Liz was typing so fast and was so engrossed, she didn’t even hear me, but Anna wore a huge grin on her face. “We’ll take care of everything. Go!”
I decided to call the police first, see if I could catch Chief James before he left for the day. It was almost four o’clock, and I needed to speak with the chief and then get to the ball diamond for my nephews’ game.
I dialed the police station’s number and waited for it to connect. I got a recording that said if it was an emergency to hang up and call 9-1-1, otherwise to remain on the line for the next available staff member. Then I had to listen to cheesy elevator music, something that sounded like a cross between disco and country. Yeah, it was pretty horrible.
Feeling a little traumatized by the music, I was relieved when a human voice came on the line. “Hi, this is Sunshine Baker at the library. I need to speak with Chief James right away.”
“Chief has already left for the day,” the bored-sounding phone-answerer said. “He had a personal commitment this afternoon.”
My heart sank, but I wasn’t willing to give up the fight. “No! I need to speak with him immediately!” I demanded. How could I take no for an answer at this point?
“Is it an emergency?” the man asked.
“Um…” Was it an emergency? Was it a matter of life and death? Not exactly, but… “You’re holding an innocent woman in jail, and I can prove it,” I blurted out.
“Again, ma’am, is it an emergency? Is someone going to die if you don’t speak with a police officer immediately?”
I heaved out a breathy sigh. “Not exactly.”
“I’ll tell the chief you called,” he said, not exactly comfortingly. “What was your name again?”
“It’s Sunshine Baker,” I repeated. “This is in regards to the library theft case.”
“Alright, Ms. Baker. I’ll pass along your message to him. What’s the best number to reach you?”
“Does he have a voicemail?” I asked, thinking maybe he would check it from home tonight.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Can you connect me to that please?” I was desperate. As much as I hated voicemail and thought it was the invention of the devil, I was willing to use it if it expedited this process. Surely, if Susan was trying to get away with her crimes, she was simply waiting until the police were occupied with Evangeline and Jada, and then she would skip town. She had plenty of money in the bank now, after all. Plus all the cash she stole.
Then I realized that picture she had pulled up on her computer when I was in her office earlier in the week wasn’t just a random picture of a tropical beach. It was a travel site. She was planning to go somewhere…maybe to the actual Cayman Islands?
The chief’s voicemail connected, and now that I had put it all together, the words were rushing out at the rate of about three million per minute. “Hi, it’s Sunshine Baker. I know you told me not to get involved, but…oops! Too late! My boss, Susan Gooch, set up two of my colleagues, Evangeline Dupree and Jada Booker. I have proof. You’re holding Evangeline right now in jail, and I have a feeling you’re going to be called to Jada’s house soon. You’ve got to arrest Susan before she leaves town!”
So…I couldn’t get ahold of Chief James. What to do now? Panic was cascading through my blood like a raging river during a flood, but I was desperately trying to keep my cool. Maybe I should run over to Jada’s house after all, so I can look for more evidence with Molly?
I rushed over to my desk and looked up Jada’s address in our patron database. Molly already knew where Jada lived because she’d been over there for her housewarming party, but I had a family thing that day, so I couldn’t go. Of course, I forgot to get the address from her before she left—I didn’t think I’d need it.
After choosing this course of action, I wasted no time texting Molly to find out Jada’s address. Clutching my phone in my hand while I waited for a response, I walked back over to where Liz was still working. “Any luck?”
“Almost got it…” She didn’t even look up, just kept typing away. Anna had taken a seat next to her sister and was looking at something on her phone, her attention span clearly spent.
I realized I could look Jada up in our library patron database. Duh! So I went back to my desk and typed Jada Booker into the search bar. Her name popped right up. Score!
Then I looked closer at the entry, only to realize it was a post office box number and not a physical address. Oh no!
