Hitting the Books Read online

  “I would have thought she’d have gone there after she was hit,” Beth said.

  “I think she was trying not to be a burden,” Lindsey said. “Especially before their wedding.”

  “Huh, if you ask me, she could do a lot better than Larry Milstein,” Ms. Cole said. She looked a bit puckered when she said it, and Lindsey was oddly reassured to have the lemon back in fighting form.

  Lindsey studied her for a moment. There was knowledge in Ms. Cole’s eyes. She knew she shouldn’t ask, but darn it, her curiosity wouldn’t let it go. “Know something about Larry, do you? I noticed when everyone else was talking about him at our crafternoon the other day, you were awfully quiet.”

  “I was eating,” Ms. Cole said.

  “And?” Lindsey prompted her by waving her hand in a circular motion.

  “Nothing. He’s got some skeletons in his closet, and that’s all I’ll say about it,” she said.

  “What sort of skeletons?” Beth asked.

  She was too late. Ms. Cole turned and headed into the workroom, cradling a stack of books in her arms, blatantly ignoring the question. Lindsey glanced at Beth as she dabbed her clothes with the wad of paper towels. They were rough industrial towels that felt as if they could alternate as sandpaper in a pinch, but she wasn’t complaining, since she was beginning to shiver.

  “Robbie’s here. Go have some tea and warm up,” Beth said. “I’ll keep an eye on things out here and see if I can work my magic on Ms. Cole and get her to talk.”

  Lindsey grunted. If there was anyone who qualified as immovable as a mountain, it was the lemon, but she didn’t want to be negative.

  “Keep me posted,” she said. “I’m going to go sit on the portable heater in my office until I dry out.”

  Beth nodded.

  Lindsey crossed the workroom, which led to her office at the back. Before she reached her door it opened wide, and there stood Robbie Vine, famous British actor and current boyfriend of police chief Emma Plewicki.

  “All right, pet?” he asked. Despite the alarm in his voice, his accent curled around Lindsey like a hug. She shrugged it off, knowing that she shouldn’t tell him anything that had happened at Theresa’s house.

  “Not today, Robbie,” she said. “I’m stressed and cranky.”

  “Not to mention leaving a trail of water behind you,” he said. “What happened? Did you decide to go for a swim off the pier?”

  “No.” Lindsey glanced behind her, and sure enough, there were water spots all along the faux-wooden floor. She sighed. She turned and went to get a mop out of the utility closet, but Robbie beat her to it.

  “No, no, I’ve got this,” he said. “I made tea. Why don’t you sit and dry off and have a cup? I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Lindsey knew she should argue, but she didn’t have the energy. Instead, she let him grab the mop while she sank into her desk chair. She switched on her portable heater and reached for the teapot he had waiting for her on the corner of her desk. Being a celebrity, Robbie traveled quite a bit, but when he was in town, he and Lindsey usually had afternoon tea together. She wasn’t sure when the habit had started, but it had never been more welcome than it was today. At least, the tea portion of it was welcome.

  She lifted the pot and poured its contents into a delicate china cup. The dark aroma of the oolong tea with soft floral notes drifted up into the air on a curl of steam, relaxing her as she inhaled even before she had her first sip.

  A plate of butter cookies sat beside the teapot, and she helped herself to a couple of them. The stress of the afternoon began to recede just as Robbie banged back into the room. He clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly as if he was warming up for something.

  “All right, let’s get down to business, shall we?”

  “Business?” Lindsey asked. She lowered her cup so that she could stare at him over the lip. “What business could we possibly have?”

  “I was listening to my beloved’s police scanner—”

  “No,” she said.

  “What?” he asked. “A chap has to have a hobby.”

  “Listening to a police scanner isn’t a hobby. It’s you being a big busybody,” she said.

  “Kettle.” Robbie pointed to himself and then to her. “Pot.”

  “I wasn’t listening to a radio,” she said. “I was here, trying to help out a patron of my library.”

  “By jumping in her car and racing to the scene of a burglary?” he asked.

