By the time the library opened, I had jotted down several important notes. 1. Get background information. 2. Find clues. 3. Interview everyone. 4. Solve the mystery.

  It all seemed very easy to me. No wonder Gladie did it all the time. It was a cinch.

  The assistant librarian opened the doors, and a woman and a man entered. The woman approached me. “Where are the DVD rentals?” she asked.

  She spoke too loudly for a library, and I wanted to scold her, but I had devised a way to get patrons to speak more softly without hitting them over the head with a ruler. I spoke to them in a faint whisper, and that usually got them to lower their voices.

  “The DVDs are located next to the reference room,” I whispered to her and pointed toward the reference room. “And the new bestsellers are out now,” I said, pointing to a stack of books in the center of the library, which was artfully decorated to promote the bestsellers. “You can grab a couple before the morning rush.”

  “Books? Oh, no. I’m here for movies,” she said without a hint of an apology and headed toward the DVDs.

  I sighed. It was getting more and more like that. Patrons came into the library for DVDs or to use the internet, and it was getting harder and harder to sell them books. What on earth did a DVD have that a book didn’t? Nothing, that’s what. Anyway, they hadn’t made a good movie since David Lean died. I had told that to many a patron, but they never knew who David Lean was. I would say: “Lawrence of Arabia? You haven’t heard of it?” And they would shrug their shoulders. So, I would point them to the biography section and hand them the Great Directors of the Twentieth Century book, and they would take it from me, but they never checked it out. Never. That book’s binding is completely intact, like it was never opened.

  The sign on the classics exhibit in the center of the library next to the bestsellers was askew, so I glued it back on, centered. I was particularly proud of the classics exhibit because I had made it by myself. Hemingway, Victor Hugo, Faulkner, Virginia Woolf. There were a couple dozen books by a couple dozen authors on the finely hued pine rack that I had sculpted myself. Nobody in town except for Zelda knew I liked woodworking. It was my little hobby. Years ago, I tried to make a side-living sculpting toothbrush handles, but it never caught on.

  “Hey, lady, are you deaf?”

  My head snapped up to see a man hovering over me. He was speaking loudly, and he did not look like a library patron in the least. He was wearing cargo shorts and a Hawaiian print shirt and flip-flops. That’s not what made him look out of place. It was his way about himself. Zelda had taught me how to trust my senses, and my senses were going off like a police siren with the twirling light on the top of their cars.

  “May I help you?” I whispered and tried to smile at him, but I failed.

  He held up a book. It was the new Grisham, and it was a number-one New York Times bestseller. I wasn’t a Grisham fan myself, not after his fifth book. But I was alone in that. Grisham leapt off the library shelves. There was always a waiting list, especially for his new books.

  The man waved a twenty-dollar bill in my face. “Here. Take this.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m buying this book.”

  I put on my librarian face, which was always at the ready. I knew from studying myself in my bathroom mirror that my librarian face made my lips purse until they disappeared, and my eyes narrow to tiny slits. It was a frightful face, cold and domineering, like it brooked no sass or raised voice.

  I clasped my hands in front of me, as if I was about to sing an aria. “Perhaps you do not understand how a library works, sir,” I whispered. “We were created under the wise tutelage of our founding father, Benjamin Franklin. You might have heard of him? In any case, Mr. Franklin devised the idea of a lending library. And that’s what libraries have been in this country for over two hundred years. The Cannes Library is no different. Let me lay it out to you in a step-by-step explanation: First, you acquire a library card. It’s free and only requires an ID and a signature. Then, you may check out how many books you want, but you are required to return them no later than three weeks from that time. If you do not return them…”

  “I know all that, lady,” he barked, cutting me off. We now had a few more patrons in the library, and they all turned to see what the ruckus was about. I hated that he was disrupting our patrons’ experience. This was supposed to be a serene place where one could focus. He was sucking the focus out of my patrons in a barbaric way.

