An Open Book
Authors: Sheila Connolly
Berkley Prime Crime titles by Sheila Connolly
Orchard Mysteries
ONE BAD APPLE
ROTTEN TO THE CORE
RED DELICIOUS DEATH
A KILLER CROP
BITTER HARVEST
SOUR APPLES
Museum Mysteries
FUNDRAISING THE DEAD
LET’S PLAY DEAD
FIRE ENGINE DEAD
County Cork Mysteries
BURIED IN A BOG
Specials
DEAD LETTERS
AN OPEN BOOK
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume
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AN OPEN BOOK
A Berkley Prime Crime Special / published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime Special edition / January 2013
Copyright © 2012 by Sheila Connolly.
Excerpt from
Buried in a Bog
by Sheila Connolly copyright © 2012 by Sheila Connolly.
Excerpt from
One Bad Apple
by Sheila Connolly copyright © 2008 by Sheila Connolly.
Excerpt from
Fundraising the Dead
by Sheila Connolly copyright © 2010 by Sheila Connolly.
Cover photos:
Snow
© Ciarada;
Library
© Moreen Blackthorne.
Cover design by Diana Kolsky.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or
electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy
of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized
editions.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ISBN: 978-1-101-60377-2
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PRIME CRIME
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Blue had always been Edith Hathaway’s favorite color. But I don’t think she would
have chosen it as a skin color.
Edith lay on her back in a drift of snow, some old, some newly fallen, looking as
though she was taking a nap—except her eyes were half-open, and so was her mouth.
There were snowflakes on her lashes. The snow created blue shadows; I could see my
breath. Edith was blue, and I couldn’t see any sign of breath from her.
I’d been taking a brisk walk along a two-mile circuit outside of town, something I
do whenever I can pry enough time free from my schedule. I live in a rural part of
Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where the gently rolling hills are broken up with stands
of old-growth trees. Here and there were sturdy old stone houses, most with a trickle
of smoke emerging from their chimneys. For the holidays the owners added electric
candles in all the windows, their very restrained salute to the season. Over the years
I’d settled on a favorite route, one that challenged me but didn’t demand too much
effort.
I try to walk rain or shine, although today I’d had to keep postponing it because
of errands and such, and now it was approaching dusk. But I’d really felt a need to
move freely and breathe deeply, and besides, I knew the views were lovely as the sun
sank. I love this time of day, particularly in winter: everything seems sharp and
clear, the black branches of the trees, shorn of leaves, silhouetted against the sky.
I know the path well, so I wasn’t worried about stumbling around as the light faded,
although I carried a cell phone just in case. Finding a dead body hadn’t been on the
“just in case” list, however, much less finding the body of someone I knew.
Edith was a regular patron at our town library. The library has only two librarians
on payroll, one an administrator, the other a children’s librarian, and the rest of
the staffing was made up of volunteers. I’m one of them: school psychologist for the
local school district by day, but some nights and weekends I work the desk in the
library, which is far less demanding than my day job. The system works for our town;
Strathmere, Pennsylvania, population 2,563, boasts a surprisingly high percentage
of overeducated people, most of whom commute to Philadelphia to work. Luckily most
of them believe in giving back to their community (at least in service if not in taxes),
so the library has no trouble finding people to staff the checkout desk. Besides,
we’d rather spend the money on new books, or more and more often, new eBooks, than
on librarian salaries. In addition, the library serves as an informal community center,
where people swap genteel gossip. Our library is Information Central in more ways
than one.
The library has an outstanding collection of mysteries, both vintage and new (most
of the acquisitions budget goes to those purchases), and that was how I had gotten
to know Edith. I would have known her much earlier if I had grown up in Strathmere.
She had taught fourth grade here for decades, and had retired only when her hip could
no longer take the long hours spent standing. Still, she wasn’t “old”; erect of carriage,
silver of hair, she was a regular sight in Strathmere, walking to and from the shops
in town. At the library, on her regular circuit, she usually borrowed at least three
mysteries a week, and returned them promptly, often with a comment that she had figured
out who the villain was before she reached the midpoint of the book.
I looked around for a place to perch, thinking I should avoid trampling on evidence,
if there was evidence to be found, of course. Had Edith been the victim of foul play?
The whole idea seemed absurd, and on first glance there was no reason to think so.
