THIRTY-THREE
I recognized the handwriting and the paper itself. These had to be the pages missing from Rachel Long’s diary. I stared at them for a moment before I realized there was a handwritten note paper-clipped to the pages.
“What is it, Charlie?” Melba sounded slightly alarmed. “You’re white as a sheet.” She had a hand on Diesel’s head. I hadn’t even heard or felt him get down from the window and go around to her.
I took a deep breath to steady myself. “These are pages that were taken out of the diary. They’ve been missing, and we had no idea where they were.” My eyes skimmed the note attached to them. “Oh my Lord, this is a note from Marie Steverton.”
“What does it say?” Melba asked.
“‘You’ll know what to do with these’ is all it says, along with her initials.” I shook my head, still a bit in shock. What had compelled her to send the pages to me?
Melba shivered. “That’s creepy, getting a letter from a dead woman. What are you going to do with them?”
I had trouble focusing my thoughts for a moment. The first thing I wanted to do was start reading the pages to find out why Marie had removed them from the diary. I realized, however, that they constituted evidence, and my first duty was to inform Kanesha of their return.
I picked up the phone and called her. This time, however, I had to leave a message. I made it terse and urgent.
For some reason I felt tense and almost panicky. Diesel picked up on that. He came around to me and put a paw on my leg. He meowed loudly several times, and I forced myself to breathe deeply and relax to keep from upsetting him.
“Charlie, you don’t look good. Are you sure you’re all right?” Melba got up from her chair.
I waved her back before she could come around and start fussing over me. “I’ll be okay, just a little concerned about all this. We can’t let anyone else know I have these pages.”
“You’re acting like they’re going to explode any minute,” Melba said. “Maybe you’d better go lock them up next door.”
“They do need to be put somewhere safe,” I said. I began to feel a bit calmer, thanks to her pragmatic suggestion. “I’ll do that right now.” I put the pages carefully back into the envelope. “You stay here with Diesel and answer the phone.”
Melba nodded, and I hurried to the storeroom next door. I would feel better once the pages were locked away in a more secure place. I didn’t know how long it would be before Kanesha could come back or send one of her men to retrieve them. Until I could safely turn them over to the sheriff’s department, I wanted them out of reach of anyone who might come into the archive.
“Mission accomplished,” I told Melba and Diesel when I returned to my office.
“Good. Maybe you can relax now,” Melba said. “You had me worried there for moment, like you were going to pass out on me.”
“Sorry about that,” I said as I resumed my seat behind the desk. “Getting those pages out of the blue like that was shocking.”
The phone rang and startled me. I picked up the receiver, praying that Kanesha was returning my call.
Thankfully for my nerves, it was her. I didn’t give the chief deputy a chance to speak. “I’ve got the pages locked up in the storage room next door. Please come get them right away.”
“One of my deputies is on the way there now,” Kanesha said. “Here’s what I want you to do. Handle them with extreme care, but scan those pages. Ordinarily I would take them right away, but I want to have a backup copy. Wait until my deputy is there, though. When you’re done with them, he’ll bring them in to the sheriff’s department.”
“All right,” I said. “I can do that.”
“Thank you,” Kanesha said. “Send me a copy of the scan. You have my e-mail. Go ahead and read the pages and I’ll do the same as soon as I get the file.”
“Will do,” I said and then ended the call.
I didn’t know why I was so jittery, but talking to Kanesha helped me feel calmer. I didn’t expect the mayor to come to my office, waving a gun around, threatening me unless I turned the pages over to her. I was simply on edge because of the events of the past few days, I decided.
I relayed the news to Melba. She nodded vigorously.
“Good, the sooner all this crazy mess is settled, the better.” She stood. “Unless you want me to hang around until that deputy gets here, I guess I should get back downstairs.”
“Thanks, but I’ll be okay,” I said. “The deputy should be here any minute.”
“All right. See you later.” Melba gave Diesel’s head one last quick rub and headed for the door. Diesel meowed after her and watched for a moment before he came back and climbed onto the windowsill.
I looked up and Melba was back in the office. “You’ve got company,” she said in an undertone, “and it’s not the deputy.”
She had no chance to explain further. Behind her I saw Beck Long and a strange man pause at the door. Long knocked and smiled.
“Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Harris, ma’am.” He took a couple of steps into the room. “I really need to talk to you for a few minutes, if you have time.”
I wanted to tell him to go away, that I was far too busy, but I knew I had no choice. I hoped I could get rid of him and his companion before the deputy arrived.
“Come in, Mr. Long.” I rose and came around the desk to shake his hand. I introduced Melba, and they shook hands.
Long nodded to indicate his companion. “This is my associate, Daryl Kittredge. He’s a member of my campaign staff.”
Melba and I shook hands with Kittredge. He was short, verging on plump, with dark hair and eyes, a definite contrast to tall, blond Beck Long.
I glanced over at the windowsill, and Diesel remained there. He was watching the proceedings, however. I wondered why he hadn’t come over to greet the visitors. Perhaps he had picked up on my unsettled state and was keeping out of things.
Melba quickly excused herself. She paused in the door to mime something. I thought she was trying to tell me she would hover nearby in the hall in case I needed help. I gave her a slight nod.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Long?” I didn’t ask them to sit because I didn’t want to encourage them to hang around.
Long didn’t seem to notice the lack of invitation. He smiled, exposing a set of perfectly formed, dazzlingly white teeth. “My mother shared with me the contents of the diary. Daryl and I would like to see it for ourselves. He’s going to take a few shots of the pages for a press release.”
Exactly not what I needed to hear. My hopes of keeping the mayor from finding out I suspected the diary was a fake were fading quickly.
