by Sofie Kelly
I took a deep breath. “Lise, the reason I called is I’m looking for some information. Do you know anything about Gregor Easton, the conductor?”
“I know he died just a couple of days ago.”
“He died here, Lise.”
“There? What was Easton doing in Smallville, Minnesota?”
“Mayville,” I said. I held the phone with one hand and stretched my other arm over my head. “He was here for the Wild Rose Summer Music Festival. He’s—he was—guest conductor and clinician.”
“I’ve heard of the festival.” Lise’s voice turned pensive. “I didn’t realize that was where it was.” I could hear her tapping a fingernail against the side of the phone. “But what was Easton doing there? It’s not his usual type of venue.”
I shifted in the chair and pulled my legs up under me. “He was a last-minute replacement for Zinia Young.”
“Now, your festival would be Zinia’s type of event.”
“She had to bow out at the last minute, so Easton volunteered to fill in.”
“Volunteered? I don’t think so.”
“That came straight from someone on the festival board,” I said. “I guess he offered because he and Zinia are close friends.”
An inelegant snort of laughter came through the receiver. “Gregor Easton doesn’t have friends,” Lise said. “He has—had—sycophants and people he was using. Easton and Zinia were not friends. Trust me, if he volunteered, there was something in it for him.”
The man Lise was describing did sound like the man Ruby and Maggie had talked about in class, like the man I’d encountered at the library.
“What else do you know about Easton?” I asked. I kept waiting for Lise to ask me why I was asking for information about the man.
“He wasn’t well liked in the classical music world,” Lise said. “He was arrogant—even for a conductor.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Now, to be fair, he was considered to be a first-rate composer, deservedly so, from what I’ve heard. But technically he wasn’t anywhere near as gifted.”
“What do you mean, technically?” I asked. I heard Lise’s feet drop to the floor and I knew she was probably reaching across her desk for her coffee.
“His playing—and conducting, too—weren’t close to the caliber of his composing. Do you remember Dr. Mitton?”
I thought for a moment. “Wasn’t he musician in residence a couple of years ago? He was English.”
“That’s him.” I imagined Lise nodding on the other end of the phone. “He once compared Easton’s piano playing to that of a three-year-old on a toy keyboard.”
“That’s harsh,” I said.
“That’s the kind of response Easton generated in people,” she said. “I heard him play once, years ago, and while he was good, he wasn’t great. The music was beautiful, but he didn’t seem to connect with it. It was almost as though he hadn’t written his own score. It was so much better than his playing. The best versions of his compositions have been played by other people.”
That was interesting, though I had no idea how it might help me. I glanced at my watch. There was a lot more I wanted to know, but I was running out of time.
“Lise, do you know anything about Easton’s background?” I asked. “Where he grew up, where he got his first degree?”
“I don’t.” I pictured her shaking her head, blond curls bouncing. I felt another sting of homesickness. “But I can ask around, discreetly, of course, if you’d like me to.”
“Please,” I said. I gave her my home phone and my cell number. If we missed each other, I didn’t want a message about Gregor Easton left for me at the library.
“So, Kath,” Lise said. “Why all the interest in a dead conductor?”
So I wasn’t going to get away without answering some questions myself after all. “This stays between us?”
“Absolutely.”
“I found his body.”
“Oh, Kath, I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I am. Thanks,” I said. “The thing is, the police still have some questions and so do I.”
“Do you mean there was some kind of accident, or are you saying someone killed him?” I heard the surprise in her question.
“Lise, I honestly don’t know for sure,” I said. “I can tell you that it looks like the library is one of the last places he was before he died. Somehow he got into the building after hours.”
“And you want to know why a renowned composer was breaking into your library.”
That, and why would someone want to kill him at all, not to mention who did. But I didn’t say that out loud.
“I thought the biggest problems you’d see out there would be grizzly bears and killer mosquitoes.”
“Maybe I’m just being nosy. It’s probably going to turn out that Easton had a stroke.”
“Well, let me see what I can find out and I’ll get back to you.”
I thanked her and we both said good-bye. I hung up the phone and stood up, giving my right foot—which had fallen asleep—a shake. I stood in the doorway of my office. And looked down to the main floor of the library. In the time I’d been on the phone, Will Redfern’s men had taken the temporary circulation desk apart. One of the workers was spreading a heavy canvas tarp over the floor where the desk had sat. The front doors were propped open and another man came in, carrying what looked to me like pieces of steel staging.
Something was up. I headed down the stairs. “Excuse me,” I called, walking quickly over to them. “Are you setting up staging?”
The man spreading out the tarp turned at the sound of my voice. I recognized him as Eddie, a cousin I wasn’t sure how many times removed, of Abigail’s. He was a big, barrel-chested man with a great, booming laugh, but as Abigail had observed wryly, he wasn’t very “work brittle.”
“Yes, ma’am, we are settin’ up stagin’,” Eddie said. “We brought this ’cause we didn’t know if we could get into the storage room to get the other stagin’.”
The other worker set the pieces he’d carried down on the tarpaulin. I knew from watching Eddie work, or, more correctly, not work, who’d be assembling that staging.
