Murder Past Due Page 19

  We both turned to hunt for box twelve. Kanesha spotted it first, at the bottom of a stack of four. I helped her move the three on top, and she pulled box twelve out of the way.

  “It’s pretty light,” she said, frowning up at me.

  She squatted down and removed the lid.

  It was empty.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  If I could have crawled into that empty box and pulled the lid over me, I would have. Kanesha’s expression was implacable enough to stop a charging rhino in its tracks.

  She stood after replacing the lid on the box. She walked out into the hall, and I fancied I could see the anger in every step she took. She turned and waited for Diesel and me to join her in the hall.

  “Please lock the door,” she said.

  When I had done so she held out her hand for the keys. “I’m sorry,” I said as I complied.

  She didn’t respond. Instead she walked down the hall to my office, unlocked the door, and stood pointedly by the door. Diesel followed me as I went down the hall and into the office.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said. “I’ll return your keys then.” She headed for the stairs.

  I went to my desk and sat down. I had really screwed things up, and Kanesha had every right to be furious with me. I had let myself get too caught up in the situation and hadn’t thought things through clearly enough. I wasn’t one of the Hardy Boys, happily assisting my famous detective father.

  As a basically law-abiding citizen, however, I had interpreted what I saw as my civic duty to assist the deputy in her inquiry a little too broadly. I did think I had helped her in some ways. How long would it have taken her to find the letters on those disks, for example? But did that outweigh my blunder in allowing someone to steal a whole boxful—if not more—of Godfrey’s papers?

  To distract myself from spinning mental wheels to no effect, I turned to my computer to check my e-mail. Diesel, seeming to sense my inner turmoil, kept rubbing against my legs and purring. I scratched his head and, as always, that made me feel better. Seeing his pleasure from the attention was an effective calming agent.

  After a couple of minutes of scratching, Diesel pulled his head away and climbed into his window seat. Still purring he settled down for a siesta while I tried to focus on work.

  As I read through my e-mail, I heard Kanesha return, but I didn’t look up from my task. Some minutes later I was aware that she entered my office, and I swiveled in my chair to face her.

  “Here are your keys,” she said as she placed them on my desk. “I’ve put an official seal on the room, but I’ll be sending someone here within the hour to remove those boxes to the sheriff’s department. If you will have a receipt ready, I’d appreciate it.”

  I glanced at her face. Her expression had lost some of the rigidity it had earlier, and I relaxed a bit myself. Maybe she wasn’t going to bless me out after all.

  “I’ll be glad to do that,” I said.

  “Fine.” She glared at me a moment. “I realize that you had good intentions, Mr. Harris, and generally we appreciate cooperation from the public. But you stepped too far over the line. You realize that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do,” I said. “I can’t tell you how much I regret not notifying you right away about Godfrey’s papers. I can only hope this won’t cause serious problems for your investigation.”

  She listened, but when I finished, she simply nodded and walked out.

  After that I tried to focus on my e-mail, but it was no use. I was still too unsettled by what had transpired between Kanesha and me. I glanced at my watch. It was almost four-thirty. Might as well get out of here.

  “Come on, boy, time to go,” I told Diesel as I shut down my computer.

  Yawning, he sat up and stretched. He stood patiently, as always, for me to put him in his harness, and a few minutes later we were ready to go. The afternoon was cool but sunny when we left the building. During the brief walk home, I thought about what I might do this evening.

  A quiet night at home would be just the thing. That’s what I told myself, but a little niggling voice kept insisting that there was something else I could do.

  Teresa Farmer, the librarian I mentioned to Kanesha Berry, was usually at the public library until six on Friday evenings. I had time to go over there and have a quiet chat with her and find out what she might know about local writers’ groups.

  This would mean treading on Kanesha’s toes again, but I knew I could trust Teresa’s discretion. If I told her why I was asking, she would not talk about it to anyone until the deputy asked for her assistance.

  When you want something, you can generally come up with the reasoning to justify it, I have discovered over the years. Even when you know you shouldn’t.

  At home all was quiet. I let Diesel have time to use the litter box and eat something before heading to the public library in the car. I contemplated leaving him home, but if I walked through the front door of the library without him, I would have to look at any number of disappointed faces. Diesel was very popular there.

  I pulled into the parking lot at the library a few minutes after five. Diesel walked ahead of me, pulling a bit on the leash, eager to go inside. He enjoyed the public library because of the attention he always received.

  The first few minutes inside we spent accepting greetings from some of the children who were there, not to mention the adults on the library staff. Teresa was not at the reference desk, and I was afraid for a moment that she wasn’t at work today.

  But a few minutes later she appeared from the office area behind the reference desk, alerted no doubt by the increase in noise. A petite dynamo a few years my senior, Teresa smiled broadly when she discovered the reason for the noise.

  As soon as I could I extracted Diesel from his cadre of young admirers and led him behind the reference desk where Teresa waited. She had three cats of her own, and she was as fond of Diesel as anyone here.

  “Charlie, what are you doing here? This is an unexpected pleasure,” Teresa said. “And Diesel, how are you?” She squatted in front of the cat in order to give him some attention, rubbing his head affectionately.

