The Chocolate Book Bandit Read online

  Rhonda had inherited a half dozen lakeshore tourist cottages, and she and her husband rented them out each summer, so they were part of the Warner Pier business community. Their cottages and their home were about a mile from where Joe and I lived, south along the shore of Lake Michigan.

  “Oh, hi, Lee,” she said. “I heard that you’re to replace Abigail on the board.”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “You should take the job. There’s nothing to it but one meeting a month.”

  “I would have thought you’d have been quite busy for the past year, what with the planning and construction of the new building.”

  “The director—the former director, Catherine Smith—took care of nearly everything. We’re a rubber-stamp body, I’m afraid.” Was her tone a bit on the dry side? Or was that my imagination?

  Rhonda sat down and produced a notebook and pen from her tote bag. She laid these on the table; then she took out a large piece of knitting.

  Before I could question her about the board, a tall, slender young woman came in. She had long brown hair and carried a baby in a sling. At the door to the room she turned back and spoke firmly. “Geraldine, you’re to keep an eye on Hal. Stay strictly in the children’s section. Any problems, come and get me.”

  I recognized her, too. Gwen Swain. She was the wife of an engineer who worked at a power plant south of us. Lindy called her the Earth Mother. I knew from Lindy that Gwen homeschooled her oldest child and had been known to nurse her baby while browsing the produce at the Superette. For the moment the baby was napping.

  Gwen gave me a vigorous handshake and sat down next to Dr. Cornwall.

  Hard on her heels, Carol Turley stomped in with her usual awkward gait. She carried a fancy red leather folder, a sort of miniature briefcase.

  Gwen spoke to her. “Oh, hi, Carol. Is that the case you were telling me about?”

  “Yes,” she said, and smiled a rather nervous smile. But she blinked her eyes so rapidly I thought she was trying not to cry. “Yes, Brian gave it to me last week. For my birthday.”

  “That was a sweet thing to do,” Gwen said.

  Carol blinked harder. “Yes, my husband really is a sweetie.”

  Maybe so, I thought, but he’s not real romantic. I mean, a leather folder isn’t a diamond ring or even a dozen roses. But I guess it was something Carol would use all the time.

  Carol dropped the folder on the table, and it made quite a thud. Dr. Cornwall jumped and opened his eyes. Luckily, his chair did not go over.

  Carol was the kind of person who is never noticed in a crowd. She was about my age and short, with dull blond hair. But I couldn’t call Carol plain; her big brown eyes were too expressive. She shut them tightly, then popped them open. After taking a deep breath, she spoke to me. Her voice had its usual whine. “I see you’ve decided to join us.”

  “Actually, this is an exploratory visit,” I said.

  “Well, there’s nothing to it,” Carol said. She twisted her hands together nervously. “Between the library director and the city engineer we have strong guidance. There’s never any question of how to vote.”

  “But you’re getting a new library director,” I said. “He may expect more participation from the board.”

  “Why?” Now Carol’s voice was not only loud, but also incredulous. “We just stand back and stay out of the way. Unless he pulls some dumb stunt.”

  “And I’ll try not to do that.”

  A bass voice sounded from the doorway, and we all turned to look at a person who was designed by nature to be called Butch. He was tall—maybe six-three—and rough-hewn, with a large, blocky build, and a friendly grin. But the most eye-catching thing about him was a gorgeous streak of gray at each temple. He looked like an ad for men’s hair color. If I owned such a company I would have made him our official spokesman on the spot.

  “I’m sure you’ve all figured out that I’m Butch Cassidy,” he said. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me who you are.”

  He walked around the table and shook hands with each of us.

  I was the final person he greeted, so I had a minute to take him in.

  Sexy. He was sexy. My innards noticed that right away.

  By the time he reached my side of the table, “sexy” was definitely the word I’d picked to describe him. It wasn’t that he was particularly handsome; Joe was a lot better-looking. Butch just seemed to broadcast sex appeal.

