Kendel Lynn - Elliott Lisbon 02 - Whack Job (16 page)

NINETEEN

(Day #5: Tuesday Morning)

I woke Tuesday to a crisp Carolina blue sky sparkling through the skylight above my bed. The sounds of seagulls flying low along the surf drifted through the open window. I loved the end of summer. The days became cooler and the island visitors headed home. Part of me wanted to throw on my sweats and tennies and hop on my oversized three-wheeler, riding my bike along the hard-packed sand. I could get in three or four miles before I needed to be at the Big House.

But that was the procrastinator in me. I didn’t have that kind of time. If I hurried, I could make one quick stop before I hit the Big House. I needed to get up, get out, and get it together.

Since my culinary palate resembles that of a third grader, my first stop was the Sonic drive-thru for French toast sticks with extra syrup and a large Coke. It was barely half-past eight, but a serious sugar kicker was my reward for getting on the road so early.

After a short drive down Cabana, where I spotted two suits and a pair of boxer shorts in an azalea bush (clearly Gilbert hadn’t retrieved his entire wardrobe), I pulled into the Sea Pine Civic Complex. I turned to the west and parked in an empty spot near the library entrance, opposite the police station. I left the top down in the shady lot and hoped I wouldn’t return to find a family of squirrels nut-hunting in my back seat.

The library is considered the largest in the county. Though “largest” only applies if comparing it to a library you’d find in a one-room schoolhouse. The Library Guild manned the inner lobby, selling used books on racks and tables. I waved as I passed, then entered the main (and only) room. It was packed.

Not sure what I expected to see first thing on a Tuesday morning thirty minutes after opening, but certainly not so many people. The sun was shining and the beach was only a mile away. I stood in line behind a woman and two children, all gripping more books than they could carry. The two ladies behind the counter didn’t seem overly friendly to the customers, more like harried grocery store clerks than librarians, and not likely to waste time answering my random questions. I stepped out of line.

I slipped into a low chair in the magazine section. What was I even doing there? How could I figure out why Gilbert was sneaking over here conducting secret research? And what did it matter? This was nuts. I had to go to the Big House, get to Charleston, find a teapot, question Jaime’s sister, have lunch to secure tables for the Wonderland Tea, which was in less than twenty-four hours, and greet the Ballantynes at the Big House.

I was about to leave when I spotted Deidre Burch at the information desk at the far end near the back wall. Her bright glasses perched on her nose, her gray bob tucked behind her ears.

“Deidre, I need a little help,” I said. I am nothing if not persistent.

“Why, Elli, what a surprise. Two days in a row. Sorry about the mahj, sugar.” She patted my hand. “But it didn’t look like it was your type of thing. Though Sid’s a natural. She won two of the five games.”

“She must’ve been thrilled,” I said, then remembered I was fake mad at her, and waved my hand all willy-nilly. “Whatever. What’s with the crowd here, you guys giving these books away?”

She smiled. “You should come by more often. We’re always this busy in the morning. Especially the week before school starts. Why do you think I’m here and not at the Big House? Which reminds me. You hear about the dustup over at the Big House this morning? A real showstopper, I heard. I’ll head over in an hour. You, too?”

I walked behind the long desk and slumped into the worn visitor’s chair. “My next stop. What happened?”

“Busy Hinds wants on the board. Tod wants to nominate her and Jane’s pitching a fit like a pageant mother back stage.”

“To her face?”

“Oh no, honey. Behind her back. Jane’s a true Southerner.”

The Ballantyne board short list was turning into a neglected plant, only the more I neglected it, the more it grew. “I’m actually here about a different candidate. Suspected murderer slash candidate, Gilbert Goodsen. I hear he was frequenting the library over the last two weeks and I’m wondering why.”

She looked over the top of her glasses at me. “And you find this suspicious?”

“I do. Can you help?”

“Absolutely,” she said. She wiggled her fingers and started typing on the keyboard below the counter, surreptitiously glancing around at the other library volunteers. She perched her tangerine readers upon her nose. “Let’s see. Gilbert Goodsen registered for a card in August, but no books on record. Checked out or otherwise.”