  “But I’m not getting a library card,” he continued. “I’m buying this book because I need a birthday present for my uncle, see. I need it now. The bookstore is closed, so I need to buy this one.”

  “We don’t sell books except for our used book sales the first Tuesday of every month in the courtyard from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon. But the Grisham won’t be there. That’s a brand-new book, and many patrons are waiting for it. You will have to wait your turn to borrow it.”

  There was a pause, in which I thought he was going to become even more belligerent, but he backed down, angrily. He shoved the book at me, and I clasped it to my chest so it wouldn’t fall.

  “This is ridiculous. We live in America, lady. America. We buy whatever we want here. If you’ve got the money, you should be able to buy whatever you damned well please. Fine. Take your damned book. But don’t look so smug about it because these libraries aren’t going to last, you know. Libraries are on the way out, just like rotary phones and dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, lady, dinosaurs.”

  “Thank you,” I said politely. I let my librarian face drop, and I put on a sweet smile. “Mr…”

  “Phil Moretti. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

  And he stormed out. I took a deep breath, put the Grisham back on the bestseller stack, and straightened out my cardigan. I took a look around. The patrons were slowly returning to their work. It had been a disruption in the day, but I hoped everyone could get back to normal and enjoy the library as they wished.

  As quietly as I could—so I wouldn’t cause any more disturbance—I returned to the front desk and clicked the space bar on the computer. The monitor sprang to life. I typed in Phillip Moretti. Sure enough, he had an old library card from years ago.

  Smiling, I typed information into his file and gave the rude man a $327.56 overdue charge for books he had never really checked out. I stared at the monitor gleefully and clicked enter. There. He would receive the overdue notice in about three days.

  Put that in your pipe and smoke it, jerkface.

  It wasn’t the first time that I had given rude patrons a phony overdue charge. It was a completely justified action. I had a mission to uphold. I had to keep Benjamin Franklin’s legacy afloat and thriving. If I had anything to do with it, libraries would continue long after cellphones and Netflix and vegans. Libraries were going to be immortal.

  By mid-morning, I put the assistant librarian and three volunteers in charge of the library, and I took a quick walk around the block. I had only been doing this for the past couple of years because I hated to leave the library for fifteen minutes, but my blood pressure had been creeping up, and my doctor suggested some fresh air and a good stretch of my legs every day. I hated to admit it, but I enjoyed my walk around the block. It reminded me that there was a world outside the library, and I could see what was going on.

  Perhaps Gladie’s unflagging nosiness was contagious. I never used to care what other people were doing outside the library, but here I was watching Lucy drive by in her Mercedes. I waved to her. I wondered where she was going in such a hurry. Had she gotten a lead on Annie Benoit’s murder?

  I walked a little faster. I hadn’t done any investigations on the murder, even though I had promised to do my part. Out of everyone in Zelda’s kitchen this morning, I was the only experienced researcher. I should have at least started research on burglaries in the neighborhood to try and track down the murderer before Gladie’s blind day stretched into a week. How would it look if Lucy solved the mystery, and I hadn’t contributed anything at all to the effort? It wouldn’t look good at all. It would look like I was sleeping on the job, like I didn’t care, or even worse: that I was unable to assist.

  Remington’s police car drove by just as I was making my final turn toward the library. He wasn’t driving as fast as Lucy, but when I waved to him, he didn’t wave back. That was unlike him. He was always more than courteous and he always gave me the time of day, which helped my ego to no end, if I was being completely honest. But as he drove past me, I noticed that his head never wavered. He was staring straight ahead. Focused like an eagle.

  Oh, drat. Remington must have found a clue, too. I was way behind everyone else. I practically jogged the rest of the way back to the library, intent on finding out something myself.

  Inside, the library had really picked up. The regulars had arrived. There were those who came every day to read the newspapers and magazines. There were others who did research or used the library simply as a quiet place to study, work, or write. A couple mothers had arrived with their young children to read to them in the children’s section, and of course, there were the voracious readers in the romance and mystery sections, who were getting their daily dose of books.

