The Broken Spine

by Dorothy St. James

  She’d scolded young Timmy Cho for breaking the spine of a popular picture book with such a firm whisper that tears had flooded the eight-year-old’s eyes.

  She’d ejected Betty Crawley, the local newspaper reporter, from the stately old building for interviewing library users about what they thought about the coming changes to the library. Not only that, she told the sputtering Betty that she was banned from ever coming back.

  And she’d given strict instructions to the library staff that we could no longer waive fines for books returned late. “If the citizens of Cypress cannot return their books on time, they’re going to have to pay the price,” Mrs. Farnsworth had whispered ominously. A worrisome gleam darkened her rich brown eyes as she emphasized “pay the price.”

  Despite her determination to pretend the library wasn’t getting a hideous overhaul, changes had started to happen. A newly hired technology specialist imported from Silicon Valley showed up one morning and took charge, ordering everyone, even Mrs. Farnsworth, around.

  Anne Lowery looked like she should still be in high school. The purple streak running through her inky black hair only added to her youthful looks. I would have suspected she was lying about her credentials if not for the bright spark of confidence in her glittering green eyes and the way she took charge without hesitation.

  Change was coming. Whether we liked it or not, the books were going to be replaced by computers and tablets. A mainframe computer system had already replaced the employee lounge, and the children’s section was slated to become a café.

  As the renovations entered their last stages, the library closed its doors to the public. The staff had spent our days pulling our collection from the shelves and packing up the books in cardboard boxes.

  “I don’t understand why we have to get rid of all the books,” I’d given my last plea for sanity two days ago to Duggar, who’d been on hand every day to oversee the changeover. “Isn’t there some way we can keep at least some of the books as a special collection? Some of these books are worth the world to our residents.”

  “We’re not getting rid of the books,” he’d explained as if I were an idiot. He pointed toward the employee lounge, which was now filled with computer equipment. “They’ll still be in there. On hard drives and in the cloud on the Internet. And more books will be joining them.”

  “Yes, but some of our patrons—”

  “It might take a while for our citizens to get used to the new way of doing things,” Duggar had cut me off to say. “It’s normal. Soon everyone will be raving about the ease of accessing information from the library. No one will even have to come into this building. Everything will be accessible online.”

  “Not everything,” I’d grumbled. Not the escape from a family that was falling apart when my parents were heading toward divorce. Not the refuge from the chaos of living a divided life between two households in the aftermath of the divorce. And certainly not the friendships I’d forged as a lonely teen wandering through the stacks, running my fingers along book spines, and stumbling upon steadfast friends within the pages of timeless classics written by great literary voices such as Daphne du Maurier and Georgette Heyer. I found the justice I felt was lacking in my home life within the pages of novels written by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and especially Carolyn Keene.

  How would a child facing similar challenges find such a lifeline in the keywords of a search engine?

  “This is a mistake,” I’d told Duggar.

  He’d patted my head and chuckled. “Scores of people once worried about switching from carriages to automobiles. It’s progress. I’m leading the way for our community to attract the kinds of jobs that raise the standard of living for all of us. It might seem difficult now, but you’ll see. One day you’ll understand.”

  I’d thought and thought on what he was telling me. I knew that nearly ten percent of the residents in Cypress were out of work. Many of them had long given up hope of ever finding a position that would put healthy food on their family’s table. These were good people in tough situations. They deserved better. We were at least an hour-and-a-half drive to the closest city. And Duggar was right. Jobs in our rural corner of the world were both low paying and scarce. But destroying the books? That didn’t seem like the answer.

  Which was what had brought me out here on this moonless night. I flicked on the flashlight. Its light bounced around the empty stacks. The stray cat was nowhere to be seen. The books had already been packed into cardboard boxes very similar to the flattened ones I’d brought. The only media allowed to remain on the shelves were the DVDs, music CDs, and audiobook CDs.

  The newer books and the children’s board books were going to be shipped to a third-party resale company. The older books, the ones that had served as lifesavers and friends for generations in Cypress, were slated for the landfill. Just thinking of dumping those books with the everyday garbage made the acid in my stomach churn. I had to save them.

  Thanks to Mrs. Farnsworth and her dedicated attention to order and detail, all the boxes were cataloged and numbered. In a way, this made my job tonight easier. But it also complicated matters. Once I was done here, if anyone opened the boxes, they would know which books were missing.

  I knelt down beside a box labeled 31A and peeled open its lid. The heady smell of leather and paper filled my nostrils. I ran my hand over the spine of The Secret of the Old Clock, a 1930s edition of the first Nancy Drew Mystery, and sighed.

  I continued working in the dim glow of the security lights, pulling classics out of the boxes bound for the landfill and carefully repacking them in the boxes I’d brought. I left the boxes that were going to the book reseller untouched. About an hour into my work, a metallic tap, tap, tap sounded.

  Finally, they were here.

  With a smile, I hurried downstairs to the back exit in the basement. I quickly unlocked the door and threw it open. When I saw who was standing there, the smile froze on my face.

  “Who are you?” I demanded. My heart pounded in my throat. Had I just been caught in the act of saving my books?