I stood and glanced over her shoulder at the screen. “I guess it affirms my anonymity theory. He didn’t want anyone to know what he was up to.”

“You know, I did see him in here a few times, using the desktops.”

I studied the long bank of computers down the central aisle. At least a dozen, all occupied.

“He favored the one in the back, near the Large Print.” She clicked off the screen and pointed to a section tucked in the corner. A kid sat at the desk near the window, tapping on the keyboard.

“Thanks, Deidre. See you tomorrow.”

“We going to have tables at the Tea? Not sure Edward will enjoy eating on the grass. Though Vivi will.”

“I’m working on it,” I said and left her at the desk.

With a tiny library comes a tiny catalog resulting in half-empty bookshelves. I tiptoed over to the Large Print section, then moved two books to the shelf below, ignoring the sign requesting I not re-shelve the books because I’ll put them out of order. I peeked at the kid. A boy, maybe twelve. Backpack, notebook, iPod. Doing homework a week before school starts? Goes to the library instead of the beach? What world am I living in? And how do I get him to move?

I scooched to my left, two wide steps, then a third. Grabbed three books, and peeked again. This time I saw the monitor. Some sort of video game. Ha! All was right with the world.

Except he’d never get up, not the way he was battering the keys with one hand and clicking the mouse with the other.

A woman cleared her throat from six inches behind me, and I jumped. I dropped the books on my foot and screeched. Damn hardback smashed my baby toe. The woman shushed me (quite loudly, I might add) as she selected a book from the shelf above me, then walked away.

I sat on the floor holding my throbbing foot, then leaned over and checked on the kid. Still battering and clicking.

I wasn’t leaving without getting on that stupid computer. I did not sustain a painful book injury for nothing. His finger tapping taunted me from behind the bookcase and I was still sitting on the carpet. The dusty dirty public carpet that probably hadn’t been shampooed since the grand opening some thirty-five years earlier. I scrambled to my knees.

One’s perspective changes when one is squatting on the floor. For instance, there were no books on the bottom shelves. I had a clear view of the kid’s feet and his backpack. And the computer’s power cord.

It ran from beneath the desk, along the back wall and over to a square outlet box at the edge of the Romance section.

I stood and walked over to the tall cases opposite Large Print. Chose a particularly thick book. An antique brass clock with cracked glass and Scotsman kilt on the cover.
Outlander
. I casually leaned against the wall and pretended to read the opening page. No one noticed me; only one man could see me. He sat in a low chair two rows down reading a paperback.

I slowly slid down the wall, pulled the computer’s power plug out of the socket, then strolled down the aisle toward the kid.

He jabbed the on/off button, then smacked the side of the monitor, all the while mumbling words his mother would object to.

“Network went down,” I said with a knowing nod. “This computer only. Lady at the info desk said it won’t be back up until tonight, maybe Wednesday. First day after Labor Day, the guy’s backed up with tons of work orders.” I shrugged vaguely and went back to the case, slowly re-shelving
Outlander
in its proper place.

The kid shoved his notebook into his backpack with his iPod and shuffled over to the entry hall. After hovering around the other busy computers, he walked out the front.

I quickly plugged in the power cord and snagged the seat in front of the computer. When the screen came to life, I clicked on the web icon. I started with something easy. Party rental companies, searching large and small from Alabama to Tennessee. Not as many as I’d hoped. I printed the short list, then moved on to Gilbert and his clandestine searches.

It only took me thirteen minutes to find the history option from the browser menu.

Lots of gaming sites, medical diagnostic pages, travel sites, Wikipedia entries, Google searches, and the
Islander Post
website. Funny, since the actual newspaper was less than twenty feet away.

I started with the
Post
, paging through dozens of links to the classifieds. Next I checked the Wikipedia entries. Nothing interesting or helpful, but I got lucky with the web searches.

A series of articles on Fabergé eggs. I skimmed through them, ending up with basically a longer version of Jane’s history lesson. Tsar Alexander III commissioned Carl Fabergé to craft an Easter egg for his wife in 1885. She adored it so much, Alexander continued the tradition, as did his son, Nicholas II, after his father’s death, until the Revolution in 1918 (when his entire family was viciously murdered). Known as Imperial eggs, Fabergé made about fifty, though most agree only forty-two survived. Each was currently accounted for, and each was worth in the several millions. Fabergé also designed eggs for his private clients, though it’s unknown exactly how many. Or where they were.

