be reached from the basement floor.
Maggie inched her way down the steps behind Claire, relieved when they were on the floor and Claire was able to reach the light. With a click, the light flared on, illuminating the area.
Maggie blinked to adjust her eyes, but nothing prepared her for the sound of Claire’s scream, which rent the quiet of the basement like the sharp edge of a knife.
Chapter 5
“Claire, what is it?” Maggie cried. “Did you see a rat?”
She stood on tiptoe, as if this would help, and scanned the area around her feet, dreading the thought of some beady-eyed critter staring back up at her.
“B…b…body,” Claire said. The box of books she clutched in her arms slid from her grasp and she began to wilt. Maggie dropped her box of books and grabbed Claire just before she slammed her head into the stairs.
“Claire!” she called her friend’s name. “Claire!”
There was no response. Claire’s limp body was too heavy for her to hold, and Maggie was forced to prop her against the steps before she dropped her. She studied Claire’s face. Even in the dim light it looked gray. What was wrong? Had she fainted?
Maggie gently patted Claire’s cheek. “Claire, wake up!”
There was no response. The sound of footsteps poundingdown the hall brought Maggie’s attention up to the door above.
“Down here!” she yelled. “We’re down here.”
Preston Turner, the town handyman, came running down the stairs. His work boots thumped on the steps, jarring Claire’s body. As soon as he saw her, he slowed his pace.
“What happened?” he asked as he stopped beside Maggie. “I heard a scream.”
“I’m not sure, but Claire fainted,” she said. “Can you help me get her out of here?”
Preston crouched down beside Claire. He ran a hand through his short brown hair, which was just beginning to sprout some gray. “She didn’t bang her head, did she?”
“No, I caught her,” Maggie said.
“What made her scream like that?” he asked. “It sounded like someone was being tortured.”
“I don’t know,” Maggie said.
She glanced over her shoulder and leaned forward a bit so that she was closer to where Claire had been standing when she screamed. That’s when she saw a pair of men’s shoes, toes pointing up at the ceiling, poking out from behind an old file cabinet.
“Oh no,” she said. Curiosity propelled her forward even as a nervous flutter in her gut told her to run.
She moved farther into the circle of light cast by the lone bulb. The body of a man lay on the floor in a pool of his own blood. A large knife stuck out of his chest, and a book lay on the floor next to his hand.
“What is it, Maggie?” Preston asked as he carried Claire toward her.
“A body,” Maggie said. She went over to check the manfor a pulse. His skin was cold, colder than the cement floor he lay on. His eyes were open and staring up at the ceiling. There was no pulse in his wrist or his neck. “He’s dead.”
Preston’s eyes went wide, and he said, “Come on, up you go. Let’s get Miss Claire upstairs and call Sheriff Collins.”
Maggie studied the dead man. He was tall. He wore an impeccable charcoal suit—Armani, Maggie guessed, judging by the cut and the cloth. His shoes were soft leather loafers, the kind one wore in a carpeted boardroom, not in a musty old library basement. His features, pale and slack with death, were still strong and handsome. This was a man who was comfortable with power, or at least, he had been. His thick silver hair put his age somewhere in his fifties.
Maggie studied his face. She didn’t know him. She’d lived in St. Stanley all her life and knew most everyone by reputation if not personally, and she found it disturbing that this strange man had been stabbed and bled to death in her town library, and she had no idea who he was.
“Come on, Maggie, there’s nothing you can do for him.”
“Should we just leave him here?”
“Well, I don’t suppose he’s