A Likely Story: A Library Lover's Mystery

by Jenn McKinlay

“What do you mean?” Kirkland asked.

  “Emma said that when the investigation team went through the house, they disabled everything,” he said. “There is no way they would have missed this.”

  “So Stewart came back,” Lindsey said. She glanced around, hoping to see her wily friend.

  “Maybe, or whoever murdered Peter, assuming it wasn’t Stewart, came back and set this up, possibly to kill Stewart,” Sully said.

  All three of them were silent as they thought over this information.

  “Can we just step over the wire?” Kirkland asked.

  “I’m checking,” Sully said. “I’d rather cut it to be on the safe side, but I want to be sure there aren’t any other nasty surprises attached to it.”

  Lindsey held her breath as he checked out the invisible fishing line that was strung just a few inches above the floor from one side of the door to the other. When he rose to stand and took a step over the wire, she felt her whole body tense up.

  She pressed her fingers against her mouth to keep herself from shouting for him to stop and instead held her breath, knowing full well that it did nothing to help him, and yet she couldn’t seem to force herself to breathe. Not yet.

  Once he was on the other side, Sully crouched low and examined the line. He took a pocket knife out of his jacket pocket and opened up the scissors feature.

  “I want you two to back up and take cover just in case,” he said.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Kirkland said. “Can’t we just step over it like you did?”

  “We can’t risk forgetting about it and getting caught by it later,” Sully said.

  “Good point,” Kirkland said.

  He and Lindsey moved back the way they had come until Sully nodded. Lindsey noted that Kirkland blocked her with his body, which she thought was unnecessarily gallant of him and a little annoying since she was trying to see what Sully was doing.

  She heard Kirkland heave out a pent-up breath, and she figured Sully had just cut the wire. Nothing happened. No knives were launched at their heads, no fireballs flew at them. Instead it was eerily quiet.

  Kirkland rose, and Lindsey moved around him to see Sully. He met her gaze and pursed his lips as if to say phew. Lindsey felt her heart start beating again, and she sagged a little in relief.

  Creak.

  The noise came from directly above them and sounded just like a person stepping on a loose floorboard. Lindsey felt the back of her neck prickle with unease.

  “I’m thinking we have company,” Kirkland said, and he put his hand on his department-issued Glock.

  Lindsey glanced up at the ceiling. There was another creak, and this time it was followed by the sound of something being dragged across the floor. Uh-oh.

  Lindsey felt her heart leap up into her throat. At first, she was giddy, hoping it was Stewart, but then she remembered his boat hadn’t been at the dock. Either he was keeping the boat elsewhere or this wasn’t Stewart.

  She glanced at Sully. His head was cocked to the side as he listened. Kirkland looked about to say something, and Sully put up his index finger, indicating quiet for the moment.

  Kirkland nodded, and they all stood still, listening. There was another creak and then the heavy tread of what was most definitely a person stepping across the floor above them.

  “There’s definitely someone up there,” Kirkland said. He looked as if he was about to pull his piece out of its holster, but Sully put his hand on his arm, stopping him.

  “Wait,” he said. “We don’t want any accidents until we know for certain what we’re dealing with.”

  “But—” Kirkland began to protest, but Sully shook him off.

  “Trust me,” he said.

  Kirkland nodded and left his weapon on his hip.

  “We have to play this very smart,” Sully whispered. “We can’t go up the stairs because the path is so narrow with all of the stuff on the steps that if it is the person who murdered Peter, they’ll be able to pick us off from above as easy as one, two, three.”

  Lindsey did not love this description.

  “We need to draw them down here, then,” Kirkland said.

  “No.” Sully shook his head. “This is not someone who is going to join the party if he hears us down here. This is someone who is going to jump through a window to get away from us if need be.”

  “So, we’re just going to wait down here?” Kirkland sounded horrified by the idea.

  “Consider it a stakeout,” Sully said.

  Kirkland’s frown cleared up at that.

