Classified As Murder

ONE

When I was a boy growing up in Athena, Mississippi, forty-odd years ago, the public library occupied a large one-story house built in 1842. The town bought it in 1903 and converted the front rooms to one large space, full of bookshelves, chairs, tables, and the checkout desk. Windows with shades protected the books and furnishings from the sun. I remember it as a cool, slightly dusty place where I could roam among the shelves to find all kinds of treasures. There was a feeling of age, of time reaching back deep into the past, in that house. The way a library should feel, I’ve always thought.

I moved back to Athena from Houston a few years ago, and after I settled into my late aunt Dottie’s house, I made a beeline for the library. To my dismay, I discovered the town had built a new library, a larger facility with little character and no distinguishing features—think 1980s “municipal bland.” The old library sat empty and ill kept, like a derelict widow who had outlived all her family. I never drove or walked past the place if I could help it. If buildings could look sad, this one surely did.

As much as I missed the charm of the original building, I would admit—if pressed—that the new building had a few advantages. More than one toilet, for example, and space bigger than a broom closet for an office. The new building provided several offices for a full-time staff of six. I shared one of them with Lenore Battle, a cataloger, the days I volunteered.

Having been head of a branch in the Houston system before retiring, I could turn my hand to just about anything that needed doing at the Athena Public Library. Sometimes I cataloged—my preference—but more often I worked reference or the circulation desk.

Today I was filling in at the reference desk for the head of the department, who was off for two weeks on a well-deserved vacation. Teresa Farmer was a good friend, and I was more than happy to help her out. A few hours doing reference on a Friday was no burden to me.

Another good friend, sitting at my feet under the desk, chirped at me. I reached down to rub his head. “You’re a good boy, Diesel, for being patient while I work.”

My almost-three-year-old Maine coon cat gazed up at me. I knew that look well. Recumbent on the carpet, he had been napping, but now he wanted to visit his library buddies.

“It’s okay. Go ahead.” I scratched behind his ears, and he stood and stretched. He rubbed against my leg as if to say, Thank you, Charlie.

Diesel weighed almost thirty-three pounds now, and he was still not quite fully grown. I had thought he might top out at twenty or twenty-five pounds, but he kept growing—and he wasn’t fat. I remembered a woman I knew slightly in Houston, Becky Carazzone, who was a breeder of Maine coons. I e-mailed her through her website to ask about Diesel and his size. She was rather taken aback, because she had never seen a Maine coon so big. She reassured me, however, that as long as he was healthy I shouldn’t worry.

I glanced at my watch: only a bit past one-thirty. Too early yet for the after-school crowd. When they arrived, I kept Diesel close by me because there were plenty of small hands that wanted to play with the big kitty. Some children thought they could ride him because of his size. He was a gentle-natured feline and put up with a lot of attention. He did not, however, want to play horsey with rambunctious first- and second-graders dumped off at the library while Mommy or Daddy ran errands.

Diesel walked the few feet behind the counter shared by reference and circulation to where his buddy Lizzie Hayes sat, ready to check out or renew books or other items. Lizzie had an elfin face surrounded by a profusion of black curls. As she smiled down at Diesel, the cat stood on his hind legs, propping his front feet on the seat of Lizzie’s stool. He chirped a greeting, and Lizzie responded with an affectionate scratch of his head.

Lizzie laughed. “If you ever decide to find this guy a new home, Charlie, I want to be first on the list.”

In my best deadpan manner I replied, “If you saw my cat food bill, you wouldn’t say that. Plus he takes up most of my bed, and I have to hang on to the edge.”

Lizzie laughed again. “He’d be worth it.”

I had to agree. Diesel had appeared when I needed comfort badly. I found him as a young kitten in the library parking lot nearly three years ago, and I wouldn’t give him up for anything.

Diesel charmed most of the humans he met. As he grew, people were astonished at his size. No one expected to see a cat the size of a half-grown Labrador. Most people in Athena—including me—had never seen a Maine coon cat before. If I had the proverbial dime for every time someone asked me, “What is that?” I could donate a hefty sum to the library and solve some of its ongoing budget woes.

A gray tabby with dark markings, Diesel still had his winter coat. The thick ruff of fur around his neck, a distinguishing characteristic of Maine coons, made his head look even larger. Short tufts of hair sprouted from his ears, and the visible M over his eyes marked him indelibly as one of the breed. At the rate he was still growing, he might yet hit the forty-pound mark—unusual even for a Maine coon.

A patron claimed my attention then, and I spent about ten minutes showing her how to access and use one of the databases she needed for her genealogical research. Helping people find the door, so to speak, to the vast world of information available online these days is one of the more rewarding aspects of being a librarian.