Plus there was a surprise. Literally. As in each egg contained a surprise inside. Hence the clasp, because every egg opened. The very first Imperial egg was the Hen egg. Crafted of gold and covered in white enamel, it opened to reveal a gold yolk, which opened to reveal a colorful hen, which opened to reveal a teeny tiny replica of the Imperial Crown, complete with diamonds and a ruby pendant. Both the hen and the crown surprises were lost, only the golden yolk remained.

Gilbert’s egg did not include a surprise, diamond or otherwise. Did this mean his egg was a fake? Or simply a lost surprise?

After the Revolution, things got hazy–and pilfery. The Fabergé business was seized and nationalized. The family fled Russia, and Carl Fabergé never designed again, so the story goes. Many years later, his grandson, Theo, designed his own elaborate works of art, first for pleasure, then by commission. He fashioned original eggs for the White House, Royal Air Force, and many a Duke of wherever.

Then there were the eggs under the Fabergé brand, acquired in the eighties. Crafted by a contemporary of Carl Fabergé, these eggs were sold to a “members only” type crowd. No names and not many descriptions or pictures.

I searched Google images, Pinterest pages, and eBay for an egg. Over three thousand results! I was hoping to find one like Gilbert’s with gold trim and a fire opal clasp. I scrolled through pages, but I got bupkis.

Except to surmise that Gilbert’s egg was not a long-lost true Carl Fabergé heirloom smuggled out of Russia. Likely it was a one-of-a-kind by either Theo, a modern Fabergé, or one of a dozen other designers creating “Fabergé style” eggs.

Probably exactly what Gilbert figured out when he sat at this same computer and read these same articles. The values lined up, ish, with the appraisals. Somewhere between fifty and one hundred fifty thousand, depending on who was buying.

But why a secret search at the library? Seemed like extraordinary measures for an egg he bought on a whim with a plan to sell immediately.

I put my head in my hands and took a deep breath. Again I asked myself, what bothered me about Gilbert going to the library in secret? People do odd things all the time for innocent reasons. And Gilbert researching the value seemed right in line with trying to sell it, no harm done.

Except somebody ended up dead.

That’s what bothered me. Was he hiding his behavior from Jaime or from the police or from Mary-Louise? Was Gilbert being paranoid, even before the egg was stolen? So what did that mean?

It meant he knew that egg was trouble
before
he bought it.

I checked my watch. The internet is the most helpful researching tool on earth, and yet sucked up time faster than a black hole sucks air. I needed to get on with my day. I considered heading back to eBay to search for a tea set like Zibby’s, but I didn’t have the time to search or to buy and receive.

I clicked my way out of the Google machine and ended up at the
Post
’s home page.

HUSBAND KILLS WIFE FOR BALLANTYNE SEAT? by Tate Keating.

Son of a bitch
, I thought. Two full pages about Gilbert Goodsen, his divorce, Jaime’s death, and Gilbert’s vocal campaigning for the open seat vacated due to the murder of Leo Hirschorn last May. The splashy article spelled out more details than I cared to read.

Impatient bugger didn’t even wait for my quote.

I waved to Deidre on my way out and stalked to my car. No squirrel family in the back seat, but plenty of fallen leaves and a handful of Spanish moss.

I climbed in the Mini, mumbling to myself how Tate Keating skewed everything to put the Ballantyne in a disparaging light. Gilbert didn’t have a shot at the Ballantyne board any more than Jaime did, not once they filed for divorce. We’d never put ourselves in the middle of that mess. I knew that, Tod knew that, the entire Ballantyne board knew that–and I bet even Tate Keating knew that.

I stopped just before I hit the start button. But did Gilbert know that? Would he have killed his wife to get the seat? I tried to shake it off as ridiculous, but wondered if the supposedly missing egg was just a way to get closer to me. Gilbert set up our initial meeting on Friday, the day he got shot, to talk about him taking the empty board seat. Maybe I got it all wrong and it’s been about the Ballantyne this entire time.