I followed her through the oak door with the frosted glass panel into the office behind the circulation desk. It was cramped, with no pictures on the brick walls, and oddly, no books either. It looked more like the examining room of a doctor who had fallen on hard times — just the desk, one chair behind it, and a hat stand. Another, vaguely familiar older woman in a natty muslin dress was installed at the desk behind a nameplate reading “Mrs. Sigurdsen: Chief Librarian.” She held the black telephone handset as if it were a snake that might bite her. “Are you Vern Dunham?” she snapped. No whispering in here.
It was just like being on the carpet in Principal Miller’s office back in junior high. “Yes, ma’am,” I said in my politest voice. Who would think to call me at the library? It would have taken a lot of trouble to track me down here. Only Floyd knew where I was, and he would hardly bother me at the library even if his parents had a telephone in the first place.
“Deputy Morgan is on the line for you.” Mrs. Sigurdsen: Chief Librarian offered me the handset with a glare that was clearly the model for Miss Marion Weeks’ apprentice attempt at a chilling stare.
“Vernon Dunham here,” I said as I took the telephone.
Oddly, there was no operator on the line. “Mr. Dunham?” Deputy Morgan sounded like he was inside a wind tunnel. The connection was terrible, considering he was probably downstairs from me.
“Yes?” I’d already identified myself.
“Deputy Bobby Ray Morgan of the Butler County Sheriff’s Department speaking, sir. We’ve got your father downstairs here at the Augusta police station. Could you please come get him?”
“What’s happened to Dad?” I could easily imagine all kinds of disasters occurring to my father, but none that would put him the hands of the Sheriff’s Department. If he was driving around drunk again, they would have just locked him up in the county jail in El Dorado to sleep it off. There wasn’t any particular reason why the Sheriff’s Department would have brought him into Augusta.
Even over the lousy telephone line, I could hear Deputy Morgan shuffling papers. “The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division brought him in.” The cadence of his voice changed as he read from a report. “They were interviewing him about the disposition of one of his trucks. He had an episode of delirium tremens and attacked the investigators with a wrought-iron floor lamp.”
That sounded like Dad, alright. He never got over the idea that he’d killed Mom with his drinking, and that just fed his anger and kept him stuffed further inside the bottle. I hadn’t gotten over blaming him either, come to think of it, but that was both uncharitable and untrue, at least strictly speaking. More to the point at the moment, I could easily imagine which of Dad’s trucks Army CID would be interested in. It was parked in a barn fifteen miles away from here with a secret Nazi weapon still loaded on the back. “Is Dad all right?” I asked, visions of Fort Leavenworth’s penitentiary walls dancing in my head.
“He’s fine, except for a couple of bumps to the head,” said Deputy Morgan. “There’s a very unhappy Captain Markowicz here with a broken arm, however. I believe he is keen to speak with you in person.”
“I’ll be down in a minute,” I said. “Thank you for your time.” And for not locking Dad up, I thought. Not to mention the courtesy of the telephone call, instead of simply storming up the stairs with handcuffs and a truncheon. I handed the telephone back to Mrs. Sigurdsen: Chief Librarian. “I appreciate the assistance with that important call, ma’am.” I winked. “Government matter.” If I was going down, I would go down in style.
I walked out of the office right past assistant librarian Weeks’ desk, heading for the carrel where I had been doing my research.
It was absolutely clean.
No German-English dictionary. No Encyclopedia Britannica volumes spread around. And no envelope of Nazi papers. “For the love of Christ,” I hissed under my breath. I couldn’t believe I had been foolish enough to turn my back on the materials.
I turned away, my face hot and sweaty, and stepped back to the circulation desk. “Ah, Miss Weeks?”
She looked up at me, distaste obvious in the set of her lips and her narrowed eyes. “Yes, Mr. Dunham?”
“I left some research materials in the study carrel over there when I took my telephone call.”
“Yes. I reshelved them. Reference books are not to be left lying about, Mr. Dunham.”
“I don’t care about the darned books.” Miss Weeks’ glare intensified, as if she could deliver me a black eye through sheer nerve. Her boss maybe, but not her. And that was definitely the wrong thing to say. I shook my head. “That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry. What I’m very concerned about is the packet of materials I left at the study carrel when I took the telephone call. Some technical reports to be specific.”
“Nothing like that was there when I cleared the carrel,” she said primly.
“What do you mean they weren’t there?” My voice rose sharply. “I left them spread out with the dictionary when I went back to the reference section. From there, I followed you into the office.”
“Lower your voice, please, Mr. Dunham, or I shall be forced to ask you to leave and bar you from the premises. You must have taken them with you when you received your telephone call. Perhaps they are in your pocket.”
Which was ridiculous as I was wearing canvas work pants and a denim shirt. No pockets big enough. I was certain the papers were not in the office, but I pushed past her desk and walked into the office without knocking. The old bat who roosted there was talking on the telephone. It didn’t sound like English, but I didn’t catch enough of what she was saying. She covered the handset when I walked in. “May I help you, sir?” she asked in a tone that could have frosted glass.
“I need to find a manila envelope with some documents. Miss Weeks thinks I may have left the materials in here.”
“I have no such envelope in here.”
“Are you sure?” That hot, angry feeling was building in me, matching my sweaty face and racing pulse. My game leg started to ache, too, a sure sign I was in deep trouble.
“I suggest that you leave this library, Mr. Dunham,” she said. “Your presence here is disruptive and no longer welcome.”
“But my envelope—”
“There is no envelope here, Mr. Dunham. I am sure you have done something else with it. Now I believe that you have business with the Deputy Sheriff?” It was clear she would find some business for me with Deputy Morgan if I didn’t exit gracefully.
The Chief Librarian stared me out of her office. I backed out, shutting her door, and looked around for Marion Weeks. She was nowhere to be seen, vanished just like my envelope of documents. I slowly turned and walked out the front door of the library and down the old flight of wooden stairs bolted to the outside wall of the city building.
There had to be a connection between Army CID talking to Dad and someone stealing my documents out of the library. Taking the envelope wasn’t Floyd’s kind of prank. He wouldn’t be willing to compromise our little project, not even in the name of scaring the pee out of me. Nobody else in Augusta, Kansas could possibly have wanted anything from those Nazi documents. They wouldn’t mean anything to anyone here except me. Or a military intelligence officer. CID wasn’t M.I., but the broken-armed Captain Markowicz could be playing a double role. I would if I was him.
I wondered why the CID man wasn’t bringing criminal charges against Dad for assault and battery. I would.
Chapter Four
Ollie Wannamaker, newly minted Augusta police officer, sat at the desk in the police department’s cramped waiting room. Two benches flanked the desk, war bond and ration posters on the wall. The sandstone floor was blotched with odd stains, and someone was snoring inside the barred cell barely visible through a cracked open door behind Ollie’s desk. It sure sounded like Dad’s rattling breath, music to an entire childhood’s worth of sleepless nights.