Better Late Than Never

by Jenn McKinlay

  “I’m your Dr. Watson,” he said. “We can be crime busters together and we’ll start by solving the case of the overdue library book.”

  “Oh, boy,” Lindsey said. Then she narrowed her eyes at him and pulled her hand out of his as she planted her fists on her hips. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Not at all. Quite the contrary, in fact,” he said. “I just know your love of solving mysteries and I figured this would be a way for me to win your affections.”

  Lindsey dropped her hands. “Oh, Robbie, that’s really very sweet, but it won’t work.”

  “Of course it will,” he said. He sat on the edge of her desk and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles as if he were an unbudgeable piece of desk statuary. “I mean, we’re bound to get into a life-threatening situation, and then, well, sparks will fly and you’ll forsake the manly manatee for me.”

  “Robbie, my affection is spoken for—” she began, but he interrupted.

  “At the moment,” he said. “But I’m counting on the boat captain to sink his ship again.”

  Lindsey pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers while she dug deep into her reserve of patience.

  “Even if Sully wasn’t the issue, you still can’t be my Dr. Watson,” she said. “You have to actually care about finding the truth when you involve yourself in an investigation like this.”

  “I do care,” Robbie said. “In fact, I spent all last evening reading all of the newspaper articles from back in the day about the Whitley murder.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. Go ahead, ask me anything.”

  “Where was her body found?” she asked. She crossed her arms over her chest in an exasperated stance. She knew this question was an easy one but she had to start somewhere. Besides, if he didn’t know the answer then she’d know he was just trying to work an angle.

  “Under the football stadium seats,” he said. He mimicked her, standing up and facing her with his arms crossed over his chest.

  “How did she die?”

  “Strangled, although no weapon was ever found.”

  “Who was the prime suspect?”

  “Benji Gunderson.”

  “Who found her body?”

  “An older couple while out walking their dog. Actually, the dog found her,” he said.

  Lindsey stared at him for a moment. Truthfully, she’d read all the same articles and there wasn’t much more to be learned. She supposed he could have gotten all of that from town gossip but somehow she doubted it.

  She decided to go for one more just to see how committed he was. “Who was her best friend?”

  “That wasn’t in the articles,” Robbie said. “But I happened to chat up our boy Milton and he said that her best mate was a woman named Judy, who happens to teach at the high school.”

  That did it. Lindsey knew she had to reassess Robbie’s desire to help her out. Maybe he was a chronic buttinsky like her or maybe he really thought this would bring them closer together. Either way, he was a terrific study of people and Lindsey knew that ability would come in very handy.

  “You’re serious,” she said. “You really want to help find out if the person who returned the library book is Candice Whitley’s killer.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And I have some theories.”

  “Do tell,” she said.

  “The boyfriend,” he said. “It had to be. It’s always the boyfriend. Probably, she was cheating on him and he found out and then strangled her in a violent rage.”

  “He had an airtight alibi,” Lindsey said. “He was out of town.”

  “All right, then the boyfriend was cheating on her and his lover killed Candice in a jealous rage so they could be together,” he said.

  “And this theory is substantiated on what?” Lindsey asked.

  “Wild speculation,” he said. “Oh, and I saw it in a movie.”

  Lindsey laughed. She couldn’t help it. Robbie looked so pleased with himself.

  “Sherlock Holmes does not approve,” she said. She took off the hat and dropped it on his head. “You need to have facts, Watson, not guesses and movie plot lines.”

  Robbie pushed the brim of the hat up off of his face and peered at her from beneath it. “Fine. Let’s hear your theory.”

  “I don’t have one yet. I’m still gathering the facts,” she said. She glanced through her office window to the library beyond and saw a familiar figure headed their way. “But I do have a few more leads to follow up on.”

  “Excellent!” Robbie looked interested. “Care to share?”

  “Share what exactly?” Sully appeared in the doorway, making Robbie start and Lindsey smile.

  Robbie put his hand to his chest. “Don’t sneak up on a man like that; you’re likely to scare him to death.”

  “Not seeing the downside,” Sully said. He frowned. “What’s with the lid?”

  Robbie took the hat off and dropped it onto Lindsey’s desk. “A gift for a friend since we’re going to be partners in this whole investigating thing.”

  “What?” Sully looked at Lindsey with one eyebrow lowered in concern.

  “Robbie has offered to be the Dr. Watson to my Sherlock,” she said.

  “You’re encouraging her?” Sully asked Robbie. “Why would you . . . Oh, I get it.”

  “Get what?” Robbie asked. He looked innocent—too innocent.

  “You’re thinking if you can be her investigating sidekick, it’ll give you an in with her and you can romance her into more than friendship. Am I right?”

  “Maybe,” Robbie said.

  “It won’t work,” Sully said.

  “Says you,” Robbie retorted.

  “Yes, says me, because firstly, she’s with me and secondly, oh yeah, she’s with me,” he said.

  “She is not with you,” Robbie said. “I’ve been watching you two and it’s downright painful. It’s sort of like watching two tortoises run at each other. Maddening.”

