Chapter Five

Five

After having spent most of her day of rest on earnest sleuthing, Sherry decided to give herself the rest of the afternoon off. She cooked herself an enormous plate of spaghetti and had two glasses of cabernet. Then, just to make very sure that she would fall asleep promptly, she put herself into a nice hot bath with Anna Karenina . She'd barely made it through two pages of Levin holding forth on all the extremely important modern innovations he wanted to bring to nineteenth-century Russian agriculture when she almost dropped the book in the bath. She'd started to nod off. Perfect. She'd tried many methods over the years to treat her occasional insomnia, but she'd yet to find one as reliably efficacious as Tolstoy.

The next morning at the library was a quiet one, which was normal for a Monday. She took the opportunity to hide at her desk and make a few phone calls.

The woman currently at the front desk of the main branch of the Albany Public Library system picked up the phone very promptly and was immediately ready to help out a fellow librarian in a time of need. No, they didn't host life drawing classes at the library, but she could check the community board to see whether anyone was advertising one in town. She came back sounding triumphant: there was a flyer on the board for a life drawing session on Wednesday evenings in a local coffee shop called the Night Kitchen. She also, helpfully, provided the coffee shop's phone number.

The first time she called the coffee shop, no one answered the phone. The second time, the gentleman who answered was less than helpful. Who organized the life drawing classes? He didn't know, but he was pretty sure that they didn't do that. They didn't organize the classes, or didn't host them at all? He was unsure. Could she speak to a manager? A heavy sigh. The manager wouldn't be in until three. "Oh, thank you!" Sherry trilled. "I'll call back then!" In response the young man grunted, then hung up on her.

Sherry called back promptly at three and patiently made her way through an aural gauntlet of hostile or baffled teenagers before finally reaching the manager, a harried-sounding woman who nonetheless did her best to help. "The art people? They rent out the back room every Wednesday night. Hold on a second—" There was the sound of an espresso machine in the background, and two teenagers shouting back and forth about whether or not there were any everything bagels left. Eventually the harried woman returned. "Hello? The organizer is a guy named John Jacobs. Do you need his number?"

Sherry swallowed back a groan. "No," she said. "Unfortunately, John passed away last week. I was hoping to contact whoever he was working with on the figure drawing classes to let them know."

The harried woman made the appropriate noises over this lamentable turn of events. Sherry soldiered onward. "Is there anyone else I could speak to? Someone who might know how to get in touch with his model to let her know that she doesn't need to come in?"

"You could try the arts center?" the harried woman suggested. "The one in Troy? I'm sorry, I have no idea what her number is. You could always just show up here on Wednesday night and see if you can catch her."

"Thank you," Sherry said, and hung up, at which point she was forced to actually deal with the needs of the reading public. It really was annoying, she thought, when the job for which she'd been formally trained and which she was paid to perform by the local government got in the way of her unpaid amateur homicide detection. It was incredible that Jessica Fletcher ever managed to find the discipline to write novels when there was so much fascinating investigation to be done instead. Particularly in Cabot Cove, where people seemed to be murdered on a horrifically regular basis. Much like Winesap, really. It was strange. Hadn't someone said something like that recently? It was both horrible and bizarre that people in Winesap were—

A patron was trying to get her attention: he was looking for a book that they didn't have in Winesap. No problem: it should be available in Albany. Sherry made a call. Once she was done with that, she took a quick break to make coffee and chat with Mary, her volunteer for the afternoon. Mary was an energetic octogenarian, a former English teacher and general book enthusiast with an encyclopedic knowledge of popular gothic novels of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They chatted a bit about what they'd been up to lately. When Sherry mentioned that she'd met the new young priest, Mary's pale blue eyes narrowed slightly. "Oh," she said.

"You don't approve?" Sherry asked, prepared to be scandalized. Mary always knew everything about everyone in town: she was one of those elderly ladies who'd formed a network with her peers via various book clubs and churches and volunteer organizations that put her exactly one or two degrees of separation from everyone in Winesap.

"I don't know," Mary said slowly. "I just heard a funny story about him the other day. Do you know Pearl Walker?"

"I know of her," Sherry said. Mrs. Walker was an extremely rich widow who lived in a big old house on the outskirts of the village in a lavish, vaguely gothic fashion that she thought probably suited Mary's sensibilities. Sherry had been told that Mrs. Walker had once been known for her extravagant parties, but in the past few years she'd mostly taken to her bed and granted only occasional audiences to her most esteemed friends and acquaintances. Her needs were met mainly via the efforts of an assistant named Karen, an inexhaustibly hardworking and cheerful type who wore slip-resistant clogs with flowers printed all over them and talked about her wealthy charge with an air of affectionate exasperation. "I've chatted with Karen. What about her?"

