Death Overdue (Librarian Mysteries) (16 page)

I
tried the ring on. It was too big for my ring finger but came close to fitting my middle finger. Sally and Penelope were both bigger women than me, and their hands were certainly larger too. I closed the door of the library and locked it, then walked down the hall toward Penelope’s room.

Before I knocked on her door, I gathered myself together. What did I want to learn?

I turned the ring around so the stones faced my palm and, seeing only the plain gold band, Penelope wouldn’t recognize it. I wanted to learn how she felt about her sister, Sally, and what the ring had meant to her before she realized
what I already knew. When I looked at the whole blasted situation head-on, I had to ask myself whether Penelope could have killed her sister.

I hoped not. I had come to like Penelope for her quiet, quirky ways. And the fact that she wasn’t Sally.

I knocked.

Sheets rustled inside the room.

I knocked again.

“Yes?” Penelope’s voice quavered.

“May I come in? It’s Karen,” I announced.

“Of course. Give me a moment.” I heard the bed creak, footsteps crossing the room, then water running. Had I caught her sleeping?

Suddenly the door opened and Penelope stood before me: her face wiped clear of makeup, a white T-shirt on and loose jeans, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She looked younger and more vulnerable than usual.

“I’m sorry about all this,” I found myself saying, although I wasn’t sure what I was sorry about since none of it was my fault.

“Yes.” She nodded and ushered me into her room.

The bed looked a scramble, almost as if more than one person had been sleeping in it. Penelope ushered me to a small table with two chairs that was sitting by the window. We both took a seat.

She set her chin in her hands. “Yes,” she said again, “first
Sally dead, then Caldwell suspected of her death, and now Alfredo taken away by the police. It’s just too much.”

“Are you sure Alfredo had nothing to do with what happened to Sally? No reason to want her dead?”

Without hesitation, she responded, “Very sure.”

I asked, “Why?”

She lifted her hands up and waved them around as if trying to encompass a large thought. “Because he just couldn’t. Alfredo doesn’t have enough gumption to kill someone. He’s just too easygoing and sweet.”

I had to agree with her.

“Could you?” I asked.

“Yes,” she admitted after a moment. “I’m surprised to say it, but I think I could kill someone. I’ve given it some thought—you know how you do when you’re faced with one of these life-changing situations—and I’ve come to see that, in the right circumstances, I could kill someone.”

“Did you?”

She looked up at me and then covered her mouth as she laughed. “Sally? No, I wouldn’t bother.”

“Even if she took something that was near and dear to you?” I asked, feeling the ring in the palm of my hand.

“Which she did often when we were young.” Penelope stopped to think, then said, “No, I was used to it. Although I have to wonder how she would have felt if I did it back to her.”

I slid the ring around on my finger and then held my hand out to her. “Is this yours?”

She grabbed my hand with both of hers. “Oh my lord. My ring! Where did you find it?”

“In a book.”

“A book? What do you mean?”

“I found it tucked into a book in the library. Sally must have put it there for safekeeping.”

Penelope burst out, “I knew she had taken it. She denied it up and down, but I always knew.”

“Why would she take it and then leave it behind in the library when she left Caldwell?” I asked.

“Oh, I think she just didn’t want me to have it. That was so Sally. If she knew I liked something, she would do something to ruin it.”

I slipped the ring off my finger, handed it to Penelope, and then watched her slide it on the ring finger of her right hand. On my hand it had looked gaudy, but somehow on her hand it looked elegant, even regal.

“Thank you so much for finding it. I can’t tell you what it means to me. Maybe some things are going to turn out all right after all.”

“You’re welcome.” I got up to leave. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes, thanks. It was just so hard watching the police take Alfredo away. I felt so powerless.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. What is going on between you two?”

She looked down at her ring, held it out to see it better, then said, “Something.”

“You know when you said that you could kill someone—would you have killed someone for that ring?”

Penelope kept admiring the ring as she held her arm out straight, turning it this way and that. “No, not for the ring.”

“Alfredo?” I asked.

She clasped her hand around the ring. “For him, I might.”

“T
hings have really gotten bollixed up,” Caldwell said as we sat down to eat dinner in the kitchen, where we could be away from the guests. All that was on the table was one big casserole of Yorkshire hotpot.

I didn’t think it would do to argue with him about how bollixed up things were. “I know,” I said as I served both of us the dish.

He didn’t say anything. I stabbed a fork into a pile of overcooked potatoes with bits of bacon in them. I could tell how off Caldwell was feeling, because his cooking was rapidly deteriorating.

“How are we to decide what we want to do? How am I to convince you to stay here in England and start our new venture when I don’t even completely own my major asset?” he asked.

“That’s not so important,” I said. “That wasn’t really what I’ve been trying to figure out.”

“Explain to me again your thoughts,” he said, reaching out and rubbing my hand with his thumb. “Do I stand a chance with you?”

“More than a chance. It’s hardly about you at all. You’re perfect, or as close to perfect as one can expect in this imperfect world.”

At that he tweaked my nose.

