The Unkindness of Ravens by M. Hilliard (fastest ebook reader txt) 📕

Joanna jumped right in with both feet. Take the new library building, for instance. As soon as Anita proposed it, Joanna was all over it. At the very first meeting, she managed to offend Millicent, the entire Historical Society, and about half the people in the room.”

“Were you there?”

“Of course I was there. And I must say she made some good points. It was the way she made them that was the problem, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do know what you mean. But can you really see Millicent or someone from the Historical Society doing her in over it?”

I pointed out that the average age of the Historical Society membership was well over eighty, and unless we found out Joanna had been bashed over the head with a portable oxygen tank, I couldn’t see it.

“Let’s face it,” I said, “I’m a much more likely suspect since I found the body.”

Dory laughed. “I guess you’re right. Millicent is pretty spry, but she has a problem with her shoulder. Arthritis, I think, or is it the rotator cuff? My cousin Angela had that, and she couldn’t lift her arm to wash her own hair even. And as for you …” she gave her yarn a tug, “… I thought about it and I just don’t believe it. You’re not the type to sneak up on someone and bash them in the head.”

I was momentarily gratified.

“No,” she went on, “if you were going to kill someone, you’d be much more direct about it, or at least more elegant. I’m a good judge of character that way.”

Indeed she was.

“Thanks for your vote of confidence, Dory.” I was thankful. Dory would share her opinion far and wide. The police wouldn’t drop me as a suspect until they had the killer, but Anita was more concerned with the court of public opinion.

“Anyway,” Dory said, “I’d like to know what she was hit with, because I don’t believe that shelf fell on her, not for a minute.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see anything obvious.”

“Hmph. I haven’t been able to find out anything about it. Sam O’Donnell is a little too closemouthed for my liking.”

Most people were.

“If it’s not related to one of Joanna’s causes, do you think it could be, well, something of a more personal nature?” I wanted to see if she had heard any rumors about Vince and Felicity, but I didn’t want to put any ideas in her head.

“Like an affair, you mean? You don’t need to beat around the bush with me, Greer. There’s plenty of that kind of thing that goes on even in a small town, though it’s harder to pull off. Just look in some of the public parking lots after hours, and see whose car is there. Not people who lost their keys, I’m telling you. The smart ones will go into Albany, though, so it’s less noticeable. Joanna and Vince both travelled around a lot for their work, too, so it’s possible. Still tough to keep things like that quiet though, and I haven’t heard anything of the sort about Joanna.”

Welcome to Smallbany, where everybody knows your name. And who you’re sleeping with.

“What about Vince?

Dory frowned.

“Now it seems like I heard something about him and Felicity Prentiss, but I can’t remember where. Of course, the two of them used to go together back in high school. He used to come and pick her up from work. She was a library page, did you know that?”

I had not. So, Felicity likely knew every nook, cranny, and squeaky floorboard in the manor.

“And Vince?”

“He never worked here. He would come, do his homework, and drive Felicity home. He did hang around here a lot, poking into things, taking pictures. We used some of them for the library centennial celebration. Anyway, Felicity was a smart girl, what you’d call ‘motivated’ these days. It always surprised me …” Dory broke off as someone approached the desk.

“I’ll help him,” I said, moving to the computer and making polite chit-chat as I checked out a stack of gardening books.

“Garden Club plant sale next month!” Dory sang out as the man gathered his books. “Look for our fliers. You won’t find better tomato plants anywhere. Heirloom varieties!”

The man smiled and promised to drop by the sale. Dory never missed a trick.

I gave the reading room a quick once over. Still virtually empty. Dory glanced toward our lone remaining Wi-Fi user.

“He’s new,” she said in a low voice.

“I checked in with him earlier. He says his Internet is out at home.” I pitched my voice equally low.

“I don’t recognize him. He’s not from the village.”

“We’re a little out of the way, but he could live in that new development. Or he may have read about the murder and is curious.”

“Long time to linger out of curiosity. I’ll keep my eye on him. Now what was I saying?”

“Vince and Felicity. Felicity was a page.”

“That’s right. So was Matthew Prentiss, though a few years earlier. But anyway, I’ve seen Vince and Felicity around, but I can’t say I had the sense something was going on there. Not something that would lead to murder. Felicity and Joanna had their heads together a lot lately, but they were working on the sale.”

“Crimes of passion often don’t make sense, but Vince is up a creek without Joanna in terms of their business. He would have been better off with a divorce.”

“I don’t know about that,” Dory said. She motioned me closer and gave a quick look around. When she set down her knitting, I knew this was important. I pulled a chair over and started tidying the desk drawer.

“My cousin Angela, the one I mentioned, with the shoulder?” I nodded to show I remembered. “Well, Angela works at Schuyler Insurance, and she said the Goodhues had big insurance policies. They took them out when they started the business, and they recently increased them. Angela was there when they came in to sign all the papers. She said Joanna was