Hitting the Books

by Jenn McKinlay

“Which Emma will determine by the end of the day, no doubt,” Violet said. She gave Lindsey a stern look as if daring her to argue. Lindsey had no intention of doing so.

  Beth glanced from Lindsey to the others and said, “I really enjoyed reading about Francie getting her education in the book. I felt like it sent such a positive message about the value of learning.”

  Now all the heads in the room swiveled toward her.

  “I’m sorry. Are we not discussing the book?” she asked.

  “Of course we are,” Mary said. “On the off chance that the hit-and-run wasn’t an accident, I don’t think we need to remind Lindsey that my brother, Sully, would be devastated if anything happened to her, do we?”

  Lindsey swallowed the mouthful of bread. It went down hard. “Have you been practicing the guilt-trip thing in anticipation of Josie, or does it just come naturally when you become a mom, like a superpower when you’ve been zapped by lightning?”

  “Pretty sure it just comes,” Mary said. “How’d I do? Did it work?”

  “Yes,” Lindsey said. “I promise I will stay away from the whole rotten mess with the car and Theresa and let the police figure it out.”

  She noticed half of the room gave her side-eye, while the other half seemed to believe her. Fine. Whatever. She wasn’t going to get involved. Really, she wasn’t. It’s not like the car or the driver had anything to do with her or the library. She was just a concerned citizen. That was all. Really.

  * * *

  • • •

  Three days after the accident, and there was still no news about the car or who had been driving it. Larry Milstein had been seen in the police station, yelling in his auctioneer’s voice about wanting the driver responsible apprehended and locked up. Chief Plewicki had done her best to calm him down, but there was no appeasing him. In an uncharacteristically aggressive move, he threatened to have her job if she didn’t arrest someone and soon.

  The small town of Briar Creek was agog, with everyone taking sides in the Plewicki versus Milstein debate. Lindsey heard most of the details because Officer Kirkland bought his morning coffee at the bakery at the same time Lindsey did. He was rabid in his defense of his boss, and Lindsey understood that, but she also grasped the fact that Larry Milstein’s temper was mostly coming from a place of fear. People behaved badly when they were afraid.

  Lindsey was sitting at the reference desk giving Ann Marie, her adult-services library assistant, a break, when Liza Milstein entered the building. The last time Lindsey had seen Liza, she had been climbing into the ambulance to ride to the hospital with her soon-to-be stepmother, so Lindsey was surprised to see her in the library, especially since it was not the usual day for her study group.

  “Liza, how are you? How’s Theresa?” Lindsey gestured for Liza to take the seat beside her desk.

  Liza tucked a hank of light brown hair behind her right ear. She clutched her book bag in front of her and sat down. She was wearing an oversize hooded white sweatshirt, skinny jeans, and white Converse high-tops. Lindsey wasn’t sure whether it was the same outfit as a few days ago or whether all of Liza’s clothes looked like this. Either way, she’d probably had a rough couple of days, so Lindsey wanted to put her at ease in any way she could.

  “I’m fine, Ms. Norris,” Liza said. “And Theresa will be fine, eventually. I really just stopped by to thank you for taking care of her. She said you were very comforting right after she was hit.”

  “Wow, she was in so much pain, I’m surprised she can remember anything about that,” Lindsey said. “Does she remember anything from right before she was struck by the car?”

  “No.” Liza shook her head. “She said she didn’t even hear the car coming. She was thinking about some wedding-related detail, her flowers, I think, and the next thing she knew, she was clipped by the car and sent up into the air to land with a crunch. She says she only remembers the crunch. She doesn’t remember the car or the driver or anything else.”

  “Maybe that’s a mercy,” Lindsey said. “Otherwise she might have nightmares. Although it probably doesn’t help the police very much.”

  “No, Chief Plewicki was pretty disappointed when she talked to her, although she tried to hide it behind an ‘all that matters is that you’re okay’ attitude,” Liza said. “I could tell she was struggling.”