"Just something that Karen said the other day," Mary said. "The priest has been coming by to visit Mrs. Walker sometimes, since she doesn't like to go to church. Karen said that the first few times he showed up she thought he seemed very sweet and considerate, but on this most recent visit she overheard him asking Mrs. Walker strange questions about her finances, and the second Karen walked into the room he immediately changed the subject."

"That does sound suspicious," Sherry said, struck again by her little flight of fancy about the priest bilking little old ladies out of their life savings before he murdered them. "Keep me updated if you hear anything else about it? It's like something out of a domestic thriller."

"I know ," Mary said appreciatively, just as a large group of mothers with small children walked into the library and began to demand all their attention.

The next few hours were nothing but work, until finally Sherry had more time to make phone calls. She looked up the number for the arts center in Troy, called them, and lied. She was the librarian in Winesap (true), she was hoping to bring more arts programming to the library (somewhat true), and she'd been considering organizing some life drawing sessions (a vile and wicked falsehood) and heard good things about the model used at the café sessions from a young lady who had attended one of them (another sinful lie).

The woman at the arts center was happy to help. Yes, they held occasional life drawing sessions and were familiar with the sessions held at the café, though they hadn't actually been organized by the arts center. Yes, she did have the contact information for a model who she knew had worked at several of the café sessions, and she would be happy to share it: Ruth had mentioned to her that she was hoping to find more jobs to do. She was a sweet girl, very prompt and reliable, and the students found her interesting to draw—when they worked in pastels they had to struggle to get the shade of her beautiful red hair just right. It was so nice that Sherry was trying to organize life drawing up in Winesap. Sherry guiltily acknowledged the praise—she consoled herself with the thought that she might really organize some drawing classes at the library, one day—and then hung up.

Next she called the number that the arts center woman had given her. No one picked up, but the answering-machine message belonged to an authoritative-sounding woman. "You've reached the Cohen residence. Please leave a message for David, Rachel, or Ruth after the tone."

It was strange, Sherry thought. Not that this young woman apparently still lived with her parents. Something else. Something about the phone number, and the answering machine. There was no time to think about it any longer. There was the beep. Sherry put on her sweetest, fluffiest, most pocket-full-of-caramels-and-meeting-my-bingo-friends-at-the-diner-at-five-for-supper voice to leave a message. "Hello, Ruth. This is Sherry Pinkwhistle, the librarian up in Winesap. I've been trying to organize some life drawing classes for beginners here at the library, and I was wondering if you might be interested in modeling for us. They have wonderful things to say about you in the arts center in Troy. Call me back whenever you have the chance!" Then she left both her work and home numbers, followed by an extended, rambling dither about when she was at work and when she could be found at home, and oh, so sorry, there was an event at the library on Wednesday, so she would be here a bit later that night , until the machine cut her off with a curt beep and she hung up. Perfect. No one would ever suspect a nice old lady who left such amusingly flustered grandmotherly messages of being a homicide detective, amateur or otherwise.

Ruth didn't call back immediately. She didn't call back at all, for the whole rest of that afternoon and until the next evening. Sherry was already in her bathrobe drinking a cup of chamomile tea with Lord Thomas Cromwell in her lap when her phone rang. She got up to answer it, to Lord Thomas's enormous indignation. The voice on the other end of the line was very high, almost childlike. "Hello? Is this Mrs. Pinkwhistle?"

"Miss," Sherry said. "Yes, this is Sherry Pinkwhistle. May I ask who's calling?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," the girl said. "This is Ruth Cohen. The model? You left a message?"

"I did!" Sherry said. "It's so lovely to hear from you. I know it's very old-fashioned of me, but would you like to come up to the library for an interview? I always like to meet people in person before we decide whether or not we'd like to work together."

Ruth agreed to this, after a momentary hesitation, and they arranged a time: Ruth would come up that Friday at six, after the library was usually closed for the evening. Then they said their goodbyes and hung up. Sherry smiled and leaned down to pet Lord Thomas, who was standing on her slippers. She was pleased with herself. Winesap was a tiny place, and not a place that most people ever bothered to visit. Ruth hadn't mentioned being familiar with it. It wouldn't be an answer, exactly, but Sherry thought that it would be a fairly significant clue if Ruth arrived on Friday having never bothered to ask Sherry for directions to the library.