Leaving the patron happily at a computer clicking through page after page of the U.S. Census for 1820, I moved back to the reference desk. Diesel sat patiently at her feet while Lizzie helped Mrs. Abernathy, an energetic octogenarian who visited the library every day of the week to check out three books. She brought them back the next day and checked out three more. She explained to me once the advantage of being “an old widow-woman.” She no longer had to listen to some old fool nagging at her to “turn off the light and put the dang book away.”

The late Mr. Abernathy, I gathered, had not been a reader.

I chatted with Mrs. Abernathy and Lizzie briefly. Ten minutes after Mrs. Abernathy bustled out, another of my favorite patrons entered. He paused in front of the reference desk and offered me a brief smile.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Harris,” James Delacorte said. “How are you this fine afternoon?” His voice, with its rich Mississippi cadences, had a slight rasp.

Roughly the same age as the widow Abernathy, as far as I could tell, Mr. Delacorte was an old-school gentleman. He always dressed impeccably in a dark suit last fashionable during World War II. He must own a whole closet full of them, all the same style and color. They bore some signs of age but were well cared for, not worn and shabby, as one might expect. They gave off a faint aura of smoke from expensive cigars—perhaps the explanation for his voice.

“I’m doing fine, Mr. Delacorte.” I smiled. “And how are you?”

“Tolerable” was his inevitable reply. Never more, never less. He was personable, but reserved. I sensed a barrier between us when I talked with him. He was never rude or unappreciative, but he impressed me as a man who guarded his privacy and kept the world at a distance.

Ever since I first encountered him in the library, I never saw him use one of the computers, not even to search the online catalog. He was certainly literate, but he evinced no interest in the Internet or anything else to do with computers. The library staff looked things up for him and directed him to the print materials he needed. They all knew his habits.

He might be a Luddite where computers were concerned, but the range of his interests never ceased to astonish me. One month it was the economy of Latin America; the next it was the revolutions of 1848 in Europe. Last autumn he read whatever he could find on the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, and after that he delved into the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and their contemporaries. What would it be today?

“How can I help you? Would you like me to look something up on the computer for you?”

“Yes, thank you.” He regarded me with a faint smile. “Today I would like to find materials on the life of Louisa May Alcott and her family.”

“Let me see what we have.” I started searching the online catalog, building a list of books he could consult. The process took a few minutes, but he waited, ever patient. When I handed him a couple of pages of citations, he examined them carefully for at least a minute.

“You have been truly helpful, Mr. Harris.” He inclined his head, an old-fashioned gesture, but one I found charming. “The thirst for knowledge can lead one down so many interesting byways. I’ve traveled many of them over the years. You might say this library has been my travel agent.”

“That’s a delightful way to put it, Mr. Delacorte.” I smiled. “I started on my own travels as a boy in the old library.”

“As did I.” Mr. Delacorte frowned. “A shame, don’t you think, that the library outgrew its old home?”

“Yes, sir, but a bigger library is a benefit overall.”

“Assuredly.” He nodded. “To everything there is a season, after all. And the seasons pass, all too quickly—even without human intervention.”

I didn’t know how to respond. For a moment I had the feeling he had forgotten I was there. His eyes appeared fixed on some distant prospect as he gazed over my shoulder.

He blinked at me, as if he suddenly recalled my presence. “Pardon an old man’s woolgathering, please.” A faint, self-deprecating smile flitted across his face.

I nodded, with a gentle smile in return, and waited.

Mr. Delacorte glanced around, perhaps to see whether anyone was close enough to overhear our conversation. “I understand that you work for the college library. You are in charge of the rare book collection.”

“Yes, sir. I work there three days a week.” This was the first time I could recall his ever making any kind of personal inquiry of me.

“Very good,” he said. “I would like to call on you there, if I might, to discuss something. I would prefer to do it in a more private setting.” Again, he surveyed the area, but no one was close enough to overhear. Lizzie had stepped away from the desk for a moment, and Diesel was gone, too.

“I’d be delighted,” I said. “Normally I’d be there next week, but it’s spring break. I’m afraid I won’t be in the office until the week after. Would you like to meet then?”

Mr. Delacorte frowned. “It is a matter of some urgency to me, but I suppose a week’s delay won’t matter.”

I felt that I was somehow letting him down. He did seem, for the first time in my acquaintance with him, uneasy about something. “How about tomorrow morning?” I said. “Say nine o’clock?”

“That is most kind of you,” Mr. Delacorte replied. “If you are sure I would not be imposing on you.”

“Not at all,” I said. Meeting with Mr. Delacorte would certainly be more interesting than weeding the front yard—my previous plan for tomorrow morning. “I’ll meet you at the front door of the building at nine.”

