Lost Books and Old Bones

by Paige Shelton

  “Those unclear things have put me in a bad light. I did nothing wrong,” I said as we sidled over to an out-of-the-way spot of the sidewalk.

  “You wouldn’t talk tae me.”

  I sighed again. We were going to keep going around in circles.

  Before I could turn to leave again, though, she said, “All right, maybe I stretched things a bit. I’m sorry about that, but I didn’t write untruths.”

  She’d apologized. It was a wimpy apology, but I’d take it if I could manage to get any other information out of her.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay. So, are you here tae tell me more about what happened?” she asked.

  “I don’t know much more. I was looking in the window of the bookshop to see if I could tell if it had been tampered with. Yes, there was a murder, and the body was found in the close not far from that window.” The police report had said that much. “From neither side—I’ve now looked—has that window been tampered with, other than the glass having been broken out the night of the murder and some marks on the grate that might be file marks. Might. Anyone who would try to get in that way, though, would be there a long time. That’s what I was doing. That’s all I have.”

  “I see. I don’t understand why you couldn’t tell me that.”

  “Because I’m just an employee at the bookshop, Bridget. I didn’t find the body. I didn’t know anything. I don’t know you. The police had been there and we’d been asked to close the shop for the day. I felt like it was all none of your business, none of anybody’s business at that moment.”

  “You knew the victim though, right?”

  “I’d only met her that night. She was a student at the medical school and I’m friends with two other students. She was at the pub with them. That’s it. I didn’t get to know her at all, but she seemed like a sweet person.”

  “Yeah, the medical school,” she said.

  “What about it?” I tried to make my pounce sound like normal conversation.

  “I’m not sure.” She looked at me. “You know anything about a professor there named Dr. Eban?”

  “I know who he is.” I paused. “Is he involved somehow?”

  Distractedly she shook her head. “I don’t know, but I’m trying to get an interview with him. He was friends with Dr. Glenn.”

  “I’ve only recently heard about him. He was a murderer?”

  She was perplexed. “You don’t know who Dr. Glenn is?”

  “No idea.”

  “God, I hope the police do.”

  I didn’t tell her that it was from an officer that I’d recently heard Dr. Glenn’s name. “Tell me about him.”

  “There’s too much tae tell. Look him up. He was friends with all of them: Dr. Eban, his wife, who is also a doctor and a professor at the university, as well as Mallory Clacher’s father. They worked together back in the day, until … Well, it’s hard tae think that Dr. Glenn has resurfaced, but if he has,” she shook her head, “we’re all in danger.”

  Dr. Glenn had gone from being a mere curiosity in my mind to being someone who could feasibly have been involved in Mallory Clacher’s murder. “Tell me more about Dr. Glenn, Bridget.”

  She looked at her watch. “I would if I had the time, but I don’t right now. You’ll find all you want on the Web. If you want tae meet later, I could.”

  The urge to say “yes” was strong, but I pushed it away. I’d look him up on my own. “Mallory’s dad’s name isn’t Conn, is it?”

  She smiled. “You know more than you’re ever going tae tell me. No, her father’s name is Boris. Boris has a brother, a real troublemaker for the family. That’s Conn Clacher. He’s not a killer, but he’s trouble nonetheless. Oh, hell, are the police looking at Conn as the killer?”

  “No! Not that I’m aware of at least.” I paused, and then decided to be straight with her so she wouldn’t bother the Clachers. “Gaylord has represented a Conn Clacher. He was at the bookshop the day you saw him so Tom and I could talk to the police with an attorney present. There could be a conflict in him representing us, that’s all.”

  She nodded slowly. “You a suspect? Anyone at the shop a suspect?”

  “No, we just needed to give statements of our whereabouts the night of Mallory’s murder. We aren’t suspects.”

  We were two people avoiding telling each other everything, and both of us probably knew it. Briefly, I thought again about meeting her later, but decided not to.

  I said, “I don’t know who the police suspect.”

