Dewey downed the rest of his drink and telephoned his stringer. “Simply? Taylor here. Meet me at the local library in thirty minutes.”
Hanging up, he grabbed his coat and left. He remembered passing the county library on his way to and from the courthouse, and he walked there now. It was only two blocks away, a neat, white-columned little building setting back off the street in its own little tree-lined park. Inside, it looked and smelled like every library Dewey had ever been in: neat, quiet, but somehow musty and not quite in sync with the world outside its walls. There was a plain woman behind the counter. She was in her late thirties and looked as if she belonged right there.
“Do you keep back issues of the Birmingham papers?” Dewey asked.
“Yes, we do.” Her voice was lower than Dewey expected, almost throaty. The sound of it seemed to change her appearance, making her not so plain after all. “Which date are you interested in?” she asked. Dewey told her and she nodded briefly. “Everything over two years old is on microfilm. If you’ll come this way, I’ll show you.”
She led him down to a basement room that contained a microfilm reader and several film cabinets. From one of the cabinets she took a numbered reel of film.
“Do you know how to thread a microfilm reader?” she asked.
“No,” Dewey lied. He had done it a hundred times. But he suddenly had an urge to watch her do it. He studied her fingers as they expertly inserted the reel and threaded the film into the viewer. His eyes moved up her bare arms to her shoulders, her neck, her ears. She had light, downy hair on her earlobes. When she finished threading the film, he said, “Thank you, Miss — uh—?”
“Elizabeth Lane,” she said in her throaty voice. “I’m the county librarian.”
She returned to the main floor and Dewey sat down in front of the reader. He wound the film to a Sunday-supplement feature he had written ten years earlier. In it he had recapped the entire story of the ice pick killing of Angela Strawn, the arrest of her husband, the futile search for the missing murder weapon, the trial of Jack Strawn, and his subsequent acquittal. Dewey did not know what he hoped to find in reviewing the story; probably nothing at all, he guessed; but the killing and missing weapon of a decade earlier were so similar to the recent killing and missing weapon that he thought it best to refresh his memory.
When he finished, Dewey left the film on the reader and started back upstairs. On his way he stopped and looked through an open door into another small room, this one furnished with a couch and club chair, end tables, a small refrigerator, coffee maker, and portable TV. In one comer was a worktable with a paper cutter, glue pot, and two small vises. In another, a book lift loaded with books to be hoisted upstairs. Between them was a small desk with a chair.
“That’s my little workroom, Mr. Taylor.”
Dewey whirled around at the sound of Elizabeth Lane’s voice. He had not heard her come back downstairs and she startled him.
“It isn’t much,” she continued, “but it’s a quiet place to work after hours. I do all the bookbinding and repairs myself. It saves on the library budget.”
“That’s very conscientious of you,” Dewey said, back in control of himself.
“Thank you. I came down to tell you that Fred Simply is waiting for you upstairs. He says you’re a famous newspaper reporter from Birmingham.”
“I’m not really that famous,” Dewey said, following her back upstairs. He liked the way she looked walking up the stairs.
“Hmmmmm. It surprises me that a newspaperman doesn’t know how to use a microfilm reader.”
Elizabeth Lane returned to her desk. Dewey suppressed a smile as he watched her walk away. She had long legs and a healthy, country-girl stride. Dewey liked that too. He felt a stirring inside that he had not felt in a long time.
“Uh, Mr. Taylor,” Simply said, touching his arm. “I, uh, I’m here.”
“Of course you are, Simply. I knew you wanted to take me to supper, that’s why I had you come over. Have you selected a nice place?”
“Well, I, uh—”
“I’m sure you have.” Dewey draped an arm around the stringer’s shoulders and guided him toward the door.
“Uh, about that byline, Mr. Taylor—”
“Later, Simply, later. Right now, I want you to tell me everything you know about your county librarian, Elizabeth Lane.”
As they left the library, Dewey glanced back at the desk. Elizabeth Lane was watching him leave. Dewey smiled a satisfied smile.
At ten the next morning, Dewey rang the bell at the Trane mansion. Leonora Trane herself answered the door. She was a tall, regal woman with perfectly coiffed hair and a splendid figure, wearing an ankle-length silk robe.
“Come in, Mr. Taylor,” she said easily. “We’ll talk on the veranda. There’s coffee.”
Dewey followed her through a dining room to a veranda laid in deep red Mexican rootstone, ringed by yellow roses. They sat and she poured coffee.
“Mr. Taylor,” she said, “the only reason I consented to see you was because you said on the phone that you had seen Jack and that he told you he believes I murdered George. If he told you that much, I’m quite certain he must have told you a great deal more. Such as the fact that he and I were lovers. And that I no longer loved my husband. All of which is true. But I assure you, I had nothing to do with George’s death. My late husband and I had an understanding: I went my way, he went his.”
“Did he know about you and Strawn?”
Leonora Trane shrugged elegant shoulders. “Possibly. No, probably.” She smiled slightly. “We didn’t discuss our affairs; we weren’t that decadent. But we were usually aware of what the other was doing, at least abstractly.”
“Was Mr. Trane having an affair at the time he was murdered?” Dewey asked.
“Oh, yes. George had a mistress. Someone he’d been seeing for several years.” She smiled again, in amusement this time. “I used to find all those telltale, silly little signs that wives notice: makeup smudges on his collar, a perfume scent on his coat and shirt. Jasmine fragrance, something I never use. It was so — well, mundane. Like afternoon television.”
“Do you know who his mistress is?”
“Was. No, I don’t. I never really cared to know.” She sipped her coffee, then said, “Shall we get to the main point of your visit? How can I convince you that I did not murder my husband?”
Now it was Dewey who shrugged. “Just tell me you didn’t.”
“All right. I didn’t. Anything else?”
“Why would Jack Strawn think you did?”
Again the amused smile. “Jack is the sort of man who thinks women would kill for him. You may have noticed that he’s quite impressed with himself.”
Dewey locked eyes with her. “You must have been a little impressed too. He was your lover.”
“One of my lovers, Mr. Taylor,” she said without the faintest unease. “Just one of them.”
Dewey sat back and nodded thoughtfully. “I see. You didn’t want to run away with him then?”
“Certainly not.”
“Or sue your husband for divorce?”
“No.”
“Did you ever tell Strawn you wanted to do either? Or lead him to believe you would?”
“Never.”
Dewey shook his head. Strawn, you lying macho bastard.
“Who do you think killed your husband, Mrs. Trane?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea. Frankly, I didn’t think for a moment that Jack had done it. Then that business came up about his wife being killed the same way.”