Due or Die (18 page)

“Leaving already?” Charlie asked.

Sully glared at him, looking like he wanted to pick him up and toss him out into the snow. For some reason this made Lindsey feel unaccountably better. She didn’t want to
be the only one feeling denied, and she was quite pleased that Sully looked as frustrated as she felt.

Sully looked over at her and said, “Lock the door behind me.”

She gave him a snappy salute, and his mouth curved up in one corner. He opened the door and gave her a scorching look. “We’ll revisit this conversation later.”

T
he door shut behind him and Lindsey stood staring at it until Charlie nudged her.

“Your candle blew out,” he said.

Lindsey couldn’t have disagreed more, but she picked up the smoking wax stub from the windowsill and followed him back into the main room.

Nancy and Carrie were huddled by the fire. No one said as much, but they all started to assume their sleep positions. Somehow, while the storm raged outside, it felt as if there was strength, or at least warmth, in numbers.

Charlie stretched out in his recliner while Lindsey took the other. Heathcliff climbed up with her and Lindsey snuggled him close.

Carrie and Nancy departed to their rooms, and a silence
fell over the house, broken only by the whistling wind and the occasional hiss from the gas fire, which Nancy had turned down to blue flicker.

Even though it warmed her from the toes on up, Lindsey decided not to think about Sully or what might have happened in the foyer if Charlie had been just a few minutes later. She wasn’t sure if he had been planning to kiss her or if it was just her own temporary insanity at being that close to an attractive man.

It had been almost a year since she’d left John, and she wasn’t sure she could even read a signal from a man anymore. She had the horrible feeling that she was going to embarrass herself by leaning in to kiss Sully when he was merely trying to tell her she had spinach in her teeth.

She decided to think about what Sully had told her about the warehouse instead. He thought the damage had been deliberate. But why?

The books donated to the Friends were everything from a lifetime collection of
National Geographic
to an oily repair manual for a Yugo. Why would anyone want to bust into their shed?

Having no answers, her mind wandered back to Markus Rushton’s murder. A rifle shot through a sliding glass door that no one heard; there were so many things wrong with this scenario it was hard to tell where to begin.

Could it have been one of the men he’d recently had an altercation with? It seemed unlikely, but any newspaper in the country reported stories of murder for even less. It was a mystery. One she intended to solve before Carrie became the winner of the most-likely-to-have-shot-him award.

*  *  *

A
light awoke Lindsey first thing in the morning. She blinked against the intrusion, and it took her a moment to realize it wasn’t just any light but the lamp beside the chair where she was sleeping. They had electricity!

“Charlie!” she shouted as she bolted upright. “Wake up. We have light!”

“Hunh, what?” Charlie grunted.

“Light and power!” Lindsey repeated.

Nancy and Carrie stumbled from their rooms, looking bewildered.

“What’s happening?” Carrie asked.

“Behold,” Lindsey said. “Light.”

She flicked on all of the nearby light switches, and Nancy clapped her hands together and jumped up and down.

“I’ll start the coffeepot,” she said.

“Shower,” Lindsey said. “I’m going to take a hot shower, plug in my cell phone and reprogram my clocks. I’ll be back.”

She bolted up the stairs with Heathcliff at her heels. It was such a relief to go back into her apartment and be able to turn on the lights, play the radio and know that she wasn’t limited by battery life.

She was towel drying her long blond hair when her phone rang. She was so happy to have her cordless working again that she didn’t bother checking the caller ID.

“Hello,” she answered.

“I’ll be watching you,” the voice on the line said.

“Excuse me,” Lindsey said. She clutched the phone to her ear, concentrating on the caller’s words.

“You heard me. I’ll be
watching you, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll do the right thing.”

The caller hung up. The bubble of joy Lindsey had been feeling at listening to NPR popped like a soap bubble.

She knew that voice. She was unlikely to forget that shrill tone anytime soon. It was Batty Bilson.

She settled the receiver in its cradle. Should she call the police? It seemed trivial given all that they had going on. Marjorie hadn’t threatened her exactly, although it sort of felt that way.

