“Then she can just move into a hotel. She is, after all, living in our home, Jed. That woman has a lot of nerve and …”
“Right.” Jed interrupted before Susan really got going. “So, anyway, I called the library, and Charles Grace was absolutely insistent that he speak to you as soon as possible. He was most emphatic. He said it was urgent.”
“I don’t suppose he suggested it was a life-and-death situation?” Susan asked rather sarcastically.
“He didn’t say anything about that, but he said it was very important. He wants to see you at three p.m.”
Susan looked at her watch. Three forty-five. “And what did you tell him?”
“I said I’d try to find you and pass on the message.”
“Well. You did.”
“Are you going to go?”
“I’ll see. It depends on what’s happening here. We thought we heard a prowler, and the police have been here checking it out, so I really don’t know what’s going to happen. But if Charles Grace calls back, at least you can say that you passed on the message.”
“What about Rebecca’s things? Apparently she really needs some of them.”
Susan thought of the see-through negligees now packed in the expensive luggage. “I can send them home with Amy if I decide to head downtown.”
“Okay. And, Sue …” He paused, and Susan, assuming he was going to tell her to be careful, started to construct reassuring phrases. “Where do we keep the honey mustard? Rebecca says she can’t eat ham on rye without it.”
SEVEN
Susan had no trouble resisting the urge to run out and purchase honey mustard. In fact, she would have had trouble discovering such a need inside herself. She didn’t particularly want to speak with Charles Grace either; she was still mad about the snub she had received from him earlier in the day.
On the other hand, he might have some information essential to the case, she reminded herself as she drove to the library. She was wondering what had changed since noon, when he had claimed to be too busy to keep the appointment he had insisted on last night, when she almost ran into a large black Jaguar.
Susan was tired. She felt that it had been a long day, and it was barely four o’clock. That was the only excuse she could make for saying what she had just said to a complete stranger. Only the driver wasn’t a complete stranger. The driver turned out to be David Pratt. Happily he was amused by Susan’s vocabulary.
“You don’t happen to be a longshoreman, do you?” he asked, leaning out his window and grinning at her.
“Sorry about that. It’s been a difficult day, and now Charles Grace wants to see me at the library for some obscure reason.”
“Me too. And the reason is insurance.”
“What?” Susan looked in her rearview mirror to see who was honking so loudly.
“He’s worried about the town’s insurance policy. He’s afraid the family of the man killed at the library is going to sue. At least, I think that’s what’s worrying him. He called an emergency meeting of the entire library board. I didn’t know you were a member, though.”
“I’m not.…” Susan glanced at the car passing her. The driver was apparently more than slightly irritated by her conversation. “He just called my house and asked to see me.”
“You’re lucky. You probably won’t be tied up all afternoon. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you would be sure to tell Linda that I’m not going to make it to the track when you see her.”
Susan glanced at her watch. “I’d forgotten all about running,” she admitted, thinking how quickly this glitch had appeared in her plans. “I’m supposed to meet her in fifteen minutes.” She glanced over her shoulder into the back of the car. A sweatshirt and sweatpants belonging to her son lay across the seat; he had brought them home from school to be washed, and they hadn’t made it to the laundry room yet. A pair of Chrissy’s running shoes were on the floor. Susan made her decision. After all, Charles Grace apparently hadn’t worried about wasting her time. “Listen,” she urged David, “why don’t I go to the track and deliver your message to Linda? Then I’ll run my mile and head back to the library. You could tell Charles that I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“Fine with me. I’d better get going, or I’ll be late. See you there—I have a feeling this meeting is going to go on forever. How that man can talk once he gets started.” The loud engine of the Jaguar drowned out his words, and Susan stepped on the accelerator and headed toward the track.
There wasn’t a whole lot of space in the front seat of her sedan, and she was busy struggling to get her son’s sweatpants tied tightly when Linda drove into the parking space beside her. Susan opened the door and pulled on the black running shoes.
“Great-looking new outfit,” Linda called over her shoulder, taking long loping strides toward the track.
The two friends had developed a routine that suited them both. Unless they shared a ride to the track, they didn’t speak until the end of their respective runs. When they got to the field, Linda liked to stretch for a few minutes, then do some mental exercises that were supposed to get her “psyched” for the task ahead. Susan just tried to reserve her strength. After the run, however, they usually chatted for a few minutes—once Susan had caught her breath. Today, however, they had guests.
“Hey, how long have you been here?” Susan asked, sitting down next to Kathleen Gordon. Bananas was toddling around the grass in the middle of the track, chasing a sparrow.
“Just a few minutes. You’re getting better, aren’t you? Faster, I mean.”
Susan mopped off her forehead. “I don’t think so. But I’m going farther each month, and I keep telling myself that’s all that matters.”
“It is.” They both watched as Linda ran by. “You were going to talk with the homeless man,” Kathleen began when they weren’t likely to be overheard.