“Very good. I appreciate this deeply, Mr. Harris.” Mr. Delacorte nodded, offered a brief smile, then turned and headed for the stacks to track down his choices. He carried the battered leather dispatch case I never saw him without.

I wondered what he wanted to talk to me about. Something to do with rare books, no doubt. Perhaps he wanted to make a donation to the college, either money or books. I knew very little about the man, but I would have to wait until tomorrow morning to satisfy my curiosity.

Lizzie and Diesel were back. Lizzie resumed her seat on the stool, and Diesel came over to sit by mine. I reached down and rubbed his head and was rewarded with a couple of chirps.

By now it was a few minutes after two, and the person scheduled to take over for me was late as usual. Anita Milhaus—if you took her word for it—was a gifted, dedicated reference librarian who could find the answer to any question posed to her.

The problem was getting her to sit at the desk and actually answer questions when patrons approached her. Only the bravest of them dared to. Her acerbic manner was bad enough, but Anita’s obvious contempt for anything she considered a stupid question was notorious.

After my first encounter with her several years ago, I immediately approached the head librarian, Ann Manscoe, to lodge a complaint. In my years as a library manager, I never allowed an employee to behave as Anita did. Mrs. Manscoe agreed with me but explained, with a weary tone in her voice, that Anita’s family contributed a significant amount of money every year to various civic causes. Any attempts to fire her would mean a withdrawal of much-needed monies by the Milhaus clan.

So the library was stuck with Anita. That dismayed me, but I understood. In a small town like Athena, there were few options—other than pushing Anita in front of a big truck.

To my surprise, Anita walked out of the stacks just then. She was usually in the staff lounge napping when she was supposed to be at the desk. She came around the counter and frowned the moment she spotted Diesel.

She had at least given up complaining about his presence, since my time at the reference desk meant she could goof off even more.

She didn’t speak, nor did I, as we traded places. She plopped down on the stool and leaned on the counter. She held up her right wrist and wiggled the diamond bracelet it sported. The diamonds flashed as they caught the light, and Anita stared at the bracelet with evident pleasure.

“That’s beautiful,” I said. “Is it new?”

“Yes, it is. My gentleman friend gave it to me.” Anita bestowed on me what was probably meant to be a coy glance but looked more like a constipated bovine attempting to relieve herself.

“How nice,” I said as she continued to gaze with rapture at her bracelet. As I turned to leave, she spoke.

“Here, you left something in the printer.”

I turned back to see her brandishing a sheet of paper. I took it from her and glanced down at it. It was the last page of the citations on the Alcotts. “It’s for Mr. Delacorte. I didn’t realize there was another page.” I looked up at her. “Thanks. I’ll go give it to him.”

Anita flapped her hand in the direction of the stacks. “The old fart’s back there at his usual table. Honestly, the man has more money than the Rockefellers. Why he keeps coming here when he could afford to buy whatever book he wants is beyond me.”

“It must be for the friendly atmosphere and dedicated customer service,” I deadpanned.

Behind me Lizzie guffawed. Anita shot me a look of pure loathing. I just smiled.

“Time for us to be heading home,” I said. “Come on, boy. See you later, Lizzie.”

Lizzie responded in kind, and Diesel and I headed for the area where Mr. Delacorte was working. He wasn’t at the table, but I spotted his dispatch case and left the final page of citations on top of it. On the way to the staff lounge we passed by Anita, dawdling at the water fountain instead of sitting at the desk. Once we passed her, Diesel warbled at me, and I nodded at him. “I know, boy; she’s one strange lady. Thank goodness we only have to see her once or twice a week.” I sighed. “And may the good Lord reward Mrs. Manscoe and the rest of the staff who have to deal with her on a daily basis.”

Diesel watched as I gathered my jacket and lunch bag from my locker. My volunteer shift ended at two, and I was ready to head home. It was Friday afternoon, and the forecast promised spectacular spring weather the next few days. I anticipated a relaxing weekend working in the yard and reading—all with the assistance of Diesel, of course.

On the way to the car, I remembered my appointment with James Delacorte tomorrow morning. I was looking forward to talking to him and finding out what he wanted.

A few minutes later, with Diesel in the car beside me, I approached my house.

A dusty late-model car with Texas plates occupied a spot on the street in front of the house.

I knew that car. It belonged to my son, Sean.

He hadn’t told me he was coming to visit. He’d been here only once—this past Christmas—since I moved back to Athena. Showing up out of the blue like this was unlike him. He had always been methodical and well organized, doing nothing without planning ahead.

My spirits sank. This couldn’t be good news.