By Book or by Crook (7 page)

I blushed and hoped he couldn’t see in the soft light. “You took me to a bonfire at the beach.”

“I suppose I was a normal kid some of the time. My parents saved every penny they could for my education. That, plus some scholarships, got me into Duke, and then to med school at UNC. I am, truth be told, a dentist.”

“A dentist!”

He laughed. “You sound so surprised. Yes, I’m a dentist. I’ve cut my practice down a fair amount while I’m mayor, but I still have some hours, to keep my hand in and to serve my regular patients.”

We leaned back to allow the waiter to put our drinks in front of us. He recited the night’s specials and left us to consider the menu.

“I can never resist she-crab soup,” I said. Butch Greenblatt came onto the patio. For a moment I considered crawling into my menu. Butch had invited me to have dinner here with him recently. He had canceled, hadn’t he? Nothing wrong with me having dinner with the mayor. Nothing at all.

“Evenin’, Lucy, Mr. Mayor.”

“Butch,” I said, “How lovely to see you. Case all resolved, is it?”

“We’ve haven’t ordered yet,” Connor said. “Would you like to join us?”

Nothing awkward about that. Nothing at all.

But Butch didn’t seem to mind. “No, thanks. I saw you folks sitting outside and came to say hi. I’m picking up something to go. We’re working late
down at the station.” He glanced around, lowered his voice. “About . . . you know.”

“Any developments?”

“A few. Look, this isn’t really the time or the place to talk, but a word of advice, Lucy. Don’t get too attached to your job, okay?”

“What are you saying?”

“I . . .”

“Hey, look who’s here.” Josie swung onto the patio in a flurry of flowing blond hair, tiny shorts, and high-heeled sandals. Every man in the place almost choked on his food. “Having a nice dinner? Why are you standing up, Butch? We can find a bigger table.”

“I’m not staying, just picking up something Jake prepared for me and the detectives.”

“Nice,” she said. “Jake doesn’t usually do takeout, but anything for his little bro, eh?”

Right on cue, a waitress arrived, bearing a white paper sack. My mouth watered at the scents rising from it. She handed it to Butch; he mumbled good-byes, threw me a glance, and took his leave.

I grabbed my glass and gulped down a mouthful of wine. I reminded myself that I wasn’t dating Butch. I wasn’t dating Connor, either. I was having dinner in a public place with a person who happened to be a man. A handsome, single man. A childhood friend. No need to feel guilty.

None at all.

I threw back another mouthful of wine. “Gee, did I interrupt something?” Josie asked. “I didn’t mean to. I wouldn’t have thought this was the place to conduct police business.” She glanced at me with a
sparkle in her eye. “Or maybe Butch wanted the chance to talk to you, Lucy?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” I said, fighting to keep from blushing. “Why are you here, anyway?”

“Date night. How pathetic is that? Jake’s so busy at night getting the restaurant up and running, and I start early at the bakery and work all day; we don’t have much time to spend together. I’m going to sit on a stool and watch him cook.”

“It’ll be worth it, Josie,” Connor said. “You have to make sacrifices when you’re young if you want to achieve your dreams. I’m proof of that.”

“Yeah,” she said, with a tinkling laugh. “You’re such a crusty old guy, dispensing a lifetime of wisdom to us young’uns. Here’s a word of wisdom from me: try the seafood tray. It’s to die for.”

She wiggled her fingers in a wave and skipped through the doors. Diane Uppiton threw her date, who was gaping at Josie’s rear end like a fish on a line, a scathing glare, before calling for another bottle of wine.

I thought about Connor’s words for a moment. I’d never sacrificed anything. Everything I’d ever wanted in life had been handed to me. I’d never given a thought to fees for tennis or music lessons or the extra tutoring I needed to get into a good college. I didn’t even know how much tuition cost at Simmons or a dorm room at Northeastern. I’d taken my monthly allowance without question and thought I was hard done by if I had to phone Dad and ask for more. My Yaris had been a gift for my thirtieth
birthday. I’d been proud of myself, thinking I was proving my independence when I told my parents I’d rent an apartment myself, out of my own salary, rather than letting them buy me a place when I began work.

“Ready to order?” Connor asked, interrupting my thoughts.

“What do you think he meant?”

“Who?”

“Butch. About my job?”

Connor let out a long sigh. “I think, Lucy, he was trying to tell you not to count on Bertie being around much longer.”

“You can’t mean they’re going to arrest her. Charge her with murder? That’s preposterous.”

