Buried in Books

by Kate Carlisle

  “Good question. That’s what I wanted to know. Maybe you were growing tired of her. Or maybe you found someone new. Cornelia, for instance.”

  I heard the woman snort at those words.

  “None of the above,” Cornelia snarled. So it seemed that she and Rod weren’t lovers after all.

  “Yeah,” Rod said. “Sara was defacing school property, which meant she was a criminal. I couldn’t live with a person who would do that to a book.”

  “Oh, you’re so honorable,” I scoffed quietly.

  “But you don’t mind threatening my daughter?” My mother’s shout came loud and clear.

  “Just let me at him,” Meg called out. “I’ll show him how the British handle problems like this.”

  I smiled. God, I loved these women. But I had to keep Rod talking while Derek and our brothers all crept closer.

  “This was never about the book, was it, Rod?” I said. “We both know it. This was about you getting tired of Sara and killing her, then blaming it all on her.” But when I stared up at his face, I suddenly saw the truth in his eyes. “Oh, wait. I was wrong. She was tired of you. Did she want a divorce? Is that why you killed her?”

  “Shut up.”

  “How about that? A woman wanted to dump you. I imagine she was making you a nice little bundle of cash by forging all those books. How much money did she make over the years? You were getting used to living the good life and couldn’t afford to lose her, could you?”

  “I said shut up.” His gaze flashed from me to Derek and the others and I could tell he was wondering if they were closer or if he was imagining things. He wasn’t.

  “But once you knew she was tired of that life, you couldn’t afford to keep her around, could you?” I kept him focused on me deliberately. “Was she sick of lying for you? Was she threatening to confess to the school what she was doing? Or maybe she just wanted to get away from you. Can’t blame her for that. That must’ve been a blow to your fragile ego.”

  “You’re wrong about everything.” Rod held me tighter. “I told you to shut up.”

  “And I heard you the first twenty times you said it.”

  I heard Robin snicker and gave myself a point for that one before continuing. “So did you offer to help Sara move the books the other night? Is that when you saw your chance to get rid of her? Or were you already lying in wait for her? Did Cornelia help you? Did she lure Sara into that cold basement while you huddled near the forklift, waiting for the exact moment to bury her under a ton of books and crates? You must have really grown to hate her, because that’s a brutally awful way to kill someone.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Cornelia wailed.

  Rod bared his teeth at me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about murder,” I said. “You’re a cold-blooded killer and you’re going to rot in jail.”

  “I said shut up,” he shouted.

  I made eye contact with Inspector Lee, whose teeth were clenched and whose fingers were white from the pressure of holding her gun so tightly. She looked ready to kill Rod at a moment’s notice and somehow that comforted me.

  “Okeydokey, Rod.” My throat was so dry I could barely speak anymore, but I stared up at him and managed to keep talking. “My husband has the book. If you take the knife away from my throat, he’ll bring it to you and then you and your delightful friend Cornelia can go.” I stared at Derek. “Tell him you’ll give him the book.”

  Derek moved a few feet closer. “I don’t think he cares about the book, darling.”

  I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Just bring him the damn book,” Cornelia shouted.

  I glanced up at Rod and saw his eyes widening in fear. What was Derek talking about? But I played along. “Is it the book you want, Rod? Or something else?”

  He swallowed nervously. “I need the book.”

  Derek pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and waved it. “Or is it this list?”

  “Derek?”

  “Give that to me,” Rod demanded.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Derek glanced at the list and then looked at me. “It’s a long list of books that Sara worked on, with names and dates and sales information.”

  I gazed up at Rod. “Was she going to blackmail you?”

  But he was glaring at Derek. “Bring me that list.”

  “Or what?”

  He gripped the knife even tighter. “Or I’ll end it all right here.”

  “And you won’t make it out of here alive.” Derek’s voice was coldly dangerous and Rod was too self-involved to realize who he was dealing with.

  “Get the list, Rod,” Cornelia shouted.

  It sounded as though she had given up playing the helpless sidekick.

  Rod seemed to make up his mind in that moment and jerked his arm tighter. “You’re coming with me.”

  “Are you crazy? In case you didn’t notice, I’ve got a wedding to go to.”

  He scowled. “There you go again, thinking you’re funny. But I’ll have the last laugh.”

  Why did he sound like Snidely Whiplash all of a sudden? I’ll have the last laugh, my pretty.

  Rod pulled the knife away and wrapped his arm across my shoulders, then jerked me around to face the door leading into the foyer. Glancing back at the crowd, he shouted, “Don’t even think about following us, or she gets it.”

  “You’ve been watching too many B movies.” Seriously, could he drag out more clichés? I wondered. I tried to concentrate on the moment. The knife was no longer a threat, for the moment anyway, so I could take my best shot to hurt him. I just had to remember my self-defense moves that Alex had been drumming into me for the past year.

  Rod dragged me another step toward the door.

  I had run out of time and needed to make my move now. I took another step and faltered. “Sorry, I tripped on my dress.”

  “Be careful,” he snapped.

