Death in the Stacks

by Jenn McKinlay

  Ms. Cole nodded to signify that she’d heard while Paula gave her a faint smile and waved.

  Shrugging into her jacket, Lindsey hurried out the door to the bike rack in the back of the building. Dumping her handbag into the basket, she slipped off her heels and slid into her sneakers. She unlocked her red Schwinn cruiser and sped off as fast as she could.

  Normally, she would have enjoyed a brisk ride with the wind in her hair and the breeze reddening her cheeks with a bite of cold, but at the moment it felt as if everything was too far away and she couldn’t get there fast enough. She hopped off the bike while it was still moving, dumped it on the ground and hurried into the town hall. She ran into the human resources office and tossed her envelope into their intake basket.

  “Hi, Lindsey, how are you?” Marcia Burges asked.

  “Good, I’m good,” Lindsey answered as she hurried back out the door. Marcia was lovely, but she did like to chat, and Lindsey had no time. “I have the new Fixer-Upper Mystery by Kate Carlisle coming in. I’ll be sure to put it aside for you.”

  “Oh, yay, I just love the TV movies they’ve made out of her books, don’t you?” Marcia asked.

  “Never miss them!” Lindsey cried.

  She let the door close behind her, and she raced back to her bike. She hefted it up and pushed off the curb. Now to get to the country club before the mean girls finished their wine. She pedaled hard all the way to the road that ran along the shore. She was out of breath and sweating, but still, she didn’t slow down.

  At the country club, the parking valet raised one eyebrow at her as she rode right up to his station and hopped off, handing him the handlebars so she could grab her handbag. She then switched out her sneakers for her heels.

  “Take good care of it,” she instructed with as much dignity as she could muster.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. She watched as he wheeled it over to his booth while shaking his head.

  A doorman held open the large glass door for her, and she hurried inside. The massive entryway was old and stately with paneled walls and a fireplace. A staircase led upstairs to the floor above and Lindsey hurried past it, knowing from a previous visit that the club’s restaurant and lounge were down the hallway toward the back of the building.

  The hallway had painted portraits of some of the outstanding members over the years. Basically a rogues’ gallery of stuffy old men.

  There was one portrait toward the end that caught her eye, and Lindsey paused. With a bushy red mustache and wearing an old-fashioned golfer’s cap with a pom-pom on top, “Happy” Lawrence smiled down at her as if he was amused by all of the club’s goings-on. The date on the painted portrait was 1872.

  Lindsey grinned. Maybe the old and stuffy ones had come after him because, judging by the glint in his eye, she would have put good money on Happy being a real cut-up.

  She passed the restaurant, which was empty, as the waiters scrambled to set the tables for dinner. A glance through the door and she could see through the far windows out onto the golf course beyond. Golf. She straight up didn’t get it. She’d heard it once described as “a good walk spoiled,” and she’d never been able to think of it any other way.

  The double doors to the lounge were ahead, and she slipped through them, trying not to draw any attention to herself. It appeared a group had just come in from the course, as they all stood around the bar having a deep discussion about the treacherous pond by the seventeenth hole.

  Lindsey followed the line of the bar until she spotted a man sitting by himself wearing a cap. Robbie! She hurried over and slipped onto the empty stool beside him.

  “Have they seen you?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Luckily, this crew arrived and have been making quite the ruckus about a duck stealing a ball in the pond. Sounds like fiction to me.”

  “How did you get a drink and manage to linger until I arrived?” she asked. “Are you a member?”

  “God, no,” he said. “Like Groucho Marx, I’d never be a member of any club that would have me, but people just assume I’m a member because, well, I’m me.”

  Lindsey shook her head at him. “It’s just a totally different world that you live in, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “You can go wherever you want, do whatever you want, and no one questions it because you’re Robbie Vine, famous actor,” she said. “I can’t even imagine being able to have that sort of access to the world.”

