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Fitz and I arrived at the library thirty minutes before it opened. I loved the library when it was quiet like this. It almost made it feel like it was something that belonged totally to me. Fitz, although incredibly social for a cat, also liked the chance to sprawl out in the middle of the library floor for a nap—something he was cautious about doing when the library was full.
Wilson came in fifteen minutes later, looking pleased to see me there. “Excellent! You’re getting an early start on the day, aren’t you?”
“I figured I might as well, since I was up early this morning,” I said lightly. My voice, I realized, didn’t sound exactly like myself, though. It was a scratchy, throaty, didn’t-get-enough-sleep voice.
Wilson frowned and said, “Yes, seems you did. Hopefully not too early. I believe you’re closing up this evening, aren’t you?”
That was actually a wrinkle I’d forgotten about. I repressed a sigh. It was going to be a long day on both ends, it seemed. I nodded.
“Well, what have you gotten started on this morning?” asked Wilson briskly. “Might as well have a look before I head into the office and all the paperwork devours me.”
I hadn’t really made my notes about Fitz’s Picks for public viewing and they were hastily scribbled out. I flipped to the page in my notebook and showed Wilson my very sketchy sketches and the titles I’d come up with as the cat’s favorites in different categories.
Wilson nodded, looking pleased again. “That’s going to work very well, I think. Yes, very well.” He paused. “On other matters, I was wondering if you’d heard anything from Grace?”
I chuckled. “Are you proposing I start a daily lunch club with her? No, I’m afraid I haven’t.”
Wilson said, “No, no, nothing like that. I was simply curious if she thought renaming the community room was a good idea.”
“I haven’t even broached it with her yet. We’ve been talking about other things.” I hesitated, thinking about her husband and the opioid income. “Just a thought, and you’re welcome to ignore it if you like, but usually the consensus is that it’s safer to name a building or a room after someone long-dead and not someone who’s still living.”
Wilson frowned at this. “Do you think there might be a scandal of some sort? Nothing to do with that death at her house, is it?”
“I’m not saying there’s going to be a scandal, just that perhaps we should proceed with caution. Maybe the board needs to vote on it, for one.”
“The board?” Wilson stared at me as if I were from outer space. Considering how early I’d arisen, perhaps I was starting to look a bit alien. “The board doesn’t have to be involved in trivial decisions like this. It’s a waste of their time.” His eyes narrowed. “Is there something you know about Grace that I don’t?”
The last thing I wanted to do was gossip, especially during my early-morning quiet time at the library before things started getting busy. But now Wilson was looking at me as if he expected a far-worse story, so I supposed I needed to spill what little I knew. “It’s really probably nothing. It’s just that Grace’s money, from what I understand, came to her from her husband’s estate when he passed away.”
Wilson said irritably, “And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s her money now, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is. All I’m saying is, I spent a bit of time doing some research. You know how research librarians are,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.
Wilson’s eyes narrowed even further so they were slits behind his glasses.
I took a deep breath. “Anyway, her husband was on the board and owned a lot of stock in a pharmaceutical company. The company had a few smaller products that didn’t bring in much income. Their star product and the bulk of the business’s income came from an opioid drug. The company has had lots of bad press and so have the board members and others associated with the business.” Wilson’s face was unreadable and I continued, “It was all online. I read a good number of articles on it all.”
Wilson now looked as if he devoutly wished I weren’t such a nosy person. Or such an avid researcher. “And you’re sure about this?”
“Very sure. I can send you links, if you’d like to read the stories.”
He shook his head and put up a hand as if warding off unhappy stories. “No. No, I don’t think I want to.” He paused for several moments and then said slowly, “I suppose one could say the money is tainted. Yes, I don’t think it would be too dramatic to say it’s tainted with human unhappiness and desperation.”
This was quite a poetic turn of phrase for Wilson.
He paused again and then said, “Yes. Yes, I think you may be right. I should present this to the board. Perhaps they’ll think it’s more appropriate to return the funds, under these circumstances, and not risk putting the library in a bad light. Or,” he added hopefully, “maybe they’ll think it’s an opportunity for the money to be used for public good since it was used to harm the public previously. At any rate, I shouldn’t make the decision on my own. Good point, Ann.”
He started moving briskly away to his office and then stopped and turned around. “When I present this issue to the board, I would like to come fully apprised. On second thoughts, could you send me all the links and information you have?”
I pulled out a sheet of paper from my purse and handed it wordlessly to him.
He nodded, glancing over it as if not at all surprised that such a document existed. “And could you continue delving into Grace’s background? It appears we have abundant information on her husband, but not so much on Grace herself. Particularly if we’re to name a room in the library after her.”
