Sweet Revenge

by Diane Mott Davidson

  No sooner had Roberta left the reading room than a sudden shout split the air. “Hey!” a man yelled. This was followed by “Hey, shut up!”

  “Would you please cool it?” Arch asked, a bit too loudly.

  My skin prickled with gooseflesh. I raced out of the reading room and tried to remember the location of the carrel where I’d left Arch.

  The man’s voice rose. “Don’t tell me what to do, kid! I’m on a very important call to an attorney!”

  “I don’t care!” Arch replied at the same volume. “You need to turn off your stupid cell phone!”

  I looked around but felt disoriented. Where was Arch?

  “Shut up, kid!”

  “Cool it!”

  Ahead I finally saw the cluster of carrels where I’d left my son…except he wasn’t working. He was standing up, his jaw thrust in the direction of the bald fellow from the reading room, the one who’d stomped off when Roberta had first asked him to leave. He was large, stocky, and muscle-bound, and Arch looked short, slender, and wholly inadequate to hold his own in this fight.

  “Hey, boy!” the man hollered. “I’ll teach you what it means to be cool!” The bald man used his free hand to shove Arch’s shoulder. Arch lost his balance, toppled back toward his carrel, but stood his ground. Furious, the man lifted the cell phone as if he planned to strike Arch with it.

  The bald guy didn’t see me coming. I whipped around to his side, mashed my hands together, and chopped them upward, dislodging the cell phone and sending it flying.

  “Hey!” yelled the bald guy, diving for his phone, which had skittered under a bookshelf. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, lady?”

  I ignored him. “Arch, are you okay?”

  Arch, still standing, looked a bit shocked. “I’m fine.” His wide brown eyes implored me. “Mom, he was being rude! He was yakking away on his phone, and he was so loud I could hear him through my headphones. So I couldn’t concentrate. Finally I asked him to hang up, and he yelled at me. Then suddenly everything got totally intense. Oops, look out.”

  The bald guy was back on his feet. “What have you done, woman?” he shrieked. “That was a very expensive phone! What is the matter—”

  But he had no chance of finishing that thought because Roberta, bless her brave heart, interposed herself between him and me. “Sir,” she said, her voice firm, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave the library right now—”

  “What about my last fifteen minutes?” he demanded. “And what about her?” He used what was left of his phone to point in my direction.

  “You pushed a defenseless boy,” I said.

  “Was I talking to you?” the man wanted to know. To Roberta, he said, “Make her leave the library ten minutes early.”

  “I will deal with her and her son,” Roberta said quietly.

  “You?” the man howled, incredulous. “How old are you? You don’t look as if you could deal with a poodle, much less a bitch—”

  “In the interim,” Roberta interrupted firmly, “Hank here will accompany you to the door.” One of the male volunteers, a wide, humpbacked fellow wearing a cowboy hat, had appeared at Roberta’s side.

  “Git yer stuff,” Hank’s low voice rumbled. The bald fellow’s eyes narrowed to slits. Arch, who had his arms folded, stood well away from him.

  “I am not going anywhere!” the bald man cried. “Make her leave!”

  Hank said, “I’ll git yer stuff.” He leaned over the carrel and picked up the bald fellow’s laptop.

  “You take your hands off—” the bald man cried when he realized what Hank was doing. He hurtled toward Hank’s back, but Hank expertly sidestepped him. The bald guy reeled into a bookshelf.

  I wondered if there was anyone in the library who was still working.

  Hank pulled the bald guy’s laptop cord out of its outlet, closed the computer, and gathered up some stray papers from the carrel. With his free hand, he gripped Baldy’s upper arm. Hank, who clearly had studied at the Calvin Coolidge School of Communication, said, “C’mon.”

  The two of them made their awkward way toward the door, Baldy now subdued but still protesting, and Hank moving purposefully forward. Roberta caught me with a questioning glance. Arch, meanwhile, had put on his noise-canceling headphones and gone back to work.

  “Shall I call the sheriff’s department?” Roberta asked. “We don’t want that man waiting for you and Arch out in the parking lot.”

