“She,” Sherry said. “She’s right here in the library. Waiting for you to come here so she can confess to killing John Jacobs in self-defense.”
“Right,” said Sheriff Brown. “I’ll be right there.”
“Just a moment,” Sherry said. “There were just a couple of odd things that I noticed in her confession to me.”
He sighed. “Go ahead.”
“The first,” Sherry said, “is that she did an awfully deliberate job of attempting to conceal her connection to the victim after the fact for someone who panicked and killed someone in self-defense. Also, she’s a redhead, and she has such a lovely long neck.”
“She has awhat?” Sheriff Brown asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sherry said. She was, she thought, suffering from a bit of post-cracked-case giddiness. “I mean that redheads are generally very pale, and you can see her neck very clearly in the sweater she’s wearing. Bruises ought to be very visible on her. If she’d been violently strangled just a few days ago, I mean. I suppose that shecouldbe telling the truth. You’ll probably be better at telling that than me. Forensics and things.”
“And things,” Sheriff Brown said. “Thanks, Sherry. I’ll keep all of that in mind.”
He was being just atouchsardonic, Sherry thought. She didn’t really mind. “You’re welcome,” she said, very sincerely. Then she hung up and went back into the meeting room. Ruth had eaten a cookie while she was on the phone. “The police will be here soon,” she said. “I just had one more question, if you don’t mind.”
Ruth shrugged. Sherry took that as assent. “I was just wondering about that sketchbook. You could have easily taken it with you back to Albany and thrown it into a dumpster. No one ever would have found it. Why did you break into the library just to put it in the shredder?”
Ruth frowned. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I don’t—”
The world flickered.
Ruth’s expression smoothed over. “I panicked,” she said. “Iwanted to destroy it, and I didn’t want it anywhere near where I lived. I saw the library while I was leaving and I thought of the shredder.”
“I see,” Sherry said, and then the sheriff’s department descended on the library. Sherry didn’t pay much attention to that, though. She was preoccupied. Her stomach felt uneasy. Something strange was hanging in the air. If you wanted to drive back to Albany from the gallery, the library was in exactly the wrong direction.
Six
Sherry glided through the next few days on the well-sharpened ice skates of self-satisfaction. She’d done well, she thought. Charlotte thought so, too. She bought that bottle of champagne that Sherry had advised her so strongly against just a few days before and invited Sherry over to drink it. When Sherry got there, those cold-looking nude women had been taken off the walls, and Charlotte was full of the sometimes-tearful giddiness of a woman who had come very close to being arrested for a murder she hadn’t committed. They got tipsy together, and made morbid jokes that couldn’t be repeated in mixed company, and talked about books and cackled like witches. “Is it awful of me to say that I’m so glad that I had this chance to get to know you?” Sherry asked, once the champagne was gone and Charlotte had mixed them up some spontaneous caipirinhas.
Charlotte gave a little shriek, then dissolved into laughter again. “Yes,” she said. “It’sobviouslyawful,come on. You can’t just say that you’re grateful for someone getting murdered because of thefriends you made along the way. God, poor John.”
“Poor John,” Sherry agreed. She felt suddenly odd. Frightened, maybe. “Charlotte—I’m probably being silly. But try to be careful, please?”
Charlotte frowned at her over the rim of her caipirinha glass. “Be careful of what?”
“I don’t know,” Sherry said. Her head was swimming. She didn’t usually drink this much. “There’s just—something. It feels like there’s something to be careful of.”
“By the pricking of your thumbs,” Charlotte said, and gave another little giggle.
Sherry didn’t laugh. “Maybe,” she said. It was dark out now, dark enough that she couldn’t see Winesap through Charlotte’s living room window. All she could see was the reflection of her own pale, anxious face. “Maybe something wicked.”
The next day was Saturday, which meant that she would have her date with Alan that evening. She woke up with her head already aching and full of more of that sense of dread that had started the night before, though now she supposed that she could blame it on her hangover. She was annoyed with the world and with herself. She was too old to drink enough to have a hangover on a day when she knew perfectly well that she had to work. Her trying to seemcoolto her new young friend, probably. Embarrassing. She was embarrassed and anxious and her head hurt so badly even Lord Thomas Cromwell annoyed her. His yowls for his breakfast were too loud.
Alan was as wonderful as ever, at least. He took one look at her when she climbed into his car—their plan had been to drive to Saratoga to see a live jazz performance—and said, “I know that we said we’d go into the city tonight, but what would you think about just having a night in? We could pick up Chinese and eat it on my couch in front of a movie.”
“That soundsperfect,” Sherry said, the words coming out ina big relieved sigh. Then she confessed, “I have a hangover. Isn’t that embarrassing?”
“Extremely embarrassing,” he said. “I can’t stand to be seen with you. Get out of my car.” He pulled carefully out of the library parking lot. NPR was on the radio. “I’ve been tiring myself out over the books for the store all day. I’ll probably be worrying about them all night, too, so I thought I might as well take a break for a few and not bother with all of that driving back and forth. Why do you have a hangover? Hitting the clubs last night?”
Sherry blushed, which was fairly novel. Only Alan ever usually managed to make her blush. Most of the time she was almost completely shameless. She tried to evade the question. “Are things not going well with the store?”
She could see his frown reflected in the windshield. “Just some strange things I’m trying to figure out. And I had to talk to Alice about paying attention to what she’s doing. She was doing more daydreaming than working today.” Then: “You just changed the subject. Do you have another guy on the side who takes you to all of the wild Winesap parties?” He was teasing, obviously, but it made her blush harder, anyway.
“Charlotte invited me over for drinks.”
“Charlotte Jacobs?” Alan asked, shifting slightly to look at her. “The merry widow?”
