“I’ve been looking forward to running into you ever since I took this job.” They joined hands.
Of course, it wasn’t as if he was running into her on the street in New York City. Hancock was a small town, and of course he would be on the lookout for her. How vain she was getting in her old age. She smiled back at him, glad he couldn’t read her thoughts. “It’s good to see you, too. I didn’t know you were the new police chief. In fact, I didn’t know there was a new police chief. You see, I don’t always read the local papers, and we were up on Deer Isle most of last summer.…” She heard herself starting to babble. Why did she always act this way around him?
“But you’re around to help me with another murder.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. Anything I can do …” She bit her lip. There must be some way to stop talking.
“Mrs. Henshaw found the body,” Charles Grace announced.
“Mrs. Henshaw always finds the body,” Brett replied with a knowing smile at her. “And now I had better start this investigation. If you’ll just wait in that area near the magazines with everyone else.”
“Of course.” Susan hurried off. So much for special treatment. Well, maybe she’d find someone she knew there, someone to talk to. And something to munch on. She was starving.
And she wasn’t the only one. There had been a costume party in the children’s book section earlier in the morning, and someone had gathered together leftover refreshments, adding the few bags of goodies that the library was planning to hand out to trick or treaters. Everything was being devoured by a half-dozen mothers and four times as many kids. Susan grabbed, beating out two monsters for an M&M cookie and a paper cup of apple juice; their stained costumes belied their protests that they hadn’t had any yet.
“Hungry?”
Susan turned and looked into the smiling face that millions of Americans depended on to wake them up in the morning.
“I’m starving, too.” Rebecca Armstrong reached for another cookie, and even the children, possibly awed by her celebrity status, remembered their manners and stopped grabbing for a moment.
“This must be almost dinnertime for you.” Susan smiled back, unsure of exactly how people who appeared on television, while most everyone else was in bed, arranged their days.
“Well, hardly that. More like afternoon tea. But being nervous makes me hungry; how about you?”
“Nervous?” When Susan was nervous, she tended to keep quiet about it.
“We’re all suspects in a murder.” Rebecca opened her beautiful dark eyes their widest. “But someone told me you’ve had experience with this type of thing before, haven’t you?”
They were approached by an ebullient witch before Susan could decide how to answer. “You’re Rebecca Armstrong, aren’t you? The anchorwoman on ‘This Morning, Every Morning,’ ” she added, apparently thinking the other woman might need reminding of her profession. “My husband turns you on before he even gets out of bed!” She giggled loudly. “That’s not quite what I meant. What I meant …” She giggled even more.
“That’s okay. I know what you mean—and I’m always glad to hear from people who watch the show.” Rebecca Armstrong smiled warmly. “We depend on our viewers, after all. Do you watch, too?”
Susan moved out of the conversation, impressed with how easily Rebecca Amstrong conveyed warmth and interest to strangers. Imagine knowing that Susan had a small reputation as an amateur detective! Of course, Rebecca must be used to charming newcomers. She had been on the popular network show for almost ten years now, and her extraordinary good looks—pale skin, gigantic dark eyes, and thick mane of auburn hair—were pretty sure to be noticed in a crowd. Even without reading the paper, she had heard that Rebecca and her new husband, the handsome young cohost of the show, had moved to town recently. Susan noticed that Rebecca was being watched by the others awaiting the police’s return. Well, celebrity watching gave them all something to do. She sat down on a comfortable couch and picked up a magazine.
“Do computers interest you?”
Susan looked up at a tall man dressed in shabby clothes. She considered the possibility that he was a gardener until her nose told her that he was probably homeless, a man without access to a shower, unable to live up to normal standards of cleanliness.
“The magazine,” he continued his cryptic comments.
She looked down and saw that she was holding a highly technical computer magazine. “I …” She didn’t know how to finish. “I guess I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. What magazine, I mean.”
“We’re all a little upset by this,” he surprised her by saying. “It’s not like there’s some sort of etiquette in place to cover this situation, is there?” He smiled a wry smile.
“No,” she answered, a little startled by his perception. “I guess there isn’t.”
“Of course,” he continued, without acknowledging her comment, “it’s going to be easier for you than for me. They’re going to blame me for this, you know.”
She was startled. “You? Why you?”
“Who else is there?” There was that smile again. Did it appear a little sinister this time? He started to walk away, as though anything she might say was of no interest to him. “There’s only me. Everyone else belongs here.” He threw the comment back over his shoulder and turned the corner of a shelf of magazines.
“My next-door neighbor is a lawyer, and he says we have to let them in here—something to do with accepting federal or state funds or freedom of information.”
“There’s always a way around that type of thing. Someone ought to do something. It’s not safe having people like that in the library.”
“It’s not sanitary having people like that in the library!” Both voices dissolved into giggles.
Susan looked around at two women she recognized from PTA and Board of Education meetings. It had occurred to her before that their main enjoyment in life came from laughing at other people. Personally she found them stupid. She refused to have eye contact with either of them, returning to the magazine she still held. Even floppy disks, modems, and emulators were more interesting than habitual bitchiness. She might actually have been forced to be polite if Brett Fortesque hadn’t asked that she be questioned first.
