The Chocolate Book Bandit (5 page)

Hogan needed me, and he needed Butch?

Why both of us? Why either of us?

I called Joe’s cell phone and told him I wouldn’t meet him as quickly as I had planned. Then I signed the credit card slip and got up to leave. By then Butch was talking on his own cell phone. He was frowning. Hogan must have reached him.

I could see the library from the Herrera’s parking lot. There were so many police cars over there that I didn’t bother to move my van, and I just walked over. As I crossed the street an ambulance pulled away. Abigail must have started her journey to autopsy and, eventually, burial.

Jerry Cherry, one of Hogan’s patrolmen, let me in the library and sent me back to the meeting room. There Hogan and one of the state police detectives, Lieutenant Larry Underwood, had their heads together.

Underwood is a youngish detective—he’s been a lieutenant for only a year or so. He’s square and blocky, with a buzz cut. I’d run into him a couple of times before. We weren’t exactly buddies.

Underwood and Hogan were looking at some papers spread out on the table. Each paper was enclosed in a plastic envelope. They both looked serious as they greeted me.

“How can I help?” I asked.

Hogan spoke. “Lee, while you were waiting for the ambulance crew, did you touch Abigail Montgomery’s body at all?”

“Good night, no! I sat on the stairs. I didn’t go near her. Then. Earlier I felt her wrist, trying to find a pulse.”

“Then you didn’t move her body?”

“No. Why would I do that?”

Hogan held up one of the plastic-encased sheets of paper from the table. “Can you identify this object?”

I took the envelope from him and looked at the document inside. Centered at the top was my name and address.

“Huh?” I read on. “It’s my résumé! Where did that come from?”

Hogan didn’t answer.

I studied the résumé. It was, I saw, current—meaning it was a printout of one I had updated within the past month. Where had Hogan gotten it?

“Like most people,” I said, “I keep my résumé in my computer. There’s a copy at the office and also one on the laptop I use at home. This one is dated last month. I updated it at that time at the request of the vice mayor.”

“Jim Plaidy?”

“Right. He called me to ask if I’d serve on the library board. I said I’d think about it. He asked for a copy of my résumé, and I looked it over, then e-mailed a copy to him. He could have made a dozen printouts, of course.”

“If he wanted to take the nomination to the council, he probably did.”

“Maybe. But so far I haven’t agreed to serve.”

Hogan nodded and picked up another plastic envelope. “What about this?”

I looked at the document inside the envelope. It was an envelope addressed to a Henry C. Dunlap. His address was a post office box in Lansing, Michigan.

“I never saw it before,” I said.

Hogan nodded. “Okay. How about this?”

This time he held up a paper sack, and he dumped its contents out on the table. All it held was a wooden pencil of ghastly chartreuse green.

“Oh no! Are those things still haunting us? After three years?”

The chartreuse green pencils were imprinted with the name of Joe’s boat-restoration business, Heritage Boats. Several years earlier Joe had taken a space at a boat show, and he had ordered five hundred pencils to hand out. He deliberately picked the most eye-catching color in the promotional company’s catalog. But the color turned out to be so horrible he couldn’t even give the pencils away. They wrote fine and had exceptionally good erasers, but they were so ugly no one wanted one. The last time I’d looked he still had four hundred of them on his desk at the boat shop.

But Joe has his economical side. He wouldn’t just throw them out. So I had started snagging a handful every time I was in the boat shop. I carried them down to my office and tossed them in the trash with no compunction.

Hogan smiled, just slightly. “Didn’t I see some of these on your desk?”

“Probably.” I dumped my purse out on the table. Like most women, I carry far too much junk around. And, sure enough, in the bottom of the purse there were several ugly chartreuse pencils.

I explained that I’d started a campaign to destroy them. “But some of them do wind up on my desk. Where was that one?”

Hogan and Lieutenant Underwood exchanged looks. Hogan gave a deep sigh.

“When we moved Mrs. Montgomery’s body all these things were under it.”

“Oh no! That’s awesome! I mean awful!” I stopped and took a deep breath. “I’m shocked and horrific. I mean, horrified! And I have no idea how the pencil and the résumé could have gotten there.”

“Did you give anyone a pencil?”

“Not that I recall. I suppose I might have dropped one. Or someone might actually have taken one from Joe’s shop. He keeps them out in a mug on his desk, but none of those ever seem to go away.”

Then I pointed to the letter they had shown me earlier. “What about that?”

“We’ll look into it,” Hogan said. “You can go on home now, Lee.”

I scooped my belongings back into my purse and left. As I went out the door of the little meeting room, Butch got up from a table just outside it. Neither of us spoke, but somehow there was some significant eye contact between us.

Butch went inside the room I’d just left. At that point I realized my car keys had disappeared into the mess in the bottom of my purse. I needed to find them before I left the library so I wouldn’t be scrambling around for them in the dark.

I sat down in the chair Butch had been sitting in. It was warm—warm because he had been sitting in it.

Somehow that seemed to be a titillating thought.

I could feel my face flush. It was a stupid thought, I told myself. I ducked my head, hoping the cop guarding the front door wouldn’t look at me. I felt as if guilt must be written all over my face. Wasn’t lust one of the seven deadly sins?

I dug around inside my purse, but I didn’t find the keys. I used the table to dump out the stuff in my purse again, then repacked it, taking time for a little organization. It took me only about a minute. But still I didn’t find the keys. They simply were not there.

I made a growling noise and went through everything one more time. Still no keys.

I tried to recall the last time I had had them. I had looked at them when I left Herrera’s but decided not to move my car. I’d searched my purse while I was talking to Hogan. Could I have left them in the meeting room?

I hesitated to interrupt Hogan and Lieutenant Underwood. Maybe Butch would come out.

