As the only daughter of the town’s most influential man, she seemed to feel service to the people of Tyler was her duty. She and her very pregnant daughter, Liza Forrester, were carefully placing sections of paper toweling between individual pages to act as blotting agents. “It’s a good thing the accident happened in the Biography Room,” Alyssa murmured wryly after hearing Delia’s somewhat oddly worded description. “Otherwise we’d have a hard time telling exactly where we were.”
Grinning at her mother’s wry jest, Liza agreed, “Oh, definitely. The Dewey Decimal classification 973.629A just doesn’t have the same ring to it as a V, does it?”
Cliff Forrester, Liza’s husband, came up beside them. “What’s this about V?” he asked, watching as his wife tore off another section of paper towel and placed it between two pages. “You’re not planning names for the baby, are you? What starts with a V? Let’s see: Virgil, Venus...”
Liza tilted her head and gave a devilish smile. “What would you do if I wanted to name our child Venus?”
Cliff smiled slowly and surprised Elise by winking at her. Normally, he was so quiet and self-contained. “Why, I’d agree,” he said. “What else?”
Johnny Kelsey dropped an armload of books onto a table behind Elise. “I’ve talked with Pastor Schoff,” he announced, causing Elise to turn toward him. “We can have the church hall any time we want it. When I get off work this evening, I’ll bring some of the men from the F and M and we can shift all this again.” He motioned to the tables and books scattered along the porch. “That’s still what you want, isn’t it? To get this lot moved inside somewhere?”
Elise met the deep-set gray eyes of the man she’d known since childhood. “If you could do that, Johnny, it would be wonderful. Do I need to speak with Pastor Schoff myself?”
Anna Kelsey arrived just in time to hear Elise’s question. She, too, was delivering an armload of damp books. “Probably should,” she said. “I’m sure he could arrange fresh volunteers for tonight if you ask him.”
“I’ll call right away. Oh!” Elise suddenly looked stricken. Once again she had gotten carried away by the immediate problem and forgotten the more looming threat. “Has anyone seen Professor Fairmont?”
There was a series of shrugs and head shakes. “Not since earlier,” Alyssa said.
“What about Renata?” Elise asked. “She said she’d watch out for him.”
Again Alyssa shook her head.
Elise’s stomach tightened. Robert Fairmont’s reputation was impressive. As a practicing architect, he had won numerous design awards, and his track record as a teacher was impressive, too. A growing number of his former students were beginning to make names for themselves, with many attributing much of their success to him. Had he been insulted that she was late for their appointment, and so had decided to leave?
“Where’s Pauline?” she tried yet again, starting to feel more than a little desperate. Delia pointed to a group of people at the far end of the porch. With a soft murmur, Elise excused herself.
Pauline Martin, the library’s only full-time aid, was a plump woman in her early forties with short, light brown hair and a perpetual expression of amused good cheer. An earth-mother type, she loved working with the children who came to the library, and along with Elise had developed a program that several libraries in other small towns now emulated.
When she saw Elise, Pauline broke into a beaming smile. “You look perfect! Don’t touch a thing! Otherwise you’ll get all dirty again. Have you heard? We can use the hall at Fellowship Lutheran. Pastor Schoff didn’t understand at first why we couldn’t just put the books in another part of the library, but when Johnny told him about the dampness spreading to the rest of the collection, he agreed right away. Just like Johnny understood when you told him earlier. He—”
Elise broke into the ongoing stream. If Pauline were turned loose, they could be standing there for hours. “Pauline, Professor Fairmont—have you seen him?”
Pauline frowned. “Why, yes. Just a little while ago. He was...somewhere.” She scanned the people on the porch. “The last time I saw him, he was by the front steps.”
“Was he leaving?” Elise couldn’t help the note of alarm in her voice.
Pauline frowned in puzzlement. “Why would he leave when he’s come all the way from Milwaukee?”
“I’ll check inside.” Elise hurried through the open double doors that led into the library proper.
A steady stream of people was moving up and down the hall that led to a room at the rear of the library. There, a buildup of water from a leaking pipe had caused a portion of the ceiling to give way. Some people exiting from the hall were heading to the porch with damp volumes. Others had been assigned the task of stacking the numerous books that had managed to remain dry in an area off to one side of the circulation desk.
Elise shivered, remembering the horror of the moment when water had first sprayed everywhere. For a short space of time, her emotions had given way as well as she had tried frantically to rescue the books nearest the disaster.
At the Biography Room’s door, the tall young man next in line stood aside to let Elise enter. He was Ricky Travis, a recent graduate of Tyler High School. “Miss Ferguson,” Ricky said respectfully.
A glimmer of a smile touched Elise’s lips. Ricky was a person it was sometimes hard to like. A typical teenager, he’d had his share of ups and downs over the past year. In particular, he’d had difficulties on the high school football team. Some in town thought him cocky, but Elise knew another side of him. She remembered the little boy who had devoured books on dinosaurs the way other little boys eat cake. The fiercer the dinosaur, the better. Ricky had been able to rattle even the most complicated scientific names off his tongue. Next, he had progressed to adventure tales and finally to science fiction—his current favorite. “Ricky,” she acknowledged softly. She included a couple of Ricky’s friends in her smile and stepped into the chaos of the room.
Even though they had finally managed to cut off the water supply to the library, occasional drops still fell from the raw open wound on the ceiling. Bits of soggy plaster clung to the gaping edges of the hole, while other pieces cluttered the wet floor, mixing with dirt that had collected in the lathing for nearly a hundred years. Elise had tried to clear away the worst of the muck before she went home, sweeping it to one side, but numerous feet trampling through to rescue books hadn’t helped the situation. Several thick cotton towels had been spread as doormats into the hall, in an attempt to keep tracking to a minimum, but their success was debatable.
Josephine Mackie, principal of Tyler High School, waved to Elise from across the room. Elise lifted a hand and started to make her way toward her, all the while murmuring encouragement to those in the process of removing the last of the books as well as those taking down the free-standing shelves.
Several people in the rescue force Elise didn’t recognize, but she was grateful for their willingness to help even if she didn’t know them personally. One man in particular seemed to be enjoying himself. With his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and smudges of dirt on what once had been a pristine white shirt, he braced one of the metal shelf units so that Patrick Kelsey, Johnny and Anna’s oldest, could loosen the bolts that held it to the next section. Grinning, he said something that made Patrick laugh.
He was an attractive man, probably somewhere in his mid to late fifties, with wavy black hair
