I stood very still, looking past Dave to the Thames. I could feel Caldwell watching me. Dave took another step closer. I thought of a fluffy white mattress floating down the river.
While I no longer wanted to kill Dave—and that felt very good—neither did I want to spend any more time in his company. I wanted to be with a man who loved books, and loved me loving books.
“I already threw the mattress away.”
A laugh barked out of Caldwell. “Karen,” he said.
I ran to him and stepped into his arms. The kiss that he gave me made up for absolutely everything bad in my whole entire life. And then some.
THIRTY-SIX
Double Decked
When Caldwell and I came up for air, we were all alone, standing on a lamplit street by the Thames.
He ran his fingers over my cheeks and said, “Sweet one, as I said before, let’s go home.”
“It’s sounding better and better.”
We strolled back toward the car, which we had parked in front of the pub. Caldwell linked his arm through mine and I thought of photographs of European couples walking like this, joined so tightly together there was no distance between their bodies as they moved.
Caldwell delivered me to my side of the car and, as he was opening the door, we both looked over and saw Dave standing across the street from the Holiday Inn.
He swayed slightly. His shoulders sagged like two sloppy bags of grain. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.
“Poor bloke,” Caldwell said.
“Yeah, he is.”
“He’s left with nothing.”
“He’s got his toilet,” I pointed out.
As we stood there watching, Dave glanced the wrong way, then stepped off the curb into the path of a red double-decker bus.
I’m sure he never knew what hit him.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Shelving and Drowning
Shelving books in the Sunshine Valley Library usually soothed my nerves. The task was so methodical and satisfying. Along the way, I would realphabetize the books that had gone astray. Creating order out of a muddle. How nice that there was a certain place, one place only, that a book should be in a library, and I was able to put it there.
While I had returned from England nearly a month ago, I had only been back at work for a couple weeks. As Rosie had warned, the pile on my desk was overwhelming. But everyone had been very kind to me.
Rosie stayed late two nights in a row to help me dig out from under. She even forgave me for calling her in the middle of the night. But then, Rosie was in a very good mood these days.
Today she had another date with Richard.
“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked as she pulled on her coat. “That I’m leaving early?”
“No. Can’t wait to meet him again.” I smiled at her, which made my cheeks feel tight and bulgy. She seemed not to notice how much work it was for me to put on a good face.
I watched her demeanor transform as Richard walked in the door. She blossomed like a flower.
Richard was roughly a foot taller than Rosie, but they probably weighed about the same. When he stood in front of her, he tapped her on the nose. She giggled. They were made for each other.
He nodded at me when we were introduced, but I could see he only had eyes for her. He called her “Bud.” Rosie had explained to me that it was short for Rosebud, his nickname for her. “He’s into old movies,” she had told me. As they left the library they didn’t hold hands, but bumped each other gently as they moved along, like cows walking sociably through a pasture.
I was happy for her, but seeing them together really made me feel like crawling onto a shelf and hiding. While I loved my work, I had tasted another life and I had liked it better.
The night that Dave had been killed by the bus was a blur, but a blur that I couldn’t see around. I had been put in charge of his body and made responsible for bringing it back to the States. Kirstin had showed up for a moment at his hotel room to get her bags, but afterward had disappeared for good.
Caldwell stood by me the whole time, but we had barely touched after our one big kiss. I just couldn’t. He seemed to respect that.
Dave’s death was all my fault. I had wanted him dead, I had wished him dead, and this wish had been granted. Now I had to live with it.
Because of me, Guy had met Kirstin. Because of me, Kirstin had left Dave. Then Dave had been so distracted he’d stepped into the path of a bus. Clearly, this, too, was all my fault.
There was a place for everything, and Dave’s death landed right plop on my doorstep.
I left England on the day I had planned to leave. Caldwell drove me to the airport, held me by the shoulders, gave me a gentle, undemanding kiss, and said good-bye. All I wanted to do was hold on tight to him and never let him go, but instead I boarded the plane. I flew back with a couple glasses of wine in me and Dave’s body keeping company with my luggage.
Caldwell said he would post all my books to me, but they hadn’t arrived yet. I kept waiting every day for them, wanting the small piece of England they would carry.
Once I was home, Caldwell called every few days, but I had little to say to him. He seemed so far away. I told him about the funeral. I told him about helping Dave’s brother empty out the apartment. I didn’t tell him about crying every day. I tried to be cheerful. I couldn’t help wondering what he must think of me, all my lies. He told me how Betty and Barb were getting on with the English penal system. It sounded like they were going to rule it accidental homicide and give them each a two-year sentence, but allow them to do community service. Since that was what their lives were anyway—helping others since they’d retired—it shouldn’t be hard on them.