“What’s the staging for?” I asked.
“Well, we need to reach something up to the ceilin’ and the ladder don’t go that high.”
Talking to Eddie could be maddeningly slow. I wasn’t sure if he doled out information so slowly just because he truly was literal-minded or whether he secretly enjoyed playing people.
I blew out a breath and rubbed the knot that was forming between my shoulders. “Why do you need to reach the ceiling?” I asked.
Eddie scratched his stubbled chin. His hands were huge. One of them could have covered my entire head. “Well, ma’am, the ceilin’s where that big, old plaster medallion goes.”
Plaster medallion?
I looked up. The front entry of the library ran up two floors. I could see where a ceiling medallion could fit, but I hadn’t signed anything to order one and it wasn’t part of the original renovation plans.
The knot at the base of my neck tightened.
“Where’s your boss, Eddie?” I asked.
He scratched his ear and frowned. “Well, I can’t exactly say,” he said. I noticed he hadn’t said he didn’t know.
His cell was tucked in his T-shirt pocket. “Give me your phone,” I said. I knew if I called from the library phone Will Redfern wouldn’t answer.
Eddie hesitated. “This is a work phone,” he said.
“Good.” I grabbed the cell from his pocket and flipped it open. “Because this is a work conversation.” I stepped away from Eddie and punched in Will’s number. He answered on the third ring. “Hey, Eddie boy,” he said, all macho good humor.
“Hello, Will,” I said. “It’s Kathleen Paulson. Eddie very kindly let me use his phone.” I looked back over my shoulder and smiled at Eddie, who looked as if he were still trying to figure out how I’d managed to get his cell.
/> There was silence on the other end of the phone. “Will, are you still there?” I said.
“Umm, yes, Miss Paulson, I’m here. What can I do for you?”
“According to Eddie there’s a ceiling medallion to be installed in the front entry of the library.”
“That’s right.”
Like Eddie, Will could stonewall. “There were no ceiling medallions on the renovation plan.” I was certain of that. I’d gone over the list of renovations, as well as the actual plan, before the work started. And I knew how to read a floor plan.
“Well, you see, the medallion is from before.”
“Before what?” I asked, struggling to keep the growing aggravation out of my voice.
“Before you got here,” Will said. “Roof leaked, right after Thanksgiving last year.”
“I know,” I said.
“Caused quite a bit of damage to the medallion that was up there—part of it came down. Made a helluva mess. So the boys took the whole thing down and we sent it away to be repaired. No one around here can do that fine work. Took a long time to get it back.”
What didn’t, if Will were involved? I cleared my throat. “Thanks for explaining,” I said. “Sorry to have bothered you.”
“No problem,” Will said. He was full of that good-humored machismo again. “When you’re from away, how could you know what happened last year?”
From away. It wasn’t the first time Will had pointed that out. The words stung and I suspected sometimes they were meant to. Did the person who had used me to lure Easton to the library set me up because I was from away?
“Tell the boys I’ll be over there shortly,” Will said, and hung up.
I closed the phone and handed it back to Eddie.
“That wasn’t a long-distance call, was it?” he asked suspiciously. “You weren’t callin’ Taiwan, were you?”
“Not unless your boss was in Taiwan,” I said with a smile. “He said to tell you he’ll be here soon.”
I started for the stairs. “Call me when Will Redfern gets here, please, Mary,” I said as I passed the desk.
“Will do,” she said.
I closed the workroom door, slumped against it and threw back my head in a silent, head-shaking scream. I opened my eyes to find Abigail watching me with amusement.
“Feel better?” she asked. She was sitting cross-legged in the center of the floor.
I thought for a moment. “Actually, yes,” I said. I also felt more than a little embarrassed.
“Let me guess.” She made a show of closing her eyes and pressing her fingertips to her temples. “I’m getting an image,” she said in a singsong voice. “I see workmen. I see wood and tools. But I don’t see any work being done. I see . . . I see . . .” She opened her eyes and dropped her hands. “Let me guess: You were talking to Will Redfern.”
“Very good.”
Abigail grinned and set four paperback books into the open box in front of her. “It was an easy guess,” she said. “Will hasn’t exactly made the renovations run smoothly—especially lately.” She closed the flaps of the carton, fastening them down with a strip of clear tape. There were a dozen boxes behind her, all labeled in Abigail’s slanted printing: MYSTERY, MYSTERY, ROMANCE, ROMANCE, ROMANCE, FANTASY, SCIENCE FICTION. There were more, but I couldn’t see the writing on all of them.
“Maybe my expectations were too high,” I said with a sigh. “I’m used to a big city where things go at double speed.” I snapped my fingers rapidly several times.
Abigail shook her head. “Don’t let Will pull that small-town slash country-boy routine on you. No, we’re not Boston, but we do know how to do a job properly and on time.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “You’re doing a great job, by the way.” I gestured at the stacked boxes. “Is there anything you need?”
She sat back on her heels and looked around. “More boxes would be a help.”
“That’s easy,” I said. “There’s maybe a dozen flattened behind the door of the lunchroom.”
“Then I’m good,” Abigail said.