  “Huh, you think it’s my fame?” he asked. “I always thought it was my extraordinary good looks.”

  Lindsey snorted.

  “Really?” he asked with a feigned look of hurt. “It’s not that funny.”

  She waved her hand at him. “Stop. Be serious. Where are the mean girls?”

  Robbie jerked his head at the mirror behind the bar. It was angled so that it picked up the reflection of a booth nestled in an alcove in the corner. The mirror made it possible for Lindsey and Robbie to see the women but was at an awkward angle for the women to see them.

  “How do you want to play this?” Lindsey asked. “Should we approach all casual-like and see if we can engage them in conversation?”

  “No offense, pet, but I don’t see them talking to you,” he said. “I think I’ll have better luck on my own.”

  Lindsey thought about her earlier altercation with them. The three friends had made it pretty clear that they thought Lindsey had a solid reason to murder Olive, given that Olive had announced her plan to hire a replacement for Lindsey. In all honesty, if the situation were reversed, she would have found herself suspicious, too.

  “Agreed. Let’s use our phones so I can listen in on your conversation,” she said.

  Robbie nodded and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He called Lindsey and she answered. He then turned the volume off on his phone and slipped it into his shirt pocket so it would act as a microphone.

  “Stay here,” he said. “And keep your back to the ladies so they don’t recognize you.”

  “Do we need a signal in case you get into trouble?” she asked.

  A rocks glass was in front of him. He lifted it, and the smell of Jameson wafted up into Lindsey’s nose. He tossed it back, and Lindsey looked at him warily.

  “Nah. Don’t worry, ducks. I’ve got this,” he said.

  She watched as he wobbled his way over toward the mean girls’ table. Oh, brother. She had a bad feeling about this.

  She pressed her phone to her ear, listening intently. Robbie, in his usual larger-than-life way, paused beside the women’s table.

  “Well, hello, lovelies. Fancy finding a flock of pretty birds amidst all of these warthogs,” he said.

  Lindsey watched his reflection in the mirror as he didn’t wait for an invitation but pushed his way into their booth.

  “Hey, we’re trying to talk here,” Amy Ellers, the youngest of the group, complained. She waved her eyeglasses at him as if to admonish him. She had a heart-shaped face, pretty but not extraordinarily so; her black hair was cut in short layers around her face; and her eyes were sharp on Robbie since she was holding her trendy eyeglasses, a bit like a weapon. With glasses or without, Lindsey got the feeling Amy didn’t miss much.

  “Good thing I happen to be a fabulous conversationalist then,” he said. “Love, has anyone ever told you that your eyes are the color of melted caramel?”

  Lindsey rolled her eyes when she heard one of the women giggle. It wasn’t Amy, who shoved her glasses back onto her nose as if they formed a barrier of protection between them.

  “Go away,” Amy snapped. “You’re as tenacious as a sourdough.”

  “Did you just call me bread?” Robbie asked.

  “No, where I come from, it’s what you call old-timers who outstay their welcome.”

  “That’s not very nice,” Robbie said. He made to leave wi
th an exaggerated sigh of disappointment.

  “No, please stay,” Kim MacInnes said. She had the typical middle-aged woman’s requisite dyed blond hair, which she wore in a big knot on the top of her head. She was well-rounded with generous curves and dressed to show them off to their best advantage. She had a heavy hand with the makeup, as if long lashes and red lips could distract from the wrinkles puckering her lips and eyes.

  “Sure, why not?” LeAnn Barnett asked. She was the oldest of the three. Skeletally thin, with light brown hair cut in a severe chin-length bob, and an overbite that wasn’t hidden by her thin lips. She had an air of defeat about her that hung on her shoulders like an overcoat that was too big.

  “Excellent. What are we drinking?” Robbie asked. He picked up the bottle of wine on their table and studied the label. “Here, mind if I borrow these?”

  Lindsey watched in the mirror as he deftly snatched Amy’s glasses from her face.

  “Hey!” she protested.

