Between a Book and a Hard Place

by Denise Swanson

  Strike one. There wasn’t anything on the wall but an old sign advising the staff to use caution when descending the steps.

  Wishing I had brought along my trusty Maglite, which was strong enough to turn the midnightlike darkness into high-noon brightness, I settled for the flashlight app on my cell.

  Now that I could see my surroundings, I scanned the area for a weapon.

  Strike two. I didn’t see anything I could use to defend myself. Why was it that libraries rarely had swords lying around?

  Just as I turned toward the storeroom, thinking there might be something useful in there, I remembered that after our first investigation together, Jake had given me a pepper-spray gun. He’d insisted that I keep the bright blue revolver with me at all times. I had thrown it into my purse, then promptly forgotten about it. Digging it out from beneath all the detritus that had settled on top of it, I tried to remember his instructions for its use, but all I could recall was aim and squeeze the trigger.

  I slung my purse strap across my body, and then with the cell in my left hand and the pepper-spray gun in the other, I crept down the stairs. I kept the light trained on the step in front of me and hoped that if there was a bad guy—or girl—waiting for me at the bottom, my stealthy approach would give me an advantage.

  With both hands occupied, I wasn’t able to hang on to the railing, and as I put my weight on the next tread, I heard a sharp crack. Afraid I was about to plummet to my death, I let out a scream.

  Strike three. Whoever was down there now knew that I was heading their way.

  Scrambling upward, I decided that, despite my father’s warning, I needed backup. But before I could figure out whom to call, I heard my dad shouting my name.

  I leaned forward and squinted. I could see a figure moving toward me.

  A few seconds later, Dad grabbed me by the elbow and said, “Hurry. Benedict’s in the archives.”

  Having no idea where the library kept its archives, I allowed Dad to escort me down into the basement, but I kept both the pepper-spray gun and cell phone light clutched in my hands, ready for any trouble.

  As we passed through a large area piled with old furniture, cartons, and trunks covered in spiderwebs, I asked, “Whose phone did you use to call me?” I would have recognized the number if it were his.

  “Your mother’s.”

  “Why?”

  “She said hers was a prepaid disposable and couldn’t be traced.”

  My breath caught in my throat. Why did my mother carry a burner cell? And more important, why didn’t she want my dad’s call to me to be traceable? This situation had disaster written all over it.

  Before I could put my questions into words, Dad led me into a room lined with shelves and file cabinets. Evidently, Jett had arranged for the electricity to be turned on, because a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling illuminated the scene.

  The light was dim, but it was bright enough for me to see my stepfather’s body collapsed over an open drawer, the back of his head a bashed-in, bloody mess. My hope that he really wasn’t dead evaporated faster than a genie returning to his bottle after granting the third wish.

  When the yogurt I’d recently eaten threatened a reappearance, I swallow hard and averted my glance from Jett’s wound. Looking away from the carnage, I spotted Yvette slumped in an old wooden chair, her face buried in her hands. Mom’s shoulders were shaking, but she wasn’t making any sound.

  Taking a deep breath, I turned to Dad and asked, “What happened?”

  “Benedict kept texting your mother while she and I were talking at the dime store,” Dad explained. “At first she didn’t read his messages, but when she did, she said he wanted her to meet him at the library. We were in the middle of an important discussion, so she ignored his request, but he kept bugging her.”

  I raised a brow. My father knew darn well he and his ex-wife had been flirting, not ironing out a treaty for world peace.

  Dad had the grace to look a little sheepish as he continued. “Finally, your mom said she’d better see what Benedict wanted and left to go to the library to find out what the fuss was about.”

  “I take it you didn’t go with her.” I was fairly certain Mom’s new husband didn’t know she had been spending so much time with her old one.

  “Not all the way to the library.” Dad refused to meet my eyes, finding the band of his wristwatch too fascinating to look away from. “I waited for her in my car. The plan was that she’d run over here, take care of whatever Benedict needed, and then we’d head to the barbecue place over by Sparkville for a late lunch.”