“I did,” Susan said, and then related that conversation, the suggestions Brett had made, and what had just happened at the Armstrong house.
Kathleen was silent for a few minutes, watching her son and, presumably, thinking over the events of Susan’s day. “Has Rebecca given any reason for not returning home?”
“Maybe she would find it painful?” Susan suggested. “After all, Jason was found dead on the front porch. He was probably killed there, in fact.”
“Did she see his body?”
“She identified it at the morgue.…”
“But did she see his body when it was lying there in front of her home?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. I think she came home from here yesterday and found a policeman on her front lawn who told her about it.”
“And then what did she do?”
“She drove over to my house.” Susan paused. “It still doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? I mean, it’s not as though we were friends or anything. I met her at that party and then spoke briefly with her in the library yesterday morning when the first body was found, but it’s not as though we really knew each other at all.”
“Did she explain?”
“Oh, yes. She said that she knew no one in town, which is probably true. She hasn’t been here very long, and everyone said that with her work schedule, we weren’t going to be seeing her much anyway.”
“But she was at the library yesterday morning.”
“And she runs here once in a while. I haven’t seen her before, but David Pratt has a crush on her, and he says she has worked out here in the past.”
“But she was at two places where you were on the day that her husband was killed—for the first time since she moved to town.”
“I know it sounds like that, but I don’t see how the three things could be related,” Susan protested.
“They might not be,” Kathleen said, getting up and taking something out of her son’s fist before it went into his mouth. “Or she might have been trying to get in touch with you.”
“In the first place, why would she want to be in touch with me? She didn’t know tha
t her husband was going to be killed, she didn’t know that she was going to need a place to stay.…”
“Maybe she knew exactly that.”
“What?”
“In the first place, maybe she knew that her husband was going to be killed because she was going to kill him. That’s not impossible, is it?”
“I don’t know,” Susan said slowly. “I don’t know where she was when he was killed. I do know that she was running around this track afterward without a care in the world, but I suppose that could just have been an act.”
“Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she killed him, eliminated whatever problem he was causing her, and once he was dead, she really didn’t have a care in the world.”
“Maybe … Although, if I murdered someone, I think I’d be pretty nervous about it afterward. But what you’re saying makes some sense. Maybe the first murdered man was connected with her job in some way.”
“Maybe. But networks are pretty big organizations. They wouldn’t necessarily have met. Did she say that she knew him?”
Susan thought for a moment. “No. I don’t think she said anything about him at all.”
“Is she the person who told you his identity?”
“No. In fact, she didn’t say anything about him at all yesterday morning in the library. I know the police didn’t connect them right away because Brett said he didn’t interview her—and he interviewed all the people who were important or who were thought to be possible suspects.”
“But no one could know who those people were right after the murder. Unless someone was standing over the body with a knife in his or her hand.”
“No, the closest person to the body was me, I’m afraid.”
“You do tend to be lucky like that, don’t you?” Kathleen asked, smiling.
“Yes, but I don’t call it lucky.”
“But your experience with murders is probably the reason you have this houseguest, don’t you think?”
“I … I really hadn’t thought of it like that,” Susan answered as Linda, watch in hand, came to a stop in front of them.
“That last mile was slightly under eight. Not bad for an old lady like me, right?”
“Not bad for anybody,” Kathleen said. “In fact, it’s great. How many miles a day are you doing?”
“A minimum of two. Usually four.”
“Fantastic. How long have you been running?”
“A few months. Same as Susan.”
Susan wandered over to where Bananas had seated himself and was happily picking pieces of grass, throwing them over his shoulder and onto the top of his head. “Having fun?” she asked him, squatting down by his side.
The child answered by heaving grass into her face. “I’ll take that as a yes.” Susan laughed and pulled him into her lap.
Bananas giggled and threw more grass at her. The two of them kept each other amused while his mother and Linda chatted together. Susan was thinking about Kathleen’s last statement. She supposed what Kathleen was saying was that Rebecca wanted her to investigate this crime—except that didn’t make any sense. As far as she knew, Rebecca believed that the man who confessed had committed the murders. Or did she? Susan really hadn’t had a chance to speak with Rebecca about that. She hadn’t, in fact, had a chance to speak to her about anything. Rebecca kept her so busy running around playing hostess and doing errands that the two women really hadn’t spoken seriously at all. Was that intentional? Was she being distracted for a reason? She was thinking so hard and Bananas was so busy that neither of them noticed that they were no longer alone.
“I wonder where David is?” Linda sat down and tucked a piece of clover behind Bananas’s left ear.
Susan started. “I forgot! He’s at a meeting of the library board. Charles Grace called it—something about insurance. David asked me to tell you, and I just wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”
“No problem,” Linda assured her. “He’s doing a lot more for that library than he expected to when he accepted the job.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He’s not a great worker, you know. It’s probably a good thing he inherited all that money because I don’t think he’s much of a businessman either. I’m surprised Charles Grace chose him. There are a lot of gung ho accountants in town who would love to muddle around in the library’s books and look important.”