I hoped Caldwell wasn’t calling just to be nice.
Hay-on-Wye seemed as if it existed in another sphere, another world that circled a different sun in a universe I would never be able to travel to again. Maybe that sounds a little melodramatic, but when I thought of the afternoon I had spent there, it seemed like a taste of paradise: miles of books, a perfect meal by a cozy fire, a man who understood me to my core and liked what he saw there.
I had fallen in deep love with Caldwell, slowly but surely as I had stayed with him, and had only really come to know it as my chance with him was being pulled away by Dave’s death. Instead of me taking revenge on Dave, he had done it to me.
A grayness descended upon me. It was only late September in Minnesota, but the days had already turned cold and dreary. The leaves fell without blooming into their usual fall colors.
And as if all of that wasn’t bad enough, two nights ago I’d managed to make things even worse.
I had had a few glasses of wine after dinner and decided to send Caldwell an e-mail. I should have known better; certainly the last time I did something spur-of-the-moment after a bit too much to drink, bad things had ensued. But I had only planned on sending him a short note.
However, when I sat down in front of the computer and placed my fingers on the keyboard, words poured out of me:
I miss you. I miss having breakfast with you. I miss your books and the clean sheets on the bed and the narrow streets of London. Something opened up in me when I was with you and I don’t want it to close again. I feel like I am drowning without you.
How are you? Do you miss me?
Then I signed it:
Your fellow bookaholic and loving friend, Karen
I sent it.
I hadn’t heard from him since. I shuddered when I thought of what I had done. What had I been thinking? What if he was never in touch with me again? How much more could I lose?
The library would only be open for another hour. I hated to think what I would do at home all by myself. I had thought of taking up knitting, but all I could think of was Madame LaFarge, who knit as the world caved in around her. I wasn’t quite ready to step into that role.
As I was putting away the last few books on the cart, James Patterson mysteries, a writer who had managed to turn
writing into a corporation, I heard footsteps behind me.
“Excuse me, might you have a copy of the Pickwick Papers?” a British male voice asked.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Back Garden, Backyard
I straightened up so fast that I nearly pitched forward. That voice was the dearest thing I had ever heard.
I spun around and there he stood.
Caldwell. Caldwell Perkins himself.
He was dressed as I remembered him—crackling waxed raincoat, tweed sports cap, Scottish wool scarf.
His eyes were as dear and droopy and brown as I remembered them. Two worlds were colliding in front of me, causing atoms of energy to sprinkle the room. How was it possible that he had materialized in front of me, here in the Sunshine Valley Library, in the United States of America?
“You’ve come,” I said, not trying to keep the joy out of my voice.
“I had to bring your books.”
“Yes, my books.” I dropped the two Pattersons I was carrying.
“You dropped those books,” he said, smiling.
“They’re not very good books.” I stepped over them.
“Have you almost finished work?” he asked.
“I’ll get my coat,” I said.
I left him standing at the checkout counter and got my coat and purse from my desk. When Nancy looked up, I simply said, “I’m leaving. My friend from England came to get me.”
She didn’t bother to remind me that I still had an hour left to work.
“How did you get here?” I asked.
Caldwell had a small suitcase and a big box on the floor next to him. “I took a cab.”
“You came right from the airport? Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?”
He leaned over to lift up the box and said quietly, “I was afraid you might tell me not to.”
“How could you think that?”
“Then I got your e-mail and I wanted to surprise you.”
“You did. Completely.”
We walked to my Toyota and put his luggage in the trunk. Caldwell took off his coat and set it on top of the box. I laughed to see this very British act in Minnesota.
“It’s not too cold,” he said.
“Not yet,” I said.
We got in the car and I started it. I couldn’t believe he was sitting next to me. Caldwell was in Minnesota. He had come to see me. I looked over at him. Was this what a prince looked like in middle age?
“Can I take you out to eat?” he asked.
“Not tonight. Let’s eat at my house. I can scrounge up something for us. Do you like leftover wild rice hot dish?”
“I’ve never tried it, but I like the sound of it. Wild rice. What makes it wild?”
“They beat it with paddles to harvest it.” I laughed again, this time a nervous laugh, because I didn’t know what to do with my hands; they just wanted to touch him. I wrapped them around the steering wheel and pushed on the gas. The car leaped forward down the street.
“Nice library,” Caldwell said.
“Yes, it’s one of the smaller ones, but cozy.”
“How long have you been there?”
“Years and years. The library is also one of the oldest. We even have a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary from the twenties, and I love those volumes so. I’ve told the staff that if there is ever a fire, they should each grab one on their way out the door.”
“My, I’d love an old set like that.”
My house was only 4.2 miles away from the library. As we drove along, I pointed out the Sunshine Valley water tower, the post office, Gearty Park, which was only a block from my house.
