The Chocolate Book Bandit (12 page)

“How is Webb?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s fine. Where’d you go?”

“I’m now on a nickname basis with Corny Cornwall.” I described my dinner. Maybe I downplayed Butch Cassidy, just a little bit. But I didn’t fudge the facts.

“And earlier,” I said, “Aunt Nettie and I cleaned out Abigail Montgomery’s refrigerator.”

I reported on that visit as well, ending with a description of the mysterious key.

“Odd,” Joe said. “Did the key look like a genuine antique or a copy?”

“It looked new and shiny.”

“The only place to get a key copied in Warner Pier is the hardware store. Guy Reardon might remember if Mrs. Montgomery brought a key in to be copied.”

“Should I mention this to Hogan? Or let Tim handle it?”

“Tim or Hart ought to tell Hogan, I guess. Or maybe all of us should just forget it.”

I had hoped my detailed story about my day would encourage Joe to give me a bit more detail about his. But no such report was forthcoming. We seemed to run out of conversation. Joe wandered around, and after a few minutes got into the shower. And I turned to HGTV, just as I had threatened earlier in the evening. We both climbed in bed early, but we each brought reading material with us. The only communication was, “What time shall I set the alarm for?”

Of course, by then it had occurred to me that if Joe had a problem—such as an old girlfriend—that he wanted to discuss with a trusted adviser, Webb would have been a likely candidate for the role. So I propped up on my pillows, held my book, and didn’t read it. It was one o’clock before I turned out my light, and then I didn’t sleep well.

The next morning I got up determined to finish up the chore Hogan had requested so I could concentrate on my own life. Betty Blake was my next victim, I decided.

Butch had said she had some problem with Abigail. I needed to find out what it was. I considered several ways to accomplish this and finally decided I should just ask her. As soon as I got to the office I found Betty’s home phone number and called her. She readily agreed to meet me for lunch. I told her I wanted to discuss day-to-day operations at the library.

“Well, I know all about that,” she said firmly. “Though you might not think so, judging by the amount of attention I get.”

Food Network Magazine
did a special issue on chocolate, and one of their articles was on chocolate-covered everything.

The magazine’s test cooks tempered semisweet and milk chocolate, then dipped dozens of foods in the yummy coatings.

The items that made the cut and were pictured in the magazine included:

Shredded wheat biscuits

Dried apples

Corn chips

Saltines and cheese crackers

Melba toast

Banana chips

Red licorice

Fruits, including orange sections and grapes

Toaster waffles

And—ta-da!—fried bacon

And just what did Betty mean by that? I needed to find out. That was why we were going to have a talk.

It was a beautiful fall day, so I suggested meeting at the outside area of the Sidewalk Café.

The Sidewalk actually takes its name from the décor—which includes old outdoor toys such as scooters, roller skates, jacks, and marbles—but it has both indoor and outdoor dining rooms. It’s only a block from TenHuis Chocolade, and everybody in town walks by. It even has good food. It’s the most popular place in Warner Pier for lunch.

To my surprise, Betty hesitated. “Maybe someplace more private would be better,” she said. “I know! I’ll make us a sandwich, and we can go to Riverside Park.”

Hmmm. Warner Pier has a lovely park that runs beside the Warner River for several blocks. Right in downtown Warner Pier. But Betty wasn’t talking about that park. She was suggesting a park that’s rather hard to get to and has few amenities. Its main attraction is a boat ramp, and it’s up the river, a mile from downtown Warner Pier. Why did she want to go there?

But it was okay with me. “That might be a better place to talk,” I said. “There’s never anybody there.”

“That’s right. We shouldn’t run into anybody we don’t want to see us together.”

Hmmm again. Why did she want our talk to be secret?

I offered to pick up some of the Sidewalk’s roast beef sandwiches and grab soft drinks from the shop’s refrigerator. Betty said she had some homemade cookies. We agreed to meet at eleven thirty, since Betty went to work at one.

“This is the afternoon for the after-school movie,” she said. “So I’ll have to be right on time so I can help Gwen get ready.”

I knew Gwen Swain was the volunteer who ran that activity.

I knew very little about Betty, so I quizzed Aunt Nettie, who rarely leaves the shop but still seems to know everybody in town. Aunt Nettie called to Nadine Vanderhill, one of the “hairnet ladies,” the genius cooks who actually make TenHuis chocolates. Aunt Nettie told me Nadine went to the same church Betty did.

Nadine is a cheerful gal—tall and blond and a bit husky, like most of us descendants of the original Dutch settlers of Western Michigan.

“Why do you need to know about Betty?” Nadine asked. “She doesn’t have any new problems, does she?”