  “Yeah, an eyewitness who actually saw the driver would be a big help,” Lindsey said. “Charlie Peyton tried to describe him to a sketch artist, but when he was asked specifics about the driver, he couldn’t recall the face well enough to describe him. How’s your dad doing?”

  “Is that code for ‘Has he calmed down any’?” Liza asked.

  Lindsey nodded.

  “No, not even a little. Theresa is his whole world.”

  Lindsey considered Liza’s words. From what the crafternooners had said, she knew it had been only Liza and her dad since her mother had passed. She wondered how Liza felt about her dad getting married.

  “Is that weird for you to have your dad getting married?” she asked.

  Liza shrugged. Not being versed in the nuances of twenty-year-old mannerisms, Lindsey wasn’t sure whether this meant she didn’t care, she did care, or she wasn’t sure.

  “More weird to have him marrying my tennis coach,” she said. “Theresa has been coaching me for six years. She was always there for me, you know, when he was traveling and I needed someone to talk to about school or boys. I thought she was my friend. I didn’t realize—never mind.”

  “Realize what?” Lindsey asked. “It’s okay, you can talk to me. We have librarian-patron privilege.”

  Liza laughed as Lindsey had hoped she would.

  “It’s dumb, but I guess there’s a part of me that wonders if Theresa was my friend at all—like, maybe she was always kind to me just to get close to my dad.”

  There was a vulnerability in Liza’s eyes that made Lindsey choose her next words carefully. She didn’t want to dismiss what Liza was feeling, but she knew Theresa wasn’t the sort of person who would manipulate a young woman to get close to her father.

  “That doesn’t seem like the Theresa I know,” Lindsey said.

  Liza ducked her head and gave a quick nod. “You’re right. And I’d never ever want anything bad to happen to her.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” Lindsey said. “Don’t worry. I’m sure Chief Plewicki will have a lead soon. She’s the best.”

  “Sure,” Liza said. She looked doubtful, but then changed the subject and said, “I also stopped by because I was wondering if you could help me pick out some audiobooks for Theresa. She said you two liked the same sort of things, and she’s too tired to read or watch television.”

  “I’d be happy to,” Lindsey said. “I imagine she’ll be stuck in bed for a bit.”

  “She’s in a cast for at least two weeks and then a boot if she’s lucky,” Liza said. “It’s all so crazy. They’re supposed to get married in three weeks, and I thought they’d postpone it so Theresa could have the wedding of her dreams, you know, without a cast, but nope.”

  “They’re going ahead with the wedding?”

  “Yes, but they’ve scaled it back so that it’s just a small family gathering,” Liza said. “They planned a trip around the world, just the two of them, for their honeymoon, and neither one of them wants to give it up.”

  “I can understand that,” Lindsey said. “What an adventure.”

  “I think they’re crazy,” Liza said. “What’s the big deal with waiting until Theresa is well again? It’s so typical of my father. He gets something in his head, and that’s it. He’s like a big terrier—a lovable terrier, but still a terrier. I hope Theresa goes through with marrying him after all of this. He tried to move her into our house, but she was having none of it. She wants to be in her own home with all of her things, which makes total sense. You know, when you’re sick you want to be
home.”

  Lindsey realized she hadn’t been sick in a while, but if she was, she’d be in her new home with Sully. She wondered how that would go, since she was the sort of person who liked to be left alone when she was ill. Like totally alone, in a cave, out in the wilderness somewhere. She realized she’d never seen Sully sick. Oh, he’d been in the hospital over a year ago, when they’d gotten into a boat crash, but she’d never had to be with him twenty-four seven when he was ailing. Her last partner had been horribly needy when he was sick. Sully couldn’t be like that, could he? No, he didn’t seem the type.

  “What do you think?” Liza asked.

  “Huh? I’m sorry.” Lindsey forced herself back to the conversation. “My mind wandered there. What did you ask me?”

  Liza held up an audiobook of the latest Ingrid Thoft title in her Fina Ludlow series.

  Lindsey nodded. “A kick-butt Boston PI mystery? That will definitely take Theresa’s mind off her troubles.”

