When she turned back to me, her eyes were as wide as saucers. Her voice trembled when she said, “I don’t want trouble.”
She was frightened? Of me? No one had ever been frightened of me, not even the little hooligans I’d once caught shooting spitballs onto the library’s tray ceiling. And they should have been frightened. I’d threatened to call their parents.
“I’m not angry, Anne. I simply want to understand what’s going on.”
“I don’t want trouble,” she repeated.
“What do you mean? How could I cause trouble for you?”
She swallowed hard. “Everyone knows how angry you’ve been about the plans for the library.”
“Yes, I haven’t been happy,” I agreed.
I would have said more, but a couple of city crew members picked up some more boxes of books around me. These particular ones were filled with local historical documents. I felt a moment of panic. “Wait,” I said. “Don’t take those.”
“Ma’am, our instructions are to haul off all of the boxes.”
“Yes,” I said, thinking fast, “but these are for Charlie. Mrs. Farnsworth told him he could take whatever he wanted for his used bookstore. I’m pretty sure he wants these.”
The men gave me an odd look, shrugged, and left without the boxes. I started to breathe a sigh of relief, until I noticed Anne hurrying away from me.
I hadn’t learned anything from her other than her disdain for books and reading in general.
“Please,” I said as I followed her. “I’m not trying to cause trouble. I’m as worried about what happened yesterday as you are. People don’t get murdered, not in Cypress. We’re a small, friendly community.”
“You weren’t around yesterday morning,” she whispered as she continued to rush away from me. “You’re always around.” She was heading for the computer mainframe hub, the room that was filled with servers and all sorts of computer equipment with mysterious red and green blinking lights.
“I was at the library,” I said.
“I know.” She stopped and turned toward me. Her body trembled. “We all knew you were here. With Duggar. And you acted so upset to see him on the floor like that. But that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? You wanted him dead.”
“No, I wouldn’t wish anyone dead. And if you knew I was in the library, why would you tell the police I wasn’t around?”
“Don’t you see? You’re always around in the morning, like in our face. You greet everyone with a smile that has no business being that big that early in the day. You rush off and start the coffee brewing. When I came in yesterday, you weren’t anywhere to be seen. The coffee maker hadn’t been touched. And yet, you were somewhere in the library. And you were angry.”
“Gracious, that does sound suspicious,” I agreed.
She backed up a step, as if regretting that she’d led me to a room where I was blocking the only escape route. “Like I said, I don’t want trouble.”
I held up a hand. “No trouble. But how about I give you an explanation?”
“I don’t see how you can—”
“There’s a cat.” I’d lowered my voice even though I was already speaking at a near whisper. “It was loose in the library. He ran in when I opened the basement door the other morning. And that’s why I wasn’t around. I’d spent the entire morning in the basement searching for where he was hiding. I finally found him.”
I pushed back the sleeve of the sweater I’d put on over my ruined blouse and showed her the scratches.
“A cat?” she said, carefully forming each word.
I nodded. “He’s a skinny little thing. Brown with black stripes.” I smiled, remembering fondly how he’d batted at the mouse Jace had given me. “I named him Dewey Decimal. If no one is missing him, I think I’ll keep him. I mean, I’ll put up notices around town that I found him in case someone is missing him. But if no one comes forward, he’ll have a home with me.”
The tension drained from her face. She shook her head and laughed. “I should have guessed it was something like that,” she said with a great deal of relief.
Even though that was the reaction I’d wanted, it sounded too much like Jace’s smug laugh after learning about Dewey. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means simply that. I imagine you spend most of your free time rescuing stray cats and making sure they are comfortable,” she said, echoing Jace’s comments.
“Dewey will be my first.” My parents had never let me keep a pet. They told me after the divorce that it wouldn’t be fair to the animal since I was constantly being shuttled from my mom’s house to my dad’s house and back again.
“Good for you,” Anne said with a patronizing grin.
“So, are we okay?” I asked.
“As long as you don’t try and sabotage my work,” she said and pushed her way out of the computer hub room.
My first attempt to question a suspect wasn’t the blazing success I’d hoped for. Sure, I’d been able to find out what she’d said to the police to make them want to question me, which was helpful. But I still needed to find out why she—a relative stranger in town—would want to kill the town manager. He was one of the few in Cypress who agreed with her about the destruction she was wreaking in the library.
There had to be a reason she’d want him dead. Didn’t there?
A little voice in my head reminded me how scared she was of me just a moment ago. That wasn’t the behavior of someone with a guilty conscience . . . unless that person was worried I might figure out her secret.
“Anne, you’re from out west, aren’t you?” I asked as I chased after her. “Have you experienced much of a culture shock? I would imagine things are quite different here in the South.”
“Not really,” she said with a shrug.
“I’ve never been west of the Mississippi. I’ve always imagined life in the West to be as foreign as traveling to a different country.”
“Well, I may have been raised in California, but I’ve been coming to Cypress my entire life. My aunt has a cabin on Lake Marion.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. Lake Marion is a great place to spend vacations.”
