“What if we lose her?” He was visibly twitching to follow.
“We won’t lose her,” I said. “I know where she’s going, and no matter whether she’s taking stuff or just doing an inventory, it’ll take time. Besides, this is the only exit, unless she wants to smash a few more window panes.”
Sure enough, a few seconds later, the swaying light steadied and headed back our way. We pulled back into the shadows of the vestibule and watched as Carol emerged from the first aisle. She checked the numbers at the head of the second and third aisles, and then disappeared, correctly, down the fourth.
“Come on,” I whispered, as I slipped out into the open area.
We crept along the aisle, keeping a safe distance behind Carol. Her flashlight beam continued to swing back and forth until she was about two-thirds of the way down the aisle. Then it steadied, and I heard keys rattling. Michael and I stopped and crouched in the shadows about twenty feet away.
“Now?” Michael whispered.
“Not quite,” I said.
I waited until I heard the hinges creak as the chain-link door opened. Then I stood up and turned on my own flashlight. Carol froze when the beam hit her. She was holding a key ring in her hands, and had just hooked the open padlock on the chain link of the door.
“Carol, Carol,” I said. “Closing time was hours ago.”
She shaded her eyes with her hands, trying to see us.
“Chief Burke won’t like this,” Michael said.
“I bet he will,” I said. “He’s been looking for the keys that were taken from Gordon’s body.”
It was only a guess, but I saw from the way she winced that I was right.
“Let’s just give him a call,” I said.
“Roger,” Michael said, taking out his cell phone.
“No, please,” Carol said. “Let me explain.”
“Okay,” I said. “Start explaining.”
“Just an idea,” Michael said. “But why don’t we take the explaining outside? Just in case anyone has already called the cops about Carol’s unauthorized entry.”
“Good idea,” I said. “First, give me Gordon’s keys.”
I stepped closer to Carol and held out my hand. She balked, but finally surrendered them. I took them from her, using the hem of my shirt, to avoid messing up any fingerprints or leaving any, and got Michael to give me his handkerchief to wrap them in.
Gordon was one of the sneaky few who’d curtained his bin. Not surprising. He had one of the largest-size bins, and while most of the stuff in it was packed in boxes or shrouded under tarps, the few things I could see didn’t look like cheap junk. Carol would probably be much wealthier as a widow than she would have been as a divorcee. Assuming she wasn’t also a murderer. The jury was still out on that.
I closed the door to Gordon’s bin and clicked the padlock shut.
“Lead the way,” I said to Michael.
We set off, with him preceding Carol and me following. Halfway down the aisle, a sudden thought hit me.
“Stop for a second,” I said. “Did I lock up?”
“Yes, of course,” Michael said.
“Are you sure?” I said, raising my eyebrows and hoping Michael got the message. “I’m not sure the padlock clicked.”
“Well, not absolutely sure,” Michael said, looking puzzled, but deciding to agree with me.
“I’m not either,” I said. “I’ll check; you and Carol wait outside.”
I ran back to Gordon’s bin, unlocked it, and rummaged around for a few minutes. It didn’t take me long to find a box, near the front, with GBP lettered on it with a thick, black Magic Marker. Sure enough, it contained a stack of old, musty poetry books. I opened one at random and saw FROM THE LIBRARY OF MRS. GINEVRA BRAKENRIDGE PRUITT, printed in old English lettering on an ornate Victorian bookplate.
Although I knew I shouldn’t take the time, I couldn’t resist flipping through a few pages of the book—a fairly conventional poetry anthology from the turn of the century, featuring all the usual names. Suddenly I noticed that someone had been scribbling, in ink, on one of James Russell Lowell’s poems. I had to choke back laughter when I realized that the unknown book defacer had been hard at work changing nouns, adjectives, and verbs, transforming Lowell’s “What Is So Rare as a Day in June” into the far more pedestrian “What Is So Fine as a Morn in May.”
I flipped through a few more pages, spellbound by Mrs. Pruitt’s temerity. Surely eminent poets throughout the English-speaking world must have rolled over in their graves when she published these travesties. In fact, so many of them must have been spinning so rapidly that I was surprised no scientist had yet spotted a correlation between Mrs. Pruitt’s publication dates and periods of unusual seismic activity.