Due Or Die

CHAPTER 4

BRIAR CREEK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

A screech of brakes clawed the stillness of the winter air with a talon’s sharp edge. Lindsey jumped off her bike while still in motion, and yanked it with her onto the front lawn of the nearest house.

The driver’s side door of the car was shoved open, and Lindsey was sure she’d scared the poor driver as much he’d scared her.

“I’m all right!” she called out.

“Well, that’s unfortunate!”

Lindsey reared back as if she’d been slapped. “Excuse me?”

The person was short and tiny, and as she hopped onto the front lawn beside Lindsey, she was immediately recognizable. Marjorie Bilson.

“You heard me,” Marjorie snapped. “How dare you run Bill out of office? He has worked tirelessly all these years with little or no thanks, and then you come along and have him replaced with one of your cronies.”

There were so many things wrong with the venom Marjorie was spewing that Lindsey was at a loss as to where to begin in correcting her.

“You’re wrong,” she said.

“Liar!” Marjorie accused. Her hair was disheveled, her coat wasn’t buttoned and she looked as if she were on the brink of having hysterics.

“Marjorie, this really isn’t the time or place to have a conversation like this,” Lindsey said. “I’m working tomorrow. Why don’t you come and see me at the library and we’ll talk about it.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I…”

“Is everything all right out here?”

Lindsey heard a storm door open on the house behind them and turned to see a man chugging down the walk. He was pulling his dressing robe tight around his middle as he hurried toward them.

“We’re okay,” Lindsey said, realizing she was only speaking in the most general of terms, given that calling Marjorie okay was definitely stretching it.

When Lindsey turned to address the man, Marjorie took the opportunity to hurry back into her car. With the slam of her door and a squeal of wheels on icy blacktop, she was gone.

“Did she hit you?” the man asked. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

Lindsey shook her head. “No, she didn’t hit me.”

“You’re shaking,” he said.

She looked down, and sure enough, her gloved fingers were trembling and it wasn’t from the cold.

“My wife and I were just making some tea, would you care to join us?” he asked. “I’m Tom, by the way, Tom Rubinski.”

“Oh, thank you, Tom,” she said. “I’m Lindsey. I appreciate the offer, but I live just up the road. I’ll be home in less than a minute.”

“If you’re sure,” he said. He looked dubious so Lindsey forced a smile even though it was an effort.

“I’m sure,” she said. Then she hesitated. Maybe he could help her with information. “Tell me, do you know Marjorie Bilson?”

“Batty Bilson?” he asked. “Is that who that was?”

“Batty?” Lindsey repeated. She didn’t like where this was going.

“Yeah, I went to school with her,” he said. “She has issues.”

“Is running people over with her car one of her issues?” Lindsey asked.

“Not until tonight,” Tom said. “I’d say this is a first, but I can’t swear to it.”

“Do you suppose one of her issues could be Bill Sint?”

Lindsey went to lift her bike off Tom’s lawn. He stepped forward and took it out of her hands and lowered it to the walk for her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Bill Sint? The old guy who lives on the Sint estate on the other side of the bay? The one with the unnaturally black hair and twitchy eyebrow?”

It was a good description and made Lindsey smile. “The same.”

“I can’t say for sure. I do know that Batty tends to love with her whole heart but not all of her mind, if you know what I mean. If I remember right, she had to go away for a couple of years in high school because she developed an unhealthy crush on our chemistry teacher,” he said.

Interesting. Lindsey wondered if she was seeing a pattern here.

“Wow, so Batty has a thing for Bill. Man, he’s old enough to be her father, possibly her grandfather.”

“Ew,” they said together.

“So, why is she coming after you?” Tom asked. “Does she think you’re competition for his pruney old heart?”

“Oh, no,” Lindsey said with an adamant head shake. “But, she seems to think I had something to do with his being removed as president of the Friends of the Library; I didn’t, but she didn’t seem overly concerned that she almost ran me down to discuss it.”

Tom gave a low whistle and then he peered at her eyes, which were her only visible feature through the layers of scarf and bike helmet she had on her head.

“Oh, hey, Lindsey. I know you,” he said. “Or at least, I’ve heard about you. You’re Lindsey Norris, the new librarian.”

“Not terribly new,” she said. “I’ve been here almost a year.”

“You’ve turned my buddy Sully into a regular library user,” he said. His eyes were teasing and Lindsey was happy that her scarf covered the hot flush that she could feel warming her face.

