Read It and Weep (A Library Lover's Mystery) (16 page)

D
ylan spun on his heel and took off running. Joanie looked as if she’d just been slapped. Clearly embarrassed, she cleared her throat.

“You probably think I’m too harsh, but I had to draw the line. It is just too dangerous at the theater. Look what happened to you. As his mother, it’s my job to protect him even if he doesn’t like it,” Joanie said.

“It’s okay, Joanie,” Lindsey said. “Of course you just want him to be safe.”

“He’s my baby,” Joanie said. Her voice sounded strained. She sniffed and then seemed to pull herself together. She gave them a brisk nod and strode toward the parking lot.

“Wow,” Lindsey said. “That was tense.”

“Dylan is seventeen, almost eighteen,” Sully said. “She’s going to need to loosen her grip or lose him forever.”

“Do you think Emma told him?” Lindsey asked. “Do you think he knows that Robbie might be his father? For that matter, do you think Joanie knows?”

Sully shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out.”

Together they made their way into the police station.

Emma was pacing in the front lobby when they entered. She didn’t look happy.

“Hi, Emma,” Lindsey said. “Is everything all right?”

Emma looked at her, and Lindsey could tell she was still deep in thought. It was almost as if she didn’t recognize them. She shook her head as if to clear it.

“Yeah,” she said. “Things are coming together.”

“How did it go with Dylan?” she asked.

“Well, his mother arrived and she clarified a few things. Dylan isn’t Robbie’s son. She said there is no father listed on his birth certificate.”

“So, then it could still be Robbie?” Lindsey asked.

“No,” Emma said. “Apparently the mother did not list the father’s name on the adoption papers, but she did put down his nationality. He was an American from California.”

The phone on the counter started to ring and an officer hurried from the back to answer it.

He spoke a few sentences and then put the receiver to his chest. “It’s that same reporter from the London
Times
. Do you want to talk to him?”

“Aw, hell no,” Emma said. “Tell him the same thing I said yesterday: no comment.”

The officer nodded and went back to the phone.

“If I could just get the press off of my back, I might be able to do some real investigating,” Emma said. “I have new appreciation for what Chief Daniels went through when he was in charge.”

Lindsey had seen the hordes of reporters swarming the town since Robbie’s death. Violet had years of experience dealing with the media, but for Emma it had to be overwhelming to have the mayor breathing down her neck as well as the international media, all wanting to know who had poisoned Robbie Vine.

“I’m sorry,” Lindsey said.

“No, it’s all right,” Emma said. “It comes with the job. So, what brings you two here other than an update on Dylan?”

She glanced between them, and Lindsey felt the same speculation that had been in the eyes of the cast and crew when she and Sully had landed on the mattress.

“There was an accident at the theater,” she began.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Sully corrected her. “Someone pushed Lindsey off of the balcony.”

“What?” Emma cried. “Are you all right? Did you see the person? When did this happen, exactly?”

“I’m fine,” Lindsey said. “Sully’s quick thinking saved me. I didn’t see the person. I was hit from behind and I went sailing over the rail but managed to catch myself with a hand and a leg on the edge. I’d say it happened about ten to fifteen minutes after you left with Dylan.”

“So, whoever did it knew that I wasn’t there,” Emma said. She looked at Lindsey and frowned. “Why you?”

“I don’t know,” Lindsey said. “Violet seems to think it was someone who wants to shut the show down. That whoever it is went after Robbie first and then when that didn’t work, he looked for an opportunity to cause another accident that would stop the show.”

“She’s thinking it might be Buchanan,” Sully said.

Emma nodded as if she’d already been thinking the same thing.

“Billionaire CEOs don’t take the word
no
very well,” Emma said. “And I gather that Violet and Charlene have shut him out of their lives pretty effectively.”

“Would he be that vicious because he didn’t get his way?” Lindsey asked. “It seems counterproductive if he really wants a relationship with them.”

“It does, but you’re talking about a guy who moved his manufacturing business to a third world country where the average age of his workers is eleven,” Emma said. “I think he pays them a whopping twenty-five cents a day. From what I gather, he’s not exactly a touchy-feely kind of guy.”

