Death Threads (22 page)

“You’d what, Dirk?”

Reaching a grease-stained finger outward, the man let it trail down Tori’s shoulder as he slid his tongue across his upper lip. “How about you stick around for a while. I’m pretty sure a few minutes alone with me would make you rethink a guy like Calhoun. Not that it matters much now . . .”

“Oh it matters. To his wife. To his children. To his friends. And to the police chief.” Wrapping her hand around the strap of her backpack purse, Tori backed up around the desk.

“You mean Robbie?”

“Who?”

“Robbie . . . or—for the rest of the folks in town—Robert. Dallas. The chief.” He followed her toward the door to the garage, his gaze fixed on hers with an intensity that made her hands tremble.

“You call him Robbie?” she asked, her voice growing shrill.

“Sure do. We’ve been buddies for years.” He raised his arm to the door as she bumped into it, loosely trapping her once again. “Good, good buddies. The kind that are loyal to the end. No matter what.”

Summoning every ounce of courage she could find, Tori leveled an index finger at the man’s chest, poking him hard with each word she spoke until he backed up enough to allow her escape. “I don’t care who your buddies are. No amount of loyalty can keep the truth down for long.”

Driven from her bed well before dawn, Tori sought refuge at the one place she seemed most equipped to deal with life’s curveballs. Yet hours later, she was still roaming around the library with no real intent or purpose. She’d replayed her conversation with Dirk Rogers over and over throughout the night, the dartboard and the man’s cockiness making sleep an unattainable goal. Sure, he’d frightened her on a personal level, but it was more than that. Much more.

Dirk Rogers’s anger over Colby’s article ran well beyond that of the average Sweet Briar resident who may have shaken a head once or twice or expressed a few choice words over the subject. Colby’s picture was proof of that.

But something about the garage owner’s actions in his office the day before had gnawed at her subconscious ever since, leaving her mind to torture itself with the kind of questions she simply couldn’t answer.

Was Chief Dallas’s integrity in this case truly compromised because of his long-standing friendship with Dirk Rogers?

Was a man who mutilated a picture of another human being capable of murdering that same person?

“Ugh,” she mumbled under her breath as she flopped onto the stool behind the information desk and dropped her head into her hands. “Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.”

There’d been so many times over the past few hours that she’d reached for the phone, ready to call Milo. But she’d stopped. If she was going to reach out to someone with the information she’d gathered, it wasn’t going to be someone who was battling his own misguided feelings about Colby Calhoun.

Lifting her head, she peered around the darkened room, the only hint of light streaming through the hallway from her office playing across a small handful of shelves and a few reading chairs. There was so much about Dirk Rogers that raised the hair on the back of her neck and sent her internal radar pinging. But he wasn’t the only one. Harrison James was every bit as angry at Colby as Dirk was, and he had a far stronger motive than simply being seen as a laughingstock.

“A laughingstock,” she said aloud, the sound of the word through her own lips making her sit up tall. “Why does that sound so familiar?”

And then she remembered.

Debbie’s words filtered through her mind with startling clarity, the woman’s voice repeating the sentence again and again as if she were sitting behind the information desk at that very moment.

Was it a clue? Or simply an oddly timed coincidence?

Shaking her head, Tori grabbed the first few book request sheets the nursing home had faxed over the day before and willed herself to focus on work. Her great-grandmother had been a big believer in the watched-pot-never-boils way of thinking, and perhaps she’d been right. The more Tori tried to examine the possible suspects in Colby’s death, the more confused she became. Maybe concentrating on something else would be enough to bring her subconscious thoughts to the foreground where they belonged.

She looked down at the top sheet, her willpower deflating as she scanned Eunice Weatherby’s initial wish list . . .

1.
A Cry in the Night
by Mary Higgins Clark

2.
In a Split Second
by Colby William Calhoun

3.
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee

“Oh Colby, I’m so sorry,” she whispered as the list blurred before her eyes. “So very, very sorry.”

Pushing the list to the side, Tori stood and wandered back to her office, the early morning sun ushering in waves of natural light that played across the tiny room. She stood in front of the window that spanned the east wall and stared out into the empty grounds of the library.

As much as she loved seeing the library brimming with readers, there was something special about the building when it was quiet, void of nothing but books—those that existed purely for entertainment and those designed to further people’s knowledge.

She leaned forward, rested her forehead against the cool glass. It wouldn’t be long before the sidewalks of Sweet Briar sprung to life with people walking to church, shopping for groceries, stopping for a book. Glancing over her shoulder she eyed the small digital clock.

8:45.

In a little over three hours, Nina would be unlocking the front door in honor of yet another day at the Sweet Briar Public Library. If Tori stayed, the busyness of work might quiet the bothersome voices in her head. But if she did that, she’d be forgoing the first full weekend she’d had off in six months.

A weekend she’d originally planned to spend with Milo . . .

“Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.” She returned her forehead to the glass and closed her eyes, reveled in the momentary feel of calm that came with the sun’s warmth on her face.

Tori’s eyes flew open just as a woman’s well-dressed body darted behind a large bush just outside the window.

Raising her hand to the glass, Tori thumped back with a bent finger. The figure re-emerged.

Holding her index finger upward at her friend, Tori jogged out of her office and down the hallway to the employee entrance in the rear. With a quick turn of her wrist, she unlocked the metal door and pushed it open, her head peeking around the corner. “Leona? What are you doing out here?”

“Shhh. Be quiet.” A red-faced Leona appeared from the side of the building, her hands clutching a large straw bag in front of her as if she were carrying something fragile.

“Why? What’s wrong? What are you doing out here hiding behind a bush and tapping at my office window?”

