The Silence Of The Library

Mrs. Eden arose from her chair and walked toward them, her hands extended, a beaming smile on her face. “My dear, how lovely to see you again. And you have brought a companion. How delightful.”

Veronica stared hard at the woman. She looked like the Mrs. Eden she had encountered the day before, but her manner was so completely different that Veronica was stunned by the change.

While Artie accepted the woman’s hand and shook it, Veronica continued to scrutinize their hostess. Mrs. Eden’s face appeared harder, less fleshy, and more heavily made up than the day before. She also seemed stronger, certainly no longer an invalid.

Veronica relied on her instincts in such situations, and her instincts were telling her that the woman was an impostor. This Mrs. Eden was not the Mrs. Eden she met in this house yesterday.

I chuckled at the melodrama of it. A second Mrs. Eden—as I recalled it, a cousin impersonating the real Mrs. Eden, who was imprisoned somewhere in the house.

Out of nowhere my tired brain connected disparate pieces of information, and I knew who the killer was.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Mrs. Cartwright really wasn’t Mrs. Cartwright.

My solution to the murder was nuts.

Wasn’t it?

If Mrs. Cartwright wasn’t Mrs. Cartwright, then who was she?

Eugene Marter. Had to be.

I realized I hadn’t seen him and his grandmother in the same place at the same time. Had only seen him once, as a matter of fact.

If Eugene was really impersonating his grandmother, then where was the real woman? Was she even still living?

There was an easy way to check that. The Social Security death index.

I slipped on my shoes and hurried downstairs to where I had left my laptop on the kitchen table. As soon as it was ready, I opened the browser and entered a website address. I knew the fastest way to gain access to the information was via a genealogy service to which I subscribed. I input my search terms, Mrs. Cartwright’s name, figuring there couldn’t be that many other women with her name in the index.

There was no listing at all for Electra Barnes Cartwright. I tried Electra Cartwright. No hits. Electra Barnes returned several, but I could tell by the dates that none of them was the correct person.

I leaned back in my chair and considered the possibilities.

The fact that I couldn’t find her in the death index didn’t mean that she was still alive. That thought chilled me. Had they killed her and buried her in the backyard?

Nasty.

Maybe she was alive but mentally incapacitated. No longer able to write or make competent decisions about her books.

That would be tragic, but an alternative preferable to my first thought.

Diesel startled me by meowing loudly beside me. I was so absorbed in my speculations that I had forgotten all about him.

“I’m okay, boy.” I rubbed his head. “Thinking hard, that’s all. Nothing to worry over.”

He warbled a couple of times before he settled down on the floor beside my chair.

How would Kanesha react if I shared this theory with her?

She would demand proof; that’s how she would react.

What proof did I have? I had a lot of odd facts that I thought suggestive, but Kanesha needed convincing evidence.

Short of walking up to the fake Mrs. Cartwright and snatching the red wig off her head, what could I do?

I had a sudden vision of grabbing hold of the hair, pulling, and Mrs. Cartwright screaming in protest. I shuddered.

No, I had to be completely sure about my theory before I could test it like that.

What incontestable proof could I muster? Surely there was something.

My gaze fell on the scrapbook. Pictures of Mrs. Cartwright. A vague idea began to form.

Hard on those thoughts came another point. Photographs could be the reason the killer took away Carrie Taylor’s files. Why Carrie Taylor had to die. She had the proof right there in her file cabinet.

Surely the killer had to realize, however, there were almost certainly copies of Mrs. Taylor’s photos elsewhere. Maybe a photograph wasn’t the proof after all.