She lay in a natural-looking position, neither sprawling nor formally laid out. There
was no sign of blood, no knife protruding from her chest, no crater marring her crisply
permed curls. She looked at peace. And to the best of my memory, there hadn’t been
a murder in town in . . . decades, if ever. I could remember a bank robbery a few
years earlier, but the robber hadn’t even made it to the town limits—he’d been shocked
that our police officers had actually drawn their guns on him, and gave up without
a fight. The worst crime recently had been the failure of several dog owners to clean
up after their pets.
But I happened to know that Edith lived on the far side of town, near the library,
which was at least two miles away. Since she’d had a hip replaced a couple of years
earlier, it was highly unlikely that she had walked all the way over here, especially
with snow threatening—there had been brief squalls earlier in the afternoon, which
had left a dusting of new snow over old. Moreover, she disdained physical exercise,
at least the unladylike, sweaty kind, even though her surgeon had recommended it.
She had compromised by agreeing to walk to the library every day or two, carrying
her book. But that was three blocks on a nicely paved and level sidewalk, not over
snowy hill and dale.
I looked carefully at her, so that I would remember the details. She was wearing her
winter coat, a nice navy-blue wool one I’d seen many times before. No hat, but a hand-knit
scarf in heathery purple tones, and good leather gloves. No purse. She had on what
used to be called sensible-lady boots, but they were a far cry from hiking boots.
What was wrong with this picture? Edith Hathaway simply did not belong dead in the
midst of the idyllic rural winter scene.
I finally found a convenient fallen tree on the opposite side of the path, sat down,
and pulled out my cell phone. Of course I knew the number for town hall: the single
building in the center of town housed all of our municipal functions—not just the
town government but also the police and fire departments, and the library. It had
been that way for at least a century, and since the population hadn’t grown much,
there was no reason to change the building now, although new lines for Internet and
other modern communications had been installed a decade ago. I punched in the number.
Luckily it wasn’t yet five o’clock, and our trusty town receptionist, Mona, was still
on duty.
“Hi, Mona. Is the chief in?”
“Hi, Sarabeth. Let me check.” I knew it wouldn’t take her long, since the reception
area was about ten feet from the police department headquarters. Rather than transferring
the call, Mona could stand up and peer into Police Headquarters—which was a pretty
grand name for a bull pen that measured about twenty feet square, plus one glassed-in
office for the chief, Vanessa Hutchins. Van and I had been friends since shortly after
I moved to Strathmere and I started volunteering at the library. In a small town,
you got friendly fast with the people you saw every few days. Van had a tiny staff,
and with no more than two officers on duty at any time, the department didn’t need
any more space than that corner of town hall. There was no jail, and only two official
cars, which the street officers swapped between shifts.
Mona was back on the line quickly and said, “I’ll put you through, Sarabeth.” Thirty
seconds later Vanessa picked up. “Hey, Sarabeth. What do you need? I was just about
to head out—quiet day. Bet everyone’s at the mall returning their Christmas presents.”
“Sorry, Van, but it’s going to get less quiet. I just found Edith Hathaway, and she’s
dead.”
There was a moment of stunned silence on Vanessa’s end. “That’s terrible. What were
you doing at her house? Delivering the latest Lisa Scottoline?”
“Uh, not exactly. She’s not at home. She’s lying in the snow on top of a hill, about
two miles from the center of town.”
“What? Where?” Vanessa knew Edith too, and immediately understood how surprising that
was.
I looked around, trying to find a landmark Van would recognize. “I was out walking,
so I’m not near a road. I’d say I’m about half a mile uphill behind the Johnson house,
and the same distance from Pennsbury Street.”
“Shoot,” Vanessa muttered. “Why couldn’t she have made it easy? It’s going to be a
bear to get people up there, and to get her out, and it’ll be dark before too much
longer. What the heck was she doing way out there?”
“Got me. I don’t think she walked.” I looked around for footprints but saw none in
the light sprinkling of snow except my own.
“Let me think . . .” Van fell silent. She was a good cop, and a good person. A local
girl who’d grown up in town. There wasn’t a whole lot of competition for the position
of police chief in a town this size—the pay was low, but so was the crime rate, which
limited chances of moving on to a better position—so the town council had happily
approved her when she said she wanted the job. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do,” Van finally
said. “Since the techs can’t possibly get there until after dark, I want you to describe
the scene for me, and I’ll write it down. First of all, are you sure she’s dead?”
If Van could see her, she wouldn’t ask, but it seemed kind of rude to send such an
unflattering photo of Edith by cell phone. “Well, she’s blue, and she’s not breathing.