“He’s an avid reader,” she said. “He has excellent taste in fiction.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think it’s the books that have him giving his library card such a workout.”

“Tom, what’s going on?” A petite woman, also in her bathrobe, came hurrying down the walkway. “Your tea is getting cold.”

“Gina, come and meet Lindsey,” he said. He turned to Lindsey and said, “This is my wife, Gina.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled and his voice dropped a note or two when he said her name. It was obvious that Tom Rubinski was very much in love with his wife.

He looped his arm over his wife’s shoulders and said, “Check this out: Batty Bilson has a thing for that old coot Bill Sint, and she nearly ran Lindsey down because Batty thinks she’s responsible for his being booted off of the library’s Friends group.”

Gina stared at her husband and then at Lindsey. “Really? That’s mental even for Marjorie. Are you all right? Would you like some tea?”

Lindsey glanced at the small woman and smiled. “No, thank you, really, I’m fine.”

She recognized Gina Rubinski immediately. She had been in the library several times over the past few months checking out baby name books. Lindsey wondered if the Rubinskis were expecting, but knowing it was none of her business, she didn’t dare ask. That did not stop her from looking at Gina’s belly however. If she was pregnant, she wasn’t showing.

“You’d better get back inside, Tom; your patient needs you,” Gina said.

“Oh, gotta go,” he said. “I’m a vet, and we have a golden retriever about to deliver her first litter. It looks to be nine pups. We can’t even come up with that many names.”

Lindsey smiled. So that explained the baby name books. “Nice to meet you, Tom.”

“You, too, Lindsey,” he said. Then he grinned and added, “Say ‘hi’ to Sully for me.”

His wife glanced between them with a curious look but didn’t comment, for which Lindsey was grateful.

“Good night, Gina,” she said.

“Good night.”

Lindsey climbed on her bike, and with a wave, she pedaled to the end of the street. She was pleased that she only glanced over her shoulder five times to see if Batty’s sedan appeared out of nowhere.

This clinched it. Between the weather and this near-death experience, she was definitely going to have to look into buying some sort of car. At the very least she could get a motorized scooter, which would still be ecological but would give her enough speed to outrun Batty if she had another episode.

And maybe she’d start carrying a bag of nails with her, too, Lindsey thought grimly as she shut her bike in the stand-alone garage, relieved to be safe at home.

The weather remained unforgivingly windy and bitter for the next week. Interestingly, every time Lindsey and Beth left the library in the evening and started to unchain their bikes, Sully happened by on his way home from the pier.

“It’s too cold for that,” he shouted out the window. “Hop in and I’ll give you a ride.”

Lindsey’s mama hadn’t raised her to be a fool and neither had Beth’s. They let Sully load their bikes up into the back of his ancient pickup truck and happily climbed into the toasty warm cab.

For unknown reasons that Lindsey did not dwell upon, Sully always dropped off Beth first, which meant she got to ride in the middle of the bench seat and spend a few minutes alone with him every evening on the ride from Beth’s house to her own.

Sully was the original quiet man. He didn’t talk much but asked good questions. He listened attentively, as if what she had to say genuinely interested him. Having been engaged to a law professor who quite loved the sound of his own voice, Lindsey wasn’t used to being the loquacious one. It was a novel experience, but still, she found herself more and more curious about the boat captain beside her.

“Do you offer many boat tours in the winter?” she asked.

“After December, we’re pretty much shut down on tours until the spring. Everyone loves to see the Thumb Islands lit up for the holidays, but after that we’re mostly a taxi service for the island residents and their visitors until the end of March.”

“Do your parents stay on their island in the winter?” she asked, wondering if it was terribly cold out there.

“Yep,” he said. “Mary and I tried to talk them into getting a nice apartment off island but no dice. They’re on one of the few islands with electricity and they have a wood-burning stove. I understand why they stay out there. It’s over ten acres of peace and quiet. Their island has three houses on it, and their neighbors stay out there, too, so if there was an emergency, there are people around. But they are getting older…”

His voice trailed off and he stared out the windshield of the truck toward the islands, which were only visible by their lights reflected on the water.

From what Lindsey had read about the history of the islands, she had learned that the Thumb Islands were an archipelago of seventy to one hundred islands, depending on how you quantified an island. Some people counted the rocks that jutted up out of the water, others felt that there must be some sign of life for it to be a true island. Sully’s parents lived on Bell Island, one of the largest and one of the few populated all year round.

Sully parked in the gravel drive beside the house where Lindsey rented an apartment. From their vantage point on the raised cliffs that overlooked Briar Creek Bay and the islands, Lindsey could see Bell Island and noticed that the Sullivans still had their lights on.

