Bertie groaned.
“You might as well come in, Ellen,” Watson said. “As long as you’re here. Everyone else, can you stand back, please.”
“I don’t know what you’re going to find,” Charlene said. “Everyone at the party last night had a chance to handle those things. Fingerprints will be useless.”
“I won’t know what I hope to find until I find it, now will I?” he replied.
“I stopped in to return my books and to ask how your reunion went, Bertie.” Aunt Ellen glanced at Watson. “Not all that well, at a guess.”
“Helena Sanchez died,” Bertie said.
“Oh,” Aunt Ellen said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Butch stepped outside to use his radio to call for someone to come out and take away our things.
“You can open the library once the forensic team has removed the historical display,” Watson said. “I see no need for us to go through anything else here. I have to get back to town. If you think of anything …”
“We’ll let you know,” Bertie said.
He smiled at her. “I’m sorry this happened to you again.”
“It didn’t happen to us,” she said. “It happened to Helena Sanchez.”
“Aunt Ellen,” I said, “you knew Helena when she was the director here. You might want to tell Detective Watson about her.”
“I’m all ears,” Watson said.
“I’ll help if I can, but I can’t say I knew her well,” Aunt Ellen said. “I’ve been a member of the Friends of the Library for a long time, under various library directors. But to be honest, Helena Sanchez was by far the worst.”
“In what way?” Watson asked.
“Dictatorial. Opinionated. Rude. Completely dismissive of anyone else’s opinion. The Friends of the Library are, as you know, all volunteers. We help out here when we can because we believe in the importance of libraries in general and this library in particular. Helena Sanchez treated us as though we were serving staff. I’d been a library volunteer when my children were little, and enjoyed it, but I didn’t have a lot of time when they got older and I started helping out at Amos’s law office. I came back a few years later, and it seemed as though everything here had changed. I was on the verge of quitting the group, when Helena announced she was leaving. I don’t really remember why—it wasn’t anything in particular, a straw that broke the camel’s back sort of thing—but I decided I couldn’t work with her anymore.” My aunt shrugged. “She left. I stayed. When Bertie took over, we all breathed a sigh of relief.”
“Was her leaving sudden?” Watson asked.
“It was announced suddenly to us. I don’t know how long she’d been planning to go.”
“When was this?” Watson asked.
“I started in the summer of 2010,” Bertie said. “Helena’s leaving was sudden. I was hired with much haste, and she didn’t hang around to help me get into the job, but she was of retirement age, and there was never any indication she’d been asked to leave.”
“Here one day, gone the next,” Aunt Ellen said.
“Not quite that fast,” Bertie said, “but close. She not only left the library but left town as well, almost the day after her job ended.”
“I’ve been told it was you who told her about the party here last night,” Watson said to Aunt Ellen. “How did that come about?”
“I was surprised to see her in town,” Aunt Ellen said. “If I could have, I would’ve avoided her, and she probably wasn’t all that keen to talk to me, but we recognized each other at the same time, so we stopped to chat. The only thing we have in common is the library, so I mentioned Bertie was doing an excellent job as director. She told me she’d enjoy talking to Bertie and gave me her phone number so I could give it to Bertie. We then went our separate ways. I didn’t tell her about the party.”
“That, unfortunately, was me,” Bertie said. “Ellen gave me the number, and I called her to invite her.”
“Give me a minute,” Watson said, “I want to check my phone.”
Cell phone coverage inside the thick stone walls of the library is, to say the least, unreliable. I walked the detective to the door, and the minute he stepped into the open air, his phone beeped. He answered it with a gruff “Watson,” listened for a brief moment, and then said, “I’ll handle it,” and hung up.
“A woman called the hospital just now, looking for her sister, who didn’t come home last night.”
“You think …?”
“The description sounds very much like Helena Sanchez. I’m heading there now. Butch, I need you to stay here and guard the historical display until our people arrive. A guard is probably not necessary, and far too late, but I have to do what I can to preserve the chain of evidence. That means I need a ride. Lucy, you’re with me.”
“I am?”
“You are. Let’s go. There’s a chance the woman who’s looking for her sister might be elderly, and the news I have for her isn’t good. Your presence might calm her.”
“I’ll get my purse.” I ran back inside. “I have to go,” I called to Bertie. “I’m needed to … assist the police with their inquiries.”
“Doesn’t that mean—?” Charlene began.
Just this once,” I said, “it means what it says.”
Chapter Six
Tina Ledbetter lived on a quiet street of small houses on sandy lots set back from the bustling tourist thoroughfare that is the Croatan Highway. The garden consisted of nothing but sand, scruffy bushes, struggling grasses, and determined weeds. The house was small, a single-story above an open space that was intended to be a parking area but was stuffed full of assorted junk, some of which didn’t seem to ever be used, judging by the amount of rust and dust I saw when I peeked into it on our way to the rickety wooden steps leading from the driveway to the front door.
A dented and battered old red Honda