He had chosen the main office as his temporary headquarters, and Susan was called into the large room where each librarian had her own desk, one of a dozen arranged around the outside walls. Brett and two other officers were seated at the large worktable in the middle of the room. He glanced up and smiled warmly at her as she entered.
“Susan, I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re here. Some of my men have been telling me stories about the murders you’ve helped solve in the last few years—you’ve probably had more experience than a lot of policemen.”
Susan blushed, smiled, and sat down on the hard chair that was pulled out for her.
“You know the routine, so we may as well get started. Can you tell me everything that happened after you walked in the front door of the library? I’ll just interrupt with questions as we go along, okay?”
“Sure. Well, I guess I got here about eleven this morning. I only planned on dropping off a pile of books. Both Chad and Chrissy had reports due in school last week, and I knew we were going to pay a fortune in fines unless I got over today. So I dumped everything at the circulation desk and then decided to take the time to browse around. There’s this new mystery novelist who writes great books about San Francisco that I just discovered, and we’re thinking of adding a poolroom in the basement, and I thought there might be something about remodeling that I could use … anyway.” She realized that what she was saying had no bearing on the murder and changed direction. “I looked around the mystery section for a few minutes and spent about five minutes more searching for a book on basement renovations, and then I remembered that we’re having a few friends in for drinks on Sunday, and I wanted to find a book on sugarless cooking—one of the men coming is diabetic. So I went over to the se
ction of cookbooks …”
“Which is where in relation to where you’d been?”
“Excuse me?”
“Could you use this map and show us exactly where you were in the building to find all the different books you were looking for?”
“Of course,” Susan agreed, taking from him the diagram of the building that was given to all new residents of the town and spreading it out in the middle of the table. “This is the circulation desk.” She pointed to the horseshoe-shaped object almost directly under the bell tower. “Now, the mystery novels are behind the fiction shelves—way back here in the farthest wing from the entrance.” She pointed. “And then I looked at the section of decorating books—they’re in the other long wing. About here.” She pointed again. “And the cookbooks are close by …”
“And that’s where you stumbled on the body?”
“Yes. I turned the corner at the back of the stacks …”
“That’s the wall farthest away from the circulation desk and the main part of the library.” Brett checked out the location.
“Exactly. And there he was. Almost leaning against the wall, in fact. There are chairs against that back wall—it’s a wonderful place to sit and read with those long windows looking out over the duck pond—and the body was right there.”
“Did you touch him?”
“No, I thought at first that he was a dummy. You know, some sort of Halloween joke or decoration, but when I looked closer, it was obvious that he … he wasn’t.”
“And he was dead when you found him.” It was a statement.
“No. He wasn’t.”
All three men looked at her, surprised.
“He wasn’t. He groaned … moaned. I don’t know what to call it. It sounded weird and grating, almost artificial. I thought for a second that he was playing a joke on me …”
“And then?” Brett asked gently.
“Then he looked at me and died.”
“And you knew he was dead?”
“I saw the knife and all the blood. I don’t really know why, but I knew that he was dead.” She was silent, reliving the moment. “And then I probably screamed.”
“And who came to help you first?”
Susan thought for a moment. “I think it was Charles Grace.”
“But you’re not sure.”
“It’s possible that he just spoke first. I was surrounded by people in minutes. Mainly staff, I think.”
“We’ll get back to that later.” He shuffled through some notes he had been taking and then looked again at the diagram of the building. “There are long, straight aisles through the stacks. If I said that the body must have been there for a very short time, otherwise it would have been seen, would I be right?”
“You’re asking if it was lying in a position where anyone could look straight down an aisle and see it?” Susan asked slowly.
“Yes.”
“No, it isn’t as clear-cut as that. You see, the diagram shows everything that is permanent—the shelves and the chairs and desks—but there are always things that aren’t permanent. Like those little stools that roll around so that patrons can climb up and reach books on the highest shelves. And …” she paused and thought carefully, “and I’m sure there was more than one of those rolling carts that are used to carry books around when the librarians are shelving them. I know I had to move one out of my way when I was looking at remodeling books, and I think there was probably one in the aisle behind that. So at least two aisles were … well, not filled, but they weren’t cleared enough for anyone to look straight down and see anything—or anyone—lying on the floor.”
“Now, think back carefully, Susan. Did these moving shelves look like they had been put in place to hide the body?”
She followed his directions, but she couldn’t come up with an answer, and she told him so. “But, you know, if you found out that the librarians didn’t shelve books in the middle of the day, or something similar that made those two shelves unusual, then you would probably think that they were placed there for a reason.… I don’t mean to be telling you your job …”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll take any and all suggestions at this point. And you’re right. I need to know as much about regular library routine as I can find out.” He made himself a note in the margin of his paper.
“This wasn’t a routine day at the library,” Susan said, and explained about the annual children’s Halloween party.