  The man standing on the other side of the threshold was a stranger. A very tall, very menacing stranger. I was in trouble.

  Chapter Two

  He was dressed in a dark suit and looked like a television-show FBI agent, his blank expression speaking of power and determination. His eyes, hard as black onyx, seemed to know everything about me, while I knew nothing about him. I was struggling to come up with a reason to explain what I was doing, here, in the middle of the night, when he spoke.

  “I was invited,” he said in a voice as hard as the rest of him.

  “Not by me,” I countered and started to close the door.

  “Tru, don’t be rude.” Tori Green, my best friend ever since preschool, jogged up from the shadows of the alleyway. “I invited him.”

  “Are you crazy? Who is he?” I demanded, not daring to take my eyes from the stranger, who with a word to the wrong person could ruin our mission and—I swallowed—cause us to lose our chance to save these books from the trash heap.

  “He’s my new friend.” She grabbed his arm and, pushing me aside, pulled him into the library. “Charlie, meet Tru. She might be tense now, but I promise you she has a heart of gold. Charlie just moved to town. He loves books nearly as much as you do.”

  Tori, in normal Tori fashion, had ignored my suggestion that we wear black. Instead, she was dressed in a bright flamingo pink sundress. The neckline dipped low in a flirty manner. Her blonde hair was twisted into an updo that accentuated her high cheekbones. The heels on her sandals added at least five inches to her already tall frame. And yet, she still wasn’t as tall as the man she’d decided to invite along on our caper. Why on earth did she invite him?

  One look between the two of them and understanding dawned.

  “You brought a date? To . . . to our undercover, super-secret rescue mission
?” I didn’t want to believe my friend capable of doing something so irresponsible. But we’d been friends since forever. I knew her better than I knew anyone else in my life. This was exactly the sort of thing she’d do.

  “Don’t be such a worrywart.” She ran her hand up and down his arm and smiled. “He knows how to be discreet.”

  “Discreet?” I squeaked. How did she know that?

  I was about to send them both on their way when the bright headlamps from a passing car turning a corner on Main Street seemed to sweep through the alleyway like a searchlight. I grabbed both their arms and dragged them farther into the library, slamming the door closed behind them.

  Tori had always been the brave one of our duo. Even at a young age, her good looks allowed her to get away with nearly anything short of murder. During high school, she’d been cheerleader captain and homecoming queen. She never lacked for a date. She’d been voted most likely to succeed. She laughed quickly. And rarely took anything seriously.

  “You need to take this seriously,” I whispered as I pulled her away from her date. “If he tells anyone what we’re doing, we can get into terrible trouble.”

  “He’s fine,” she whispered back. “He recently moved into town from Las Vegas. Isn’t that exciting? I have good memories from Vegas. I married Mr. Number Two in Vegas, remember? We started talking a few hours ago at the coffee shop and—”

  “Wait, wait, wait. What? You just met him a few hours ago?” I must have said that too loudly. Charlie’s brows rose as he watched us.

  “Listen, Tru. He’s here. He already knows what’s going on, so you might as well let him help us with the heavy lifting. We need someone with strong arms.” She finger-waved at him and then sighed happily. “He has muscles and then some.”

  “You’re already thinking he could be Mr. Number Five, aren’t you?”

  She shrugged. “I just met him. But since you mentioned it, I don’t know . . . maybe. Not tonight, though. Let’s get busy.”

  I hesitated. “He looks like a cop.” The number of reservations I had against including him could fill an oversized notebook. “He looks dangerous.”

  “Yeah, he does. Isn’t it delicious?” Her pretty blue eyes sparkled even brighter. “Stop worrying so much. The books won’t wait forever.”

  Resigned that I was stuck with this new guy who might ruin our chances to save the books, I started back upstairs and toward the boxes I’d been repacking. I’d barely made it to the first step when someone tapped on the metal backdoor again. I jumped.

  “That’ll be Flossie,” Tori said, flashing that perfect smile of hers. Not at me, mind you, but at her new “hunk of the month.”

  Tori opened the door before I could. She was right about who had knocked. Our friend Flossie was waiting on the other side. Unlike Tori, she’d followed my instructions and dressed in black pants and a gauzy black shirt; she’d even donned a black felt hat with a small, but dramatic, black veil.

  Flossie Finnegan-Baker had attended high school with Mrs. Farnsworth, but that was where the comparison between the two older women ended. While the head librarian wore conservative dresses and pearls to work every day, Flossie wore tie-dyed dresses and an oversized moonstone necklace that she claims was blessed by the Dalai Lama. She’d left Cypress for decades, traveling the world with her husband. After he went to “claim his great reward in the hereafter,” she returned to her hometown and started writing books. She’d been coming to the library to write in a quiet environment for the past seven years. She never lets anyone read what she taps into that purple laptop of hers. It must be good, though. She used her latest royalty check to buy a bright red Corvette complete with hand controls for the gas and brakes and a high-tech accessibility package for her wheelchair.

  “Why are y’all just standing around gaping?” she complained as she wheeled herself through the door. “And who the devil are you, young man?”