  He rolled his eyes and then reached for the teapot. After pouring himself a cup and doctoring it with sugar and milk, he reached for a butter cookie and dunked it into his tea.

  “Liza was worried, and I didn’t want her to go alone and walk into a situation she was unprepared for,” Lindsey said. She sipped her tea, pretending that her reasoning was not as flimsy as it sounded. Robbie wasn’t having it.

  “Codswallop,” he said. “You heard there was a burglary in progress, and you jumped at the chance to be on the scene. Now I suspect it wasn’t a robbery at all. Do tell, what really happened out there?”

  “I’m sure if Emma wants you to know, she’ll tell you herself,” Lindsey said.

  Robbie ran a hand through his hair, leaving deep finger trails in the thick strawberry blond waves. “She won’t. You know she won’t.”

  Lindsey shrugged. She was not going to get in the middle of Robbie and Emma. Her life was complicated enough without being the cause of any tension between the chief of police and her man.

  “Fine, don’t tell me anything,” Robbie said. His light green eyes latched on to hers, and she could see the formation of an idea swirling in the depths. “Just say yes or no. That’s all I ask.”

  “Like twenty questions?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Was it a burglary?”

  “This is dumb.”

  “Have a cookie and answer the question,” he said.

  Lindsey reached for another cookie and studied him. The thing was, Robbie was really smart about people and their motivations. He studied people tirelessly for his craft, so he picked up on things that most people missed. If someone was trying to kill Theresa as Emma suspected, maybe having Robbie be hypervigilant wasn’t such a bad idea.

  “No, it wasn’t,” she said. She bit into the cookie.

  “I knew it!” cried Robbie. “It was entirely too coincidental. I mean, who gets hit by a car and then burglarized within a matter of days?”

  “The unluckiest person in the world,” Lindsey said.

  “Which is hardly the case, since Theresa was a tennis star and is about to marry one of the wealthiest men in the country,” Robbie said. “That’s not what I would call bad luck, so it has to be that someone is out to harm her.”

  “I’d say they want to do more than harm her,” Lindsey said. She cradled the delicate china cup in her hands, letting its warmth seep into her palms and move up her arms.

  Robbie sat up straight. “You think they meant to kill her?”

  Lindsey hesitated. She didn’t want to cause a false alarm. She also didn’t want to pretend alarm wasn’t warranted when it could have been so easy for the person who broke into Theresa’s house to snuff her out with the pillow, or the car that had hit her to have broken her entire body and not just her leg. She decided the situation warranted everyone to be on high alert.

  “Yes, I do,” Lindsey said. “I think someone is trying to kill her.”

  “But why?” Robbie asked.

  Lindsey shrugged. “The only person that’s been mentioned with a possible motive is Kayla Manning, since she was dumped by Larry for Theresa.”

  “‘Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned,’” Robbie quoted.

  “‘Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned,’” Lindsey finished the line. “The Mourning Bride by William Congreve.”

  “Well done.” Robbie
grinned. “Most people attribute that to the bard.”

  “It was published in sixteen ninety-seven,” Lindsey said. “About a hundred years too late to be Shakespeare.”

  Robbie saluted her with his tea, and Lindsey smiled.

  “So, what’s our plan?” Robbie asked.

  “Plan?”

  “Yeah, you know, what are we going to do next?” he clarified.

  “Um, nothing,” she said.

  “Nothing?” He looked outraged. “But you just said Theresa Huston was going to be murdered. How can we do nothing?”

  “Because we aren’t the police, you remember? You’re dating the chief. She wears a badge and we don’t.”

  “But Emma won’t tell me anything,” he said. “She won’t let me do anything either.”

  “You’re a civilian—of course she won’t. What if you got killed? Besides, what exactly do you think you can do?” Lindsey asked. “Short of staking out the Milsteins’ house to keep an eye on Theresa, I’m not sure there’s anything we can do that the police aren’t already doing.”

  Robbie smacked his forehead with his palm. “Of course we can do something. We can find out who wants her dead.”

