In Plain Sight

by Lorena McCourtney

  I invited Magnolia and Geoff in, and they told me about what was going on back on Madison Street. A shoddy place called the Exotic Flower Club had closed down, which we all agreed was good riddance. A rumor was going around that some big chain wanted to buy up everything in the area and put in a motel and conference center. The Margollins’ personal news was that they were on their way to a powwow in Oklahoma. Magnolia, in her enthusiasm for genealogical research, had discovered that she may have a few drops of American Indian blood, and she was rushing off to claim any distant relatives. I was sometimes afraid Magnolia would be soundly rejected by some newfound “relative,” but she was so enthusiastic and good-hearted that so far it hadn’t happened.

  Mac MacPherson’s name came up briefly, but they hadn’t heard from him and I had only that vague postcard, so there wasn’t much to say.

  We all went to watch Sandy practice at the gymnastics studio that evening. She didn’t put in the kind of practice hours that Olympic hopefuls do, but she had a big gymnastics meet in Fayetteville coming up shortly and was practicing harder than usual now. She looked incredible to me, strutting and balancing on that narrow beam, flipping across the mat like some acrobatic butterfly, whirling around on those parallel bars until my head spun just watching her.

  The following day was Easter Sunday. Skye had spent the night with us, and she and Sandy and I got up early for sunrise services. Later, Magnolia and Geoff, though not frequent churchgoers, accompanied us to services at the regular hour, stayed for a ham dinner, and left about 4:00. One thing about a motor home, your bed is right there with you, so you can pick up and move any time of day or night. They planned to park at a rest area or shopping mall somewhere along the way that night.

  I cautioned them again before they left about not letting anyone back home know where I was.

  On Monday, Leslie said nothing about the confrontation with the ex-husband. I went about my duties as usual both then and on Tuesday. The most notable incident that day was when I broke the cord on the whistle I always carry around my neck. It happened when I was dusting the banister beside the curved staircase.

  Dusting it how? That’s a bit embarrassing.

  It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. If I’d thought about it, common sense surely would have issued a resounding veto. But I was standing at the top of the stairs fully intending to dust the long, curving banister the customary way, when this other, considerably more fun way leaped into my head …

  The anemic no of common sense was no match for the rush of adrenaline as I looked down the inviting sweep of banister.

  And then there I was, gleefully throwing one leg over the railing and scrambling atop it. I’d never had a chance at a banister as spectacular as this as a child, and who knows? I might never have another chance. Which proved prophetically true, although I wasn’t thinking about that as I shoved off.

  Whee! Down I went, polished wood singing hot against my pants, body plunging around the curve like a race car on a track. The room below spun in a dizzying whirl of white furniture. The chandelier in the dining room flashed a glitter of spinning jewels. I swooped on a roller-coaster ride! I flew like a bird!

  I also crunched my tailbone hard against the newel post at the bottom, and I had to clutch the railing to keep from tumbling off it in a dizzy spin. But a small price to pay for such a glorious ride!

  Then I peered around guiltily, thinking I’d surely see Leslie standing there tapping her toe and looking at me with blue ice in her eyes.

  But no Leslie. No sound or movement anywhere. I hastily scrambled off the railing, and that was when I snagged the cord holding my whistle on the wooden ball atop the newel post. The whistle flew through the air and pinged on the polished floor.

  If that was the only casualty of my impulsive slide, I am indeed fortunate, I thought as I retrieved the whistle. The cord was repairable; if I’d taken the kind of fall my foolish escapade probably deserved, I could have broken something considerably less fixable than the cord on a whistle.

  I put the whistle in a kitchen drawer for safekeeping, intending to take it home that afternoon and replace the broken cord. Which I forgot to do, so I took a length of sturdy cord to work with me on Wednesday morning.

  Where I immediately encountered a Leslie who pounced on me quicker than a principal encountering a tardy student in an empty hallway. “Mrs. Malone, I’d like to talk to you.”

  My first thought was, Oh dear, she knows about my banister adventure and just waited until today to make an issue of it. Then I saw the paper in her hand and the ice in her eyes and knew the wild ride was probably the least of my problems.

  “I’ve been looking at what you’ve done with the books in the library.”

  “I haven’t had time to do much so far—”

  “Oh, really?” A sarcastic comment, not a question. “It appears to me that you’ve been quite busy.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said warily.

  “Come with me, please.”

  She headed for the library with her long strides. I followed with my short ones. The books were not the way I’d left them. The cartons had been opened and books haphazardly dumped everywhere. I looked around, bewildered. What had happened here? A breakin? Vandalism? Surely she didn’t think I’d done this.

  Leslie, however, did not seem disturbed by the mess. “You see the names of these books with the X mark on the left side?” She thrust the paper at me, which I immediately recognized as the master list of the boxed books.

  “I didn’t make those marks.” I had, in fact, wondered what they meant. “I’ve only been making that tiny check mark on the right as I identified and shelved each book. Right there, see?” I pointed to my pencil marks, then waved at the shelved books.

  “I had an expert go through the list several months ago. Those Xs mark the books that he identified as old and particularly valuable, probably collector’s items. As I’m sure you as an experienced librarian recognized.”

