Death Overdue (Librarian Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF

obviously it was no longer hooked. I don’t like what this is saying to me.” He raised his bushy eyebrows. “Mr. Perkins, if you would please come upstairs with me so we may discuss this further.”
    I had a hard time not standing up and going with them to protect Caldwell. He seemed so undone, as if the stuffing had come out of him.
    Just as they were leaving the room, Alfredo spoke up and pointed at Caldwell. “He did not want my Sarah to be back. He was going to sell the house without her knowing. He wished her dead . . . and now she is.”

EIGHT

Tiptoeing Through the Tomes
    S omehow, after our hour-of-the-wolf awakening, we made it through the morning. While I had a sense that the inspector wanted to blame someone for this horrible death, he was biding his time. Photographs were taken of the scene, cops tromped up and down the stairs, one even came in and took all our fingerprints.
    Four of us sat in the garden room and ate and read and watched it rain outside. For to make the setting perfect, a slow, cruel drizzle had started—the sky a dreary slate gray, the precipitation steady and relentless.
    When we were finally allowed upstairs, only Bruce wentto change. The rest of us remained in our nightwear. At least Penelope and I had grabbed bathrobes; hers was flannel and had teddy bears on it, mine was my new white satin robe. Caldwell was in his pin-striped cotton pajamas, and Alfredo was wearing a T-shirt and silk pajama bottoms.
    Caldwell turned up the heat to accommodate us all and made us a meal of eggs, bacon, and toast. Penelope barely touched her food, and so Alfredo cleaned her plate as well as his own.
    Shortly after that, Bruce strolled into the garden room, looking well rested and well dressed. He was wearing a light linen shirt with a seersucker sports coat over it and jeans, nicely straddling the line between dressy and casual.
    “Is it possible to still get breakfast? I have a busy schedule today,” Bruce said in a chipper voice.
    I could clearly see how little Sally’s death had affected him. I envied him. He could just go about his day as if nothing had happened. I felt like my life had been blown apart. To see, once again, how random life is—you get up in the night to find a book to read and you die. How was this possible?
    Finally Caldwell spoke. “Yes, coffee’s ready. What else would you like for breakfast?”
    “Just a couple pieces of toast. I don’t suppose you have any marmalade?” Bruce asked.
    We sat and watched Bruce devour his meal, but when hetried to leave for the day, Caldwell restrained him, saying the police would want to talk to all of us. No one was to leave.
    Just after noon, Inspector Blunderstone came into the garden room and announced they were done for the day. He issued us orders: “Don’t go into that room. Don’t touch anything or move anything until I give you the go-ahead. And I would like all of you to remain here in London for the next few days.”
    “Do you think it was an accident?” Penelope asked.
    “She was hit full force by the wall of books and fell straight backwards. Her arms were down at her sides, not up as if she had been reaching for a book up high. All of this raises many questions,” he said, and gave each of us a glare.
    This news hit me like a ton of books. If she had been killed, it would have been by one of us sitting in this room. Well, not me, that was all I could be sure of. And, after only a moment’s thought, not Caldwell. He just didn’t have a mean or violent bone in his body. Plus, his reaction to Sally’s death was not that of a murderer—he seemed truly upset and sorry.
    Yet I knew if the police were looking to pin Sally’s death on someone, he would be their first choice. It was his house, his bookcase, his books. And he certainly had the best motive of us all. Sally had come back demanding her fair share of the B and B, whether she deserved it or not.
    That left Alfredo and Penelope and Brenda, maybe evenBruce, as