Wild Ride: A Changing Gears Novel (2 page)

“You can call me Ms. Forrest.”

His lead on the Van Gogh, already slim, was hanging on by its teeth. He picked up his book and strode for the door. Damn it, Uncle Simon’s connections were amazing and he wouldn’t pass on information to Duncan unless he were convinced it was true.

As much as Duncan was tempted to take his extremely pricey library book and blow town, he’d be a lot smarter to hang around for a bit and discover whether Franklin Forrest had somehow left his knowledge behind.

He glanced back to find the frosty Forrest granddaughter watching him, obviously not planning to let him out of her sight until he was off the premises.

It was clear from the obit that Forrest, a widower, was close to his two granddaughters who lived here in town. He’d bet his hundred-and-forty-eight-buck book that if anyone alive knew what Louis Vendome had done with the Van Gogh in that crazy time after France fell, it was the librarian or her cousin.

A. M. Forrest probably thought she was rid of her book-defacing patron, but she’d find out differently, very soon.

In fact, why spoil the anticipation?

Almost at the double doors leading outside to the town square, he turned. “What time do you open in the morning?”

Her look of horror was almost worth the hundred and fifty bucks. “You’re coming back?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Why?”

Libraries were supposed to be free for anyone to enter, but instead of calling her on it, he decided to give her part of the truth in hopes it would improve her opinion of him. “I teach at a university back east. I’m on sabbatical, writing a book, and plan to do a lot of work here in the library.”

Her eyes widened to the point he was afraid her eyeballs might roll out of her head.
“You’re
a university professor?” She stared at him and then at the book he’d been forced to buy.

“It’s a small mind that thinks in cliches,” he reminded her. “What time tomorrow?”

She was still staring at him as though in shock. “N-nine o’clock.”

He let his gaze dwell insolently on her mouth. “It’s a date, then.
Alex.”

She swallowed, a convulsive jerk of her throat. She might have the personality of a death camp matron, but that didn’t prevent the impulse to run his lips over her long, smooth neck, his tongue along the strong hint of cleavage revealed by her tight black sweater.

He trod slowly back to her, enjoying the way her eyes darkened and her breath jerked in her chest.

He leaned once more over the counter, much more slowly this time, until he was close enough to catch another tantalizing whiff of jasmine, close enough to see her lips tremble slightly as they slipped apart.

Close enough to kiss her.

He spent a moment enjoying her reaction to his nearness. Not all ice, was she? Oh, no. There was warmth and passion under the surface. He derived a perverse pleasure from watching the pulse in her throat kick up.

For one more moment he stayed there. Still, silent, and so far in her personal space he was practically sharing her underwear.

Then he grabbed the printout off the counter. “Forgot my receipt.”

Alex was never late for work, but this morning she made sure to arrive extra early. She was determined to have the library fully operational when—and if—the odious Duncan Forbes arrived. She couldn’t keep him out, unfortunately, since this was a public building, but she could certainly keep a close eye on him and his roving ballpoint.

Not to mention his roving eye.

Since it was a gorgeous fall day, normally she’d walk to work, enjoying the late September sunshine and the feeling of fresh air filling her lungs. But she planned to pick up groceries on her way home, so she drove.

When she arrived, she took a few minutes to stand in the sunshine and breathe, then she unlocked the library’s back door and headed inside. She unlocked her office, booted up her computer and started the coffee, as she did every morning. She measured the coffee carefully, using the rich, dark rainforest blend she purchased from the Italian café on Main Street. As she wiped a trace of spilled coffee from the white counter in the tiny coffee room, she thought about Duncan Forbes as she’d been doing with annoying frequency since yesterday.

There was something about him she didn’t trust. She’d been so flabbergasted when he’d announced he was a professor that she’d let him go without challenging him. But if he were an academician writing a book, why wouldn’t he go to one of the university libraries at Eugene or Portland or Corvallis? Even a big city library would make more sense. She did her best with a limited budget, and the internet brought instant access to all kinds of research, but Swiftcurrent was still a very odd choice for an academic author.

She wondered what subject he taught. Wished she’d had wit enough to ask him. Outdoor recreation, maybe, or forestry. Something that kept him outside a good deal.

Forbes didn’t look like a professor of anything. She tapped her fingers against the once-again immaculate counter as she tried to decide what he did look like.

His image appeared in her mind immediately, and as clearly as though he stood in front of her. Brown hair streaked with blond, weathered skin, squint lines around the eyes, as though he’d spent a lot of time in the sun.

His clothes were rumpled casual in natural fabrics. He wore rugged leather walking shoes and he’d carried a sturdy and beaten-up leather bag.

A wanderer, that’s what he looked like. She imagined that sun-streaked hair blowing in the wind, the blue eyes squinting at the horizon, and smiled to herself. Not any wanderer. A pirate. A modern-day pirate with plunder in his blood, who took without asking. He’d certainly helped himself to the view up her skirt without permission.

