This, of course, brought up an obvious question. What were my secrets? I’d led a mild, librarian-like life. Never knowingly broken a law if you excepted speed limits, which I did. Never hit anyone other than my brother, which didn’t count because he was nine years older than me and I’d never stood a chance of hurting him, and even at the time I’d only been eleven. Never cheated on my taxes, never—
“Oh.” I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Because there it was, the memory I’d shoved to the back of my brain for years, the knowledge of that ill-fated ninth grade geometry quiz. The one whose questions made no sense at all to me, so I’d leaned over to look at what Jayne Smithson, the class math whiz, was writing down. The geometry teacher had, naturally, seen what I was doing, which I hadn’t known until the quizzes were returned and I’d seen my 0 grade and a stern See me after class.
That was indeed a secret I wouldn’t want the town to talk about. Sure, cheating on a quiz twenty years ago wasn’t in the same category as burglary or embezzlement or grand theft auto, but—
Creak!!
I frowned and slowed, wondering at the loud, and oddly metallic, sound. Where on earth had it come from? I was in front of the hotel, but there weren’t any workers in sight. To the left, there was nothing out of the ordinary. To the right, there was nothing.
Creak!!
I suddenly had the sense to look up.
And saw a large object tumbling end over end, going down, down, down . . . getting bigger and bigger and bigger . . .
I bolted, running as hard as I could as fast as I could. The air whooshed, and behind me, something hit the ground with a huge thump!!
I stopped, mainly because I wasn’t sure I could run any farther, and bent over, hands on my knees. The only noises on the entire street were of me panting and of my heart thudding.
When I could stand upright and breathe like an average human, I turned around and walked back. Lying on the ground, shattered into a zillion pieces, were the remnants of what looked like an old air conditioner.
I looked up. All of the tall double-hung windows had been replaced a few weeks ago, and all were closed.
Except for one.
After a short eternity, I pulled my cell out of my pocket and dialed. “Um, Detective Inwood? This is Minnie Hamilton. Sorry to bother you, but there’s something you need to see.”
Chapter 17
Ash arrived with Hal Inwood, and after one look at my face, he put his arm around my shoulders and ushered me into the front passenger seat of their unmarked police vehicle.
“You’re going to sit here until I come back for you,” he said in a gentle but firm voice. “If you get up before then, I’ll handcuff you and put you in the back seat.”
I laughed. Or at least, I tried to laugh, but it came out more like a sob. Which, since I wasn’t given to crying in front of police officers in general and Detective Inwood in particular, showed me Ash was right and that I should sit down. “Then I guess I’ll stay.”
He settled me down, gave my shoulder a squeeze, and hurried off. I closed my eyes and put my head back. Ash had left the door open, and a soft breeze was curling around my ankles. A small patch of sunshine inched its way across my lap; birds twittered.
I felt myself relaxing and was, quite possibly, asleep when a knock on the car roof made me jump.
“Awake,” I said. “I’m awake.”
“That’s obvious,” Hal Inwood said dryly. “We’ve cleared the building. No one’s here.”
I climbed out of the car. No way was I going to enter into a conversation with Hal at an exaggerated vertical disadvantage. Given my tidy and efficient height, I’d long ago grown used to being almost a foot shorter than most men, but unnecessary height discrepancies weren’t to be borne.
“What did you find out?” I asked, glancing at the bits of metal that had almost killed me.
Hal pulled his notebook out of his shirt pocket and flipped through pages. “The general contractor for the renovation project said no one was scheduled to work today, as they’re waiting for the furnace installer to get back from vacation. I contacted all the subcontractors, and none of them had any worker stop at the site for any reason today.”
A funny feeling formed in my stomach. “And the air conditioner?”
Hal shut the notebook and looked up. “It was an old one, one of the window units used when this was still functioning as a hotel. There are a pile of them stacked up in a corner, waiting for someone to take them away.”
“So someone . . .” I didn’t want to finish the sentence.
“Yes.” Hal nodded. “Someone picked up that air conditioner and intentionally pushed it out the window. The contractor said he’d unlocked the back door this morning as he’d hoped for an early delivery of plumbing fixtures, which did not happen.” He tapped the notebook with his pen. “Do you often walk past this building?”
Predictable Minnie. “This summer, when I’m at the library, I’ve walked this way almost every day, right after lunch. I like to see the construction.”
He reopened the notebook and made new notes. “And the bookmobile schedule is posted on the library’s website, correct?”
“Well, sure.” Even to my own ears, I sounded defensive. “Why wouldn’t we?”
Hal tucked his notebook into his shirt pocket. “Ms. Hamilton, it seems clear that this was a direct attempt on your life. I urge you to take steps to ensure your safety.”
I looked at the heap of metal. Looked at him. “What do you suggest, exactly? Hide out for the rest of my life?”
“You should tell everyone who cares about you. The more people who know, the safer you’ll be.”
But I didn’t see it that way. “The more people I tell, the faster word will spread and whoever did this will hear about it and try even harder to . . . to do whatever.”
“At least tell Mr. Niswander,” he said.
I wavered on that one. “I’ll think about it.”
And I did. Over and over. Most of me shrank from the idea, but by the end of the day I’d decided Hal was right, that I should tell Rafe. If our positions had been reversed, I’d certainly want to know. And I’d be furious if he didn’t tell me.
“You win, Detective,” I said out loud to an invisible Hal Inwood as I left the library that evening. “I’ll tell Rafe tonight.”
Since I was mostly thinking about how to frame the story, my feet went in the same direction they always did and I ended up walking past the old hotel. By now someone had been by to clear away the scattered bits of former air conditioner. The only thing indicating I’d almost died was a hand-size chip out of the sidewalk.
Dragging my toe over the chip, I eyed the windows—all now closed—and wondered about the whos and whys.
Was I really a target?
Who would do such a thing?
If so, why?
I kicked away a tiny piece of former sidewalk and then saw I’d managed to get my shoe covered with concrete dust. “Bad as being at the house,” I muttered. “Construction can be murder.” The common phrase caught at me, and I wished I hadn’t said it out loud. Or even thought it. But suddenly, the jumble of ideas circling around in my brain coalesced into something new.
My feet started moving, then moved faster and faster. Because what I suddenly needed, what I wanted more than anything else in the world, was to talk to Rafe.
* * *
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” I said.
“In what way?” Rafe unscrewed the cap from a water bottle and offered it to me. “Can’t believe we’re being so proactive?” he asked. “Can’t believe we abandoned our plans to paint the upstairs bathroom? Or you can’t believe we’re doing something so incredibly cool?”