Chapter Sixteen

What did you do to LIFU?” Anne demanded. I’d been so wrapped up replaying the conversation I’d just had with Marigold, I hadn’t noticed that Anne had come into the library’s café to look after the fallen robot. She was standing next to my chair at the café counter with her bright yellow fists propped on her hips. “It’s completely messed up. And now we’re going to have to explain to Keven how we broke his expensive prototype.”

“I didn’t break anything on that defective piece of metal. All I did was push it over,” I said.

“You pushed it over?! I know you don’t like technology, but don’t you think attacking a defenseless robot is going too far?”

I held up a finger. “One, that thing isn’t defenseless. The unnatural color of . . . of, well, all of you is proof enough of that.” I lifted a second finger. “Two, I didn’t attack it.”

“You just told me you did!” Anne cried.

“No, I told you that I knocked it over. Which was necessary in order to save one of our patrons from becoming that thing’s next victim. Why did Keven bring it back? It’s a menace.”

She cocked her head to one side and looked at me. “That’s what happened? Really?”

“Ask the barista. He was cowering behind the counter when I came in.”

“I was,” the barista said, and he turned a bit red.

Anne bit her lip as her gaze ping-ponged between me and the robot. “I don’t understand. It was never even supposed to come into the café. It’s only supposed to roam around the main library floor aiding anyone who needs it. And Keven promised he fixed the other . . . um . . . problems and disabled the security features.”

“Look on the bright side, this gives you an excuse to see Keven again,” I said.

“I don’t—”

“Everyone seems to be gaga over him,” I said, not unkindly.

“He is dreamy,” the barista agreed.

“Well, I’ve never met someone that brilliant,” Anne confessed while turning a bit red—er, orange—in the cheeks as well. “I worked with bona fide geniuses in Silicon Valley, and Keven makes most of them look stupid.” She smiled to herself for a moment before sobering again. “I don’t understand what’s going on. LIFU was working beautifully this morning when he brought it over.”

She returned to the robot and knelt beside it. “What did that mean lady do to you? You can tell me,” she cooed to the machine in a sugary-sweet voice I’d never heard her use before.

“I didn’t do anything to it!” I protested.

“Ah!” Anne looked up at me and smiled.

“What?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why I’d stayed to watch her treat that thing as if it were alive and in possession of feelings. I had work to get back to and, more importantly, a murderer to find. “What is it?”

“It looks like whoever last used the robot jammed it up with several nonsense requests. Most of them are strings of letters that don’t even form words. All this gibberish probably overloaded LIFU’s AI system. It’s been programmed to figure out requests, even if they are misspelled, you know? There are five gibberish ones here that happened within several seconds of the others, almost like someone was banging on the screen.”

“Who would do that?”

“One of your technology-hating friends?” Anne asked with her bright yellow eyebrows raised.

“My friends don’t hate, they just prefer—”

“I’m just yanking your chain.” Anne stood and brushed off her pants. “If I had to guess, a child was playing around with it. Did any of your tots sneak away from your program?”

“I didn’t have a program this morning. And I haven’t seen any children in the library today, at least none that could walk or reach that thing’s screen.”

“Hmm . . .” She pushed a few buttons on the robot. I stepped back as it groaned as if in pain. “It’s trying to reboot,” she said as she continued to fiddle with it. “Hold on. Let me try to stop it.” She pushed even more buttons. “That’s interesting. The last real request produced an article about Rebecca White landing a role on a television show. Everything after that is gibberish. Look here. The article was still on the screen when someone started banging on it. Who was this patron of yours who LIFU supposedly attacked?”

“It went after Marigold Brantley. She used to run the feed and seed store.”

“Goldie? Had she been using LIFU?”

“I don’t know.” Had Marigold been using the machine to look up something about Rebecca? “And why does everyone know that Marigold’s nickname is Goldie? I’ve never called her that, or even knew to.”

Anne shrugged. “Don’t know. That’s how she introduced herself to me the first time we met. She had come in right after our grand opening and wanted to see all the equipment. She’s a whiz when it comes to computers. Knew more about some of the components than I did.” That admission couldn’t have come easily for Anne.

“Are you saying that Marigold would know better than to pound on the screen like that?” I asked.

“Definitely.”

“Marigold is a computer whiz?” I felt like I needed to say that aloud. It was yet another thing I would never have guessed about her. Apparently, I didn’t know anything about this woman who lived in our small town my entire life. It made me wonder what other things I’d missed about my neighbors. “Marigold told me that she and Rebecca were close. Why would she look up an old article about Rebecca landing the role on Desiring Hearts? And if she’s such a computer expert, why would she come to the library to look up the article? Why not just use her own computer or even her cell phone to do her research?”

“Tru, haven’t you been paying attention at the staff meetings?” Anne sounded hurt. “I explained more than once that our database includes paid subscriptions to hundreds of publications.”

“I knew that.” I’d forgotten. “I just wasn’t thinking.”

She shook her head as she peered closely at the robot’s screen. “Anyhow, a straight Google search wouldn’t get her access to what we have. And we don’t have the funds to make the subscriptions available to our online patrons. She’d have to come to the library to find this article.” She swiped her finger across the screen. “Oh, look. It’s not an old article. It’s in an issue that came out . . . today.”

“Really? Can I read it?” I tried to peer over Anne’s shoulder to see what she was reading. But the display was cracked and the text garbled in several places.

“Sorry, Tru.” Anne sounded as if she meant it. “LIFU will need a complete overhaul before anyone can see anything more than bits and pieces on this screen again. I could pull it up on a computer for you and print it out, if you’d like.” She twisted around to look up at me.

“Thank you, I appreciate the offer. But I’m sure I’ll be able to find it for myself the next time I’m at one of the library’s computers.”

“Are you sure?” She raised a disbelieving brow.

“I’m sure. I did pay attention when you taught me how to use the new system. And I have been practicing with it as I teach our patrons the ins and outs of it.”

“Okay. Holler if you need any help.”

“Will do.” I headed back to the front desk.

Mrs. Farnsworth had taken over working there. She waved me away when I approached, telling me that she’d handle the desk for the next hour or so.

Not one to question my good luck, I hurried toward the back stairs that led down to the secret bookroom in the basement. On my way I passed the rows of public computers that had replaced the reference section of the library. I stopped at one and typed Rebecca White’s name in the search bar.

After wading through a few pages of results and finding nothing recent, I narrowed my search to only look for anything from the past month.

One result popped up on the screen.

I read it through.

My goodness.

According to the article, Rebecca White had been hired for a supporting role in a new soap opera that was going to be filmed in Hollywood and aired on a cable channel. It sounded as if she was going to play a character like Delilah on Desiring Hearts.

Was Sissy mistaken when she told me that Rebecca’s big news on the night of her death was that she planned to kick out the older society members? Was the news instead that Rebecca had landed a new job? Was she going to announce, in front of the documentary crew, that she was going to move back to Hollywood?

That would make more sense.

And who had gone searching for this article? Marigold? If she and Rebecca were truly as close as sisters, she would already know about Rebecca’s return to acting.

Unless Rebecca hadn’t told her . . .

And yet, if Marigold’s sharp mind figured out that she was about to lose her idol . . .

That could be motive.