I explained that I had been asked to serve on the board of the library and was trying to familiarize myself with its personnel and operations. I said nothing about getting together with Betty, since she apparently didn’t want that known.

“I’m just being nosy,” I said. “Betty seems to be a very nice person.”

“Oh, she is!” Nadine said. “But she’s had a lot of problems. Her husband went off and left her with two kids. One of the kids has needed speech therapy and tutoring and other things. You know, extra time and expense. And Betty’s house is old. She’s had lots of problems there. She’s just never been able to get ahead.”

“How old are her kids?”

“Early twenties. Her daughter works at a nursing home in Holland, and her son is at Walmart in South Haven. He got married just out of high school and had kids right away. So now it’s more problems with the grandkids.”

“It sounds as if Betty has had a hard life.”

“Lots of troubles. The church has tried to help Betty, but she’s had a struggle. I think she’s a real hard worker. And she’s smart. Through it all she’s kept on taking college classes.”

“That can be hard,” I said. “I worked full-time while I went to college. It wasn’t easy, and I didn’t have kids.”

“I think Betty finally finished her degree last spring. Maybe things will look up for her.”

Armed with two roast beef sandwiches and a few facts about Betty, I headed for lunch. When I pulled into Riverside Park an old sedan was already there, and I saw Betty sitting at a picnic table.

There was nothing very distinctive about her. She looked like a middle-aged woman. She had a round face, pale eyelashes, and mouse brown hair styled with a bad perm. She wore shapeless slacks, a baggy shirt, and run-over loafers. She probably needed to lose thirty pounds. To be honest, duplicates of Betty Blake can be found in any American supermarket.

When I joined her at the table, her expression was worried.

“I hope there’s nothing wrong,” she said.

Nothing except a murder, I thought. But I didn’t say that. What I said was, “I just wanted to understand the library’s day-to-day operations.” Betty still looked wary.

We each took a sandwich and a Diet Coke. Between bites, Betty described her work at the Warner Pier Public Library. The staff totaled six, she reported. Butch Cassidy, of course, was the director. Betty had the title assistant librarian, and there were four others classified as clerks. Betty and the other four watched the desk, shelved the books, helped the patrons find materials, and did clerical chores from ten a.m. until seven or eight p.m. Monday through Saturday, working staggered shifts. In the past the library director had taken a shift on the circulation desk, and Butch had indicated he planned to continue this. Betty was the staff member who posted the bills and kept track of the fines, then sent these figures to the director, who passed them on to the city treasurer. The library shared a custodian with another city office, and he came in at night.

I didn’t ask about the basement, since I wasn’t trying to investigate the death of Abigail. No, my purpose was to understand the personal dynamics of the people who had been in the library building when Abigail died. But Betty did volunteer some information on the basement. The area, she said, was used only for storage. The night she stumbled over Abigail’s body, she had gone down to get paper for the copy machine.

“I’ll never forget that,” she said. “It was horrible!”

I made sympathetic noises and moved on to another subject.

“How long have you worked at the library?”

“Eighteen years,” Betty said. “I’m the employee with the longest service. But it’s a very small operation. I don’t understand why they decided to hire a
professional
librarian.”

Betty definitely had given the word “professional” a special meaning, and it wasn’t a complimentary one.

“Wasn’t Mrs. Smith a professional librarian?” I asked.

“No. She had a degree in English. Just like me. But the library board decided to replace her with someone with a master’s of library science.”

“Was that because of the new library building? I mean, did they want a more professional operation?”

“It’s the same library! I don’t see why a new building should make a difference! It will have the same books, the same computers, the same Internet access that the old one has!”

“Is the budget increasing?”

“Somewhat.” The word came out grudgingly.

Obviously this whole topic was a sore one to Betty Blake. I simply made a noncommittal sound. “Hmmm.”

That was enough encouragement for Betty. She went on. “So they hired this man, Mr. Cassidy. He has an MLS. But his library experience is practically nil!”

“Oh? The newspaper story said he’d worked in libraries for several years.”

“Yes, while he was in graduate school. He checked out books in a city library, a very low-level job, then worked at the University of Michigan library. But a college library is quite different from a community library. I’m sure Mr. Cassidy knows about handling orders for books requested by professors, or helping students research esoteric topics. But he’s never planned programs for children. Or organized a teen book club. Or helped tourists check their e-mail. Or even worked on the Friends of the Library book sale. He’s nice enough, I guess, but he’s not experienced in the type of operation we have here in Warner Pier.”

Betty ducked her head. “I can’t help feeling—cheated. Oh, I shouldn’t have said that!”

“I won’t pass anything along you say.”

