Page 13 of Booked for Murder
The active case log had six similar cases including a brief about Senator Godrin. I prepared a copy of those records to send to one of the more popular printers in the place. Pretending my computer had issues, I skipped to the one beside it and printed out a reference list for myself of flooring materials, starting both jobs at the same time to help cover my tracks. Then, because I had issues, I sent a print job from one of the in-use computers to give me a reason to shuffle through the papers being printed.
On the system with my login active, I added one more print job of the newest upcoming fiction releases, a copy of the contacts for our renovators, and a few other printouts I’d need to give my branch a facelift.
As a wise woman covered her tracks, I went back into all of the systems I’d used, erased the evidence from the logs I’d accessed with my throwaway account, and inserted a log showing I’d logged in with my library account. Once I logged out of the two systems I’d openly used, I limped to the printer and began the tedious process of separating my prized records, my renovation sheets, and the extra jobs I’d run to give myself a reason to sift through the papers. The extra jobs went into the pile meant for patrons to retrieve if someone beat them to the printer. To add to my good fortune, someone had printed a research document, which showed up on the heels of my renovation papers, allowing me to better hide the police records. I waited for the research job to finish before handing a rather tired teen his stack, taking a moment to look over his citations.
At maybe sixteen and more concerned with his hair than his schoolwork, I figured he had good reason to be tired and fidget. Still, he’d done better than most I’d seen take on the task of citing sources. I offered him a smile. “You’re using the wrong format for your citations. You need to list the last name of the author first. Last name, then the author’s first name or initials before continuing with the rest of the citation. Beyond that, you got the format right, but you’ll want to fix that before turning it in.”
The teen’s eyes widened, and he stared at his sheet. “You knew that just from glancing at my papers?”
“I just happened to recognize one of the author’s names,” I replied, which was the truth. “It should only take you a few minutes to fix, and it’s definitely worth printing out a new copy. Just recycle the old one there.” The recycle bin, tucked in a corner beside the printer, usually failed to catch the attention of library patrons, so I pointed at it.
He chucked the sheets into the bin, mumbled a thanks, and bolted back to the computers.
I grabbed all of my papers, confirmed I hadn’t left any stray police records lying out on the printer, and put them in my briefcase, careful to keep the police records covered the entire time in case one of the security cameras recorded my activities.
My next stop, to further add to my disguise as a busy worker bee on a mission to renovate a library branch, involved a tour of the entire library with a notepad, jotting down ideas of what we could do with our empty floors to transform my small branch into a work of art. While I wanted to head home and learn more about Senator Godrin’s death, I needed to work a different sort of magic, the kind that convinced watchful eyes I was just a cripple with a job to do. In some ways, my cane and limp helped more than anything.
I made people uncomfortable.
Two hours and ten pages of notes later, I paid Beatrice a visit, knocking at her door.
“Enter,” she answered.
I let myself in and dodged her stacks of books and papers, dumping my notes on her keyboard. “Thoughts?”
As she liked when I didn’t waste her time, she skimmed my notes, her eyes narrowing. She snatched a pen and circled a few of my ideas. “I think you’re onto something. Do you have our contractor list?”
“I printed it out downstairs, along with some ideas for style from one of the public computers. I’ll do more research when I have access back to the library, but I think I can get started. I can go pay a visit to one of the contractors in person to discuss the job. I can get one of the other staffers to send me photographs of the spaces.”
“Especially now that you’ve joined the modern world,” she muttered.
“It seemed like a good time to get a phone. I didn’t really need one before.”
“You were, until today, the only staffer without one.”
I grinned at that. “Yeah, I was a little slow to get onto that bandwagon, wasn’t I?”
“A little?”
Laughing, I sat and stretched my aching legs out. As always, my foot hurt, but in the grand scheme of things, it was a better day than most. “Okay, a lot slow. Turtles lapped me.”
“Turtles are usually better racers than rabbits. Sure, they’re slow, but they get to where they’re going. The rabbits run around in circles and tend to lose the race because they don’t head for their goal—or the goal others set on them. I watched a rabbit versus turtle race once. The rabbits lost horribly. But they lost adorably.”
I could trust Beatrice to find weird shit on the internet. “Well, there goes that saying.”
“I was really expecting the rabbits to win. I felt like my entire childhood was a lie.”
Mine, too, albeit for entirely different reasons. “Any news about Godrin?”
“Beyond that he’s deader than a doornail, nothing. It’s being investigated. In good news, none of our people have been formally accused, but they’re being required to go through a rating evaluation.”
I sucked in a breath at that. “They’re making them all do a rating evaluation?”
“Yeah. Nobody is happy about that. You won’t need to undergo one; your evaluations are recent enough the investigators are satisfied you couldn’t have possibly developed the necessary rating since your last testing to be a culprit.”
Damn. When it rained, it poured, and all the good luck headed my way could only mean one thing: I’d be deluged with horrific luck sooner than later. I could think of a lot of things that could go wrong in a hurry.
I could run into Bradley. Up close and personal, I doubted my long hair, glasses, and attire would fool him for long.
