Page 15 of The Librarians
Soon the foursome at the table is busy unmasking the killer of Mr. Boddy. Outside Jonathan and Astrid are holding down the fort; inside the meeting room Elise handles it all with aplomb.
If only there weren’t that stupid note under her door…Sophie wouldhave felt the spheres of the universe sliding into alignment, the Venn diagram of professional success and personal happiness merging into a perfect circle.
However briefly.
Twenty minutes after the late arrivals sit down, the fast table finish their first game. Over at the Sherlock Holmes table, still digging into the details of the case, someone remarks, with satisfaction, “Aha, we have ourselves a Mata Hari.” And the younger players need that reference explained to them.
Sophie, her Nick Fury eyepatch now in her pocket, tries not to think about the fact that the note writer could be among the attendees. That potential blackmailer probably isn’t someone Elise’s age or younger. But eliminating the underage crowd still leaves six full-grown adults, without counting Hazel.
After her earlier frenzy of doubt concerning her longtime colleagues, and after those colleagues persist in not coming forward to extort her, Sophie now wonders whether the person threatening the foundation of her existence is instead a relative stranger. She can’t be sure why any stranger would know or care about the distant past of an anonymous librarian, but all the same, she finds herself drifting repeatedly toward the Clue table, occupied by four such strangers.
It so happens that at the Clue table, players are furnishing one another with their life facts. The couple and the fortune teller are all new to town: The former are relocated techies from California; the latter used to live in North Carolina. Hazel, who does not seem to be interested in talking about herself, merely says, when she is asked by the South Asian couple, that she hasn’t lived in too many places besides Austin, which is a bit brazen as deflections go, considering that Singapore is halfway around the world.
“I really wanted to move to Austin—I loved it when I came here on work trips,” says the fortune teller. “But now that I’m finally here, home prices have gone through the roof. You guys are lucky, coming from California.”
The wife of the South Asian couple waves both hands in vigorous denial. “No, no, we are definitely not those Californians buying upeverything when they come to town. We were in Silicon Valley only for a short time and were renters, so we didn’t have any home equity.”
The not-so-illuminating conversation continues, with no one saying anything that immediately makes them out to be a prime suspect.
By eight thirty-five, players at the fast table finish another game. Players at the Sherlock Holmes table correctly deduce their killer. They congratulate one another, pack up their games, and place tables and chairs back along the walls.
Folks at the Clue table, seeing the commotion, abandon their game, given that they will not be able to finish before the library closes at nine. Hazel confesses that she is in fact the killer and gets a laugh from her tablemates.
The patrons leave happily. After an orderly cleanup, Sophie locks up the building for the night; Elise side-hugs her as they make their way to Sophie’s car.
“Thanks, Mom. This waselite.”
Sophie kisses her on the cheek. “Anything for you, nugget.Anything.”
They pass a black Audi in the parking lot. Elise’s head whips around. “Look at those bumper stickers. Perfect for Halloween.”
Maybe too perfect. The two stickers declareIt’s okay to decayandThe dead know how to speak, if you know how to listen.
Sophie shivers, looks away, and says, “You know, we can have another Game Night in January. And—”
From behind her, someone calls out. “Ms. Claremont, can I have a word with you?”
Chapter Six
Hazel parks her grandmother’s Miata in the garage and immediately picks up her phone.
During the pandemic, when anti-Asian sentiments ran high, Nainai proactively put up a dozen cameras in and around her house. They are connected via Wi-Fi to her home security company’s app. Hazel checks the feed from cameras that overlook the street and does not see any cars drive by.
She isn’t sure she’s being followed, but she also can’t be sure she isn’t. She had the same feeling for a few weeks in Singapore, over the summer, then the microsensations went away and she thought that was the end of it.
Perhaps not.
She gathers her things, heads into the house, and stops for a minute in the formal dining room: On the usually gleamingly empty dining table there is a piece of paper, a flyer for a school trip fundraiser.
Well, Nainai is very charitable by nature.
She crosses the living room and peers into a book-lined space where a thin woman with a sweep of silver hair and a pair of large headphones is ensconced in a Lamborghini of a zero-gravity chair. The back of the seat rears up like the spine of an alien creature, then expands into a canopy from which suspends an enormous monitor. Nainai’s hands, cradled in armrests of equally impressive curvature, fly over a pair of ergonomic keyboards.
Hazel wouldn’t dream of distracting Nainai from the blood sport on her monitor. She merely waves and then goes to the front door: While she was at Game Night, Nainai texted to let her know that a big package had arrived for her.
Hazel hefts up the box and carries it to her bedroom upstairs. She slices open the heavy-duty carton and pulls out a smaller box stuffed with drafts of rules, palm-sized cards cut from double-thick stock, polymer clay miniature books, and three different versions of a game board—one printed, two hand-drawn, and none remotely resembling what she really wants.
Perhaps she didn’t abandon development on this book-themed game only because of unforeseen circumstances in her life. Maybe the game just plain sucks.
