Deadly Notions (15 page)

“Well, everyone didn’t. All I did was make mention about the rope Milo tied to the tree not being a good idea to have in our sights.”

“And you don’t see that as a threatening thing to say?”

Her hand stilled around the pen. “No, I see it as a comment that was meant as a joke . . . whether appropriate or not.”

“And your friends who actually mentioned the desire to strangle Mrs. Lawson?”

She pushed her chair back from her desk and stood. “You’ll have to ask them, Chief Dallas. But, having been there at the party, I’m as certain as certain can be that they, too, were joking.”

“Do you find that people often grit their teeth while joking?”

“When they’ve been pushed to the brink and they’re trying to maintain their composure by lightening the atmosphere, yes. And that, Chief Dallas, is what these purported threats you’re referring to were all about. Nothing more, nothing less.”

He followed on her heels as she crossed her office to the closed door. “Mrs. Lawson is dead, Victoria.”

She grabbed hold of the doorknob and turned. “I realize that, Chief, and that is a shame. It truly is. For no matter how offensive and mean-spirited that woman was, no one—no one I know—wished her true harm.”

“Someone did.”

Yanking the door open she swept her hand into the hall in an indication their meeting was over. “You’re right. I’m just not that someone. Neither are any of my friends.”

“Time will tell, Victoria, time will tell.”

“It always does.” She watched as his uniform-clad back disappeared down the hallway and out the back door, his squad car visible in the background. Stepping out into the hall, she turned in the opposite direction, her feet being led forward by the promise of some sanity.

Nina looked up as she entered the main room. “Are you okay, Miss Sinclair?”

She joined her assistant behind the information desk and grabbed hold of a pile of books that were waiting to be sorted. “It’s fine. Just a lot going on, you know?”

“Is there anything I can do?”

Slowly she moved the books from the original stacks into smaller ones depending on where they were shelved around the library. “We can talk about something other than Ashley Lawson and Beth Samuelson.”

“Beth Samuelson? Who’s that?”

“Nobody.” She moved the top book onto the history pile, the second onto the mystery pile. “You know what? I want to talk about that donation we got from Curtis in the fall. You know, the two thousand dollars we tucked aside until we got through the holiday season.”

Nina’s face glowed with excitement. “I’ve been giving it some thought ever since we got it, tossing around ideas for all sorts of things. I’ve even kept Duwayne up a night or two bouncing ideas off him.”

Tori laughed, the sound and the feeling doing wonders against the tension that had started with memories of Beth Samuelson and re-ignited with Chief Dallas’s unexpected second visit. “And?”

“Well, I had some good ones, I really did, but it was Duwayne’s idea that I’ve not been able to forget.”

Pushing the various piles to the side, she leaned against the counter. “Tell me.”

“Duwayne said that he thinks what you did with the children’s room is fantastic. He said it’s the kind of thing he would have loved when he was a little boy growin’ up in Mississippi. But he also said that it’s when you get a little older—like in your teenage years—that books tend to lose their pull.”

She nodded. Nina was right. It was a fact of life for the teenage set who were suddenly gaga over anything that didn’t include sitting in a room alone. “Go on,” she encouraged.

“He started talking ’bout the things teenagers like. Things like getting together with friends, acting more grown-up, feeling as if they’ve got something to say in life that makes a difference or needs to be heard.”

Pulling the computer stool closer, she sat down, her attention riveted on her assistant’s words.

“Duwayne thinks that acknowledging those things in the area of books might make them seem less babyish or inconsequential.”

“Okay.”

“He suggested having a night, maybe once a month, where the library stays open just for teenagers.”

“We don’t want to be a hangout spot, Nina.”

“If it involves books and reading, we do.”

She nodded. “Okay, keep going.”

“On that night, we host a book club that is just for them. The books they’re interested in, the books they want to discuss. We pull up the chairs and sofa, we pop some popcorn or bring in a batch of cookies, and we let them talk about the book they’ve read. What they liked, what they didn’t, what could have been better.”

“I like it.”

“Book clubs are a grown-up kind of thing. They’ll be drawn to that alone if we can focus it to where they are in life.”

Her assistant was right. “And the donation? What’s that for?”

Nina’s eyes rounded with excitement. “To buy the books they select and, maybe, bring in an occasional guest speaker to increase the excitement.”

“Depending on the speaker they can be quite costly,” Tori reminded.

“Then we tell the kids that. Let them weigh who’s most important. It’ll be an unexpected lesson in budgeting.”

For a moment she said nothing, her mind rewinding its way through their conversation, stopping to pause on the highlights. And just like that, the answer was clear. “I love it, Nina. I absolutely love it.”

“I’d volunteer my time to lead the discussion,” Nina offered. “And, believe it or not, so will Duwayne. He thinks a male presence might encourage some of the teen boys to give it a shot.”

She nodded, a smile stretching her face wide. “I suspect he’s right. Now I love it even more.”

Nina’s face grew a shade darker as she looked down and toed at the carpet beneath their feet. “I was hoping you would, Miss Sinclair.”

“You’re going to make a wonderful head librarian one day, Nina.” She stepped off the stool and pulled her assistant in for a quick hug. “Your instincts are right on the money.”

“Thank you, Miss Sinclair. Though, in this case, it’s really more a case of Duwayne’s instincts.”

“Did you like the idea when you heard it?”

“I loved it.”

“Then that’s
your
instinct that stepped up to the plate.” She turned back to the piles on the counter, her thoughts already picking through the books in their inventory that might serve as possible kickoff titles for a teen book club. “Shall we put out some feelers?”