···

Ruth never did call back for those directions. Sherry didn't make any calls, either. There had been times in the past when she'd called Sheriff Brown in advance of meeting a suspect, just in case she was worried that things might get dangerous. She wasn't worried about that this time. The skinny little freckled girl in those drawings didn't look like she would pose much of a physical threat to anyone, even a slightly pudgy senior citizen who got most of her exercise from reading while walking. She also, if she was honest with herself, wasn't completely sure that Ruth was her suspect. Charlotte was really the more obvious and rational choice. All Sherry had to say otherwise was her gut, and Sherry's gut was as convinced that Charlotte hadn't killed her husband as it was, sadly, opposed to dairy products. She fidgeted her way through the day, jerking her head up every time someone came through the door as if she expected Ruth to somehow arrive five hours early. Then, finally, it was time for the library to close, and Ruth walked through the door exactly on time.

Ruth, at first glance, looked very much like she had in John's pictures. She was young—maybe about twenty—and thin and redheaded, though the effect was more attractive in person than it had been in the rather unflattering drawings. She was very tall, like a fashion model, with a long swan neck emerging from the collar of her coat, and came scurrying into the room as if she felt self-conscious about being noticed. The sort of beautiful but na?ve young girl that a man like John would enjoy having hanging off his every word. A fawn, a sylph, a long-legged forest nymph of a girl. All in all, an unlikely murderer. Sherry's mind was already skipping ahead to alternative suspects—Ruth's jealous boyfriend, perhaps, or an overprotective parent? That authoritative-sounding mother Sherry had heard over the phone?—when Ruth finally looked up and met Sherry's eyes. She held Sherry's gaze for a long, cool, appraising moment. Then she looked away, then back, and gave a meek little smile, clasping her hands in front of her like a child abut to recite a poem at a school assembly. "Miss Pinkwhistle?"

Sherry thought that she might have underestimated young Miss Cohen. Perhaps John had, too.

"It's so lovely to see you, Ruth!" Sherry said. She'd worn a big fluffy pink sweater today, and an equally fluffy white shawl. She thought that she looked like an extremely nonthreatening strawberry cupcake. "I have tea and cookies for us in the event room. Usually I don't allow any food or drinks in the library, but I decided to make an exception." This earned a polite laugh from Ruth, who seemed perfectly at her ease. Good.

The event room was one of Sherry's favorite parts of the library. The library had, at one point, been a family home, and the meeting room had been first a summer kitchen and then a sunroom before the library had gotten hold of it. The many windows and poor insulation made it less than ideal for storing books, but perfectly serviceable for holding local candidate meet-and-greets and chamber music evenings and Sunday afternoon knitting circles, or whatever else it might be rented out for. Sherry loved all the light in it, and the view of the little community garden out back and the bird feeders that one of her elderly volunteers had set up a few years ago and still dutifully kept filled. The only real drawback was that insulation problem, which made it uncomfortably hot on summer days and frigid on winter evenings. Sherry was wearing several other layers under her pink sweater. Keeping the ambient temperature too low for the comfort of the unprepared was a useful trick both for ensuring that groups of chatty knitters didn't stay at the library for longer than the time that they'd booked and for softening up the suspect you were grilling in your freezing-cold interrogation room. Sherry had learned that from a true-crime television show.

Sherry made chitchat with Ruth while she brewed the tea. She asked her about the drive, which she was delighted to learn had been fine . Then she asked whether or not Ruth had ever visited Winesap before, in response to which she received a firm no . Satisfied, Sherry got down to business.

"Ruth," she said, after they were settled in with their tea and cookies and it would be more difficult for Ruth to easily extricate herself from the situation. "I'm afraid that I have some difficult news. I didn't want to tell you over the phone, and I think they've been keeping it out of the papers for now." Odd, now that Sherry thought of it. Odd that there had been journalists swarming the scenes at past murders in Winesap, but not at this one, despite the fact that John was a fairly prominent local citizen. Convenient, though, for Sherry's purposes, when media attention to the crime might have made Ruth warier of a stranger calling her up and asking her to come to Winesap. It was strange, how often convenient coincidences so often seemed to help Sherry—

"What is it?" Ruth asked.

"I'm sorry," Sherry said. "Have you heard about John?"

Ruth's smile froze on her face. "What about him?"

Sherry bit back a triumphant, Ha! "John Jacobs, I mean," she said. "The man who ran your life drawing sessions in Albany."