  “We’re going to need to spread out to cover the downstairs so that he doesn’t slip past us.”

  “What about Lindsey?” Kirkland asked. “She’s a civilian. I don’t feel right about putting her in harm’s way.”

  “She won’t be,” Sully said. He turned to look at Lindsey, who had opened her mouth to protest. “No. No arguing. You’re going to wait outside and act as a lookout.”

  “But—” Lindsey argued, but Sully shook her off.

  “Remember what happened to Emma,” he said.

  Lindsey blew out a breath. She would never forget finding Emma under that table or the pain the chief had been in when they had moved her downstairs. Bad pun or not, she knew she didn’t have a leg to stand on to argue her case with Sully.

  The sound of footsteps moving across the floor above caused the three of them to glance up as one. The sound of something heavy being dragged right over their heads made Lindsey freeze, and she noticed the others did, too.

  She wondered what could make such a noise, and then she felt her insides grow cold with the realization that it could be anything in this house, even a body.

  Sully put his finger to his lips and motioned for Kirkland and Lindsey to follow him. They wound their way back to the front door as silently as possible. When they got there, however, it looked different.

  It took Lindsey a second to realize that the door that they had found unlocked and had left open was now shut. Sully realized it, too, as he motioned for them to stop while he checked the door and the area around it for traps.

  The noise from above was fainter here, but Lindsey could still hear the occasional bang and thump. She kept glancing over her shoulder for fear that someone was about to spring out at her, but there was never anyone there.

  Satisfied that there was no trap, Sully reached forward and turned the knob on the door handle. It turned, but the door didn’t budge. He frowned and tried again. He put his weight into it, but it didn’t move. He crouched down to peer through the panel of the old window that had been covered with aluminum foil but that Lindsey had peeled back the last time they were here.

  He blew out a breath of exasperation. “It’s blocked. Someone blocked it with that old abandoned refrigerator out there.”

  Sully glanced over his shoulder at them, and Lindsey could see the truth of the situation in his eyes. They were locked in.

  A crash followed by muted cursing sounded, and Kirkland jumped. This time when he put his hand on his gun, Sully didn’t stop him.

  “He could be on his way down,” Kirkland said in a low voice. “We can’t linger here.”

  Sully nodded. He scanned the area and took Lindsey’s hand in his. He wedged her into a tiny space beside a coatrack that was buried beneath a pile of coats and scarves and carried the pungent odor of the inside of a barn.

  “You’re the last line of defense,” he said. “If he gets past Kirkland and me, I’d like for you to use your phone to call the police and not try to take him out yourself.”

  Lindsey nodded, and Sully gave her a dubious look. “You’ve been very lucky in the past with some of the unsavory characters you’ve run into, but remember that this person murdered a man in a wheelchair. That takes a special kind of sociopath, don’t you think?”

  Lindsey shivered. Sully was right.
Whoever murdered Peter Rosen had no conscience at all. They had likely killed Stewart as well, and now the three of them were trapped in this house with the killer. She could feel her brain spasm with hysterics. She shook her head. Panicking never helped.

  “It might not be the killer,” she whispered. Sully looked at her. “But I’ll behave as if we know for sure that it is.”

  “Good call,” he said.

  He squeezed her hands and stepped back, scrutinizing her spot and rearranging the coats until he was satisfied.

  Another thump sounded from above, and Kirkland gave Sully a worried look. They moved out of Lindsey’s sight, so she leaned back against the wall until she could peek through the coats at what they were doing.

  Sully stationed Kirkland just behind the entrance to the sitting room, which was to the left of the stairs and was full of clocks. Kirkland was too big to really be hidden. His crop of fiery red hair was visible as were his knees and elbows.

  “Wait here,” Sully said to Kirkland. “Remember, we aren’t going to do anything until he is all the way down the stairs.”

  Kirkland nodded and leaned back into the shadows as best he could behind a towering pile of encyclopedias.