  “I’m Charlie, ma’am,” he said in a deep voice. Tori quickly stepped in and performed proper introductions.

  Flossie looked over at me and mouthed, “Number Five?”

  I shrugged.

  We didn’t talk much after that. The task of digging through the books, packing them up, and carrying them down to the basement proved to be a bigger undertaking than I’d anticipated. I hated to admit it to Tori, but I was glad she’d brought a date with strong arms. He had strength enough to carry three boxes at a time down the narrow back staircase.

  During World War II, the town had built a bomb shelter in the far corner of the library’s basement. The shelter is a dark vault with double metal interlocking doors that are a foot and a half thick. Cypress used to store rations, cots, water, and radios down there in case of an enemy attack. By the mid-eighties, the shelter had been emptied out and largely forgotten. The overhead lights flickered and buzzed as we worked. I made a mental note to figure out how to get the lighting updated without attracting undue attention.

  Shelves that had once held canned beans and tinned meats lined the walls. This was where we started putting the books. I would have liked to bring down a few of the shelving units from the main library to put in the middle of the room. But the oak shelves were so heavy that even with Charlie’s incredible strength, we couldn’t manage it.

  Hours passed. Gradually, our secret bookroom started to take shape. Flossie worked the lower shelves, while I handled the higher ones. Tori and Charlie worked as a team, packing up the boxes and carrying them down the back stairs.

  I had just shelved a book from the latest box Charlie had delivered, when a loud crash sounded from directly above our heads. I glanced at the ancient gray institutional clock hanging above the vault’s door. It was already half past nine in the morning. How did that happen? It was late.

  It was very late.

  We were supposed to be done and out of the building before eight o’clock. The library staff arrived at nine, which meant they’d already come in. If any of them came down to the vault or happened to notice one of my new “assistants” packing and carrying boxes away from the main part of the library, my plan to open the secret bookroom wing of the library would be ruined.

  The crash worried me. Had either Tori or Charlie run into trouble upstairs? With that upsetting thought circling my mind—and a host of explanations I would need to give to Mrs. Farnsworth to keep the stickler from firing me or having me arrested—I exchanged a worried glance with Flossie.

  “Go,” she said.

  “Already gone.” I dashed out of the ancient bomb shelter and into the basement hallway. There, I passed Tori. She had a look of surprise on her face.

  “Find Charlie and get him and Flossie out of here,” I hissed as I hurried up the stairs.

  This morning, the historic library had an odd feeling to it. With the books removed from the shelves, it felt as if the old building had died. Which was a silly thought. Buildings weren’t living creatures. They couldn’t die.

  I kept running to where I thought the crash had come from and skidded to a halt in the media section. One of the tall wooden shelves that had held hundreds of DVDs had toppled over. Movies from the past twenty years were scattered throughout the area.

  That was where I spotted a pair of finely polished leather shoes.

  I stepped closer. My heart shuddered in my chest. There were legs attached to those shoes. The shelf had fallen on someone.

  “Help!” I screamed as I frantically tried to lift the shelf. It was too heavy. I couldn’t move it by myself. Library or not, I kept shouting at the top of my lungs for help.

  “What are you—?” The hissed rebuke died in Mrs. Farnsworth’s mouth. She moved quickly and, with a strength that surprised me, helped me lift the heavy wooden shelving unit from the person it had fallen on. Together, we managed to slide it to one side. Plastic DVD boxes crunched under its weight as it landed with a heavy thud.

  “Him,
” Mrs. Farnsworth said, as if the sight of the body we’d uncovered had caused a bad taste in her mouth.

  Yes, him. The man lying motionless on the ground was the very man Mrs. Farnsworth would have liked to have killed. Duggar Hargrove.

  I knelt down next to him and put a finger to his pink neck, searching for a pulse and finding none.

  “He’s dead,” a voice behind us gasped.

  I turned to find Mayor Goodvale and his adult son, Luke, standing not ten feet away. Their wide-open eyes made them look like cartoon figures.

  “Yes, he’s dead,” Mrs. Farnsworth repeated the mayor’s pronouncement in her whisper-soft voice. She didn’t sound upset, not in the least. Rather, she sounded almost triumphant.

  Chapter Three

  Nancy Drew would never find herself in a knot of trouble this tight. The teen sleuth knew how to figure her way out of such a bind without experiencing even the slightest twinge of worry. I, on the other hand, kept glancing over at the three boxes that Tori and Charlie still needed to carry downstairs. What if someone noticed that those boxes weren’t the same style as the others? What if someone started asking why no one had seen me in the library this morning until the time I’d found Duggar’s body?

  Despite the library’s constant cool temperature of sixty-five degrees, a bead of sweat trickled down my back. While I was still crouched beside Duggar, I half expected to see the man get up and start accusing me of tampering with his grand plans for the library. But the dead are eerily still.

  As the mayor called his office, I rose from Duggar’s side and took step after step, backing away from the scene, hoping the building’s old plaster walls would swallow me up.

  “I didn’t see you come in this morning,” Mrs. Farnsworth whispered as she followed me in my retreat. “You didn’t sign in on the timesheet either.”