Books Can Be Deceiving (20 page)

Lindsey was relieved when Ms. Cole came to tell her that she had a phone call.

She hurried back to her office, picking up her receiver and answering, “Briar Creek Library, this is Lindsey.”

“Lindsey.” It was Milton. “I have the contact information for you, but it’s not good.”

“What do you mean?” Lindsey asked.

“Mr. Broderick passed away last year, and Mrs. Broderick is in an assisted-care facility in Kingston,” he said. “They don’t have any children, so it’s just her.”

“Do you think she’d be willing to talk to me?”

“She might, but it may not matter,” he said. “She has Alzheimer’s disease.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t know how much she knows about the house on the island or how much she would remember about who they rented it to,” he said.

“Well, I have to try,” Lindsey said. “Go ahead and give me the information.”

She snatched up a pen and scribbled the address on her pink message pad. After thanking Milton, she hung up and pondered what to do next. She desperately wanted to go to the home now and talk to Mrs. Broderick, but she’d taken too much time from work the day before. She’d have to go after hours.

A knock on the door drew her attention around. It was Beth.

“I’m going out of my mind,” she said. She crossed the room and plopped down in the seat across from Lindsey’s desk. “I finished reading our crafternoon book; I’m done with the sweater I was knitting; I’ve caught up on all of the little house chores I’d been putting off. Yesterday, I seriously debated cleaning my oven. I need to come back to work.”

Lindsey looked at the circles under her friend’s eyes. They were so dark they looked like inky thumbprints had been pressed onto the skin.

“You need to lay off the caffeine and get some sleep.”

“Right now I just need to be distracted,” Beth said. “So I can’t brood about it.”

It went without saying that “it” was Rick’s murder.

“Have the police been in touch with you?”

“A few times since that first day,” she said. “But it’s always the same questions.”

She sounded tired down to her roots and looked wilted as well. Lindsey knew if it was her, she’d want to be working, too.

“Violet has volunteered to take your story times, and I said yes, as I really don’t think the kids need me to do another one,” Lindsey said.

A small smile lifted the corner of Beth’s mouth. “I don’t know if I have the energy for story time, so that’s probably for the best, but could I work on my collection? I’ve been meaning to weed the nonfiction books. There are some dusty books that haven’t been checked out in all the years I’ve been here.”

“That sounds excellent,” Lindsey said. “I’ve missed you. It’ll be nice to have you back.”

“It’ll be good to be back,” Beth said. “If you need me, I’ll be in my office pulling up the circulation stats on my books.”

Lindsey watched Beth leave. She seemed to be walking with a little bit more of a spring in her step. She was going to be okay. Well, if they could just prove she hadn’t murdered Rick Eckman.

“What’s she doing here?” Ms. Cole appeared in Lindsey’s doorway. Her thick brows were drawn into a frown, which connected them in the middle and gave her a rather forbidding unibrow.

“She’s back,” Lindsey said. “She’s going to be working on her collection. Problem?”

Ms. Cole must have picked up on the warning note in Lindsey’s voice, because she opened her mouth and closed it, turned on her stout heel and strode away.

For some reason this made Lindsey feel as if she had won the battle, if not the war.

The rest of the day passed mercifully quietly. Patrons came in, and patrons went out. Books came home, and books went out. The computers stayed busy but didn’t have a long queue. Lindsey felt as if things just might get back to normal.

She looked up the assisted-care facility where Mrs. Broderick was living and realized she was going to need a car. She knew Nancy would probably let her borrow her car, but the fancy Mustang made her nervous. If anything happened to it, she’d never forgive herself. For the first time, she doubted the wisdom of selling her own car.

She left her office and found Jessica at the reference desk. Mrs. Carter had long since departed with a list of possible titles, and Jessica was reading through the fiction reviews in
Publishers Weekly
and marking the ones she wanted to buy for the library.

Jessica was a part-time library assistant. She was somewhere in her late forties, her brown hair just beginning to be taken over by gray. She was married to her college sweetheart and had spent her twenties and thirties being a wife and mom; now her kids were gone, and her time was consumed with earning her master’s degree in library science, which Lindsey encouraged even though she knew it meant they would probably lose Jessica to a larger library.

