Checked Out (5 page)

“W
anna see my tattoo?” Gladys asked.

“Depends on where it is,” Helen said.

“Chill,” Gladys said. “It’s on my arm.”

The librarian took off her yellow plaid suit jacket. She wore a short A-line skirt, white knee socks, and black suede double-strap Mary Janes.

“Your yellow suit looks familiar,” Helen said. “I’ve seen it on someone famous.”

“Iggy Azalea,” Gladys said. “She wore it in the video of ‘Fancy.’”

“The Australian rapper,” Helen said. “Nice kicks. They’re Miu Miu, right?”

“I like shoes,” Gladys said. “Another weapon in the fight against the frumpy librarian stereotype.”

An expensive weapon, Helen thought. Those shoes cost more than three hundred dollars.

“You get a lot of that?” Helen asked. “Stereotyping?”

“All the time. My name doesn’t help. I loved Grandma Gladys, but when people see my name and my profession, they
automatically think horn-rims, hair in a bun and dowdy clothes. My tatt takes care of that.”

Gladys rolled up her sleeve and showed off her biceps: a grinning skull balanced on a stack of books. The eyeless skull wore horn-rim glasses. Underneath, it read
Bad to the Bone
in Gothic type.

“That’s one badass tattoo,” Gladys said, admiring her body art.

“I love it,” Helen said, and glanced at her watch. Ten forty. “I’m supposed to ask you for shelving tips before I go to lunch at eleven,” she said.

“We keep the returned books on these carts behind the circulation desk,” Gladys said. “I check them in and the computer automatically records the fines and lets me know which books are on hold. Right now, we have a run on the new John Grisham mystery. We only have twelve copies.”

“How does a small library afford twelve copies of one bestselling hardcover?”

“We’ll buy one or two for the collection and rent the rest from a company called McNaughton,” Gladys said. “Then, when the demand is over, the books go back and we aren’t stuck with all those extra copies. Lots of libraries use some version of this.

“We’re a reading room, so we have some books filed by their Dewey Decimal System numbers, but most are fiction and biographies. They’re filed in alphabetical order.”

“What do you do about Mac and Mc?” Helen said. “Where would McNaughton go?”

“Under Mc. And Mac is Mac. We don’t shelve them together. If I have time, I’ll prep the books for you and put them in alpha order, so you can just roll the cart out on the floor and start working.”

“This mahogany cart with the brass wheels is a beauty,” Helen said.

“They don’t make them like this anymore,” Gladys said, “and
that’s a good thing. These old carts are tanks. Good for toning up the arms.”

“They’ll keep your tattooed biceps show-worthy,” Helen said.

“Do you know there are tattooed librarian calendars?” Gladys said. “I’m not the only one fighting the stereotype.”

“You sure don’t look like Mrs. Brackensieck, my favorite librarian when I was in grade school,” Helen said.

“What? Did she keep her hair in a bun and wear twinsets?” Gladys’s question was a challenge.

“No, she looked like what she was—a soccer mom,” Helen said. “She knew I loved to read and let me check out books that were way above my reading level. I grew up in a St. Louis suburb and used to hide out at the library when my parents weren’t getting along.

“The bookmobile came to our neighborhood one Saturday a month, and it provided the best drama in town. We kids used to sit around in the bookmobile and see if anyone would check out The Book. This was the Midwest, so you have to remember two things about that time:

“First, people didn’t fling around so many four-letter words back then. Not in public, anyway.”

Gladys nodded her dark head. “I’m from a little town in Michigan,” she said.

“Second, librarians checked out books with the old Dictaphone system.”

“Before my time,” Gladys said, “but I’ve heard of them. The librarians had to say the title out loud and it was recorded.”

“Right,” Helen said. “The reason we kids hung around the bookmobile was that about once a month, someone would check out The Book. It was an Erskine Caldwell novel. We’d watch the very proper librarian hesitate, take a deep breath, then do her duty and say the book’s title out loud. In public.
The Bastard
.”

Gladys laughed so loud Helen was afraid a patron would shush her.

“I think the bookmobile librarian wore a twinset,” Helen said.

