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  THE LIBRARY, THE WITCH, AND THE MURDER

  “Sweet kitty,” I said. Rodney’s responding purr was loud enough to draw my attention. “What? You want something, don’t you?”

  He stepped onto the desk, purring with enough ferocity that he had to open his mouth.

  “Is it this?” I picked up a copy of Murder on the Orient Express. I hadn’t set it on my desk, but I was starting to get used to books appearing randomly.

  Rodney melted on the desk and plopped to his side. He licked a paw.

  “You like it that I found this book. Okay.”

  Of course I’d read Murder on the Orient Express. In my teens I’d flown through Agatha Christie’s mysteries. Hercule Poirot was a thorough investigator. In this novel, he’d questioned each suspect twice. The paperback tingled with energy. It wanted me to investigate the murder.

  “You’re joking,” I said aloud. In response, the book warmed in my hands. I dropped it on my desk and stared.

  I forced myself to breathe evenly. Something very strange was happening between books and me. It felt almost—magical. There was that word again. I’d always loved books, but never before had books been alive for me. At least, not beyond the printed page. And they certainly hadn’t materialized like this.

  The book wanted me to channel Poirot. It wasn’t satisfied with the sheriff’s determination that Craig Burdock had killed the woman I’d found, and it wanted me to find the real murderer . . .

  Bait and Witch

  Angela M. Sanders

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  THE LIBRARY, THE WITCH, AND THE MURDER

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2021 by Angela M. Sanders

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  The K logo is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-2874-6

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2875-3 (ebook)

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-2875-0 (ebook)

  Books may well be the only true magic.

  —Alice Hoffman

  CHAPTER ONE

  I scanned the passing countryside in vain for signs of life. Fir trees pressed in over the pitted asphalt. After a few miles, the forest opened to a valley sparsely dotted with farmhouses, only one lit in the night. I prayed I hadn’t made a fatal mistake.

  The driver hadn’t said more than a few words the whole hour-long drive from the airport.

  “This job looks fascinating,” I said, hoping to spark conversation. “Why did the last librarian leave?”

  The driver was a tall gent with a cowboy hat and an inscrutable expression. Every time the pickup hit a bump, his hat dented against the roof. “Didn’t work out,” he said.

  I waited for more, but nothing came. I lightened my tone and tried a different approach. “When will we be in Wilfred?”

  “Ain’t no Wilfred.”

  My heart lodged in my throat. “What do you mean?”

  Had they tracked me down already? The driver didn’t look like a for-hire killer, but I was no expert. My hand crept to the door handle. I was ready to jump, no matter how fast the truck was going, when he finally responded.

  “Ain’t no Wilfred since the mill closed.”

  “I was hired as the Wilfred librarian.”

  “Sure. Folks still call it Wilfred, that’s all.”

  Calm down, I told myself. I was still shaky. When the plane had passed somewhere over the Midwest, I’d felt a visceral snap and jerked so violently that the woman in the next seat had fanned me with her magazine and asked if she should call the flight attendant. I’d gulped from my water bottle and forced myself to breathe. After a moment, the internal earthquake had mellowed to tremors. I hadn’t felt the same since.

  The truck slowed. There was nothing around us but a copse of trees intersected by a dirt lane.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Slowing for the speed trap,” the driver—Lyndon Forster, he’d told me—said. He shifted up. “Never mind. We’re clear. We’re just about to the library.”

  A minute later we passed a few storefronts and a tavern with a nearly empty parking lot. I knew Wilfred was a small town, but I’d expected at least a stop sign. Rural Oregon couldn’t be more different than the crowded sidewalks and high-rises I was used to back home in D.C.

  We crossed a narrow river, then hooked an immediate right to climb a gravel lane. Lyndon parked in a circular driveway and cut the lights. In front of us loomed a three-story Victorian mansion replete with gingerbread trim and a central tower. We might have driven into a Victoria Holt gothic novel.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  The woman who’d hired me had said I’d be living above the library, and I’d envisioned a modern apartment atop a generic municipal building, not much different from my one-bedroom apartment back home. I hadn’t had time to ask a lot of questions.

  Too late now. I stepped out of the truck. Crisp autumn air filled my lungs. It had to be near midnight, and a chiffon veil of moonlight filtered through the oak trees ringing the mansion.

  “Just point me toward the door, and I’ll take my bag and leave you to the rest of your night. I hope you don’t have a long drive.” In fact, I hoped he had a very long drive to somewhere far, far away. The man gave me the creeps.

