Checked Out (20 page)

“E
xcuse me,” the library patron said. “Do you work here?”

“I’m a volunteer,” Helen said.

A volunteer on a mission, she thought. I’ve set up my sting, and my suspects are drifting out of the break room with their coffee. They’ll have to move soon if they’re going to steal the bag of fake evidence.

My plan is simple: After Alexa and I did our little play, I took a cart filled with novels to be shelved, and rolled it into the reading room.

Now I’ll shelve a few books so my five suspects see me at work. Finally, I’ll drift down the hall to the supply room and hide behind the bookcases in the back. That way I can watch who comes into the room. When the killer goes for the bag, I’ll grab her and start shouting. There are plenty of people around. Jared is still cleaning the hall and he’s strong enough to stop her. I should be safe.

Helen didn’t even tell the library director her final plans, on the off chance Alexa was the killer. She was in her office now, sipping coffee while Seraphina ate her tiramisu. But either woman
could pretend she needed the bathroom and slink down the hall to snag the purple tote with the evidence.

“Well, then you can help me find this novel,” the patron said. She was thirtysomething, with straight blond hair, a distinguished nose and very white teeth. Her green eyes would have been pretty if they weren’t glaring at Helen.

“I want
Panic
, by Jeff Abbott,” Blondie said.

“
Panic
,” Helen repeated. That was how she felt. She was panicking. Her chance to catch Charlotte’s killer was slipping away the longer she talked to this woman.

“Let’s go to the shelves with the A fiction,” Helen said.

“I already looked there,” Blondie said.

“We’ll look again,” Helen said. “Just in case.”

She frantically pawed through the choices—novels by Rennie Airth, Bruce Alexander, Susan Wittig Albert. No, she thought. Jeff Abbott’s novels are shelved before those writers. Ah, Abbott. Here he is.

“I don’t see
Panic
,” Helen said. But I feel it, she thought. Each second I waste talking to you, I’m losing my chance to catch the killer.

“Your computer says you have it,” Blondie said, as if she were holding stone tablets instead of a paper printout. Helen heard a hint of belligerence.

“The computer doesn’t show books that are lost or mis-shelved,” Helen said. “If it’s in the wrong place, we’ll have to track it down. That could take time.”

“I have all afternoon,” Blondie said.

I don’t, Helen thought. My sting is falling apart while I stand here.

“How about
Cut and Run
?” Helen said. “Abbott wrote that, too, and it’s good.”

And it’s what I need to do, she thought. Get out of here. Now.

“I’ve read that one,” Blondie said. “I’ve read them all. I only
need
Panic
. I just printed the information off your computer. It says you have
Panic
. There’s no librarian at the desk right now. You have to help me.”

Helen looked over at the circulation desk. No sign of Gladys. Was she helping another patron—or helping herself to the purple tote?

I have to get to the supply room, Helen thought.

But Blondie blocked her way. She was determined, insistent. She wanted her novel. Blondie stuck to Helen like gum on a shoe sole. The only way to get rid of her was to find the blasted book.

Helen checked all the As and some Bs in the fiction section, in case Abbott’s book was mis-shelved. Nothing.

“It’s a hardback,” Blondie said. “I can’t afford to buy hardbacks, but I like reading them better than paperbacks.”

Maybe I should hand her twenty-five bucks and tell her to buy the book, Helen thought. It’s the only way she’ll go away.

“Your computer says two copies are out on loan,” Blondie said, helpfully. “But you still have one.”

I can slip between the shelves and run for it, Helen thought. But Blondie seemed to read her mind. She shifted to the right and blocked Helen’s escape.

“If the computer says the book’s been returned, it may be on this cart,” Helen said. “It could be the novel hasn’t been shelved yet.”

She frantically searched the books on the cart while Blondie stood there like a lump.

Help me, Helen thought. This is no time for your impersonation of Lott’s wife. I have to run. Start checking these books.

Blondie didn’t move. The books on the cart had been alphabetized to make the shelver’s job easier. No sign of
Panic
.

Helen was sweating now. Her plan would be in ruins unless she found that book.

“It’s a thriller,” Blondie said, as if that would help.

“Right,” Helen said. She heard a door open in the back hall. Was it the door to the supply room, or one of a dozen others? Was the killer getting away?

“I don’t care if it’s the gay edition,” Blondie said.

“Huh?” Helen said.

