Hitting the Books

by Jenn McKinlay

  Sully slowly lowered his beer. “Now you have my full attention. Tell me, why would I think any of those things?”

  “I think I saw a ghost,” Lindsey said. The words came out in a rush, as if they were tripping over each other to get out.

  “A what, who, huh?”

  “Ghost. G-h-o-s-t. Ghost.”

  He stared at her and then drained his beer before plunking the empty glass onto the counter. He ran a hand over his face.

  “Okay, I’m ready. Explain.”

  “I know—I know I sound crazy,” she said.

  “Not crazy, exactly,” he said. “Tell me what happened. I bet we can figure it out.”

  Lindsey told him about Theresa’s pensive glance at the picture on the mantel and then how she saw a face in the window that resembled the picture when she and Robbie were leaving.

  “You had a really stressful day,” he said.

  “No, don’t,” she said. “Don’t dismiss it as me being overwrought. You know me—I am never overwrought.”

  “True,” he said. “Even when you’ve had to do things you’re afraid of, like jump into deep water in the dark.”

  “Yes, that’s much more terrifying. I will take a room full of ghosts over that any day,” she said. Then she shivered.

  “Do you really think it was a ghost?” he asked. “I never thought you were the ghost-believing sort.”

  “I’m not saying I believe in ghosts.” She paused. “But I’m not not saying it either.”

  “What did Robbie say when he saw it?”

  “He didn’t,” she said. “He missed it, but he theorized that it was staff in the house or a nurse for Theresa.”

  “That makes sense,” Sully said. “A house that size with the money Milstein has. They are bound to have a full staff.”

  “I suppose,” Lindsey said. “Did you know Larry’s first wife?”

  “Sarah Milstein?” he asked. “Yes, she was a Creeker, born and raised in the village like Mary and me. She was seven years ahead of me in school, and her maiden name was Sarah Hubbard. I didn’t know her very well. In fact, I was in the navy when she married Milstein, which by all accounts was the wedding of the century in Briar Creek.”

  Lindsey took her phone out of her bag. She opened up her pictures and chose the one she took at the Milstein house. She gave the phone to Sully.

  “Is that her?” she asked. She held her breath while Sully enlarged the picture. He blinked and then glanced up at her. His face was grim.

  “Yes, that’s her.”

  “Sully, that’s the woman I saw in the window. I know it is.”

  He ran a hand over his face as if he didn’t like anything about this.

  Lindsey put her hand on his arm. “Sully, how did Sarah Milstein die?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, I thought Liza or Theresa or one of the crafternooners would have told you.”

  “Told me what?” Lindsey forced herself to be still and not kick her feet with impatience. “I thought she died of a disease or an aneurysm or something.”

  “No, in fact, no one knows the truth. She disappeared from town one day just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Since there’s been no sign of her, it’s believed she was murdered, but her body was never found.”

  Lindsey slumped back against the counter. “Body? Her body? Is there a reason to believe she was murdered?”

  Sully shrugged. “When a person vanishes without a trace, foul play is usually involved.”

  “Who was the main suspect?”

  “Larry, initially, but when it was discovered that he was out of town on business, it seemed highly unlikely. Plus, he adored her.”

  Lindsey thought about the man who doted on Theresa. Maybe she was misjudging him, but she just didn’t see him as a murderer.

  “And she just vanished?”

  “Yup,” Sully said. “Larry tried everything. He hired detectives, he ran commercials begging anyone who might have seen her to call, but even with a hefty reward being offered, there was no sign of her. She vanished without a trace.”

  Lindsey’s eyes went wide, and she reached for her glass of wine. The tart beverage gave her taste buds a slap of wakefulness, and she put her glass down, focusing on Sully.

  “Tell me everything you remember,” she said.

  He frowned. “I’m afraid it’s not much. Like I said, I was away in the navy when all of this was happening.”