  “You know that her father, Boris, is part of the medical school administration?”

  “Do you think that matters? I’m sure many students throughout the school have ties to the university.”

  “Aye. Something’s going on at that medical school, but I can’t figure out what or how it’s connected to your bookshop. There has tae be something.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I know nothing about any connection.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d help me figure out what it is,” she said.

  I swallowed hard. “How?”

  “Get me an interview with your boss, Edwin MacAlister. He’s a mystery himself. I’d be curious as tae what he has tae say.”

  I didn’t want to try to get her an interview with Edwin, but I was just anxious enough about the murder that I might consider asking him.

  “I’ll try,” I said with a sigh. “But he has no ties to the medical school.”

  “Right. Edwin MacAlister has ties tae everyone and everything in Edinburgh.” She smiled and stepped toward the Renegade Scot’s doors.

  “I will try,” I said.

  “Thanks. Hey, I’m sorry,” she said.

  Two apologies.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I know you’re dating Tom,” she added as she reached for the door handle.

  “I am.”

  “You guys have been together almost a year?”

  I nodded. I really didn’t want to talk about Tom with her.

  She squinted and cocked her head. “You’re not his type.”

  Ouch. I laughed.

  “But I think that must be why he’s so taken with you. For the first time ever, I think he fell for the inside before the outside.”

  “Well, that’s an interesting backhanded compliment, but I’ll take it.”

  “It’s true that he’s smitten and you’re pretty enough, but … well, lots of women would have liked that kind of attention directed toward them, and he could get prettier.”

  Fair point.

  She continued, “I would have liked his attention long-term, because he’s a lovely man, but he’s not good with breaking things off. He’s not so lovely then.”

  “I’ll deal with that it if happens.”

  “Aye. You’ll have no choice.”

  I nodded again. And bit back words that might make me sound as bitter as she did.

  “I want you tae know that I don’t resent your relationship with him at all. I imagine he thinks I do and that’s why I wrote … well, that that’s why I wrote things the way I wrote them. Not true. I’m a journalist first.”

  “Okay,” I said. I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t want to argue.

  “Oh, thanks for sending the police after me. That was fun,” she said with forced joviality.

  “I’m trying to be honest with them,” I said.

  She laughed. “And you think I’m not? Not even close tae true. I showed him the piece of plaster and told him where I found it. He didn’t think it was important. But, I do concede that I should have done it sooner.”

  Two apologies and an admission that she’d been wrong. I needed to keep up with all this good behavior.

  “Well, good.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. If the police had thought the plaster piece was important, they would have taken it from her. Probably at least.

  “Right.” She looked at me a long moment, a surprise ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds and twinkling in her pretty eyes. Th
ey were also honest eyes, even if I didn’t want to believe that. “Thanks for coming tae talk tae me. I know you came because you were looking for more information too”—she held up her hand as I began to protest—“but I’m not sure what it was. About Tom?”

  “I came to talk to you because I felt I’d been treated unfairly by your article. I hoped that you might clear that up in future articles.”

  “I’m not sure about that. I can’t make any promises. I’ll just report the facts.”

  “Without a slant?”

  I’d pushed too far. She smiled, but it wasn’t as pretty as her eyes. “I’ll talk tae you later, Delaney.” She turned and abruptly walked back into the newspaper office.

  “I guess that could have been worse,” I muttered to myself before I headed back to my own job.

  I did pull out my phone on the way and google “Dr. Glenn.”

  It didn’t take me long to figure out who’d killed Mallory Clacher.

  SEVENTEEN

  “Edwin, it seems so obvious. Dr. Jack Glenn has resurfaced, and he killed Mallory. He needs to be caught before he kills again,” I said.

  Edwin looked up from his desk and brought his eyebrows together. “The Dr. Glenn?”

  “Yes, Dr. Jack Glenn: killer, former colleague and friend of Doctors Eban, Carson, and Clacher. They were friends—good friends from what I could find.”