Gladys grinned. “Every once in a while, I see a librarian who dresses like the stereotype,” she said, “but we come in all colors, sizes and flavors—Asian, Caucasian, Latino, African-American, men, women, straights and gays. When I started here, Hilary was the head librarian. She’s African-American, the daughter of a board member’s housekeeper. Hilary left for a better job in Chicago.

“So far, Flora Park hasn’t hired a replacement. Instead, they gave me a small raise and now I’m doing the work of two people. I don’t know when they’re going to replace me—maybe never. Alexa fills in when I take a day off.”

“Why won’t Flora Park hire someone else?” Helen asked. “It’s a rich town.”

“And clueless when it comes to libraries,” Gladys said. “One of the city council members popped in at eleven on a weekday morning and didn’t see any patrons in the library. He assumed we didn’t have anything to do. Another council member said we didn’t need a library because everyone uses the Internet.”

“There’s a lot of misinformation on the Net,” Helen said. “I need a librarian to help me find the right stuff. You’re the real search engines.”

“Tell the city council that,” Gladys said. “I hear variations on that theme all the time: ‘We have Google, so we don’t need librarians.’

“Even our library board members are clueless. One donated a hardcover mystery and expected to see it on the shelf the next day. The book has to be cataloged and labeled, put in a special protective cover, given a card pocket, a category and a spine label. And it’s even more complicated for big libraries. She was ticked because it took two weeks to get it in the library.”

“What do you like to read?” Helen asked.

“Biographies and history. I really do believe that George
Santayana was right: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’”

Helen decided to test her. “I think we’re doomed to repeat the past no matter what,” she said. “It’s part of living. Most kids can’t afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.”

“You read Kurt Vonnegut, too,” Gladys said. “Good. I read and reread him, and Mark Twain and Edith Wharton and Maya Angelou and Charlotte Brontë and lots more. Plus I read the
Economist
. Their politics are usually wrong, but their features are clever. My pile of books to be read—Mount TBR—is threatening to take over my condo.”

“Do you live in Flora Park?” Helen asked.

“No, too white and uptight,” she said. “I have a condo in the Ocean Royale.”

“Wow. Sweetest real estate in Lauderdale,” Helen said. “You can afford that?”

“Barely,” Gladys said. “I got a good price on a foreclosed studio with an ocean view. That’s why I’m driving my mom’s old white Chevy Impala. Talk about a librarian stereotype. Between buying books and clothes and the condo, I’ve run up some bills, so I’m stuck with the mom mobile for a while, until I can pay off my debts. Then I want to be the first librarian in South Florida to drive a red Ferrari.”

“That will smash some stereotypes,” Helen said. “Not to be rude, but who did you know in Flora Park to get this job?”

“You have this place figured out,” Gladys said, and laughed. “My mom belonged to one of Flora Park’s so-called first families. We spent the holidays here. You knew someone to get your job, Helen. Elizabeth pulled some strings.”

Helen looked startled, but Gladys said, “I accidently heard her talking with Alexa about hiring a private eye to recover that
Muddy Alligators
painting. Next thing I know, we have a new volunteer and Seraphina Ormond is pissed off.

“She doesn’t know why you got the volunteer job she wanted, but she’ll find out. Watch out for Blair. She’s Seraphina’s best bud, as well as head Friend of the Library.”

“Anyone else I should watch out for?”

“Seraphina’s college-age son, Ozzie. He wants to be a herpetologist.”

“Do you date him?” Helen asked.

“Too young,” she said. “And too weird. He invited me to his place so I could watch him feed live mice to his snakes.”

“Ew,” Helen said. “Disgusting. He keeps snakes?”

“Yeah,” Gladys said. “Told me he likes the poisonous ones.”

“I gather you didn’t go to his place?”

“A date like him is really gonna make my heart beat faster,” Gladys said. “Ozzie usually slithers in once or twice a week and puts the moves on me. He hits on any chick he sees, and you’ll definitely be on his radar.

“Oh, hell, he’s here,” she said.

“Ozzie?” Helen asked.

“That’s him. Short, stocky, bearded. The little sidewinder is making his way through the popular library. Brace yourself.” She started typing on her computer.

Ozzie swaggered up to the desk with a white cardboard box and said, “Gladys, how’s my favorite fantasy librarian?”

“Busy, Ozzie. As you can see,” she said.

