Bran New Death(37)

“How did you come to work here, in the library?”

“It’s my library; I applied for a grant, I talked them into it, and I got the place renovated. I’ve always loved reading,” she said. “When I was a kid, I read a book The Little Lame Prince and His Traveling Cloak. It opened up the world to me. I’ve been to Cameroon with Gerald Durrell, and to Yorkshire with James Herriot. Isak Dinesen showed me Kenya. I’ve been around the world with books as my traveling cloak.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “I’ve lived and breathed in Regency England with Jane Austen. I’ve walked the Yorkshire moors with Emily Brontë and the streets of Victorian London with Charles Dickens. Books are a marvelous transport. Tell me about why you were crying for Tom Turner.”

Her smile illuminated the shadows. “We were going to be married.”





Chapter Ten





"MARRIED?” I STARED at her. Was she serious? I examined her serene face. Yes, she was serious. “Uh, did he tell you that?”

“No, of course not. He didn’t know it,” she said, her head tilted to one side, her huge gray eyes dreamy. “But it would have happened. I was the only one he told things to, you know? He talked to me.”

“It sounds like you were friends,” I said carefully.

“We were. Good friends. And he loved me.” Her eyes flooded, and one big drop fell on her hands, which were folded in her lap. “Eventually he’d have seen that no one would have . . . no one . . .” She sniffed and shook her head, looking down at her hands, struggling with her emotion.

“I’m sorry, Hannah,” I said, gentling my tone. “He was lucky to have someone in his life who loved him so much.” It seemed an impossible match to me, this little, bookish miss and the hulking, angry Tom, but perhaps she would have been the making of him. That she loved him so fiercely changed how I saw him and strengthened my sorrow at his death.

She told me good things about Tom Turner, that he was the one who had built the wheelchair ramp for her and all the shelves for the books, many of which were from her own collection. The library truly was hers, supported in part by the Brotherhood of the Falcon that Binny made such sport of, and with other grants that she zealously pursued. She was quite accomplished, I gathered, at writing grant proposals. As Hannah spoke, I thought about how a person could be so many things at once, good and bad and sometimes ugly. I recalled what Gordy and Zeke had said, about Tom and Junior Bradley fighting over some bar dancer named Emerald. Which Tom was the real deal, the one who hung out in bars looking for a fight, or the one who built shelves and a ramp for a sweet-faced librarian? I guess he was both.

“I want to know who did this,” Hannah finally said.

“Me, too.”

“Then let’s figure it out.”

I gaped at her. “Let’s . . . you mean you and I?”

“Why not? We’re both smart women, right?” Hannah smiled even as tears welled in her eyes. She sobered, and said, “I won’t rest until I know who killed him. He didn’t deserve it.”

I stared at her for a moment, then said, “You know, some are probably going to think I killed him. In fact, I know they do.”

“Did you?”

“Of course not.”

“Good. Then let’s get started figuring this out.”

But how to do that? Maybe if I got to know Tom posthumously, it would help. “What was he like? From your viewpoint?”

“Rough around the edges,” she said, staring off into the distance. “I’ve known him a long time. Mrs. Turner used to babysit me before she left town.”

“Mrs. Turner?”

“Binny’s mother.”

“She left town? When? Why?”

“She took Binny and left . . . oh, let’s see . . . Binny was about ten, I was fifteen, so I guess about fifteen years ago or so? No one knows why.”

“Hmm. Odd that she took just her daughter and left town.” It seemed to me in a small town, someone should know why, unless it was something so breathtakingly horrible that no one wanted to be the first to say it.

Her eyes flashed, and she fastened them on me. They glittered strangely in the shadowy dimness. “And don’t you go thinking anything nasty. It wasn’t anything like that.”

My eyebrows climbed. She was not quite so sheltered as I had thought, if she had picked up on the direction of my wandering musings. But then, a voracious reader does learn much of the world, if only through books. “I’ll take your word for it.” I hadn’t truly thought the woman had taken Binny away to avoid some kind of abuse by father or son anyway; it had been a possibility, though not high on the list. There were dozens of other explanations, most of which didn’t involve anything sinister at all. “How did father and son get along after Tom’s mom left?”