“No wonder Charlene wants nothing to do with him,” Lindsey said. “Still, he must realize that if he wants his daughter in his life, this is the wrong way to go about getting her attention.”

“Some people respond very badly to rejection,” Sully said. “If he’s a bully, he might think that this is the way to get her to respond to him.”

“Through fear?” Lindsey asked. “Obviously he doesn’t realize that Violet and Charlene are made of tougher stuff.”

“
If
it’s him,” Emma said. “And I can see why Violet suspects him, but there are a lot of people who had it in for Robbie. Despite his brilliance as an actor, his personal life was a train wreck. And as for you being a target, he does have a wife and an ex-girlfriend who might not have been thrilled with his interest in you.”

“Maybe,” Lindsey said. She refused to look at Sully to see what he thought of this statement.

“I’m going to have you fill out a report,” Emma said. “I want it on file in case anything else comes up. I have to be honest: I’m going to be really happy when this play is over.”

Lindsey and Sully exchanged a look. Neither said anything but both felt the same.

• • •

W
hen she finished her report, Lindsey and Sully went back to the theater. The dress rehearsal ran late and no one left until after midnight. Lindsey was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open.

The sounds of a guitar strumming and a dog howling greeted Lindsey and Nancy as they entered the house. Heathcliff liked to sing along while Charlie played his acoustic guitar. They were all quite sure that Heathcliff fancied himself a rock star. As soon as Nancy turned the key in the lock, however, a black bundle of fur broke off in mid-howl and launched himself at the door. Lindsey knelt down in the foyer and hugged her puppy close. Nothing made the world quite so right as puppy kisses.

Charlie strode out of Nancy’s downstairs apartment, carrying his guitar by the neck.

“He’s getting pretty good,” he said. “He’s definitely better than my last lead singer.”

“Thanks for watching him, Charlie,” Lindsey said.

“No worries,” Charlie said. He held up crossed fingers. “Me and the Heathster are like this.”

“Heathster?” Nancy asked with a frown.

“Yeah, check this.” Charlie knelt down in front of the dog and held up one hand. “Give me five, Heathster, my man.”

Heathcliff patted Charlie’s hand with his paw and they both looked at Lindsey for praise.

“You taught him to high-five?” she asked. “I love it.”

Both she and Nancy tried it and Heathcliff patted their hands with his paw.

“That dog is a genius,” Nancy declared. “Now, I am going to pass out. Good grief, I am done in.”

“Good night,” Lindsey said.

“Good night, Naners,” Charlie said.

He led the way up the stairs, and Lindsey and Heathcliff followed. Charlie went into his apartment on the second-floor landing while Lindsey kept going to her place on the third. As she entered her apartment, she felt the tension in her shoulders ease. She was exhausted but the activity of the night, well, that and her near-death experience had her brain in high gear.

Someone had tried to kill her, or at the very least, cause her some serious bodily harm. Why? To stop the show? Because she had angered someone? She thought about Kitty and Lola. Was Emma right? Could it have been one of them because they didn’t like the attention Robbie had been paying to Lindsey?

Her theory that it was Dylan who killed Robbie was shot full of holes and, frankly, she was relieved. She’d hated thinking that Dylan might have had something to do with it.

Then again, was Violet right? Was Sterling exacting revenge on her and the show to destroy her because he knew it would hurt her and Charlene?

And, of course, there was always Harvey Wargus. Lindsey knew he hated both Violet and Robbie. After all, they had ruined him. But if he had murdered Robbie, wouldn’t he do the same to Violet? Why would he have tried to harm Lindsey? That made no sense unless he was working for Sterling and Sterling was calling the shots. If it was Sterling, he was apparently more interested in hurting Violet than he was in killing her.

Heathcliff sat on the couch and watched while Lindsey made a cup of decaffeinated tea. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was missing something.

She curled up on the couch, snuggled Heathcliff and sipped her tea. It wasn’t long before he rolled onto his side with his head hanging over the edge of the couch and began softly snoring.

