BRIAR CREEK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
Lindsey was working the reference desk on the adult side of the library when the first members of the Friends started to arrive for their meeting. They waved as they passed by and she waved back. She kept an eye out for Bill and Marjorie but didn’t see either of them arrive.
She wondered if they had quit the group in protest and figured she could ask Milton after the meeting, as he seemed to be in the know about these things. She thought perhaps it was for the best if they had. Tension in the group couldn’t be a good thing.
“Excuse me, can you help me find out when National Pie Day is?”
Lindsey turned away from the hallway to see a young woman standing in front of the reference desk. She looked to be in her mid-twenties. She was carrying a laptop under her arm and looking pretty cranky.
“Sure, is that all you want to know, when National Pie Day is?” Lindsey said.
“No, I have a whole list of events and I need to find out when they are. I’m student teaching at a preschool and they want me to come up with all sorts of activities and stuff.”
“Oh, okay,” Lindsey said. She rose from the desk and headed for the ready reference bookshelf adjacent to her desk where they kept their favorite reference books.
The young woman let out a put-upon sigh, as if walking five feet and cracking open a book was the equivalent of hard labor. “Can’t you just google it?”
“I could,” Lindsey said. “But since you have a list of events, using a book is actually going to be faster.”
The girl grumbled as she followed her, and Lindsey had to suppress the urge to smile. She reached for her favorite book and placed it on top of the shelf.
“This is Chase’s Calendar of Events. It should answer all of your questions. There is an index in the back so you can look it up by the type of event. For example, you might want to start with pie. The pages are also broken down by day, so you can look up any day in the calendar year and find out what is special about it.”
“Really?” the woman asked, looking suspicious.
“Indeed,” Lindsey said. Now she did chuckle. “It’s a great book, one of my favorites. And now I’ll tell you a secret. When you google things, you have to be able to verify the website. Otherwise Joe Shmoe could put up a web page declaring National Pie Day is October fourth, when everyone knows-and Chase’s will verify-that National Pie Day is January twenty-third.”
The woman looked at her with rounded eyes as if she’d never thought of that. Lindsey smiled and walked away. She loved Google for doing searches as much as the next person, but really, it wasn’t all that and it certainly didn’t verify its sites. It was just one tool out of many in the quest for information.
When she got back to the reference desk, Mimi Seitler was standing there, fretting her lower lip.
“Hi, Mimi,” Lindsey said. “Is everything all right?”
“You haven’t seen Carrie, have you?” Mimi asked.
“No, not since the last meeting,” Lindsey said. “Isn’t she here yet?”
Lindsey glanced at the clock on the lower right-hand corner of her computer monitor. It was fourteen minutes past the hour. It wasn’t like Carrie to be late, and certainly not to her first meeting as president.
Just then the main glass doors slid open and Carrie rushed in. Her coat was hanging off her shoulders, she didn’t have on a hat or gloves and her cheeks were brightly flushed. Lindsey would have thought it was from the cold but she looked agitated.
“Oh, good, she’s here,” Mimi said.
Carrie was rushing through the main room toward the back and Mimi hurried to join her.
Lindsey thought she heard the words car trouble and was relieved that at least it hadn’t been Bill or Marjorie causing Carrie grief.
The rest of the evening passed quietly, and Lindsey and her two remaining staff members were just shutting down the equipment when the Friends adjourned for the night and trooped through the library on their way to the exit.
“So, you must be the notorious Ms. Norris,” a voice said from behind her.
Lindsey spun around to see a very handsome man in a long overcoat standing behind her.
“Notorious?” she asked. “I don’t know about that.”
“According to my uncle Bill, you are quite the femme fatale.”
Lindsey sighed. She had a feeling she knew to which Bill he was referring. “You’re related to Bill Sint?”
“He’s my uncle,” the man said and held out his hand. “Edmund Sint at your service.”
He was a few inches taller than Lindsey and he had the whole-milk, grain-fed, clean-cut appearance of a model in a Brooks Brothers’ ad. With a pang, she realized he reminded her of her former fiancé, John Mayhew, as he had the air of an academic about him with the same ruddy-cheeked good looks and charming manner.
She shook his hand. “I know your uncle is unhappy with me. I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “Uncle Bill can be a bit taciturn, but he generally gets over it. He has a horrible cold right now. He sent me as his emissary to make certain no one thought he’d been driven out of the Friends.”