  “I’ve never had experience with books of collectible value—”

  “Really.” More sarcasm. “I’ve been going through the books.” She waved a hand at the disorganized mess, which apparently was her doing. “At least five of those marked with an X are missing.”

  It didn’t take diagrams to see what she was getting at. “You think I took them?”

  “The books are on the list. They are not among the books now in the library.”

  “But there are any number of people who could have taken the books! Some previous housekeeper or other employee. The movers who brought the books here. Someone getting into them after your father died and before you got them. Someone who had access before you moved the books here. Someone—”

  “You seem to have a rather ready list of ‘someones’ to blame. As if you had it already prepared.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” I was getting rattled now. “Innocent until proven guilty” didn’t seem to mean much in this situation. “I mean, it’s obvious any number of people could—”

  “It’s obvious to me that you’re the only one who has ever shown any interest in these books, the only one who has ever expressed a desire to get her hands on them, the only one who has any knowledge about books. And the only one who’s had access to them when they come up missing.”

  “I like books, but that doesn’t mean I’d take them. In fact, I wanted to read this Mary Higgins Clark one—” The book was lying right there on the table. I grabbed it, resisting an urge to shake it in her face. “But I didn’t even want to borrow it without asking you first.”

  “I would like my house key and the remote control for the gate returned now. You will no longer be needing them.”

  “You’re firing me?”

  “I see no way we can continue this arrangement under the present circumstances.”

  “But I didn’t take your books! I don’t know anything about them. This isn’t fair!”

  “I can hire whomever I want, and I can fire whomever I want,” she stated.
Which was obviously true. And grammatically correct. But it still wasn’t fair! “My key, please.”

  I dug in my pocket for the key and handed it to her, resisting an urge to fling it across the room so she’d have to chase after it. Regrettably I have these impulses; fortunately I usually overcome them.

  “I’ll have to go out to my car and get the remote control.”

  “Please do that. I’ll have the wages due you ready when you return.”

  I brought the remote control in and held it out to her. She held the envelope out to me. We exchanged them like two distrustful spies swapping secrets.

  I went back to my car. The gate was already open when I reached it. It swung shut behind me. I drove away feeling a bit dazed. At the edge of the city park I was so shaky that I pulled over to the curb and wiped my damp hands on my pants.

  So, my days of gainful employment were over. I tried to put a lighthearted spin on the situation, maybe even make a funny story out of it to tell DeeAnn. But nothing amusing came, and all I could think of was that I could, at least, be glad I hadn’t traded the old Thunderbird in on a new Camry on some overly optimistic idea of projected earnings.

  I put it all to the Lord as I sat there. My disappointment. The hurt and frustration and sense of injustice at being fired for something I hadn’t done. In all my years, I’d never before been fired from a job. Why, Lord? What’s going on here?

  Now was one of those times I’d like a booming voice, or at least a whisper, of advice or explanation in my ear. Maybe a reassurance that Leslie would discover how wrong she was and come rushing to me to beg forgiveness for her error.

  No booming voice or whisper about Leslie seeing the light arrived. But a memory of Harley saying, back when we were unfairly sued over a minor incident at his pharmacy, “People may be unjust, but God isn’t. So, no matter how this turns out, we don’t have to worry about it. He’s in charge.”

  I took a deep breath and let the words wash through me. Okay, I was hurt and disappointed, and I had been treated unjustly. But the Lord was in charge. And, peering around the edges of my disappointment, I could see several things to be cheerful about.

  The job had been nice while it lasted. I had the satisfaction of having done it well. I’d seen Tara of the Ozarks from the inside, which few had. I had a few extra dollars in my pocket. And I’d taken what was surely one of the all-time grandest banister slides ever.

  It was only when I got home and checked the money in the envelope that I discovered that Leslie had shorted me by ten dollars. I was indignant for a moment; then it struck me as funny, in a sad sort of way. She had, according to the ex-husband, a couple million dollars from the sale of some company they’d been involved in together. But she’d chosen to take petty satisfaction in cheating a fired housekeeper out of a few insignificant dollars.

  She’s the one who needs the prayers, isn’t she, Lord? And I do pray for her. Come into her heart, Lord. Open her mind and eyes and spirit to you. I couldn’t help adding one small afterthought.

  And you might warm up her personality a bit too, if it isn’t too much bother.

  Then that seemed a bit self-serving, and I apologized.

  I thought that was the end of it. I was wrong.

  12

  The next day two things happened.

  When I was leaving Bible study, I automatically reached up to finger the whistle that always hung at my throat, then remembered it was still in that kitchen drawer over at Tara of the Ozarks. (Leslie’s ex-husband’s name for the place had stuck with me.) I felt uncomfortably naked without my whistle. I’d never yet had to make emergency use of it, but I liked having it available.

  The second happening was that Sgt. Yates showed up.

  I was standing in the front yard after lunch, looking at a scalped shrub that I’m certain was cowering under my gaze. I stepped out to the flagstone walkway to meet him.

  “I understand you’ve been working as housekeeper for Leslie Marcone,” he said without the bother of how-are-you preliminaries. He tilted his head toward the house across the lake.

