Chapter Sixteen

Sixteen

She was greeted at the door by Lord Thomas Cromwell, and her initial reaction was to respond to him with the same level of suspicion that she usually leveled at strange men on her doorstep wearing matching short-sleeved button-downs. She fed him his breakfast, anyway, maintaining a wary distance the whole time, until finally he started winding around her ankles and purring and she was forced to scoop him up and give him a cuddle. "I missed you being your usual self," she told him, whereupon he gave an almighty wriggle and jumped down to the floor. He'd never been very patient about being carried around like a baby.

While she took her shower and got ready for the day, she contemplated how completely unnerving it was to live with someone who might, at any moment, be someone else. She'd never experienced anything quite like it before. Her ex-husband, despite his flaws, had been resolutely the same person every single day that she'd known him. The closest she'd ever come to this had been with Caroline. She'd had a strange habit of sometimes, when they were out in public, pretending to be someone else. One particular favorite was a bohemian heiress named Phoebe. Sherry had taken it as a harmless quirk back then, just as something funny that Caroline liked to do sometimes. It was only much later that it had started to feel sinister. As if what Caroline had enjoyed about it wasn't the fantasy but the part where she got other people to truly believe in her lies.

Once she was thoroughly washed, dressed, and hastily fed on a breakfast of slightly stale cornflakes, she gave Lord Thomas one last pat and headed down to the library. She felt more refreshed than she probably ought to be after a night of sleep in a pew. Then, after she arrived at the library, she had another turn of good luck: there was a small stack of papers waiting for her on her desk, with a Post-it note from Connie stuck on top. For you from Schenect. PL.

Sherry sat down to read what the intern had dug up. The first few pages were nothing special: Alan's name popping up in his father's obituary and his own wedding announcement, or in a brief and very old piece about his having advanced to the state high school wrestling championship. A few brief references to his having been the defense attorney in cases of minor note, in particular a local official who'd eventually been convicted of embezzlement. Sherry checked the dates: the man in question would be in his nineties now. If he was still alive, he was unlikely to have the energy and upper-body strength to travel to his former attorney's house and bash his head in.

Then, at the bottom, something that looked important. The article was three decades old, and the events it described had apparently made enough of a splash to merit a front-page headline. orellana ruling overturned. Sherry read on to learn that the name in the headline referred to a teenager named Salvador Orellana, who had been convicted in a homicide case five years earlier. He had appealed the conviction on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel, and his appeal had been successful.

His defense attorney had been Alan Thompson.

Sherry sucked in a quick breath and let it out slowly. She'd already felt a little frustrated with how the suspects with good motives kept piling up, but this might be the strongest suspect yet. It had all been a long time ago now, but five years in prison for a crime that you hadn't committed might be a rare example of something that almost anyone could stew over for thirty years. At the very least, she needed to try to track down Salvador Orellana, if only so she could conclusively rule him out as a suspect.

There was a photo at the top of the article of two men standing in front of a courthouse. Orellana and his new attorney smiling jubilantly toward the camera. It was dark and blurry, a copy of a copy of an antique newspaper. Sherry couldn't make much of it. Orellana was just a small, indistinct figure in an oversized suit, with a face that could have belonged to any number of vaguely nice-looking young men. It felt impossible to imagine such a lifeless little picture as being something connected to Alan's murder.

She folded the relevant page up and slipped it into her pocket, just as Connie walked in to open up the library for the day. Sherry felt oddly as if she'd been caught doing something wrong. "Good morning," she said, a little too loudly. "Thank you for the faxes."

"Oh," Connie said. She was clearly surprised to see Sherry there. "You're welcome. Were you—did you want to work today?"

"What?" Sherry asked. Then, impulsively: "Yes, actually. I thought it might—take my mind off of things a little."

Connie's expression softened. "That's a good idea," she said. "Just tell me what you need. It's been a zoo around here without you."

Sherry doubted that very much. Connie was a model of efficiency. If she'd been employed at an actual zoo, she'd have it very quickly functioning exactly like a library. "I don't believe you," she said aloud. "If you worked at a zoo, you'd have all of the monkeys reshelving their own toys by the end of the first day. How about you tell me what you need, instead? You're the one who's been holding down the fort here while I've been…at home." It occurred to her, very belatedly, how incredibly strange it might have looked to Connie that Sherry was having librarians in Schenectady send her articles about her recently murdered boyfriend. Hopefully she'd assume that Sherry wanted them for a memorial service.

Sherry's stomach abruptly twisted. A memorial service. She'd been so wrapped up in the investigation, she hadn't even bothered to think about who would be responsible for organizing poor Alan's funeral.

Connie must have seen something of what Sherry was thinking in her expression, because she stepped in close and gave Sherry a quick, tight hug. "Thank you," she said. "I will, if you don't mind. You'd been planning on a new display for the children's section, weren't you? Maybe you could get to work on that? I wanted to try to process some late fees before everything gets too hectic."