The northern town limits of Cypress were bounded by a large man-made lake. Built in the 1930s to produce electricity, Lake Marion has become a fisherman’s paradise. Summer cottages line the shoreline. In the summer, the town’s population swells to nearly double its winter numbers. While all that sounded good and should have meant Cypress was a thriving community, the reality was that the service jobs associated with the tourism economy were low-paying and seasonal and the cute boutique shops that sold antiques and lake-related household goods barely survived from year to year.
Despite that, the town was ridiculously proud of the lake and its natural beauty, myself included.
Anne nodded. “When Duggar came out to Silicon Valley to sell his idea of developing a southern Silicon Valley and to research how best to attract start-up companies, I acted as liaison for him. I introduced him to executives and made sure he attended all the most important meetings. And when this position opened up, I was the first person he contacted. With my favorite aunt living nearby and the chance to be at the forefront of a transformation that will obviously receive national attention, I jumped at the opportunity.” She leaned toward me. “And I’m not going to let anyone get in the way of making this a success.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean, Tru, is that I’m not going to let you or anyone else derail my plans. I’m going to drag this library into the twenty-first century.” Her painted purple eyelids snapped angrily. “And I’m going to make sure I get the credit for making it happen.”
Chapter Ten
I brought Dewey home with me after work because I couldn’t imagine leaving him in the library alone all night. When we entered my small house, he stepped out of the tote bag that
I’d used as a carrier and sniffed everything in the living room, especially the books, before moving to the kitchen, where he jumped up on the counter and nudged the can of cat food that I’d set there.
I had just started to open the can when the doorbell rang.
“Surprise!” Tori said when I opened the door. She’d come with an extra-large veggie pizza and a rom-com DVD. “It’s a cheer-up gift, because, you know, you need to be cheered up after everything that’s been going on at the library.”
But instead of distracting me from my worries, Tori ended up talking about books and the biblioclasts who destroyed them, and about Duggar’s death and our investigation.
“What Anne told you isn’t proof she murdered Duggar,” she argued.
“No?” I said as I spooned the can of cat food into a small soup dish. “I don’t see why it isn’t proof. Duggar loved being the center of attention. I’m sure he’d planned the library’s renovations so we’d become a national spectacle not only as a lure for tech companies but also to shine the spotlight on himself.”
Dewey butted my leg with his head. He gave me a look that seemed to say, “Stop talking and put the bowl of beef stew down already.”
“Sorry, bud. Here you go.” As soon as the bowl touched the ground, the little kitty started to gobble the food.
Tori slid the pizza box to the middle of my secondhand dining room table and flipped open the lid. The table wobbled. “And you think Anne killed the town manager because—?”
“Because she wants credit for the work she’s doing at the library, and as long as Duggar was alive and breathing, no one would have ever known she existed. He was going to be the one to talk to the media. He was the one who was going to bask in the spotlight.” I drew in a deep breath. “I kind of feel sorry for Anne.”
Tori made a face and started to say something, but the doorbell rang again.
“I’ll get it.” She jogged toward the front door.
Who, other than Tori, would drop by my house unannounced? I grabbed a piece of pizza and followed.
Flossie, wearing a bright red tie-dyed dress, was at the door with a towering cake in her lap. “I thought chocolate was in order.”
“You thought right,” Tori said, sounding suspiciously chipper.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “What’s really going on here?”
But before either of my friends could answer, Charlie came bounding up to the porch and peeked around Flossie.
“Since we’re celebrating our modern-day Saint Wiborada, I brought wine,” he said, holding up an old, dusty bottle. He’d changed out of his suit. He looked fashionably causal in a pair of neatly pressed khaki pants and a crisp short-sleeved button-up shirt with green and blue stripes that was open at the neck.
“Saint who?” Tori demanded.
“Oh! That looks like a good wine,” Flossie gushed.
“Saint Wiborada, the patron saint of libraries and librarians,” I said with a frown. “I’m not—”
“In the tenth century, Saint Wiborada saved more than one Christian library in Switzerland from rampaging pagan Hungarians.” Charlie tossed his arm over Tori’s shoulder.
“That’s our Tru. Standing like a warrior that no one has ever heard of against a wave of invaders.” She laughed and then swung the door open wide. Flossie rolled in. “I was wondering when you’d get here, lover boy,” she said. Tori brushed a kiss on Charlie’s lips as they followed Flossie straight through my living room and toward the kitchen in the back of the house as if they lived there. I smiled and shook my head, thinking how lucky I was to have Tori and Flossie in my life. And even Charlie.
My plans for the evening had been to type up more cards for the card catalog while trying not to think about those boxes of books rotting away in the landfill. Or about the fact that it was supposed to rain tonight.
When I reached the kitchen, I pulled Tori aside. “I was wondering why you brought an extra-large pizza for just the two of us. How many people did you invite?”
“Just Charlie and Flossie and, well”—she skirted away from me and hurried over to where Charlie was uncorking the wine bottle—“Jace.”
“Detective Bailey?” I cried with dismay. “Why would you do something crazy like invite him, of all people, into my home?”
