BRIAR CREEK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
“Can I help you?” Lindsey asked. She was pleased to hear that her voice was almost normal.
Marjorie slipped around the edge of the door. The bright pink hat she was wearing had a fluffy pom-pom about the size of her head on top. It was pulled low over her brow as if she were using it to hide behind. Her coat was unbuttoned, but she still wore her scarf and mittens, also in an eye-watering shade of pink.
Lindsey could see Beth sit up straighter, as if bracing herself for the onslaught of crazy. She sat up straighter, too.
Marjorie looked at her out of the corner of her eye and said, “I was just wondering if you had decided to reinstate Bill yet.”
“It’s not really up to me,” Lindsey said. “I work with the Friends, but I’m not a member. It would be a conflict of interest for me to get involved with the leadership of the group.”
“That didn’t stop you from getting Bill kicked out,” Marjorie said through gritted teeth. She was staring at a spot on the wall over Lindsey’s shoulder, which was completely unnerving.
Lindsey took a deep breath. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
Marjorie’s eyes got wide and focused on Lindsey for the first time, and she snapped, “Liar!”
Beth jumped up from her chair, looking ready to rumble. Lindsey rose from her chair, too, and circled the desk. She’d had it with Marjorie and her weird phone calls, almost getting run over by her in her car and most probably being locked in the shed to freeze by her, too. The fact that she had probably ransacked Carrie’s house was just the capper.
“Marjorie, let’s have a chat,” she said. She gestured for the woman to have Beth’s vacated seat. “Beth was just leaving. Let’s take this opportunity to clear the air, shall we?”
Marjorie gave her a suspicious look. Lindsey took that to mean she was crazy but perhaps not stupid. Lindsey took Beth’s elbow and led her to the door. As she pushed her through, she whispered, “Call the police.”
Beth gave her a quick nod and hurried off.
Lindsey left the door open just a crack, in case Marjorie went batty on her, and then took her seat behind her desk.
“Now, I understand that you are unhappy with me,” Lindsey said. “What can I do to make things better?”
“Make Bill the president again,” Marjorie said.
“The Friends have to make that decision,” Lindsey said. She had a feeling this conversation was going to be as repetitive as a hamster’s run on a wheel, and they’d probably get about as far.
“You control the Friends,” Marjorie said. “They will do whatever you tell them to. That’s why they voted him out to begin with.”
“I never told anyone to vote him out,” Lindsey said.
“Then why were you at the meeting that night?” she asked. Her gaze fleetingly met Lindsey’s before moving to fixate on something behind her head.
“I was at the meeting to bear witness to the fairness of the proceedings,” Lindsey said. She did not add that she’d been there mostly to keep Bill from having a hissy fit, because she didn’t really think it would help her case with Marjorie even if it was the truth.
“Fair?” Marjorie’s voice became shrill, and Lindsey glanced out her office window, hoping to see a police car arriving. Nothing yet.
“Would you like a mint?” she asked. She pulled a canister of mints from her desk drawer and offered it to Marjorie. “They’re butter mints; they melt in your mouth.”
Marjorie frowned at her, her expression distrustful. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“I’m nice to everyone,” Lindsey said.
“Not Bill,” Marjorie retorted. She took off one mitten and then opened the canister. Snatching a fistful of mints, she shoved them in her coat pocket as if afraid Lindsey was going to grab the candy back.
She looked like a scared little kid, and Lindsey felt a pang of sympathy for her. Marjorie couldn’t help it if she was a few cards short of a full deck. Maybe she just needed some understanding.
“I’m sorry that the Friends vote has been so upsetting for you,” Lindsey said. “But you can’t go around threatening people and trying to run them over with your car because you don’t like the way things turned out.”
Marjorie stuffed a mint in her mouth and chewed furiously.
“That sort of behavior doesn’t help anything,” Lindsey said. She spoke calmly, hoping that maybe she was getting through to Marjorie.