She wondered what it would be like to live out there, with the constant sound of the surf as background music and the cries of the seagulls as the days’ conversation. After last week’s altercation with the screeching Marjorie Bilson, it seemed a nicer option. Which reminded her, she had been meaning to ask Sully about that episode.

“So, how did you find out about Marjorie?” she asked him as he opened his door and circled the truck to open her door for her.

He hadn’t said so, but given that he’d been driving her and Beth home every night for a week now, she couldn’t believe it was just coincidence.

“Let’s talk inside where it’s warm,” he said.

He gave her a hand down from the truck and then lifted her bike out of the back and walked it to the garage, where she kept it out of the inclement winter weather.

Lindsey followed. She hoped she hadn’t put him off by asking about Marjorie. She held the door open for him while he wheeled the bike inside. She closed the door behind him and stepped back.

They were both bundled against the cold, him less than her with his knit cap and peacoat. She had on her puffy coat with a hat and scarf and gloves. Pretty much the only skin she had left exposed was her eyelids.

Sully took her arm and led her across the frozen ground to the walkway. Spots of ice made the walk precarious and she picked her way carefully, aware of his hand at her elbow. If she slipped, Sully was ready to catch her. She found that comforting.

Her landlord and crafternoon buddy, Nancy Peyton, lived on the first floor, and Nancy’s nephew, Charlie, lived in between them on the second. He was an aspiring rock star who worked for Sully’s tour-boat company. Since winter work was slow, he had packed up his band in his ancient van and migrated south to play some gigs for the month of January. Lindsey liked Charlie, but she had to admit it was nice not to watch her furniture dance across the apartment floor during his weekly band practice.

The front door was never locked and Lindsey opened it and stepped into the vestibule.

The heat from the steam radiator fogged up the window but made the small entryway toasty warm. Lindsey pulled off her hat and unwound her scarf.

“To answer your question, my friend Tom told me that Marjorie tried to run you off the road the other night,” he said.

When Lindsey met his gaze, she could see worry in his blue eyes.

“Ah, I thought it was something like that,” she said. “I really don’t think she’ll do it again.”

“No, probably not,” he said. Although, he didn’t sound as sure as she would have liked. “But since I get off work about the same time as you do and it’s dark out there, I think we can maintain our current carpool situation for a while, don’t you?”

Lindsey nodded. She had to admit it was a bit of a relief to know she could depend upon Sully to get her and Beth home, at least until Marjorie calmed down about the whole Bill Sint thing or she found the time to buy a car.

“Have you seen Marjorie since the incident?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m sure, well, mostly sure, that she didn’t mean to scare me like that.”

“Sure she did,” he said.

“Really?”

“Marjorie lacks impulse control,” he said. “She always has.”

“Has…?” Lindsey began to ask if Marjorie had ever hurt anyone before, but Nancy’s door opened and she stuck her head out.

“What are you two doing out here?” she asked as if she’d been waiting for them. “Come on in. I just made some fresh gingerbread and I have some hot cider on the stove.”

Lindsey and Sully exchanged a bemused glance before stepping into her apartment. Nancy was renown in town for her cookie-baking skills. Fresh gingerbread? They didn’t need to be asked twice.

Not wanting to worry Nancy, Lindsey changed the conversation to Charlie Peyton and his band. He had been texting Nancy from every city he played in. The messages read like he was an academic exchange student, but even Nancy knew better.

With a laugh, she dug out her phone and read his latest message. “Dear Naners, our gig went well in Charlotte. Lots of college students turned out and we had a great debate on the economics of the pitcher versus the pint. We then took turns driving the big bus in our hotel room. Off to Savannah. Love, Charlie.”

Then she translated. “I believe ‘driving the big bus’ is a euphemism for getting so drunk he threw up in the toilet.” Nancy made a big circle of her arms and lowered her head.

Sully and Lindsey laughed over their cider and gingerbread, and Lindsey was grateful for the diversion. She didn’t like to acknowledge that the incident with Marjorie had her looking over her shoulder, but there was no denying that she had her guard up, especially when riding her bike.

Mercifully, tomorrow was the first meeting of the Friends of the Library with Carrie as president. Lindsey could only hope that once the first meeting was a done deal, they could start to move forward and put the hurt feelings and hostility behind them, way behind them.

Of course, a lot of that would depend upon whether Marjorie showed up and tried to do anyone an injury or not.