  Diesel purred and warbled while I explained.

  “I came to see you,” I said. “I need your help with something.”

  Teresa stood. “Sure, come on back to my office.”

  Diesel and I followed her. Teresa was the head of reference for the library as well as the assistant director. She also supervised the library’s few volunteers, and I had worked closely with her for almost three years now.

  She sat down behind her desk and motioned for me to take a seat across from her. I did so and unhooked Diesel’s leash from his harness. He padded around the desk and climbed up into Teresa’s lap. When he sat up his head was actually a bit higher than hers, and I had to smile at the sight.

  “What can I do for you, Charlie?” Teresa said as she rubbed Diesel under the chin.

  “It has to do with Godfrey Priest,” I said.

  Startled, Teresa looked at me. “That’s odd,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “I had a call just a few minutes ago from Detective Berry,” she said. “She’s coming in tomorrow morning to talk to me about something to do with Godfrey. She didn’t say what, exactly, just that she needed some information and someone had suggested me to her. Was that you?”

  Kanesha had acted more quickly than I expected. At least she had accepted my suggestion, I thought.

  “Yes, it was,” I said. “I’m being really naughty in coming to talk to you before she does, but I’m letting my curiosity get the better of me, I’m afraid.”

  Teresa laughed. “I promise not to rat on you. What is it you and Deputy Berry want to know?”

  “Information on local writers’ groups,” I said. “If there are any, I figured you’d be bound to know.”

  “Thanks,” Teresa said. “We do try to keep track of any community activities to be prepared for the inevitable questions.”
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br />   “I know,” I said, grinning. “I’ll never forget the time I got a call from a woman—this was in Houston—who was looking for information on an organization for cats.” I had to laugh, just thinking about it.

  “What’s so funny about that?” Teresa asked.

  “She had heard about a group that knitted socks for cats, she said, and she wanted to join them,” I said. I chuckled again.

  Teresa joined in my laughter. “I can’t imagine one of my cats allowing me to put socks on her or him. They’d have a fit.”

  “I thought it was pretty funny,” I said. “But of course I couldn’t tell her that. So I found her the name of a contact person for a local cat fanciers’ group. I never heard whether she found what she was looking for.”

  “At least you gave her something,” Teresa said, still smiling. “Now, about writers’ groups. Yes, I can think of several. There’s one group that’s been meeting here at the library for about twenty years. They’re all poets, though, and somehow I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for. Not if it has something to do with Godfrey Priest.”

  “Right,” I said. “I want to know if there was a group he was ever a part of, or maybe whether he spoke to local groups when he came back to Athena.”

  “And you can’t tell me exactly why you want this information?”

  “No, I can’t,” I said with regret. “You don’t mind, I hope.”

  “I can live with it,” Teresa said wryly. “Okay. Godfrey Priest and writers’ groups.” She frowned as she thought. By now Diesel had settled down in her lap, his head against her chest as he purred in deep contentment. Teresa stroked his head gently.

  I kept quiet while she dredged through her memory banks. She had amazing recall—one reason she was such a terrific reference librarian. If there were something to find, she’d find it.

  “It has to be at least twenty years ago now,” Teresa said. “Godfrey Priest hasn’t spoken at this library in at least that long. He did participate in a fund-raiser we had about seven years ago, spoke at a Friends of the Library dinner, but that was it.”

  “What about twenty years ago?” I said, prompting her gently when she fell silent again.

  “There was a group that met here occasionally back then,” Teresa said. “Seven or eight people, I think. They weren’t together that long, or at least they didn’t ask to use our meeting room for long. They could have continued meeting somewhere else.”

  “Do you recall who was in the group?” I kept my fingers crossed.

  “I can do better than that,” Teresa said with a smile. “I can show you a picture of them.” She scratched Diesel’s head. “But you’re going to have to let me up.” Diesel sat up, butted his head against her chin, and jumped to the floor at her gentle urging.

  “A picture would be great,” I said as Diesel came around the desk to sit by my chair.

  Teresa got up from her desk. “I’ll be back in a minute. What I want is in one of the filing cabinets behind the reference desk.”

  Diesel and I waited quietly for her return. She was gone less than five minutes.

  When she returned she handed me a folder. I examined the label: “Library Annual Reports.”

  “I put the relevant one on top,” Teresa said as she resumed her seat behind the desk.

  I extracted it from the folder and laid the rest aside on top of her desk. The report consisted of only a few pages, and it was on page four that I found the photograph Teresa wanted me to see. It was rather small, and the caption only said, “Writers’ Group Meets with Local Novelist.”

  In the center of a group of six people was Godfrey Priest—looking much younger and much less successful than he did when I saw him a few days ago. That was only natural. This picture was taken before he hit it big.

  I examined the faces of the others in the group. I recognized two of them right away, and I was stunned as I put the names to the faces.

  Julia Wardlaw and Rick Tackett stood on either side of Godfrey, both smiling into the camera.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “You look shocked,” Teresa said. “Is anything wrong?”