“I don’t know what the police are thinking, Lucy. But it does look as though, right now, Bertie’s their prime suspect.”

“That can’t be. What about Theodore? Sitting there reading
Moby-Dick
without a care in the world. I saw him go upstairs moments before Uppiton was killed. I told the police that.” I leaned across the table. Despite how upset I was, I kept my voice low, and none of the other diners paid us any attention. I had been well trained never to create a scene. The worst sin, in Mother’s eyes. “Bertie didn’t do it!”

“I know that, Lucy. I also know she needs all her friends around her, and I’m glad you’re on her side. I’m going to take Josie’s advice and have the seafood tray. A Caesar salad to start. What about you?”

I tried to relax and enjoy a pleasant evening with Connor, but I couldn’t get Butch’s warning out of my head. An arrest, a trial, maybe even a conviction,
would be a nightmare for Bertie and also for the library.

Diane Uppiton laughed uproariously at something her date said. The man glanced around the patio, grinning, seeking approval. His false teeth were too large for his mouth. Theodore, sitting directly under one of the round white lights, turned a page with his left hand while his right wiped the bottom of his bowl with a slice of freshly baked bread.

Maybe it was time I made some sacrifices in life.

Tonight I’d enjoy my dinner. Tomorrow I’d start poking my nose where it didn’t belong.

Beginning with Theodore and Diane Uppiton and her companion.

I
was awakened by the tinkling of a bell. It took a few moments for my head to clear and for me to realize, first, where I was (in my lighthouse aerie), and, second, what the noise was.

The doorbell.

I opened one eye. Outside, it was daylight. Charles leapt up on the bed and swatted at my face as if to say,
Aren’t you going to answer that?

I stumbled out of bed, crossed the room, and switched on the camera that was mounted over the door to the outside. It wasn’t a security camera, because it didn’t record anything, but it had been installed by a previous resident of the fourth floor so he didn’t have to run downstairs every time someone hammered on the door to return a book or ask if the library was open (if so, why would the door be locked and the parking lot empty?).

Louise Jane McKaughnan obviously knew about the camera, because she was smiling up at it. In one hand she held a tray bearing two extralarge take-out cups from Josie’s, and in the other a small paper bag.
She lifted the bag to the camera and pointed with the cup-bearing hand. Grinning all the while.

I switched the sound on. “Louise Jane.”

“Isn’t it a beautiful morning, Lucy? It’s going to be a real Outer Banks day, just like we had when I was young. I thought you’d enjoy a treat.” She smiled.

I glanced around my room. The bed was unmade but everything else reasonably tidy. Connor had driven me home after dinner and walked me to the front door. I didn’t suggest he come up, and he did not ask.

Slowly, slowly,
I’d thought.

He waited until I was safely inside and the door shut behind me before returning to his car and driving off into the night with a roar of the vehicle’s powerful engine.

Expecting to be able to sleep in and enjoy my day off, I’d not gone to bed but had filled the kettle for hot tea, hung up my dress, put on comfortable cotton pajamas, and switched on the computer. I’d worked late into the night, enjoying the sounds of quiet and the distant waves crashing against the shore, and doing some research to advance my admittedly limited knowledge of Jane Austen. Charles had attempted to assist, but after the seventh time I’d removed him from the keyboard and placed him firmly on the floor, he gave up and curled on the window seat for a nap.

“It’s a bit early for a social call, Louise Jane,” I said, attempting to stifle a huge yawn.

“We Outer Banks girls get up with the sun. I brought coffee and muffins.”

“I’ll be down in five minutes.”

“Don’t bother—I know where the spare key’s hidden. I just wanted to make sure you were . . . alone.” She gave me a long wink that almost turned my stomach.

“Fourth level.”

“I know.”

I flew into the bathroom, splashed water on my face, stuffed unruly curls into an elastic band, and threw on the first clothes that came to hand. I was not going to be found in my jammies by Louise Jane McKaughnan.

I was pulling a T-shirt over my head when I heard footsteps on the iron stairs and then a knock at the door. I opened it, and Louise Jane tumbled into my apartment. She headed straight for the kitchen, opened a cupboard, took down two small plates, and laid out muffins and scones. All while I was still standing with my hand on the open door. “Make yourself at home.”

“Thanks. I will. Josie said you take cream and sugar, so I added that already.” She put the cups and plates on the table and pulled out a chair. “I adore this little room. It’s just perfect.”

Louise Jane was trying hard to be friendly, but the woman had not one iota of warmth. She came across much like a shark smiling from the other side of the aquarium glass.
If this glass breaks, you’ll see what I really think of you.

