Page 12 of By the Book

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Fine,” I snapped. “You need to talk to Keme about guns.”

“Okay.”

“And tell him why we don’t want him to buy one.”

“Okay.

“And about how to be safe.”

Bobby nodded.

“And tell him why a nine-millimeter is—is butch.”

“Uh, what?”

Fortunately—or not—at that moment, the medieval folk music picked up. It was mostly tabor and lute, it turned out, and my parents were only moderately bad at it. Think “Greensleeves,” but with a lot more wailing. Everyone seemed to love it.

I was about to suggest to Bobby that we go somewhere a little quieter—like a little cabin in the Canadian Rockies—but a ripple ran through the crowd. Men and women pulled back, murmuring to each other, to clear a path as a woman made her way through the room.

She wore a trench coat that accentuated her full figure, and beneath the coat she wore a black dress with a white collar. The outfit was clearly stylish. It also looked too young for her. Her blond hair had been expensively colored and styled, and I had a morbid curiosity about how many curling irons she owned (and the state of her electric bill). After a quick scan of the room, she headed toward where Mrs. Shufflebottom was introducing Colleen and George to Aric Akhtar, one of the library’s frequent patrons. I caught a whiff of perfume—it smelled like cottoncandy, and I imagined it was incredibly popular in the local middle schools.

“Agatha,” the woman said, and her voice cut through the, uh, “music.” “I want to talk to you.”

Mrs. Shufflebottom didn’t look happy about it, but she detached herself from Colleen and George, and she and the newcomer moved to a patch of a shadow beyond the reach of the lamps.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“That,” Bobby said, “is the mayor, Teri Berner.”

I tried to make her out through the gloom, but I couldn’t. I’d never seen Hastings Rock’s mayor. In fact, I hadn’t even been sure we really had one—I thought maybe it was more of a nominal role, kind of like being Chef Boyardee or Ronald McDonald.

Bobby must have known what I was thinking because he said, “She lives here six months out of the year—barely enough to count it as her primary residence—and even when she’s here, she’s usually not very involved with the town.”

That was about as close as Bobby would ever come to talking smack about someone, so I said, “She doesn’t sound like a very good mayor.”

Bobby didn’t say anything, but the shadows made his frown look deep and severe.

“Why do people keep electing her if she doesn’t do a good job?” I asked.

“That’s the problem. I think she does do a good job—in some ways. She’s the one who came up with the plan to make Hastings Rock a tourist destination, and it saved the town from ending up as just one more coastal village struggling to make ends meet. She’s a good spokesperson for the town, too. She brings in a lot of business.”

“But she’s not interested in the day-to-day stuff,” I guessed.

“Not so much.”

I was about to ask how that impacted law enforcement when the mayor emerged from the shadows on the far side of the room. Her face was set in a furious mask as she stormed past me and Bobby toward the doors. She stopped abruptly, staring. For a moment, her anger appeared to be forgotten, and she looked curious more than anything. When I tracked her gaze, I was surprised to see she was staring at Colleen, the woman who had donated the diary. Colleen didn’t appear to have noticed; her head was bent as she said something to George. Some internal process of decision happened—you could see it on the mayor’s face—and then she continued toward the exit. The silence moved with her—people quieted as she drew near and then burst into excited murmurs when she was safely out of range again.

The only person who didn’t seem caught up in the energy of the crowd was a solidly built woman near the pocket doors. She was White, at the hard edge of thirty (maybe early forties), with a sloppy bob of graying hair. In a Portland State pullover and mud-spattered jeans, she didn’t exactly fit in with the auction crowd. As though she’d sensed me looking at her, she snapped her head in my direction and locked gazes with me. I flushed and looked away.

Fortunately, at that moment Mrs. Shufflebottom moved into view. Her face was set in a strange expression that it took me a moment to decipher as grim satisfaction—there was even a little smile. She made her way across the room toward me and Bobby.

“Dashiell,” she said, “I think we should get started with the auction.”

“Uh, sure. Is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine. I’m here as a private citizen, along with other like-minded private citizens. That’s perfectly within my rights. The same way it’s perfectly within the mayor’s rights to shrink the library’s budget year after year after year, and todefund the library, and to do everything in her power to make sure the library closes for good.” Mrs. Shufflebottom gathered herself, smiled, and in a brighter voice said, “If you’d ask your parents to take a short break, I’ll make the announcement.”

---