  “What happened next?” I asked, although I had a pretty good idea.

  “Yvette walked across the square and used her key for the side entrance.” Dad glanced over at my mother, who still hadn’t lifted her head or moved from her perch on the wooden chair. “She knew Benedict was in the archives, so she went down here to find him.”

  “And?” I swear getting Dad to tell me the whole story was as hard as getting the last bit of caramel sauce from a glass jar.

  “And your mother discovered Benedict like this.” Dad pointed to the body of my stepfather. “It was obvious he was dead, so she called me.”

  “Why?” I narrowed my eyes and looked at my mother. She was now staring straight ahead. “Why didn’t she get out of here and call the police?”

  “Uh.” Dad’s eyes jerked to Mom, and then he shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  It was more than a little creepy that we were calmly discussing the events leading up to discovering my stepfather’s body while he was oozing blood a few feet away. But I needed more information before I could formulate any kind of sensible plan.

  “So you came over here.” I was perplexed by the whole scenario. Mom finds her husband murdered. Sticks around. Calls her ex-husband and waits for him to . . . what . . . resurrect Jett? “What next?”

  “After I made sure there was nothing we could do to help Benedict, I called you.” Dad cut his gaze to my mother. “I wanted to contact the police, but Yvette got hysterical at the idea.”

  Mom’s actions didn’t add up. Had she and Jett had a fight and she smacked him over the head with something? Then, when she’d seen what she’d done, had she decided to try to pin the murder on Dad?

  Oh. My. God! Dad was on parole. He had been paroled rather than pardoned, because despite the fact he hadn’t willingly taken the drug, he had run over and accidentally killed a woman while under its influence. He might have been able to get the conviction overturned, but taking parole had been cheaper and quicker than a new trial.

  My heart raced. He could be sent back to prison. I mentally ran through the conditions of his parole. He hadn’t traveled out of the state without permission or changed his residence. I could prove he was maintaining employment. Unless Mom was a convicted felon, he was avoiding contact with known criminals, because with the exception of Gran, the chief of police, and me, Yvette was the only person with whom he socialized.

  He didn’t do drugs or own a weapon. And he reported regularly to his corrections agent. As far as I knew, there was nothing about discovering a dead body in the rules, but I had a feeling that might fall under some sort of miscellaneous section.

  My stomach clenched. I had to get him out of here right now, and then I had to make sure no one knew he’d ever been on the scene.

  Grabbing both his hands, I demanded, “What have you touched?”

  For a third time, Dad glanced at my mother. He was definitely hiding something, but we’d already been here way too long, so I couldn’t take the time to pry whatever secret he was keeping out of him.

  When he didn’t answer my question, I raised my voice and repeated, “What did you touch?”

  Dad’s mouth dropped open. Even as a rebellious teen, I had never yelled at him before. Suddenly, his eyes widened, and he shouted, “Son of a bitch! You’re a
fraid I’ll be accused of murdering him.”

  “Not necessarily,” I hedged. Privately, I thought Mom had more to worry about on that front, but now was not the time to bring up that idea. “However, I am concerned that this might affect your parole.”

  My father screwed up his face and then said slowly, “The outside doorknob, the banister, and Benedict’s wrist when I took his pulse.”

  I dug around in my purse until I located a packet of tissues. Ripping one out of the cellophane wrapper, I handed it to my father and ordered, “Wipe everything you touched or might have touched.”

  “What about him?” Dad pointed at Jett. “Does skin retain fingerprints?”

  “I don’t think so.” I tried to remember every forensic television crime show I’d ever watched and every dark mystery I’d ever read. “But if he’s wearing a watch on the wrist where you took his pulse, clean that.”

  “His Rolex is on the other arm,” Dad murmured.

  When my father continued to stand there, I jabbed his shoulder with my index finger and said, “Move it. You need to get out of here right now.”

