Bookmarked to Die by Jo Dereske

Author:Jo Dereske
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Zukas, Washington (State), Contemporary Women, Mystery & Detective, Librarians, Women Librarians, Helma (Fictitious Character), Fiction, Bellehaven (Wash.: Imaginary Place), General, Mystery Fiction, Bellehaven (Wash. : Imaginary Place), Women Librarians - Washington (State), Women Sleuths
ISBN: 9780060790820
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2005-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

“All I observed is that they were together,” Helma said, continuing to watch the Hopewell Building.

“Glory looked quite satisfied.” Ruth grunted. “I bet she did. Do you think Pepper saw us and rode off?”

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“You’re assuming she’s trying to hide her movements,” Helma said.

When, after ten minutes, no one appeared and no lights were switched on in the office building, Ruth said, “Well, I guess that was a bust. Let’s go.” Helma reached toward the car ignition, then pulled away her hand and instead placed it on the door handle.

“I’m curious. I’m going to take a look.”

“Wait,” Ruth said. “Take a look at what? So what if Pepper’s sneaking around? Besides, it’s dark out there.”

“There are streetlights. You can wait here. I’ll be back when I discover where she went.”

Chapter 14

A Formless Shadow

Helma stepped from her car onto the street and closed the driver’s door, holding in the handle button so it wouldn’t click, then stood motionless and soundless beside her Buick contemplating the dark Hopewell Building. Had Pepper actually gone inside? She might live nearby and prefer to hide her bicycle in the bushes, an idea Helma rejected as quickly as she considered it. Most bicycle owners she knew stored their bicycles in garages or even lugged them inside their homes when they weren’t in use.

Behind Helma, as she took two deliberate steps forward to cross the street, the passenger door slammed and Ruth whispered, sotto voce, “Hey, wait up.”

Helma turned and placed her finger to her lips.

“Oh yeah, right. Shhh,” Ruth whispered in slightly lower tones, stepping up beside Helma, BOOKMARKED TO DIE

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her boot heels clicking on asphalt. “You’re going to check the bike, right? See if it’s still there?”

“First,” Helma said as she glanced both ways—no cars currently traveled the side street. A darkened auto body shop and a vitamin store with pale suffused light in its window shared the block with the Hopewell.

Further down the street the flicker of a television emitted from a small house set back in a stand of cedar trees.

When she reached the opposite sidewalk, Helma headed toward the shrubbery where Pepper and her bicycle had disappeared. She identified the leaves glistening in the wan light of the streetlamps as photinia, a popular Bellehaven shrubbery with a tendency to flourish beyond reason. Behind her she caught the musky fragrance of Ruth’s perfume. The Bellehaven evening was Thursday-night quiet. No more rain fell.

She longed to stop and relish the sharpness of her surroundings, the way the world had shifted back to its proper tilt, as if a mesh curtain had been raised from before her eyes. She touched a leathery leaf, feeling the cool moisture of recent rain, and stepped behind the six-foot-high photinia.

Against the wall of the Hopewell Building leaned Pepper’s bicycle, a U-shaped lock uselessly attached to the seat post, a definite sign that Pepper had chosen to conceal her transportation, not simply stow it because she’d forgotten a lock. “She didn’t take her bicycle helmet,” Helma whispered, touching the

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