Carbs & Cadavers (8 page)

The others murmured in agreement, fantasizing about the monster cookies.

“Where were you all this time?” James asked quickly, fearing that he might start drooling. “Did you see . . . uh . . . us?”

“Just your backsides as you hustled off to the parking lot,” Lucy giggled. “Don’t worry, I’m not mad. I tore down there faster than a speeding bullet so I can hardly blame anyone else for being curious.” She resumed her narrative. “Anyway, I was taking notes while Keith interviewed Megan. Both of them were really upset and Amelia clung to Megan like a baby chimpanzee, but after a few minutes, she excused herself to use the restroom. Now, we were interviewing Megan in back, near the ovens. There are a few stools there and it was toasty and comfortable back there. Amelia
did
head for the bathroom, but then she snuck up front.”

“How could you see that if you were in the back?” Gillian asked dubiously. “Do you have the gift of
second sight
?” She grew excited, tugging on her violet overshirt. “I’ve read about people who can
see
things happening in another room, they—”

“Sorry to let you down, Gillian, but I could see her reflection in the oven doors. Once I noticed her heading to the front, I kind of sashayed sideways until I could see what she was up to out of the corner of my eye. I saw her pick up the cell phone, but then she turned her back to me and I couldn’t see anything else. Keith was being his usual charming self with Megan, so she was too distraught to notice anything and it all happened in under a minute.”

Bennett’s eyes shone with interest. “How did Amelia seem when she came back?”

Lucy grew thoughtful. “She was only gone for a few seconds, but when she turned to face me again, I could tell a weight had dropped off her shoulders. Kind of like when a huge pile of snow goes sliding off a rooftop. ’Course she was still upset when she looked down at that pool of blood again, but who wouldn’t be? Lord knows
I’ve
never seen anything like that before.”

“The human body holds about five liters,” Bennett casually informed them. He pointed at a plastic liter bottle of Diet Coke sitting on the break room’s countertop. “That’s five of those, folks.”

“
That’s
exactly what was bothering the ME,” Lucy also gestured toward the bottle. “For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what had caused so much bleeding.”

“So, I take it neither Megan nor Amelia bludgeoned him to death with a rolling pin,” Lindy stated, sounding disappointed. The others regarded her curiously. “Well, let’s face it, the guy was a total jerk.”

“Certainly to women,” James added, and all eyes turned toward him. He filled them in on the belittling remarks Brinkley had made in reference to Whitney, the sweet waitress at Dolly’s Diner.

“She’s such a good girl, too!” Lindy exclaimed. “A wonderful art student and a hard worker. Her daddy had to quit his job last year ’cause of health issues and so Whitney stopped going to college full time. She started taking shifts at Dolly’s in order to help out with household expenses. I always chat with her when I’m there. How many kids these days would be so selfless?”

“None that
I’ve
seen,” Gillian harrumphed. “That’s why I work with animals. They’re as loving and as spiritual and as selfless as you can get.”

“I don’t know if you could call Lucy’s three hounds of terror loving
or
spiritual,” Bennett mumbled, and then his stomach grumbled so loudly that everyone turned to look at him. “No donut holes today,” Bennett said, looking embarrassed. “See? My gizzard is staging a revolt.”

Everyone laughed in sympathy. Their own stomachs were complaining about not receiving their daily doses of fatty carbohydrates or tasty sugars as well.

“So there’s no indication of what caused Brinkley’s death?” James asked Lucy once the room had grown quiet again. She shook her head with an air of regret. “Besides one powerful nosebleed, it’s a mystery. The ME did send a blood sample away to the lab in Charlottesville, but it could take a week or even longer for them to respond. They have to go with their priority cases first and I doubt Brinkley Myers will qualify as a priority.”

“What does qualify?” Lindy asked. “This case seems pretty unusual to me.”

Lucy shrugged. “I guess a suspicious death or the death of someone famous. We’ve never had something like this happen since I’ve been working at the Sheriff’s Department so I’m not so sure. Who knows? Maybe the lab won’t be busy and we’ll know before I see y’all at my house on Sunday.”