  “What about me?” Appearing to have recovered from her shock, Yvette jumped up from her seat. “I should leave with Kern.”

  “Whoa.” I grabbed her upper arm as she headed out of the room.

  “Let me go.” Mom’s voice rose, and she tried to break free from my fingers. “I have to get out of here. They’ll think I did it. In cases like this, the police always assume it’s the spouse.”

  “Did you do it?” I asked, watching her expression carefully.

  “No!” Mom’s face crumpled. “How could you even think that about me?”

  “Let me count the reasons.” Sanity might be on back order in our family, but I had an unlimited supply of sarcasm. “On second thought, we don’t have time for that list.”

  “Why are you being so mean to me?” Mom tried to get away.

  I tightened my grip on her biceps, and keeping Yvette by my side, I pointed at Dad and instructed, “You, wipe off your fingerprints, make sure no one sees you leaving the building, and then drive straight home.” When he hesitated, I foolishly promised, “I’ll take care of Mom.”

  When he continued to hesitate, I threatened, “Unless you want to go back to prison, listen to me and do what I say right now.”

  Dad’s fair skin turned an ashy gray and he nodded. He kissed Yvette’s cheek, muttered that he was sorry, then hurried out of the archives.

  While my father wiped off his prints and made his escape from the library, I had a few minutes before I could execute the second part of my plan, so I whirled on Yvette and said, “What’s your game?”

  “I . . . I . . .” she stammered, then out of the blue said, “The trouble with life is that there’s no background music.”

  I was silent only because this was one of those situations where my supply of profanity was insufficient to meet my demands. Instead, I stared at my mother until she spoke.

  Apparently, she correctly interpreted the “don’t even try” look on my face and said, “Kern always fixed everything when we were married. I thought he could fix this.”

  “How?” I wrinkled my brow in disbelief. Maybe I had been right. Could my mother really think Dad could bring back the dead?

  “I’m not sure.” Yvette sobbed. “But Kern was always the smart one.”

  “Any idea who would want Jett dead?” I checked my watch. I’d give Dad five more minutes to get to his car. Then I’d call the police.

  “Of course not.” Mom shook her head vehemently. “Everyone loved Jett. He was giving the town back its library. Why would anyone harm him?”

  “How about you?” I put myself between my mother and the door and released her arm. “You and Dad seem to be getting awfully cozy again.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Mom huffed. “Kern and I are just good friends now.”

  “Right.” I looked at my Timex again. Dad should have made it to his Jeep by now. “Here’s the story. You and I came to the library to pick up Jett for a late lunch. When we got here, we discovered him dead and called the police.”

  “But—”

  I ran through the scenario we would tell the authorities and added, “Be vague about the time. Tell the police you don’t know when we got here.”

  “Got it.” Yvette nodded. “Late lunch. Found him dead. Called cops.”

  “Good.”

  I started to dial 911, and Mom grabbed my hand.

  “We need to put our fingerprints back on the railing and the outside doorknob.” Mom pulled me out of the room, then said over her shoulder, “Otherwise, the police will notice they’ve been wiped clean.”

  I stared at my suddenly calm and collected mother. How did she know stuff like that? I certainly hoped she came by her knowledge of forensics the same way I did, via TV and books. But she’d never been much of a reader, and her taste in television had run more toward Sex and the City and Gilmore Girls than NCIS and CSI.

  CHAPTER 8

  I stood in front of the library, trying to peer through the dirty windows. As soon as Chief Kincaid had arrived and assessed the situation, he’d sent me to wait outside and led my mother off somewhere for a chat. Along with watching the influx of cops, I’d been checking my watch every few minutes since my banishment.

  Both ends of the street had been blocked, with an auxiliary officer manning each barricade. I knew they weren’t the real deal because, instead of the standard uniform, they wore light blue shirts with navy epaulets and black pants. These volunteers provided traffic control, helped on searches, and supplied additional manpower on an as-needed basis. Unfortunately, the imitation cops were often a few doughnuts short of a dozen.

