Murder Most Witchy (Wendy Lightower Mystery)

Murder Most Witchy

by Emily Rylands

Kindle Edition © Mary Lindsley 2014

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Cover image © Victoria Kalinina | Dreamstime.com

Cover design © Mary Lindsley

One

Wendy Lightower stood on her tiptoes, stretching to her full length off the top step of the rickety wooden ladder.

"Just a bit more," she muttered under her breath. 

The heavy leather-bound volume was perched on her fingertips, hovering anxiously on the edge of the very high shelf. Wendy gave the tome a final great shove and held her breath while she waited to see if it had been enough. The book teetered back and forth.

Then the inevitable happened. Like a movie reel in slow motion, Wendy watched the book tilt away from the safe confines of the shelf into the open air. She reached out to catch it and was rewarded with a sharp corner in the palm of her hand.

Her cry of pain was drowned out by the echoing thud as the book fell several feet onto the cold tiled floor.

"Wendy?"

Rubbing her wounded palm with her other hand, Wendy carefully descended the ladder and retrieved the fallen book.

A woman rounded the stacks and sought her out, her eyes wide with concern and alarm.

"Are you all right?" she asked, looking Wendy up and down as though checking for injury.

"Fine, Magda. I just dropped a book." Her voice betrayed her irritation, and she didn't take her eyes off the leather of the book's cover. It didn't appear to be marked or harmed in any way, and she exhaled a large sigh of relief.

"It's fine," she said, this time actually meaning it. "The book is undamaged."

Magda laughed and shook her head. "And so are you, I see. I'll leave you to it then."

"Sure," Wendy answered, her voice vague and distracted as she began climbing the ladder again. "Thanks, Magda."

"Whoa, there," Magda said, no longer laughing. "Where do you think you're going?"

Wendy stopped midway up the ladder. "I have to replace this book."

Magda shook her head. "Uh uh. It's too high for you. I'll do it."

"I don't mind, really," Wendy replied, though she was on her way back down.

"Well, you may not, but I will mind when the next falling object turns out to be you. Give me that."

Dutifully, Wendy passed her the heavy book.

Making it look embarrassingly easy, Magda slipped the book neatly into place on the top shelf. Of course, being six feet tall made reaching high shelves much easier.

Magda resembled a fashion model more than a librarian. She was tall with legs so long they practically reached Wendy's chin. She wore her straight black hair long with blunt straight bangs that framed her deep blue eyes. Beyond her international supermodel looks,
Magda had enough style for at least six women.

As she reached ground level, Magda looked Wendy over once and rolled her eyes. "Next time, just call me over."

"Whatever you say," Wendy agreed with a smile. Most women didn't like Magda, either because of her striking looks or their perception of her attitude, but Wendy knew that Magda was actually a very nice person, at least to people she liked. And she liked Wendy.

Wendy stared wistfully at the highest shelf, not for the first time wishing that she had a few more inches of her own. Some of her favorite books called the top shelf home, and it was very frustrating to her not to be able to reach them whenever the whim called.

When she said as much to Magda, the other woman smirked. "You say every book is your favorite."

Wendy shrugged. “In their own way, they are all my favorite.”

Magda put her hand on Wendy's shoulder in a rare gesture of affection. "Remember, they're just books, love. They're not worth getting hurt over."

"Just books?" Wendy sounded shocked. "
Just
?"

Magda furrowed her perfectly sculpted brows. "That's right.
Just
books. Now I'm going back to work. Promise me you won't kill yourself while I am gone."

The promise duly given, Magda left Wendy alone with her books.

"Just the way you like it," she'd added, not unkindly.

It was true; Wendy was happier amongst her books than anywhere else in the world. It had been the most natural, if not the most popular, choice when she became a librarian. Unlike Magda, aside from her age, Wendy looked the part. She was small and slender with waves of blond hair that she coiled neatly at the back of her neck everyday. Her eyes, which shared both shape and color with almonds, were often framed by thick black reading glasses, and she always wore a variation on a single outfit - dark pencil skirt paired with a tucked in Oxford style shirt and sensible heels. Despite being only thirty years old, she conjured images of a comfortable spinster.

Like Magda, however, people made assumptions about her based on the way she looked. That she was meek and easily influenced was the most common misconception.

If only they knew.

Wendy's low wedges made virtually no noise as she retraced her steps out of the stacks and back to the circulation desk. Magda had disappeared, but the desk was still attended. Not that it would have been at all problematic for no one to be waiting at the desk at this particular moment. The North Harbor Museum and Historical Library didn't exactly draw huge crowds. Being tourist season, there were enough patrons to make one librarian and one library staffer, three museum staffers, and a couple of interns necessary. During the winter months, there were hardly ever more than three people in the building at a time, and that included the unpaid interns they hired from the local university.

Carrie, this season's grunt from the state college campus, was sitting behind the counter scribbling on a pad and flipping through a large, heavy book. It was old and looked boring, even to a bibliophile like Wendy. Carrie was a freshman, just eighteen, with long, naturally wavy brown hair. She was either a bit plump or just inclined to wear slightly baggy clothing.

"Homework?" Wendy asked with a smile for the younger woman.

Carrie closed the book on her notes and slipped the entire bundle into a bag at her feet. "Yes. Just a little research for my history class. I'm sorry. I won't bring it out at work again."

Wendy waved a hand. "Don't worry about it, Carrie. If it's slow, I don't mind if you do school work. That is the reason you're here, after all. School."

Carrie nodded, but she left the book inside the bag.

