I remembered the first time I’d seen Tracy, wearing a catering company shirt, arranging food on the craft service table for the Whimsical Death crew. She’d even seemed pleasant.
“I wish I’d known who she was right away.” Robin’s thoughts had been paralleling my own. “But I’d never seen her, or a picture of her. Just gotten the letters. To me, my publisher, my agent, my publicist … Celia … and my mother. That one really made me take alarm,” Robin said.
“How did Corinne handle that?” I couldn’t imagine her reaction to something so outlandish.
“I had a hard time explaining the situation to her,” Robin said. He looked very grim. “She’d never encountered a woman like Tracy. Someone mentally ill and fixated on her son … of course, that shook her up.”
“I’m sorry that your mom had to go through that. She’s so nice.” I was sincere. “When you actually met Tracy on the set … you didn’t get any vibe from her? Any creepy feeling?”
“Maybe it’s hindsight, but I did sort of register she watched me all the time. Didn’t you tell me when she met you, her reaction was almost excessively excited?”
I nodded. “It struck me as strange, but you know … people are. Especially true-crime buffs.”
I’d figured in the book about the murders in Lawrenceton, simply because I was part of the Real Murders Club, and I’d been able to tell the police that each murder was staged like a famous homicide. Tracy had thought of me, perhaps, as someone who’d sparked Robin’s interest in true crime. If Tracy had known that Robin and I would become a couple, maybe she would have leaped across the craft service table with a knife.
She’d done the leaping and stabbing later, in my home.
When Tracy had tried to kill me in my own kitchen, I had grabbed her ankles and toppled her to the floor. In the process, she’d fallen on her knife. Her injury had been serious, but she had recovered.
Now, when I thought of the image of Tracy standing in the same room where my helpless child lay sleeping, I wished that I had killed her that day in my kitchen.
It was not the first time I’d thought that.
The maids rang the doorbell then, and I let them in.
“I’m calling a security company,” Robin said suddenly, and rose to his feet. When he’d made a decision, Robin moved quickly. By the time I’d had a quick discussion with our mother-daughter cleaning team, the telephone book spread on the kitchen counter was open to “Security,” and Robin was having a conversation. “Then we’ll see you later today,” he said, and after a second of listening, he hung up. He nodded at me, satisfied with his progress. “Spartan Shield Security is coming around two o’clock,” he said.
“That was quick.”
“He had a cancellation,” Robin said.
Sounded like a standard face-saving strategy. “How’d you pick that one?” I said.
“I remembered the Finstermeyers got their system from Spartan.” Robin went off to his office, whistling. He’d made a solid move toward protecting his woman and his baby. He felt strong.
I smiled as I sat down at the counter to plan my day.
At least I could do so with a pleasant sense of relief.
It’ll be good to have an alarm system, I thought, as I put my library books in my cloth bag. Swapping day was always fun. It was so pleasant to come home with books I’d selected, like the prospect of diving into a cool pool on a hot day. I’d topped off Sophie, so to speak, so I could stay away longer. I needed some “me” time. I put the monitor on Robin’s desk and waved almost cheerily.
The maids were working on the kitchen and it was beginning to look orderly and shining. They certainly didn’t need my supervision.
I’d wondered if my first trip to the library as a civilian would be a little awkward, but I had no way of anticipating how very awkward it would be.
Perry Allison was at the desk, busy with a line of patrons. Perry gave me a little wave, but he also looked as though he wanted to tell me something pretty urgently. He couldn’t leave his post with patrons standing there, so after I set my books in the return bin, I went over to the “New Books” shelves, ready to browse. Just as I began looking (would the new Karin Slaughter be in?), the media specialist, Janie Spellman, strode around the end of a set of shelves and almost collided with me.
This would not have been notable—Janie was always in a hurry—but she made it an incident by flinching away from me as if I had cooties. Killer cooties.
“Why are you here?” she gasped.
“To check out books,” I replied. I could feel my eyes narrowing. I had what Robin called my “about to be mad” face on.
“But weren’t you arrested?”
I was genuinely confused. “I got robbed. Why would I be arrested?”
“For that woman.”
I spread my hands, to tell her she’d have to give me more information.
“Since that woman … ah, died in your house.”
I was exasperated and I didn’t try to hide it. But I kept my voice low, because I was in the library. “Janie, could you have worked with me even a week, and not known I would not kill someone? Can you possibly imagine that I would bash in someone’s skull? Also, the body wasn’t in our house, but in our backyard. Believe me, we’d like to know who killed Tracy just as much as everyone else. Maybe even more.”
Janie seemed flustered by my counterattack, so she simply didn’t acknowledge it. She did a little sidestep to get around me with no touching (murder cooties!) and then she zoomed over to the door to the employees’ break room.
I was disgusted to discover I was so angry there were tears in my eyes. It makes me even angrier when I feel the prickle of tears. It sends the wrong signal.
I dabbed my eyes surreptitiously, kept my back straight, and finished picking out my books. I felt that every eye was on me, weighing my guilt or complicity in the death of Tracy Beal and the disappearance of Virginia Mitchell. I knew I’d been an innocent bystander, and I knew Robin had been in another state. Now I realized the gossip mill was grinding overtime.
My dignity was intact when I put my books on the checkout desk. Perry said, “Don’t pay any attention to Janie. She’s a drama bitch, and she’s never been your fan.”
“Why?” I asked, because I couldn’t stop. “I never did anything to her.” I winced when I heard myself whining like a child.
“Robin,” Perry said, looking at me as if I should have known.
“What about Robin?”
“She wanted him. Famous novelist? Right up her alley.”
“But he was already dating me when she began work here. I don’t believe he ever even looked in her direction.”
“I think she’s starring in her own movie,” Perry said. “Everyone looks at the heroine.”