  I nodded to the assistant librarian as I entered and gestured that I would be at the computers for a moment and that she needed to continue overseeing the library while I was busy. She was going to be a good librarian one day. After ten years in the position, she was almost done with her training.

  I sat down at a computer. I wished I could do research like in the good old days, with the Dewey decimal system and the library card catalog drawers and my beloved microfiche machine. But holding back technology was like holding back the tide. The computers had taken over, just like in an Isaac Asimov book.

  Pressing the space bar, the computer sprang to life, and I began typing. Burglaries in Cannes: It took only a few moments to discover that there had been four in the past two months. That was more than in the previous decade. I tsked at the computer. The world was going to hell in a handbasket. How could anyone approve of progress? It was deadly.

  I jotted notes about every single burglary, but there wasn’t much information. Just the neighborhood and the date and time. Either the police were holding back information for their investigation, or journalism had progressed to incompetence, just like everything else.

  “Mary, I’m going to get a seventy-five-incher in the living room,” I heard next to me in a raised voice.

  There was a couple in a conversation right by the history stacks. They were around my age, obviously married, and standing very close to each other in order to obey the rules of quiet in the library. But they were still talking much louder than I liked. Something stopped me from shushing them, though. Instead, I decided to listen in for a moment.

  “Seventy-five inches for a television, Harold? Whoever heard of such a crazy thing?” the wife asked. Her voice stayed at a loud whisper. In most cases, women knew how to obey the rules better than the men.

  “Everyone’s heard of seventy-five-inch televisions, Mary. There are even bigger televisions than that, you know. I don’t need that for the bedroom, though. Forty-five would be fine for the bedroom. And the insurance is covering it. We don’t have to pay a dime.”

  Mary and Harold… those names sounded familiar. I scanned my notes. There it was. Mary and Harold Rafkin had been robbed not ten days ago while they were out at Mary’s mother’s funeral. Oh, that was sad. I was sorry for her loss… all of her losses, I mean.

  I scooted my chair a hair closer to them so I could hear better.

  “What will the neighbors think?” Mary asked, wringing her hands with concern.

  “They will think that we’ve finally left the 1960s. You know how long I’ve wanted a flat-screen TV? Thank God those bastard burglars took all of our electronics. Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  “They took my mixer, too,” Mary told him, looking down at her Oxford shoes. “My mother gave us that mixer for our wedding. They don’t make mixers like that anymore.”

  “Listen, Mary, it’s a good thing to get rid of every single thing your mother gave us. Clear out the house, like Indians do with sage.”

  “They don’t say Indians anymore, Harold. They say Native Americans.”

  “Well, you know what I say? I say we’ve struck it rich with the insurance company. That’s what I say.”

  Grabbing one of the little pencils and a scrap of paper, I got up and walked over to them. “Excuse me for interrupting,” I whispered. “I couldn’t help but hearing that you were burgled. Is that right?”

  “They took all of our electronics. Even our mixer,” Mary told me.

  I shook my head, showing them how sympathetic I was to their plight. “What’s the world coming to? First Twitter, and now this.”

  “It’s all right. The insurance is covering it,” Harold pointed out.

  “Just the electronics, you say?” I asked, jotting down notes on the scrap of paper, which laid flat on the palm of my hand. It was hard to write like that, but I had experience with the technique.

  Mary gestured to her necklace, a chunky gold chain with a drop pearl. “They didn’t touch my jewelry or furs. Or the artwork, come to think of it.”

  “Strange,” I said and noted strange on the scrap of paper and underlined it three times.

  “I’m calling them the plug-in burglars,” Harold said. “You can quote me on that.”

  “I’m not a journalist.”

  “You can quote me, anyway.”

  “Do you think these are the same burglars who are hitting the neighborhood?” I asked, and looked up at their faces. Just like Sherlock Holmes, I planned on studying their facial expressions to get a read on the veracity of their answers. A lot could be discerned from facial expressions, according to Sherlock Holmes.

