Hitting the Books Page 3

  “Liza.” Theresa lifted her head with a wince. She glanced at the young woman standing by the open door. “I’m all right. Please don’t worry your father. I’m fine.”

  “Worry him?” Liza said. “Look at you—he’s going to go mental.”

  She didn’t wait for an invitation but climbed into the ambulance. She turned around and took her backpack from Zach with a quick nod of thanks.

  “You don’t have to—” Theresa protested.

  “Yes, I do. I won’t leave you alone,” Liza interrupted. She glanced at the driver and scowled. “Can’t you see she’s in pain? Let’s go!”

  Liza’s command got everyone moving. The driver shut the door and hurried to the front of the vehicle.

  “All right, I’m off. If any of you think of anything you feel is important, call me,” Emma cried over her shoulder as she dashed to her squad car.

  “Of course,” Lindsey said.

  They stood motionless as the ambulance flipped on its lights and sirens and sped out of town with Chief Plewicki right behind it. The silence that followed their departure felt heavy, as if a large hand were pressing down on the small seaside community, pushing out the air and making it hard to breathe.

  “I have lived here all my life,” Dennis said. “And I have never seen anything like that. A hit-and-run, can you believe it? Right here in the center of town in broad daylight.”

  “What is wrong with people?” Sam agreed. “He didn’t slow down or stop or anything. He had to have seen her. He intentionally swerved into the bike lane to hit her.”

  “He?” Lindsey asked. “Did you see that it was a man?”

  Sam frowned, then shook his head. “He had a hat on. I just assumed it was a man.”

  “Did either of you recognize the car?” She glanced between Sam and Dennis.

  “It was a Chevy,” Dennis said.

  “No, it was a Honda,” Sam argued.

  “What sort of hat was he wearing?” Beth asked.

  Lindsey gave her an approving nod. Good question.

  “Baseball hat,” Sam said. “A Mets hat.”

  “No, it was a Yankees hat,” Dennis argued.

  “Either way, you should tell Chief Plewicki that the driver was wearing a hat,” Lindsey said. “That’s the sort of detail she was looking for. Did you see anything else, anything at all?”

  “No,” they said together.

  Lindsey glanced at Beth. She looked as discouraged as Lindsey felt. She supposed this was why eyewitnesses were frequently considered unreliable. Three of them had been watching, and they couldn’t agree on the type of car or the type of hat the driver was wearing, none of it, and they had all seen the exact same thing.

  “Hey!” Toby Carter, another student from the study group, jogged toward them. “Did I just see Liza climb into an ambulance? Is she okay?”

  “She’s all right,” Meredith said. She turned to face Toby. “But Theresa, her dad’s fiancée, was hit by a car. That’s who was in the ambulance.”

  “Oh no.” Toby frowned. “Is she going to be all right?”

  Zach shrugged. “It looked pretty bad. We saw the crowd gathering from the library window, and Liza recognized Theresa’s sweat suit and came running out here. Where were you? You know we were supposed to meet up to study, right?”

  “Yeah, sorry, I spaced on the time,” Toby said. He glanced away, taking in the calm water of the bay before turning back to his friends. “Did anyone see the driver? I mean, who would drive like that through the middle of town?”

  “That’s what I want to know. A crazy driver almost took me out in front of the Blue Anchor, and he was coming from this direction.” Charlie Peyton, Nancy’s nephew who worked for Sully part-time as a boat captain, strode toward them. His shoulder-length black hair hung over his face, and when he pushed it back out of his eyes, Lindsey noticed his fingers were shaking.

  “You all right, Charlie?” she asked.

  He put his hand on the back of his neck. “Yeah, I’m just a little shook up. I’d just finished my lunch at the Anchor when I heard a car screech. I stepped out to see what was happening, and the guy almost hit me. I had to dive out of the way.”

  He gestured to his jeans, and Lindsey noticed one knee was torn and his Doc Martens were scuffed. He was sweating profusely for a day that was on the brisk side of cool, and his eyes were wide, as if he were stuck in a permanent state of surprise.