No, she wasn’t going to cause a stir over this. She would call her staff and get the library back open, then she would deal with Marjorie Bilson and her cryptic message.

I
t took Lindsey and Beth the better part of the morning to shovel out the building. Once the walkways were clear and Lindsey felt that patrons and staff could navigate the stairs and enter the building without risking a broken limb, she opened the library. It was a few hours later than usual, but at least they were open.

The book drop was full. When they opened the door to the small room, a tidal wave of books slid into the main room. Lindsey stooped down to pick them up and put them on a cart. The covers were icy-cold to the touch.

Ms. Cole was logging in to her computer at the check-in desk, getting ready to deal with the deluge of books. Once she and Beth had filled a cart, Lindsey wheeled it over to Ms. Cole. She glanced at the check-in screen on Ms. Cole’s monitor and frowned.

“Ms.
Cole, you have today’s date as the check-in date,” she said.

“We
are
checking them in today,” Ms. Cole said.

Lindsey could almost hear the unspoken
duh
at the end of her sentence.

“Yes, but the library was closed for two and a half days. We need to go back three days, so that people who returned their books on time don’t get fined unfairly.”

Ms. Cole looked outraged. “But what about people whose materials were due three days ago, who just returned them today?”

“They get amnesty,” Lindsey said with a shrug.

“Well, I just…that’s just…”

“It’s just what?”

“It’s setting a horrible precedent,” Ms. Cole said. Her bosom heaved with her agitation. “I mean, people might expect…they might demand…”

“Good customer service?” Lindsey supplied.

“Exactly!” Ms. Cole said. “They might think that we’ll always bend the rules just for them. I’m telling you, you’re inviting anarchy.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to risk it,” Lindsey said.

When Ms. Cole looked like she might continue her protest, Lindsey held up her hand, indicating the conversation was over.

“I’m sorry, but this is how we’re going to do it,” Lindsey said. She leaned over Ms. Cole’s chair, took her computer mouse and clicked the check-in date back three days. She saved the change and then went back to the book drop to load another cart, leaving the lemon sputtering behind her.

“How very unlike Mr. Tupper you are,” Beth said with a teasing smile. She handed Lindsey a stack of books.

“He wouldn’t have rolled back the check-in date?” Lindsey arranged the books on the truck.

“He would have let Ms. Cole decide,” Beth said.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s wise,” Lindsey said.

“It wasn’t,” Beth agreed. “But between you and me, I think he was afraid of her.”

Lindsey glanced over her shoulder to where Ms. Cole was muttering while the check-in machine beeped with each item. She was in shades of brown today. Not her best color.

“Maybe that’s why he retired to Florida,” Lindsey said.

Once the drop was empty, Beth went to man her desk in children’s while Lindsey wheeled the cart over to Ann Marie to assist Ms. Cole with the check-in. She’d called in their teen shelvers for an extra afternoon shift later in the day to help get them on track, and all was slowly getting back to normal in the quiet little library.

Lindsey walked over to the big windows that looked over the town. Huge drifts of snow still covered the park, but the roads had been sanded and salted and were just becoming passable.

She glanced over at the pier. She wondered if Sully was around. She noticed that several of the boat owners were out checking their rigs, including the charter boat that Dale Wilcox owned.

She could just make out a man in a navy blue hooded sweatshirt, unzipped, with a knit cap on his head and yellow waders. He was stomping around the end of the pier, looking ornery. She knew without being told that this was Dale Wilcox.

She glanced over her shoulder at the library. It was quiet. Most people were home digging out from the blizzard or they were back at their first day of work.

The clock on the wall showed it was fifteen minutes until her lunch hour. Good enough. She turned away from the window and headed toward her office.

If she dragged it out, getting suited up to go out into the cold could take at least five minutes. She slipped off her favorite loafers and slipped on her storm chaser boots from L.L.Bean. Scarf, hat, jacket and mittens were next and she was ready.

She strode out of her office and stopped in the children’s area.

Beth glanced up in surprise. “Going somewhere?”