“You know what I think?” Marjorie asked. She swallowed her candy, and her eyes went wide, so wide that Lindsey could see white all around the irises.
“No, Marjorie, what do you think?”
Marjorie jumped from her seat and pointed a bony finger at Lindsey. Then she bellowed in a voice so loud and deep that it sounded like it came from the bowels of hell.
“I think you killed Markus Rushton, that’s what I think.”
At that moment, the door swung wide and in walked Chief Daniels.
“You had a torrid affair with Markus Rushton,” Marjorie continued, still pointing at Lindsey. “You were madly in love with him, but he ended it, and you were devastated, so you shot him and killed him.”
The chief looked at Lindsey, who gave him a bemused smile and a finger wave. “Hi.”
The chief glanced between them and then shook his head as if to clear it of confusion. Then he looked at Marjorie and said, “Marjorie, I’m going to need you to come to the station.”
“Why?” she asked. “She’s the one you should be arresting. She’s a murderess!”
Chief Daniels stepped forward, and Marjorie started shifting her weight from foot to foot as if gauging how she could run around him and get out the door.
Chief Daniels was not a little man, however, and the odds were unlikely that she’d make it even if her reflexes were faster than his. The man just took up too much space.
“I need to talk to you about what’s been happening over the past few days.”
“What about her?” Marjorie pointed at Lindsey. “Don’t you need to question her?”
Chief Daniels turned his back to Marjorie and looked at Lindsey. He opened his eyes wide, and she figured he was trying to tell her to go with it.
“I’ve got Officer Plewicki coming to pick up Ms. Norris here.”
“So, you know she killed Markus Rushton,” Marjorie said. She looked impressed with the chief.
Lindsey opened her mouth to protest, but the chief gave her a look that clearly said shut up, so she did. It wasn’t easy.
“We have several people we need to question in regards to the murder,” he said. “And, of course, I need your statement.”
“Oh!” Marjorie’s little body went aquiver. “Of course I’ll give my statement. I have all kinds of information about everyone, you know.”
“That’s what I’m counting on,” he said.
Lindsey watched as he led Marjorie out of her office and through the library. She exhaled and realized she’d been holding her breath for the past several minutes. There was something in those eyes of Marjorie’s that made her skin crawl.
And she wondered, did Marjorie’s crazy accusation hold some truth to it? Like maybe Marjorie’d had the affair with Rushton, maybe she was the killer?
Beth appeared at her side with Ann Marie.
“What was that all about?”
“Marjorie seems to think I had a torrid affair with Markus Rushton and killed him because he dumped me,” Lindsey said.
“Wow,” Ann Marie said. “I wouldn’t be too concerned if I were you. She once told me that my boys were the obvious by-product of an alien-on-human experiment gone wrong.”
Both Lindsey and Beth looked at her. Ann Marie’s boys were known for TPing their teachers’ houses and teaching Beth’s mechanical parrot dirty words, and last year they hijacked a float in the annual Fourth of July parade so they could sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with armpit fart accompaniment into the microphone, among other things.
“Well, I’m not saying she’s wrong about everything,” Ann Marie said and then grinned.
Lindsey chuckled, happy to release the knot of tension that had torqued her from the moment Batty had walked into her office.
The front door to the library slid open and Officer Emma Plewicki walked in. She glanced around the room and headed toward Lindsey.
She was dressed in her usual uniform of dark blue pants and pale shirt. She had on her government-issued fleece-lined coat and a matching hat with earflaps; only someone as pretty as Emma could make that hat look fashionable.
“Hi, Emma,” Lindsey said. “Thanks for responding so quickly. You wouldn’t believe the crazy talk Marjorie was spewing. She was really beginning to make me nervous.”
Emma nodded, then cleared her throat and glanced quickly down at the floor before glancing up to meet Lindsey’s gaze with hers. “Ms. Norris, I’m going to need you to come to the station with me.”