"The rainy-day display," Sherry said. "Yeah, thank you." Then she took a moment to rub at her eyes, squared her shoulders, and got to work.

As soon as the day got started, she knew that she'd made the right choice to say yes to working. Putting together book displays was one of her favorite parts of the job—she loved seeing people shoot straight toward a new one when they came through the door—and she always found the arts and crafts aspect of it oddly meditative. She put on a pot of coffee in the office and hunkered down to work, letting herself get absorbed in cutting raindrops and tulips out of her supply of colorful construction paper, then selecting a collection of picture books to suit the theme. By the time the display was ready, it was almost time for lunch, and the rest of the day flew by in the same way, all the worries chased out of Sherry's head by the ordinary demands of the library.

It was just before closing time when a group of people walked in who looked very out of place in their cozy little library. In the lead there was a tall, elegant-looking blonde woman in a long camel coat, with the sort of expertly done makeup that made her look much younger until she got close enough for Sherry to realize that they must be close to the same age. Along with her were three young men.

The first was thin and gentle-looking, maybe forty years old or so, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a blue ski jacket. The second was taller and broader, a rather strikingly handsome young man in a sharp black peacoat, with a shock of dark wavy hair artfully draped across his forehead. She took them all in instantly and recognized them just as quickly: Alan's family. His wife, Susan, and his sons: Eli, the soft-spoken married father of two, and Corey, the aspiring painter with the revolving door of unsuitable boyfriends. It was the fourth person in their group who made no sense, whose presence was making her gawp at them like a hopeless redneck who'd never seen a group of nicely dressed city people in her life. He'd not only changed his clothes since she'd last seen him—she couldn't imagine him owning such an expensive-looking coat—but changed his haircut, and, apparently, changed his perspective on his vow of chastity, considering the way he and young Corey were looking at each other.

" Father Barry? " she burst out, utterly confounded.

He visibly recoiled. Then he threw his head back—she'd thought people only did that in books—and laughed. " Jesus , that's weird," he said. "The last time someone got us mixed up it was before he was a father . I feel like I'm sinning already!" He gave her a big, sunny grin.

She smiled back at him instinctively. He had a lovely smile. "You must be Todd," she said, enormously relieved to have cracked the case and restored order to the universe. The world continued on its usual route around the sun. She could appreciate, now, how different the two of them looked, once you knew to expect that there was a pair of them. Just the way that Todd held himself was different. He moved like a man who knew he was handsome and was delighted to provide you with something nice to look at, whereas Barry held himself like he suspected he might be handsome and wanted to apologize for any carnal thoughts his good looks might have caused in advance. "I'm so sorry, I should have known. Barry was just talking about you the other day." Then she looked toward the rest of the group. "And you're Alan's family."

Susan stepped forward and held out a hand. "Susan Thompson."

Sherry shook her hand when it was offered. "Sherry Pinkwhistle," she said, utterly pointlessly. Susan clearly knew perfectly well who she was. She wasn't looking at Sherry as if she wanted to get revenge on her husband's dumpy mistress and slap her in the middle of a public library. Her blue eyes were calm, clear, and unreadable. Within a few seconds of withstanding her gaze, Sherry cracked. "I didn't know," she said. "That he was married."

Eli visibly winced. Susan appeared unmoved. "I know," she said simply. "He told me that you didn't, and I believed him. Alan was always telling little lies to avoid uncomfortable conversations. Being divorced was easier than being married, so he lied about it." She shrugged.

Sherry felt almost as if Susan had slapped her. It made sense; that was the problem. It made everything fit together just a bit better. Alan wasn't some horrible villain. He'd always been incredibly kind to Sherry. It was just that he was the sort of man who sometimes told little lies to try to smooth things out and make hard things easy and keep everything calm and pleasant. A little lie like, I'm divorced , when he was actually only separated. A little lie like, Of course that paperwork's completed , when he was defending someone in a murder trial. Little lies about his bank account. Little lies that he got away with, until he couldn't anymore. "Yes," she said, a bit faintly. "That makes sense."

Susan's expression shifted into something that looked alarmingly like sympathy. "Anyway," she said. "I'm sorry to ambush you at work. I just wanted to meet—you. And let you know that we're here in town to make the funeral arrangements, and for the reading of the will tomorrow."

"Thank you for letting me know," Sherry said. "Will you—I'd like to go to the funeral. If you won't mind too much."

Susan's eyebrows shot up. "Of course you can come," she said. "You were his girlfriend. You didn't do anything wrong. All of his friends should be at the funeral."

"She's right," Eli said, speaking up for the first time. The sound of his voice made Sherry jump. He sounded exactly like Alan. "Dad talked about you all the time. He'd want you to be there."