“The gay edition,” Blondie repeated. “Your computer says it’s LGPT. That stands for Lesbian, Gay, Prohibited and Transgender. I don’t judge people. It’s no one’s business who they love.” She squared her shoulders, standing tall for gender equality.

Helen felt so relieved she had to lean on the cart. “No, ma’am,” she said. “That’s not what LGPT means. It stands for
large print
.” She rushed over to that section, found the novel and handed Blondie
Panic
. She practically threw it at the woman, Helen was so eager to leave.

“But I don’t like reading large-print novels,” Blondie said. “They make me look old.”

“No, they’re good for your eyes,” Helen said. “Squinting causes wrinkles.” She pushed Blondie toward the self-checkout machine, then pushed the cart around the corner of the bookshelf, where it was out of sight.

Helen ran. She sprinted down the back hall as if it were an Olympic event. She was sure the judges would all hold up their “ten” cards for her speed in the empty, dimly lit hall.

Helen stopped at the supply room, and looked both ways. The hall stayed deserted, except for Jared dust-mopping at the other end. That was reassuring. Help was close by.

She slid inside the dark room. Helen hit her shins on an empty book cart near the door, then carefully worked her way to the back of the room by the tall wooden bookshelves on rollers, bumping her elbows and bruising her knees. She found the tote with the fake evidence, and kept it within sight.

Then she waited in the dark. And wished Charlotte’s makeshift home were still there. She’d like a comfortable cushion. Her
legs were falling asleep while she stood here. Helen leaned against the hard bookcase, but it offered no comfort. An energy bar would be good, too, she thought. After that huge lunch, she was hungry. And a little bit sleepy.

Wait! Someone was walking down the hall. Now Helen heard the door handle turn. She tensed. Her hand clutched the pepper spray.

The supply room door opened, and the light flicked on. Helen was temporarily blinded. Then her vision cleared and she saw Gladys. Please don’t let it be her, Helen thought. I like Gladys. She’s crazy-funny. She wouldn’t kill anyone, would she? She was so patient with that rude man who didn’t like her clothes.

But Gladys had a determined streak, and she was definitely a risk taker. How far would she go to get that red Ferrari? Not to mention those hip clothes? A million dollars could give her the life she wanted.

Gladys took a pack of marking pens off the shelf and turned off the light.

The room was dark.

Gladys was gone.

H
elen was relieved. But I still don’t have the killer, she thought. Who killed Charlotte? The supply room was hot and stuffy. Helen shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot and tried to rest her hip on a bookshelf, but it was the wrong height.

Then she was hit with a blast of light and sound. Helen froze in place, and heard a woman bellow, “Where the hell is that purple tote?” Seraphina. She was loud, even when she was talking to herself in an empty room.

Helen heard her rummaging through the supply shelves like a raccoon in a Dumpster, then the
whump!
of something heavy falling on the floor.

“Shit!” Seraphina said. “It should be here. Why can’t I see it?”

Helen’s eyes were adjusting to the light. She saw Seraphina pull her cell phone out of her pocket and speed-dial a number. “Alexa!” she said. “I can’t find the damn purple tote.”

Alexa? Helen thought. Were those two in it together? Had they conspired to kill Charlotte? Seraphina could have killed Charlotte while Alexa helped Phil and me look for the tote. Seraphina’s son,
Ozzie, rode in his girlfriend’s Acura Friday night. Why didn’t he drive the nearly new Beemer his mother gave him? Was it in the repair shop? Helen felt for the pepper spray again. Lean, strong Seraphina could easily overpower her without it.

“No, no. You don’t have to come to the supply room,” Seraphina said. “Just tell me what shelf it’s on. You don’t know? Why not?

“Okay, I realize you’re the director, but I thought you knew everything in this library. Try the third shelf? I’m looking straight at it. Nothing. Sorry to be such a pain in the butt, but my cleaning lady wants one. I gave her a perfectly good Prada tote, only one season old, and she sold it. She wants a purple Flora Park Library tote so all the other cleaning ladies know she works here.”

So much for my theory that Seraphina and Alexa are in it together, Helen thought.

“Even cleaning ladies need status symbols, I guess. But I want to humor her. She does windows better than the Flora Park Window Washing Service. Really. You don’t have to come. I’ll keep looking till I find it.”

But Alexa did come to the room. She’s a good woman, Helen thought, and Seraphina is a major fund-raiser. She wished she could wipe that last idea out of her mind. She didn’t like being so cynical.

The supply room door opened, and Alexa was in the doorway. “There’s the tote,” she said. “On the third shelf of the third metal bookcase.”