  Together they gathered several more audiobooks, and Lindsey grabbed a volume of poetry by Rudy Francisco called Helium that she thought Theresa would enjoy. As she followed Liza to the self-checkout machine they had recently installed, Lindsey was filled with a sense of purpose: connecting people to words, whether listened to or read or watched. Nothing made her feel as if she was contributing to the betterment of the planet more than introducing a reader to an author’s work. As always, she was convinced she had the best job in the world.

  She glanced at the stack of materials Liza was checking out. “Maybe we should have gotten Theresa some travel books.”

  “Travel books?” Beth joined the conversation. “Where is she going?”

  “Honeymoon trip around the world,” Liza said with an eye roll.

  “Oh, honeymoons are the best,” Beth gushed.

  Now Lindsey had to clamp her eyeballs into place to keep them from rolling. Beth was her very best friend in the whole wide world, and she loved her like a sister, truly, but if she had to hear about—

  “Paris, tell me they are going to Paris,” Beth said.

  “Oh, hey, is that the phone in my office ringing?” Lindsey craned her head. “I’d better get that. Liza, please let Theresa know we’re thinking about her, and if she needs anything, more books or whatever, be sure to let us know.”

  “I will,” Liza said.

  “I just got back from my honeymoon in Europe,” Beth continued as Lindsey backed away. Slowly, slowly, she was almost out of there.

  Lindsey took another step back and bumped into the person standing behind her. With a small yelp and an apology at the ready, she whipped around to find Emma Plewicki standing there.

  “You can’t outrun the stories from her honeymoon. I don’t know why you’re even trying.” Emma shook her head as if she couldn’t believe Lindsey had attempted to ghost out of the conversation.

  “Ugh, Beth’s post-wedding honeymoon phase is going to end someday, isn’t it?” Lindsey asked.

  They both glanced at Beth, who had gotten to the Eiffel Tower portion of her story. “And then he got down on one knee and proposed . . .”

  Lindsey and Emma mouthed the words to me all over again to each other.

  They exchanged grins.

  “She will get over it someday,” Emma said. “Probably when she gets pregnant, and then it will be all about baby names and decorating the nursery and all that junk.”

  “Junk?” Lindsey said.

  Emma shrugged, and Lindsey had the feeling that Emma was a kindred spirit in the no-desire-for-a-baby club.

  “That sounds really romantic,” Liza said. She glanced past Beth at Lindsey with a please help me sort of look that Lindsey knew she’d had on her face when hearing Beth’s wedding stories for the umpteenth time.

  “We should save her,” she said to Emma.

  “Agreed, but first I have some news.” Emma straightened her shoulders, looking more official than she had a moment ago.

  “Is Theresa all right?” Lindsey asked. She felt her stomach drop in preparation for the worst.

  “As far as I know, she’s fine,” Emma said. She blinked. “Unless you know something I don’t?”

  “No, I just panicked,” Lindsey said. “Sorry. What’s up?”

  “We think we have a lead on the car,” Emma said. “And I wanted to see if you could look at a video clip and verify that it’s the same one you saw.”

  4

  “The car that hit Theresa?”

  “Were we looking for a different one?”

  Lindsey gave her an exasperated look.

  “Sorry,” Emma said. “Lack of sleep, I’m grumpy.”

  “Forgiven.” Lindsey dismissed Emma’s mood with a wave of her hand. “It was a dumb question. When no one recognized it, I figured the driver was from out of town and we’d never see them again.”

  “So did I,” Emma said. “But luckily the Blue Anchor has a security camera that monitors the outside of the restaurant even when they’re open. I had Ian bring up the video from when Charlie was almost hit. We didn’t get a license plate, but we did verify that it almost hit Charlie.”

  Emma took her phone out of her pocket and opened a video. She handed it to Lindsey and said, “If you can tell me if that’s the car you saw, that would be a huge help.”