  “We’ll be fine,” I replied. “Maybe Hank could place himself at the front door, in case Baldy tries to come back in.” Roberta nodded. “Then if Hank could make sure Arch climbs into Mrs. Druckman’s station wagon safely, and I get to my van, that would be super. I still have work to do.”

  Roberta spoke to a male volunteer. Then she turned, intent on her mission of clearing the library. The rest of the volunteers had vanished from the reading room, which was probably just as well, since I liked to ponder exactly where the silver and china should go. First I placed the silver holders for the serving dishes in strategic spots, bearing in mind that how it looks is the most important aspect of catering. I imagined the grapefruit halves next to the dish I’d dubbed Chuzzlewit Cheese Pies, then the Tale of Two Cities French toast—so people would see they had a choice of carbs—followed by the Bleak House Bars, just in case folks believed that chocolate was the perfect food for breakfast. This was the Christmas season, right?

  I’m on a very important call to an attorney! Baldy’s shouts suddenly echoed in my ears. If the call was so important, why hadn’t he made it from his vehicle? And why had he shoved Arch?

  Stop thinking about it, I ordered myself. I stared at the plates and silverware. The volunteers had wrapped individual knives, forks, and spoons in cloth napkins. I had just finished setting out the dishes for the buffet when I was distracted by a movement to my left.

  Through the large reading-room windows, I could see that the snow was coming down more heavily. Since the reading room jutted out from the rear of the building, I could also see back into the east wing of the library, where another bank of windows gave a partial view of a corner seating area and the library’s nonfiction stacks. Someone was moving stealthily behind the first set of shelves. The lights in the library flickered again, casting strobelike shadows on that secretive-seeming person, so that he or she appeared to creep along, only half visible beyond the row of books. I shivered.

  Without thinking, I leaned over and snatched the knife we were going to use for the ham. But when I peered through the windows again, I couldn’t spot anyone in the stacks at all. Had I been seeing things? Was I just, as Tom claimed, really, really tired? Maybe my mind, jangled by the argument with the bald man, was creating phantoms.

  I put down the knife and rearranged the silverware. Periodically, I couldn’t help looking over at the shelves where I thought I’d seen someone. An emergency exit sign shone above unoccupied easy chairs. Nothing seemed to move.

  I blinked. Someone now stood near the windows opposite me, right next to the stacks. I could make out a face, in profile. The person was staring at the corner of the library, where the chairs were. It was a young woman. I inched closer to the reading-room windows. My skin turned cold. Oh Lord, I thought, there she is again.

  And she’s still supposed to be dead.

  I stood, immobilized, as the woman slowly turned. She was no longer looking at the seating area. She was staring at me.

  A child squealed outside the reading room, and I looked away. One of the staff members was speaking to someone in a sharp, frustrated voice. When I glanced back in the direction of the woman in the stacks, she had disappeared.

  “Let me have it!” the child shrieked. “I want it!”

  “Jamie, give that to me!” came a woman’s voice, presumably the little boy’s mother.

  “It’s time, folks.” It was the staff person again, more loudly this time. “You need to pack up your stuff and throw away your trash.”

  Man, what was it with Friday c
losing time at the library? I figured the librarian had caught the kid eating cookies or drinking hot chocolate, and now the mother was trying to confiscate the contraband. I looked again at the bookshelves, but the ghost of Sandee Brisbane had not reappeared. Once more, I wasn’t entirely sure of what I’d seen. Had the woman been Sandee? Was she also the person I’d noticed moving among the shelves?

  With the library closing, I didn’t have time to chase down phantoms, and I concentrated on getting the last of the breakfast dishes set out. A few minutes later, people were murmuring outside the reading room. Then a high whine went off—yet another warning? I’d never heard it before. Had someone tried to slip out the exit with a library book that hadn’t been checked out?

  A voice cried out for help. Was Arch all right? Worried, I quickstepped to his carrel, but he was pressing his hands on his headphones and concentrating on his Latin. The whine was louder outside the reading room, I noticed. At the reference desk, none of the staff was in sight.

