1 Killer Librarian (8 page)

“Oh, you’re not going to believe it. I actually talked to him. He took out one of my favorite books. An Ursula Le Guin. I mean, I had to say something. And it came out very naturally. He seemed interested
in what I thought about the book. He even asked me questions about what else I liked. I told him I would give him a list. I’ve been working on it all morning.”

“Try not to make it too long, Rosie. You don’t have to train him in all at once.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. But I want it to be good. I want the list to show him who I really am.”

“I understand.” I saw the waitress approaching with my tea. “Listen, I have to scoot. Food is appearing. How’s everything going at the library?”

“Everything’s fine. Listen, Karen, avoid dead men and deader ex-boyfriends. And don’t worry about the library. We hardly miss you.”

Not what I wanted to hear. I was surprised by how much I missed work, wandering around the library, knowing my place in the world. I wished her luck with Richard, said good-bye, and snapped my cell phone shut.

The waitress put down the teapot first and reminded me to let it steep a few more minutes. Very civilized. She set down two platefuls of scrumptious food: elongated sandwiches of pure white bread with slivers of cucumber tucked in between, perfectly browned mounds of scones. I took my time, looking over the gorgeous plate of food, forcing myself to eat it slowly. Like a good girl, I ate my
sandwiches first, then gave myself into the melting sweetness of the scones and cream and jam.

I couldn’t get over the fact that I had just seen Dave, much as I wanted to rip him out of my mind. I remembered the first time I met him. He was recently divorced and I had taken a year off of dating after a long-term affair had run out of steam. Then came the disaster that brought us together.

One evening as I was getting ready for bed, the toilet started running. The next thing I knew it was overflowing. But this wasn’t a slow dribble. That could have waited until morning. A waterfall erupted, flowing all over the whole bathroom and out into the hall. It had to be stopped. I called an all-hours plumber and Dave happened to be on call that night. Minutes later he was at my door, tools in hand.

Nothing like being rescued in the middle of the night to make a woman’s heart grow very fond. He fixed the faucet with a few quick turns of his wrench and I offered him coffee. We talked for a while until he got his next call. I was sorry to see him go.

Two days later Dave called and asked me out.

After seeing him in the Gallery, I couldn’t help continuing to wonder where his new girlfriend was and why he had been checking out my favorite
painting. I imagined running into him as I left the National Gallery. Him standing droopily in the rain, seeing me and breaking into a big smile.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he would say. “I hoped you would be here. That’s why I came.”

I would look down my nose at him and say, “Do I know you?”

“Would you like more hot water for your tea?” the waitress held out a large teapot.

I jumped, then smiled up at her. Just in time, I remembered my accent. “Ta, that would be lovely.”

Dave was completely out of my life. All I had to do was remember for a fraction of a second what it had felt like to get his phone call telling me we were done. After all our time together, he couldn’t even tell me face-to-face. And I had thought him brave. The bolt of pain, anger, and, yes, devastation that cracked through me was enough to warn me off any thought of even talking to him again. Even if he came begging, crawling on bloody stumps to me, I would not have anything to do with him again. Once a man has dumped you like that, there is no going back.

Looking out the big windows, I could see that the sky had lightened and the rain was only spattering. Maybe tomorrow would be bright and sunny. A good day to take a long walk, maybe even go to a garden.

I paid my bill, walked out of the museum, and stood for a few moments on the stone steps, taking in the scene and looking forward to my tube ride home.

Off to my left down at the bottom of the stone stairs, I saw a young woman fling her shoulder-length hair back from her face and pull out a cigarette. She had one of those perfect bodies, tall and lanky, that all clothes looked good on. An equally tall blond-haired man was hovering about her.

I looked more closely, hoping to see a bit of English-style romance in action.

But as I stared, I saw the young woman was none other than Honey. Figured she’d be out here, rather than inside looking at the art. The blond-haired man leaned over and lit her cigarette.

I couldn’t see his face, but his physique looked familiar. Too thin and too much hair to be Dave, and too tall to be Caldwell, and who else did I know in London?

As the man pivoted and sauntered off, I got a glance at his face. Guy, the man I’d spilled my heart to in the pub. What was he doing here? I ran down the steps and tried to follow him.

I raced toward him, but the light had changed by the time I reached the street. The traffic came from either direction like a river charging wildly about.
I would not have dreamed of trying to run through that sea of cars and busses, no matter what direction I was told to look.

Guy turned when he was half a block away and saw me. I was pretty sure he saw me. He smiled and held his hand up. He pointed his finger up in the air, made his hand like a gun, and acted as if he was shooting at Honey.

Then he turned and was lost in the crowd.

THIRTEEN

Barb and Betty

W
hen I let myself into Caldwell’s, the house was quiet. Like a morgue, I thought, and then squelched that thought.

I walked up to my room, wondering how and why Guy had been talking to Honey.

His appearance on the steps of the National Gallery couldn’t be a coincidence. Such enormous stretches of serendipity only happened in books, and usually in not very good ones. I think what worried me most of all was the gesture he had made
with his hand of shooting at Honey. What had I set in motion?

From the silence in the house, I deduced that Caldwell was not home, which was fine with me. I couldn’t talk to him about what had happened and I didn’t think I was capable of talking about anything else. I wasn’t hungry after my large and delectable tea. The evening stretched ahead of me, my second night in London, but I didn’t want to go out again. I wanted comfort.

A bath and a book. That was what I wanted. The perfect combination of my drugs of choice.