There was a flicker in Ruth's expression now. She'd realized anyone with only a casual working relationship with a man with an extremely common first name should have asked, John who? "I know," she said. "Is he okay?" Then, abruptly, her chin wobbled, just a bit. She was avoiding Sherry's gaze.

"He's not, dear," Sherry said. "I'm afraid that he's passed away."

Another chin wobble, followed by a shiver, but not a trace of surprise.

"Are you cold, dear?" Sherry asked. Exactly as planned. "Here, take my shawl." She got up to drape it around Ruth's shoulders, then sat down to nudge the tea and cookies closer to Ruth. "Have some tea. It'll warm you up."

Ruth was clutching at Sherry's shawl. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's just—sad."

"I know," Sherry said. "You and John were more than just friends, weren't you?"

Ruth looked up at her. She was even paler than she had been when she walked in. "How did you—"

"Just a guess," Sherry said. "Would you like to talk about him? You must have been very in love."

An ugly mottled flush flooded across Ruth's cheeks. "I thought that we were," she said, and then looked away again.

"Oh, dear," Sherry said. "Heartbreak after heartbreak. You know, when I was your age, lots of my friends were treated very badly by older men. Was he not very nice to you?"

"No," Ruth said. "No, I mean—he was really romantic. Not like guys my age, you know? He drove me down to the city once. We got a hotel room in the West Village, and he introduced me to all of these really cool guys who ran art galleries and stuff and artists who wanted me to model for them." Her expression lit up a bit as she talked about it. All those glamorous, sophisticated artists in the big city. All those men who Charlotte probably thought of as friends, flattering John's young mistress and winking at John behind her back. Sherry didn't have to feign her sympathy.

"It must have been so exciting," she said.

Ruth shrugged, her expression dimming slightly. "I thought so," she said. "I mean—yeah. It was great."

"But it didn't last," Sherry said. "That must have been very difficult. But you must have known it would be difficult, hm? Because he was married."

Ruth looked up at her again, her face suddenly transformed. She didn't look like a lost little girl anymore. She looked like an avenging Valkyrie. "He told me he was divorced ," she said. "I'd never date a married guy. My biological father cheated on my mom for five years; it ruined our lives. I had no idea until I came up here to surprise him and I saw—" She stopped. Ruth saw a muscle in her jaw flex.

"It's all right, dear," Sherry said. "You don't have to worry about giving anything away. I already know that you were here at the library. The police have the evidence, and they should be looking at it today. My friend also knows that I'm meeting you here tonight, and you're on the security cameras again." This last bit was Sherry being creative, but the broad strokes were true enough.

Ruth didn't look angry now. She just looked tired. "What do you want?" she asked. "Why did you get me to come up here, if you think the cops are about to arrest me? What was the point? You're just playing Sherlock Holmes? Or you like messing with people's lives?"

The question hit strangely. Other murderers she'd encountered had sometimes been given to oddly dramatic pronouncements about her meddling. No one had asked her why . It took her a moment before she settled on an answer that she thought might draw Ruth out more. "John's wife, Charlotte, is a dear friend of mine," she said. "He'd cheated on her for years. It's why they moved up here, in part. It crushed her, and now she's the prime suspect in his murder. The police weren't interested in looking elsewhere. It's always the wife's fault, isn't it? I wanted to help. Charlotte's a wonderful woman. Beautiful and smart and artistic, just like you. I think that you'd like her very much, if you met her. And I think that she deserves an explanation of what happened to her husband, as awful as he was to the women in his life. Don't you?" She paused. She was thinking fast. "And you are very young. And pretty. I'm sure that if you went to the police of your own accord and explained all about the… mitigating circumstances , that might make a difference for you."

Ruth stared down at her mug of tea for a long, long moment. "He asked me out after the session one night," she said slowly. "He bought me dinner and we went to a couple of bars. It lasted about six months. I thought we were in love. I really did. I knew he lived in Winesap, but he never brought me up here. It never really seemed weird, since he was down in Albany for class, anyway. But he talked about the gallery sometimes, so I decided one Saturday that I wanted to come up here to see it and surprise him. When I got here he was out for lunch, so I went in and looked around. They had brochures about the gallery. They had this picture of him and his wife right on them. It talked about how they'd opened the place together. So I left."

"That must have been such an awful shock," Sherry said. She said it with real sympathy. It felt very much like any other conversation she'd ever had with a friend who'd just been through a bad breakup. "What did you do next?"