In as bland a tone as I could manage, with my heart suddenly racing a mile a minute, I said, “I’m sorry, but that won’t be possible.” My mind raced along with my heart as I tried to come up with a plausible excuse for denying their request without revealing I didn’t have the diary in my possession.
Long’s brow furrowed. “Why not? It will only take a few minutes.”
“It’s not the time,” I replied. Inspiration struck. “Or rather, it is the time. Your timing, I guess I should say. The binding of that volume has some problems, and it’s in the process of being repaired. These problems had to be addressed immediately to insure the integrity of the binding for the future. I’m sure you understand. I know you wouldn’t want such an important resource to be damaged; nor would your mother.”
I cut the babbling off as Long’s eyes glazed over. I wasn’t sure he understood what I was telling him; he looked so blank. His associate, Kittredge, however, caught on quickly.
“That’s too bad,” he said. “I suppose we’ll have to go with the scans.” He reached in his jacket and pulled out a leather business card holder. He extracted a card and handed it to me. “If you could e-mail the scanned pages to me right away, I’d appreciate it.”
“No problem,” I said.
Long frowned at his associate. “I don’t see what the big deal is about letting you take a few pictures. That’s not going to hurt an old book.”
Kittredge looked slightly exasperated but then cleared his expression.
“That’s the problem,” I said quickly. “Until the binding is fully repaired, you can’t open the book wide enough to take good pictures without damaging it.”
“We understand,” Kittredge said. “How long before the repairs are completed?”
“A week, I suppose.” I shrugged. I prayed that this would all be over well before a week passed.
Kittredge nodded. He shook my hand. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Harris.”
Long looked sulky as he in turn shook hands with me. “Yeah, thanks.”
I watched them leave with great relief. I went back to my chair and sank down. Diesel meowed and tapped my shoulder with a paw. I turned to face him. He meowed again, and I rubbed his head. “Everything’s okay, boy. No need to fret.”
Diesel and I sat quietly for a couple of minutes, until I heard another knock at the door.
Deputy Turnbull walked in. “Morning, Mr. Harris. Ms. Gilley alerted me that Mr. Long was here, so I waited down in her office until he and his associate left the building.”
“I’m glad to see you, Deputy,” I said. “It’s been a bit nerve-racking the last half hour or so. If you’ll come with me, I’ll retrieve the pages.”
He nodded and then followed me next door to the storage room. I picked up the envelope with the pages inside, and we went back to my office.
“It won’t take me that long to scan these,” I told the deputy. “Please have a seat if you like.”
Deputy Turnbull shook his head. “Thank you, sir, but I’ll stand here in the door to keep an eye out for potential visitors.”
“Good idea,” I said. While I readied the scanning station, Diesel got down from his spot and walked over to the deputy. He sat at the man’s feet, looked up, and meowed. Turnbull grinned and said hello to the cat. He rubbed Diesel’s head, and that apparently satisfied my boy. He left the deputy and came to sit beside me.
I felt tense as I worked on the pages. The cotton gloves I wore made the process a bit slower as I took each page and scanned both sides. I was sweating by the time I finished. I reassembled the pages but did not paper-clip them. The paper clip could damage the pages. I advised Turnbull of this when I gave him the envelope. Then I remembered I should let Kanesha know what I’d told Long and Kittredge about the diary volume they wanted to photograph. “Sorry to load you down with messages for Deputy Berry,” I said when I finished.
“Not a problem, Mr. Harris. I’ll pass it all along to her when I give her the envelope,” Turnbull said. He smiled briefly before he left the office.
Before I shut down the scanning station I e-mailed the file of the scanned pages to myself and to Kanesha.
I returned to my desk, where I collapsed in my chair, Diesel by my feet, and mopped my sweaty brow with my handkerchief. My rampant curiosity about the contents of the missing pages made me want to start reading right away, but my brain needed time to relax from the tensions of the morning.
“I don’t know about you, boy, but I’m ready for lunch,” I said to the cat. “Let’s go home.” A good meal in the quiet of my house was what I needed right now.
Diesel meowed loudly to indicate his approval, adding in a couple of the odd trills he made sometimes.
Downstairs we stopped by Melba’s office to let her know we were going home for lunch.
“I’m about to head out myself,” she said. “I’m going over to the bakery to meet a friend for lunch. Y’all want to tag along? I know Helen Louise would be happy to see you. As hard as she works, I reckon she doesn’t have a lot of free time.”
Hearing Helen Louise’s name gave me a guilty start. Hadn’t I promised her last night we would come to see her at lunchtime today?
I had promised her, I decided. “Thanks, we’d appreciate the ride,” I said. “Saves me from going home to get the car.”
About fifteen minutes later Melba found a parking space on the square across from the bakery. We crossed the street, and I opened the door for Melba. The ever-tantalizing scents from the bakery filled the air.
“There’s my friend,” Melba said, nodding in the direction of a lone woman seated at a nearby table. “Y’all enjoy your lunch, and we’ll head back in about forty-five minutes, okay?”
“Sounds good,” I said.
Diesel and I made our way to our usual spot, the table near the cash register Helen Louise always kept reserved for us when we were expected.
I didn’t see Helen Louise and figured she was in the kitchen. I sat, and Diesel stretched out under the table near my feet. We settled in to wait for Helen Louise.
“Mr. Harris,” a voice called out over the low hum of conversation in the bakery. “I was hoping I’d find you here.”
I looked around to see Kelly Grimes advancing toward my table.
“Hello,” I said when she stopped about three paces from me. “What can I do for you?”
She smiled. She held out a slim book. “You can read this and tell me what you think.”
I accepted the book and glanced at the cover. The title read: A Memoir of Mrs. Rachel Afton Long of Athena.