Dangerous Alterations (21 page)

“I don’t have my car. Margaret Louise dropped me off on our way back from the mountains.”

“Then can I drive you home?”

For a moment, she considered it, the pull of her bed and the safety of her little cottage beckoning like a lighthouse in a storm. But, in the end, a stronger, more comforting force won out.

She glanced at the clock on the wall then turned back to Fred.

“Actually, it’s still plenty light out. I think I’m going to head over to Debbie’s and get a little treat before calling it quits for the night. Sugar helps me think.”

His hearty laugh boomed around the room. “Sugar helps you think? Hmmm, that’s not one I’ve heard before.”

“You’re not a woman.”

“True.” He wandered over to the door, stopping to look at her one last time. “You need anything, give me a call, okay? And quit worrying about who rigged your office. We’ll take care of that. You just concentrate on getting that kids’ room back up to speed.”

She smiled her first real smile all day. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

A deal she knew she’d break even as he walked out the door. Worrying was in her nature. Especially when it involved the library or people she cared about.

Taking in the clock one more time, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and dialed the familiar number.

It was answered on the second ring.

“Meet you at Debbie’s?”

“I’ll meet you there,” she repeated as the calm that had been eluding her all day finally settled over her heart. Margaret Louise’s unwavering sense of loyalty had a way of doing that for her, as did the woman’s fifth grandchild.

Lulu …

From the moment she’d first laid eyes on Lulu while reading to the child’s class nearly two years earlier, she’d felt a connection with the little girl. A connection that went far beyond their shared love of Little House books. She’d tried to smoke it out, to put her finger on the exact reason the two had bonded, but she’d been unsuccessful beyond the obvious. Lulu Davis was simply a sweet little girl who brought sunshine and hope wherever she went.

“Any chance you could bring along a certain somebody? I could use a few of her hugs right about now.”

“Done.”

“Done?” Tori repeated, dumbfounded. “But how? I just asked.”

“Anticipation is my strong suit.”

She laughed. “One of many, Margaret Louise. One of many.”

“Want us to swing by and pick you up?”

The offer, while enticing, was one she turned down in favor of a little exercise and some fresh air. The walk would do her good. Besides, it would give her an opportunity to shake off any residual glumness before she came face-to-face with Lulu.

Part of the child’s charm was the way in which she embraced her childhood—the innocence, the fun, the joy. The last thing Tori wanted to do was mar that in any way.

“I think I’ll walk. It’s a beautiful evening.” She stepped off the stool and pushed it against the counter. “Can you meet there in about ten minutes?”

“We’ll be waiting.”

Closing the phone in her hand, Tori walked across the room, pausing at the hallway that led to her office. Was there a clue somewhere Fred may have missed? Something to indicate the who behind the act?

It’s not your job …

Inhaling sharply, she forced her feet to bypass the hallway and head toward the front door. Once there, she shut off the lights, stepped outside, and locked the door, stopping to double- and triple-check her efforts.

She knew Chief Dallas would be patrolling the grounds, knew that every person who drove by the library would be on alert for anything amiss, but still, she hesitated. Someone had tried to do the building harm once. Who was to stop them from coming back again and finishing the job?

Slowly, she descended the steps, the heat of the day finally settling into a more tolerable evening. She moved slowly across the grounds, the hundred-year-old moss trees providing a canopied walkway from the front door to the sidewalk. When she reached Main Street, she turned left, the pull of seeing Lulu guiding her steps the rest of the way until she found herself at Debbie’s Bakery.

The bakery itself was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for fellow circle member, Debbie Calhoun. The fact that it was thriving beyond the mother of two’s wildest dreams was a testament to just how hard she’d worked for that dream.

Tori pushed the glass door open and stopped, breathing in the potpourri of aromas that pulled her stomach in so many different directions.

“Miss Sinclair! Miss Sinclair! You’re here!” Lulu jumped off the lattice-back chair she’d claimed to the right of the door and ran toward Tori, her long black braids flapping against her back.

Tori leaned down and wrapped her arms around the little girl. “Hi, Lulu! How are you, sweetie? Did you have a nice weekend with your dad?”