  “Yes, that’s right. Unfortunately, it was a rather short-lived employment. She fired me yesterday.”

  “So I understand.”

  I was surprised. I’d told Sandy, and her loyal reaction had been, “She didn’t deserve you anyway.” Skye had spent the night at our place because her dad was in Little Rock on some political thing, and Sandy may have passed the information along to Skye as reinforcement to support her dislike of Leslie. Skye could have told her stepmother, Tammi. Perhaps Tammi had mentioned it at the health club. Even with that chain of possibilities, I didn’t see how the gossip could have blanketed the town already.

  So, Sgt. Yates’s information must have come directly from Leslie. It seemed doubtful Leslie had contacted the sheriff’s office simply to give them a news flash about firing a housekeeper.

  “Let me guess. Leslie has filed charges against me over the books missing from her library.”

  “The report said she has a valuable collection of books inherited from her father, and eight of them—”

  “Eight!” I echoed. Yesterday it was five. How long before she was accusing me of carting them off by the carload?

  “Eight, yes, that’s what she says. Anyway, she claims these books are missing, and no one but you had access to them.

  She says you worked alone in the house while she was away overnight.”

  “Yes, I was alone there one day. Which gave me the perfect opportunity to make off with any number of items, I suppose. Is she missing a potato peeler? Or perhaps something larger? That leather furniture is quite nice. And I had time to call in my criminal cohorts, the Over-the-Hill Gang, and make off with a sofa or two. Although the bigger stuff is difficult to handle when you all have lumbago and rheumatism.”

  Sgt. Yates frowned disapprovingly. “Did anyone ever tell you, Mrs. Malone, that you have an attitude?”

  Apparently he just had. I remained silent.

  “She didn’t go so far as to request that charges be filed against you—”

  “How generous of her.” I’m not, unfortunately, above a bit of snide sarcasm as well as facetious exaggerations.

  “But she wants us to investigate.” He frowned again, pulling that scar across his eyebrow into greater prominence. Did the criminals he interrogated find that scar intimidating? I did. It had an attitude of its own. “I’m with the Major Crimes Unit, and this isn’t the type of case I usually handle, so I didn’t talk to her personally. But when I saw your name on the report I became … concerned.”

  “I appreciate your concern, but I can tell you, as I told her, I don’t know anything about any missing books. I may have been the only person with access to them at the moment she discovered they were missing, but who knows how long they’ve actually been gone?”

  “An interesting point.”

  “As I pointed out to her, many people may have had access to the books before I came along.” I ignored the echo of Leslie’s accusation about my “ready list of ‘someones’” and plowed through the possibilities.

  “I’ll suggest the officer check on what you’ve mentioned.”

  “Does Leslie indicate when that master list of books was made up? Was it before or after her father’s death?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “If it was an inventory made after his death, then yes, the books are missing now and someone must have taken them. But if the list was made while he was alive and the books still in his possession, perhaps he simply disposed of some of the more valuable ones but didn’t take the names off the list. I believe the check marks on the list were made by an expert on the basis of titles and authors only, not a physical examination of the books.”

  Sgt. Yates folded his arms across his uniform. “Read a lot of mystery books, do you, Mrs. Malone?” he inquired.

  I felt myself reddening. Okay, I’d been hitting Mike’s library of mysteries rather hard lately. But that was surely irrelevant to
this situation. I tossed his question back at him. “Why do you ask?”

  “No particular reason.”

  Which we both knew was less than accurate. He was thinking that with my excursion into minute details I was trying to play clever amateur sleuth like some character in one of those mysteries. The one who comes up with that tiny but vital clue all the experienced officers and detectives have inexplicably missed.

  He made no further comment along those lines, however. Instead he said, “Why don’t you tell me a bit about your … ah … involvement with the books. Ms. Marcone indicated that you were organizing them, I believe. She requested that you do this?”

  “No. I volunteered.”

  “I see.”

  A world of speculation in those two small words. Obviously, I should have stuck to the old army adage of never volunteering. I explained about my past as a librarian.

  “There really wasn’t all that much housekeeping to do with only one person in that big house, so I had extra time.” Then, feeling as if I might only be digging myself in deeper, I stopped the explanations.

  “Well, we’ll see where we can go with this,” Sgt. Yates said, not committing himself. I thought the interview was over. Because it had definitely been an interview. He may have been “concerned” about me because of his friendship with Mike and DeeAnn, but he was all cop, and this was business. Then he surprised me with another question.

  “How do you feel about all this, being accused of something you say you didn’t do, and getting fired?”

  How did I feel? It seemed a non-cop type inquiry, too touchy-feely for a lawman, yet he was watching me with interest. Although at the moment I was undecided as to whether it was friendly interest or the kind of interest a scientist has in a wiggly new microbe he’s peering at under a microscope.

  “Well, I … uh … I’m certainly not happy about it. It seems unfair. And it’s frustrating that I don’t have any way to prove my innocence. Unless your department uncovers the real guilty party.”

  “Yes, it does seem an unfortunate circumstance. I hope you’re not frustrated enough to retaliate in some … ah … physical way?”