  “White car?” Lindsey asked.

  Charlie nodded.

  “Theresa Huston was crossing the street and was hit by a car, a white car, just a little while ago,” Beth said. “I’m sure it was the same one that almost hit you.”

  “Oh, that’s awful!” one of the women from the beach said as she joined their small group. “We could hear the commotion but couldn’t see anything. I was afraid to come up from the beach in case it was some sort of nutjob on the loose.”

  “What’s worse is the driver took off,” Sam said.

  Dennis looked at Charlie. “You didn’t recognize him, did you?”

  Charlie shook his head. “No, but I’ll remember his hooked nose and beady-eyed stare for the rest of my life. If I did know him, I’d have chased him down.”

  “Good thing you didn’t then,” Beth said. “Clearly, the person is disturbed. If they didn’t stop when they hit one pedestrian, they weren’t going to stop for a second.”

  Charlie was shockingly pale, and Lindsey could tell he was trying to shake off the adrenaline surge that had left him shaky. She gave him a bracing hug.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” she said. Charlie hugged her back hard, and Lindsey felt the breath get squeezed out of her lungs. As if realizing he was holding her too tight, Charlie quickly released her and stepped back. “Sorry.”

  “It’s oka—” Lindsey was cut off by an imperious voice coming from the curb.

  “Officer Kirkland, you will let me pass, or I will take down your badge number and file a formal complaint.”

  They turned as one to see Nancy Peyton nose to nose with Officer Kirkland, who was doing his best to cordon off the area with some plastic yellow crime scene tape.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t have people traipsing through—”

  “That is my nephew,” Nancy declared. “If you want to keep me from him, you’ll have to arrest me.”

  They stared at each other for several seconds, and then Kirkland grunted. In the battle of wills, Nancy had forty years of sharply honed endurance on him. He didn’t stand a chance.

  “Fine, but walk around and not through the area where the victim was struck by the car.” Officer Kirkland rolled his eyes toward the heavens as if seeking patience.

  “Charlie, are you all right?” Nancy cried as she jogged around the crime scene perimeter and reached for her nephew. She wrapped him in a fierce hug, and then leaned back to study him. “You look like you were in a fight.”

  “I’m all right, Nanners,” he said. He hugged her back, and Lindsey noticed he looked less shaky. “I’m in better shape than Theresa Huston, at any rate.”

  Another squad car arrived, and Kirkland ushered all the bystanders out of the area so that the police could investigate the scene. Lindsey glanced at the dented railing and wondered whether they would call the state police crime scene unit to come and collect paint scrapings or note any tire marks that might help identify the car that was involved.

  Her curiosity made her want to linger, but Lindsey knew the most helpful thing she could do was to get out of the way. Besides, it was possible that someone in the library had seen something, and maybe she could get some information for Chief Plewicki.

  “Let’s head back to the library,” she said to Beth. “We should tell the others what happened.”

  “Right,” Beth said. “And maybe if we’re lucky, one of our patrons saw something that will hel
p the police out.”

  Lindsey glanced at her, and Beth shook her head. “Don’t even pretend you weren’t thinking the same thing.”

  “Oh, I was thinking it,” Lindsey admitted. “I’m just surprised that you were.”

  “Clearly, I’ve been spending too much time with you,” Beth said. “Being a buttinsky is contagious.”

  Lindsey laughed. She knew her need for information was usually her downfall. Over the past couple of years, she’d had several harrowing episodes, such as boat chases, being held at gunpoint, and locked in a storage shed in the dead of winter. All of these things should have nipped her curiosity, but no. Instead, she took comfort in the fact that in each instance, the criminal had been caught because she hadn’t been able to ignore pursuing the facts. She felt the same need for answers right now.