That had been bad enough. Worse had been the dizzying rush of attraction she’d felt when she’d first caught him studying her with his deep blue pirate’s gaze. For one wild second she’d imagined she’d quite like to be plundered.

She slapped the counter as though the white laminate were having the inappropriate impulses. A footloose pirate was exactly the kind of man she didn’t need complicating her life. Leaving the coffee room, where heavenly smells were already beginning to waft, she headed for the books.
While the computer was booting and the coffee brewing, it was her habit to walk through the quiet library and make sure all was in order.

The cleaners had been in last night. She still shuddered at the memory of the night they’d left behind a spray bottle of window cleaner and a couple of sixth grade hooligans had found it first.

Stepping out from behind the checkout desk, she decided that if Mr. Forbes returned today, she’d remind him of all the superior research centers in other parts of Oregon.

The man was sexy as hell in a sleepy, rumpled way, but she’d be busy for the next few months with her own agenda. She’d given herself until Thanksgiving to transcribe her grandfather’s life story from audio tape to print and get her grandparents’ house listed and hopefully sold. Once all that was done, she’d help hire her replacement and then she was out of here. She’d find a job in a big, exciting city where anything was possible and people were too busy to gossip about her and her cousin.

The only reason she’d come back to Swiftcurrent was to look after her grandfather once her grandmother passed on. Now that he was gone– The pang of grief was a small, sharp pain in her chest. She rubbed it, feeling the outline of the necklace Grandpa had given her for her twenty-first birthday.

He’d been an old man who’d lived a good life, but still it was hard to believe she’d never see him again.

She shook off her gloom. It was time to get back to her life plan. Marriage before she was thirty-five—well, it was her modified plan. Originally she’d planned to be married by thirty, but since her big birthday last month, she’d had to adjust her life map. She still hoped to have her first child before and her ovaries started emitting warning signals.

For her plan to work, she needed to move to a bigger city where she might actually find a decent, well-educated man in her age range with good eyes and strong teeth, who was good in bed and a good conversationalist. In Swiftcurrent, you could find up to three of those attributes in any one single guy. But Alex was particular. She wanted them all.

She had one other unshakable requirement. He had to be a stay-put kind of man. She wouldn’t put her kids through the vagabond life she’d lived.
Besides, a move out of Swiftcurrent was a move away from her troubled cousin. The familiar feeling of helpless frustration smacked her at the thought of Gillian, so she put that thought firmly away, the way she’d put a damaged book in the basement storage room.

She loved the first luxuriously peaceful minutes of the day. Everything was as quiet as a library should be and in perfect order. She walked among the stacks, breathing the smell of books. The paper and glue, old leather and dust. The smell of learning. She loved being alone with volumes crammed with ideas and knowledge waiting to be explored. She stopped to straighten a row in the children’s section, then noticed that the Narnia novels were out of order and took a moment to numerate them correctly.

If there was a phrase that made her cringe, it was the young mother telling her child to “put that book back where you found it.” In her experience, kids who grabbed books at random weren’t ready for the finer points of Dewey decimal.

It wasn’t a big library, but she was proud of how many resources she could offer the people of this small town. There were two computers with Internet access, plus books for all ages, which she updated twice a year. She’d be able to offer an extra hundred dollars’ worth, thanks to Mr. Forbes, she thought, as she strolled down passed Antiques and stepped around the end to the next aisle.

Art and Artists.

Where she stopped in her tracks and slapped her hand over her mouth.
This morning, there were no stray cloths or bottles of cleaning solution littering the library.

There was a man lying face down on the floor.

For a stunned second or two she simply stood and stared. His feet were toward her, so the first thing she noticed was black shoes with crepe soles. He wore navy slacks and a navy windbreaker. His neck was ruddy and his thick hair more salt than pepper. His arms were on either side of his head, almost as though he were about to do a push-up. A heavy gold ring with a dark red stone adorned the ring finger of his right hand.

She noted all this in the instant it took her to realize that something was wrong. Very wrong.

Her first thought, that a homeless guy had somehow sneaked in and slept here all night, she quickly dismissed when she saw the decent clothes, crisp lines of a recent hair cut and the ring. In the next instant, her skin turned clammy. He looked awfully still and he slept without a sound.
And what was that smell?

Dropping to her knees beside him, she put a trembling hand to his shoulder and squeezed. “Sir?”

No response.

Nausea rose, but still she managed to put two fingers to his neck in search of a pulse, only to draw them back with a helpless moan. His flesh was as cold as marble and almost as stiff. There was no pulse that she could detect.

For the first time she understood the term stone, cold dead. She crouched over the man, scrubbing the fingers that had touched him against her thigh.
Help.
She had to get help. There was a phone in her office, but she wasn’t near brave enough to hang around having a close-up encounter with a corpse while she waited for the police. She’d run next door and get Tom or the chief. They’d know what to do.

Run being the operative word.

