If you haven’t heard the news, I wanted to alert you that Simon Anderson of CBN fame is with us for the next ten days. He’s in my cottage; his assistant, a fellow named Bill, is in Francine’s room while she’s elsewhere on Chappy. I’ll be on the property 24/7, camping out upstairs in the outbuilding by the meadow. Don’t hesitate to pop over if you need anything.
Simon is here to work on a documentary about climate change. I told him you have a special interest in that in relation to the leatherbacks, so if he asks you about it, you’ll know why. Maybe he can help you get good exposure for your study and a job at the lab!
She signed it, tucked it in an envelope, then went upstairs and slipped it under Mary Beth’s door. Annie loved that the Inn provided a chance to bring people together; maybe Simon’s extroverted personality would help bring Mary Beth out of her shell. Then she smiled at her choice of the word “shell” when thinking of Mary Beth, the turtle lady.
Her next task was to call Lottie at the community center and ask her to please extend her thanks to Joe, but that Annie had decided to decline his generous offer to work at the fire station. She said she had to stay at the Inn in case anyone needed her. After hanging up, she went to the workshop, where she parked her belongings and the sleeping bag she’d borrowed from Earl. Grabbing her laptop and her latest notebook, she retraced her steps, went into the kitchen, and taped a note saying she’d be in the reading room if anyone had questions. She put a copy of the note at the front desk. After all, Simon had said the room was “perfect,” and he was right. The restful space filled with books would be an ideal place for Annie to write. Even about murder.
She wondered why she hadn’t thought about it sooner.
Sitting at the square table, she turned on the brass lamp with the green glass shade—a replica of the hundreds of lamps positioned on the tables in Bates Hall at the Boston Public Library. Once having read that the green glass had been presumed to be “easier on the eyes,” Annie had selected the lamp with its twin light bulbs for a different, more important reason: She remembered the weeks and months she’d spent reading and writing in that room as she’d studied the skills she’d later use—plot, character, conflict, and the rest.
She couldn’t believe it had taken Simon’s comment for her to see that she could gather inspiration in the reading room. Especially now that “the gawking” over him was out of the way, having left behind nothing but blessed silence. The way libraries once had been.
The first memory Annie had of the BPL as it was known, she must have been seven or eight. She’d gone downtown with her dad for some reason she did not remember.
“I know you love books,” Bob Sutton had said, “and I know you love stories. So as a special treat I’m going to introduce you to a place that I expect, as you grow older, you’ll return to often. And no matter where you live or where you go in life, it’s a place you won’t forget.”
He took her to the library.
And she fell in love.
In addition to the endless shelves of volumes and the magnificence of Bates Hall, where countless hushed people were hunched over research volumes, scrawling line after line in spiral-bound notebooks, Annie remembered the dioramas—the intricate, three-dimensional miniature scenes that a woman named Louise Stimson had crafted out of cardboard, paper, and other materials. People, houses, workshops, streetlamps, carriages, and more were positioned in in tiny tableaux inspired by books:Alice in Wonderland,The London of Charles Dickens,Printmakers at Work. Scattered throughout the building, each diorama held a story; each was mesmerizing to her.
Her dad had been right; the library was a place Annie never forgot.
And now, by the light of her own green glass shaded lamp, she opened her laptop and got to work on the blog posts for Tricia. She began by writing about that first BPL visit.
She didn’t know how long she’d been working—two hours? Three?—when she became aware of low voices and laughter drifting in from the great room. Checking her watch, she was startled to see that it was after six o’clock. Still, she kept at it, until she sensed that someone else had entered the room. Annie looked up and saw Mary Beth.
“Annie?” she asked. “Can we talk?”
* * *
“It’s about Simon Anderson.” Mary Beth sat across from her. The soft light from the lamp reflected worry in her eyes.
“What is it? Has something happened?”
“I read your note.”
At first Annie thought she was referring to the notes she’d left in the kitchen and at the front desk that mentioned where she’d be. But that would hardly upset her. Then she remembered the one she’d slipped under the door of Mary Beth’s room.
“The one about Simon?”
She looked away. “I don’t want a TV reporter knowing what I’m doing.”
Simon would be irked if he’d heard someone call him a “TV reporter.” After all, his career had arguably grown into something much more than that.
“Oh, Mary Beth,” Annie said, “I’m sorry. If I’d known your research was confidential, I wouldn’t have said a word.” There was no point in saying that Simon had hardly been interested in hearing about her work, that he’d been more intent on asking Annie out for dinner. Yes, she decided right then, he had, indeed, been trying to coax her to go on a date.
Mary Beth stood up. “It’s no trouble. But I also wanted you to know I saw him in Edgartown this afternoon. At the library. It didn’t look as if he was engrossed in reading up on climate change. Unless you wrote about it in one of your books.”
A wave of apprehension rippled over Annie. “What?”
“At first I didn’t realize it was him. I only was aware that someone was sitting in an overstuffed chair by the window, close to the bookshelves. But when I started to squeeze past him, the book jacket caught my eye:Renaissance Heist. Then I saw your name. It’s as big as the title.”
Annie had once been told that the more book sales an author had, the bigger his or her name would appear on the front cover. Trish denied it, saying that “Annie Sutton” fit nicely, which was why they’d bumped up the type size.
“Well,” she said, “that’s my latest. Not counting the one coming out next month.” What on earth had Simon been doing? He’d already admitted he hadn’t read any of her books. Did he intend to try and impress her now? For God’s sake, they’d just met; he barely knew her. She stifled a shiver.