  “Again, isn’t that a task for the police?”

  “Sure, but we have access to people that they don’t,” he said.

  “How do you figure?” Lindsey took another cookie and bit it in half. Robbie did the same but paused to dunk his in his tea first.

  “Quite simply, I’m a famous actor, and you’re everyone’s favorite librarian,” he said. “If we ask questions, no one will give it a second thought.”

  “Except you’re an actor and I’m a librarian, and why would we be asking questions about who would want Theresa Huston dead? That’s just not something you can slide into a conversation as casually as inquiring about the weather.”

  “Having been the cover story of many a tabloid, trust me when I tell you people love a good goss,” Robbie said. “If we just chat them up, the information will come.”

  “Suppose that’s true,” she said. “Where do we start? We’d have to talk to Theresa first, and now that Larry has moved her to his house, it’s not as if access to her is going to be easy. We’d need a reason to pop in, a reason that won’t make your girlfriend want to arrest you for butting into an ongoing investigation.”

  Robbie opened his mouth and then closed it. Twice. He cast Lindsey a chagrined look and slumped back in his seat in defeat. She was right and he knew it.

  A brisk knock sounded on Lindsey’s door before it was pushed open and Ms. Cole strode in.

  “What can I do for you, Ms. Cole?” Lindsey asked.

  “When Liza Milstein ran out of here.” Ms. Cole paused to make a disapproving face—running was never allowed in the library—before she continued. “She left the books she’d been checking out behind. I can either check them back in, or someone can deliver them to her house.”

  Robbie sat up again. “Ms. Cole, I could kiss you.”

  “Try it and it’ll be your last,” she said. She scowled at him and Robbie laughed, which made her blush.

  “Thank you, Ms. Cole,” Lindsey said. “Since these were for Theresa for use during her convalescence, I’ll see that they are delivered to her myself.”

  Ms. Cole glanced between them. She lifted one eyebrow but didn’t say a word. She backed out of the office, closing the door behind her.

  “Yes!” Robbie said. He balled his hand into a fist and drew his arm down in front of him in a sign of triumph.

  “Don’t get so excited,” Lindsey said. “You’re not going.”

  “Of course I am,” he said. “It’s bucketing out there, and you don’t own a car, so I’m your ride.”

  Lindsey looked past him and out the window. He was right—it was still raining. The heavy downpour that was going to make the grass green, the leaves on the trees unfurl, and the flowers bloom was also going to soak her through if she tried to ride her bike all the way to Larry Milstein’s house.

  When Lindsey had moved to Briar Creek a few years ago, she had decided to be more environmentally friendly and had given up her car. Other than borrowing Sully’s pickup truck occasionally, she had only her handy Schwinn cruiser to get herself around. She could easily stuff Theresa’s books into the saddlebag baskets in the back, but she didn’t want to risk the materials being ruined in the rain, and she didn’t think she could stand to be soaked through to the skin again.

  She glanced at Robbie with a frown. “Fine, but you wait in the car.”

  He shot up from his seat as if he’d been launched.

  She held up her hand in a stop motion. “And we’re not leaving now, because I am still on duty. I get off work at five. I can’t go before then.”

  Robbie sank back into his seat and picked up his tea with a sigh. “This civil servant stuff is for the birds.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Lindsey left the library a little after five with Robbie carrying the tote bag of materials Liza had left behind when she fled the building. It was a short drive to Larry Milstein’s house, as he lived on the same street as Nancy Peyton, Lindsey’s former landlord. Whereas Nancy had turned her three-story captain’s house into three apartments, so she could live on the first floor and rent the two apartments above, Larry’s house was still in its original form.

  The wide shell-encrusted driveway led them to a huge house that stood on the very end of the cul-de-sac, with a large corner lot and an unparalleled view of the ocean and the Thumb Islands.

  Robbie parked right in front of the house, and Lindsey noted that there were several cars in the driveway, none of which were police cars.

  “Your girlfriend isn’t here,” she said.

  “Bit of luck there, I’d say,” he said.