  It was like an incurable disease. She desperately wanted to know who was driving that car. Why had they sped up when Theresa stepped into the road? Was it an accident or on purpose? Where had they gone? Were they drunk or uninsured? Had they just panicked? It didn’t feel like it to Lindsey. From what she had seen, the car had appeared to be aiming for Theresa. Was Theresa the target, or was the driver out to hit anyone who got in their way? The questions spun through Lindsey’s mind, ending with the most concerning of all: If Theresa was a target, would the driver come back and try it again? Lindsey knew the events of the day would plague her until she had some answers, and what better place to start asking questions than the library?

  3

  “Maybe they had pedal confusion—like, they stepped on the gas instead of the brake,” Paula said. She was balancing her plate on her knee as she nibbled on Ms. Cole’s herbed zucchini-ricotta flatbread.

  “How do you figure?” Beth asked. “And even if they did, wouldn’t they have figured it out in time to stop before they almost took out Charlie as well?”

  “That’s a solid point,” Mary said. She clutched baby Josie close, and Lindsey knew she was thinking it could have been her crossing the street with the baby.

  The thought made Lindsey’s heart clutch in her chest. She glanced at her cell phone. It had been less than an hour since the incident, and they were all in the crafternoon room, eating while they discussed the hit-and-run. Both the book and the craft for the day were forgotten.

  “I hope they catch the driver and throw the book at him,” Ms. Cole said. “There is absolutely no excuse for such reckless behavior in the center of town. What if it had been after school? So many children come here to wait for their parents to pick them up. It could have been devastating.”

  It was one of the few times Lindsey could remember being in complete agreement with her cantankerous staff person. It was horrible that Theresa had been hit, certainly, but it could have been so much worse. Theresa could have been killed.

  Given that the driver had almost taken out Charlie as well, Lindsey didn’t think the driver had planned to hit Theresa. She was a popular tennis coach who had lived in Briar Creek for most of her life. There was no reason to think she’d be a target for malice.

  In fact, Theresa was well regarded in town. She had recently gotten engaged to Larry Milstein, Liza’s father, who owned a franchise of furniture stores up and down the East Coast. Larry had gobs of money, and he was more than happy to spend it on the petite tennis coach who had captured his heart. They were an outgoing couple in the community of Briar Creek, using Larry’s wealth to fund loads of programs for schools and seniors and any other philanthropic venture that caught his eye. Considering their background, Lindsey couldn’t think of anyone who had a grudge against Theresa or Larry, and neither could any of the crafternooners.

  “Maybe the driver was drunk,” Violet suggested. “Could be he was passing out at the wheel and had no idea that he hit Theresa and almost took out Charlie.”

  Everyone glanced at Nancy. Charlie had gone home when they came back to the library. He was still a little shook up, and Lindsey noticed as he walked away that he stayed well away from the edge of the curb. She did not blame him a bit.

  “I’m with Ms. Cole,” Nancy said. “I hope they catch whoever did this and cut his license into tiny little bits. Poor Theresa, how is she supposed to coach now? And Charlie, what if—”

  She stopped talking and lifted her spoon to her lips, taking a big mouthful of the gazpacho Ms. Cole had made for their meeting. Lindsey followed her lead. The gazpacho was cold and smooth and perfectly seasoned. She glanced at Ms. Cole and found her staring into her own bowl, looking forlorn. Lindsey knew that Ms. Cole, who had lived here most of her life, was likely struggling with the events of the day.

  Lindsey suspected Ms. Cole was thinking what they all were. That if something as horrible as a hit-and-run could happen in broad daylight in the center of town . . . well, was the town they all knew and loved as safe as they’d once thought? The past several years had brought several murders to light, one of which had been over twenty years old, but this sort of aggression in the middle of the day made the small village lose even more of its humanity. When a person wasn’t even safe crossing the street, things had changed and not for the better.

  “This is excellent, Ms. Cole,” Lindsey said. “Really delicious.”

  “Thank you.” Ms. Cole smoothed one hand over her teal blue skirt. The compliment seemed to shake her out of her moroseness, which was what Lindsey had intended.