  “Yeah.” I slipped again and his grip loosened. I elbowed him in the solar plexus and heard him gasp. He dropped the knife. Then I stomped on his instep with my three-inch heels and his wail of pain sounded like choir music.

  I heard Alex shout, “Yes!”

  I pivoted and used my elbow again, this time aiming for his face. He screamed and I scurried backward, praying there was no blood about to spurt out and hit my dress.

  In the confusion Cornelia broke away from Mitch and scrambled for the knife, but I beat her to it. Grabbing it, I pointed it right at her with one hand, holding the hem of my dress with the other to keep it from getting dirty. “Not so fast, you cow.”

  Inspector Lee was already there, grabbing Cornelia’s wrist and wrenching it behind her back. “Good girl,” she said.

  Derek grabbed on to me and lifted me into his arms.

  I vaguely heard the crowd screaming and clapping as Derek took one long stride off the steps, landing on the ground with me still in his arms. I held on to him for dear life until we were a safe distance away.

  Our brothers surrounded Rod and shouted threats. There were so many of them that I could no longer see the weasel who’d tried to kill me. I was okay with that.

  Inspector Lee, still clutching Cornelia’s wrist, signaled to one of her officers standing a few feet away. “Take her out of here.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” she whined. “Rod and Sara were in on the whole thing together. I was only here to save the books.”

  “Yeah, you’re a real patriot,” Inspector Lee drawled.

  Cornelia was shuffled off to a patrol car while Inspector Lee watched and waited for the men to finish with Rod. I could hear his screams, but I seriously doubted that the brothers were hurting him too badly.

  “My hand,” Rod shrieked. “You’re standing on my hand!”

  “That must hurt
,” Austin mused. “Dalton, maybe you should step back.”

  I smiled into Derek’s chest. My heroes. My family. My miracles.

  “Okay, break it up, guys,” Inspector Lee said, her voice almost cheerful as she nudged her way through the crowd of good-looking men. They moved aside for her and I could see Rod writhing on the ground, whimpering. He didn’t look as though he’d been harmed much, at least not by any of the men. He just looked pathetic.

  I had managed to give him a bloody nose, so that gave me a little thrill. Especially since I was a safe enough distance away from the possibility of staining the dress. I considered it a real miracle that my dress remained unsoiled through all of the insanity.

  Derek finally set me down, but we kept our arms around each other’s waists, unwilling to let go. We both knew how easily Rod’s self-control could have shattered. I could’ve died. The thought of leaving Derek alone without me was almost unbearable. So I clung to him as the aftermath of the danger carried on around us.

  “How did you find that list?” I asked. “I examined the book and never saw it.”

  “Did you look all the way through the book?”

  I thought about it. “No, darn it. I stopped at the title page because the paper felt different from the previous pages.”

  “When I handed the book to Ian, he glanced through it and the list fell out. I looked at all the books and information and made an educated guess. I put it in my pocket, thinking I would show it to you later.”

  “You saved the day,” I marveled.

  “No, darling. You did that all on your own.”

  And now I had to wonder if Sara had wanted me to find the list. Had she been trying to redeem herself? I guess I would never know for sure.

  As soon as Inspector Lee slapped the handcuffs onto Rod’s wrists, two uniformed officers came over to guard him until they were ready to escort him off to jail. Then she walked over to me.

  “You are a complete pain in the ass,” she said. “What were you thinking, taunting him like that?”

  “That wasn’t taunting,” Robin put in. “That was just Brooklyn.”

  I smiled at Inspector Lee. “I wanted him to confess to Sara’s murder.”

  “He had a knife to your throat, for God’s sake.” She shook her head in despair. “You scared me half to death. What am I going to do with you?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. “This wasn’t actually part of our wedding plans. We all should’ve been drinking champagne by now. I’m not even married yet.” I was feeling close to tears now that the adrenaline rush had left me.

  Derek wrapped a protective arm around me. “Let’s take care of that right now, shall we?”

  “Yes, let’s do it.”

  “Come here.” Inspector Lee reached out and gave me a tight hug. She whispered, “You did good, kid.” And then she let me go.

  I was left dumbfounded while she carried on as usual, giving orders to the guys in uniform. Glancing up at Derek, she said, “Just give me a minute to make sure all of your uninvited guests are taken care of. Then you can start the ball rolling again.”

  “Thank you, Inspector,” he murmured, and she winked at me.

  She walked away and I saw her stop to talk to the ex-FBI agent, who didn’t seem inclined to leave anytime soon. I would have to ask later if this was the guy hired by Glen Cove College to hunt down the stolen books. If so, I was fairly certain he had found his suspects.

  Inspector Lee suggested to the uniformed officers that they put Rod in a cell with Thuggy and Leon until she was ready to come in and do the paperwork.

  “That could take days,” she admitted, and I laughed for the first time since I walked out that side door and got ambushed by a stone-cold killer.

  * * *

  • • •

  Everyone was back in their seat. Ten minutes later, after Laura the makeup-and-hair wizard had given me a quick do-over, the music began anew. My bridesmaids were less restrained this time as each of them counted to ten before heading out of the foyer to do a little boogey down the aisle.