He grinned at her, and Lindsey couldn’t help but smile back. Whatever Bill Sint lacked in good manners, Edmund made up for by the bucketful.
“Tell me,” he said as he leaned close, “is it true he told you to get stuffed?”
He wiggled his eyebrows at her and Lindsey had to laugh. He had the look of someone who did not take life too seriously. She liked that.
“He did,” she said. “It was quite shocking.” She imitated his eyebrow maneuver and he laughed. It was a good, deep laugh that rumbled up from his chest without restraint. She was glad Ms. Cole wasn’t here right now, for she surely would have shushed him.
“Good night, Lindsey,” Carrie called as she passed them.
“Good night,” Lindsey said.
“Oh, Mrs. Rushton,” Edmund called to her. “Won’t you join us for a moment?”
Carrie looked uncertain, as if she wasn’t sure if Edmund was friend or foe.
He must have sensed her reluctance, because he said, “Don’t worry; unlike my uncle, I don’t bite.”
Carrie smiled with relief and joined them.
“As an apology for my uncle’s behavior, I’d like to invite you both to lunch at the house,” he said. “It will give us a chance to get better acquainted and encourage my uncle to get over his hurt feelings. I’ll even give you a tour of the estate. You can admire all of the family’s various collections. What do you say?”
“Well, that’s very nice of you.” Carrie hedged.
“We’d love to.” Lindsey accepted for the both of them. This was just what Carrie and Bill needed to let bygones be bygones.
Carrie gave her a wide-eyed glance while Edmund grinned at her. “Excellent. I’ll give Uncle a few days to recover from his cold and then we’ll set a date.”
Lindsey liked the way his gray eyes darkened when he said the word date. Not that she thought it was a date or that he was implying that it was a date. She just liked his eyes, really.
She and Carrie watched him leave with a good-natured wave.
“What was that about?” Carrie asked.
“I’m not sure, but I suspect Edmund wants Bill to get back into the good graces of the Friends and he’s trying to facilitate a reconciliation.”
“Yeah, or he’s warm for your form,” Carrie said and gave her a teasing close-lipped smile.
“Why that’s just, well, silly,” Lindsey spluttered. There was no denying the warmth that heated her cheeks, however. She turned and headed for her office. “I’ll call you if I hear from him.”
“You mean when you hear from him,” Carrie said. She laughed at Lindsey’s chagrin and left the building with a wave.
Lindsey ushered her staff out the back door and hurriedly set the alarm. As the large steel door swung shut behind her, she waved good night to her staff. The evening air was bitterly cold, and it felt as if it pierced her lungs on the inhale. As she circled the building to where her bike was kept, she was not at all surprised to find Sully there waiting for her.
“No Beth tonight?” he asked. His pickup truck was parked at the curb, and she wondered if he’d been waiting long.
She had a sudden pang of conscience for agreeing to lunch with Edmund Sint, which was ridiculous since, as far as she knew, she and Sully were just friends.
“No, she’s off today because she’s working Saturday,” she said.
“Ah,” he said and he grinned at her. Dimples bracketed his smile, making him even more handsome than usual, which was impressive, given that Sully could trip up most of the female population without even trying.
Lindsey felt her insides do the flip-flop thing. After her fiancé had cheated on her, she hadn’t thought she’d ever feel that kind of sizzle-and-zip attraction for a man, at least not for a very long while. But Sully sure was making her change her mind about that, and suddenly she had no interest in having lunch with Edmund Sint, even if it did include a tour of the Sint estate, which she had been dead curious about since she’d moved to Briar Creek.
She found herself watching Sully as he loaded up her bike. She realized she hadn’t bundled up as much as she usually did. Her scarf was loose around her neck and she wore her hat back on her head. She hadn’t jammed up all of her hair under it either. She wondered if this had been an unconscious decision because she had hoped she’d be seeing Sully or if she’d just been rushing and forgot.
She decided she really didn’t want to know. If anyone asked, she’d been rushing. Yep, that was her story and she was sticking to it.
She glanced away from Sully and noticed a lone car out in the parking lot. Standing beside it was Carrie Rushton. Lindsey remembered she’d been late to the meeting because of car trouble. She wondered if Carrie was stuck.
She told Sully she’d be right back and hurried across the dark lot to make sure her friend was okay.