I accepted a cranberry bran muffin and chastised myself for being mean. Perhaps Louise Jane really did want to be friends.

“Absolutely perfect for a single woman who’s just passing through,” she finished.

“Where’s Andrew today?”

She waved a hand. “Off playing somewhere. We don’t
live
together, you know. He’s not my boyfriend. We’re only good friends. I’ve found it helps deter unwanted male attention, having Andrew at my elbow. Not something I suppose you’d understand.” She bared her teeth at me in what she thought was a smile. “The sea air certainly makes your hair . . . curly, doesn’t it?”

“I’m from Boston, Louise Jane. I am not a stranger to sea air.”

“Just making a comment. I’ve heard that older men still like those old-fashioned curls.” She openly studied my room. “Everything looks . . . okay. Have you been bothered by anything?”

Other than unwelcome Sunday-morning visitors who knew where the spare key was hidden?

“No. I enjoy the quiet and the dark.”

“At night . . .”

“What do you mean?”

She stood up and went to the window. She pulled the heavy drapes aside. Charles hissed at her. “Nasty beast. You really are too soft for your own good, Lucy, letting him upstairs like this. I never could understand why Bertie took him in. Animals have no place in a library.”

“I like him.” I went over to give Charles an approving pat.

“You would.”

The sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue, the sparkling ocean as calm as bathwater. A rusty, red-hulled
freighter passed, a distant speck on the flat horizon. Fish crows swooped low over the marshes. Even Louise Jane had to stop being catty and admire the view. “They say animals have powerful senses.”

“True.”

“Have you noticed him acting strange at all?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Just wondering.” She walked over to my laptop and wiggled the mouse to get rid of the screensaver—libraries around the world.

The page that came up showed images of Jane Austen, where I’d left my research last night.

“Did you know I’m named after her?”

“No.”

“Louise is my grandmother, but my mother always adored Jane Austen, so she added that name in tribute.”

If that was true I’d eat Charles’s dinner and give him the fresh flounder I’d planned to buy later.

“We’ve always been great literature lovers in my family. I did a paper on Jane Austen in college. Got an A-plus. My professor desperately wanted me to switch to English lit, but I had to drop out before finishing. We can’t all get graduate degrees. My grandmother was ill and she needed me. We’ve always been awful close.”

“This has been lovely, and thanks for the coffee, but I have an appointment soon,” I said. “I’ve . . . I’ve . . . booked a sailing tour. I’m looking forward to a day on the ocean. Looks like it will be perfect for it, too.”

“My greatest interest has always been the history
of this area. My family came here in 1764. One of the very first families. What a wild and desolate place it was then. And over all those generations, the McKaughnans have never even considered living anywhere else. This strip of land is my family. And my family is this land.”

“How nice. Will you look at the time?”

“This is a charming little apartment. I hope you’ll like it here. Perhaps you won’t . . .”

“Won’t?”

“Never mind. It’s just that, well, they’ve had trouble getting people to stay here, you know. For more than a few nights.” She ran her fingers over the frame above the window seat. Charles hissed and leapt down. He darted into the kitchen and crawled into a corner. “You might want to keep the window closed at night.”

The window was set into a white-painted wooden frame with black iron bars outside. The bars presumably were intended to protect one from falling out. The window opened and closed by turning a latch at the bottom. Water and salt streaked the outside of the glass. “I like the breeze. I always keep my windows open at night.”

Louise Jane gasped. “No!”

“Why not?” I said, stepping directly into her trap.

“I’m not surprised Bertie hasn’t told you. It really isn’t my place, but if you’re going to live here . . . One of your predecessors killed herself. She threw herself out that window, back in the 1990s, I think it was. A sweet young thing, much younger than you, so you probably have nothing to worry about.”

The bars would stop an accident, but they were wide enough apart that a normal-sized woman would be able to squeeze through. If she wanted to. “That’s sad, but I’m hardly going to kill myself because someone I don’t even know did.”

“I’m sure you’re right. It’s just that . . . well, my grandmother knows the story. A lighthouse keeper brought his young bride here. It was 1872, and the lighthouse was newly built to replace the one destroyed in the War Between the States. He was an older man, much older than her. Too old to be a lighthouse keeper, but so many of the young men had died in the war or never come back.” Her voice settled into storytelling mode, and despite myself, I listened. When she wasn’t trying to be catty or get in a dig at me, Louise Jane’s voice could be deep and calming. A perfect storyteller voice.