  “Oh, Christ!” someone yelled. It sounded like Roberta.

  “Jamie!” the mom from before hollered. “Come here now!”

  “Dammit!” Roberta shrieked.

  “Jamie!”

  “Mom!” the child cried. “I’m not done yet!”

  “Jamie, come here when I call you!”

  Jamie must really not want to leave the library, I thought as I walked quickly in the direction of the whine and the voices. Somehow, I didn’t think Jamie’s problems with his mother were what had Roberta so panicked.

  “Somebody please help me!” Roberta shouted again. It sounded as if she was in the back of the library. This was the same area where I’d seen Sandee or whoever it was. So that was where I headed.

  In my haste, I failed to notice a toddler race around a corner of the stacks. Clutching a huge stack of videos, he was bolting for the checkout desk.

  “Jamie!” came the impatient cry from behind me. “You’ll never be able to see all those in one weekend!”

  As it turned out, Jamie couldn’t see me either. When we collided, a goodly portion of the entirety of Disney’s output caromed outward and landed on the floor. I lost my balance, and Jamie fell on his behind.

  “Oof.”

  “Ack!”

  My knees smacked a library cart and I doubled over. Once I was back in a standing position, I rubbed my knees, blinked hard, and ascertained that Jamie was fine. He even told me he was sorry as he hastily nabbed his stash and began, once again, to scurry toward the checkout desk. I checked that he could make it without running into somebody else. As I turned, I caught a very angry glare from his mother. I shrugged and apologized. She warned that I should be more careful. What did she think I was supposed to do? I walked away. If I’d had the misfortune to be that woman’s kid, I’d want to glue myself to the TV all weekend, too.

  Over the nonstop whine, someone in the far corner of the library was moaning. Was that Roberta, too? Two librarians rushed past me. With my knees still recovering from the collision with Jamie, I limped after them.

  Roberta was past the shelves and carrels, in the seating area I’d been able to half see through the windows. Arch had said once that the easy chairs there were the best and most comfy in the library. But Roberta didn’t look comfy. She was crouched beside a figure in the corner, a big, blond fellow who looked as if he’d rolled forward in his chair. Roberta had her arm around him, as if she were trying to hoist him up.

  “Can somebody help me?” Roberta pleaded. The other pair of librarians, too stunned to move, stood by. Maybe they’d seen a ghost, too. Roberta ordered them to go to her desk and call an ambulance. Now! They pivoted and stumbled past me.

  Roberta looked up and caught my eye. All color had drained from her pretty face. “Goldy,” she said, “please help me lift him. I thought he was sleeping, but he won’t wake up. Please. Something’s terribly wrong with him. Oh God, I thought he was sleeping.”

  I hustled forward and put my right arm around the man’s shoulders. He was very heavy, and I could only get an awkward hold on him. “Lower him to the floor,” I commanded. “Once he’s down there, we can flip him over.”

  Working in tandem, we managed to get the man out of his chair. I felt his neck for a pulse, but couldn’t find one.

  On the floor next to him, a toppled thermos had spilled dark liquid all over the carpet. There was the smell of liquor mixed with coffee. Roberta kept saying, “I thought he was sleeping. I went to wake him up. Oh God.”

  She slumped against the wall. I tried to turn the man over, but I needed Roberta’s help to get him into a position for CPR. Several other staff members came over to us, asking Roberta what they should do. Their questions seemed to galvanize her. She gulped back her distress and told them to keep everyone away from this area of the library. The three women quickly retreated, tumbling over one another and shouting for curiosity seekers to keep back.

  I realized the freezing-cold sensation I felt wasn’t just from fear, but from a frigid wind blowing into the library. I searched for its source. For crying out loud, the emergency exit was open; snow and winter air were pouring in. The exit was also the reason for the high whine. Now that I was right next to the door, the piercing sound was almost unbearable.