“Wanna go out?”

“No, Ozzie. If I’d spent six months in a lighthouse, I wouldn’t go out with you.”

He ignored the insult. “Who’s your hot friend?” He looked Helen up and down. “Are you a librarian, too?”

“No,” Helen said, her voice clipped. Up close, she saw his well-trimmed dark beard gave him the illusion of a chin, and his lips were rubbery pink.

“Wanna do lunch?” He rolled the word around as if savoring it.

“No, thanks. I’m out of circulation,” Helen said. “I’m married.”

“My favorite kind of woman,” he said.

“Are you here for library business?” Gladys said.

“I just stopped by to see Aunt Blair.”

“Then go see her,” Gladys said. “She’s in the back.” She walked away from the desk and began alphabetizing books on the cart.

“Aunt Blair?” Helen said, when Ozzie slouched toward the back.

“It’s a courtesy title,” Gladys said. “The families have been friends forever.”

“He’s repellent,” Helen said, and shuddered. “Does he really get dates with that routine?”

“Not with me. I think he just hits on women for practice. Ozzie dates impressionable high school girls who tell him how wonderful he is. I have to be nice to him because his mother’s a big donor.”

“You were nice?” Helen said.

“You should see me when I’m rude,” Gladys said.

“I guess there are a lot of politics in a small library,” Helen said.

“You wouldn’t believe,” Gladys said. “Some of the stories are better than those novels you’re shelving. Actually, the crazy politics have improved since I came here six years ago.

“Back then, the library had a totally different Friends group, a bunch of rich old trouts who spent most of their time fighting over who should run the Friends. There was so much infighting they finally closed the bookstore.”

She nodded toward the shelves of used books in the corner. “Nobody would sort the donated books or help sell them. They were too busy backstabbing one another.

“The bookstore is the Friends’ primary fund-raising tool, and those old books bring in seventy or eighty thou a year. The Friends’ power grabs didn’t stop until the woman who ran the group died. Then, six months later, the Friends started up again, this time with a new president and a new, younger board. Blair is in charge, but I give her credit—she actually works, and so do the new Friends.

“I’d just missed the big Flora Park Library sex scandal, but I heard about it from Hilary. The library board censured the library director—an old white guy—because he was having an affair with a staff member. They both were married, to other people.

“The board found out because the two shared a room at a library convention. One of our librarians ratted them out. The director made that librarian’s life so miserable she finally quit.”

“Why would she tell the board?” Helen asked.

“She thought she’d get his job. Instead, she couldn’t take the harassment. She left. Then the censured director quit, and we got Alexa. She’s good.”

“The old director must have been a heartbreaker,” Helen said.

Gladys laughed. “He starred in the epic video
Flora Park, Flower of South Florida Libraries
. The dude was no hunk—short, bald, in his late fifties, and spoke like he had a mouth full of mashed potatoes.”

“Wow,” Helen said. “I had no idea there was so much going on between the covers.”

“Lisa, the current board president, is a bit whack-a-doodle about ghosts,” Gladys said, “but she’s still an improvement. You’re doing a good job as an undercover detective. It must be cool to be a private eye. You’ve really maintained your cover as a library volunteer. You don’t look like a private eye.”

“Now who’s stereotyping?” Helen asked.

H
elen smelled the books before she saw them. She’d passed a fragrant jasmine vine near the library’s staff entrance, when she caught the stink of mold and rotting paper.

The half-crushed cardboard box was abandoned on the staff steps. More worthless books for the Friends of the Library, she thought. Do people really think dumping trash here helps the library?

Might as well take it inside. It’s part of my new job.

Helen was in a better mood after her encounter with Blair Hoagland. Her lively conversation with Gladys had lightened her outlook. She’d had a sandwich and a soda, and bought treats for Paris, the library cat. It was nearly noon and she was ready to tackle the Kingsley collection.

The abandoned box was piled with tattered medical books and outdated dictionaries. She picked it up gingerly and heard a tiny buzz.

Did someone leave a cell phone in the box? she wondered.

Helen tried not to hold the moldy box close to her blouse, especially after Alexa said donated books might be infested with
silverfish and bedbugs. But the box was too heavy to hold at arm’s length. At least it was a short walk to the Friends’ intake room.