“Does this meeting have anything to do with the murders?” Kathleen asked.
“In an indirect way. I think Charles Grace is afraid that the library is legally responsible for someone being murdered there. Or that there’s going to be a lawsuit or something.”
“And the library board is what?” Kathleen asked.
“Actually, I’m not sure …”
“I am,” Linda broke in, handing Bananas back to his mother. “It’s the governing body of the library. It’s all volunteer work, of course. Hancock is pretty much run by volunteers. But they do have the legal right to make decisions that affect the library in a very real way—like the Board of Education and the schools. David is chairman of the board. He has been for the past few months.”
“So they will have some real decisions to make concerning how the news of the murder is handled or what to do if someone does sue.”
“Definitely.” Linda confirmed Kathleen’s suggestion.
“He wanted to see me,” Susan muttered.
“Who?”
“Charles Grace. It was a little strange, in fact. Last night he came to the house and insisted that I come to the library and talk to him this morning, but when I got there, he was too busy to bother. Then while I was at the Armstrongs’ house, he apparently called my home a few times. He told Jed that it was very important that I come to the library right away. Obviously, I didn’t think it was all that necessary to rush over there. After all, the last time I did, he didn’t even bother to talk with me,” she answered Linda’s raised eyebrows. “And I thought I’d go on over after I ran,” she added.
“Bananas and I were on our way to the library,” Kathleen surprised her by saying. “He’s very fond of books, you know.” She didn’t admit that, primarily, he liked the way they tasted.
“Maybe I’ll see you there,” Susan said, standing up. “I don’t know how long the meeting will last. Probably I’ll get there and Charles Grace will be too busy to see me again.”
“Well, it’s worth a try, isn’t it?” Kathleen asked, as they all headed toward their parked cars.
“I suppose so. It’s stupid to be so sensitive about being ignored.”
“You don’t like Charles Grace, do you?” Linda surprised them both by asking.
“I never really thought about it,” Kathleen admitted.
“Neither did I, but now that I’m seeing more of him, I don’t find much to like either,” Susan agreed.
“David says the board has to spend too much time defending him. That if he got along with the public better, they would have a lot less to do.”
“That’s funny. The other librarians insist that he believes service to the public is the most important part of a librarian’s job,” Susan said.
“Well, apparently that’s not the way he acts. But I don’t know much about it all. David is very discreet,” she added.
They said good-bye at their cars and then backed out and headed in the same direction.
The town of Hancock must suddenly be full of enthusiastic readers, Susan decided as she entered the parking lot. It was the first time she’d ever had to search for a spot for her car.
The Hancock Public Library prominently displayed an official sign from the office of the Hancock fire inspector notifying the public that no more than three hundred citizens were to inhabit the first floor of the library at any one time. Susan thought it was a good thing no one was counting. The large area was jammed. She headed to the front desk as quickly as the crowd would allow, only to be told by the woman there that Charles Grace was in a board meeting and had left word that he was not to be interrupted for any reason. Susan thanked
her for the information, smiled politely, and left, determined to interrupt Charles Grace whether he wanted to be interrupted or not. The man was going to go down in her personal history as having a whole lot of nerve.
The library’s meeting rooms shared the downstairs area with the children’s section. Susan hadn’t had any reason to visit them until now. There were three conference rooms. One had the door closed, and the other two were full of women sitting around. Susan, who had spent a lot of time in meetings of one group or another ever since her children had begun nursery school, didn’t get the feeling that either group was official in any respect. That left door number three. She hesitated for a minute, attempting to overcome her reluctance to be rude, and then opened the door to the third and final room. David Pratt was sitting at the head of a large walnut table, smiling. At the other end, the end closest to her and to the door, Charles Grace sat, scowling at her entrance. Susan ignored his expression and walked right in, closing the door behind her.
“Excuse me,” Susan offered her apologies to the rest of the group, “but I got a message that Mr. Grace wanted to speak to me—urgently.”
“Then you are certainly welcome to join us.” This from David.
“I really don’t think that’s necessary,” Charles Grace leapt in. “I can speak to Mrs. Henshaw later.”
Did this man think she had nothing to do but wait around for him? “I’m afraid that will be impossible,” Susan argued. “I have a lot of things to do.…”
“I understand Susan has Rebecca Armstrong staying with her.” David offered an explanation for her insistence.
Everyone at the table turned and stared at Susan, possibly admiring the social coup she had pulled in having such a famous guest. Susan wondered if she should offer to sell off bits of her guest-room carpet to the highest bidder. (Somewhere in her dresser drawer she still had a few square inches of hotel carpeting that, possibly, Paul McCartney had walked across in 1965. It had been sold as a part of a fund-raiser for some charity or other.)
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