Murder of a Stacked Librarian (6 page)

They were so intent on getting their own opinions across, none of the folks seemed to notice when Skye eased in back of them. She stared at the bulletin board, hoping it looked as if she were studying an announcement that read:

CHOIR AUDITIONS WILL BE HELD TUESDAY, DECEMBER 26, AT 1 P.M. PLEASE COME AND TRY OUT. THEY NEED ALL THE HELP THEY CAN GET.

As Skye heard someone say, “If you ask me, that woman committed suicide,” she used her peripheral vision to see who was speaking.

“Why would she do something like that?” A sweet-looking little old lady sighed. “Was she hooked on those awful drugs or something?”

Another woman touched her tight white poodlelike curls and said, “I overheard her having a big fight with her daughter in the parking lot of the library that afternoon right after the library closed at four.”

“Why in heaven’s name was the library open on Christmas Eve?” demanded a man dressed in a Western-style shirt, cowboy boots, and a bolo tie. “Let alone a Sunday afternoon?”

Another guy, this one wearing shiny polyester pants, asked, “Don’t you remember the fuss last summer about the library being shut on too many holidays?”

“Oh, yeah. Right.” The faux cowboy nodded. “The board decided it should be open every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and New Year’s.”

“I can’t help thinking about the poor daughter.” The sweet little old lady patted her chest. “I sure hope she doesn’t feel guilty that her last words to her mama were mean ones.”

“And don’t forget Mrs. Osborn was divorced,” the man in the boots added.

Poodle Hair poked him in the arm with her index finger. “If every divorced woman committed suicide, the men around here would have to start having sex with their sheep.” She giggled. “Besides, most divorcées would kill their exes, not themselves.”

“She’s right,” agreed a woman wearing a Christmas tree pin that was almost as big as the real thing. “Anyway, the news said it was an accident. What makes you think it wasn’t?”

“I got a cousin over to the crime lab in Laurel,” the counterfeit cowboy explained. “He said they got proof it wasn’t no accident.”

Voices rose as everyone in the crowd offered an opinion, and when they began to repeat themselves, Skye slunk away. She hurried down the front steps and out the double doors, intent on telling Wally that the county lab had a leak—not that that would be an enormous surprise to him. Keeping a secret in Scumble River or the surrounding area was like trying to carry water in a sieve—there were just too many holes to plug.

The rain had stopped, and a trio of fortysomething men had gathered in the middle of the sidewalk. Skye scanned the street, and when she didn’t see Wally’s car, she strolled slowly by the threesome. They were talking about Yvonne, too, and although Skye kept walking, as soon as she passed them, she ducked behind a large evergreen.

The men were discussing the librarian’s tenure in Scumble River. Skye’s pew mate seemed to be the leader of the triad. He leaned on a cane and rubbed his back. The other two men also appeared to be injured. One wore a cervical collar and the other had his arm in a sling. Had they been in some sort of accident together?

“Your neighbor was a real piece of work, King,” Mr. Arm Sling griped.

King clutched his cane and sneered, “Tell me something I don’t know, Artie.”

“She about had a hissy fit when I tried to eat my lunch in the library.” Artie shook his head. “All I had was a sandwich and chips. It wasn’t as if I was going to spill a bowl of soup on her precious books.”

“Yeah.” Mr. Cervical Collar folded his arms. “Where else we gonna eat when it’s cold out? It’s not like there’s a lunchroom for the city’s maintenance crew.”

Ah. So that was where Skye had seen King before. The maintenance workers were often in and out of city hall, which was right next to the PD and the library.

“Judy never minded us being there,” King added.

“That’s because she’s a sweet kid, not a ball-busting witch,” Artie grumbled.

“That was one good thing about getting hurt,” Mr. Cervical Collar said. “At least we didn’t have to deal with Miss I’m-Too-Good-for-You anymore.”

“Maybe you guys didn’t, but remember, Dutch, my property is right next to the place she was renting,” King said. “All I heard from the minute she moved in there were complaints about my kids and animals. Somebody sure peed in that broad’s cereal.”

“So you told us, again and again,” Artie whined. “What I don’t understand is how she even heard any noise you made, let alone saw you doing anything. You live in the middle of a couple of acres and her house was in the center of a big piece of ground, too.”