Lindy turned to James and raised her brows playfully. “Okay, Mr. Drill Sergeant Henry, what are we having for dinner on Sunday?”

Lucy looked at him expectantly. Her gaze made his heart beat faster as he shuffled through the menu packet he had created. The light from the fluorescents stained her blue eyes a deep indigo. “Ah, let’s see . . . page 6. It’s all there, including what every person needs to bring. I wasn’t trying to be bossy, I was just trying to make things easier on everyone.” His shoulders slumped. “We can divvy out all of the menu items out on Sunday for our next meeting. I had found this website on running a supper club so . . .” He trailed off.

“Oh, James,” Lindy was instantly apologetic. “I was just teasing you! You have done a terrific job and, speaking for all of us, I’m glad we were able to recruit you. We’d still be trying to decide on a diet plan if it weren’t for you. Now, since I don’t have a single one of those snack items at home, I’m off to the grocery store.”

“Man cannot live on celery . . . at all,” Bennett stated seriously. “I’m going to pick up some cheese and a whole mess of peanuts.”

“Me too,” echoed the others as they shuffled out of the office, wishing James a good night and warmly thanking him again for the menu packets.

James was so unused to praise that he just stood behind his desk, soaking up the moment. The library was quiet, as most of the high school students had retrieved the information they needed to complete their projects and had gone home. Mrs. Waxman was busy flipping through the pages of
Time
magazine as James walked past her with a cheerful wave.

“Have a good night, James,” she whispered and waved in return.

Outside, darkness had fallen among the pine trees, dragging with it a multitude of glittering stars. “I believe I
will
have a good night,” James answered. As he headed to his car, he walked a little taller, like a man with a purpose.

James was repairing
a loose page from a hardback copy of
The Old Man and the Sea
. He lovingly applied a thin line of glue along the inside gutter and then carefully replaced the page. Closing the book, he wrapped it with a rubber band and then set a brick covered in muslin on top so that the weight could help set the glued page. Scott had given him several lessons in book repair and now sat beside him using fine-grade sandpaper to rub away ground dirt smudges from the page corners of a copy of
Tender is the Night
.

“There you are, Mr. Hemingway,” James handed Scott a newly covered copy of
The Sun Also Rises
to be placed on the reshelving cart.

“Think you could ever run with the bulls, Professor Henry?” Scott asked, pushing his heavy glasses farther up on his nose.

“Not unless they counted me as one of the bulls,” James replied grumpily. It was only Thursday and he felt as though he couldn’t survive another second without having a bag of cheese puffs or a slice of pepperoni pizza. He was irritable and hungry and felt completely devoid of energy.

“The F. Scott Fitzgerald books must be in the best shape out of our entire collection,” James said, meaning to be critical, but Scott beamed as if he had just received a compliment.

“We try,” he answered modestly, glancing across the room at his twin brother as he sat at the reference desk. “They see so much wear because they’re on the reading list at Blue Ridge High. Imagine, a Fitzgerald classic every year! What a great school that must be.”

James ignored him, wishing a patron would arrive with a challenging question so that he might be distracted from his powerful cravings. By eleven thirty, the stillness of the library began grating on him. He strolled restlessly to the lobby, telling himself that the books for sale needed to be straightened. Of course it just so happened that he had a perfectly unwrinkled dollar bill inside his wallet that would slide effortlessly into the snack machine’s slot in exchange for some crunchy, orange heaven. Checking over his shoulder to make sure that the twins were occupied, James fed the money into the machine and desperately punched the E6 buttons until the splendid thumping sound announced the arrival of a precious parcel of cheese puffs.

“It’s just a snack-size bag,” James muttered aloud defensively to the vacant lobby. Slipping outside, he sat down on the front steps and, heedless of the cold, devoured the bag in under a minute. He felt an incredible sense of elation from having granted himself his favorite treat. He crunched blissfully, examining the blazing colors on the maple and oak trees dotting the library parking lot. The contents of the bag disappeared all too soon. James stared longingly at the bottom of the bag and then wadded up the evidence, stuffed it in the lobby trash can, and was just about to suck the orange dust from his fingertips when Francis came outside.

