Which it was, but even when I’d dug up a few thousand dollars to cut, Stephen had latched on to the savings as a way to reduce library costs, not as a way to transfer funds to the bookmobile. In the past few weeks, I’d sent off applications to all the grant possibilities I could think of, but I was way past the deadlines for most of them, thanks to the one that had fallen through. Still, it didn’t hurt to try.
“I think it’s silly,” Lina said, thumping her crate of books onto a solid table. “Everybody knows that you can’t maintain a solid staff through volunteers. They’re just not a reliable source for long-term operations.”
Between young Lina and Thessie, my teenage summer volunteer, I would soon learn all I needed to know about everything. Smiling, I put my milk crate next to Lina’s. “I’ll be sure to mention that to the library board at their next . . .” Volunteers. Denise also volunteered for other groups. And hadn’t there been a fuss about—
“What did you say?” Lina turned to me, her hands full of the books she was about to shelve.
“I’d glad you had a good time today,” I said vaguely, and tried to concentrate on what I was doing, but my brain was fizzing about something else altogether. Because I’d finally remembered why Denise had fingered the director of a nonprofit organization as a possible murder suspect.
* * *
I opened the door of the Northern Lakes Protection Association and walked in. As I turned around to shut the door, I looked at Eddie, who was maybe twenty feet away in my nicely warmed-up car. “Ten minutes,” I mouthed. Since he’d protested so loudly at the unanticipated stop, I’d let him out of his carrier. He was sitting on it and staring at me out the car window, giving me the Look That Should Kill.
“You’re lucky it doesn’t,” I muttered. “Who else would feed you like I do?”
His mouth opened and closed, but I didn’t hear what he said. Which was just as well. I closed the door and turned around.
The room had been painted in shades of blue; a light blue near the ceiling morphing into a medium blue at eye height, then feathering into a dark blue at the floor. On the walls were framed maps of area lakes, and the carpet was a squiggly pattern of blue and green. The whole space made me feel as if I were underwater.
A man was sitting behind a large desk and talking on the telephone. He smiled and held up his finger. He was older than me, but not by much. Then again, he had that whipcord-thin build and hair so short it didn’t give a good clue to its color, two things that could conceal a man’s age for decades.
“Sure,” he was saying to the person on the other end of the phone. “It’s your birthday, honey. We can go anywhere you want, even if it is in the middle of the week.” He listened. “Grey Gables? Sure. I’ll make the reservations. Seven o’clock?” He picked up a pen and scratched a note on a desk-blotter calendar for the day after next. “Yes, I’ll put it in my phone, too. Don’t worry.” He said good-bye, hung up the receiver, and looked at me. “Sorry about the wait. How can I help you?”
I introduced myself, then asked, “Are you Jeremy Hull?”
Thanks to the photos someone had so kindly placed on the NLPA’s website, I already knew I was talking to Jeremy, the organization’s director and only full-time staff member, but saying so would have felt a little like stalking.
“Sure am,” he said, pushing back from his desk. “Have a seat. What can I do for you?”
I sat into what I immediately realized was a seriously uncomfortable chair for someone my size. If I sat all the way back, my feet would swing in the air like a small child’s. Since that wasn’t the image I wanted to project—not now, and not ever, even when I had been a small child—I perched on the edge of the seat.
“Have you seen the bookmobile?” I asked. Jeremy nodded, smiling a little. Seeing that, I forgave him for the chair. “Ever since we started up this summer,” I said, “we’ve been having problems finding volunteers to go out on the bookmobile. In a perfect world, we’d have money to hire part-time staff, but I just don’t see that happening. I know your organization runs mostly on volunteer power, so I hoped you might have some advice.”
He laughed. “Sure. Go back to school and get a degree in computer science. Make a pile of money, then retire early and spend your time volunteering for the bookmobile.”
“Gee,” I said thoughtfully. “I never once thought of doing that.”
“And on your off days, you could spend some time here,” he said. “Just to mix it up. Wouldn’t want you to get bored.” He laughed again, only this time it didn’t sound very happy. “Volunteers are the best part of this job. And the worst.”
“So you’ve had problems, too?”
He leaned back, shaking his head. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stories.”
Now was the time. “I hear Denise Slade used to volunteer with your organization.”
“Denise.” He said the word in a monotone. “That’s not a story; that’s a chapter.”
“She’s the president of our Friends of the Library group,” I said. “Should I be worried?”
He sat forward and put his elbows on the desk. “Can I ask you to keep this conversation confidential?”
I’d have to tell Eddie, but I doubted that would count. “Absolutely.”
“Denise Slade,” he said, spitting out the consonants, “might be the worst thing that ever happened to Northern Lakes.”
“Oh,” I said.
“It’s too bad about her husband—I was even out there that day, checking levels at the Jurco Dam—but after what she did, I couldn’t find it in me to even send a card. My wife says I should forgive and forget, and she’s right, but that just hasn’t happened yet, and it’s not something I’m going to fake.”
I studied Jeremy’s tight face. “How long ago did this happen?”
“Almost a year ago, but it might as well be yesterday.”
“What did she do?”
He made a disgusted sort of noise. “She was my assistant. Worked hard, cared about the projects, talked more people into volunteering, basically made herself indispensable.”
“That all sounds okay,” I said. “What went wrong?”
“You must know Denise. What would you guess?” he asked.
I thought a moment. “That your board made a decision she didn’t agree with, something she thought was just plain wrong. She told them so in a grand and very public manner, and she walked out.”
He nodded, his mouth a straight line. “Bingo. Walked out, didn’t look back, didn’t leave any notes for the next person, didn’t finish up any of her projects—nothing. She left me with a huge mess, and the board blamed me. I almost lost my job because of her. It took a lot of scrambling to hold everything together, and I’m still not sure I’ve regained the board’s complete confidence.”
It all sounded pretty horrible, and I said so.
“Thanks.” He smiled. “So, I guess the answer to your question about volunteers is to avoid using Denise Slade. The woman is a menace.”
We chatted for a few more minutes, tossing around collaboration ideas for next summer, and I left after having exceeded my ten-minute promise to Eddie by only five minutes.
“Oh, hush,” I said as I encouraged him back into his carrier. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about. It’s not like you can tell time. And even if you could, you’re not wearing a watch.”
“Mrr!”
“Yeah, back at you.”
When he didn’t respond, I looked over at him as I buckled my seat belt. “Now what are you doing?”
He was scratching the side of his carrier, going at it with his claws as if he were trying to dig a hole and escape.
“What—did Timmy fall down the well again?”