“In the winter, they make a rink and flood it and the kids play hockey,” I told him, pointing out the spot. “I can sit at my dining room table and watch them skate around in the dark.”
“Hockey? Do you skate?”
“Yes, but not very well. My ankles are weak. I have an old pair of skates.”
“Lovely,” he said.
“This is my house.” I parked in the driveway of my two-bedroom bungalow.
“Very nice. An entire house.”
“It’s not very big.”
“It’s practically a manor,” he teased.
I went around and opened the trunk.
“Should I bring my things in?” he asked.
“I think you had better.”
I grabbed the mail by the front door and let Caldwell into my house, glad that I had straightened it the night before—all the newspapers in the recycling, the dishes clean in the dishwasher.
“What a great house,” he said as he walked to my picture window and looked out over my flower garden.
“That’s my backyard,” I said. “With my flower garden. But I grow no foxglove so you needn’t worry.”
“Yes,” he said. “So this is what a backyard looks like. Very similar to a back garden.”
While I reheated the casserole and opened a bottle of red wine, he wandered around looking at my bookshelves, clucking and nodding as he went. Occasionally he’d pull out a book and cluck his tongue.
“You are an Anglophile, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Yup.”
“You sound more American than I remember.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Neither, just interesting. You must be a bit of a chameleon—blending in wherever you are.”
I poured us each a glass of wine and we sat down next to each other on my leather couch in the living room. We clinked glasses.
I said, “I can’t believe you’re here.”
At the same time he said, “I can’t believe I’m here. By the way, Twad and Tweed send their love.”
“Your cricket buddies. The ones who got me drunk my first night in London. Please give them my regards.”
We laughed nervously, then Caldwell grew serious and asked, “How are you, Karen?”
I thought for a moment, determined to try to explain clearly how I was, hoping he would understand. “I feel unreal. I can’t seem to be here, back home, but I know I’m not in England. It’s like I’m nowhere.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I can hardly think about what took place on my trip. When I went to England I was so angry with Dave, but I never really wanted anything bad to happen to him. Then I get back home and have to bury him. A few days later, I find out that he did leave me the royalties from the Flush Budget, like he said he would. Don’t you see? He wasn’t a total bad guy. It’s all my fault that he died.”
Caldwell carefully set his wineglass down and said in a very controlled manner, “You have got to stop.”
“But Dave would be alive if it weren’t—”
“That’s not the truth. Let me make it clear for you. He left you. He took Kirstin to London. He wouldn’t listen to you when you tried to warn him. He lost Kirstin to another man. And he walked in front of a bus—all by himself. Americans do that all the time in London—the left-right thing, you know. You didn’t leave him. You didn’t go off with another man. Yes, you got angry and let off steam about him to someone else, and that someone else just happened to be a policeman. Who, by the way, knew you were just letting off steam. And who stole the girl away when he got the chance. Then you had to cart your ex-boyfriend’s body back to the States and bury him. I would say you got the bad end of the bargain.”
“But I’m still alive.”
He reached out his hand and touched my shoulder. I could feel his hand through my blouse. A spot of warmth.
“I noticed,” he said.
The kitchen timer went off and I jumped up to get the casserole. “I’ll bring the food right in. You must be hungry after your long flight and all.”
Caldwell grabbed our wineglasses as I took the casserole out of the microwave. I burned my hand on the dish, then decided to give it a minute to cool off. That was when I noticed a letter on the pile of mail that was addressed in handwriting with the return address: KOHLER PLUMBING.
When I opened it, a check
for $107,000 fell out. I stared at the amount in amazement. The money from Kohler Plumbing represented the first six-month royalties for the Flush Budget. I’d had no idea that it would amount to this kind of money.
Caldwell was standing in the doorway. I let the check fall to the floor.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you are here,” I said. “I can’t stand not being with you.”
He took a step toward me. “I feel the same way.”
“I guess I have given you my heart,” I said.
He pulled me close. “Karen, my own librarian.”
I felt completely at home back in his arms. “I was thinking of starting a bookstore with Dave’s money. All I need are the books.”
“I just happen to have books galore. Might this bookshop be named the Karen Nash and Caldwell Perkins bookshop?”
When I tried to agree, he muffled my words by kissing me.
I finally believed he was there.
It was not too good to be true.
MARY LOU KIRWIN makes her fiction debut with Killer Librarian. She feels she owes a great deal to all the librarians in her life—for handing her the right book at the right time, and for being fonts of information. She lives in the wilds of Minnesota and, when not writing or reading, she loves eating dinner with the man in her life, going for long walks with her poodle, and doing handwork.
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1 Killer Librarian Page 17