The top book was thicker than a brick and weighed maybe six pounds. The stained blue cover had a naked skull under the title
Color Atlas of Anatomy: A Photographic Study of the Human Body.

Helen’s stomach flopped like a beached fish. The atlas had full-color photos of real dissected dead bodies. She was definitely not opening that book. The others could have been doorstops. Moldy, smelly doorstops.

She staggered into the Friends’ intake room, dropped the box on the table and heard that buzz again.

It has to be a cell phone, she decided. Maybe a doctor’s phone. What if someone’s calling with a medical emergency? She grabbed the tattered atlas by the corner and saw movement.

Something long, swift and dark darted out and attacked the book. A rat? No, a snake!

Helen screamed and slammed the heavy atlas down on the snake, crushing it, then hit the snake again and again until its midsection was a bloody pulp. She was still hammering the dead snake when Alexa ran in, followed by Blair Hoagland.

“Helen! What on earth!” Alexa said. “I heard you screaming in my office.”

“A snake,” Helen said, her voice shaking. “I picked up these books at the staff entrance and there was a snake in the box. A live snake.”

“Not anymore,” Alexa said, looking at the smashed snake. “It’s definitely dead.”

Helen steeled herself to examine the bloody mess in the book box, then shuddered. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve ruined the books.”

“We couldn’t have used them anyway,” Blair said. “They were infested with silverfish.”

“You aren’t hurt, are you?” Alexa asked.

“No,” Helen said, still breathing hard. “The snake didn’t bite me.” She gathered her courage and looked at the dead snake again. She hated snakes, and this was no harmless garter snake. The long, yellow fangs were bared. The grayish body was thicker than a garden hose and blotched with dark spots. On its tail was a spike. No, not a spike.

“Is that a rattle on the snake’s tail?” she asked, her voice high and thin.

Alexa peered into the box. “Yes,” she said. “I believe that’s a rattlesnake.”

“Do we have rattlers in Florida?” Helen asked.

“You’re asking the right person,” Alexa said. “I used to work the reference desk, answering patrons’ questions. We don’t get as many reference questions these days, thanks to the Internet. Follow me to my office and we’ll look up Florida snakes on my computer.”

“Wait!” Blair said. “What about this disgusting snake? Who’s going to remove it?”

“Ask Jared,” Alexa said. “We’ll be back shortly.”

Helen sank into the leather barrel chair in Alexa’s office. The room’s soothing quiet calmed her while Alexa clacked on her keyboard. Something about that snake incident nagged at her. Something someone said. Alexa? No, it was . . .

“I’ve found your snake on a Florida wildlife Web site,” Alexa said, and Helen saw the hunter’s light in the librarian’s eyes. She enjoyed tracking down information. “Take a look. It’s a pygmy rattlesnake.”

Helen hurried over to the computer screen and saw the snake’s photo. Coiled on a pile of leaves, heavy-bodied and evil, the rattlesnake was so lifelike Helen backed away.

“That’s it,” she said.

“The site says the pygmy rattlesnake is ‘the most commonly encountered venomous snake in urbanized areas, often in gardens
or brush piles,’” Alexa said. “Just like Adam and Eve, we have a snake in our garden.”

Snake. Garden. Helen suddenly remembered what had been nagging at her. “Maybe you have a snake in the grass,” she said. “When I apologized for ruining the books, Blair said,
We couldn’t have used them anyway. They were infested with silverfish.
”

“I heard that,” Alexa said.

“How did she know the books had silverfish?” Helen said. “That box was abandoned at the employee entrance. I took an early lunch, came back and found it. Did anyone else go out that entrance?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Our lunch hours start at noon and we’ve been busy.”

“Blair left that snake there for me,” Helen said.

“You’re upset, Helen,” Alexa said. “I admit Blair wasn’t very welcoming, but she wouldn’t try to harm you.”

“Murder me,” Helen said. “You can die from snake venom.”

“Blair wouldn’t do that,” Alexa said. “The Friends of the Library are valuable contributors to our library. We need them and we need Blair. I admit she can be difficult, but a killer? Never.”

The library director absently tugged on her distinctive lock of white hair. Alexa looked so distressed, Helen said, “You know her better than I do.”