She took off at a sprint. She barreled through the library, rounding the corner so fast she put out a hand to hang onto an end cap and knocked Interior Decorating for Beginners, Third Edition, onto the floor.
It was an indication of her level of panic that she didn’t even consider pausing to re-shelve the book sprawled untidily on the floor, but kept running.

Only to smack into something warm and hard.

That grabbed her.

She screamed, horror-movie visions of psycho killers overcoming her common sense. Strong arms tightened, and she bucked and struggled wildly. Kicking, scratching, squirming—fright lending her supernatural strength.
Her fist connected with flesh in a satisfyingly deep jab. Immediately, the arms released her.

“Ow! Alex! It’s me. Duncan Forbes. Hey, what’s wrong?”

The voice. She knew the voice. As the words penetrated the veil of terror covering her senses, she stopped struggling and drew a breath, focusing on the strong, rugged planes of the face in front of her. She’d think about how foolish she’d acted later. For now, even a book defacer was a comforting presence in comparison to a psychotic murderer.

“He’s dead,” she said in a small voice, pointing, ashamed to note that her entire arm trembled.

“Dead? Who’s dead?”

“The man. On the floor. Between Crafts and Art and Artists: 690 to 861.”
Duncan Forbes didn’t look all that shocked by her explanation. He had, she realized, eyes that had seen everything, broad shoulders that encouraged a woman to lay her head—and her problems—there. There was a solidness to him. If there was trouble he’d get to the bottom of it. A fight to be fought, he’d fight it. A dead man on the floor, he’d deal with it. For a woman who already had too much weight on her own shoulders, such a man looked tempting indeed.

Duncan Forbes gave her arms a brisk rub. “You okay?”

She nodded.
Liar.

“Wait here,” he said, and headed off to investigate. Now that Duncan Forbes was here, she didn’t feel such a strong urge to run, and she realized she couldn’t leave her post. Forcing herself to march back through the door and into the library, she walked straight to her office and phoned the sergeant.

“Tom’s across the street getting donuts,” Raeanne Collins, the police department receptionist, told her in a cheerful tone. “He’ll just be a minute. Want him to call you?”

“No. Ask him to come straight over. I’m closing the library so he’ll have to use his master key or knock.”

“Oh, my gosh! You didn’t close that time you had pneumonia. Were you all robbed?”

If Alex told gossipy Raeanne there was a dead man in her library, the entire county would know about it long before Tom made his choice between cream-filled and sprinkles.

“No. We weren’t robbed. There’s a situation I’d like his advice about.”

“Is there anything I—”

God, no. “No. Tell Tom to bring me over a cinnamon sugar.” The very idea of a doughnut was enough to make her gag, but her request would squelch Raeanne’s curiosity.

She locked up the library, then reluctantly went back to the dead man.
As she dragged her feet back to the spot, she braced herself to face a deceased man face down on her floor, but even so she suffered a second shock.

“What are you doing?” she shrieked.

So much for her ridiculous fantasy that a man who scribbled on library books could be counted on in an emergency. The fool had flipped the corpse onto its back.

“I was checking to make sure he was dead.”

Oh. The man had no pulse and felt like a slab of granite. That had been good enough for her. “Is he?”

Duncan Forbes glanced up. “Oh, yeah.”

Something about the way he spoke made her look at the body again, and the minute she did so, she wished she hadn’t. There was a ragged hole in his chest that appeared black and crusty and from it spread a dark, oily stain that had to be blood. The swarthy, middle-aged face was hideous in its final grimace.

“Oh, God. He was . . . he was . .” She slapped a hand over her mouth as nausea choked her. The sickly smell of blood and death was worse, now the corpse was face up.

Ignoring her distress, Forbes calmly completed her sentence. “Murdered. Yes. Recognize him?”

She forced herself to look at the man, really look at him. “No.” She swallowed. If the stranger could be matter-of-fact, so could she. “Why would anybody murder a man inside a library? It doesn’t make sense.”

He shook his head. “Nobody did.”

“What? You think he killed himself in here?” She glanced around. “Where’s the gun?”

“He was murdered, all right. But not here.”

How did Forbes know that? Who was he anyway? Two strangers came into her library within twenty-four hours, one live and one dead. Could it be a coincidence? Damn, she wished Tom would hurry. As one of the only bachelors in town young enough to sport a good head of hair and his own teeth, Tom was popular and prey to matchmakers of every description. She supposed even getting morning snacks involved chitchat—especially since Val at the doughnut shop had a single daughter she’d been trying to fix him up with for years.

Meanwhile, Alex was stuck in here. For all she knew, the live stranger had killed the dead one. She rubbed her chilled arms. “I called the police.”

“Good.”

Silence stretched and she couldn’t stand it any longer. She wished someone would come in, if only to return a book. But, of course, they wouldn’t now that she’d closed the library.

“How do you know he wasn’t killed here?”

“Not enough blood. He was shot first, then dumped here.”

“Is that why there was no bullet hole in the back of his jacket?” That’s why she hadn’t noticed right away that he’d been shot.