“You mean at the high school?” Nina asked in a voice that was suddenly breathless.

She nodded.

“Oh yes! Yes! But”—Nina squared her shoulders with a rare burst of confidence—“can I try my hand at a few posters first? Something that can be hung up around the hallways to drum up the kind of interest an announcement over the P.A. might not accomplish?”

“I think that’s a wonderful idea but under one condition.”

Nina smiled. “What’s that?”

“I get to show it to the board before you hang them up. It’s high time you got some recognition by those men.”

Melissa Davis was the epitome of the perfect mom—endlessly patient, always encouraging, and constantly smiling. The fact that she had seven children under the age of thirteen to mother didn’t change those qualities one iota.

Being a possible murder suspect, however, scratched two of those certainties off the list.

“Victoria, I was positively awful to Jake Junior this afternoon when the kids got home from school. He set his backpack on the counter to unload his papers and homework then left everything there for just a moment to go help Tommy pump up his bicycle tire.” Melissa sunk into the lattice-backed chair across from Tori and slumped her head onto the table. “When I walked back into the kitchen after getting Molly up from her nap, I saw his backpack still sitting there and no Jake Junior anywhere in sight.”

“Okay.”

Melissa popped her head up. “I called for him to come back to the kitchen and then told him to get his garbage out of the kitchen. His
garbage
, Victoria.”

She reached across the table and patted her friend’s hand. “If that’s the worst you say over the course of that child’s life, he’ll be okay. Trust me.”

“For some children, maybe. But my kids don’t have the manners they have because I bullied them. They have them because Jake and I made the decision long before Jake Junior came along that we were going to raise our children by example.”

“You have a lot on your mind.”

“That’s no excuse.”

Tori pushed back her chair and walked over to the cabinet that held various cups and glasses. Reaching past the colorful, plastic, teeth-nibbled offerings, she extracted a tall glass from the very back and filled it with ice water. “Here. Drink this. You don’t look very good right now.”

“I don’t feel very good.” Melissa took the glass from Tori’s outstretched hand and merely set it on the table, untouched. “As soon as I said what I said, his eyes got all big and his bottom lip quivered and, well, I felt positively awful.”

Tori claimed a chair closer to her friend. “Did you tell him that?”

Melissa nodded. “I did. I told him I was sorry. And I think he understood but I just don’t know.”

“Does he know what’s going on?”

“I suspect he does. I think he heard me and his dad talking about it last night after I got the call.”

“The call?” Tori leaned forward. “What call?”

“The one from Chief Dallas. Saying he wanted to stop by after the kids left for school.”

She felt her stomach lurch. “And did he?”

With a twist of her hands, Melissa removed the ponytail tie from her hair only to gather every last strand together once again and reposition it slightly higher on her head. “He did. He got here around eleven. Said his ten o’clock meeting ran a little later than he had anticipated.”

“Meetings are generally scheduled in advance and written on a calendar. His ten o’clock didn’t entail either.”

Melissa’s hand stilled atop her hair. “How do you know?”

“Because I was his ten o’clock and he didn’t schedule anything. He simply showed up.” She grabbed hold of Melissa’s water glass and took a gulp then repositioned it in front of her friend once again. “Unfortunately, my office didn’t have the windowless effect of most interrogation rooms.”

The woman pulled her hair out of its holder once again, her hands repeating the same pattern—gather hair, wrap with band, gather hair, wrap with band. “You, too, huh?”

“Me, too.”

Melissa dropped her hands to the table and slumped against her chair. “Does it make me an awful friend to say I’m a little relieved to know I wasn’t the only one being grilled about Ashley Lawson’s murder?”

She considered her friend’s words. “I’d say it makes you human.”

The faintest hint of a smile flitted across Melissa’s face only to disappear just as quickly. “Thanks, Victoria.”

Nodding, Tori reached for the glass once again, stopping her hand midway. “How about I just get my own?”

Melissa laughed. “You can have mine. I’m not thirsty.”

She accepted the glass and held it to her lips once again, the coolness of the liquid helping to dispel the dryness that had started during her own visit from the Sweet Briar police chief. “So what happened?”

“He asked me about the party, again, and I told him, again.” A burst of laughter wafted its way from the backyard and through the open window. Rising to her feet, Melissa peeked outside, her gaze lingering beyond the confines of the cheerfully messy kitchen. “I can’t be without these kids, Victoria. I just can’t.”

“Are you going somewhere?” she asked as she took yet another sip of water.

Without turning, Melissa spoke, her voice dripping with fear. “If Chief Dallas has his way I’ll be spending the next kazillion years behind bars.”

She choked on her water, the resulting cough pulling Melissa back to the table. “Are you okay, Victoria?”

“I—I’m f-fine. But”—she inhaled sharply—“what’s this with the prison stuff? Did he say that?”

Melissa dropped into her chair once again, her shoulders rising and falling as she did. “He didn’t have to. The questions he was asking said enough.”

She thought back over her own encounter with the chief just that morning, the man’s pointed questions and skeptically raised eyebrows a memory she’d tried to banish as she moved through the rest of her day at work. “Let me guess. He wanted to talk about the things you said regarding Ashley Lawson.”

“He knew I’d said strangling would probably be my preferred method of killing her. He knew I’d laughed when Caroline Rowen commented on eliminating her for the good of the kindergarten birthday party circuit. And he knew I’d been one of the ones to speculate how best to untie Milo’s knot.”

Blowing a strand of hair from her cheek, she pushed back her chair and stood. “I got essentially the same thing. Though his statements were tailored to the things
I
said that evening.”