I said, “Actually, that was something I was going to tackle today if it’s not too busy here.”
Wilson shook his head. “We have tons of staff and volunteers here today. I looked at the schedule last night. The library can spare you, believe me.”
“It’s going to mean spending a good deal of time in the archive room with old newspapers. The local paper didn’t start putting their articles online until about ten years ago.”
Wilson shook his head again, this time with some irritation. I wasn’t sure if it was irritation at me for continuing to press the point, or irritation with the newspaper for not loading their archives online. “Whatever it takes.”
“Actually, Luna might be able to provide some additional information, as well. And maybe her mother. They knew Grace from when she was growing up here.”
Wilson said, “Please call Luna and ask her to bring her mother to the library with her today.” He flushed slightly and then resumed his brisk path to his office where he firmly closed the door behind him.
Luna was more than happy to bring her mother to the library, although it meant Mona had to quickly dress since Luna had been about to leave the house to head to work. I smiled to see Mona arriving at the library with a large makeup bag and quickly disappearing into the restroom to finish getting ready. Luna appeared to be carrying a covered dish of some sort.
“Breakfast casserole for the breakroom,” she said wryly.
I blinked at it. “How on earth did Mona know she would be here today?”
“Oh, she intended on bringing it for us tomorrow, but she cooked it last night in preparation. Her whole strategy for wooing Wilson is via food,” said Luna.
“I think she may be winning the battle. Wilson seems to be blushing quite a bit.”
“That’s good to hear,” grinned Luna. “I’d hate to think all this cooking could be for nothing. Nothing, aside from a bunch of extra calories I don’t really need.”
I followed Luna into the breakroom as she put the labeled casserole in the fridge. “By the way, our day is taking something of a detour. Courtesy of Wilson.”
“Is it?” asked Luna, looking surprised. “Wilson isn’t so fond of detours.”
“He wants us to help him find out more information on Grace.” I quickly gave her the lowdown on the origins of Grace’s wealth.
Luna gave a low whistle. “So now he wants you to dig up as much dirt as possible on her. I see how it is.”
I winced. Luna always had a way of getting to the heart of the matter. “I don’t know if I’d really look at it that way. He said he wanted to go to the board with as much information as possible.”
Luna said glumly, “There go our lovely lunches. I knew it was too good to last.”
“And now we’re going to spend our day shut up in the dusty archives room. Wilson said he had lots of help today. Apparently, he overscheduled volunteers and staff, so we’re covered.”
Luna raised her eyebrows. “Even in the children’s area? Wow, okay. Well, let’s see what we can uncover.” She glanced over at Wilson’s closed door and rolled her eyes. “The least he could do is come out of his office. My mom is putting time into getting her makeup just right for him.”
“He’ll definitely want that breakfast casserole. Your mom should let him know it’s in there.”
Luna shook her head. “She’d never be so forward as to knock on his closed office door. I guess I could do it, though, before we get started.”
While Luna was giving Wilson a heads-up about the breakfast food, I eyed the newspaper archive. Our older newspapers were all on microfiche, but the old papers from the early 2000s hadn’t been transferred because microfiche was falling out of favor at that point as everyone was hopping online. Everyone, it seemed, but the Whitby newspaper.
Luna came back as I started pulling out papers from around the time the whole group would have been in high school.
“Any ideas about where I should start?” I asked.
Luna blew out a breath as her gaze combed the wall of papers. “I really don’t know what Wilson is looking for. Couldn’t we just do a background check on her with Burton?”
I gave her a doubtful look. “Somehow I don’t see Burton happily doing a background check without good reason. I think Wilson is trying to make sure there’s nothing on Grace that pre-dates the online stuff we’ve already found. But I feel if there was something on her, you’d probably know about it, right? Small town. I should probably know about it too, but I wasn’t paying that much attention to what older kids were doing when I was a kid.”
Luna said, “The problem is that when Roz and her friends were in high school, I’d already left Whitby and was making a living in New York. I kind of kept up, but not really. You know what college is like.” She frowned. “Like I mentioned, I know there was a tragedy with the group, but I don’t have any real details.”
I said, “That’s the one Linus mentioned to me.”
She nodded. “I asked my mom about it briefly last night. One of their friends died. They were all out on the lake together. I think they’d skipped school or something. It was one of those stories that the local moms would tell their kids to keep them in line. Anyway, they skipped school and went out to the lake for the day and one of their friends drowned, I think. She wasn’t even very far from the shoreline so it was probably a cramp.”
I stared at her. “Luna, that’s awful! That must have really scarred all of them.”
