“Anything will be appreciated,” she said, looking around. The low room was filled with floor-to-ceiling card catalogues and metal filing cabinets with scrawled notes taped to the front.
“Like I told the Asian fellow when he asked, there isn’t much about that old rumor.”
That old rumor. Confirmed, Wes was interested in the scandal.
The librarian paused at the end of a stack. “Oh, there he is.”
“Hello, Wes.” Nadine had no choice but to face the inevitable. The shirt you most want to wear will be in the bottom of the laundry, you’ll only forget to set your alarm on days you have an early meeting, and Wes Chen will be right there, inserting himself in the middle of your off-the-books investigation.
Judging from his expression, Wes had come to the same conclusion.
I hate you, she mouthed at him, thrilled to be able to say the words to his face.
He glared at her.Ditto, he said silently.
Get off my turf.
The frog sings at midnight.
Her lipreading might not have been as good as she thought. She turned her gaze from his mouth, with the edges that tilted up, and stared at the arm curled protectively around his work like the resource-hoarding twat he was. This wasn’t only about Voline anymore. It was about the two of them. Nadine was going to beat Wes to this story if it was the last thing she did.
“Can you tell me what you told my esteemed colleague here?” Nadine asked. “So we’re all on the same page.”
If looks could kill, she’d be smeared on the battered steel cabinet behind her, but she deflected it with a saccharine smile she’d never directed at Wes in her life and never would again. That was unless it continued to antagonize him as much as this one apparently did. Then she’d get it surgically attached to her face.
“You’re familiar withThirty Pieces of Silver?” the librarian asked.
Nadine was. “Her third book, and the one that first garnered Voline international fame.”
The man looked pleased. “A tour de force of a woman’s experience, baring raw her soul and the core of her feminine energy. An examination of the nature of gender and workplace power dynamics and a woman’s cry of impotent rage in a society dedicated to bending her will to that of Man.”
Nadine could hear the capitalM. She didn’t dare look at Wes.
“It was about a lying politician who took advantage of a naive woman in love to save his career, although it destroyed her life,” she said, hoping she could take a shortcut through the literary criticism.
“Dot Voline never confirmed whether the book was based on personal experience,” said the librarian with relish. “Of course she was only a schoolteacher in a small Manitoba town with no access to Ottawa’s hallowed halls of power, so it was obviously the result of herrich imagination.”
“There isn’t enough known about her early years to prove that, is there?” asked Wes in a bland voice.
The librarian waved off that point with a pale bony hand. “She refused to take part in any official biographies. Profiles tend to focus on her productive years, when she was unfettered from small-town life and could spread her creative wings tofly.”
Nadine, who had been raised in a small town, bristled at this. “Was the rumor you mentioned that people thought she based it on her own life?” She kept her phrasing careful, to not give away anything to Wes.
The librarian laughed. “No, no, like I said, no one believed it could be based on Voline’s experiences. There was an idea it was about a specific politician though.”
This was new, and although he tried to hide it, she could tell from Wes’s expression it was the first time he’d heard it as well. “Do you remember anything else?” she asked.
The librarian sucked his teeth and looked at the ceiling before raising his tweedy shoulders in defeat. “As I said, it was only whispers. I assume she heard some little tidbit, perhaps from one of the men in town, and let her imagination work. The story is exaggerated for literary effect.”
Wes’s eyebrows went higher. “Exaggerated?”
The librarian stiffened. “One must believe in the morality of our country’s leaders. A married politician having a work affair and allowing his mistress to cover his financial misdeeds? He would have been shunned by those responsible for maintaining our institutions.”
“Right, right,” Nadine rushed in as Wes opened his mouth to reply. “Thank you for your help. I’ll look around, and if you remember anything else, I’d appreciate it.”
The librarian cast a suspicious look at Wes before bestowing a coffee-stained smile on Nadine. “Happy to help. It was such a shame about the mistake with her obituary in theHerald. I wrote a very strong letterto the editor about their journalistic standards and threatened to cancel my subscription.”
Nadine felt her smile grow thin. “I’m sure they appreciated your feedback.”