  “I’m just really surprised,” I said. “I see two people in this group I never expected to see. Two people I had no idea were interested in writing.”

  I examined the other faces in the group. Two of them looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place them. If only the caption to the picture had included their names.

  I was about to hand the report back to Teresa to ask whether she knew who they all were when I spotted something odd in the picture. I held it closer and squinted. The resolution wasn’t great, but I thought I saw the top of another head peeking out from behind Julia’s shoulder, the one next to Godfrey.

  “Looks like there’s another person here in the background,” I said. I held the report across the desk to Teresa. “See what you think. Also, do you know who all the people are?”

  Teresa examined the picture for a moment before laying the report aside. She opened one of her desk drawers and rummaged through it. “Ah, here it is,” she said. She brandished a magnifying glass. She picked up the report again and examined the picture with the aid of the glass.

  “I think you’re right,” she said after a moment. “That does look like someone’s head. It’s odd, though. Why wouldn’t whoever it was want to be visible in the picture?”

  “Beats me,” I said. My heartbeat picked up though, because I wondered if the mystery person behind Julia was X. Based on the letters I had read, X shunned the spotlight, and it could be that he or she avoided having photos taken.

  Teresa laid the glass aside and looked at the picture again. “I recognize all of them,” she said. She named them, and in addition to Julia and Rick, I recognized the names of a couple of professors at Athena, one from the history department and the other from English.

  “Would you mind writing those down for me?” I said. “And do all of them still live in the area?”

  “One of them passed away a few years go,” she said. “I’ll put an X next to her name. But the others—except Mr. Priest, of course—are still around.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I really appreciate your help with this. I can’t tell you how, or why, but this may be the key to Godfrey’s murder.”

  “That’s definitely intriguing,” Teresa said. She finished writing and handed a piece of paper across the desk to me. “I’m sure it would help if we knew who the other person was lurking in the background. I’ve been mulling it over, and I seem to remember that there were a couple of people who met with the group a few times, but the six you see here were the core. They met together for four or five years, I think.”

  “I know one of the people in the group pretty well,” I said. “And I work with another one.”

  “That’s right, Rick Tackett works at the college library,” Teresa said. “He’s a nice man, pretty quiet. Reads a lot. I hope he’s not involved in this.”

  “I hope so, too,” I said. “I agree he’s a nice guy. But I think one of the people here may very well be the one Deputy Berry is looking for.”

  “That’s unsettling, to say the least,” Teresa said with a frown. “I hope she manages to figure it out soon. If one of them comes in the library before she does, I think I’ll be a bit nervous.”

  “No need to be, I’m sure,” I said. “There’s no reason for anyone to think you’re involved in any way.”

  “Other than assisting the official inquiry, you mean.” Teresa’s smile was impish. “And the unofficial one.”

  “Yes,” I said, hoping that my face wasn’t turning pink. “I appreciate your help, but I think Diesel and I ought to head home now.” I stood, and Teresa came around the desk to shake my hand. “I’ll see you next Friday, of course.”

  “We always look forward to it,” Teresa said as she escorted Diesel and me out of the office. “Our volunteers are a huge help, and we definitely appreciate what you do for us.” She bent to rub Diesel’s head. “And you too, bi
g guy.”

  Diesel chirped at her, and I smiled as I led him away. We managed to make it out the door after only a few minutes’ delay for more attention to Diesel. He loved every second of it, the ham.

  Back in the car I examined the list of names for a moment while Diesel settled down on the passenger seat beside me. I might as well start with Julia, I reckoned. Seeing her in the picture had really knocked me for a loop. Her connections to this case were so strong, and though I was sure she had to be innocent of Godfrey’s murder, I knew her having been part of the writers’ group might make Kanesha Berry focus more intently on her.

  Rick Tackett seemed like a stronger possibility in many ways. He was Godfrey’s half brother, for one thing, and as the library’s custodian, he had easy access to my office and to the archive storeroom. No one would have thought twice about it if he had been spotted upstairs near the storeroom on the evening when someone had obviously entered my office and examined the boxes.

  I had to hope that whoever it was hadn’t destroyed the contracts. If Kanesha could find those in his—or her, I added, to be completely fair—possession, that would be an important link to the murder.

  Surely, however, there were other copies of the contracts. Godfrey’s agent had to have copies. I brightened at that thought. The agent would be at Godfrey’s memorial service tomorrow. By then she would already have talked with Kanesha, and perhaps I could slip in a few questions without objection.

  On the short drive home I pondered the questions I wanted to pose to the agent. How should I start? What preface to my questions could I use to disarm her enough to talk to me?

  One big question occurred to me right away, and I knew I would have to be very careful in asking it. Did the agent know that Godfrey wasn’t writing the books himself?

  Then I remembered that Kanesha would probably be asking her that question, not to mention countless others, tonight. I would try and see how far I could get.

  Julia’s car was parked in front of the house, and Diesel and I found her in the kitchen. We exchanged greetings as I released Diesel from his harness. He went to greet Julia before trotting off to his litter box.