“’Cause she spied on me, you dope.” King whacked his friend on his uninjured arm. “She was always out near my place with her binoculars.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me! Was she some kind of pervert or something?” Dutch snorted back a laugh. “That’s gotta be against the law. Did you ask her why in the hell she was looking at you?”

“Of course I did,” King retorted. “What am I, a moron? I marched myself right up to her and asked what she thought she was doing and told her that in these parts we liked our privacy.”

“What did she say?” Artie asked, adjusting his arm in the sling.

“She claimed she was bird-watching.” King switched his cane to his other hand. “I said, in the middle of the freaking winter?”

“Yeah,” his buddies echoed each other, egging him on. “She musta just been hot for you.”

“I wish. She was really . . .”

When King trailed off, Skye stepped forward and peered through the evergreen’s branches, thankful that there was no snow on the ground. At the same moment, the man in question swiveled his neck and saw her watching him and his friends.

King’s mouth flattened into a mean line; he jerked his head in her direction and said to his buddies, “Let’s go have some breakfast. My wife can whip us up something. Geez, she stayed home from church ’cause she claimed she had so much cooking to do. And we won’t have to worry about some busybody sticking her nose in where it don’t belong.”

King’s friends glared at Skye, then trailed after him as he limped toward a pickup parked in front of the building in a handicapped spot. Despite their injuries, all three men hopped into the cab without any perceptible difficulties, and the truck roared away.

Her face burning, Skye decided it was time to see if Wally had arrived. She checked the street in front of the church and the one on the side, but there was no sign of him. She decided he must be waiting in the parking lot. But when she walked around to the back of the church, he wasn’t there either.
Great!
Her fiancé had forgotten about her on Christmas Day.

CHAPTER 6

By Book or by Crook

“I
’m really sorry I was a few minutes late.” Wally glanced at Skye as she got into the car. He’d finally arrived just as she was deciding whether to call him or hike over to the PD.

“Fifteen.” Skye buckled her seat belt. “Fifteen is more than a few.”

“It’s just that it turned out the senior crime tech was available and willing to meet me at the bridge,” Wally explained.

“He volunteered to come all the way from Laurel to Scumble River on Christmas Day?” Skye’s voice held more than a hint of skepticism.

“That was the thing.” Wally headed the T-bird toward Skye’s house. “He lives in Clay Center, so he was close by, and his ex-wife wasn’t dropping off his kids until ten thirty, so he had an hour free.”

“I see.” She kept her gaze on the windshield. “Why did you need to go back to the accident scene?”

“I wanted to have the tech show me how the vic’s car was forced off the road.” Wally glanced sideways at Skye, undoubtedly to check if she was still angry with him.

“Hmm.” She adjusted the heat vent to blow on her cold hands. She’d forgotten her gloves. “I can’t quite picture how it happened, either.”

“We can swing by now so I can show you,” Wally offered, clearly still in appeasement mode. But after another quick look at Skye’s expression, he said, “Or we could do it sometime tomorrow.”

“Maybe tomorrow.” She leaned her head against the side window.

“Right.” Wally turned the car onto Brook Road; they were almost back at Skye’s place. “I also wanted to have the guy see if there was any evidence that might have been missed the night before.”

“Why?” Skye asked, curiosity winning over annoyance. Wally usually had a good reason for his actions. “Did you think the other techs had been careless?”

“Not exactly.” Wally pulled into Skye’s driveway. “But at the time we all thought it was an accident, so they might have overlooked something last night.” He parked the T-bird in front of the house. “Now that we know she was forced off the road, I wanted a fresh pair of eyes to take a look and see if he could spot anything.”

“That makes sense,” Skye said as she and Wally got out of the car and walked up the steps.

Wally unlocked the front door and held it open for her. They took off their coats, hung them on the hall tree, and walked into the kitchen.

Skye filled the teakettle. “Did the tech recover any new evidence?”

“Yes.” Wally got out a teapot, mugs, and spoons. “Quite a bit.”

“What did he find?” Skye asked, adding several packets of sweetener to a tray.

“There were paint scrapings on the rail that matched the ones they found on the side of Yvonne’s car.” Wally opened a can of Earl Grey, spooned the leaves into an infuser, and placed the ball into the pot. “He also found fragments of glass that are probably from the perp’s vehicle.”