  It was then that Sully disappeared from view and Lindsey felt her heart clutch in her chest. She didn’t like not being able to see him. She wanted to pop out from her spot just to see where he was, but she didn’t want to do anything that might put them all in jeopardy.

  The sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor above her sounded, and she felt her nerves stretch to the point of breaking. There was another thump and a crash, and she wondered what was happening up there.

  Had the killer caught Stewart? Was he tied up right above them, pleading for his life while they hid down here waiting for some indication of what was happening?

  She felt sick to her stomach, and the terror that clawed at her insides wasn’t helping. It was taking every bit of her self-control to stay in place and not bolt up the stairs and confront the killer.

  And then she heard it, a heavy footfall on the top step. She was pretty sure her heart stopped in her chest as she waited for the sound of the next step. Thump. There it was. She wondered if Sully and Kirkland had heard it, too. She was sure they must have.

  She waited for the sound of the killer making his way down the stairs, but there was nothing but silence. Had he seen Kirkland’s hair? Or Sully? Where was Sully? Had he harmed them? Were they in trouble even now while she hid?

  Lindsey wanted to peek, but she didn’t dare. Sully said she was the last line of defense. She couldn’t jump out and ruin their stakeout. Not yet.

  The silence felt as if it were being stretched taut like a string about to snap. Then again, maybe it was just her nerves.

  She jumped when another thump sounded on the stairs. What could the person be doing that would make such a noise?

  Lindsey fisted the fabric of her jacket in her hands. The image of the killer dragging Stewart’s limp body down the stairs popped into her head, and she felt her heart thump hard in her chest. She felt dizzy and weak and realized she had stopped breathing. She forced a tiny breath into her lungs to keep from passing out.

  There was another bump and then a shout. It sounded like Officer Kirkland. There was a yelp and a crash and the sound of footsteps pounding the floor going in the opposite direction. Lindsey shifted on her feet, torn between leaping out to find out what was happening and staying put to be the backup she was supposed to be.

  “Damn it!” That was Sully’s voice. “He’s getting away!”

  “Sorry!” Kirkland yelled. “I thought I had him.”

  “Go that way,” Sully ordered. “I’ll go this way, but look out for traps. Be wary.”

  “Roger that,” Kirkland answered.

  “Lindsey, stay put. Do not move,” Sully hissed.

  “Okay,” she whispered back.

  She heard the two men move away from her and wondered in which direction the killer had gone. Not back upstairs, since neither of them went that way.

  Lindsey frowned. It seemed to her that the killer could double back and hurry up the stairs to hide or escape. She leaned forward and tried to see the staircase. She couldn’t see it from her spot. She crouched low, hoping that would give her a better angle. No luck.

  It occurred to her that it was useless to be the last line of defense in front of a door that the killer wasn’t going to use because it had been blocked, undoubtedly by him. Clearly he knew it wasn’t viable. The only spot in the area that needed watching was the stairs.

  She knew Sully was going to be mad. But it wasn’t her fault that he had raced off without thinking things through. The staircase was what they should be monitoring, and she couldn’t do it from behind all of this junk.

  There was only one thing to do. She stepped out from the pile of coats, keeping low to the floor, and scurried toward the stairs. She heard a crash from the kitchen and almost crab-walked back to her hidey-hole, but instead she lurched forward until she was on the bottom step. She tried to climb the steps quietly, but the hard heels of her shoes knocked on the wooden steps with sharp raps.

  She inched her way up the first three steps but then darted up the stairs until she was halfway up and hidden in the shadows. She perched on the step, fretting over what could have made the crashing noise from the kitchen. Had Sully or Kirkland gotten caught in a trap? Or had the killer gotten them?

  She wanted to dart down the steps to investigate, but she hadn’t heard a cry for help. Surely, if one of them had been injured, they would have shouted for help. She rocked back and forth and hugged her knees while keeping her gaze on the doorways below.