I went to my room and started a tub, then, while I was waiting for it to fill, perused Caldwell’s library. I had always felt that you could learn so much about a man by what he read. I should have been forewarned when I had seen a puny pile of Dean Koontzes and Robert Ludlums next to Dave’s toilet.

Caldwell, on the other hand, had exquisite taste: from Philip Larkin to Gerard Manley Hopkins, from Jane Austen to Henry James. But he was not a total literary snot. Tucked in its proper place was a small stash of Dick Francises and the complete oeuvre of John le Carré.

What would be the perfect book for this moment?

I really wanted to read in the tub and I didn’t dare do that with one of Caldwell’s books so I had to select one I had brought along. I decided on a Josephine Tey. She was quintessential English, old-school, not too gory. A trip to the past would be the thing to help me forget my worries.

I sank into the tub carefully, holding the book up high, then equally sank into
Tiger in the Smoke.
I had read it many years ago but had forgotten most of it. The atmosphere was foggy London, and I read until the bath turned cool and my skin was a maze of puckers.

The water drained out of the tub with a gurgle as I toweled off. In this quiet moment, I took in deeply for the first time that I was in England, in London, away from my life. I could be someone completely different.

I
was
someone completely different: I was a mystery writer doing research, I was a scorned woman who had railed against her old lover to a stranger in a pub, I was a world traveler who ate scones in the National Gallery.

But looking down at my sturdy but curvy body, I was still me. I hurt from Dave’s rejection, yet I was energized from my day in London. I was scared about having run into Guy again, by how one could set something in motion and not know how it was
going to end. Having just seen a dead body, I knew how bad things could turn out.

I felt awful about the death of Howard Worth, but more than anything, I was puzzled by it. Something seemed wrong and out of place about it. How could I even say this—but I didn’t think his death was an accident.

I pushed that thought out of my mind. I was not a mystery writer, no matter what Caldwell thought. I was a tired librarian, ready to crawl into bed with a good book by a master storyteller.

Then I heard wailing coming from right beneath me, like an Irish banshee foreshadowing a death. Or mourning a death.

I tied on my new, purchased-for-the-trip, pink flannel bathrobe, checked myself for a moment in the mirror, slipped my feet into a pair of darling satin slippers also bought for the trip, and set off downstairs.

A trio was ensconced in the sitting room—the two broad-boned women I had seen in the middle of the night were crammed into the love seat and Caldwell was across the room in his high-backed chair. He stood up to greet me.

“Oh, Karen,” he said. “I hope we didn’t wake you.”

“Oh, no,” I assured him. “I was relaxing and reading.”

“I’m glad you came down. Fellow travelers need to meet under better circumstances,” Caldwell said. “So sorry about last night for all of you. Not a good way to start a trip, is it?”

He reached out to pull me closer to the group. “Here are some fellow Americans—Betty and Barb, retired schoolteachers. We were just commiserating about Mr. Howard. They were quite good friends of his.”

I turned and got my first good look at the Betty and Barb, and quite a pair they were: matching large women in their late sixties with tightly curled steel-gray hair, blue polyester blazers, tie-on shoes, large wire-rimmed glasses, and, just to be different, one was wearing a red scarf at her neck and the other a yellow one. They were both still crying, but the sound had subsided to a soft burble.

“Hello,” I said. I hadn’t caught which one was Betty and which was Barb, and I wondered if it really mattered. The Tweedles.

“We were so looking forward to spending time with Howard again. Every year we meet here for the Chelsea Flower Show.”

“It’s been ten years now. A kind of anniversary for us. We had so many things planned.”

“You know his wife doesn’t like flowers, so we would have had him all to ourselves.”

“Just like old times.”

“At least we did see him for a moment.”

“When we came in late last night.”

“We popped our heads in and said hello. He was so pleased to see us.”

“But he was reading and we didn’t want to bother him, so we left him there all alone.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have.”

They both started to weep, as if on cue.

I was trying to keep them separate, but they were blurring together. I was even having trouble telling which of them was speaking; their lips barely moved, and I always seemed to be looking at the wrong one when a remark was uttered.

“Girls,” Caldwell called them and pointed at me. “Please meet Karen Nash. She’s a mystery writer.”

I sat down with a hard thump in the other high-backed chair in the room. I thought I had told him I was incognito. This lie was becoming a tourniquet around my neck. Even my metaphors were getting twisted.

“Well, then maybe she can find out what happened to Howard,” said one of them. I guessed it was Barb.

“Oh, Barb, it was simply Howard’s time. We must accept this,” said the one who I was now sure was Betty.

Barb was wearing the red scarf and Betty the yellow.

“But there’s nothing to find out,” I started, then added, “He died of a heart attack. Isn’t that right, Caldwell?”

Caldwell turned slowly to me, his face ashen. “He did, but we’ve just had news. Apparently the doctor took it upon himself to check his level of digoxin, which Mr. Worth was taking to regulate his heart, and found that it was quite high. High enough to bring on a heart attack.”

“How awful,” I said. “What can this mean? I’ve heard that that medication can be very tricky.”

“It might be a simple matter of doubling up his dose,” Caldwell suggested. “He might have forgotten and taken it again.”

“Yes, of course,” I said. “Tired from jet lag, getting off of his normal schedule. That makes total sense.”

“Or that awful snit of a wife might have slipped it to him,” Betty said in her flat Nebraskan voice. “And killed him.”

FOURTEEN