  In addition to the auxiliaries, it seemed as if Chief Kincaid had called in every officer on the Shadow Bend force. The strong police presence was puzzling. True, there had been a murder, but the chief was treating the situation as if there were a bomb threat or a biohazard emergency.

  Tired of pacing, I strolled up to the squad car parked on the sidewalk. It was barring the building’s entrance and I peeked inside, but there wasn’t anything interesting to see. The driver had gotten out and was arguing with the cop from another cruiser—the one positioned diagonally across the mouth of the alley.

  I sauntered closer. Maybe I could overhear their conversation and get some idea of what was going on. However, as soon as they spotted me, they clamped their lips shut and frowned.

  The officer closer to me was Jessie Huang, one of two female cops on the force. She and I had spent some time together during a previous investigation, and she had bonded with my grandmother’s cat.

  Hoping Jessie might give me a hint as to why the chief had rallied all the troops, I put a question in my voice and said, “Looks like Chief Kincaid thinks this is more than a simple robbery gone bad?”

  “Hard to say.” She looked somewhere over my head, clearly avoiding my gaze. As I opened my mouth to try another approach, the radio on her shoulder crackled to life. Stepping out of my earshot, she listened intently and nodded.

  When she moved back to where I was standing, she said, “The chief’s ready to talk to you. Meet him inside the library’s rear entrance.”

  “Is my mother with him?” I asked, trying to gauge Jessie’s expression.

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  A chill ran down my spine. I sure hoped my mother had stuck to our story and left my father out of it. She was a good liar, so she had no excuse to let anything about him slip into her account of the events. If she got Dad in trouble, I would never forgive her.

  Not that I planned to forgive her anytime in the near future anyway, but if she screwed up my plan, I’d be even less inclined to let her off the hook.

  As I sprinted away, I heard Jessie mutter to the other cop, “I wouldn’t want to be Dev. The chief is mad
enough to chew nails.”

  Yikes! Why was Chief Kincaid angry? He liked things neat and tidy, and murder certainly didn’t fit into that scenario, but, hey, it gave him job security. At least it did if he solved the case. Hmm. I probably shouldn’t mention that during our interview.

  Walking into the library from the dim alley, I blinked, temporarily blinded by the eighteen hundred watts of illumination now flooding the building’s back hallway. Half a dozen lights mounted on tripods marched down the passageway in a straight path to the stairs, where Chief Kincaid stood, gesturing for me to join him.

  Several people wearing white Tyvek coveralls, booties, and rubber gloves were swarming over the tiny corridor and down the steps. I assumed there were even more in the basement, dusting for prints and gathering any other forensic evidence the killer had left behind.

  One of the coverall crowd was kneeling in the storage room doorway, pawing through an unzipped wheeled suitcase. He glanced up at me as I passed by him, a speculative expression on his face, then twitched his shoulders and continued digging around in the duffel.

  Oh. My. God! I should have realized I’d be a suspect. Family was always under suspicion. But in my haste to make sure my father wasn’t implicated, I hadn’t considered my own vulnerability.

  Before I could panic, Chief Kincaid joined me and said, “Follow me.”

  “Where’s my mother?” I asked, refusing to be ordered around like his pet dog.

  “I sent her to the station to rest,” Chief Kincaid answered. “Yvette claimed she felt ill and needed to lie down.”

  “I should go check if she’s okay.” What I really wanted to know is what she’d told the chief. “Maybe she should see a doctor.”

  “Yvette’s tougher than she lets on.” The chief started down the steps, but when I didn’t immediately move, his head snapped back and he glared. “Don’t just stand there. I need you to go over the crime scene with me.” He raised a brow. “Unless you’re feeling a case of the vapors, too.”

  No way was I admitting to Poppy’s father that I didn’t want to spend any more time with a corpse—I had my reputation as a tough chick to maintain—so I sucked it up and accompanied him back into the basement, hurrying to keep up with his rapid descent.