“Was it a hit-and-run?” Skye poured boiling water into the teapot. “Or do you think someone deliberately forced Yvonne into the river because they wanted her dead?”

“The tech said there’s no way this could have been an accident. The pattern of the paint transfer on the side of the vic’s car and the skid marks indicate that someone not only rammed into her, but they backed up and did it again.” Wally lifted the tray from the counter and followed Skye into the sunroom. “Whoever ran her off that bridge meant to do it.”

“How awful.” Skye curled up on the love seat and Wally sat next to her. “In that case, I’d better tell you what I found out at church.”

When she had finished recounting the various conversations she’d overheard, Wally slumped back and looked up at the ceiling. “It looks like we’ll have our hands full of possible suspects.”

“And I’m sorry to say, we may not even have uncovered the first page of the prologue yet.” Skye leaned forward and poured tea into the mugs and handed Wally his. “I don’t think I told you that I ran into Anthony on Saturday at the Gift Box in Clay Center.”

“Not that I remember.”

“He said people were really looking forward to Judy Martin’s return because Yvonne had ticked off nearly every library patron she encountered.” Skye added Sweet’N Low to her cup. “Not to mention whoever was complaining about her in the
Star
.”

“Son of a buck!”

“Yeah.” Skye stirred in the fake sugar. “The only thing worse than nobody having a motive is when everybody has one.”

Wally nodded his agreement.

“Think about it.” Skye sipped her tea. “Yvonne exposed people’s shortcomings, which had to make them pretty darn uncomfortable. Not to mention that it looks like she annoyed them by insisting that they comply with every rule, no matter how trivial. If she didn’t put up with even small infractions like eating a sandwich in the library, then what would she do if she caught someone doing something really bad?”

“Exactly.”

“Folks may not understand Yvonne’s kind of thinking, but communities need people like her,” Skye mused. “If you let the small things go, it becomes too easy to turn a blind eye to the bigger things, until eventually there’s anarchy.”

“True.” Wally frowned. “But being the one who stops the chaos from happening doesn’t win you any popularity contests.”

“Yvonne reminds me a lot of you.” She poked Wally in the chest. “You’d never allow any hint of wrongdoing among your officers.”

“Maybe.” Wally shrugged, then changed the subject. “Anyway, I want to wait until the crime lab narrows down the color and make of the perp’s vehicle before I talk to any of the possible suspects.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “And at best, they won’t have that information for me until tomorrow, and probably not until after lunch.”

“Good.” Skye put her mug down and snuggled next to him. “Can we forget about the case until then and focus on Christmas?”

“Definitely.” Wally tilted her chin up for a kiss, then vowed, “I promise not to even think about the murder for the rest of the day.”

“Yippee!” Skye bounced off the love seat and went over to the Christmas tree. She selected three presents and brought them to Wally. “Here. Open this first.” She pointed to a box wrapped in silver. “It’s the one you got in the Leofanti gift exchange.”

May’s extended family was too big for everyone to swap presents—only the kids got gifts from the whole group—so the adults picked names at Thanksgiving.

He looked at the tag attached to a big blue bow. “I see my secret Santa was your cousin Ginger’s husband, Flip.” Wally tore off the paper and revealed a flat aluminum storage case. “Nice.”

“What is it?” Skye stared at the label. CABELA’S was written in script on a forest green background.

Wally opened the lid and showed her the contents. “It’s an all-in-one firearm-cleaning kit. How did Flip know I wanted this?”

“I’m guessing my mom told Ginger and Ginger told Flip. He must have been pretty darned happy because it gave him an excuse to go to Cabela’s. He talks about that store the same way I talk about Von Maur.” Skye paused, then added, “You do realize that now that you’re going to be her son-in-law, May’s taking notes on everything you say or do?”

“You’re kidding!” Wally’s eyebrows rose. “Why would she do that?”

“Come on. You’ve worked with her for more than eighteen years. You must have realized that she’s elevated meddling to an Olympic sport. Why do you think she brings Vince his lunch every day? It’s to keep an eye on him and nudge him into doing what she wants.” Skye raised an eyebrow. “Have you noticed her talking to you more at work since we set the date?”