  Between the walk and the bus ride back to the bookshop, I’d had enough time to research on my phone. I’d learned exactly who Dr. Glenn was, and there was no doubt in my mind that he’d been Mallory’s killer. It made so much sense. I moved to the chair in Edwin’s office as he closed the book he’d been looking at. In fact, there were a few short stacks of books on his desk. Normally, that was something that would interest me, because he so rarely worked in his own office. Even one stack of books would be curious. But not today.

  “You mean, it’s obvious Glenn was the killer like it seemed so obvious that Dr. Eban was the killer?” he said.

  “I know what you’re saying. But Dr. Glenn is a proven killer! And the police are curious about him. They must have found something.”

  Edwin thought a moment. “He went missing, is that correct?”

  “Yes! Here, let me just read a few things to you.” I fired up my phone again and went to one of the Web pages I’d found. “Dr. Jack Glenn arrived at the medical school in 1998. He’d come to the school with all the right paperwork that proved he was a highly educated and well-trained surgeon. All that later proved to be false. He was not educated, trained, or experienced as a doctor of any kind.”

  “Of course, ‘Dr. Glenn’ became what he was called even after it was proved that he wasn’t truly one,” Edwin said.

  I nodded and then continued. “He worked as a surgeon, researcher, and professor at the university until 2005, when one of his patients died as the result of a botched appendectomy.” I paused and cleared my throat, remembering that Joshua and I had just been speaking about the miracle appendectomy procedures had been. “Things became more mysterious when the victim’s body disappeared from the hospital’s morgue, only to be found in the medical school’s anatomy morgue. Dr. Glenn claimed he hadn’t been the one who moved the body from one morgue to the other, but no one else seemed to have been near the right place at the right time to do such a thing.”

  “It’s coming back tae me,” Edwin said. “Go on.”

  “In the subsequent two weeks, two more patients died in Dr. Glenn’s surgery, and his hospital privileges were suspended. He disappeared three days after the imposed suspension and didn’t surface again until his wife called the police from a phone in Inverness.

  “The botched surgeries had been kept under wraps pending investigations, so she hadn’t known about them when they left Edinburgh. Everything came to light when, while having her breakfast one morning, she read a small article in the Scotsman stating that the police and the university officials were searching for Dr. Glenn, who had gone missing shortly after three people had suspiciously died at his hand. It was thought she didn’t have a clue regarding what her husband had been up to, or why they had to leave Edinburgh so quickly, but that was never confirmed.”

  “Oh, Delaney, she called Dr. Eban, didn’t she?” Edwin interjected.

  “Yes! It says it right here. Her first call was to Dr. Bryon Eban, someone she knew as a respected colleague and a friend to her husband. He told her to stay where she was, and that he would meet them in Inverness. But she’d felt uncomfortable waiting and then placed a call to the local police, who, apparently, didn’t believe her when she’d told them who she and her husband were.

  “Dr. Glenn overheard the call and then proceeded to suffocate her with a bag. He got away, and hasn’t been seen since.”

  I had to clear my throat to push away the surge of emotion the article sent through me. “I didn’t know anything about him, Edwin. I don’t ever remember hearing about him back home.”

  “I’m sure we don’t know about many of your country’s killers either, Delaney. Did the police arrest Dr. Eban back then?”

  “He was picked up when he arrived at the Glenns’ place. He was brought in for questioning as well, but was never a suspect in the murder. He was released.”

  “Though I remember the case, even many of the details, I didn’t know any of the people involved. You say both Inspector Pierce and Ms. Carr mentioned him tae you?”

  I nodded again. “Yes. Oh, and she would like an interview with you. I told her I’d ask. Now I’ve asked.”

  “I know. She left a message or two here. I’m sure she thinks knowing more about the bookshop is somehow integral in finding that poor lass’s killer.”

  “That’s exactly what she thinks.”

