the fumes. How had they not seen the consequences of their act?

  When Buck got home, his mother looked up from the ironing board and didn’t say anything. It crossed his mind that she might’ve heard something. He went to his room and sat down on the bed. His face felt hot and red. He couldn’t stand how squirmy he felt inside. Even if he and John Beaver got away with it, he would have to see that kid tomorrow in patched shoes. Or maybe the kid wouldn’t get on the bus at all. Maybe Buck had ended that boy’s education. He heaved a sigh. There was only one thing to do. He opened his closet and took down the Luccheses from their place of honor and went outside to find his father.

  “Daddy, I did something bad today and now I gotta pay for it.”

  His father was watching a colt cavort around its mother in the paddock. He reached in his shirt pocket for a cigarette and got it going, blew out a thin spiral of smoke. That was his way of giving himself time to think, to weigh the consequences of words before he spoke them. There was so much Buck had to learn.

  “Well, son, I was hoping you would own up to it. Are you sure you want to make things right with that pair?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s gotta be these.”

  “Get in the truck. I’ll run you up there.”

  And so he handed over the beautiful pair of boots to the kid who might’ve owned just one pair of shoes to his name and told to make them last. There were other penalties—school-related—but none hurt as bad as seeing that kid in his ripped shoes. With his finest pair gone, the boot collection lost its importance in Buck’s life. His feet grew anyway. And his sister was right. You could only wear one pair of boots at a time.

  Today, Buck Weathers owned two pairs of handmade Texas boots. Beautiful things, both. He loved the smell of leather when he pulled them off his feet. Every few years one of them needed a new half-sole. He got ‘em polished every time he had to fly, which wasn’t often. But when he did, when he was sitting up high there in the airport watching an old black man polish his boots, he thought about those Luccheses and the lesson they imparted.

  “Worth every penny I paid for them,” he said.

  “I never heard that story before,” Betty Blanton said softly. “I always wondered why you wore the same two pairs of boots all the time.”

  “Well, now you know.” He gave her a kiss. “Come on, old lady. Let’s go eat something. We can do that, can’t we?”

  “No way, Buck. This thing could still backfire on us.”

  “Ah, live a little, Betsy.”

  “You go on. I’ll meet you up at the place this evening. I don’t have anything on my calendar in the morning. We might sleep in.”

  *****

  “It a nice house, Kate. I love what they’ve done in the backyard.”

  “You would be so close to town, Aunt Elinor. You could even walk to the library—if it wasn’t a hundred degrees outside. Updated kitchen and bath.”

  “How’s the little house working out in your backyard? Does Enid play in it?”

  Kate grimaced. “As I said, it’s a hundred degrees outside. I can hardly wait for school to start. I can’t get the kids to spend five minutes outdoors. Besides, it’s such an eyesore. I’m just waiting for a decent interval before I ask Shelby to get rid of it.”

  “Is Stevie, er, Steve, still planning to take shop class this year?”

  “As far as I know. Why? Are you thinking about Mathew Calender?”

  “Have you heard anything?”

&nbs
p; “You mean, like, how are the Calenders coping with the fact that their sixteen-year-old’s been carrying on with a pedophile and a murderer behind their backs? I’ll tell you what people are talking about. They’re wondering where those parents were all this time. How could Janie miss something like that? Didn’t she notice anything going on with her teenager?”

  “Dot and I saw Janie up at the casino the day you listed Eula Wyckham’s house.”

  “You’re kidding. What’s a big church lady like her doing in a casino?”

  “Appeared to be working over one of those slot machines.”

  “I just don’t get the fun of seeing if a bunch of fruit lines up. There must be plenty of people who do, though. Casinos keep popping up all over the place. Probably masses of penitents warming church pews on Sunday morning.” Kate giggled at her bon mot and walked into the master bedroom. “New carpet throughout. Would’ve been nice if they’d put in hardwoods.” She walked over and flicked open the drapes. “And these will have to go. What were you and Dot doing up there?”