“Hey, Jessica, I have a question for you,” Lindsey said as she approached the desk.

“Shoot.” Jessica glanced up from the magazine and gave Lindsey her full attention.

“Can you recommend a car-rental place in the area? I have to run an errand this evening that is farther than I’m willing to ride my bike.”

Jessica pursed her lips. “Briar Creek is really too small to have its own. Probably you’d have to call a rental office in one of the larger neighboring towns and see if they’d be willing to pick you up. Unless . . .”

She picked up the phone and dialed.

“I have an idea,” she said to Lindsey. Then she turned back to the phone. “Bruce? Hi, it’s Jessica Gallo.”

There was a pause and then she continued. “Yeah, it’s running fine, thanks. Hey, do you remember that loaner you let me borrow? Do you still have it?”

There was another pause. “Uh-huh. Well, I have a friend who needs a car; could she borrow it?”

Jessica looked at Lindsey. “When do you need it?”

“Just for this evening,” Lindsey said.

Jessica repeated the information into the phone.

“Do you have a valid driver’s license?” she asked.

“Yes,” Lindsey said.

She waited while Jessica concluded the call. When Jessica hung up, she looked at Lindsey and said, “Bruce, the mechanic with the shop on Tyler Street, will let you borrow his loaner for the evening for twenty-five dollars.”

“Really?” Lindsey asked. “That’s great.”

“Don’t thank me until you’ve seen it.” Jessica chuckled. “It’s not pretty, but it runs great, and Bruce is a solid guy. He never overcharges.”

“Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.”

Jessica flushed with pleasure and grinned. “Aw, pshaw.”

Lindsey headed back to her office, feeling relieved that her first obstacle had been cleared. Now if she could get in to see Mrs. Broderick and even more importantly get her to remember anything about Rick. That would be key.

 

 

T
o say the loaner was not pretty was an understatement. It was a 1970s olive-green Buick Century with a white top. Lindsey felt like she was driving her living-room couch, but despite its looks, the engine purred and it glided over potholes in the road like butter on toast.

Lindsey drove through town and turned onto the road that would lead to the highway. It felt good to be driving again, and she turned on the radio; an oldies station seemed most appropriate. The music surrounded her, and she rolled down the window just a little, letting the cold night air seep in while she turned on the heater, enjoying the feel of the two air currents swirling around her.

She followed the directions she’d printed from the assisted-care facility’s website, taking I-95 east past several exits until she reached Kingston. It was full dark now, and the streetlights lit her way like hovering fireflies as she drove over rolling hills lined with tall trees that were becoming skeletons of their springtime selves as their leaves fell, leaving them bare.

The road she followed led up a hill to an old stone mansion set back on a large rolling lawn. A small visitor’s parking lot fronted the building, the only indication that this wasn’t a private residence.

Lindsey parked in the lot. She had a moment of wondering what the heck she was doing here, but then she thought about Beth and how forlorn she’d looked and Chief Daniels’s unwavering belief that she had stabbed Rick, and Lindsey knew she had to at least try to find out more about Rick’s past. With his charming personality, there had to be someone else who wanted him dead.

The doors to the old house had been retrofitted to accommodate automatic sliding-glass doors. Lindsey stepped on the mat and walked through to a plush lobby full of plants and soft carpeting.

She stopped at the registration desk and asked the woman in the pink scrubs behind the desk where she could find Mrs. Broderick.

“Oh, are you family?” the woman asked.

“Cousins,” Lindsey said. “I just recently heard about her decline.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sorry,” the woman said. Her name tag read “Trudi.” “Adele is just the sweetest woman. We all adore her. Sign here, please.”

Lindsey signed in as Leigh DeWay. No need to alert anyone that she’d been here, after all. Trudi handed her a visitor’s badge and directed her to the fourth floor, room 421.

There were only two elevators, both in service, so she opted for the stairs. They wound up through the old building until Lindsey reached the fourth-floor landing. She followed the room numbers until she got to Adele Broderick’s.