"Nothing for a while," Ruth said. "We usually just made plans after class. When I wasn't modeling, I'd meet him somewhere after the class was over. So I just thought for a while, and then I came back up here again. To…confront him, I guess. I came late, because he said he normally painted at night, so I figured I could catch him. I had a couple of drinks at that bar down the street. Then after it closed I went to the gallery. I knocked at the door in the back and he let me in. He was pretty surprised to see me. I confronted him about being married and he acted like it wasn't even a big deal. He said that he thought Charlotte was going to divorce him, anyway; she didn't even like him anymore. I told him that sounded like bullshit, but he made it sound really real. Like they were really going to get a divorce. Then I saw that he had this big painting of me right there where anyone could see it. A nude one, I mean. And I was like, You just leave nude paintings of your mistress around where your wife can see them? And he said something like, It doesn't matter, she doesn't care about models . And I could tell , I could tell he meant he didn't care, like he meant I don't care about models . So I started cursing at him, calling him a pervert and a dirty old man and stuff, and it was like this switch flipped and suddenly he was so angry. He got right up in my face, there was spit going everywhere. So I pulled out my knife I carry and told him to back off, and he laughed in my face." There was a brief pause. Ruth gave a few rapid blinks. "And grabbed me by the throat. He started choking me. I thought he was going to kill me."

"Then you stabbed him," Sherry said. "To get him to let go. So it was self-defense."

"Yeah," Ruth said, looking right back at her. "Yeah. Self-defense."

"You're innocent of murder, then," Sherry said. "Should I call the sheriff now to tell him what you've told me? We might catch him before he sees those security tapes."

"Yeah, okay," Ruth said. Then she looked straight at Sherry again. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Sherry said. Then she asked, "Just out of curiosity—why did you destroy all of those paintings?"

"Oh," Ruth said. "I kicked the big one while we were arguing. The one of me. Then I thought that if there was one painting of me that was damaged with John dead right next to it, that that would look like a clue. So I ruined all of the ones of me, plus a few others to make it look like someone just trashed a bunch of different paintings for no reason."

"I see," Sherry said. "That was very clever of you." Very clever, and cool, and calculated. "I'm going to call the police, now. To let them know."

Sherry went into her office to make the call. She wasn't worried about Ruth running off: she'd have to come past the front desk to do that. She dialed Sheriff Brown's number without having to look it up. "I've found John Jacobs's killer," she said as soon as he picked up.

"Of course you have," Sheriff Brown said. He sounded tired. "Where is he?"

"She," Sherry said. "She's right here in the library. Waiting for you to come here so she can confess to killing John Jacobs in self-defense."

"Right," said Sheriff Brown. "I'll be right there."

"Just a moment," Sherry said. "There were just a couple of odd things that I noticed in her confession to me."

He sighed. "Go ahead."

"The first," Sherry said, "is that she did an awfully deliberate job of attempting to conceal her connection to the victim after the fact for someone who panicked and killed someone in self-defense. Also, she's a redhead, and she has such a lovely long neck."

"She has a what ?" Sheriff Brown asked.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Sherry said. She was, she thought, suffering from a bit of post-cracked-case giddiness. "I mean that redheads are generally very pale, and you can see her neck very clearly in the sweater she's wearing. Bruises ought to be very visible on her. If she'd been violently strangled just a few days ago, I mean. I suppose that she could be telling the truth. You'll probably be better at telling that than me. Forensics and things."

"And things," Sheriff Brown said. "Thanks, Sherry. I'll keep all of that in mind."

He was being just a touch sardonic, Sherry thought. She didn't really mind. "You're welcome," she said, very sincerely. Then she hung up and went back into the meeting room. Ruth had eaten a cookie while she was on the phone. "The police will be here soon," she said. "I just had one more question, if you don't mind."

Ruth shrugged. Sherry took that as assent. "I was just wondering about that sketchbook. You could have easily taken it with you back to Albany and thrown it into a dumpster. No one ever would have found it. Why did you break into the library just to put it in the shredder?"

Ruth frowned. "I don't know," she said slowly. "I don't—"

The world flickered.

Ruth's expression smoothed over. "I panicked," she said. "I wanted to destroy it, and I didn't want it anywhere near where I lived. I saw the library while I was leaving and I thought of the shredder."

"I see," Sherry said, and then the sheriff's department descended on the library. Sherry didn't pay much attention to that, though. She was preoccupied. Her stomach felt uneasy. Something strange was hanging in the air. If you wanted to drive back to Albany from the gallery, the library was in exactly the wrong direction.