  “And you would be what, then?” Sully asked. “The bird of prey who swoops in and snatches one of the tortoises?”

  “I fancied myself as more of the speedy hare, who sadly dozes off in the middle of the race but then makes up for lost time,” Robbie said.

  “Sorry, jackrabbit, but you aren’t going to be making any time here.” Sully grabbed Robbie by the elbow and led him to the door. “No hard feelings, mate, but I actually have information for Lindsey that I’m not sharing with you.”

  With that he pushed the Englishman out the door and shut it in Robbie’s face before turning back around to face Lindsey.

  “Rude!” Robbie shouted through the door.

  “Did I say he was growing on me like a fungus? Because now I’m not so sure,” Sully said. “Now he feels more like a bloodsucking tick.”

  “You did say that,” she said. “But I think you’ve just established some very clear boundaries.”

  She glanced at the clock on her wall. “I hate to say it, but I only have five more minutes until my lunch hour is over and then I really can’t be socializing.”

  “Five minutes? I can work with that.” Sully reached out and took her hand and led her into the only corner of her office not visible through any of the windows. Then he kissed her.

  It wasn’t a long kiss. It was a swift decisive press of his mouth against hers; no less potent for its brevity as it was clearly a stamp of possession. Lindsey was utterly appalled at the fluttery feminine part of her that kind of dug it.

  “Feel better?” she asked when he released her.

  “Almost,” he said. He took the pencils out of her hair and let it fall about her shoulders. Then he cupped her face and kissed her one more time, less swiftly and much more thoroughly. When he leaned back, his blues eyes sparkled at her. “Now I’m good.”

  Lindsey was glad she
could read lips, because with all of the blood rushing to her head in an overheated reaction to Sully’s nearness, she couldn’t hear a word he said.

  Since they had rekindled their relationship, Sully had been much more forthcoming in his actions and words, minus the whole “L” word thing. Although they were keeping their relationship on the down low, Lindsey was never in any doubt that he was as attracted to her as she was to him. It was pretty intoxicating.

  She glanced at the clock. Lunch hour was over. Pity.

  “Okay, then, right, back to business. What library-related thing were we talking about?” she asked.

  She sidestepped away from him and moved behind her desk. She was at work, for crying out loud. She needed to get a grip. She had to at least try and appear professional and not throw herself at him even though she wanted to, right?

  Sully grinned as if he understood her need to keep a healthy boundary between them and why. “We were talking about me having a name for you as to who might have returned that overdue book.”

  “We were?” she asked.

  “We were about to,” he clarified.

  “What’s the name?”

  “Matthew Mercer.”

  Lindsey frowned. She had spent her morning reading every article she could find about the case. She hadn’t seen that name mentioned, not once.

  “That’s a new one,” she said.

  “He was one of her students.”

  “So he was a minor at the time of the murder,” she said. That explained why he hadn’t been mentioned.

  “Does he still live in the area?” she asked.

  “No,” Sully said. “But his parents do.”

  “Why would he have had the book?” she asked. She gestured for him to sit down as she sat behind her desk.

  “He was a star student of Ms. Whitley’s,” Sully said. “A real reader; he always had his nose in a book. He was in my sister Mary’s class, so I had to check in with her to make sure I remembered him right, but she confirmed that Matthew followed Ms. Whitley everywhere. She was always loaning him books and they would have big discussions about the literary merits of the works.”

  “It sounds as if they were close,” Lindsey said. “Inappropriately close?”

  “Mary said she didn’t get that feeling but she was only fifteen at the time, so who knows for sure,” Sully said.

  “What happened to Matthew?” Lindsey asked.

  Sully blew out a breath. “Although there was no evidence that he had any connection to the murder, the townspeople seemed to think it was either him or Benji Gunderson. Mercer was bullied so badly, he had to drop out of school and ended up taking the GED and leaving for an out-of-state college a year early.”

  “That’s awful. It must have been really rough,” Lindsey said. “First he loses his favorite teacher, who may or may not have meant more to him, in a horrible way, and then he is accused of her murder without any evidence.”

  “His parents still live here but as far as I know, he’s never been back,” Sully said.

  “Sounds like a similar story to Benji Gunderson’s,” Lindsey said. “How hard it must have been for them to be driven out of their hometown on just suspicion.”

  “Have you heard anything more from Herb?”

  “No. I get the feeling he just wants it to all go away, but these things never do that, do they?”

  “Not in my experience, no, but especially not if someone returned the book in an effort to reopen the case,” Sully said.

  “But why after all these years would someone do that?” she asked.

  “I don’t suppose we’ll know the answer to that until we know who returned the book.”

  “It’s maddening.”

  “Agreed,” he said.

  Sully was looking over her shoulder out the window that looked into the library, and Lindsey got the feeling he wasn’t talking about the case anymore.

  She turned and followed the line of his gaze and saw Robbie pacing back and forth in front of the window, pausing every now and again to look up from the book he was holding to peer into her office.

  When he did it again, both Sully and Lindsey waved at him. Robbie started and then frowned and stomped away.