Wendy decided not to pursue it. In fact, she admired the young woman's work ethic. She had found it sadly lacking in most people under the age of twenty-five. She passed Carrie a stack of papers that needed filing and asked, "Anyone come in while I was gone?"

Carrie paused, as though trying to recall. "One man came in about twenty minutes ago. The couple hasn't left yet. Otherwise, we're empty," she finished with a shrug.

"Well, it is the middle of the week. The new exhibit should bring in some tourists."

The new exhibit was scheduled to open that weekend. It was a collection of documents and artifacts accompanied by research from local historians on the town's early days. Some of the objects dated back to the beginning of the seventeenth century. The locals were eager to see it, but the tourists were still expected to make up the majority of the visitors.

"Right," Carrie answered, sounding distracted.

Wendy didn't blame her for needing all of her faculties focused on the filing. It should have been a mindless task, but the filing system was several decades old, at the minimum, and not at all intuitive. Wendy herself had needed months to become proficient in it. No one had ever bothered to update it; that was just the way it had always been.

"What is your major again, Carrie?" Wendy asked. She always made an effort to get to know the interns, even if they were only there for a semester.

Carrie looked up from the filing. "I'm still undecided, but I'm leaning towards a double major in History and Women's Studies."

"Interesting," Wendy said, and she meant it. Wendy had been an English major before she got her Master's degree in Library Science, but she was fascinated by all the humanities. "This exhibit should be right in your line, then. It's a history of the town, and I know there are a number of sections that feature prominent women."

"So I've heard," Carrie replied, her eyes back on the filing.

Wendy smiled at the young woman's bent head. "I suppose I'll leave you to it. I have some work to do in the back room. Are you comfortable holding down the desk for a while?"

Carrie answered without lifting her gaze from her stack of paper. "Absolutely."

"And Carrie," Wendy continued. She waited for the young woman to raise her eyes before she went on, "Please feel free to do your homework if you run out of things to do."

Carried rewarded her with one of her rare but bright smiles. "Thank you."

She sounded so sincere and grateful that Wendy couldn't help but smile back. "Must be an important paper you're working on," she commented.

Carrie tilted her head to the side. Her eyes were intent on Wendy's face. "Oh, it is."

Wendy left Carrie behind the desk and wound her way through the stacks towards the back wall. Set in the far wall was a door marked "Authorized Personnel Only." Wendy slid a key card through the slot installed next to the door and was rewarded by a high beep and the click of a lock being released.

The interior room was the exact opposite of the larger library. The North Harbor Museum and Historical Library was a beautifully renovated Victorian building. The exterior was red brick and climbing ivy. The inside was all gleaming polished mahogany and shiny brass. The smell of books and varnish was particularly intoxicating, at least to Wendy. Walking into the restoration room was like traveling through time. If the library was a glimpse into the past, the workroom was an image of the future. It was a sterile room with plain white walls and cement floors lit by overhead florescent lights and furnished entirely in stainless steel.

Though Wendy loved the library, the work that she was able to do in this polar opposite space made it equally endearing to her. It was in this lab space that Wendy was able to do the work that she loved the most.

Restoration.

On the steel table in the middle of the room was an oversized volume wrapped in discolored brown leather. Even from the distance of the door, Wendy could see that the pages were yellow and warped. The book contained the important notices of the town from its creation at the turn of the seventeenth century and spanning several decades. Births, deaths, and weddings were recorded, with varying levels of accuracy and detail by innumerable hands. It was a study of the most important days in the lives of the brave men and women who founded the town.

Wendy approached the book cautiously, studying it from several angles before pulling on a pair of gloves. Using a pair of tweezers, she carefully opened the front cover and studied the crabbed writing on the first page.

The words were faded and cracking but still legible.

"North Harbor Town Register," she whispered. She was constantly in awe of the sheer age of some of the books she was privileged to handle.

First step was documentation. Using a high-resolution digital camera, she took several photographs of the first page, a procedure she intended to repeat with each new page. If there was any loss of quality while she worked on the book, there would at least be a record.

After the photographs, Wendy pressed the red button on a small, handheld recorder on the table.

"Cover opened and photographs taken," she dictated aloud. "Writing is clear though faded. There is water damage in the latter half of the text. Some evidence of mold."

Wendy worked meticulously, one page at a time, dictating her notes as she went. By the time she looked up at the stark white and black clock on the wall, two hours had passed. Only then did she feel the throbbing pain in her neck from holding it in one position for far too long. Massaging it with stiff fingertips did little to dispel the pain, but Wendy didn't mind. Her smile was wide and unabashed as she removed the gloves and left the room.

"You look way too happy."

Wendy rolled her neck to the side to face Magda, wincing as she hit the point that caused her pain. "It was a good day's work."

Magda shook her head, but her unnaturally red lips formed a smile. "Good because it is over," she said, reaching for her brown satchel and slinging it over her shoulder. "Are you up for happy hour?"

Wendy looked around the empty library. "I suppose I might as well. Did Carrie leave?"

Magda snorted. "Over an hour ago. You were in there a long time. Closing time has come and gone."

Wendy checked her wristwatch and realized that Magda was correct. The hours posted for the library had ended nearly forty-five minutes earlier.

They went through the daily closing procedures, shutting down computers and turning off lights. As a senior librarian, Wendy had a set of master keys, and she set the alarm and locked the door behind them as they left.

The town of North Harbor was not especially large, comprising a few square miles and only 10,000 year round residents. Magda and Wendy decided to walk the few blocks to a local seafood restaurant that also happened to serve Wendy's favorite beer and a decent dirty martini for Magda.