“So,” she said now, “are you okay? I heard you fainted dead away when you found the body.”
Frowning, I sat up a little. “Who told you that?”
More thumping noises. “Can’t say. Promised Rafe I wouldn’t tell.”
I slid back down. “Rafe’s making it up.”
“Well, duh. So. Are you okay?”
“Haven’t had time to think about it, really, but—” The library’s other phone line started beeping. “Hang on. There’s another call coming in.” I put Kristen on hold. “Good morning. Chilson District Library.”
“Is it true?” a familiar male voice asked.
“Hang on,” I said, and punched out a sequence of buttons. “Conference call,” I told them. “And Rafe Niswander, I have never fainted in my life.”
“You told her,” he said to Kristen.
“Of course I did. You knew I would.”
“Well, yeah, but you promised.”
I didn’t have to see the six-foot-tall Kristen to know she was rolling her eyes.
“Promises from a girl to a boy don’t have any power over confidences between girls,” she said. “You should know that by now.”
“In theory, yes. It’s reality I have a hard time with.”
Rafe wasn’t the only one having a hard time with reality. I blinked away the memory of what I’d seen that morning and tried to focus on the present. “Sorry—did someone ask a question?”
“For the billionth time, I asked if you’re okay,” Kristen said. “I mean, now that you’ve had time to think about it and all.”
Yes, the last minute of my life had been very meditative. I half smiled, which I knew had been her intention. “I’ll feel better when the police figure out who did this.”
But how had it been done? Detective Inwood had already been in my office, asking about the maintenance schedule (five p.m. to one a.m., five nights a week) and the library’s security system (doors that were securely locked every night). I’d passed on the phone number of Gareth Dibona, our custodian and maintenance guy, and Inwood told me that Gareth had said he hadn’t seen anyone in the building after closing time and that he’d locked up as usual. To Detective Inwood, I’d confirmed that I’d had to unlock when I’d arrived that morning.
The detective’s eyebrows had gone up when I’d told him about the locked doors as security, and I’d felt compelled to explain that a full-fledged security system had been part of the renovation plan, but increased construction costs had made cuts necessary.
If the library ever received the large bequest we’d been promised in the will of the late Stan Larabee, a security system would be installed lickety-split, but the will was being contested by numerous family members and it was a toss-up if we’d ever receive anything.
“No fainting, then?” Rafe asked.
“You sound disappointed,” I said. “Did you bet anyone on it?” Rafe and I had a longstanding practice of making five-dollar bets on everything from which snowflake would make it to the ground first to what year Thomas Jefferson was born.
“Well, it would make a better story,” he said. “You fainting, your knight in shining armor rushing to the rescue, dampening your brow with love-struck kisses, you blinking to life and—”
Kristen made a rude noise. “Have you been watching the Hallmark channel again?”
“Hey, no making fun of Jane Seymour. She’s hot.”
This was undeniably true. And now that I was being reassured that I had good friends who cared about me—even if they were moving on to a discussion of how all actors on the CW network looked alike—I was indeed feeling okay. Or at least a lot better than I had been.
“Thanks for calling, you two,” I said into the middle of a mild argument regarding a plot point of Arrow. “But I need to get going.”
“You sure you’re okay?” Kristen asked.
“She’s fine,” Rafe said, and somehow his saying so made me feel stronger. Of course, that could have been because I wanted to prove him so very wrong about the fainting thing. He could be such a putz.
“Do you think . . .” Kristen paused.
“Let the woman go,” Rafe said. “You heard her: She has things to do. Places to go. People to see. All sorts of—”
“Do I think what?” I interrupted. Rafe would go on like that for hours otherwise.
“That having the library be the place where someone was murdered will be a problem?”
“Not really. Ash figures they’ll be done soon.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Kristen said. “What if the murder hurts the library’s reputation? What if people don’t want to come to a place where someone was killed? I mean, this is safe little Chilson, where nothing bad ever happens, but now . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“It’ll be fine,” Rafe said, but this time his assurance didn’t instill me with confidence. Because Kristen was right, and I was suddenly frightened for my library.
There was a quiet cough. Detective Inwood was standing just outside my office doorway. “Ms. Hamilton? I have questions about library procedures.”
I nodded. “It’ll be fine,” I told my friends, then hung up, hoping it was true.
* * *
It didn’t take long to answer the detective’s questions, and soon after that, he told me I was free to open the building.
“There’s limited value,” he said, “to a deep crime-scene investigation in such a public space.”
I nodded. Evidence that Suspect A had been in the library wouldn’t prove anything unless Suspect A tried to claim that he (or she) had never been in the place, and what was the point of saying you’d never been in a public building?
“You have a bit of a mess over there.” Inwood gestured toward the nonfiction section. “If your maintenance staff is like most, they won’t have any idea how to clean it up.”
“Clean what up?”
“Fingerprint powder. It’s extremely fine-grained,” he said. “I’d vacuum as much as you can, but that won’t get all of it. Try putting a little liquid dishwashing soap into a spray bottle with warm water for what the vacuum doesn’t pick up.”
“Thanks so much,” I said, but I wasn’t sure my sarcasm showed enough, because Inwood said, “You’re welcome,” and then, “Deputy Wolverson will notify you when the victim’s family has been contacted. At that point you can give out Ms. Vennard’s name. I’ll call if I have any questions.”
He strode off. Ash, who’d been standing nearby, sent me a smile that made me go a little mushy inside, then followed him.
When they were gone, I was the only one left in the library. This wasn’t unusual either early in the morning or late at night, but I couldn’t think of a circumstance in which I’d ever been the only person in the library at one in the afternoon.
It was just too weird for words.
I wandered out to the reference desk, picked up the phone to call our maintenance guy, then put the receiver down. Gareth didn’t start work for a few hours. If I asked him to come in now, he would, but it would result in overtime pay, and that particular part of the budget was tight after the recent repairs and cleanup expenses from a big storm.
Happily married and older than me by well over a decade, Gareth was a solidly good guy. We’d become friends soon after I’d moved to Chilson when, during a summer festival, we’d looked up from the opposite ends of a picnic table to see the other eating an identical, horribly delicious junk-food dinner of corn dogs, elephant ears, and cotton candy.
We’d made a pact not to tell a soul—especially Gareth’s nutritionally minded wife and my budding restaurateur of a best friend—and ever since, we’d traded recommendations for restaurants with the best fried food.