Glancing down at my phone, I tried willing it to buzz with a text from Molly, but that didn’t work. My mind raced, scrambling for ideas about how to figure out where Jada lived. Sucking in a deep breath, I decided I’d have to go upstairs to see if I could get Jada’s address from her personnel file.
“I’m going to run upstairs for a moment. Be right back,” I said, walking back over to Liz. “If you find the check images, print them out.”
She barely looked up from the screen. “Yeah, just trying to hack the right server. Give me a sec.”
“Of course. I appreciate this!” I put two twenty-dollar bills down beside her, and I was pretty sure it was the best forty bucks I’d ever spent.
I didn’t want to go ask my boss for Jada’s address, but obviously the post office box wouldn’t help me find her, and the fact that I hadn’t heard back from Molly yet was starting to alarm me. I’d just have to bravely march into Susan’s office, tell her I was running late for my nephews’ baseball game, get Jada’s address and get the heck out of there before she could say anything else. I also wanted to look for any clues that Susan might be close to making a break for it. I had a feeling once Jada was arrested, she would be fleeing the country.
I hurried down the hallway toward her office, which was across from the activities room. The executive office suite featured its own lobby, where Susan’s assistant was stationed. I stepped into the reception area and noticed immediately that my boss’s office door was shut. She usually kept it open at least a crack.
“I’m just going to ask Susan something real quick,” I told Pam, her assistant.
“Oh,” Pam said, shaking her head, “sorry, but she’s already left for the day.”
“She has?” It wasn’t even quite four o’clock yet. She was almost always here till five. “Did she say where she was going?”
“Nope, just said she had an appointment.” Pam shrugged and smoothed her light brown hair with her fingertips.
“Did she say anything else?” I pressed.
Pam pursed her lips, deep in thought for a moment before her face animated with a memory. “Yeah, it was a little strange, actually. I told her I’d see her tomorrow, and she just gave me this weird look and then laughed.”
Oh no.
“Is her office locked?”
“I think so,” Pam answered. “She usually locks it up when she leaves for the night.”
“Do you have a key?”
“You can’t go in her office,” Pam insisted, her eyes narrowing as she looked me up and down.
“She wanted me to drop by Jada Booker’s house, but she only has a PO Box in our patron database, so I need to get her real address. I was going to grab it from her file.” And that would give me an excuse to snoop around a little bit too.
But Pam wasn’t having it. “Oh, I can get her address for you. Hold on.” The fingers of her left hand hovered over the keyboard while her right hand made a few mouse clicks. “Here you go: it’s 115 Primrose Court.”
“Oh, okay. Well, thanks.” I glanced down at my phone. Molly still hadn’t texted me back. Maybe she and Jada were just chatting away, and she didn’t hear her phone buzz.
If only I could think of a distraction to get Pam away from her desk just long enough for me to grab the keys. I knew there was a ring of keys in the top drawer—I’d seen it several times. I was pretty sure the one with the green plastic was for Susan’s office. I didn’t know how I knew; I just did. I could see a key with a green plastic cover stuck in Susan’s door with the other keys on the large silver
ring dangling beside it. It was a mental image I just couldn’t shake. Sometimes having a photographic memory was the best thing ever.
At that moment, I remembered I had a scratch on my wrist from when I was holding Paige, and Bond decided he wanted to be in my lap. He swatted at Paige to get her to move, and she freaked out, leaping off my wrist and slicing into me with her back claws. As I scrambled for something else to ask Pam, I picked at the scab on my wrist.
“Big plans this weekend?” I asked her as I felt the scab give way under my fingernail.
“Not really. If the weather’s nice, I might plant some flowers,” she answered with a shrug.
“Were you at the gala last weekend?” I continued, knowing full well she wasn’t.
“No, but I’m just sick about what happened. I hope we don’t all lose our jobs.” She shook her head at the tragedy. “I heard they found the Bible, though, and will be installing it tomorrow back in the lobby where it belongs. There’s going to be a small ceremony and everything.”