  The rain had finally eased to a light drizzle, but the early evening had a cloak of gloom about it. Everything felt damp and gray, as if the life had been wrung out of it. Lindsey shivered in her raincoat.

  “I hope we’re not intruding on their dinner,” she said.

  “We’re not intruding,” he said.

  He climbed out of the car as he spoke, jogging around the front to get Lindsey’s door for her. She would have gotten it herself, but she was holding the bag of audiobooks on her lap. Robbie took the bag from her and slung it over his shoulder.

  “We’re doing them a favor by dropping off the library materials. I’m sure they’ll be glad we stopped by. You’ll see.”

  Lindsey didn’t share his optimism but followed him up the steps and across the wide front porch to the large double doors. Matching spring wreaths made up of silk daffodils and wrapped with bright green ribbon adorned each door. Robbie lifted his fist to knock, but the door opened before he connected, causing him to awkwardly drop his arm back to his side.

  “What do you want?” A tall blond giant with the chiseled good looks of a male model glared down at them.

  “Mr. Milstein?” Robbie asked. “Huh. Funny, you appear old—er . . . more mature in your television commercials.”

  “Stieg, is that you?” Lindsey nudged Robbie aside and squinted at the big Swede.

  The man’s face cracked into a wide grin and he said, “Ms. Norris!” Then he swooped down and hugged her close, lifting her off her feet.

  “Oh, now, just a moment,” Robbie protested. “That’s awfully familiar of you.”

  Lindsey hugged him in return and laughed when he put her back on her feet.

  “It was a fifty-fifty shot,” she said. “I’m glad I got it right.”

  “Actually, you didn’t,” he said. Behind him, his twin brother popped up and said, “He’s Stefan. I’m Stieg.”

  Lindsey glanced between the Swedish Norrgard brothers. She didn’t have the heart to tell them that with their long blond hair, handsome masculine features, and bright b
lue eyes, she didn’t really care what their names were, and neither did any other woman with a pulse. Instead, she opened her arms and reached out to hug the real Stieg.

  “Well, it’s good to see you both,” she said.

  “Oy, that’s enough with the hugging,” Robbie said. “I take it you know these lads, Lindsey?”

  She stepped back from Stieg and glanced at Robbie. “Yes, they’re the Norrgard brothers. Don’t you remember? They worked with the salvage company to find Captain Kidd’s treasure on Pirate Island.”

  Robbie blinked. “I think that was before my time.”

  “Oh, well, let me introduce you. Robbie Vine, these are the Norrgard brothers, Stieg and Stefan,” she said. She made sure she put the right twin with the right name.

  Robbie shook their hands and looked expectantly at the young men. Neither of them recognized Robbie as the famous actor that he was. Lindsey had to bite her lip to keep from chuckling at the look of chagrin on his face.

  “DI Gordon?” Robbie said.

  “I thought she said your name was Robbie,” Stieg said. He scratched his chin, clearly confused.

  “It is,” Robbie said. “I was referencing a role I played on television. You’ve heard of it. The light-up box in your living room with the people in it who talk to you?”

  “He’s snarky,” Stefan said. “I like him.”

  The brothers exchanged grins.

  “Stieg, Stefan.” Lindsey brought their attention back to her, hoping to change the subject and keep Robbie from acting out any of his more famous movie roles. “We’re here for a reason.”

  “Oh, sure, what can we do for you, Ms. Norris?” Stefan asked.

  “I’m here to see Theresa,” she said.

  The twins glanced at each other. Stieg lifted one heavily muscled arm and put his hand on the back of his neck. His thermal shirt molded to each curve of his muscled abs, and his jeans sank lower onto his hips. Lindsey kept her gaze on his, refusing to treat him like a piece of man candy, even though, yeah, he totally was.

  “Bloody show-off, that’s what that is,” Robbie muttered from behind her. “Any lad could look like that if he had nothing better to do than pump iron at a gym all day. Blimey, my grandfather could look like that if he felt like it and he’s ninety.”