“Carrie, are you all right?”
Carrie looked at her and then quickly away, wiping at her face with her mitten as she did so, but not before Lindsey saw the trace of tears in the glow of the overhead streetlight on Carrie’s face.
“Carrie, what’s wrong?” she asked.
Carrie took a long shuddering inhale, and said, “My car won’t start.”
“Oh, no wonder you’re upset.” Lindsey glanced over her shoulder to see Sully headed toward them. “Don’t worry, we’ll help you.”
“I keep turning the key, but nothing happens,” Carrie said. She gestured at her tears with a mitten. “I’m not normally this much of a baby, but I think the stress of the day is getting to me. I was so stressed about the meeting tonight, frankly, my nerves are shot.”
“It’s understandable,” Lindsey said. “Don’t feel bad. Sometimes you just have to let it out. I cried the other day when I realized I’d left my wash in the washing machine for two days and accidentally felted my favorite wool sweater.”
“Bummer,” Carrie said with a big sniff.
“Big one.”
“Carrie, is everything all right?” Sully joined them beside her car.
“Her car won’t start,” Lindsey said.
“Mind if I have a look?” he asked.
“No, please do,” Carrie said, and she moved aside so Sully could sit in the driver’s seat. Lindsey saw him turn the key. Nothing happened. He frowned.
“I’m no expert, but I think it’s your starter,” he said. “It’ll probably need to be towed to Bruce’s garage over on Tyler Street.”
Carrie closed her eyes and Lindsey was afraid she might cry again, so she said, “Do you want to call your husband?”
“I already did,” Carrie said. She opened her eyes, and her face under the parking lot lights looked pale. “He’s not answering.”
Lindsey wasn’t terribly surprised. If he was as lazy as he seemed, he’d probably tell his wife to walk home.
“Don’t worry. We can give you a lift,” Sully said. “And Bruce can come and collect your car tomorrow.”
“See? This will work out,” Lindsey said. “Now, is there anything you need to take with you?”
“Well, I have two boxes of donated books that I don’t want to leave in the car,” Carrie said. “Warren said he’d take them out to Friends’ shed at the Drury Street storage facility this weekend.”
She opened the trunk, and both Lindsey and Sully took a box and started carrying it to his truck. Carrie locked up her car and followed.
“I really can’t thank you enough,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done if you two hadn’t happened along.”
“You’d have managed, but I’m glad we’re here to help,” Lindsey said.
Sully put his box of books into the back of his truck and then turned to take Lindsey’s.
They all piled into the toasty-warm cab of the truck, and Carrie gave Sully directions to her house. She lived a few miles inland in a small development of raised ranch houses built in the seventies with the standard two-car garages and big bay windows.
Carrie’s house was at the end of a short cul-de-sac; it was white with black trim and a bright red front door. It looked well kept and cozy, with an outside light on and a yellow glow shining from its main window above.
Carrie hopped out of the truck and fished her keys out of her purse. Sully and Lindsey climbed out of the truck too and retrieved her boxes for her.
“Oh, no, you don’t have to,” she protested. “I can carry them.”
“It’s no trouble,” Lindsey said as they followed her up the walkway. “Just tell us where you want them.”
Carrie unlocked her front door and held it open for them. From the foyer, a short staircase led up while another went down. Carrie pointed to the top of the stairs and said, “Would you mind just putting them in the closet up there? I’m going to check on Markus.”
She went down the stairs to the lower half of the house while Sully started up. Lindsey watched him shoulder his box as if it were no heavier than a sack of groceries.
Admirable but also very annoying as she tried not to grunt and groan under the weight of her own box.
The closet door was on the right at the top of the stairs, and Sully put his box on the floor and then turned around to take hers. Lindsey was more than happy to relinquish it.
He had just taken her box when a blood-curdling scream sounded from the basement.
Lindsey met Sully’s startled look and then spun around and raced down the stairs. Behind her, she could hear Sully drop the box and pound down the stairs after her. At the bottom of the lower staircase, a hallway led to a couple of bedrooms and a bath in one direction and a large family room in the other. She went toward the family room.
She stepped into the doorway and saw Carrie slumped against the far wall. Her eyes were wide and her face was etched with a look of horror. As Lindsey rushed to her side to see what was wrong, she noticed that Carrie’s hands were covered in blood.