I raised my arm up to see my handiwork, and, sure enough, a tiny crimson streak was running down my skin. Sweet! “Oh my gosh! I’m bleeding!”
Pam’s eyes doubled in size when they landed on my arm. “Oh, no! Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, squeezing it to make it bleed even more. “Do you have a Band-Aid?”
“Uh…I’ll go see if there’s a First Aid kit in the activities room. I think it’s in one of the cabinets.”
As she started to get up from her desk, I started praying, Please don’t need the keys. Please don’t need the keys!
Pam was a heavy woman and moved slowly. I watched her trudge across the hallway to the activities room and then lunged for the desk, opened the drawer and snatched the keys before she even made it all the way inside the room. Then I had the door unlocked in record time. I furtively glanced around Susan’s office.
It was completely empty.
Sixteen
My mind was spinning as fast as a Gravitron amusement ride by the time I staggered back to the reception area of Susan’s office, where Pam’s desk was. Her jaw dropped when she saw me standing there, the keys in my hand and the door to Susan’s office open behind me.
“I thought I told you not to go in there?” she growled, throwing a whole box of Band-Aids at me.
I caught it and tore it open to snag one for my bleeding arm. There was a red streak all the way from my wrist to my finger now.
“What’s going on?” I demanded as I slapped it on my skin.
“Nothing.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“That’s a lie, and you know it.” I stepped closer to her, unwilling to back down. She knew something, and I wasn’t going to let her get away with playing dumb.
“Susan is gone,” she said with a shrug. “She’s not coming back. No one is supposed to know until tomorrow—and—” she narrowed her gaze on me, looking like she was about to spit venom out of her mouth at me, “—if you tell anyone, you won’t live to regret it.”
“Did she threaten you?” I stepped closer still, hoping to break through. Why was she being loyal to her boss who had stolen the library’s money? Who had threatened all of our futures?
A tear glistened in the corner of Pam’s eye as she sucked in a breath and stared at me. She wasn’t going to give me any more. Maybe she didn’t know.
Molly, I thought, fear striking a blow to my heart. What if she went after Molly? What if…
“I’ve gotta go.”
That was the last thing I said before flying down the stairs as fast as my legs could carry me. I had Jada’s address, and now all I needed was the proof. Liz was packing up her things when I made it to the ground floor.
“Well?” I panted, trying to catch my breath.
“Everything you need is right here.” She pointed to the printer, where a stack of papers waited for me to collect it.
“You’re the absolute best! If I have anything to say about it, I will definitely be hiring you to work here this summer.” I rushed over, grabbed the printouts, and raced toward the door, calling out, “Bye, Anna! Thanks again, Liz!” over my shoulder as I sprinted to the parking lot.
As a heavyset girl, I was not accustomed to running, but my body had been flooded with so much adrenaline, I didn’t really have a choice. My legs were carrying me faster and faster before my brain had a chance to tell them to slow down. I was lucky I didn’t trip over my shadow in the middle of the parking lot! I aimed the key fob at my Mazda from yards away, practically somersaulted into the driver’s seat and raced off toward 115 Primrose Court.
If I plan to keep up detective work, I’m pretty sure I need a stunt double. It’s a little more physically demanding than my library gig.
I spotted Molly’s car on the street not far from Jada’s house. There were plenty of other cars and trucks parked along the sidewalk, which curved around Primrose Court, but I didn’t know Jada well enough to know which was hers. And I couldn’t remember for the life of me what Susan drove, but I had a feeling the silver Subaru with the Bryce Beach Public Library decal on the back window was hers.
This was not good. I could feel it.
And the fact that Molly never texted me back only made it way, way worse.
I sucked in a fortifying breath and marched up to the small porch. Jada’s house was tiny—half vinyl siding, half brick, dark green shutters and a matching front door. A potted fern hung from a hook at the edge of the porch. What was it I told Molly about not being afraid because I voluntarily work with teens? Okay, this situation was way scarier than any teen I’d ever seen in the library, but I was going to see it through. My job, as well as access to literature, information and programming for the entire community of Bryce Beach was on the line, and I wasn’t about to be the one who dropped the ball.