Luna said, “Of course it did. I think Roz still had nightmares sometimes about it.”
“And they saw her drown? Or did she sort of slip off to swim and went missing?”
Luna said, “I’m not really sure. I don’t think all of them were around when it happened. Mom was fuzzy on the details and I’m fuzzy on repeating them.” She frowned. “Actually, I think maybe Felicity and Scott were around and the others were taking a walk or something. From what I remember, they tried to help the girl . . . it was a girl . . . but by the time they reached her, it was too late. But we’re talking about something that happened decades ago, Ann. It’s not like it was a recent tragedy or anything.”
“Well, the paper would definitely have reported a story like that. It’s rare that something like that happens here. Most of the articles in the Whitby paper have to do with who’s become an Eagle Scout or whose vegetable garden has a prize-winning tomato.” I started rooting around in the papers.
Luna said, “You won’t get too far with that. The paper wouldn’t have reported the names because they were minors at the time. They have a policy against doing that.”
I stared at the stack of papers and said, “It doesn’t really sound like the type of story Wilson is looking for, anyway. He’s trying to find out if there were any scandals that would make the library embarrassed by naming a room after Grace. A tragedy when she was a teenager doesn’t fit the bill. And it sounds like she wasn’t even around at the time it happened, even if she was part of the group.”
Wilson opened the door to the archive room then. He had a slightly panicked expression on his face, which eased slightly as soon as he spotted us. “There you are.”
I bit my tongue to keep from replying that we were exactly where he’d asked us to be. And apparently Luna wasn’t feeling in a sassy mood either, because she also didn’t say anything.
“Plans have changed,” said Wilson briskly. “You’re needed out front.”
“What happened?” I asked. How did we go from overstaffed to understaffed in a matter of minutes?
Wilson sighed. “The schedule was incorrect. I must have been interrupted in the middle of creating it. We’re not overstaffed at all; in fact, we could use a few extra people. Did you find anything out?”
Luna said, “We didn’t have time to dig into the archives, but I remembered a tragedy that happened when Grace was a teenager.”
“Did she cause the tragedy?” asked Wilson intently.
Luna shook her head.
“Did she indirectly cause the tragedy?” he asked.
Luna shook her head.
“Then it’s nothing of concern. Case closed. And I’ll present the information I do have to the board at our next meeting.” Wilson trotted away.
Luna left to take on the children’s section. I hesitated. There was something about this death that didn’t sit right with me. I took my phone out of my pocket and dialed Burton, hoping I wasn’t completely sending him on a tangent and wasting his time.
“Hey there,” he said, sounding very much as if he was in the middle of something. “What’s up?”
“Maybe nothing,” I said. “But I wanted to loop you in on a couple of things, in case you didn’t know.” I quickly told him first about Grace’s husband’s wealth.
Burton said, “I appreciate it, but we’ve actually already found that information out. It doesn’t seem to tie into the case, though. If one of the others in the group had lost someone close to them from opioid addiction, we’d definitely have a motive. Right now, it just explains how Grace ended up with so much money.”
I took a deep breath. “Got it. There’s something else, too. I don’t want to send you on a wild goose chase, though.”
Burton chuckled. “Oh, I love me a wild goose chase. Go ahead and lay it on me. You never know if it might end up being something important. Besides, you’re not the kind of person who comes up with totally innocuous stuff. You’re a research librarian, after all.”
“At any rate, I’m not sure if it means anything. So, when all of the group was in high school together, they cut school one day and took off for the lake.” I glanced at the door, expecting Wilson to come barreling through it at any moment to drag me off to the circulation desk.
There was a pause on the other end. “Okay, I take it all back. This is totally innocuous stuff.”
I laughed. “Sorry, there’s more. I was just distracted for a second, sorry. While they were there, a member of their party drowned.”
Now I had Burton’s attention again. “Was it a suspicious death?”
“Well, I was going to try to find out information from our newspaper archives, but Luna pointed out that the newspaper’s policy is to redact names if the people involved are under the age of eighteen, which apparently they all were at the time. I wondered if there was more to the story and if you could possibly check back in the police department records to see what you could find out.”
Burton said, “Sure. I’m on it. You just never know.”
I said, “I did want to follow up on one thing with you, if you’re able to tell me. Did you ask Grace if Scott was blackmailing her?”
“I did. I didn’t mention your name, so no worries about that. She said Scott was being pushy about a loan. He said Grace owed him for introducing her to her late husband.”
It sure hadn’t sounded that way to me, but I didn’t have any proof to the contrary.
There was a voice in the background and then he said, “Got to run. Thanks for the call.” And he hung up.