  All the women seemed to grow more feminine as he spoke to them. The prim Rhonda Ringer-Riley almost simpered. Gwen looked more Earth Motherish. Carol Turley even managed not to say anything else rude. “I’m Carol Turley,” she said. “I’m secretary-treasurer.” Then she sat down abruptly, almost missing her chair.

  But the stupid comment was left for me. I extended my hand to the new director and said, “I’m Lee McKinney. I mean, Woodwind. I mean, Woodyard. Lee Woodyard. And I’m not a member of the body. Board.”

  I quit then. I had completely messed up, and I had the sense to know things might get even worse. I’m famous for my twisted tongue, but I’d outdone myself.

  Rhonda looked pained, and Carol Turley giggled. “Well, who are you, Lee?” She giggled again.

  Butch—I was already thinking of him by that name—ignored Carol. “Guests are always welcome,” he said. He sat down next to Rhonda. “We seem to have a quorum, Mrs. Ringer-Riley. Shall we start?”

  Rhonda looked surprised. “Oh. But Miss Vanderklomp isn’t here yet.”

  Butch consulted a paper. “Vanderklomp? Is she a member of the board?”

  “No. No, she’s an honorary member. She always attends. It seems—well, rude to start without her.”

  Butch frowned.

  “And she’s here!”

  Miss Vanderklomp shot into the room as if she’d been propelled by a cannon. “Late, as usual!” Her voice was close to a shout, and, yes, it managed to be both nasal and very deep. She was tall, nearly as tall as I am, and I’m close to six feet. Her build was husky, and her silver-gray hair was cropped into a thick Dutch bob that stuck out over each ear. She dropped several file folders and a plastic water bottle onto the table. She plunked herself into a folding chair with such force I expected the chair to collapse. She reached inside her blouse—first the right shoulder, then the left—and adjusted her bra straps. Then she took a drink from her water bottle. It was the opaque kind of plastic, so you couldn’t see the color of its contents. It could well have held Pepsi, just as Tony had claimed.

  “Sorry for my dilatory habits,” she boomed.

  I was staring openmouthed. Tony’s parody of her had been unbelievably accurate. For the first time I fully appreciated his humor.

  But nobody on the library board laughed.

  Instead, Gwen spoke quietly. “Abigail Montgomery isn’t here either.”

  “She’s in the building,” Rhonda said. “I saw her when I came in. She’ll be along. Let the meeting come to order.”

  Apparently no one was concerned about waiting for Abigail, even though Abigail, unlike Miss Vanderklomp, was an official member of the board. In fact, she was the person I had been invited to replace. That seemed rather odd.

  The meeting went on. Abigail didn’t appear. No one seemed to notice.

  The business seemed routine. Minutes, various committees. There was a simple financial report from Butch Cassidy. This made me ask about Carol’s duties as secretary-treasurer, and Carol explained that the title “treasurer” simply indicated she chaired the financial committee. A library staff member kept any financial records, passing them on to the city treasurer.

  After twenty minutes I had concluded that Carol’s assessment of the board was right; they didn’t do much.

  Actually, there was not much need for them to take action. The staff and building expenses for the library were paid by the Village of Warner Pier. The
city council, for example, had officially hired the new director. The board merely advised on programs and operations. They were more citizen representatives than officials.

  Butch Cassidy didn’t suggest any revolutionary changes at his first meeting. His report didn’t draw much reaction until he got to the final item.

  “I found a request for a change in hours among the director’s files,” he said. “I was surprised to learn that the Warner Pier Public Library has never been open on Sundays.”

  “The previous director didn’t recommend that,” Rhonda said.

  “In August a group of students requested that the library be open Sunday afternoons during the school year. This seems to be a reasonable request, and I’ve—”

  “Humph!” The syllable exploded from Miss Vanderklomp’s lips. “Think carefully, Mr. Cassidy! That might be a dangerous precedent!”