I continued, “I’m trying to see if I can give up my life back home, my work as a librarian, my friends, my house, my books, my walks, my everything . . . to come and live with you in this world that I don’t completely understand and in which people get killed far too often for my taste.”

“Okay, now we’re getting someplace. First off, I need you as a librarian. You will help me order my books, organize my life. In my eyes, you will always be the librarian of our books. Second, your books will come with you, I hope, to commingle with mine. Third, as they say,
mi casa es su casa.
And I hope your friends will come often to visit and that you will find new friends and new walks to make your life full and complete. And then there’s me.”

“Yes, the most potent argument of all—to live with a man who loves books and who loves me.”

“Nearly as much as books,” he murmured.

“I would be a fool not to grab you while I can,” I said, pulling away to look at Caldwell.

“And no one would ever be caught dead calling you that,” he said emphatically, then heard what he had said and apologized. “Sorry about the dead part.”

“That is the part that worries me now. I can hardly think of all the rest of it until we have that part figured out. What if they take you away again? What if it was Alfredo? What if they think it’s me?”

“You? Why would they think you did it?”

“Because of you.”

“Oh, now this is getting ridiculous,” he said.

“You don’t think I have it in me to be a jealous, conniving woman who would slay anything in the way of getting her man?”

“Well, hardly conniving. The rest of it, perhaps.”

“Caldwell, we must resolve what happened to Sally.”

“And we will.”

“I forgot to tell you that Bruce went into the library this morning. I found him in there snooping around.”

It was as if I had thrown a glass of ice water in his face. Caldwell gulped, went white, and then stood up, shaking his head. “He was in the library?” he asked. “Alone? By himself?”

“Yes, but I don’t think he had time to do anything. I
asked him what he wanted—which was to buy books from you. I explained to him that you weren’t ready to sell and then sent him on his way.”

“I must go and check on my books.”

“I locked the room. I’m sure that everything is fine.”

“But I haven’t told you about something.”

“The thing that you haven’t told me about yet?” I asked. “The surprise that you’ve been keeping from me?”

“Yes, that thing. Well, I did want it to be a surprise, at the right moment, but I think you need to know now, because of how valuable it is and all that.”

“Yes, I’m ready.”

“But first I have to go and check the library.” He dropped his napkin on the floor and bolted out of the room.

I followed behind him, at a slower pace. I caught up with him as he was fumbling with the key to unlock the door.

“Please let it still be there,” he said as he pushed the door open.

Caldwell strode over to the Edwardian rolltop desk and unlocked the top to reveal a set of drawers and pigeonholes. Underneath one of the drawers, he pulled out a second small, secret drawer. From there, he took out a carefully wrapped rectangular object that I had no doubt was a book. Reverently, he placed it on the desktop.

Then he pointed to me. “Please unwrap it.”

I knew this was an honor that he was bestowing on me.
I ever so carefully undid the tissue paper, which I was sure was archival, and stared at the cover of the book that was revealed:
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
by Beatrix Potter.

The cover was gray with an inset picture of Peter Rabbit in a blue coat running away. It had been published by F. Warne and Company, if I remembered correctly, in 1902.

“Not a first edition?” I gasped.

He only nodded.

“But it’s worth a lot of money,” I said.

He nodded again.

“Where did you find it?” I asked.

“At an estate sale. I got there late, and the woman in charge had just opened up the children’s playroom in the attic. It was at the bottom of a pile of books. I couldn’t believe it. I paid ten pounds for it. Ten pounds.”

“But it’s worth?” I couldn’t even guess. I just knew it was one of the most valuable children’s books.

“Five thousand times that.”

“Oh my.”

“Yes.” Caldwell touched the cover gently with his finger. “And it’s definitely VG if not FN.”

“Yes, I can see that. And you were worried that Bruce might have found it. But how would he know about it?”

“I’ve been dumb,” Caldwell said.

“How so?”

“I couldn’t keep it to myself. I just had to tell someone
the news. I wanted to surprise you when you were here. So I e-mailed a friend, who happens to also be a collector. All I can guess is he spread the word. Bruce called a day or two later, nosing around. And now he’s here.”

“Has he asked you about the book?”

“No, he hasn’t. Not directly. But I can smell it on him—book lust. Very distinctive. He goes out every day, but then he comes back and sniffs around here. Wants to talk about children’s books. I can tell he wants it.”

“Might you sell it to him?” I asked.

“I might. But not yet. I’m so enjoying having it. It’s like looking for the Holy Grail and then you find it next to the rubbish bin one night. At first you can’t believe it, then you start to believe it, then you are convinced of it. I’m not quite to the convinced part. I need to know that I have done this before I even think of letting the book go.”

“To what end do you think he would go to get his hands on this book?”

“Hard to say. But I’ve heard stories of books that are found, then follows mysterious deaths and the books are never seen again.”

“But surely not for Beatrix Potter?”

“One of the most valuable books in England.”

I looked at the cover again, not even daring to open the pages. A little bunny rabbit hopping away. Who would have thought?

I
was able to persuade Caldwell to put the bunny book back in its safe hiding place and to consider getting a safety deposit box in his bank the next day. He double-checked the lock on the library door as we stood in the hallway.