  “Restraint be damned,” I muttered, and this time I walked out the door with my arms raised in victory. The crowd went wild and I laughed out loud. With family and friends cheering, my father took my arm and we walked together down the aisle toward my new life as Derek Stone’s blissfully happy wife.

  And as I got closer, I could see that Derek looked pretty darned blissful himself. Rather than wait patiently, he walked toward me, shook my father’s hand, and kissed me. Then he lifted me into his arms and carried me the rest of the way.

  “This isn’t necessary,” I whispered in his ear.

  He kissed my neck where the faint impression of a knife blade still showed. “I almost lost you. I don’t want to take a chance on losing you again.”

  I pressed my hand against his cheek. “You could never lose me, love. I’m yours forever.”

  “And I’m yours.”

  After a long moment of soulful gazing, we glanced at Robson, who smiled beatifically. “Let’s do this, shall we?”

  I laughed. “Yes. Absolutely yes.”

  All the way through the ceremony, the bursts of applause almost drowned out Robson’s words. But nobody cared. Not until the very end, when he finally, finally said, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

  And the crowd went wild all over again as Derek Stone kissed his blissful bride.

  Epilogue

  “But how did you figure out that he killed his wife?” Meg asked, as she nibbled on pâté and crackers. John, sitting next to her on the couch, was partial to the miniature blinis stuffed with caviar, chives, and crème fraîche.

  It was the day after the wedding and we had invited the entire family over to our place for leftovers. Most of Derek’s family had spent the week up in Dharma getting to know my family, but Derek and I had hardly spent any time with them at all. We wouldn’t be leaving for Paris until tomorrow night, and since we were already packed and ready to go, we wanted to hang out with our loved ones for the day.

  I glanced at Derek, who happily deferred to me.

  “We suspected Rod all along,” I said, stroking Charlie’s soft fur. The cat was happy to play the role of security blanket for the moment. “Not only because the husband is usually the most likely suspect when the wife is killed, but also because Rod was such a jerk. And who else would’ve done it? Of course, it turned out that Sara’s boss, Cornelia, was also involved. But we also considered Heather for a while, and even Thuggy and Leon.”

  Daphne chuckled. “Did you ever learn their real names?”

  “Not yet. Frankly,” I continued, “I don’t care what their names are. They’re horrible people and I hope they wind up spending lots of quality time in a rat-infested prison somewhere.”

  “Here, here,” Mom said.

  It turned out that my scenario was as close to the truth as anyone had guessed. Sara had announced that all the books had been brought to the booth in the conference center, but Cornelia didn’t believe her. She had insisted on going back into the basement with Sara, and that was when Rod suddenly fired up the forklift and dropped several crates filled with books on top of her.

  The nature of the crime made me think that Cornelia had to have been the mastermind. Rod wouldn’t have had a clue about book storage at a conference, but Cornelia would’ve known and she would’ve told Rod exactly what to do. So even though Rod had been the one who actually killed his wife, Inspector Lee was determined to hold Cornelia equally responsible for Sara’s murder. And I couldn’t have been happier to hear it.

  “Heather seemed like such a nice girl when we met her at the restaurant the other night,” Meg said.

  “She is very nice,” I said, and thought of the phone call I’d made earlier that morning. Heather was already back home in Valley Heart, Wisconsin, and getting ready to go back to her
job at the local library.

  I’d told her everything that happened at the wedding and we commiserated for a few minutes about Rod and Sara. I begged her to stay in touch and she promised she would.

  “I want to hear what happens with Gus,” I said.

  She laughed. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Look, Heather,” I said hesitantly. “I wanted you to know that while Inspector Lee was investigating Sara’s death, she called to talk to your boss about a few things.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that. But go ahead, tell me everything.”

  “It sounded pretty ominous,” I admitted. “But I’m sure it’s all easily explained.” At least, I hoped so. “Your boss mentioned an anonymous donor that had raised suspicions over the past year.”

  “Anonymous . . . Oh, Mrs. Freeling,” Heather said. “She’s a sweetie.”

  “What did you do for her?”

  “Well, let’s see. She’s a junkie for true crime so I hold all the gritty bestsellers for her. And she loves romance, too.”

  “She sounds like a good customer,” I said lightly.

  “She’s the best. She’s eighty-nine years old and sometimes forgets her coat, so I always have a shawl for her to wear. Sometimes I’ll drive her home when I find out she walked to the library. It’s almost a mile away from her house, so I worry that she’ll fall or hurt herself.”

  “You’re a nice person.”

  “Well, I like her.” She chuckled. “And her family bugs the heck out of her. They keep waiting for her to die so they’ll be able to split her fortune among themselves.”

  “That’s creepy.”

  “I know,” Heather said. “So she started giving her money to the library. I mean, a lot of money. But she doesn’t want her relatives to know, so she insists on anonymity. She’s worried that if they find out, they’ll have her declared incompetent.”

  “I can’t believe what some families do to each other.”

  “That’s the real crime,” she said staunchly.

  “Well, Mrs. Freeling sounds like a crackerjack.”