Lulu hugged Tori even harder, her head bobbing up and down against Tori’s cheek. “We camped in the middle of the family room and it was so much fun!” The little girl stepped back and peered up at Tori. “But I missed Mommy and Molly Sue. Mee-Maw, too.”

She ran a hand across the top of Lulu’s head, reveling in the feel of the child’s soft hair. “They missed you, too. But now you all have lots of stories to tell each other, don’t you?”

Lulu grinned. “I made a story about our weekend so I could read it to Molly Sue. I even made pictures to go with each page. Though my pictures aren’t as good as the ones that lady takes.”

She followed the path of Lulu’s finger, her smile widening at the sight of Margaret Louise and a bandana-wearing Lynn Calder bent over a package of photos. “I bet your pictures are even more special.”

“But hers are real.”

Reaching out, she tugged Lulu’s left braid. “So are yours. The difference is, you used your own imagination on your pictures. Mrs. Calder’s camera simply recorded what it saw. Now, can I get you a treat?”

“Nah, Mee-Maw got me a brownie. She got one for you, too. They’re the same kind Mr. Wentworth got me last week.”

Just the mere mention of Milo’s name brought a longing deep in her soul. Oh, how she couldn’t wait for his summer program to be over.

“He got it for me ’cause I helped him with his homework just like he used to help me with mine.” Lulu bent forward, her breath warm against Tori’s ear. “They’re really, really chocolaty and gooey.”

Her stomach growled. “Chocolaty and gooey, huh?”

Lulu’s eyes sparkled. “C’mon. Follow me.”

When they reached the four-top table Margaret Louise had secured, Lulu climbed into her chair and patted the one next to her. “I saved this seat special for you, Miss Sinclair.”

“Thank you, Lulu.” She turned to the pair looking at pictures. “It’s good to see you again, Lynn. How are you?”

A slow smile broke out across the woman’s tired face. “I’m doing okay. Spent the afternoon with Rose working in her garden.”

Margaret Louise handed the stack of photos to Tori. “You should see Lynn’s garden. Looks like somethin’ out of some fancy magazine.”

Lynn blushed.

“Can I see?” Lulu asked.

“Of course.” Tori slid onto her chair and pulled Lulu closer, the top picture on the stack nearly taking her breath away. “Oh, these are so pretty. What are they?”

“Those are crepe myrtles,” Lynn explained. “It’s a flowering shrub with clusters of white, pink, and lavender blooms. They’re one of my favorite.”

“I can see why,” she whispered as she shifted the picture to the bottom of the pile and studied the next one in the stack.

“I like those ones! They’re real tiny,” Lulu said.

Lynn nodded her agreement. “Those are Osmantheis and they’re a very fragrant flower.”

She nodded, taking in the information as Lulu moved the picture to the bottom, both of them releasing an “oohh” at the sight of the purple bell-shaped flower now on top.

“That’s the common foxglove plant.”

“It’s beautiful.”

Lulu slid the picture off the top and tucked it underneath the rest, her body suddenly bouncing next to Tori. “I remember that lady!”

Tori stared down at the fair-skinned blonde with the long tresses. “That’s Kelly. Jeff’s girlfriend.” She looked up at Lynn. “How’s she doing?”

Lynn shrugged. “Hard to tell. She’s not exactly what you’d call open, or even friendly. She hightailed it out of here about four days ago. Haven’t heard from her since, though, now that his death’s been classified as a—”

Margaret Louise coughed. Loudly. Then jerked her head in Lulu’s direction.

Tori’s heart sank. They’d come much too close to speaking of things Lulu had no need to hear.

“She gave me a lollipop when I saw her. A great big red one!”

Lulu’s words broke through her woolgathering. “Who gave you a lollipop?”

“That lady,” Lulu said, pointing at the picture of Kelly. “She gave it to me that day we were at the library Mee-Maw. Remember?”

Margaret Louise cocked her head to the right and pondered her granddaughter’s words. “Yes. Yes, I remember. We had to leave the children’s room because Sally was in a snit ’bout not gettin’ a lollipop, too.”

“Where was I?” Tori inquired.

“Dixie was covering while you checked in on Nina.”