  Lindsey felt something press against her leg. She looked down, and Heathcliff was giving her his I’m starving to death expression. Lindsey hopped off her stool and grabbed his bowl from his mat in the corner. He followed her as if to offer his assistance as a sous chef.

  Lindsey prepped his food, keeping an eye on Sully while she did. He looked to be trying to remember the details of what had happened. Lindsey let him gather his thoughts, patting Heathcliff on the head as she put his food down. She resumed her seat and stared at Sully expectantly, much like Heathcliff had watched her with the food.

  “If I remember right, and that’s a big if,” Sully said, “Liza was five years old and attending kindergarten at Briar Creek Elementary. I remember because my mother was teaching there at the time, and it was quite the scandal. School ended, and Sarah didn’t show up to retrieve Liza. When they called her, she didn’t answer her phone.”

  Lindsey didn’t say a word. She waited quietly and let him sift through what he remembered. It was excruciating to resist the urge to pepper him with questions, but she knew he would have an easier time if she didn’t heckle him.

  “One of the teachers stayed with Liza while the principal called Larry,” Sully said. “He was opening a new store down in Virginia, so it wasn’t like he could race home. Liza ended up being collected by the housekeeper, who had not seen Sarah all day. In fact, no one had seen her that day. She dropped off Liza at school that morning and vanished.”

  “Oh, poor Liza,” Lindsey said. “She was just a kid. That had to have been devastating.”

  Sully nodded. “I could call my mom for more specifics if you want.”

  Lindsey appreciated the gesture, but she suspected from his reluctant tone that he really didn’t want her to dig into the disappearance of Sarah Milstein any more than she already had. Still, she had to wonder out loud.

  “Do you think Theresa knows about this, and if so, do you suppose she’s worried that whatever happened to Sarah Milstein is about to happen to her, too?”

  “Maybe, but she’s not even married to Larry yet,” Sully said. “If it was foul play that got Sarah, wouldn’t the person—assuming it’s the same person—who made Sarah vanish wait until Theresa was Mrs. Milstein?”

  “I suppose that depends upon what the gains would be to have Theresa gone—say, a life insurance policy taken out on her, for instance.”

  Sully’s eyebrows went up, and Lindsey nodded.

  “Theresa told me Larry hired the Norrgard brothers as bodyguards to keep her safe because he said he had no interest in collecting on the life insurance policy he’d taken out on her when they got engaged.”

  “Weird. Does she believe him?”

  “She seems to.”

  “Are you going to tell Emma?” he asked.

  “Robbie is,” she said. “I wonder if there was an insurance policy on Sarah Milstein.”

  “I’m sure there must have been, but I doubt he collected it, since her body has never been found,” Sully said. “I’m not even sure he’s had her declared dead yet.”

  “Wouldn’t he have to if he’s planning to remarry?”

  They exchanged a look. This was one more thing to mention to Emma.

  “So, from what you know of the two situations, do you think they’re connected?” Lindsey asked.

  Sully shrugged. “I think it’s an awful coincid
ence that both Larry’s wife and now his intended have had suspicious things happen to them. But given that we don’t know what happened to Sarah Milstein for sure, how can we determine if there’s a connection, especially when Sarah went missing but Theresa seems to be blatantly under attack?”

  “True, that is different, but we also don’t know whether Sarah Milstein had weird things happening to her before she vanished. So what you’re saying is we need to find out what happened to Sarah Milstein,” she said.

  Sully shook his head and waved his hands in a no no no gesture, but it was too late. Lindsey knew that this was exactly what they needed to do.

  9

  Sifting through old issues of the Briar Creek Gazette, Lindsey found the articles written after Sarah Milstein’s disappearance. The stories were fast and furious at first, speculating on everything from kidnapping to murder to the possibility that she had orchestrated her own disappearance. Sadly, there was no evidence to prove any of the theories, and as the months went by, the articles appeared less and less, until the community seemed to accept that it was a mystery that would never be solved.