I might as well have kept quiet. Betty wanted to talk, and I was the first person who had offered to listen to her.

“It’s just that Catherine—Mrs. Smith—well, she promised me that once I got my degree and she retired, I would be in line to be considered for the position. Then that Mrs. Montgomery, well, she came up with that plan to ‘upgrade.’ That’s what she called it. She wanted to hire a ‘professional’ librarian.”

“I see.”

“She pushed the budget changes through with the vice mayor. Then she pushed her plan through the library board. So here I am. I worked all these years for my degree, and it was no use!”

I tried to make soothing noises, but I could see how futile my efforts were. Betty had hoped to follow Mrs. Smith as director of the Warner Pier Public Library. She had worked hard, not only at her job, but at her education. And as a single mother in a low-paying job, this would have been a struggle. Then, just as she attained her bachelor’s degree, the game changed. The library board decided to hire someone with a master’s.

I could understand her feelings entirely. But I could also understand the board’s desire to call for higher qualifications for the director.

All I could do was cluck sympathetically, but noncommittally.

Luckily, once she had her grievance off her chest, Betty seemed to feel a little better. “Everyone was sympathetic,” she said. “I talked to Miss Vanderklomp. But she said that she’s not an official member of the board. Of course, she forgets that when she wants to. If she’d been on my side . . . And Mrs. Ringer-Riley was highly sympathetic, but she didn’t support me either.

“So here I am, with a useless degree.”

“Oh, Betty, all that work! You can’t regard it as useless.”

“I enjoyed the classes. I like to learn, and I love English literature.”

“So it wasn’t a waste of effort. And you don’t have to work at the Warner Pier library forever. Have you tried Holland? Or one of the other library systems?”

“I’d have to start at the bottom there. And I can’t look too far away from Warner Pier because I really can’t afford to move. I inherited my house from my parents, and I owned it mortgage free until I had to borrow money for repairs. And the city has good benefits! My daughter is still on my insurance.”

I hadn’t thought about benefits. Jobs around Warner Pier are not easy to find unless the job seeker is in certain categories. And by joining with other small municipalities, the city is able to offer a nice benefit package. A person with the problems Betty had had would find that attractive.

On the other hand, property is worth quite a bit in Warner Pier. Even if Betty’s house needed repairs . . .

I opened my mouth, then shut it without saying anything. Betty hadn’t asked me for financial guidance. A lot of Joe’s clients are in deep financial doo-doo, so if she did ask for advice, Joe could help her find an adviser. But it wasn’t my place to make suggestions on how Betty handled her money. Or suggest that she quit her job and move elsewhere.

Betty and I seemed to have reached the end of our conversation. But I had one more question.

“Betty,” I said, “why didn’t you want anyone to know we were meeting for lunch?”

Betty turned as red as one of Michigan’s prize apples. “Oh, I didn’t want to hide anything!”

“But you said that you preferred to meet here, rather than at the Sidewalk Café, because then we wouldn’t see anyone we didn’t want to see us together.”

“Oh! Did I say that? I didn’t mean anything by it. I just didn’t want anyone to think I was talking out of school. I guess I thought you might want to talk about something a little touchier.”

“Like what? What’s touchy about the library? Other than Abigail Montgomery being killed, of course.”

“Oh, but that has nothing to do with the library!”

“It happened there.”

“But it must have been an accident! I’m sure it was.”

I shut up again. Hogan hadn’t announced that he believed Abigail’s death had been caused deliberately. I wasn’t supposed to know that, much less spread it around.

“Anyway,” Betty went on, “I’ll be glad to discuss the library anytime. The everyday operations. The finances. Anything. Just call me.”

I assured her that I appreciated her information.

Having confided in me—human nature being what it is—Betty was now regretting what she’d said. And I was a bit embarrassed that I’d encouraged her to tell me her secrets. We said good-bye a little stiffly and gathered up our sacks, paper napkins, and Coke cans to put them in the proper bins. I thanked Betty effusively for giving me an inside look at the library from a staffer’s viewpoint.

She smiled wistfully. “It’s so nice to see a board member really take an interest in the library,” she said. “Most of them just seem to swallow whatever the director tells them.”

Her comment made me feel a bit guilty. If Hogan hadn’t instructed me to look into the interactions of the board members, well, I’d have been a board member who just swallowed whatever the director told me.

I drove away, wondering. Had I learned anything from Betty?

Yes, I decided.

First, some people had said that Abigail Montgomery was negligible as a member of the library board, that she didn’t take an active part in the organization’s business. Apparently that wasn’t correct. According to Betty, Abigail had been the big pusher in the effort to upgrade the qualifications of the library director. She had gotten Butch Cassidy his job.