  Lindsey squinted at the video on the phone. It was tiny, but she recognized the front door of the Anchor. She watched a man exit the restaurant. At least, she assumed it was a man, judging by his build and the work clothes he was wearing: boots, jeans, a flannel shirt, and a beanie on his head. He looked like Ray Michel, a local fisherman known for being able to drink six pints and six shots, and still be able to recite the entire Greek alphabet in order and in reverse. In the video, he was checking over his shoulder while he wandered over to the edge of the pier. Judging by his pose, it took Lindsey only a second to figure out what he was doing.

  “Oh, gross,” she said. She shoved the phone at Emma. “I did not need to see Ray Michel peeing off the side of the pier.”

  Emma cringed and grabbed the phone. “Sorry, sorry, I forgot to queue it up to the pertinent part. I haven’t erased the part with Ray, because he and I need to have a chat about indecent exposure. Honestly, just because these guys urinate off their fishing boats, they think anyplace with water near it is a go.”

  Lindsey waited while Emma looked for the segment of the video that had the car. She glanced at Liza and noted that the young woman looked half asleep as she listened to Beth’s description of the best tapas to be had on the Spanish Riviera. Once Beth reached this point, Lindsey knew that she was in the homestretch of her honeymoon stories.

  “Here.” Emma dragged her finger across the screen and handed it to Lindsey.

  Lindsey squinted at the screen. There was no sign of Ray. Now it showed Charlie Peyton leaving the Blue Anchor. The video was low quality and grainy, and even if the date and time were not in the corner of the frame, verifying that it was about the same time Theresa had been hit, Lindsey would have recognized Charlie from the distinctive bop in his walk. A musician at heart, he always moved as if he were listening to a tune no one else could hear.

  A few seconds into the video, she watched Charlie whip his head to the left. He visibly jumped, and then a white car appeared on the screen, charging right for Charlie. He threw himself backward, got tangled up in the railing around the restaurant’s front door, and landed hard on the ground on his knee. The car lurched back toward the street, denting the railing and missing Charlie by one of the long, straggly hairs on his head. When the screen went dark, Lindsey exhaled. She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until that moment, and she felt a bit light-headed.

  “Charlie is lucky he wasn’t killed,” she said. She cringed. “I didn’t realize it was so close. Please don’t show this to Nancy. She might stroke out.”

  Emma nodded. “I kn
ow I almost did. Do you recognize the car?”

  “Yes, that’s definitely the car,” Lindsey said. “A white, four-door sedan, and the time of the tape verifies that it would have been right down the street at the time Theresa was hit.”

  Emma nodded. “Thanks, that’s what I was hoping you’d say.”

  “How will you find it now?”

  “Actually, we may have a lead on it already,” Emma said. “The morning of the incident, we had a report of a stolen car. A white, four-door sedan, in fact.”

  “That would be a heck of a coincidence,” Lindsey said.

  “Wouldn’t it?” Emma asked. “I don’t believe in coincidences. I think whoever hit Theresa Huston stole Kayla Manning’s car and used it to do it.”

  A gasp brought their attention around. Liza Milstein clapped her hand over her mouth as if she could force the gasp back.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” she said. She dropped her hand. “That’s a lie. I was totally trying to hear your conversation.”

  Beth frowned. “And here I thought you were riveted by my honeymoon stories.”

  “Sorry, but I was sure Chief Plewicki had some information about the hit-and-run, and you do, don’t you?”

  “It may not mean anything,” Emma said. “But yes, there is a possibility that the car used in the hit-and-run was stolen from Kayla Manning. What can you tell me about your father’s relationship to Kayla?”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Liza said. She turned away and began stuffing the audiobooks into the tote bag she’d brought with her.

  “I know that they dated,” Emma said.

  “That was ages ago,” Liza said.

  “It was just before your father met Theresa,” Emma said.

  Liza gave her a nervous glance but said nothing. Lindsey watched her closely. She couldn’t tell whether Liza was rattled because of what Emma was asking or because she actually knew something about Kayla.

  “Liza, if you have information that might be important to the case, you need to share it with me,” Emma said. Her voice was calm, but Lindsey could tell by the way she rocked up and down on her toes that she was fighting for patience.