“Never mind that, dear. I have a problem.”

“C’mon. Come inside. Are you okay?” she asked, concern for her friend chasing all other thoughts away.

The woman shook her head, her normally salon-styled hair showing rare movement. “Isn’t there a policy about no animals in the library?”

“Animals? What are you talking about?” Tori’s gaze traveled to the bag in her friend’s hands. “Oh no . . . don’t tell me you have an animal in there. I really don’t want a pet, Leona. Not yet.”

Scowling, the woman shook her head again. “It’s not for you.”

“Then who—”

Looking one by one over each shoulder, Leona lowered her voice to a near whisper. “It’s one of Ella May’s bunnies.”

“What?”

“Shhh!” Leona hissed through clenched teeth. “You heard me, dear. It’s one of Ella May’s precious bunnies.”

Holding her hands in the air, Tori took a step back into the still open doorway. “Oh no. No, no, no. Please don’t tell me this is some sort of weird revenge on the woman for marrying a man you’d hoped to snag for yourself . . .”

“I don’t snag men, dear. I hook them, make them squirm with anticipation and desire, and then I let them go.”

Tori rolled her eyes. “Whatever. But is that why you have one of Ella May’s”—she reached out, wedged open a corner of the woman’s straw bag—“bunnies?”

“Don’t be silly. I don’t need to resort to things like revenge. I’m above that.” Leona’s chin jutted into the air, revealing a smudge of dirt.

“Uh, do you know you have dirt on your chin, Leona?”

“I do? Where? Good heavens, dear, where is your compact?”

“I don’t have one.”

The woman gasped. “You don’t have a compact in your purse . . . for quick touch-ups of your nose and lips?”

“Nope.” Tori shook her head, the disgust in Leona’s face making her laugh out loud, the straw bag wiggling in response.

“Well then we must add that to the list of things I still need to teach you.”

She shrugged. “Sure thing. Right after you learn how to sew.”

The woman stared at her. “You never give up, do you?”

“Nope.”

“I don’t have time for this, dear. I have a bunny to take care of . . . or return.”

Stepping out from behind the door, Tori let it shut behind her as she claimed a seat on the concrete step. “Tell me, how did one of Ella May’s bunnies get into your purse?”

“He hopped in.”

“He hopped in?” she repeated, the corners of her mouth twitching upward.

“Yes. He hopped in.”

She pointed at the bag. “I’ve known you for what . . . six months now? And never, in all that time, have I ever seen you carry a bag like that. Margaret Louise? Sure. You? No way.”

“The binoculars wouldn’t fit in my clutch.” Leona looked at the ground, toed a small rock with her sensible yet stylish white pumps.

“Binoculars?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Why would you need—wait. Don’t tell me. You were spying on Ella May, weren’t you?” She stared at her friend, saw the way her cheeks grew still redder. “Leona! What on earth were you thinking?”

“I just wanted to see them with my own two eyes.” Leona looked around the employee entrance with a trace of disgust before finally resigning herself to a spot on the steps, the straw bag-encased bunny on her lap.

“Them?”

“Ella May and William Clayton Wilder, who else?”

Tori reached for the bag and transferred it to the patch of concrete between them, her fingers reaching through the top to stroke the soft animal. “You know he’s not here often, so why drag yourself out of bed at some ungodly hour to see someone who probably isn’t even there?”

“Because today, of all days, he should be. He’s got the perfect excuse if anyone happens to see him.”

“What kind of excuse?” She glanced up at Leona only to look back at the snatch of brown fur she could see through the top of the bag as her fingers continued to stroke its back.

“My sister. She’s baking her new Sweet Potato Pie for him today.”

“Ahhh, I get it now.” She pulled her hand from the bag and rested it behind her body. “So, was he there?”

“No!” Leona muttered a string of unladylike words beneath her breath before addressing Tori once again. “I stood out there, waiting, for nothing. Well”—the woman leaned forward, peeked inside the bag—“nothing except for him . . . or her.”

“When you realized he was in there, why didn’t you just set the bag down and let him hop right out?”

“I heard a noise. And I didn’t want to take the chance Ella May might come around a corner and see me standing there with binoculars in hand.”

It made sense. Sorta. “So why’d you bring him all the way here instead of dropping him off along the way?”

Leona peered at Tori over the top of her glasses. “Would you drop off someone’s dog any old place?”

“No. But that’s different.”

“They’re still her pets, dear. And I didn’t have the heart to dump him off where he might become a shooting target for Carter Johnson or any of those other gun-toting crazies.”

Tori’s lips inched upward as Leona’s true meaning hit home. “Why, Leona . . . if I didn’t know any better I’d think you’ve gone all soft in the head over this little guy in here.” She lifted the bag off the step and set it back in Leona’s lap.

Leona opened her mouth to speak then closed it without saying a word.

“Bunny got your tongue, Leona?” she teased.

Peering over her glasses once again, Leona stared at Tori. “Has anyone told you how positively awful you look this morning? Have you given up on Milo altogether?”

Tori gasped. “What does my appearance have to do with Milo?”

Leona smoothed the lines of her pale pink skirt. “Everything, dear. Men don’t come crawling back to women who, well, look as if they haven’t slept in a week.”

“That’s because I haven’t, Leona. I have a lot of things on my mind right now. And as for Milo”—she turned her head and gazed out across the empty parking lot as the man’s face flashed before her eyes, tugging at her heart—“I’m not looking for Milo or anyone else to come crawling back. Unlike you, I don’t need a man to make me feel good about myself. And I don’t change what I believe to please anyone else.”