  The lemon was known for dressing monochromatically, as if assured that if she wore all blue or green or red, all the pieces of her outfit would match. It made for some interesting wardrobe combinations, such as today’s teal blue skirt and periwinkle blue blouse paired with navy blue pumps. It was one of the oddities that made Ms. Cole her own true self, like shushing and badgering patrons for their overdue materials. Still, she was here and she was participating. A year ago, Lindsey never would have believed it.

  “Poor Larry,” Mary said. “I can’t imagine how he felt when he got the call from Liza that Theresa had been hit by a car.”

  “He suffered so much when his first wife passed away,” Nancy said. “We belonged to the same bereavement group for a while.”

  “He’s a widower?” Lindsey asked. “I didn’t know that. I don’t know why, but I assumed he was divorced.”

  “That’s because of his television ads,” Beth said. “They are so obnoxious. On an unconscious level, you probably assumed he was divorced because, really, who could live with a guy like that? He’s handsome and all, but he’s always yelling about low, lower, lowest prices on sofas, sleepers, recliners, blah, blah, blah. I lunge for the mute button every time one of his ads comes on.”

  “Don’t think too harshly about him—he’s a self-made man,” Violet said. “I remember reading about him in the New York Times. He grew up in the projects in the Bronx and worked his way up from furniture deliveryman to owner of the company with no education, just a lot of hustle. He’s never had it easy.”

  “Besides, you can’t be judging him when you married a man who dresses up like Thomas the Tank Engine for a living,” Mary teased.

  “That’s different,” Beth protested. “Aidan is a children’s librarian like me. We pull out all the stops to get kids reading.”

  “Mary’s just joking,” Lindsey said. “Although, that one time when Aidan came into the library dressed as the Headless Horseman from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, he scared the bologna out of me.”

  Beth laughed and nodded. “Headless is not his best look. And yet, still not as scary as when Milstein promoted his furniture store by dressing up as a hot dog and jogging around the bases at Fenway. I heard he paid a hundred thousand dollars to shoot that ad in the ballpark.”

  “Yeah, and then there’s the one where he was posing with the beluga whales at the Mystic Aquarium,” Paula said. “I swear it looked like the whale was swim-dancing while Milstein played his ukulele, which in all fairness was not as painful as it could have been.�
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  “Oh, I love those whales,” Beth said. “They always look like they’re smiling.”

  “Don’t forget the ad where he looks like he is parasailing in New York Harbor,” Nancy said. “And still he was yelling about low, lower, lowest prices, and then the phony shark jumps up and swallows him.”

  “I thought it was pretty funny in a campy sort of way,” Paula said. Nancy gave her a look. “Or not.”

  “You’re right. His personality is larger than life,” Lindsey said. She had never met Larry Milstein, but she knew the mayor of Briar Creek cleared his calendar whenever Larry called. “Milstein’s is the biggest furniture retailer on the East Coast. It seems to me other people in the same business might not be as fond of him as we are. He might have made some enemies along the way.”

  She felt everyone turn to stare at her, even baby Josie, who puckered her mouth and made a smacking noise. She could feel the concern, the worry, the anxiety pouring off her friends in waves.

  “I’m just theorizing,” she said. “You know, acknowledging the possibility that if someone had a beef with him, they might have tried to hurt him by going after his fiancée.”

  “But you’re not planning to start investigating something that was probably just a hideous traffic accident, right?” Nancy asked.

  “Right, absolutely,” Lindsey agreed. They were still staring. “So, what did you all think of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? Did you like the protagonist, Francie Nolan?”

  She took a big bite of her herbed ricotta bread and glanced around the room while she chewed. They all continued to stare.

  “What?” Lindsey asked. “Do I have something in my teeth?”

  Paula shook her head. “You are the worst liar ever. You know you’re not going to let the incident rest until you know for sure that it actually was an accident.”