She took a deep breath and knocked on the door. There was silence, so she waited before knocking again. This time the door opened and a stout, dark-haired woman with big brown eyes peered out at her. Her face was lined with wrinkles, and her dark hair seemed to absorb light, letting Lindsey know it was a dye job and that she was probably well into her seventies.

There was a confused look on the woman’s face as if she’d been expecting someone else. Then it cleared, and she grabbed Lindsey by the hand and pulled her into the tiny apartment.

The room was decked out in old-lady chic, which meant lots of brocade and doilies and fragile, glass knickknacks.

“I’m so glad you made it,” Adele said. She was wearing tennis shoes and a navy-blue track suit. “I was afraid you’d miss the beginning.”

“Mrs. Broderick, I’m Lindsey Norris,” she began, but the older woman pushed her down onto the couch and sat beside her. She picked up the remote and began to channel surf.

“Mrs. Broderick? Is my mother-in-law here?”

“Huh?” Lindsey felt mildly panicked that she was inadvertently messing with this poor woman’s head.

Then Mrs. Broderick swatted her arm and laughed. “You’re teasing me. I really thought you were going to miss the opening of the show, Sis.”

“Show?” Lindsey asked. “Of what?”

“You’re so funny,” she said. “As if you don’t know.”

She flipped through the cable channels until the familiar perky theme to
I Dream of Jeannie
came on. Then she got up and started to dance in a fair imitation of a belly dancer.

“Come on, Sis; don’t be a party pooper.” Mrs. Broderick pulled her up, and Lindsey found herself in the awkward position of having to pretend to be Adele Broderick’s sister or risk upsetting her. Oh, brother. She moved her arms and jiggled her hips just to keep her new friend happy.

Finally, when the opening music stopped, Mrs. Broderick collapsed onto the sofa in a fit of the giggles. Lindsey sat cautiously beside her.

“That was fun, Mrs. . . . er . . . Adele,” Lindsey said.

Why, oh why, had she thought this was a good idea? This sweet old lady was obviously a few slices short of a loaf, and here she was trying to pump her for information. Lindsey figured she’d best get while the getting was good.

“We should sneak into the kitchen and get some ice cream,” Adele said. “Mama and Daddy are asleep. They’d never know.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Lindsey said. “I’m trying to maintain my figure.”

Adele frowned at her. “Well, I want ice cream, and if you don’t come with me, I’m going to tell Mama that you were kissing Cletus Beauregard under the bleachers at the Friday night football game.”

“I did not,” Lindsey protested.

“Yes, you did,” Adele argued. “Molly and I saw you!” She made kissing noises at her, and Lindsey felt like she suddenly had the pesky little sister she’d never wanted.

“That’s just mean,” Lindsey protested.

Adele grinned at her. “Oh, come on.”

She popped off of the couch, but instead of going to her own kitchenette, she went out the door of her apartment, giving Lindsey no choice but to follow.

They passed a few of the residents on their way. Some were in wheelchairs, some were using walkers and all were elderly. Adele smiled and waved at all of them, and Lindsey wondered if she had been a cheerleader in her youth; she was just so perky.

Adele led the way into an empty cafeteria. It was full of round tables with linens and centerpieces, looking more like a restaurant than an assisted-care dining hall. The kitchen doors were closed, but Adele pushed her way through, putting her finger over her pursed lips at Lindsey to indicate that she should be quiet.

The dark kitchen was a maze of stainless steel, and Adele led the way to the back, where the freezers were. Lindsey had a sneaky suspicion that Adele had done this before. She opened the Sub-Zero and turned to Lindsey and said, “We have Italian ices. Do you want lemon or raspberry?”

Suddenly the lights popped on overhead, and Lindsey whirled around to the door. A large, forbidding looking man dressed all in blue scrubs was glaring at them.

Adele poked her head out of the freezer and grinned. “Frank, I’m having lemon. What do you want?”

“Raspberry,” he growled.

Lindsey blinked at him, and Adele elbowed her. “Well?”

“Lemon,” Lindsey said. Adele snatched the three small cups out of the freezer and shoved one at Lindsey. She shut the door, and as they passed by Frank, she handed him the raspberry with a wink.