“The children’s room is downstairs, though, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but by the time I got there, the party had ended and they were all over the place. And you know how excited kids get at Halloween; they were noisy and keyed up.” She remembered a tiny blond elf that had been crawling around under the computerized card catalog. “I think the librarians were busier than usual—or at least more distracted. The woman at the desk when I came in looked terribly harried, and the place had been open for only a few hours.”
“What is your impression of the people who work here?”
Susan exchanged glances with the officer who had asked her the same question earlier. “I don’t know many of them very well.” But she knew he was going to insist on a more complete answer than that. “Charles Grace is, well, a little dull, I’ve always thought. Something of a boring man, to be honest. I’ve heard it said that he is exactly what you would expect a librarian to be—mild, unassuming, quiet.”
“Exactly what you first said, a little dull,” Brett suggested.
“Yes, but not, well, not literary. I would have thought that most librarians loved books, but I don’t get that impression from him.” She remembered her disappointment at his office. “I do think he loves running the library. I have also heard people say that the place has never been so well organized. He’s got a growing group of volunteers who run annual book sales to raise money. There are monthly programs for adults and weekly programs for children. There’s even a nightly study hall organized for students who need access to research materials and a quiet place to work.”
“Sounds very impressive. But you don’t like him, do you? I remember that you always worked very hard to say good things about people you didn’t particularly care for,” he added, seeing the puzzled look on her face.
“I don’t know why I don’t. I don’t know anything against him,” Susan protested.
“We’ll just leave it that you’re not crazy about the man and move on from there. How about the rest of the staff?”
“I don’t know them very well. I’ve done some bits and pieces of research here, and the research woman is wonderful. I’ve heard a lot of good about the children’s librarian, too. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know if the other women have different titles or if they all do the same work.”
“But they are all women? All the other librarians are females?”
“You know, they are. I’ve never realized that before.”
“What?”
“Oh, it has nothing to do with the murder. It’s just that I hadn’t realized that the only male here is the boss.” Susan, her consciousness raised in the sixties, had only one opinion about that, but Brett was changing the subject.
“I understand that you don’t know who the dead man is,” he stated.
“Apparently no one does. He doesn’t look at all familiar to me. I did recognize the knife, though.” She smiled brightly.
“You did?”
“Sure. It’s a Slim Sharpie.”
“It looked to me like an ordinary boning knife,” Brett answered. “But if you’re sure it is something else …”
“You don’t understand; Slim Sharpie is a brand name. They’re very expensive knives made in some tiny town in the Midwest.”
“That’s good.” Brett was enthusiastic. “Then they’re probably not very popular, and we just might be able to track down the owner of this one.…”
“Not a chance,” Susan corrected him. “They were sold by every kid in the high school orchestra last spring. I’ll bet ther
e isn’t a house in town that doesn’t have at least one Slim Sharpie. And if the murder weapon was the boning knife, you’ll never pin it down. That knife was one of six in the master chef’s set; it was very expensive and completely impractical. But most parents felt obliged to buy it—to support such a good cause,” she explained.
“Well, that’s fine.” Brett’s tone was sarcastic. “The murder weapon is a symbol of parental devotion. Sounds like our murderer is pretty clever. Damn it.”
TWO
The second body was found by a tiny redheaded Cookie Monster. He told his mother about it immediately, of course. She had been patiently waiting for him back at the curb, munching on peanut butter cups snitched from his plastic pumpkin. At first she was inclined to ignore the child. It was, after all, a day when scary things are supposed to happen, and excited seven-year-olds aren’t reliable reporters even in ordinary circumstances. But then she saw blood on his hands. It wasn’t immediately identifiable, being mixed with a melted Mars bar, but this woman had been a nurse and she recognized blood when she saw it. And as a devoted viewer of early-morning television, she had no trouble recognizing Jason Armstrong, the handsome anchorman on “This Morning, Every Morning.” Even though he didn’t usually have a butcher knife sticking out of his neck.
The Armstrongs had recently bought a large Victorian on one of the most expensive streets in town. Their decorator was one of the best in New York City. Enticed to the suburbs by the potential publicity emanating from working for the famous, he had just completed furnishing the entire house with period antiques. So Jason Armstrong had bled to death on a genuine cast-iron Gothic settee made by the Berlin Iron Company in 1856. It was possibly the most uncomfortable piece of furniture ever made, but, of course, that didn’t matter to Jason Armstrong now.
No one screamed when they saw Jason Armstrong dead. The children thought it was a grand joke, and their mothers knew better than to disillusion them. The first lady on the scene was quickly joined by others, a half-dozen women herding their children door-to-door were the next group to arrive. They quickly organized themselves, collecting their little trick or treaters and urging them on down the street, knowing that the promise of more candy would offer plenty of distraction. The front door was discovered to be unlocked, and two women volunteered to enter and call the police. One of them grabbed a silk shawl that was in the hallway, artistically thrown across an Empire mahogany pedestal table, and carried it outside to cover the body. The other resisted a natural urge to look around and joined her on the porch. When Brett Fortesque arrived, he found six women, one little boy (who had taken off his mask and was stuffing himself with candy), and a second body draped in black.
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