  Robbie squinted at the label through them. He frowned and handed them back to her. “Not much of a prescription there, love, is there?”

  Amy shoved her glasses back on and snapped, “They’re for seeing distances, not close-up.”

  “Ah.” Robbie nodded, sounding unperturbed. “What are we drinking to then? Wealth? Power? Eternal youth?”

  Kim giggled. Amy glared. LeAnn stared morosely into her glass.

  “To the memory of our friend, Olive, if you must know,” Amy said. Her tone was condemning. Robbie seemed not to notice.

  “Ah, that was a tragedy,” he said. “Have the police offered any ideas as to who they think might have done it?”

  “None,” Amy snapped. Her voice sounded equal parts disgusted and frustrated. “Of course when you are besties with the chief of police that probably gets you a pass.”

  “Oy, what are you saying there?” Robbie sounded irritated.

  Lindsey watched in the mirror as Kim wrapped an arm around him, trying to soothe him. He wasn’t having any of it, however, and leaned aggressively over the table toward Amy.

  “Briar Creek’s chief of police is one of the finest in the state,” he said. “She would never let a criminal go, whether the person was her friend or not.”

  Amy glared back. “Says you.”

  “Damn right, says me,” he snarled.

  Lindsey wondered if she needed to step in. Robbie was letting his defense of his girlfriend get in the way of his interrogation. While she appreciated the sentiment, she really didn’t want to miss the opportunity to find out more about these women and their relationship to Olive.

  “She saved your life a while back, didn’t she?” LeAnn asked. She was giving Robbie a curious glance.

  “Yeah,” he said. He seemed to realize he was on shaky ground. Not many people knew that he and Emma were a couple, and he’d lose his chance to question these women if they figured it out. “So, I feel a certain loyalty there.”

  “Perfectly understandable,” Kim said. She wrapped herself more tightly about him. “I, for one, am going to thank her the next time I see her.”

  Robbie seemed to clue in to the fact that Kim’s intentions were more than friendly, and he eased himself out of her grip.

  “So, you haven’t told me, who do you suspect in the murder of your friend Olive?” he asked.

  The three women exchanged a glance as if trying to decide whether to talk to him or not. Finally, Amy shrugged.

  “It won’t matter if we tell him,” she said. “Given what we told her, I’m sure Chief Plewicki is on her way to the library to take her into custody right now.”

  Lindsey felt her heart triple thump in her chest. Who? Who was Emma going to arrest? She clutched the phone closer to her ear, trying to hear over the rushing sound in her ears.

  “And who would she be?” Robbie asked.

  “That library girl Paula Turner, of course,” Amy said. “Olive had something on her, something bad that would cost that nosy librarian her job for hiring her and ruin Paula Turner at the same time. I’m sure Paula killed Olive to shut her up, and the police think so, too.”

  Lindsey dropped the phone from her ear. She didn’t wait to see what Robbie was going to do or how he was going to extricate himself from those women. She had to get back to the library. Pronto!

  16

  Lindsey thrust a ten-dollar bill at the valet as he parked her bike in front of her. She checked her messages, feeling her panic ebb when she saw a new text from one of her staff. She read it quickly with great relief. Still, she knew a situation was brewing, and she needed to be there. She hopped on her bike, hoping she could get back to the library in time.

  While pedaling, she tried to call the circulation desk, but the call went right to the recorded message that announced the library’s hours. The same thing happened when she called the reference desk. Beth wasn’t answering her cell phone, and Lindsey had a moment of panic that the entire library had fallen into a sinkhole while she was gone, because she could not for the life of her figure out why no one was answering their phone. Maddening!

  She cut through the neighborhood, trying to shave some time off of the ride. She was hot and sweaty and the last hill about killed her, but she didn’t stop pedaling or pause to catch her breath. She had just pulled out onto Main Street, when a car pulled up alongside of her and she recognized Robbie’s strawberry blond head as he leaned over the console from the driver’s side and glanced at her through the open window on the passenger’s side.