  Mary crossed herself. “Yes,” she whispered, leaning close to me. “The very same ones that got Annie. They’re escalating. That’s what they call it in the detective shows. They started with mixers, and now they’re killing innocent women in their living rooms. They’re escalating.”

  “You can quote her on that,” Harold told me.

  Chapter 5

  Lucy Smythe

  Peach is my signature color, but I decided to wear black to Annie Benoit’s wake. That way, if I needed to do some ninja reconnaissance work afterward, I would be dressed for it. Normally, I never wear pants, but today I was dressed in wide-leg, black chiffon trousers, a black silk blouse, and a black Hermes scarf tied around my neck. I wore flats to round out the outfit, in case I needed to make a run for it, either after the killer or away from him.

  My name’s Lucy Smythe, and I live in Cannes, California. I’m from the south, however. Deep South. I still have the accent and the attitude. Nobody can beat that out of me. They have served me well. I left the south when I started my career in marketing, which, of course, wasn’t marketing. Well, it was marketing myself, and I marketed myself to some of the richest gentlemen in the country.

  Somehow, I found myself in this idyllic town in the mountains east of San Diego, and here I am today. Now, I’m married to my husband Harry, and we have triplets: Laura, Leslie, and Lonnie. I love them dearly, and I worked very hard to get each one a day and night nanny to take good care of them. Truly, it was exhausting for me.

  I have two best friends here, Gladie and Bridget. We are very close, just like the Three Musketeers, but Gladie recently found herself in a terrible predicament. She woke up in the morning and was blind. Not blind with her two eyes. Blind with her third eye, the eye that helped her solve mysteries nearly every month.

  I loved when she solved mysteries. I cannot tell a lie… I always helped her solve those mysteries. I was the Dr. Watson to her Sherlock Holmes. She could always count on me to find clues, grill suspects, and bring the mangy killer to justice. Oh, it was a thrilling ride each and every time!

  But now my darlin’ friend was at home, a helpless heap of useless jelly, eating Danish and drinking coffee and not able to get herself up and find out who on earth killed Annie Benoit. Her grandmother Zelda had made it crystal clear that if we couldn’t investigate for her, Gladie’s blind day could be much worse, and it could be permanent.

  Actually, I knew that Zelda was talking directly to me. Who else congregated at their home had the experience that I did in helping Gladie with her snooping? No one, that’s who. I was her right hand. I was Cato to her Green Hornet. I took up Zelda’s gauntlet, and I was determined to solve the mystery, capture the killer, and save Gladie.

  Lucy to the rescue!

  As soon as Zelda gave the orders, I called all the nannies and told them they had to make sure I was completely free to save the day. I could not be bothered at all with childcare when a life was at risk. Then, I ran home to change my clothes and made a few calls.

  Annie’s family was having a wake for her at the funeral parlor. It was odd to do it the same day that she died, but it was the tradition of her family. The funeral parlor was more than happy to oblige, especially since they didn’t have to deal with Annie’s body yet. That was at the coroner’s. The funeral home just had to set up the reception hall with an empty basket and a buffet of light salads and casseroles and open the doors to the mourners. And here I was, one of the mourners.

  Wink. Wink.

  It was a pretty big turnout, considering Annie had just died a few hours ago. I didn’t know if it was the free food or the curiosity that brought out the crowd. I only found out about the wake through my chef, who contacted me about it immediately. He was a very good source for gossip in town. You can learn a lot if you go to the grocery store every day.

  I scanned the room, searching for my first suspect. They all looked suspicious to me. They all looked like they could kill a woman if given half of a chance and a motive. It was all I could do not to take out my taser from my large purse. A detective never knew when they were going to be attacked. Suspects were sneaky that way. They seemed sweet and non-threatening— just like the eighty-year-old woman piling cheese balls onto her paper plate at the buffet table—but that could very easily be a sly façade, a ruse to throw me off my guard right before they knocked me over the head with a tire iron and chopped me up in pieces to feed to their dog.

 

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