  She didn’t know what she would do if she saw the perpetrator. Scream, most likely. Maybe throw some stuff at him. She wondered if he was carrying a weapon. She glanced around her at the piles of rubbish. Yeah, this was not going to be a fair fight.

  Lindsey listened for any sound of movement downstairs. There was nothing. She couldn’t hear Sully or Kirkland moving through the house. She strained her ears, trying to pick up the sound of a step, the creak of a floorboard, the whoosh of a door opening. There was nothing. It was as if the house was empty of any living being except her. Lindsey shivered.

  From her vantage point on the steps, she scanned the piles of junk and garbage that filled the room below her. The hair on the back of her neck prickled, and she could swear that someone was watching her. Her head darted from side to side, looking for a person, but the junk below made it impossible to pick anyone out in the shadows.

  She fought the panic that clawed at her insides. There was no one there. There couldn’t be. Sully and Kirkland were too big for the killer to have gotten by. Unless that crash in the kitchen had been the killer taking out one of the men or maybe both.

  Her hands began to shake as fear took hold of her extremities and slowly worked its way up her skin like frost growing on a windowpane. She would not be a victim. She would fight back.

  She scanned the stuff crammed along the side of the steps for a weapon. She had seen an assortment of old golf putters out on the porch, but she had no way of getting one. No, it had to be something within reach.

  She flipped open the top of the cardboard box beside her. A plume of dust rose up in the air, forcing her to turn away, but not before the musty, moldy cloud flew up her nose, making her want to sneeze. She fought the urge, not wanting to make any noise and give away her position.

  She tucked her face into her elbow and looked inside the box. A pile of rusted old door hinges filled the box to the top. She reached in and quietly withdrew one. It was gritty to the touch and heavier than she’d thought. Cast iron and shaped like a fleur-de-lis, it had some heft and a nice sharp point.

  Lindsey figured she could either conk someone on the head with it, or, if required, she would stab them with the business end. It
wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

  She held it in front of her, bracing for the killer to run up the stairs at her. But the distinct sound of heavy breathing didn’t come from in front of her, it came from behind. It only took her a second, but Lindsey knew with the crystalline clarity born from sheer terror that Peter’s killer was standing right behind her.

  For a nanosecond Lindsey considered not moving, as if she could blend into the piles of garbage like a mannequin or a statue if she just didn’t move. Fortunately, her fight-or-flight response kicked in, overriding her temporary paralysis, and she jumped up from her position with a yell, spun around and hurled the door hinge at the person behind her.

  It struck true, and the person yelped and then cursed, but Lindsey was already scrabbling down the stairs away from him. She tripped on a box of books, but even the sight of their leather bindings and gilded pages did not give her pause.

  She dashed through the narrow pathway that cut across the next room. Her breathing was ragged, and her heart was pounding. She didn’t think to slow down for any traps but rather fled like a runaway, knocking bags of clothes over in her wake to keep the stranger from pursuing her.

  It didn’t work. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw a man in a dark gray puffy jacket with the hood up over his head chasing after her. He leapt over the books and clothes without difficulty.

  He was gaining on her. Lindsey turned up her speed and didn’t even pause when she launched herself through the doorway into the next room. If there was a trap, she was hoping that by jumping through the middle of the doorway, she would avoid triggering it.

  She slammed into a pile of picture frames. They were big and wooden, and one of her legs got wedged in the middle of them. She heard the man behind her. He had stopped at the doorway and was clearly checking for a trap before he came through. It bought Lindsey just a second. She glanced at the path ahead, knowing he would be right behind her, and then she glanced down at where her leg was stuck.

  It was a long shot, but she thought that the frames might form a cubby that would hide her away from the killer. She didn’t overthink it but let her instincts take over. She ducked down into the old frames. The cramped space smelled of mildew and rotten wood, but she didn’t care. She got her foot free and wiggled her way backward. In a matter of feet, the light disappeared completely, and she had to use her hands to feel her way.