Without thinking, James frantically wiped his hands on the back of his pants as Francis leaned on the stair railing and blinked in the face of daylight like a bat.

“Nice day, huh?” Francis asked, his breath hanging in the air like wet lace.

James agreed, rubbing off more orange dust stuck between his thumb and index fingers.

“Do you remember the Halloween Carnival from when you lived here?” Francis asked nervously.

“Sure,” James replied. “All the local businesses can enter a float for a chance to win a cash prize.”

Francis shuffled his feet. “Mrs. Kramer never let us build one. She said we didn’t have funds for it in the budget, even though Scott and I came up with a design that would only cost three hundred dollars to build.”

James smiled. “So you two want to enter a float in this year’s parade?”

“Yes, Professor, we sure do.”

“Let me review the budget for this month, but I’m sure we can come up with a few hundred dollars. I think it would be great to have the library represented.”

“We have a drawing.” Francis held out a rolled piece of paper.

James examined the drawing with a smile. “This is great. Are you certain that you two can build this on your own?”

Francis looked sheepish. “We started it last year, hoping we could change Mrs. Kramer’s mind. We just need to add on some final touches, like special effects. Thanks, Professor! I can’t wait to tell Scott!” Francis bounded up the steps and went inside. A few seconds later, James followed.

At lunch, he stared at his chef’s salad, suddenly feeling guilty about cheating.

“You’re really sticking to it, Professor,” Francis said as he came into the kitchen. He folded his long, lanky form into the chair across from James and began to eat one of his three peanut butter and banana sandwiches while reading the latest paperback release by Piers Anthony. James was still unenthusiastically picking at his salad when Scott arrived and switched places with Francis, who had consumed his entire meal within five or six minutes. Scott ate two salami and cheese sandwiches, a bag of pretzel twists, and a jelly donut while speed-reading the October issue of
Popular Mechanics
.

Midway through his donut, Scott wiped his sugar-speckled lips with a napkin and then exclaimed. “Sorry, Professor Henry! I didn’t mean to eat this kind of stuff in front of you.”

“Don’t worry, Scott.” James sighed. “Just be glad you have the metabolism of a goat.”

Scott guffawed. “’Cause their stomachs have four chambers. Good one!” He cocked his head to the side and then said, “But hummingbirds have the fastest metabolism of all animals. I wouldn’t want that, though, as you’d have no time for anything except for eating.” The phone in James’s office began to ring.

“Sounds good to me,” James murmured crossly and got up to answer the phone. It was Lucy.

“James? Do you have a second?” she asked hopefully.

The black cloud that had been orbiting James’s head disappeared with a poof. “Of course,” he answered brightly. “What can I do for you?”

“The lab results came back,” Lucy paused and took a deep breath. “I kind of eavesdropped on Sheriff Huckabee as he talked to the ME in Rockingham. All I heard was the sheriff repeat the word . . . um . . .” James heard the rustle of paper. “Sorry. Here it is.
Coumadin
. Do you know what that is?”

“No idea.”

“Well, I can’t look it up from work or they’ll wonder what I’m doing. Plus, I have to type up the incident report and all of the interviews, even though Keith is supposed to do his own.” James could almost feel Lucy shrug at the other end of the line. “Guess it’s better this way, ’cause I get to stay in the loop. Do you have time? I don’t want to keep you from—”

“No problem. We’re really dead today,” James assured her. “I’m not positive, but Coumadin sounds like the name of a drug. Give me a sec and I’ll grab a
PDR.
”

“A what?”