  “Did you hear?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she cried. Then she gestured at the library up ahead. “Go!”

  With a nod, he stepped on the gas and sped right up to the large stone building at the end of the street. He parked in front and jogged up the walkway just as Lindsey pedaled to a stop in front of the building. Barely taking the time to grab her purse, she ditched the bike on its side and bolted into the library.

  She was sucking in great gulps of air, and her heart was beating triple time. She had to pause to bend over and catch her breath.

  “There’s no time for that,” Robbie cried.

  He grabbed her elbow and dragged her forward into the main room of the library. Lindsey would have argued that breathing wasn’t something a person needed to make time for, but she had no breath.

  When they approached the circulation desk, it was to find Emma having a stare-down with Beth. With her black hair in two pigtails on the top of her head, while wearing a red sweatshirt with black dots on the back and a pair of strap-on black wings on her back, Beth looked about as intimidating as a ladybug possibly could, which was to say not very.

  “Beth, I understand your concern, I do,” Emma said. “But this isn’t negotiable. I’m here to speak with Paula. Now where is she?”

  “Wait!” Lindsey panted. “Let’s talk.”

  Emma spun around to see Lindsey with Robbie. Her eyebrows rose, but she didn’t say anything about the two of them being together and obviously out of breath.

  “We were racing,” Lindsey explained anyway.

  “Racing?” Emma asked.

  “Yeah,” Lindsey wheezed. “His car versus my bike. Big fun.”

  Robbie looked at her, and she nudged him with her elbow.

  “Right, racing,” he said. He rubbed his hand over the sore spot on his side and gave her a look to let her know she didn’t need to poke him that hard.

  Sorry. She mouthed the word then turned back to Emma.

  “What can I help you with, Emma?” she asked.

  “I’m looking for Paula, actually.”

  “Sure, okay,” Lindsey said. “She should be around here somewhere. Follow me. We’ll find her.”

  She ignored Beth’s outraged flap of wings and Ms. Cole’s huff of displeasure. They didn’t know that she’d just received a text from Paula, telling her that she’d be taking some p
ersonal leave time effective immediately.

  Emma was in uniform and had her radio in a holster on her shoulder. Without taking her eyes off of Lindsey, she said, “Suspect is in the building. Are all points of entry being monitored?”

  “Yes, Chief,” several different voices responded.

  Lindsey felt her heart sink. This was serious. Paula may have put off the inevitable, but she was going to be taken into custody, and there was nothing Lindsey could do about it.

  “Can we talk first?” Lindsey asked.

  “It won’t change anything,” Emma said.

  Lindsey nodded. She led the way to her office, and Emma fell into step beside her. When Robbie would have joined them, Emma turned back and said, “Not you.”

  “But—”

  “No.”

  As soon as the door closed after them, Lindsey turned to face the chief of police. She crossed her arms over her chest as if that gave what she was about to say more authority.

  “Paula didn’t murder Olive,” Lindsey said.

  “Can you prove that?”

  “No.”

  Emma studied her. It was her cop face. The one that didn’t miss even the smallest facial tic.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” Emma asked. “About her past?”

  It was pointless to lie. Lindsey nodded. “She told me about the incident with her family just this morning.”

  “Incident? She stabbed her stepbrother,” Emma said. “She was taken from her home for it.”

  “She was defending herself from assault by him,” Lindsey argued.

  “That’s not what her parents said,” Emma argued.

  “Yeah, it seems her stepfather couldn’t believe his son would do anything like that,” Lindsey said. “I’d be curious to see how the stepfather has treated her mother all these years. You know, any calls for a domestic disturbance.”

  Emma studied her and then gave a slow nod. “I’m ahead of you on that one. There have been calls, and the husband has been taken into custody a few times, but the wife never presses charges.”

  “And Paula grew up in that. Still think the stepbrother didn’t attack her?”