Lindsey rubbed his soft fur while she pondered the events of the past few days. She’d missed her little fur baby while she’d been busy with the play, and she made a mental promise that she would take him for a nice long walk tomorrow morning to make it up to him. She was so grateful to have Nancy and Charlie to help her raise her boy.

This made her thoughts shift to Violet. It must have been a huge relief to her to have people like Robbie fill in the father gap while she was raising Charlene on her own. She thought about her visit to Charlene on the island and realized that for her to walk away from work and hole up on her island, she must be taking Robbie’s loss pretty hard. She’d certainly seemed awfully grief struck when Lindsey had visited her.

The whole thing made Lindsey want to call her own father and thank him for being there, always, no matter what. Her mother, too, for that matter. They were her foundation. They were academics at a small university in New Hampshire. They had fostered her love of books and learning. Without them, she couldn’t even imagine what her life would be like.

She drained her tea and rinsed her cup out in the kitchen sink. She heard her cell phone chime from the holder she’d put it in to recharge.

She glanced at the clock. It was well past midnight. Who would be calling her this late? The hopeful flutter that it might be Sully launched inside of her before she could squash it.

Probably, it was a wrong number. A drunk dialer making a booty call seemed likely given that the bars were just closing. She glanced at the display, but didn’t recognize the number. She figured it was better to answer it than to have them keep calling all night.

“Hello?” she asked.

“Lindsey?” the voice asked. She didn’t recognize the male voice.

“Yes,” she said. “Who is this?”

“A friend,” the voice said.

“I don’t recognize your voice,” she said. She kept her tone frosty. “Who are you?”

“Someone who cares about what happened to you tonight,” the voice said.

Lindsey listened very closely. She thought maybe the voice was familiar, but why wasn’t he identifying himself? He had to have something to hide. Was it a reporter who’d heard about her fall? Or worse, was it Sterling Buchanan or one of his minions?

“I’m fine,” she said. Her voice dropped from frosty to subzero. “Unless you tell me who you are, this conversation is over.”

“I’m glad you’re okay,” the man said. “Sleep well.”

The caller hung up, and Lindsey felt a chill sweep over her body from head to toe as she stared at the phone. She didn’t like feeling as if she was being watched, especially when there was a killer out there.

What if the caller had been the same person who shoved her and they were just calling to let her know in a very sick and twisted way that they knew she was fine and that they would be coming for her again?

Okay, that’s just stupid, she told herself. Whoever had pushed her was out to stop the show, not harm her personally. It could just as easily have been someone else who got pushed. But then, who was her caller and why had he called?

She went into her recent calls and looked at the number again. She decided to call it. Even if no one answered, if it rolled over to voice mail, she would know who it was. After eight rings, an automated voice repeated the number and asked her to leave a message. She ended the call, feeling even more creeped out than before.

She put the phone back in the charger and then checked all of the locks on her windows and doors. No one was after her. No one was watching her or so she kept telling herself.

She had just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been anyone who had been up in the balcony. The caller probably was a reporter. When she had told him she was going to hang up, he had probably thought better of pursuing his line of questioning.

Now she knew why Emma had been so annoyed with the media. They really were a ruthless bunch.

She got ready for bed and climbed in between her flannel sheets. She switched out the light, and a few minutes later she felt the telltale dip on the foot of the bed. Heathcliff made a few circles and then collapsed onto the fleece blanket she kept on the end of the bed just for him.

She had thought she’d drop right off to sleep but no. Every time she felt the woozy, fuzzy lull of oblivion begin to overtake her, a creak or a groan from the house would cause her eyes to snap open and stare into the darkness.

The phone call had put her more on edge than she’d expected. She could hear Heathcliff’s even breathing. She tried to mimic him but it was no use. Finally, she reached down and pulled his fleece blanket up the bed until Heathcliff was beside her. She absorbed his dog warmth through her heavy covers and finally, she fell asleep.

• • •

I
t was opening day for the show, and the library was abuzz with nervous jitters. Beth had brought coffee and doughnuts from the bakery in the general store, so all of the staff members were overcaffeinated and oversugared. Lindsey would have loved it if it sped up shelving and check-in, but instead, it seemed to make everyone hyper and unable to stay on task.