  Butch looked surprised. Then he frowned. “But it’s standard practice—”

  He didn’t get to finish his sentence. Before he could say another word, an enormous shriek echoed through the building.

  We all reacted. I jumped up and headed for the door. Gwen’s baby joined the clamor. The front legs of Dr. Cornwall’s chair hit the floor with a crash. Carol yelled out. “What’s that? What! What!”

  I was the first person out, because I’d been nearest the door. The noise was coming from across the main room. Peering between the stacks, I saw Betty Blake, the clerk who’d been checking out books, running toward the front of the building.

  I scurried after her. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

  “Help! Call 9-1-1!”

  “What’s happened?”

  “I think it’s Abigail! Abigail Montgomery! She’s in a heap at the bottom of the basement stairs. She’s not breathing!”

  She cried out again. “She’s dead! She’s dead! Call someone!”

  Chapter 3

  There was a mad rush to the tiny back hall and then to the basement door. Since I’d been the first one out of the room, I was the first one down the stairs, and Butch was right behind me. The others hovered at the top of the steps.

  The light was poor, but when Butch and I knelt over Abigail Montgomery, I felt sure she was dead. She was lying on her stomach, with her head turned slightly to the side. Blood from a wound on the back of her head had made a puddle on the floor. I couldn’t find a pulse, and when Butch held a scrap of paper in front of her nose, it didn’t give a quiver. She wasn’t breathing.

  “She’s gone,” Butch said.

  He called out to the group at the top of the stairs. “Please go back to the boardroom. I’ll call 9-1-1 on my cell phone. Then I’ll wait for the EMTs at the front door.”

  Everybody moved back except Miss Vanderklomp. She came down two steps and growled a comment. “It doesn’t seem right to leave her alone.”

  Butch went up the stairs and edged past her. “I think it will be okay.”

  “I feel that someone should stay with her.”

  The darn woman was bossing just for the sake of bossing. I felt really annoyed.

  “It’s all right, Miss Vanderklomp,” I said. I spoke as firmly as I could, considering that my insides were sloshing around like Lake Michigan on a windy day. “I’ll stay here.”

  I followed Butch partway up the stairs and sat down, firmly planting my fanny on a step, then spreading my arms and legs out so that Miss Vanderklomp would have to jump over me if she tried to come farther.

  “I could stay,” she said.

  “Oh, I have completed first-aid training,” I said.

  Which was true, but had nothing to do with anything. First aid was not going to help Abigail Montgomery.

  The comment did make Miss Vanderklomp pause, although she was still lingering on the step, frowning.

  “Plus,” I said, “I’m sure you know the chief of police is married to my aunt.”

  That shut her up, even though that circumstance also had nothing to do with anything. She sniffed irately and went back upstairs. At least she left the door open. I didn’t want to be down there alone with what had been Abigail.

  Not that I was deeply grieved. In fact, although Abigail Montgomery had been pointed out to me, I didn’t think I had ever spoken with her. My impression was that she led a rather reclusive life. I racked my brain, trying to remember what I knew or had heard about her.

  Abigail was a member of a fairly prominent family in Warner Pier. They had also been prominent in both Michigan state affairs and in Chicago. They had “cottaged” in Warner Pier since forever, and Abigail was one of those summer people who had come to live in Warner Pier after she retired, moving to a home she and her husband had built years earlier at the family compound.

  Abigail’s maiden name had been Hart, and the Hart family had a few skeletons in their closets that I already knew about. Her brother, Timothy Hart, is one of the sweetest men I know—he helped save my life once upon a time—but he’s a chronic alcoholic. Her sister . . . Well, the less said about her sister, the better. Her brother-in-law had a strange life, as well as a strange death. However, her nephew, Hart VanHorn, is a former Michigan state legislator who is now a leading lawyer in Grand Rapids, and as far as I know is a perfectly nice guy.

