Arsenic And Old Books

There was nothing to tempt me on television tonight. I could always watch a DVD of a favorite movie, but that didn’t appeal, either. I finally sat down in the den with my laptop and started searching the Internet for information on Rachel Afton Long. Given all the interest in her from other parties, I figured I might as well research her life before I started working on the diaries.

I started with the online catalog at the college. I had vague knowledge of the contents of the Long family collection in the archive, and I ought to acquaint myself fully with the extent of it. The catalog record had only broad headings for the contents, but there was a finding aid created by my predecessor, Miss Eulalie Estes. It had not been digitized yet, so I would have to wait to consult it when I was back in the office. There might be letters or other documents connected to Rachel, but I wouldn’t know until I delved into the collection itself.

I discovered a record in the catalog for a memoir of Rachel, however, written by her granddaughter-in-law, Angeline McCarthy Long. Privately published and part of the regular circulating collection, the memoir was only seventy-eight pages long, but it could prove helpful for background detail. Then I noticed the status of the item: Lost.

That annoyed me. There might be a copy in the Long collection in the archive, however. Out of curiosity I decided to log in to the back end of the catalog where I could see more detail about the item’s status that wouldn’t be visible to the public.

What I discovered disturbed me. The status Lost had been applied earlier today.

Simple coincidence? I wondered. Or was there something suspicious about the book’s disappearance?

FIVE

Get a grip, Charlie, I told myself. Next thing you know, you’ll be turning into a conspiracy theorist.

The memoir could have been missing for years and its absence only discovered today when someone wanted to check it out. I speculated that either Marie Steverton or Kelly Grimes had looked for it and then reported it missing. As far as I knew no one else had been interested in Rachel Long for years, if not decades.

Still, I thought, it is odd. For a moment I fantasized a battle between Marie and Ms. Grimes over any resource connected to Rachel Long. Could one of them have stolen it to keep the other from having access to it?

My flights of fancy were becoming ever more absurd, I decided. I had yet to establish any connection whatsoever between Marie Steverton and Kelly Grimes. Let alone a link between either one of them and the missing book.

On impulse I went to the college website and entered Kelly Grimes into the people directory search. I retrieved three results: Jonathan Kelly, Andrea Kelly, and Winston Grimes, Jr.

I was pretty sure that all students and faculty were listed in the directory. If Kelly Grimes wasn’t a student or a faculty member, then who was she?

I exited the college’s website and typed the name into a search engine. The first result told me what I needed to know.

Kelly Grimes was a freelance writer. She had written a couple of articles for the local paper, the Athena Daily Register.

Curiouser and curiouser, I thought. If a freelance journalist was interested in Rachel Long, then perhaps the mayor was right about the potential political implications of her diaries. Ms. Grimes would probably be even more irritated over the delay in access than if she had really been a student. A writer hot on the trail of a saleable story wouldn’t be happy about being blocked from a source.

Loud warbling roused me from my reverie. Diesel, evidently having had his fill of cat food, butted his head against my side. He stretched out on the sofa beside me and laid his head and front paws on my thigh, nudging my laptop aside. I grabbed the computer to keep it from falling to the floor and moved it to safety on the end table. The cat moved farther onto my lap and rolled on his back. I recognized that as an invitation to scratch his chin and rub his tummy.

Happy sounds ensued for the next few minutes as Diesel received what he considered his due attention.

“How would you like to go to work tomorrow, boy?” I made a quick decision to spend the day in the archive office, despite the fact that it was Tuesday and a day I didn’t normally work. My curiosity about Rachel Long had continued to grow, and I might as well get started on the diaries a day earlier than I had originally planned. The sooner I had them ready for public use, the better.

I was also burning with curiosity to discover whether the archive collection contained a copy of the missing memoir. If it did, I was going to read it right away.