“It’s a hundred-pound book called the
Physicians’ Desk Referenc
e. Hold on a sec.” James placed the receiver on the desk as gently as if he were placing a bird’s egg back in its nest. He grabbed the blue tome from the reference section and returned to his desk, his lethargy completely dissipated. Glancing through the index, he spotted Coumadin under the heading “Blood Modifiers.” He picked up the phone again. “Lucy? Looks like it’s a kind of blood thinner.” He scanned the microscopic font describing Coumadin’s uses. “Comes in tablet form or can be injected. Let’s see here—if I’m translating this medical-speak correctly, it looks like people are mostly given Coumadin after they’ve had heart valve replacement or after having a heart attack, if that’s what
myocardial infarction
means.”

Lucy digested the information. “Weird,” she said after a pause. “I doubt Brinkley has had heart problems. I mean, he was a football star in high school and then he mowed lawns all day long. What would Coumadin have to do with his sudden death?”

“I dunno. It doesn’t make much sense to me either.”

Lucy was quiet for a moment “I’ll have to just wait and see, I guess. Sit here answering phone calls about lost pets until one of the
real
deputies gives me a report to type or something,” she added bitterly, her voice trembling a little, as if she might begin to cry. When James failed to respond, she said, “See you Sunday,” and quickly hung up.

James held the receiver aloft until the grating noise blaring out of the earpiece signaled the conclusion of his call. Returning it to its cradle, he thought back to the many times when his wife had been upset about something and he had felt incapable of finding a way to comfort her. It’s not that he didn’t want to, but something in him seemed to shut down and go numb in the face of a woman’s tears. He didn’t know whether Lucy had been on the verge of crying, but that same reaction of idiotic silence had taken a hold of him during the last few seconds of their conversation. He was going to have to be especially attentive and charming on Sunday to make it up to her—two character traits he had never been known for.

As he was about to return to his work at the circulation desk, Scott tapped him on the shoulder.

“You’ve got somethin’ on your pants, Professor.”

James looked down at his clean khakis and saw nothing amiss.

“On the back,” Scott pointed at his own non-existent derriere.

James craned his neck over his shoulder and still saw nothing. Excusing himself, he went into the men’s room and turned his back to the mirror. There, on his wide bottom, were two perfect handprints made of orange dust. James sighed and dampened a paper towel with water. Rubbing at his pants while watching himself in the mirror, he noted that tiny dots of white paper towel were now sticking to his pants along with the orange dust. He moved closer and closer to the mirror above the sink, so that his rear end was practically hanging in the bowl. He was so focused on his reflection that he didn’t hear the door open.

An older man entered the restroom and gasped in shock at the sight of the head librarian thrusting his full buttocks toward the mirror. He pivoted immediately and exited with a huff. James groaned. He would never be able to look at that man in the face again. This is what he got for cheating.

Sunday evening finally rolled around, signaling the end of a gray and rainy week that seemed to have dampened the spirits of everyone in Quincy’s Gap. James stopped by Dolly’s to pick up one of her famous “After Church Pot Roast” specials for his father’s dinner. The diner buzzed with a pleasant air of vivacity. Silverware clinked, people chatted between booths, and Dolly bustled about, laughing heartily as her mighty bosom shook beneath her “Kiss My Okra” apron.

At home, Jackson eyed the take-out container with a frown. “What’s this?” he demanded, sniffing the lid as if the Styrofoam package was filled with fresh manure.

“Pot roast.” James opened the fridge. “There’s a bowl of Caesar salad in there for you, too. I’ll be back around ten-ish.”

“You got some kind of hot date tonight?” Jackson cackled gleefully. “Maybe she could come over and fix our leaky roof instead of you wastin’ yer money throwin’ food down her neck.”

“I told you, Pop. I’m in a supper club,” James said as he glanced at the two plastic buckets sitting on the counter. He had used them to catch the water seeping in through the ceiling of the upstairs bathroom and hallway. James knew that the entire roof needed to be replaced, but he didn’t have that kind of money saved up. As it was, he was completely supporting himself and his father on his librarian’s salary. Jackson never offered his son any money and didn’t even glance at the bills in the mail pile, most of which were in his name. James didn’t know if his father even owned a credit card any longer.