“We can’t waste any more time. Not if—” Sheila said.
“Absolutely not,” Bertie said.
“Ready?” Connor McNeil said.
I let out a small cry and jumped.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t you hear me come in?”
I allowed my heart to settle back into its regular rhythm. I looked at Connor and jerked my head toward the small group near the hallway. Louise Jane and Sheila were still waving fingers and hands and arguing. Bertie had stopped arguing and stood with her hands on her hips, shaking her head. Charles perched on the nearest bookshelf (Cooking and Gardening) and watched intently.
Connor went to join them. “Good evening, ladies.”
Bertie smiled at him. Louise Jane grumbled, and Sheila threw up her hands. “You people don’t know what you have here.” She spun on her heels and marched out. Louise Jane ran after her. I realized Sheila hadn’t given me the book. I called after her, but Louise Jane said, “Sorry, not now. We need it.”
“What was all that about?” Connor asked.
“Louise Jane and her ghost hunting,” Bertie said. “Although in this case I gather it wasn’t Louise Jane’s idea, but when Sheila suggested it, she couldn’t say no and still save face.”
“Suggested what?” I asked.
“Last night some fool suggested that maybe Jeff Applewhite has never left the library, and Shelia wants to have a séance in an attempt to talk to him and find out where the Blackstone necklace is. She has the book he supposedly took out and thinks that will help Louise Jane contact him. Stuff and nonsense.”
“You know she stole the book, right?” I said.
“She did what?”
“Sheila took The Celestine Prophecy last night while we were upstairs, without bothering to ask if she could have it. That would have been before anyone mentioned Jeff or the necklace, so she got the idea into her head all by herself, maybe as a way of trying to contact Louise Jane’s so-called spirits. When the meeting was over and everyone had left, and I was closing up, I noticed the book was missing. I figured Sheila had it. I also figured she’d be back with it sooner rather than later. Looks like I was right about that.”
Connor shook his head. He’d come straight from the town hall and looked very handsome in a perfectly tailored blue suit, with a white shirt and a blue tie with thin pink threads running through it. Dark stubble was coming in thick on his jaw. He patted his jacket pocket. He was here to pick me up for dinner, as arranged. We had a standing date for Tuesday night, although we tried to get together at the end of the day as often as our schedules matched. I’m not much of a cook (boiling water is an adventure to me) and neither, so he told me, is Connor. We often order in pizza at his place or mine, or we throw together something using a supermarket-bought rotisserie chicken, but now and again we treat ourselves to a restaurant outing, and Connor had suggested that for tonight.
“I have to point out,” I said, “that Sheila brought the book with her this afternoon but didn’t give it back.”
“Is it potentially worth something?” Connor asked.
“You mean monetarily? No, and it never was. It’s a mass-produced book, unsigned, and it’s badly damaged.”
“Sheila seems to think it’s worth something,” Bertie said, “and I don’t like what that something is one little bit. I told them there will be no séances in my library. Louise Jane tried to suggest they hold it in your apartment—”
I choked.
“—and considering the last time that happened you were not impressed, I said no. If you want to challenge that decision, it’s up to you. Your apartment’s your own space.”
“I am most definitely not challenging that decision,” I said.
“There was a séance in your apartment?” Connor said. “When was that? Did anything happen?”
“It was all much ado about nothing, as I tried to tell Louise Jane before she even started. It ended uneventfully.”
That wasn’t exactly true. The attempt at a séance ended when a thief broke into the library and was frightened away by Charles, and we ran downstairs to see what was going on. I never told Connor about any of that, but particularly I didn’t tell him about the break-in and the attempted theft.
“Ready to go?” Connor said. “I’m starving.”
Bertie smiled at him. She made no move to leave. Connor shifted from one foot to another. Finally he said, “Uh … Bertie would you like to join us? Nothing special, nothing special at all. Just dinner. We’ll probably go to Jake’s or Owen’s. Unless Lucy wants to try someplace else. But it’s nothing special. Really.”
Bertie recovered herself and said, “No, but thank you, Connor. Sorry, I was trying to remember if I’d promised to meet Eddie tonight. He’s not the only one getting absent-minded in his old age. Although, in Eddie’s case he was absent-minded in his young age.” She smiled at the memory. “You run along, Lucy. I’ll close up.”
“Won’t say no to that,” I said. Charlene had had the day off, and Ronald left after the final children’s program. “Can you give me ten minutes?” I asked Connor.
“Sure. No hurry. I’ll call to make sure we can have a table. Jake’s or Owen’s?”
“Owen’s would be nice for a change.” I ran upstairs and quickly changed out of my work clothes into something fresh to wear for dinner. It was nothing special, as Connor had said, but I always like to go to a bit of trouble. My mother’s influence, I suspect.
I washed my face and reapplied a light touch of makeup and brushed my hair out and then tied it back again. I put on a black dress with a thin red belt and slipped my feet into red suede ballet slippers and added earrings made of red sea glass, while Charles watched. He likes to supervise my preparations for an evening out.
“Will this do?’ I asked him.
He meowed, jumped off the bed, and preceded me out of the