  Larry Milstein was never considered a suspect, as he was proven to be in Virginia at the time of her disappearance and also because he seemed utterly distraught at losing his wife. It was observed that he was tireless in his search for her, following any lead, pursuing every avenue available to locate a missing person, from hiring a private detective to offering a reward. There was nothing. Sarah Milstein had vanished without a trace.

  Lindsey leaned back from the microfilm machine. The last article written about Sarah Milstein was ten years after she vanished. After that, there was nothing. No mention of her or her disappearance. The police chief at the time Sarah disappeared was not a name Lindsey recognized, and the ones who followed afterward had even less to say about the case.

  Lindsey knew that the only people who might be able to tell her more were people who had been around at the time, who knew Sarah and Larry. Given that a housekeeper had collected Liza from school that day, she seemed like a good person with whom to start. Unfortunately, there was no mention of the housekeeper in any of the papers. Lindsey didn’t know her name and couldn’t figure out how she could ask Larry. She didn’t want to ask Liza, because she had no wish to make the young woman revisit what must have been a very painful and confusing time in her life.

  Lindsey rewound the final reel of film while she mulled over the possibilities. She could talk to Ms. Cole. She had lived in town her whole life and might know something, but she wasn’t one to gossip, which was one of the things Lindsey liked about her—except in this case. She could ask Milton Duffy, her newly reinstated library-board president, as he was also the town historian. The only problem was that he was dating Ms. Cole, and she wouldn’t like it if Lindsey dragged Milton into her quest for information. Bad things had happened before when Milton had helped her out, and now that she and Ms. Cole were getting on somewhat, she didn’t want to jeopardize the relationship.

  Larry wouldn’t be inclined to talk to her, since he hardly knew her, but he might talk to Robbie. Maybe the new drinking buddies could share another glass of the good stuff, and Robbie could slyly interrogate his new friend and get the name of the housekeeper and, with any luck, her address and phone number.

  Lindsey put the film from the machine back in its box. She’d always liked the microfilm machine; if she hit just the right speed when she was spooling the film, she could give herself a nice case of vertigo. But as the Gazette got archived digitally, she knew the microfilm was going to be weeded out of existence, taking with it it’s grainy photos of the actual paper from days gone by. Sometimes progress was hard.

  She left the reference area of the library and did a sweep of the facility. It was late afternoon, and the chess club had taken over the glassed-in study rooms as they practiced for a tournament this weekend. The computers were all in use by a mix of town residents. The children’s area had two large families in it, running roughshod around the room. Beth was there, corralling the kids by bringing them to the puzzle table in the center of the room. It looked like she was herding cats. She’d get all of the kids at the table, and then two would take off for the puppet theater, which was fine, although there were kids already using it. Thankfully, the kids already dressed in garb from the costume box were more than happy to have more players in their puppet production.

  Lindsey turned away with a smile, admiring not for the first time her friend’s ability to manage chaos. She saw Ann Marie Martin helping one of their regular patrons with the copy machine by the front door. Ann Marie had the toner cartridge out and was giving it a good smack. To get more prints out of it, no doubt. Working at a small-town public library with a limited budget, Lindsey and her coworkers had refined the art of stretching their spending like squeezing pennies into copper wire.

  In the two soft chairs by the new magazine display, Leo O’Donnell and Chester Jones, two of Lindsey’s favorite patrons, were asleep with their heads tipped back, and Leo—yep, it was Leo—was snoring. She had no idea what shenanigans the two men had gotten into the night before, but if she were a betting woman, she’d place money on CJ doing his stand-up comedy routine (he was always good for a laugh) and Leo breaking out his rendition of “Mack the Knife” (he had an amazing singing voice) at the amateur talent night held weekly at the Blue Anchor.

  She decided to let them nap. Life moved pretty fast; sometimes a body needed some shut-eye. She wouldn’t kick them awake until someone complained or the snoring got too loud. Knowing them, they’d wake up unassisted as soon as happy hour started.