I left her sorting books and went back downstairs. Will’s workmen had the first lift of staging assembled. Mary was checking someone out at the new desk. Jason was pushing a cart full of books over to the shelves.
For the moment, everything was running the way it was supposed to.
I went back to my office, turned on my computer and pulled up the budget spreadsheets. I spent the next hour going over the numbers, stopping only once to give Mary the key to the back loading dock for Larry, so he could bring in his supplies. I didn’t realize how dark the sky had gotten until I finished the last column of numbers, leaned back in my chair and swung around to look outside. Heavy gray clouds seemed to be pressing on the lake. Spits of rain began hitting the window. Harry was a lot more accurate a forecaster than the weatherman on this morning’s news.
The rain was beating steadily on the window now. I got up to turn on the overhead light and put paper in the printer.
The last copy of the budget was coming out of the printer when Larry knocked on my open door. “Sorry to bother you, Kathleen,” he said. “But it looks like you’ve got a leak in the computer room.”
I sighed and stood up. “Where?” I asked.
“Window on the far left.” Larry looked back over his shoulder. “I wouldn’t have bothered you, but it seems Will’s guys are on a break.”
“They take a lot of breaks,” I said, coming around the desk. I followed Larry to the computer room. Just as he’d said, the end window—a brand-new-three-weeks-ago window—was leaking. A small stream of water ran along the inside edge of the unit, between the actual frame holding the glass and the build-out, across the wide ledge and onto the floor. Actually it was running into a large white bucket with SHORTENING written on the side. The floor around the base of the bucket was wet.
“Do you have any rags or paper towels to soak up that water?” Larry asked.
“There’s a plastic crate full of clean rags under the sink in the lunchroom upstairs,” I said.
Larry touched my arm. “Stay here. I’ll get them.” He headed for the stairs. I checked the other windows.
I was thankful there was only the one leak.
Larry came back with the box of cloths in one hand and a couple of heavy drop cloths in the other. He handed me the drop cloths. “I thought it might be a good idea to put these under the other windows—just in case,” he said.
Together we spread the painting tarps under the two dry-for-now windows. Then I mopped up the small pool of water around the bucket. The leak hadn’t slowed down, but it wasn’t any faster, either.
“There’s probably something wrong with the flashing outside around that window,” Larry said.
I looked at the little river of water running down the side of the window. I took a couple of deep breaths, but they did nothing for the anger simmering in my stomach.
“Looks like I need to track down Will,” I said to Larry, rubbing my wet hands together.
“Good luck with that,” he said with a wry smile.
I went back to my office and called Will’s cell phone. No surprise; all I got was voice mail. I left a tense, brief message.
Then I hung up and called Lita at Everett’s office. I explained about the leak, and after a moment’s hesitation gave her the highlights of what it had been like working with Will, especially lately.
“You have more patience than I do, Kathleen,” Lita said. “Everett’s out of the office right now, but I’ll have him call you when he gets back.”
I thanked her and hung up. I went back out to the desk to see if Mary had any idea where Eddie and the other worker had gone. “They might be in the parking lot,” she said. “Will’s here.”
“He is?” I said. “Where?”
Mary gestured at the staging. “He was checking that when I was on the phone.”
The staging filled all the free space inside the front doors. Neither Will nor his crew was i
n evidence anymore. How could they have gone off and left it like that?
I threaded my way between the wall and the metal framework. The floor was damp in spots. I hoped it was because the sections of staging had been outside in the rain, not because there was another leak.
I tipped my head back to check the ceiling overhead. My foot skidded on the wet tiles and my shoulder banged into the metal frame.
“Kathleen, look out!” Mary called.
Startled, I put a hand against the wall just as a large roll of plastic fell from the top of the staging above my head.
13
Wave Hands Like a Cloud
The roll of plastic glanced off my shoulder and thudded to the floor, where it unrolled for several feet before hitting the circulation desk. The impact knocked me into one side of the staging and onto the floor. It also knocked the breath out of me. Wheezing, I clutched my shoulder.
Mary scrambled over the unraveled plastic and around the staging to get to me. I looked up at her, wide-eyed, mouth gaping like some kind of fish that had jumped too high and ended up on the shore. Mary used a swear word that I didn’t even think she knew. It was so out of character, I would have laughed if it hadn’t been for that pesky breathing thing.
“Kathleen, are you all right?” Mary asked, kneeling beside me.
I nodded, making squeaky sounds as I tried to get a full breath.
Larry appeared behind Mary. “Do you want me to call nine-one-one?” he asked.
“Yes,” Mary said.
I shook my head vigorously, which only made the wheezing squeaks sound worse. I was not going to the hospital, because if I did, I wouldn’t be here when Will Redfern came in from the parking lot or wherever he was. I wouldn’t be able to take a couple of swings at him with that three-foot roll of vapor barrier that had just whacked me on the shoulder. I closed my eyes for a second and had a Walter Mitty-esque moment, in which I imagined myself swinging the roll of plastic like I was Big Papi swinging for the stands, as I chased Will over the rock wall and down to the lake.
“Kathleen, you need to see a doctor,” Mary said.
“I . . . I’m . . . fine,” I managed to gasp.