“Didn’t you tell me that he’s not going to rest until he knows you’re taking good care of Dewey? Honey, if that’s the case, we need to pull off that Band-Aid and get him over here—or did you want him to visit Dewey in your basement library?”
“No, you know I don’t want that.” She was the expert when it came to handling men. “Still, I wish you’d warned me. This place is a mess.”
I wasn’t simply talking about my house. After work, I’d changed into a pair of old running shorts (not that I ever went running) and a dingy white T-shirt that was a few sizes too big. The outfit would have been fine for a night in alone with Tori. But this was turning into a party. And the thought of Jace seeing me like this—
I yelped and ran down the short hallway toward my bedroom just as the doorbell rang again. Dewey scooted into my room with me.
“What should I wear?” I asked my little kitty as I tossed half the contents of my closet onto my bed. He batted the hem of one of my dresses. I considered it for a brief moment. But no. The black dress seemed too dressy. The jeans were too warm for this time of year. The sundress was too similar to what Tori had on. I didn’t want to look like her less attractive sister.
In the end, I pulled on a pair of dressy black shorts and a white tunic shirt that had pink roses stitched into the scoop neckline.
I traded my comfortable fuzzy socks for a pair of strappy sandals. With quick motions, I hastily applied a pale pink lipstick that matched the roses on my tunic and a dusky brown eye shadow. Finally, I dabbed a thick coating of cover-up onto my arm to hide the angry red scratches.
My fine-textured brown hair was impossible to tame in the South’s humidity. By the end of the day it was a frustrating mix of both kinky and limp. The best I could do with it was pull it back into a high ponytail like Tori’s.
I took one last look in the dresser’s mirror. A few stubborn tendrils of hair had escaped to curl around the crown of my head, making me look fuzzy. I sprayed some hairspray on the top of my head and patted everything down.
Once I’d finished, I drew a deep breath and said to Dewey, “Now remember, kitty, the detective—no matter how handsome he looks—is not our friend. So be careful around him.”
My kitty meowed as if he understood. But I suspected he was simply tired of being closed up in the bedroom with me.
“You’re right. Enough stalling. We can’t hide in here all night.”
I emerged to find the party had formed around the kitchen table. Tori was pouring the wine. Charlie and Flossie had their heads together in conversation. They both were laughing. And Jace was standing off to one side looking around as if he were still on duty and in search of a murder weapon.
He’d come dressed in worn jeans and black T-shirt, which made him look like the living definition of hot cop. Put a picture of him dressed like that on the cover of a romance novel, and it would hit the best-seller list in an hour.
“Um, hi there,” I said, hoping to sound causal.
Tori spun around and splashed half the wine in the glass she’d been pouring onto the linoleum floor when she saw me. “What did you—?” she started to say, but stopped herself.
“You look nice.” Charlie lifted a glass in my direction.
I glanced down at myself, pretending to notice for the first time what I had on, trying to act cool, and pretending that wearing makeup to hang out at home was a normal thing to do.
“Thanks,” I said. “I hope y’all are eating the pizza. Tori brought enough for an army. And, Detective, I’m glad you could come by.”
“I’m off the clock. C
all me Jace.” Off duty or not, he was drinking water instead of wine unlike the rest of my friends. “How’s our kitty doing?”
As if on cue, Dewey sauntered into the kitchen with his tail held high, its tip shivering with happiness.
Jace crouched down and made a shushing sound. Much to my dismay, Dewey rushed right over and rubbed up against the detective’s outstretched hand while purring loudly.
“He’s eaten two cans of stinky beef stew since we’ve gotten home. And he’s been carrying that mouse you brought for him everywhere,” I said. “So I think he’s happy.”
“Don’t know that I’ve ever seen a cat look happier,” Jace agreed as he stroked Dewey’s petite back. “Is he smiling?”
“Cats can’t smile,” Flossie said from across the small room. “Their facial muscles aren’t built that way.”
“I don’t know. This one sure looks like he’s smiling,” Jace said. “He wasn’t grinning like this when Tru caught him and stuffed him into the maintenance closet this morning.”
I rubbed my arm. The deep scratches still stung. “Have you had pizza yet? Tori bought this monster pie, and I don’t want leftovers.”
“Thanks. With everything that’s going on with the investigation, I forgot to eat lunch.” He’d forgotten to eat lunch, but he’d taken the time to buy Dewey a toy? My heart softened a little toward him.
I smiled.
He smiled back.
It felt like the start of a Hallmark movie.
But when he stood up, his gaze drifted over to the far wall to where my grandmother’s old china cabinet was standing. His smiled dropped. His shoulders tensed.
The only thing out of place on the china cabinet was the screwdriver I’d left on the cabinet’s top. Why would the sight of a screwdriver make Jace put his police game face back on?
“I was trying to fix the kitchen table,” I explained and then demonstrated how the table’s top wobbled. “But that was the only screwdriver I could find out in the shed. Not too helpful, right?” I’d set the screwdriver on the surface closest to the back door, intending to return it to the backyard shed the next time I went out that way.
The Broken Spine Page 8