Jo Dereske by Index to Murder

Author:Index to Murder [Murder, Index to]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-04-25T17:44:33+00:00

“Well, that’s the truth. But I don’t go blabbing my work around town. People spot a trend and they break their necks trying to beat you to it. What did you say your name was again?”

“Miss Helma Zukas.”

“Thanks, Hilda. I’ll get the books back as soon as I can.”

On a square of notepaper imprinted with the new City of Bellehaven logo, Helma jotted down the name Douglas Bogelli of Banner & Bogelli, and their phone number, then tore 134

JO DERESKE

off the sheet and slipped it into a new folder she’d already used the label maker to identify with the words, winthrop, ruth: missing paintings.

George ducked his head into Helma’s cubicle. “May Apple Mayhem is afoot,” he said in a low voice, holding his hand to his mouth and nodding toward Ms. Moon’s office, and then in a louder voice, “Time to gather together for another scintillating staff meeting. Don’t be late.”

Six of the seven librarians gathered in the staff room.

The only one missing was Ms. Moon, who’d abandoned her onetime dedication to everyone changing places at the con-ference table each meeting in order to “enhance the group dynamic” and now laid claim to the head of the table. Her chair—the only armed chair in the room—had been pulled from the table and a glass of ice water sat beside two mechanical pencils and a yellow pad imprinted with, ms. may apple moon, director of your library.

Helma took a chair directly opposite Ms. Moon’s, between George and Roger Barnhard, the children’s librarian.

Glory Shandy sat to George’s left, wearing a butterfly bar-rette in her voluminous hair, perched to the side as if it were about to take flight. Again she wore the fringed vest, but her short skirt had been replaced by a denim gored skirt with a fringed hemline, and a chain belt made of silver interlocking horseshoes.

“How much longer do we have to live with this?” George muttered, gazing at Glory.

When there was a lull in the conversation, Glory swept her eyes around the table and said, “She’ll be here in a minute.

She had to take her medication.”

Harley leaned toward Glory. “Is she in pain? Maybe the sutures are suppurating. People don’t think bones feel pain but they do.”

“Harley,” George said. “Let me tell you about being a pain.”

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135

“Shh,” Eve said, turning toward the door. “I hear her coming.” And indeed, Helma heard the gentle whirring of Ms. Moon’s motorized wheelchair. She buzzed through the door, her library blueprints protruding upward from the back of her chair like thick antenna, scraping the chair arm a little against the left jamb, pausing and frowning as if she’d felt the machine’s distress.

“Did you see that?” she asked the gathered staff, pointing toward the bruised doorjamb. “That’s exactly the issue.

Exactly.”

The librarians watched her electrified progress toward the head of the table. She maneuvered the chair with remarkable dexterity, but the table was too low for her to tuck her chair arms beneath and she was forced to sit back two feet, her raised foot nearly at the librarians’ eye level.

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