  “Treating ourselves to dinner.”

  “Shelby says the prices in that restaurant are higher than a cat’s back.”

  “Tuh, Kate.”

  “Not that I’m likely to find out for myself, not till we’ve got three kids raised. So, is this a possibility or not? I have two others to show you.”

  “Kate, dear… ”

  “I know what you’re going to say! You’re not really interested in a new house, are you? It’s not just a sale for me, you know. I worry about you out there in the country so far from town.”

  “I’ll need to move by and by, but not just yet. I still enjoy my big roomy farmhouse, the peach trees, my nice screened porch. It was just the shock of finding that poor woman dead in the library.”

  “Now that we’re getting honest, did you learn anything about Eula Wyckham from seeing her house?”

  “I’m sorry for the subterfuge, Kate dear, but if we hadn’t gotten in, Dot wouldn’t have found the power cord to her laptop. That’s what it took to convince DeWayne she owned a computer.”

  “You think there was something on that computer that led to her death?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? Dot and I did a little genealogy research ourselves this afternoon, but the Wyckham family tree wasn’t very… well, fruitful.”

  “Betty Blanton said that Janie’s mother was one of Nurse Wyckham’s patients.”

  “What was her illness?”

  “She wouldn’t say. Client confidentiality.”

  “You must have been a classmate of Janie’s. What was her maiden name?”

  “Pritchett, Puckett, something like that. She was a few grades ahead of me. They moved here when she was already in high school. I do know one thing. Her father was a surveyor. Dad had him survey that piece of land he sold to Winfield Weathers. He was going to make a killing on that sale.” Kate scoffed.

  “My brother and his deals,” Elinor agreed. Kate’s father was Elinor’s much-younger brother, Gerald. Elinor tended to hear from him in the first flush of fervor over some scheme guaranteed to make them all fabulously wealthy.

  “The reason I remember,” Kate said, “is that Dad was unhappy with the survey, claimed that Mr. Pritchett or Puckett was too drunk to sight a transit.”

  “Gerald should know. He had his own issues with strong drink, which is the reason you came to live with me,” Elinor reminded her niece.

  “And that might also be the reason Janie Calender ended up living with Eula Wyckham. I tried to get her to talk about that, but she was more interested in selling me tickets to the Little Rays of Sunshine banquet. Talk about a promoter! She could teach Dad a thing or two. I ended up buying two tickets even though Shelby’s speaking to the Elks tomorrow night.”

  “They always hit us up at library. Dot’s strategy is to suddenly get interested in shelving books. I reserved a ticket and was thinking I might actually go, but if you need a baby-sitter…”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got it covered—a teenage girl mature enough, I hope, to handle any unwanted attentions from our suddenly hormonal eldest son. This whole business about Guy Pettibone has made me nervous. By the way, Janie Calender may be all churchy and respectable now, but she had her own little sex scandal back in high school. Maybe you had moved to Houston by then.”

  Elinor paused in the doorway. “An affair? With whom?”

  “With Mathew Calender.”

  “What was scandalous about that? She married him, they have two kids, and are living together still.”

  “He was her teacher. If it happened today, Mathew Calender would be terminated on the spot and probably arrested.”

  “Shop class?”

  “No. Government or Oklahoma history. You know how they give coaches and industrial arts teachers an academic course to teach.”

  “So the daughter’s sin is hardly original. Have they found out what Guy Pettibone’s real name is?”

  “Why, Aunt Elinor, you must be slipping. I was sure that’s why you agreed to look at a house you have no interest in buying. It’s Gary Pierce.”

  “He must’ve chosen the name based on its initials. Is he trying to hide a criminal record?”

  “He served time for being involved in something called a ‘chop shop.’ Apparently our local mechanic is very handy at cutting things up.”