"And you might want to come to the reading of the will, too," said Corey. "Just in case Dad decided to disinherit all of us and give the cash to his mistress."

Sherry felt her whole face go hot. Corey quite clearly didn't feel as charitably toward his father's girlfriend as the rest of the family. Todd elbowed him. "I can't believe that I've only known you for three days and I already have to keep you in line," he said.

"How exactly did you meet?" Sherry blurted out. She knew that the likely answer from Corey would be a spirited none of your business , but she couldn't help herself. The sheer unlikeliness of the coincidence was making her itch. Either there was some sort of scheme afoot—with that amount of money in play, all sorts of strange people might want to attach themselves to this particular domestic tragedy—or her demon friend was up to new tricks.

Fortunately for her, it was Todd who jumped in to answer. "Me and Corey met a month ago at a party. We just happened to run into each other again because it turned out we were all coming up from the city to Saratoga on the same train," he said. "I was just heading up to see my brother, and when Corey told me about what had happened with his dad, I told them that Barry would do a good job with the service, if they didn't mind a priest. I'm going to take them to meet him next."

"I'm sure Barry will do a wonderful job," Sherry said, slightly too late. "Alan never got the chance to meet him, but I think he would have liked him very much." As soon as she said it, she was sure that it was the wrong thing to have said, and that Corey would insult her again. Instead, they all seemed to accept this, and departed with a smattering of polite goodbyes. Then there was nothing to do but provide a brief explanation to a lurking and obviously curious Connie, help close up the library for the evening, and consider her next move.

She went to the library phone without planning on it, and dialed without realizing that she'd memorized the number. It was already ringing when it registered how creepy that was, and she gave a brief, full-bodied shiver just before Charlotte picked up. "Hello?"

"Hi, Charlotte," Sherry said, the heebie-jeebies outweighed by the sudden pleasure of hearing Charlotte's voice. Her new friend, who laughed at her and still took her seriously. "I think the demon just made me call you, so I don't actually have anything important to say. Do you want to go out for drinks with me?"

"Yeah, okay," Charlotte said immediately. "Can we get some food first? I'm starving."

"Definitely," Sherry said. "Marino's?" It was the Italian restaurant where Alan had liked to take her for dinner. Right now she liked the idea of reclaiming it for herself and Charlotte.

"Yeah, great," Charlotte said. "See you in half an hour?"

"Perfect," Sherry said, and hung up, then took her leisurely time getting her things together and then ambling down the road to the restaurant. She was there early, so, in honor of the oddly rebellious mood she was in, she ordered a predinner martini. By the time Charlotte arrived, she was already starting to feel comfortably detached from her surroundings.

"You won't believe this," Charlotte said, before she was even fully seated. "My witch friend I told you about? The one who was supposed to come up to help out? She got into an accident basically the second she pulled out of the rental lot. Now she's in the hospital in Yonkers. That's two out of two for people trying to visit me up here and having some sort of horrible accident happen."

"So we can't get out, and they still can't get in," Sherry said, the alcohol making it feel more interesting than terrifying. She briefly explained to Charlotte about how an enormous tree had abruptly ended her attempt to drive to Schenectady the day before, though she left out the bit with the ghosts. Then she said, with a bit of dramatic flair, "And after all that, guess who came to visit me at the library today?"

"The angel Gabriel?"

"Alan's wife !" Sherry said, triumphantly. "Not his ex , his wife !"

"His what ?" Charlotte said, with a gratifying display of shock and horror.

Sherry backed up then and told her everything that had happened since they'd last met, which carried them through another order of drinks and a round of shared appetizers. Charlotte, as usual, was an excellent audience for a long and extremely bizarre story. By the time Sherry'd gotten her up to date through the Thompson infestation at the library, Charlotte was shaking her head. "First of all," she said, "how bad is it that I'm feeling kind of relieved that Alan was an asshole, too? Like, I was feeling like a dumbass for picking John, but I guess some guys will just cheat until they die, no matter what."

Sherry winced, then took another bite of arancini. "I think that's the sort of thing that everyone thinks but you're not supposed to say out loud," she said. "Like how right now I'm feeling better about having trusted Alan because you reminded me of how bad John was."

Charlotte gave a restrained little cackle of a laugh. "Cheers to schadenfreude," she said. "The only thing getting us through this mess."

"Cheers," Sherry said, and clinked glasses with her. When she shifted in her chair she felt her pocket crinkle. "Oh! Would you like to look at that article I told you about?"

"About the guy who got out of prison? Sure," Charlotte said.

Sherry handed the now slightly crumpled article across the table. Charlotte looked at it for a moment, then frowned. "Does he look familiar to you?"

Sherry frowned, too, and leaned in closer. "Who? Orellana?"

"Yeah," Charlotte said, and brought the picture up closer to her face. "I swear I know him." Then her eyes went wide. "Oh my God. Isn't that Jason ?"