“Oh.” She stared down at the photograph, noting the many features that probably attracted Jeff in the first place. The toned body, the voluptuous curves, and the pretty face. Though, falling for a reader was a bit of a surprise.

“She only had one lollipop. Her other hand had one of those turny things Daddy uses.”

“Turny things?” Tori asked, shaking her focus from the picture to the little girl beside her. “What turny things?”

“That thing Daddy uses when he has to put a battery in one of our toys.”

She looked a question at Margaret Louise. “Turny thing?”

“A screwdriver.” Margaret Louise furrowed her brow at Lulu. “Land sakes, child, why would that woman have a screwdriver in the children’s room?”

Lulu shook her head emphatically. “She wasn’t in the children’s room, Mee-Maw. She was in Miss Sinclair’s office.”

“My office?” she echoed with a voice that was suddenly shrill. “Why was she in my …” The words slipped from her mouth as a roar filled her ears, a near-deafening sound broken only by the sound of Margaret Louise’s gasp.

There was something about sitting in Margaret Louise’s kitchen that calmed Tori, made her feel as if everything was going to be okay, one way or the other. She supposed some of that was the cheerful artwork and magnetic alphabet letters that covered nearly every square inch of the grandmother’s refrigerator, creating an atmosphere of warmth and love and innocence. The rest, though, came from the woman who lived there—a woman who exuded a steady hand, a cool head, and an uncanny ability to reach into the haystack and pull out the lone needle.

“Do you think Lulu knew something was up?” Tori wrapped her hand around the water glass and peered inside, the rapidly disappearing ice cube Margaret Louise had added at the last minute a testament to the day’s heat and its disregard for the late hour. “I tried not to react to what she said, I really did.”

Margaret Louise lowered herself onto the chair across from Tori. “That child was too tickled by the peanut butter cup she found in the middle of her brownie ’bout the same time we put two and two together.”

She hoped Margaret Louise was right.

“Two and two looks pretty damning, wouldn’t you say? Especially when you take into account the fact that Jeff met this woman when she came to help her father do some electrical work at the gym where he worked.”

“I’d say.” Margaret Louise stretched her short pudgy legs beneath the table and leaned back, a smile still playing on her lips despite the creasing between her brows. “Guess what I said the other day was more on the mark than I realized.”

“What are you talking about?” Tori asked as she studied her friend. Despite their twin status, Margaret Louise and Leona were as different as night and day, putting a capital
F
on
fraternal
in a way she’d never seen before. Where Leona was thin and stylish, Margaret Louise was plump and casual. Where Leona was a stickler for rules, Margaret Louise was more carefree. Where Leona tended to exercise skepticism, Margaret Louise was willing to give it a shot and see what happened.

“You know, what I said when you got back to the cabin yesterday afternoon. ’Bout the fire in your office bein’ more ’bout you than the library.”

“But why would Kelly be after me?” It was a rhetorical question, really, especially since the answer popped in her head before she’d even finished the sentence. “Wait. Don’t answer that. She saw me as a threat to her relationship with Jeff.”

“Sounds ’bout right to me. Though I’m thinkin’ she should have been bringin’ you presents for that instead of tryin’ to set your things on fire.” Extending her index finger outward, Margaret Louise chased a drop of condensation down the outside of her own glass.

Tori lifted her glass to her mouth, pausing it mere inches from her lips. “Presents?”

“From what I saw with my own two eyes while he was in town, she’d have been better off without him.” Margaret Louise inspected her finger and then popped it in her mouth. “Now she’s probably goin’ to be sittin’ in jail on charges of arson and murder.”

Tori choked on her water. “M-murder? What are you talking about?”

“That’s the two and two I put together while droppin’ Lulu off at her Mamma and Daddy’s just now.”

She stared at her friend. “You think she killed Jeff?”

“Of course. If green eyes could make her rig a room, then anger could certainly make her kill.”

Anything was possible. Tori, of all people, knew that. But still, it was hard to imagine the fair-skinned blonde she’d seen at the funeral home setting fires and—

“We still don’t know how Jeff died, do we?”

Margaret Louise shook her head. “Not that I’ve heard. Seems his family would hear somethin’ first.”