  “Nope,” he
said. “I’m the caretaker here. Got a little place out back.” He grabbed my suitcase and ambled up the steps but bypassed the double doors in front. He stopped before rounding the corner. “This way. We use the service entrance.”

  I took a deep breath and followed. Maybe it was for the best. They’d never find me here, that was for sure.

  * * *

  We climbed a narrow staircase, Lyndon hefting my suitcase over his shoulder like a sacrificial goat. The hall was cold and smelled of beeswax. Two flights up, he extracted a ring of keys from his Levi’s and unlocked the door. He set down the suitcase.

  We stood in a hall that looked over the old house’s central atrium, open all the way to the third-floor ceiling. A stained-glass window set in the roof glowed dull red and blue with moonlight. Below us, two floors of shadowed rooms that must have once been the house’s bedrooms and parlors held bookshelves.

  “Here we have the living room,” he said.

  I stuck my head into a dark room with mullioned windows and the dim shapes of a sofa and chairs.

  “Next is the bedroom.” He waved his hand toward the next door, closed, but made no move toward invading those quarters.

  “Here’s the kitchen. Not too large, but plenty big for you, I reckon.” The bloated form of a midcentury stove was all I could make out in the dark. Lyndon turned to examine me as if for the first time and drew his bushy eyebrows together. “You feeling okay? You seem kind of jumpy.”

  “I’m fine,” I lied. We moved on.

  “The bathroom.” The mint-green bathtub and sink clearly hadn’t been updated since the Eisenhower administration. “Here are the keys. I’ll show you more once you get settled in.” He touched the brim of his hat and disappeared down the hall. After a moment, I heard the door shut and the solid thunk of a bolt thrown in place.

  Well.

  The apartment was quiet but for the faraway sound of crickets. I rolled my suitcase to the bedroom and clicked on the lamp on the dresser. Pale light showed an armchair and a bed with an elaborately carved headboard that stretched nearly to the ceiling. Someone had left a jug of wildflowers on the dresser, a reassuring note.

  A pink envelope next to it was labeled “Josephine Way.” I opened it to find a handwritten note from Darla Starling, the woman who had hired me by phone.

  “Dear Josie,” it read in a girlish hand, each letter painstakingly formed. “Welcome to Wilfred. I hope you find your rooms comfortable—we changed the sheets, and there are fresh towels in the bathroom. We’ll see you downstairs at nine tomorrow morning. I look forward to meeting you in person. Sincerely, Darla.” A banner reading SWEET GEORGIA PEACHES ran across the stationery’s edge.

  I crossed the room to the window to draw the curtains and stopped short. Amber eyes stared back. It was a black cat, perched on the roof outside my window. I wasn’t being watched, I reminded myself. No one knew I was here. They couldn’t. It was just a cat.

  Just as I was about to jerk the chintz drapes closed, the cat sat on his haunches and paddled his front paws comically on the windowpane before falling on his back in a move Buster Keaton would have envied. The cat opened one eye to make sure I was watching. I couldn’t help but laugh.

  Feeling calmer, I turned to the task I’d been dreading. I’d seen a rotary phone on the kitchen wall. It had been years since I’d used one, but there was no question of using my cell phone. I’d left it at home so I couldn’t be traced. First I dialed 1-1-6-9 to block my number, then my sister Toni’s number, even though it was three in the morning back home. I let it ring twice and hung up. Our signal. Then I called again, again blocking my number.

  Toni—Marie Antoinette was her full name; our historian father had named each of the three of us after French queens—answered with a hesitant “Yes?”

  “It’s me, Josie.”

  “What time is it? Is everything all right?” In those few words, her voice went from drowsy to alert. “How’s New York?”

  “About that.” I screwed my eyes closed and opened them. Out with it. “I’m not in New York.”

  She groaned. “Oh, Josie, you haven’t—”

  “I won’t tell you where I am. But I wanted you to know I’m okay, just in case you called the hotel and found out I hadn’t checked in.”

  “So. You ran.”

  “I’ll come home after the trial. It’ll only be a few months. I already gave my deposition. They don’t need me now.”

  “I knew this would happen. Couldn’t the feds hide you somewhere? What about the witness protection program? I don’t feel good about this.”

  “After what happened to Anton, I didn’t want to take the chance.” The week before, my coworker and fellow whistleblower Anton had vanished, leaving a wife and toddler daughter with no idea whether he was dead or alive.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes—that is, I’m not sure. I had this weird episode on the plane, like my innards were exploding. Is that what a panic attack feels like?” Toni was a physician. She’d know.