  I knew nothing about Mr. Montgomery, whomever he had been, but Abigail had lived in California for many years. I had a vague impression, drawn from Warner Pier gossip, that she had moved back to the family compound for financial reasons. She’d been a year-round resident for three or four years, and since my father-in-law is the mayor, I happened to hear that Hart called him and asked him to find his aunt some sort of committee to serve on. “She needs to get out more,” her nephew said, “and she could make a genuine contribution to the community.” “She’s incredibly shy,” Hart had said, but she’s an intelligent and well-read woman.”

  “Well read.” Aha. Mike had named her to the library board, and she had served two years. Abigail was declining a second term because she’d developed health problems.

  I rapidly reviewed this information as I waited for the EMTs. But nothing that I had ever heard about Abigail Montgomery told me what I’d really like to know: What the heck had she been doing falling down the basement stairs in the Warner Pier Public Library when she should have been up in the meeting room?

  I looked around that basement. Only the area around the bottom of the stairs was illuminated. A bare bulb swung above my head, but the light it gave left parts of the room too glary and other parts too shadowy. The basement extended off into the dim, dark recesses of the building. I guessed that it was the same size as the upstairs, but I certainly couldn’t tell for sure.

  What I could see were bare wooden stairs—the kind with empty space between the treads—and I was sitting on those. There were heaps of boxes, tables loaded with books, and an old rack that must have once held newspapers. The area was cool, too, and the air had a damp, cellarlike feeling.

  By the time I heard heavy footsteps thumping over my head and realized that Authority of some sort had arrived, I was definitely ready to get out of that basement. But, of course, I couldn’t. Butch and the Warner Pier PD’s night patrolman came down the stairs, and I couldn’t get past them. Instead I had to get up and move farther into the basement to let them in. The EMT crew was right behind them. I had to move even farther into the basement to let that group have room. So I wound up standing about twenty feet away, behind a table, while all the men blocked the steps that would have allowed me to escape. There was nothing I could do but wait.

  And look around. I admit I did that. I didn’t want to watch the undignified things that were being done to Abigail, so I looked elsewhere.

  After my eyes adjusted to the dark I did find another hanging lightbulb, the kind with a pull chain. So I pulled it on. That illuminated a new area of the spooky basement. Not that there was much to see. It was more of the same. Broken ch
airs, a heap of boards that might once have been a bookshelf, and stacks of old books.

  The most interesting item was that old rack that had once held newspapers. People younger than I am might never have seen one, now that library patrons access old newspapers by computer. But when my grandmother took the five-year-old me to the children’s story hour at the library back in Prairie Creek, Texas, that library had a special rack for newspapers.

  It’s hard to describe; the only thing similar I’ve ever seen might be a folding drying rack. Wooden sticks hung on staggered pegs, and newspapers hung on the sticks. They were staggered so that the newspapers in front wouldn’t block access to the newspapers in back. The back of the rack stood about five feet from the floor, and the front row of pegs about three feet. The wooden rods had some sort of clamps or slots to hold the newspapers.

  The racks I had grown up with had metal rods, but this rack had wooden rods to hold each type of newspaper. There were a half dozen sets of pegs to hold the rods. The rack had probably once held recent issues of the Warner Pier Weekly Gazette, the Holland Sentinel, the Grand Rapids Press, and the Chicago Tribune. Probably the Chicago Sun, too, back then, when major cities had more than one daily.

  Because I didn’t want to think about the work going on with Abigail, I found myself wondering whether the library had originally bought the rack secondhand. The wooden rods were surely older than the metal rods I remembered.

  Five empty wooden rods were lined up on the old rack, but one set of pegs was empty. Then I saw the extra rod. It was on the floor between me and the group of emergency workers kneeling near the stairs.

  I went over and picked it up. The basement was a mess, but at least I could do one little thing to neaten it up.

  As I turned toward the rack, something on the wooden rod I was holding caught my eye. Hair. A clump of hair was sticking to the thick end of the rod. That seemed odd. I pulled it close to my eyes, trying to see it in the harsh light. And I saw that a crack ran down one side of the rod, a crack that wasn’t supposed to be there.