  She circled back toward her office, thinking about the articles she’d read. How had Sarah just disappeared without a trace? With the world under surveillance at all times by phones, cameras, security checkpoints, and so forth, it didn’t seem possible. True, her disappearance had been fifteen years ago, but surely if she was alive, someone must have picked up a trace of her somewhere. Unless she didn’t disappear. Lindsey thought about the face she’d seen in the window; could it have been . . . ? No. That was crazy. Still, the air suddenly seemed colder, and she shivered, pulling the sleeves of her sweater down over her wrists.

  Lindsey thought about her colleagues from library school. She considered them and their various fields and knew that Susie McAllister had taken a position as a genealogy librarian. She was an expert with vital records and had databases at her fingertips that Lindsey could only dream about. She decided to send her an email asking her about Sarah Milstein. If only she had Sarah’s social security number—but that was going too far.

  She was standing by the front doors when they whooshed open.

  “Lindsey, your office, now,” Emma Plewicki said as she strode into the building, not slowing down or stopping but cruising right past Lindsey.

  Lindsey could tell by the tight set of her shoulders that something was bothering the police chief. She scanned her brain. Other than her visit to the Milstein house, she had steered clear of Theresa Huston and whatever was happening—well, other than looking up old articles of the Gazette, but that was just being a librarian. It wasn’t as if she’d expected to find anything, not really.

  Lindsey followed Emma into her office. Emma sat in the chair opposite her desk, and Lindsey closed the door and sat down.

  “Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Water or coffee?”

  “No, thanks, I don’t have time,” Emma said.

  She stared at Lindsey for a moment. Lindsey got the feeling she was considering her words very carefully. Lindsey waited, not wanting to rush her. Whatever Emma had to say, it was clearly important to her.

  “I can trust you, can’t I?” Emma asked.

  “Do you really have to ask?” Lindsey responded. “I mean, I know we don’t always see eye to eye on things, but I like to think you feel I’m trustworthy.”

  “I do, but you have a knack for getting in
to trouble, and I really don’t want any trouble right now,” Emma said.

  “Trouble? Me?” Lindsey asked. She blinked, as if she were the picture of innocence, but Emma wasn’t playing.

  “Save it,” Emma said. She tossed her long dark hair over her shoulder and leaned her elbows on the edge of Lindsey’s desk. “We found the car.”

  “The car that hit Theresa?” Lindsey leaned in.

  “Yes, and the driver was still in it,” Emma said.

  “So you caught him? This is great! Did he say why he did it? Was it an accident, or was he aiming for her?”

  “Let me be more specific: we found the dead driver in the car,” Emma said. “Charlie Peyton has confirmed that he was the man who tried to run him down outside the Blue Anchor.”

  “Oh.” Lindsey slumped back in her seat. She could feel her heart beating hard in her chest in a rush of anxiety. “Did he have any tie to Kayla?”

  Emma shrugged. “He’s not local, and we’re still working on identifying him. Kayla says she’s never seen him before.”

  “Do you believe her?” Lindsey asked.

  “In my line of work, you never believe anyone,” Emma said.

  They were both silent, and Lindsey wondered how far she could press Emma for information. She decided to go for it, knowing Emma would stop talking whenever she felt like it.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance he died of natural causes,” she said.

  “Not judging by the bullet hole in his head, no,” Emma said.

  “Do you think it was Kayla?” Lindsey asked. She tried to picture Kayla as a killer. She couldn’t do it, not that that signified anything.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Emma said. “Kayla says she doesn’t own or know how to operate a gun, and I have no evidence to the contrary, so . . .”

  Her voice trailed off, and Emma leaned back and clasped her hands in front of her. While Lindsey was pleased that Emma had decided to trust her, she couldn’t help but wonder why. A murder victim found in a car that had been involved in a hit-and-run really had nothing to do with the library—or her, for that matter.