  “I’m thinking the next time that Peeping Tom comes by I’m going to give him his money’s worth,” he said.

  “Really?” Lindsey asked with a laugh. “And how are you going to do that?”

  Sully turned to face her and the look in his blue eyes scorched.

  “Oh, oh my,” Lindsey said. It came out breathier than she intended and he grinned.

  A knock on her office door stopped whatever else she might have said, which was probably a good thing since she was pretty sure she was seconds away from taking him up on his unspoken offer.

  “Lindsey, can I talk to you for a sec?” Ann Marie asked as she opened the door just enough to poke her head in. “Oh, hi, Sully.”

  “Hi, Ann Marie,” he said. “How are those boys of yours?”

  “Serving a week’s detention for switching the signs on the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms at school,” she said.

  Sully burst out laughing until he saw the look on Ann Marie’s face. Then he sobered up immediately.

  “You have to admit that as pranks go that’s clever,” he said.

  “Yeah, other people have a college fund for their kids, I have a bail fund. Hmmm,” she grumbled, sounding an awful lot like Marge Simpson.

  “They’re just rambunctious,” Lindsey said. “They’ll outgrow it.”

  “Yes, I’m sure I’ll look back and find their shenanigans amusing, you know, after the principal takes me off his speed dial,” Ann Marie said.

  “What can I help you with?” Lindsey asked.

  “Well, speaking of the boys, I need to chaperone a school field trip next week and I was wondering if I could take that day off?” she asked. “I think it’s in the best interest of everyone that I go.”

  “No problem,” Lindsey said. “We’ll make it work. Shoot me an email with the date and I’ll adjust your schedule.”

  “Thanks,” Ann Marie said. She paused and glanced between them. “I wasn’t interrupting anything, was I?”

  “No!” Lindsey said at the same time Sully said, “Maybe.”

  Lindsey gave him an outraged look and Ann Marie laughed.

  “I’ll just be going, then,” Ann Marie said. She went to close the door but Lindsey rose from her seat and grabbed the handle.

  “Sully was just leaving, too,” she said.

  He rose from his seat and headed toward the door. He paused beside Lindsey and leaned close. She felt her heart stutter to a stop as she waited to hear what he had to say.

  “Call you later?”

  “Please,” she said.

  He looked like he wanted to say more—heck, he looked like he wanted to do more, a lot more—but he didn’t. Instead, he stepped forward and kissed her forehead in a gesture that meant no more than friends, and then he was gone.

  “I love my husband,” Ann Marie said. “I really do, but that man just packs a wallop to your girl parts, doesn’t he?”

  Lindsey watched as Sully strode out of the library and forced herself not to chase after him.

  “Yup,” she said.

  “And there’s really nothing going on between you two?” she asked. She looked at Lindsey with pity in her eyes. Lindsey hated lying to her, but she just wasn’t ready to have the whole town in on their relationship yet.

  “Nope.” At the moment, it was about as coherent as she could get.

  • • •

  “Explain to me again why we’re doing this,” Paula said as she and Lindsey strode through the front doors of the high school.

  They were moving against the tide of students who had just been released. As it was Friday, Lindsey realized they were lucky
they didn’t get knocked down and curb-stomped for going in what was clearly the wrong direction.

  “It’s a cooperative project between the public library and the high school library to get every freshman a library card to encourage their summer reading,” Lindsey shouted over the voices of the student body pouring out around them.

  As two teens on skateboards came barreling at them, Lindsey grabbed Paula and dove to the side.

  “I think we’d better hug the wall until the horde passes,” Paula said.

  “Cool hair!” a teen girl said to Paula as she jammed earbuds into her ears. She didn’t wait for Paula’s response.

  “And that’s why you’re here,” Lindsey said.

  Paula glanced down at her thick purple braid. “You think they’ll relate to me because of the tats and the hair?”

  “Wouldn’t you back in the day?”

  Paula appeared to consider it and then nodded. “I was a bit of a rebel back then. I would have dug me.”

  “So unless you really don’t want to be the liaison to the high school, I figured I’d put you in charge of the library card project,” Lindsey said.

  “Cool,” Paula said. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Lindsey liked seeing her newest employee embrace the opportunity to do something all her own, and she did believe that Paula’s appearance was going to help her build a rapport with the teens. Of course, it was a bit of a no-brainer given the choice between Paula and Ms. Cole as to who would work with the teens more effectively. It was Paula all the way.

  Once the mob had cleared the entrance to the building, Lindsey led Paula up the steps and through the glass doors into the main lobby. Lindsey had only been in the high school twice before, so she had to stop by the office to sign in and get directions to the library.

  Michelle Maynard, who ran the office, was pleasant but distracted as she had several teens underfoot all demanding her attention right now in the overly dramatic the-world-is-ending way that only teens can manage.

  Lindsey glanced at a map on the wall and saw that the library was located on the upper floor next to the English department. Given that she had hoped to do some teacher recon, how fortuitous was that? She and Paula put on visitor nametags and headed upstairs.