“I’m going to get some soup at the Blue Anchor,” she said. If she actually did pick up soup, then it wasn’t a total lie. “Can I bring you some?”

“Are you kidding? If you bring me some of Mary’s chowder, I’ll be your best friend,” Beth said.

“You already are.” Lindsey laughed. “Back in a few.”

She stopped by the circulation desk and offered to bring Ann Marie and Ms. Cole some chowder as well. Ann Marie was game but Ms. Cole declined with a sniff. Lindsey suspected she was still miffy about the backdated check-in. Ah well, she’d just have to get over it.

Lindsey stepped on the rubber mat and the doors slid open. A blast of frosty air smacked her face and she sucked in a breath.

Ducking her head, she hurried out into the cold and headed for the pier. The packed snow on the road had melted just enough to freeze again after the abrupt temperature drop
from the second half of the storm and had formed a nice sheen of ice.

Lindsey stepped carefully but still managed to half slide across the road as she navigated the treacherous conditions.

The parking lot of the Anchor was surprisingly clear, but then again, because it had become a meeting place for the plows, it had gotten the most use over the past few days.

She strode past the Anchor, keeping the man in the yellow waders in sight. She wasn’t sure exactly how she was going to broach the subject of Markus Rushton with him, but she’d worry about that when she got there.

The pier, made of thick solid planks, hadn’t been shoveled, and the snow had drifted over to one side of it while the footprints of the many boat owners had stomped the deep snow into matted patches.

Lindsey approached the boat, noting that the name
Pilar
was written in a forest green script across the stern. Interesting.

Dale was up on his boat sweeping the snow off the bow. Huge chunks fell over into the water with a splash.

Lindsey could hear him muttering while he swept. She wasn’t positive, but it sounded like a nice string of profanity he had going. She hated to interrupt.

For the first time, she debated the wisdom of approaching a man known to be volatile when he was irked.

But she was only going to ask him some questions; it wasn’t like she was going to accuse him of murder or anything.

“Hello?” she called out.

The boat went silent and then a knitted hat appeared over the side. Unshaven, with a jailhouse tattoo on his neck of what looked like a dragon or maybe a mermaid on steroids, and sporting a gold incisor that sparkled in the morning sun when he sneered, Dale Wilcox looked like he ate small children for breakfast.

L
indsey swallowed. She briefly wondered if her storm chaser boots could get her out of here before the man on the boat jumped over the side and whacked her with his broom.

“What do you want?” the man growled, glaring at her. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Sorry,” Lindsey said. She was pleased that her voice didn’t betray how nervous she felt. “You know, the original
Pilar
was custom built in 1934 in Brooklyn.”

“By Wheeler Shipyards,” he said.

“Oh, so you did know.” Lindsey smiled.

“That’s not surprising,” he said. His scowl relaxed into a wary look. “I’m a fisherman. What is surprising is that you know.”

“Not really.” Lindsey shook her head. “I’m a librarian.”

“Ah, then you
also know, ‘a man is never lost at sea,’” he said.

“
The Old Man and the Sea
,” she said. “Brilliant book.”

“Hemingway was a brilliant writer,” he said. He looked her up and down. Not in an insolent way, but as if trying to get the measure of her. “I read all of his works when I was in prison.”

“I think he would have liked that,” Lindsey said.

Dale indicated the ladder with a shrug. “Feel free to climb aboard.”

Lindsey had a feeling he was testing her, to see if she was brave enough to be on the boat with the big, bad ex-convict. For some reason, she wanted to pass his test and show him that she wasn’t afraid.

She stepped forward and pulled herself up the short ladder. Dale continued sweeping, completely ignoring her. At a loss, Lindsey saw a second broom propped in the corner, so she picked it up and began to sweep the snow off the side. Dale paused to watch her for a moment and then set back to work.

They worked silently for a while. There wasn’t much snow left to sweep, but the stuff she managed to push off the starboard side fell into the water with a satisfying splash. When they were done, she handed the broom back to Dale.

“You know, if you like Hemingway, there are other authors I could hook you up with,” she said. “Library cards are free.”