I have a ghost to find, she thought. I’ll be extra careful around Blair, that’s all.

There was a knock on the door and a tall, thin woman with lank gray-blond hair poked her head in. “Alexa, may I speak with you, please?” she said.

“Ah, Lisa,” Alexa said. “Helen Hawthorne, meet Lisa Jackson Hamilton, president of our library board. Helen is our new volunteer, Lisa.”

Alexa’s smile seems forced, Helen thought. Is it the strain of finding that snake, or is Lisa another difficult person?

“Pleased to meet you,” Lisa said, and held out a bony white hand with short, polish-free nails.

Lisa looked like a certain kind of old-money type Helen had seen in St. Louis. She was thin and faded, with fine bones and an aristocratic air. At twenty, she would have been dazzling, with a creamy complexion and pale shining hair. Three generations ago, her debutante portrait would have graced the family drawing room.

Lisa had aged, but it was more than that. Something had sucked out her spirit and left this lifeless shell with the no-color hair.

Helen stood up to greet her. “I’ll go back to work so you two can talk,” she said.

“No, no, I’d like you to stay,” Lisa said. “I’ll need your participation, too, tonight.”

“Tonight?” Alexa said. “What’s tonight?” She sounded suspicious.

Yep, Helen thought. Lisa is definitely a thorn in the director’s side.

“I want to hold a séance to contact the ghost of Flora Portland,” Lisa said.

Alexa frowned.

“I know you believe the library isn’t haunted,” Lisa said quickly, “but I disagree. I can feel Flora’s essence in this building. She is troubled and restless.”

Alexa’s jaw was clenched. Helen fought to keep hers from dropping. Lisa didn’t look like a flake. She was a fiftysomething woman in a well-cut lavender suit.

“Hear me out,” Lisa said softly, quickly. “The séance won’t cost the library anything. I have a sensitive medium. Melisandra is volunteering her services. I need the people who are here today to form the circle to communicate with Flora. I need you, of course, Alexa, and the new janitor, Jared.”

“Jared?” Alexa said. One word seemed to be all she could manage.

“He worked for the Kingsleys and they were friends of the Portlands.”

“Jared didn’t know Flora Portland and he’s angry that Davis Kingsley didn’t give him a more generous bequest.”

“Even better,” Lisa said. “Spirits are attracted to strong emotions. I’ll need Blair because she’s head of the Friends of the Library, and you, too, Helen. You have a good aura.”

“I do?” Helen said.

“I can see it pulsing. It’s a lovely shade of indigo,” Lisa said. “You are a person of honesty, inner peace and love.”

Good thing she wasn’t around when I was bashing that rattlesnake, Helen thought.

“I’m essential to the séance because I saw Flora,” Lisa said.

No, you
believe
you saw Flora, Helen thought. Instead, you hit an innocent patron in a lavender dress.

“I did see Flora,” Lisa said, as if she’d read Helen’s mind. “Ghosts can be quite playful.”

“That wasn’t playful,” Alexa said. “Our patron needed stitches. We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t sue.”

“That’s why Flora’s spirit needs to rest, don’t you see?” Lisa’s voice was insistent. “She doesn’t want to hurt anyone. She’s trying to communicate. Melisandra can help reach her and then we’ll know what she’s trying to say.”

Helen remembered Alexa telling her that the Flora Park Library might have to be abandoned and a new one built:
Our board president said that Flora would turn over in her grave
.

“Oh, and one more person,” Lisa said. “I saw her working at the checkout desk. Gladys Gillman, our librarian.”

“I’ll ask her if she can stay,” Alexa said.

“I already did. She said she would,” Lisa said. “I have everything set for nine o’clock tonight. Please, Alexa. It won’t cost anything but a little time. I even found someone to watch Mother.

“My mother is indisposed,” she said to Helen.

“I—” Alexa began, and Helen could tell by her expression she was going to refuse.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Helen said, quickly. “Please forgive me for speaking out of turn, but a séance will be a huge help in getting to the bottom of this mystery.”

“Exactly,” Lisa said, and showed her tiny white teeth. “Flora is upset by the proposed changes in her library. We need to find out her wishes, and then I promise she’ll stop haunting this building.”

And you’ll have the ammunition you need to get the library you want, Helen thought.