She handed Seraphina two bags from the purple pile.

“Thanks,” Seraphina said. “If it was a snake, it would have bit me.”

Alexa picked up the package of typing paper that had slid to the floor during Seraphina’s search, then turned off the light.

Once again, Helen was left in the dark—in more ways than one. Alexa, Gladys and Seraphina are cleared, she thought. That left Blair and Lisa. Unless Jared killed Charlotte. Did his truck
accident really take place in Fort Lauderdale? I never saw the police report. I just took his word for it.

She could hear Jared working in the hall outside the supply room door, his wide, old-fashioned dust mop making clacking sounds with each sweeping movement.

Helen heard voices and footsteps. A woman, but she didn’t recognize who was talking. She said something to Jared, then heard his dust mop clacking down the hall. The footsteps were closer now, almost at the supply room door.

Lisa or Blair? she thought.

I don’t want Lisa to be the killer. I feel sorry for her, for all she gave up to marry her dream lover, for her lost fortune, for her struggle to care for her ailing mother. Please don’t let it be Lisa.

But I know those are all good motives for Lisa to kill Charlotte and try to find the painting. Alexa had to practically throw Lisa out of the library after Charlotte was killed. Only a frantic call from her mother’s caregiver made her finally leave.

With a million dollars, Lisa could put her mother into a good home where she’d be watched by professionals. Lisa would even have enough left over for some well-deserved comfort. Killing a homeless woman nobody knew would be easy. Much easier than her current life.

And Blair, she was another one who didn’t want to leave the library that evening. Alexa literally pushed her out the door and locked it.

Blair, head Friend of the Library, but no friend to me. Please let it be her, Helen thought. I don’t like Blair. She tried to kill me with a rattlesnake. She called Ozzie and he brought one to the library. Then she carefully hid the snake in the box of moldering books. She nearly got away with premeditated murder. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill homeless Charlotte.

Helen held her breath.

Eons passed in the stuffy room. Helen recalled her
conversations with Lisa, the impoverished board president who’d insisted on a séance. And frumpy Blair, who hated Elizabeth’s father because the old boy bought a LeRoy Neiman painting. It was almost funny. But if she had that million-dollar watercolor, she could save her beloved library.

Blair or Lisa? Helen was sure one of them was Charlotte’s killer.

Then the door opened, and the light flashed on again. For a moment, Helen was blinded. Now she could make out a tall, lean shape in pants and a long-sleeved shirt. She couldn’t move closer to see the person’s face or the rolling bookcase might creak.

Was it Blair or Lisa? Helen was dying to peek.

She heard searching, scrambling sounds. She poked her head around the bookcase and saw a slender hand—a woman’s hand—pick up a purple tote stuffed with reams of printer paper, then toss the bag on the floor.

The killer, Helen thought, her heart thumping. She’s in this room.

She’d been standing too long in one place. Helen’s legs tingled unpleasantly with needles and pins. She carefully flexed first one, then the other, while the killer found another tote, this one filled with bags of rubber bands, and threw it down. The killer was getting angry now.

Helen gripped the pepper spray and the evidence tote. She rolled aside the tall bookcase and climbed around it.

“Looking for this?” she asked, and held up the tote.

Helen’s eyes widened when she saw the killer standing there. Blair, the head Friend of the Library.

Now that she was face-to-face with Charlotte’s killer, Helen was too stunned to speak.

Blair looked surprised, but recovered quickly. “What are you doing back there?” she asked. “Stealing supplies?”

“Catching a killer,” Helen said. “You killed poor homeless Charlotte.”

“That’s crazy,” Blair said.

“Is it?” Helen said. “She was run down by a white car.”

“So what?” Blair said. “My car was here the whole time. Ask anyone.”

“I did,” Helen said. “You took a long lunch hour that afternoon.”

“So? I’m not an employee,” Blair said.

“Exactly why no one would care what hours you kept. But you told Alexa you were staying late because you’d had a long lunch,” Helen said. “You listened at the Kingsley collection door and heard that Charlotte had a job interview at Norton Management Associates. Then you rushed over to the building where Charlotte was going for her interview. All the parking spots were taken, so you went to the next lot, and when Charlotte got out of her car, you ran her down and killed her. You hit her so hard, there were white paint chips on her body. Chips that can be traced back to your car.”

“My car’s in the shop,” Blair said. “It’s being repaired.”