I didn’t go looking for a pulse or anything. I mean, the poor woman is eighty-four—if
she’d decided to come out here and take a nap, she wouldn’t have lasted long.” But
how on earth had she gotten out here? And why? Edith had shunned the glories of nature,
particularly when they were covered with snow.
“You don’t have to get sarcastic on me, Sarabeth,” Van rebuked me. “I’ll attribute
it to stress. Okay, give me a quick description of what you see, and then take some
pictures. Your cell phone does have a camera, doesn’t it?”
“It does.” It had been a birthday present from my husband, Henry, who really liked
high-tech toys. This thing had options I couldn’t even identify, much less use. I
would have been happy with a simple phone that made and received calls, period, but
Henry had looked so pleased with himself when he gave it to me that I didn’t have
the heart to tell him I didn’t need all the bells and whistles. I wondered if I’d
tell him what I’d used it for today. I could already hear his gloating “I told you!”
“But I’d better hurry. What do you need to know?”
“You said the only thing you’re near is that walking path, right?”
“Yes. I don’t generally see a lot of people on it, but plenty of people know about
it, and it’s not hard to find.”
“Footprints?”
“Nope, at least not around Edith. All I see right now are mine. There were some squalls
a little while ago, maybe around four, so whatever happened had to have been before
that.”
“Is there snow on her?”
“Just a bit. Could have been blown there, rather than fallen—it’s windy up here. It’s
not like she’s covered in it.”
“Okay, whatever happened, happened around the time the snow stopped, maybe a couple
of hours ago. Is it still windy there?”
I looked around. The day had reached that moment when the sun was slipping below the
horizon, and everything was still. There had been a slight breeze earlier when I’d
left the house. “Not now. “
“Hmm—so it won’t be much different when the crew gets there. Sarabeth, when was the
last time you saw Edith? Alive, I mean?”
“Last night about six, when she picked up the book she’d requested from interlibrary
loan. She stopped by the library before dinner.”
“Anything out of the ordinary then? Did she seem depressed, or excited?”
I thought back. “Nope, she was the same as she always was. We chatted for a few minutes
about the book she was returning. She hadn’t liked it, thought the killer was too
obvious from the beginning. I agreed with her.” Edith’s mind had definitely been as
sharp as ever, and so had her tongue—she’d had some derisive comments to make about
the book she’d returned.
“She didn’t mention any plans? No visitors? No trips out of town?”
“She said she was having a pork chop and applesauce for dinner, and she was looking
forward to curling up with the new book afterwards. That was about it.” Edith still
had all her own teeth and was proud of it, and the pork chop reference was her sly
way of mentioning it.
“No sign of a weapon, or obvious injuries on her body?”
“Not that I can see. Of course, the weapon could be under her. If there is one.”
“You think maybe it was natural causes?” Vanessa said hopefully.
“I’d prefer to think so, but what was she doing up here? Look, Van, it’s getting pretty
cold. For all I know, somebody could have blasted her with a bazooka and then put
her coat on her and covered it up, but I’m not about to turn her over to check. You
coming out here? And bringing some help?”
Vanessa sighed. “Yeah, I guess. I’d better call the coroner, and somebody from the
state forensics lab and tell them they’ll be working late. And tell them how to get
to her. Poor Edith. I really thought she’d outlast us all.”
“I know what you mean. You want me to stay here and wait for you?”
“Are you in any danger of frostbite?”
“I don’t think so. I dressed for the walk. But hurry it up, will you? Henry’s cooking
something special tonight.” Henry had really gotten into
haute cuisine
recently, and was using me as a guinea pig. I like to cook, but if he wanted to take
over now and then, it was fine with me. Although I was still trying to explain to
him that he didn’t have to use every pot and pan that we owned to produce a simple
dinner for two, especially given that he usually stuck me with the cleanup.
“Give me half an hour.” Van hung up.
I got up and stamped my feet for a while, to keep the blood flowing in that direction,
while avoiding looking at Edith. Then I called Henry. “Hey, I’m going to be a little
late. Will that spoil our dinner plans?”
“Hey, SB. No, no problem. It’s a
daube de boeuf
, and I didn’t get it into the oven until late. Besides, the longer it cooks, the
better it will be. What’s up?”
“Uh, I can’t talk about it now, but I should be home in an hour or so and I’ll fill
you in then. Love you.”
“Me too.”