  “We need to start CPR,” Roberta called to me. Together we rolled the man onto his back, and I finally got a good look at his face. He didn’t seem to be breathing. I moved aside as Roberta bent over him. Then I flipped open my cell phone and punched in the numbers for Tom. I was pretty sure that there beside me lay a man before whom Tom had appeared many times.

  And now it was my job to tell my husband that former district attorney Drew Wellington appeared to be in very bad shape. Despite his crime-fighter reputation, Drew had lost the last election three years ago. There’d been some kind of scandal, of which I’d only caught a whiff. Something about drunk driving? I couldn’t remember. Undaunted, Drew had gone ahead and turned his hobby, collecting high-end maps, into a wealth-producing machine. He was one of the people the MacArthurs had invited to their party tomorrow night.

  When I got Tom’s voice mail, I left a message for him to call me ASAP.

  I closed my phone and looked carefully around the area where Drew had been sitting. Besides the spilled thermos, there was an open briefcase and a spew of papers. Was that a silver flask in his briefcase? As in the kind you use for whiskey? I thought so.

  Roberta worked patiently on Drew. She was better at CPR than I was. Still, Drew Wellington was not responding. It looked as if he’d had a heart attack, or stroke, or something. I glanced at the dark carpet. There seemed to be too much liquid to have come out of such a small thermos.

  “Please tell me this isn’t happening,” I said aloud.

  Roberta, pumping and counting, seemed not to hear me.

  3

  The sheriff’s department had an outpost, an office actually, that was next to the library, and the skeleton staff that worked there—two men and one woman—were still on duty on Friday at five in the evening. They hustled over as soon as a librarian summoned them. Just the sight of their uniforms filled me with a sense of calm. The female officer immediately went to work trying to resuscitate Drew Wellington.

  The two male officers secured the scene. I knew the drill: members of law enforcement needed to make sure there was no one with a weapon lurking in any corner of the library, nor in the parking lot. When the duo returned from outside, they took down the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the remaining patrons. Back when Roberta and I were working on Drew, I should have thought to insist that no one leave the library, but I hadn’t. There was only a handful of folks, who were quickly questioned and summarily hustled out to their cars. I took this to mean that no one had seen anything of import. Still, it was unlikely those two cops were going to tell me anything.

  My friend Eileen Druckman arrived with her son, Todd, Arch’s buddy. They’d come to pick up Arch for the sleepover, and the two cops agreed to question my son nex
t. Since he was a minor, I stood beside him, but was cautioned not to say anything. Arch looked shaken as he related that he hadn’t seen Mr. Wellington at any time, nor had he seen anything unusual. The exception, of course, was Arch’s altercation with the bald man, whom he described. I wanted to clutch Arch tightly when he was telling the police officer his story. But my son gently shook off my arm when I put it around his shoulders. He was almost sixteen, I kept reminding myself, and no matter what the circumstances, sixteen-year-old boys did not want Mom giving them hugs in public.

  Once Arch had left with the Druckmans, the two officers ordered me, the library staff, and the three male volunteers to stay. There was no sign of the female officer working on Drew. Hank and the other two fellows who’d been helping me and shelving books looked dismayed but resigned. It was still snowing hard, so one of the policemen told us which outside path to our vehicles we could use. A cursory glance out the emergency exit must have convinced them that if the crime-scene unit was called in, they’d need to pick up whatever they could from an area that now had at least two new inches of white stuff.

  In the meantime, we were told, we needed to stand apart and not talk until sheriff’s-department investigators assigned to the case had arrived. Investigators. The reason they needed us, the officers said more gently, was that we knew the layout of the library, the security system, and what belonged where. Unable to stand the tension, I hustled outside to the snowy sidewalk.

  The night was already very dark and cold. Flakes fell in a ceaseless curtain.

  After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only ten minutes, I heard the sirens. You always hear them before you see the lights. Julian, who loved physics, had explained the reason for this to me. Even though light travels faster—hence the delay between lightning and thunder—light doesn’t bend. Sound does.

  Why was I thinking about this? I wondered as Roberta and her colleagues joined me outside. Because Tom still hadn’t called me back, and I didn’t want to face what was happening.