“The police can still find traces of blood and tissue on the undercarriage,” Helen said. “And plenty of old paint will remain for a test. The repair shop isn’t going to be an accessory to your crime. They’ll tell the police the day and time you brought the car in. I bet they took photos of the damage, too—or your insurance agent did.”

“Ridiculous!” Blair said, but her voice wavered. She didn’t sound so confident now. “Why would I kill a woman who had nothing?”

“Because she had a million dollars,” Helen said. “You heard Charlotte say she’d found the watercolor and hidden it. You know every inch of this library. You’ve gone over it with Alexa, again
and again, while the board discussed fixing the floors. You thought if you killed Charlotte, you could come back and search for the painting and sell it. You needed the money to save the library.”

Blair hissed like an angry snake. “We’re entitled to it,” she said. “The Kingsley family gave those books away.
Gave them away.
”

She’d said,
We’re entitled to it
, Helen thought. Blair’s not just the head Friend of the Library. She
is
the library—at least in her mind.

“Finders keepers, I say,” Blair shouted.

“The law doesn’t,” Helen said.

“Just because Elizabeth was the director’s friend, Alexa refused to let the library have those books until they were searched,” Blair said.

“Elizabeth didn’t deserve that money. She’s already thrown away one fortune. Why should she have two? She’s going to spend it on a crumbling old house. An old house! Elizabeth is only interested in herself. Her house isn’t even historic. It’s just old. This money could save Flora Portland’s life’s work, and benefit a whole community. Hundreds of people will be better off because of this library. Living, breathing people.”

“Charlotte was a living, breathing person,” Helen said.

“She was nobody. She wanted to be a ghost. Well, now she is.”

Blair’s smile was chilling. She was backing toward the door.

“You’re horrible,” Helen said. “You tried to kill me. You got that pygmy rattlesnake from Ozzie.”

“Seraphina’s son wanted to help. You took his mother’s job.”

Helen moved toward Blair to grab her, but the head Friend pushed over a metal shelf. It landed with a rattling crash, supplies flying everywhere. Helen saw reams of paper, heavy as bricks, burst open and snow down their contents. Paper clips, freed from flimsy containers, turned the floor slippery and treacherous. Bags of white cotton gloves bounced on the floor and metal book supports clanged and clattered.

Helen hoped the noise would bring help. Where was Jared? He’d been right outside the room.

“Don’t go looking for the janitor,” Blair said. “I asked Jared to run an errand, then told him to buy himself some lunch. He won’t be back for at least an hour.”

Help is going to come too late, Helen thought. Blair was on her way out the door. Helen had to stop her—now. She had to get through the barricade of the overturned metal shelf and library supplies. The bookcase! The built-to-last bookcase on castors.

Helen rolled the heavy bookcase through the room. The rumbling oak bookcase pushed the overturned shelf out of the way and rolled over the spilled supplies. The old floor was slightly slanted toward the door and the bookcase gained speed. Helen rammed it against the door, slamming it shut and blocking Blair’s exit. She held up the pepper spray, but just as she hit the button, Blair lunged forward and twisted Helen’s hand, and she got a faceful of spray. Coughing and gagging, eyes streaming, Helen slipped on a pile of paper clips and went down, hitting the hard floor with a
thwack
.

She heard the trapped Blair coughing. She must have caught some of the spray, but she wasn’t blinded like Helen.

Helen opened one eye and saw a blurry shape pick up the gigantic hardcover
New Oxford American Dictionary
and hurl it at her. The seven-pound, two-thousand-page dictionary hit Helen in the chest and knocked the breath out of her. She felt a sharp burning pain, and stayed on the floor, dazed.

Blair was getting away. The killer was rolling the heavy wooden bookcase away from the door. Soon she’d be out and gone.

No! That can’t happen! Helen struggled to her feet. Dizzy with pain, blinded by the spray, she searched for something to help her stand. She found it. The library cart. A tank with shelves.

Blair almost had the door open.

Helen pushed the cart as hard as she could. Pain seared her
chest and she could barely breathe, but the cart connected with Blair’s lean body. She pinned the killer to the wall.

Helen felt the pepper spray canister underfoot. Blair was starting to move.

Oh no, Helen thought. You’re not getting away. Not after what you did to poor Charlotte. Helen found the canister and sprayed Blair in the face.

“Helen!” Alexa ran into the room. Helen saw the others crowding behind the director. “What’s going on?”

“I caught the killer,” Helen said, choking and gasping. Despite the pain and dizziness, she couldn’t resist the next line.

“Book her,” she said.