“The young bride—Frances was her name—was the youngest daughter of a wealthy family that had lost everything in the war. She wasn’t pretty and was too fond of sticking her nose in books, but that didn’t matter to potential suitors, because her family had money and land. But when that was gone her parents were forced to marry her off to the only man who would have her.

“He was old and very cruel, and, according to my grandmother, who was told by
her
mother, was one of the ugliest men God ever put on this earth.” Louise Jane shuddered, and despite myself I felt goose bumps crawling across my arms. “He brought her to the lighthouse, to this lighthouse, and here she stayed. Until she died. She never came into town,
not even to church. Women attempted to call on her, and the old man would turn them away, saying Frances was ill and had to keep to her bed. Eventually they stopped calling. The reverend was the only one allowed into the lighthouse. He would stay for a short while, and when he left he would be seen shaking his head and heard muttering dark words. This is a remote spot now, but back then . . . When the occasional wanderer did pass at night, they said they could hear the terrifying sound of Frances’s screams.

“Screams that came, Lucy, from this room. Have you noticed how this room doesn’t really fit the design of the lighthouse? It was built after the lighthouse was built. It was built to be Frances’s room. Her prison. She would stand at that window, weeping, calling out for someone to help her.”

Louise Jane’s hand jerked upward, pointing. I almost leapt out of my skin.

“It was a different time, of course. Frances and the lighthouse keeper had been married in the presence of God, in a church, with many witnesses. Although the townspeople’s hearts went out to her, no one would help her. Children would ask why no one would help
the Lady
, and their mothers would tell them to hush.

“And then, one day, about a year after Frances had come to the Bodie Island Lighthouse, two men hunting ducks in the marsh spotted her broken, lifeless body. At the bottom of the lighthouse. Right beneath
that window
!”

I jumped. “How awful.”

The edges of Louise Jane’s mouth curled up. “I debated telling you about this. Andrew said I should keep it to myself. But I thought you deserved to know, Lucy. After all, you’re sleeping here. In the very room where Frances went mad. And died. You’re an intelligent, educated woman, aren’t you?”

I nodded. It was daylight, the twenty-first century. Bright sunlight streamed in the window, the sun played on the calm sea. My room was cheerful, modern, with electric lights, plumbing, Wi-Fi, a telephone. Even a doorbell. But the corners seemed deep and full of shadows. I mentally shook my head. This room didn’t even have corners!

“Now, don’t get me wrong,” Louise Jane continued. “Frances—
the Lady
, she’s called now—isn’t an evil spirit. Not at all. She was kind in life, or so they say, until she was locked away. She remains kind in death. When she sees a woman, a young—well, almost young—woman living in this room . . . Frances believes she’s trapped. And tries to free her. The only way she knows how. The way she freed herself.”

It was so quiet up here when the library was closed, high above the sea and the marsh, no one else around. At night, the darkness broken only by the rhythmic flash of the light.

“Well, well, look at the time. I promised to meet Andrew for a hike along the beach before lunch. Fresh air and exercise, there’s nothing like it. Are you all right, Lucy? You look awful pale.”

“I’m fine,” I squeaked.

“If you liked that story, I can tell you plenty more. This lighthouse has seen a lot of things over the years. A lot of strange and terrible things. And about
the death of poor Mr. Uppiton—they say ghosts haunt the places they loved most in life, don’t they? Don’t bother coming down—I can let myself out.”

And she left.

Charles rubbed himself against my ankles. I picked him up and stroked the soft tan fur. He purred. “She didn’t scare you, did she? Didn’t scare me, either. Silly story. Probably isn’t even true.” I glanced at my laptop. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to look up legends of the Bodie Island Lighthouse.

Nonsense.
“Fresh air and exercise sounds like a good idea,” I said to Charles. “After breakfast.”

Louise Jane hadn’t touched her muffin. I was considering it when my phone rang. I crossed the room, picked it up off the window seat, and glanced at the display. My heart sank. Couldn’t put it off any longer.

“Morning!” I trilled. I clambered onto the seat and pressed the phone between my ear and the glass.

“Lucille,” Mom said, “I trust you’re packing to come home.”

“Why would I do that? I’m having a great time here. The weather’s been perfect.” I’d sent e-mails to my parents and my brothers, telling them about the new job, that I had a place to live. That I was happy. Mom had called a couple of times, and I let it go to voice mail.

“This killing. It was in your very library. I called Ellen, and she told me the police had the investigation well in hand. But that’s not what the papers are saying. And you’re living right there. I know that lighthouse. It’s miles from anywhere!”