  “I know Mallory’s father, Boris, but not well, and I only met him a couple of years ago. I don’t know anyone else at the medical school anymore. If Mallory came tae explore the warehouse for either the books her friends brought or the scalpels, I’m not going tae share that with any reporter. Not while a killer is being sought.”

  “I doubt Bridget will give up trying to talk to you.”

  Edwin frowned. “Aye.”

  “Edwin, Mallory was suffocated. The preferred method of Burke and Hare. It sounds like Dr. Glenn used the same method, at least once, on his wife. He brought the body of a man he’d killed to the medical school’s morgue, just like the historical killers did with their victims.”

  “Do you think the murderer is Dr. Eban or Dr. Glenn?” Edwin asked.

  “What if they’re in on it together? Some sort of vendetta against Boris Clacher?”

  “Oh, Delaney. That sounds like something so big, with so many pieces. You said the police are looking at this angle?”

  “Inspector Pierce told me to look up Dr. Glenn. I’m sure—”

  “Delaney!” Edwin exclaimed as he pounded his hand on his desk.

  I jumped in my seat and my hand went to my heart. “What?”

  “Come with me.”

  I followed Edwin down to the warehouse, where we gathered the treasure chest with the remaining scalpels and then hurried over to the light side.

  Rosie and Hector watched us with matching wide eyes as we closed in on the front desk.

  “Rosie,” Edwin said. “Weren’t you neighbors with Dr. Glenn?”

  “Och, aye, ’twas a terrible time, wasnae it?” she said.

  “Yes.” Edwin set the chest down on the desk and opened it. He signaled that I was to take out the scalpels and the two cases. I did.

  “Aye!” Rosie said. “I forgot all about those razors.”

  Edwin and I looked at each other.

  “These are the scalpels, Rosie,” I said.

  Horror overtook her features. “The eetems that Dr. Eban asked aboot the night ye were all with the lass?”

  I was afraid the news would topple her over, so I nodded, gently.

  Rosie gasped. Hector barked in response.

  “Call the police, lass, we need tae tell them
where I got those razors … scalpels,” Rosie said.

  “Where did you get them?” I asked.

  “From that killer, Dr. Glenn.”

  Oh boy, I thought. “Let’s start from the beginning. What happened?”

  Rosie nodded.

  “I purchased them at a jumble sale,” she said.

  “Like a garage sale or a rummage sale?” I asked.

  “Sounds aboot right,” Rosie said.

  I looked at Edwin.

  “Rosie used tae live next door tae Dr. Glenn and his wife in West Port. It was back when he first came tae Edinburgh. She got them at the jumble sale and brought them to me,” Edwin said. “It was a long time ago and I don’t remember much about it except that we didn’t think they were anything.”

  We looked at Rosie. She nodded.

  “Aye,” she said. “Ye were just beginning Fleshmarket. Fifteen years anon. Always busy. Dr. Glenn said they were just wee trinkets, souvenirs, and we didnae think any differently. We put them in the warehouse and didnae think aboot them again. Weel, I didnae.”

  “That’s right,” Edwin said. “And when Dr. Glenn committed his murders and then disappeared, we talked about looking for the items you got from him.”

  “But we didnae,” Rosie said. “That was when my dear Paulie passed.”

  “Paulie?” I said.

  “My husband.” Rosie’s eyes pooled with tears, but she blinked them away quickly.

  “I had no idea you were married,” I said. “I’m sorry, Rosie.”

  “It was a sad time,” Edwin said. “Of course, we all paid attention tae the news about Dr. Glenn, but we were much more focused on Paulie and Rosie.”

  “That makes sense,” I said, knocked off my center a little by the news that Rosie had been married. I should have known about that.

  Rosie looked at the scalpels. “Even when ye first talked aboot these, lass, I didnae put it all together. I should have. I’m sairy.”

  “Don’t be,” I said as I regathered the scalpels. “This is going to help the police, I know.” I looked at her. “What was he like? Dr. Glenn?”

  “He was a nice man, tae me. His wife was lovely. Their daughter adorable.”