The door to the meeting room was closed, but I heard voices rumble.

I decided that I would have to interrupt. I couldn’t simply sit there until Hogan and Lieutenant Underwood stopped questioning Butch.

I went to the door and knocked. Hogan immediately opened the door a crack. He frowned at me, and I suppose he said something. But what I heard was Butch’s voice. He wasn’t quite yelling.

“I’ve never heard of Henry C. Dunlap!”

Then Butch went on, his voice just slightly lower. “Lee Woodyard’s résumé was on my desk. The vice mayor sent it over for my information. I have no idea how on earth it got into the basement. But I’ve never seen that letter before.”

He sounded adamant. It was a firm denial.

I realized I was staring at him when Hogan touched my arm. “Lee? What do you need?”

“My key card. I mean, my car keys! I must have dropped them in here when I took everything out of my purse.”

“I’ll look for them,” Hogan said. He turned around and looked through the things on the table—papers, evidence sacks, notebooks, and other items. Then he looked in the seats of the chairs nearest the door.

While he did this Lieutenant Underwood was gathering up the papers on the desk—my résumé and the letter, each in a plastic envelope—and putting them into a large plastic bin. And all the time he and Butch were staring at each other like hungry dogs with only one bone between them.

Underwood finally leaned over and looked at Hogan, who by now was looking under the table.

“Chief, what are you doing?”

“Lee’s lost her car keys. They could be in here.”

Underwood glared at me. He lowered his head below the edge of the table. I came in, got on my knees, and joined the search. “They must have fallen out of my purse when I looked for the pencils.”

I tried to sound contrite, but this didn’t mollify Underwood. A moment later Butch had joined the search. The four of us were now crawling around on the floor. We weren’t dignified, but I finally spotted the keys behind the leg of a chair. Then I bumped my head trying to grab them. It turned into a farce, but I managed to snag the keys and get myself on two feet. Everyone else stood up, and I left.

As the door closed I heard Butch’s voice. “Is there anything else, Lieutenant?” He was still sounding authoritative, more authoritative than the cops were. Both Hogan and Underwood know how to throw their weight around, but neither was choosing to do it right at that moment.

I clutched the keys and turned toward the street door. As I exited I remembered sitting down in the chair Butch had just vacated. The chair with the warm seat.

Lee, I lectured myself, you’re a married woman. A happily married woman. What are you doing lusting after a strange man?

I marched up the street to Herrera’s parking lot and unlocked the door of my van with a vicious push of the electronic button, telling myself I was a wicked woman.

But by the time I had driven halfway home the lecture had changed. It’s normal to notice the opposite sex, I told myself. And you’re a normal woman. There’s nothing wrong with—well, admiring someone. Nothing wrong unless you act on those feelings.

And I didn’t plan to do that. I had wasted five years of my life on one disastrous marriage, though infidelity was the one problem it hadn’t had. Now I wanted to be married—happily married—to Joe for the rest of my life. I wasn’t going to start ogling sexy guys.

But I couldn’t help noticing that they
were
sexy guys. After all, if I caught Joe looking at a pretty girl, I always told him it was okay because I didn’t want him to lose interest. That made him laugh. And so far he definitely hadn’t lost interest in me. I thought about Joe. He was much better-looking than Butch. And he was as sexy. Forget Butch. I’d go for the guy I already had. Anytime. Like tonight.

But first we had to get Tim handed over to the care of his nephew. And that reminded me that Joe had had a miserable evening. He’d been hauled out by an intoxicated neighbor and asked for transportation so that neighbor, Tim, could see about a family bereavement. He’d helped Tim call his closest relative. He’d worked on sobering Tim up, including taking him out to dinner. He’d picked up the tab—or at least I’d put the dinner on a credit card that was paid by shared family funds. Then he’d had to take Tim home and wait until Hart, Tim’s nephew, showed up. If there was any time before Hart arrived, Joe had probably had to spend it talking Tim out of having a few more drinks. Plus I’d called and said I had to go back to talk further to the investigators, so I had been no help at all.

All in all, Joe had had a lousy evening. I needed to tell him I understood this and appreciated all he’d done to help Tim—and me.

I decided the direct approach would be best. I’d just tell Joe how much I appreciated him and that I understood that he’d made an extra effort to be Mr. Nice Guy in a very difficult situation.

Thinking about how wonderful Joe had been actually did make me feel romantic, and this time the focus of my feelings was the right person. I made up a little speech. “Darling, you’re the greatest guy in the world. The way you helped Tim was—well, super.” That was the beginning.

My plan did not work out.

At least Joe was home when I got there, so I concluded that Hart had showed up to assume responsibility for his uncle.

In fact, Joe had been home long enough to get in the shower. I stood outside the bathroom door and considered getting into it with him. On some occasions, this would have been a good idea, but somehow it didn’t seem like a good one that evening. Especially when I tried the door and found it locked.

Hmmm. Unusual.

Then the phone rang. I was surprised, because it was nearly ten o’clock. The caller ID came up with Aunt Nettie’s number. I can’t ignore Aunt Nettie. So I answered the phone in the kitchen.

“Lee? What’s going on down at the library?”

Apparently Hogan had been too busy to call home and give her a report. So I had to do it. And, of course, she had to discuss it.

I paced around the downstairs, phone to ear, while she went over all the disasters that had struck the Hart family in the past few years. When I heard the shower stop, then heard the bathroom door open, I paced even harder.

Finally I said, “Aunt Nettie, I’ve got to talk to Joe. We’ll have to finish this up tomorrow.”

I put the phone back where it belonged, then dashed into the bedroom. There was one dim light on my side of the king-sized bed. The room looked romantic.

Except that Joe was already snoring.

I said his name quietly. “Joe.”