  Chapter 7

  Thursday, July 13

  In spite of the crisis in her family, Janie Calender had shown up for work, evoking amazement and pity from the women on the Little Rays committee and from her boss, Claire Holmes. She couldn’t stay home, Janie told them, not with the biggest fundraiser of the year taking place in their fellowship hall that evening. She was made of sterner stuff than to leave final preparations to others. She had been working on this event all year.

  Still, by early afternoon, the church secretary had come down with a migraine that threatened to send her to the emergency room. It was an astonishing admission. Claire had never known Janie to miss a day’s work in the four years she had been pastor at New Community.

  “Go home and take care of yourself, my dear,” Claire urged her. “You’ve done quite enough for this event. We can take it from here.”

  The arrest of their daughter had brought about a subtle shift in the dynamics of the Calender family. The façades of the vivacious and socially competent members, mother and daughter, had crumbled, exposing weakness. Sara, rather than heading into her senior year as a member of an elite female cadre—a cheerleader—would face her peers that fall as a girl whose summer activities had included quite a bit more than learning new cheers. For her mother, the public humiliation could not have been more devastating. Anyone who had ever praised Janie’s competence as a family manager was surely having second thoughts now.

  On the upswing was the stock of the two stoic Calender males, at least the father’s. (Jeffrey was still waiting for someone to explain why it was illegal to be naked in a junkyard.) Mathew had come into his own as a father. Never could Janie have imagined the effect it would have on her strong silent husband to hear that his daughter had been arrested. In the normal course of things, Mathew wouldn’t even have been home when Shelby Jacks came to the door to give them the news.

  It was always Janie who handled childhood emergencies, managed the family budget, made every decision about the children from the time they were born up to the moment of that knock on the door. Yet, without the slightest preparation for the role, Mathew Calender had gone to the kitchen and called the lawyer whose name appeared, fortuitously, on a card next to the phone. By the time Janie knew there was an emergency, her husband had already done what needed to be done. She was the one who lay now in a darkened room with a damp towel covering her face, waiting for relief from the pain behind her right eyeball.

  Mathew crept into the room to see how she was doing. “I’ll get up,” she murmured, trying to sit.

  “Don’t.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “I just came in to le
t you know I’m taking the kids to the banquet so they’ll get a good supper.”

  “I have to be there,” Janie insisted, trying to sit up. “Think how it will look.”

  “She has to face them sometime. Best do it now before school starts.” He patted her awkwardly. “I’m sorry.”

  His voice was so low she wasn’t sure she had heard right. She reached over and turned on the lamp, illuminating her own face, swollen from tears of pain. “Sorry for what?”

  “For not being here. You’ve had to do everything. You must think I’m a monster.”

  “I don’t think anything of the sort, Mathew. I know how you love that place up there. This doesn’t change anything. Girls will be girls. If you remember, I did much the same thing when I wasn’t much older than her.”

  “I’m going to do better, Janie. I’ll sell the cabin, spend more time at home. I’ll be a better father, a better husband.”

  Janie stared at him. “But… ”

  He stood up. Strong men do not argue. “I knew you would hear the car start and wonder about it.”

  “And she agreed to go?”

  “I didn’t give her a choice.”

  *****

  Judith Weathers had spent the day packing, getting ready for the moving van, preparing to leave the country estate that had once been featured in the pages of Sooner Country, a glossy magazine showcasing luxury homes, and, by inference, the lifestyle of the people who lived in them. She felt exhausted, spent, not so much from the physical effort—after all, an army of movers were coming in the morning to do the real packing—but from the delayed reckoning that only arrived with the signing of that document in Betty Blanton’s office.

  There is an awful finality to divorce and its related settlement, the part that had been the sticking point for so long. Now it was over. Her marriage was over. Her life, the one she had curated for herself, was over. She was no longer Mrs. Buck Weathers. Yes, those Weathers. She wondered if she had the vitality, the time, to reinvent herself. Who would she become? New owners would inhabit these rooms, admire the view that she, Judith, had framed. She wouldn’t even have a quaint little town, for how could she endure the fall from grace, the look she would see on every face? That Judith Weathers sure got what was coming to her.