I rang the doorbell, and my heart skipped a beat as I waited. And waited. I heard a scream come from inside, a blood-curdling scream that could only be produced when one’s very life was in jeopardy.
It wasn’t too late. I could turn and run.
Before I could consider that option any further, the door handle twisted, and the door creeped open. I was grabbed around the wrist and jerked inside so hard, I was sure my bones cracked.
“Get over there in the corner,” a voice hissed.
Susan.
I held my hands up when I saw she had a small gun and was pointing it right at me.
“Go, now!” she screamed, waving the gun in the air hysterically.
Now, I’d never been on the business end of a real gun before. My mother, never fully recovered from her peace-loving hippie ways, didn’t allow my brother and me to play with guns. Not that I ever wanted to, mind you, but River sure did. He would make everything he could find into guns. Legos? Guns. Lincoln logs? Guns. Two sticks tied together with string and tape? A big gun.
So, even though the adult side of my mind knew what was happening was real, and I was in a considerable amount of danger, the child side of me, the little girl buried deep within my forty-two-year-old self, declared this was all make-believe. And I just needed to play Susan’s little game until it was all over, and the police came.
The adult voice inside my head scoffed because the police weren’t coming. I hadn’t been able to get ahold of Chief James, and there was probably less than zero chance he would check his voicemail now that he’d left the office. They said he had a “personal commitment.” Actually, I was pretty sure his niece and nephew played Little League, so his personal commitment was likely watching them play ball. How ironic that I was supposed to be there too. Instead, I was doing his job.
Jada and Molly were huddled in the corner. Jada looked almost as ill as Evangeline was when we saw her a couple of days ago. Molly was shaking so hard, she couldn’t even get her lips to work, but she said everything with her eyes. I knew her well enough to know she was begging my forgiveness for not being able to warn me that I was heading straight into a trap.
I shot her a look
that said, I have all the evidence we need in the car, so all we have to do is make it out of this alive.
When she nodded, I was fairly certain we understood each other. Never underestimate the power of nonverbal communication!
“I’m glad you’ve finally shown up, Baker,” Susan sneered at me once I cowered in the corner with the two others. Jada was in the middle, sitting with her back in the actual corner. Molly was on the other side, her knees pulled up as she sat on the floor with the skirt of her dress covering her legs. I took a seat on the other side and wrapped my arms around my legs for support. I hated sitting on the floor. You’d think I had enough padding that it would be comfortable, but no. It felt like my bones were going to push through my skin.
Once I got situated, I looked up to see that our boss was still holding us hostage at gunpoint. I’d often wondered what it would be like to have a little more excitement in my life, but this was definitely not what I had in mind. “What are you doing, Susan? I don’t understand where all this is coming from!”
“Shut your mouth, Baker. I already told the whole story to these other two morons, and I’m not repeating it for you.”
“Well, that’s not fair!” I crossed my arms over my chest. “What makes you think you’re going to get away with this?”
“First of all, Chief James thinks I’m the distraught library director who lost the entirety of my library’s donations for the year. He thinks I’ve been betrayed by two of my employees, one of whom is a certified witch!”
IS there such a thing as a certified witch? I wasn’t going to argue with her, but I was pretty sure she was making that up.
Something told me it was not the time to tell her I had all the evidence we needed to connect the dots. There were a couple of different routes I could take, but I thought I’d try a guilt trip to start out.
“Jada and Evangeline might have betrayed you,” I tested the waters, “but Molly and I didn’t. You asked me to investigate, and I did. I’m the one who found the Bible! And this is how you’re repaying us? By holding us hostage at gunpoint?” I tsked and shook my head. “I really thought you were better than that.”
Dangerous Curves Boxed Set 1: 3 Cozy Christian Mysteries Page 14