  “Not usually. Stress does weird things, though.”

  I’d had plenty of stress. I pulled aside my collar and pressed a finger on the star-shaped birthmark on my shoulder. Ever since I was a girl, I’d touched it for comfort. Tonight, it almost burned.

  “I’m sure I’ll be better in the morning.”

  “You really won’t tell me where you are?”

  “No. You know I can’t. But you should see it here. It’s crazy, like I stepped into Cold Comfort Farm. The guy who drove me from the airport could have been nicknamed Lurch. I’m waiting for a raven to appear on a tree branch outside.”

  “Just give me your town’s name. What if something happens to you?”

  “No. I can’t. It’s better this way.” I toyed with the phone’s coiled cord. “I’ll call Mom tomorrow,” I said, replying to Toni’s unspoken question. All our lives, my sisters and I had shared a tacit communication. We could work elbow-to-elbow in Mom’s kitchen and never get in each others’ way. We’d pass a half cup of milk or plug in the mixer or set the oven’s timer for another sister without saying a word. “It’s late. I need to get to bed. I just wanted you to know I’m all right.”

  After hanging up, I laid my nightgown on the foot of the bed. On impulse, I heaved up the bedroom window. Oak trees vanished into the night. Beyond the trees was a cabin that couldn’t have been more than a few rooms. The caretaker’s, I guessed. Beyond that, maybe fifty yards away, was a house as large as the library, but squat and wide. I made out the glow of a light in an upstairs window. As I watched, a window shade pulled shut and blocked it out.

  A breeze whooshed through the dry leaves, carrying a few to rattle against the roof. “Good night, wind,” I said, almost hearing my grandmother whisper the words in my ear. Funny, I hadn’t greeted the wind since I was a girl.

  The black cat returned, too, padding up the shingles below my window.

  “Who are you, little guy?”

  He took two steps forward, mouthed a silent “meow,” and leapt away into the darkness.

  CHAPTER TWO

  That night I dreamt for the first time in decades—vivid images of my grandmother’s garden with lavender-scented laundry on the line and bundles of herbs drying on a sunny windowsill. One dream in particular stayed with me. I was a little girl, outside in my nightgown. Stars spangled the night. My mother was encouraging me to drink something from a crystal tumbler, but I didn’t want to. In another, darker vision, a woman in a black jacket circled the house, trying doors and windows.

  But that was last night. This morning, sun seeped through the cracks in the curtains. I swung my feet to the braided rag rug and pushed the drapes open to blue skies. It was the first day of my new life.

  I’d never managed a library before. Sure, in library school I’d supervised a few interns and staffed the information desk, but at the Library of Congress I’d specialized in cataloguing the folklife collection. It had been just me, a computer, and stacks of old documents.

/>   To tell the truth, I was surprised the Wilfred library had hired me, given my lack of experience. I felt a twinge of guilt that I wouldn’t be staying long. Still, while I was here I’d be the best librarian I knew how to be. All I had to do was act normal—unremarkable, even. Do my job and draw no attention to myself.

  When I’d interviewed, I’d glossed over my work at the Library of Congress and focused on the job I’d held before at the University of Maryland. My former boss had been happy to give me a recommendation and play down my dates of employment. Darla hadn’t seemed to mind my relative lack of experience. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought she’d planned to hire me no matter where I’d come from.

  For my first day of work, I chose a professional cotton skirt, cardigan, and the librarian’s regulation clogs, perfect for hours on my feet. My hair, a long nest of red curls threaded with frizz, would spoil the efficient look I wanted to project. With the help of the dresser mirror, its face spotted black here and there, I managed to wrangle it into a low bun studded with bobby pins.

  As I popped in the last bobby pin, I noticed a book on the nightstand. Funny, I could have sworn it hadn’t been there last night. Folk Witch, it was called. I bit off a laugh. Must have been left by the last librarian, probably some hippie girl who made love potions and did astrological charts. I tossed the book on the bed with the intention of reshelving it later.

  As I made my way down the staircase, voices drifted up. And, thank goodness, the aroma of coffee.

  The staircase led into a bright, blue-and-white-tiled kitchen with a long wooden table in the center. Around the table, three heads turned toward me. All at once, I felt apprehensive. Had I made a huge mistake?

  “Hello, everyone.” I took a deep breath. “I’m Josephine Way, the new librarian. You can call me Josie.”