Page 68 of The Librarians
It occurs to her that Hazel didn’t need to say anything at all about Conrad, especially not in front of everyone. There is no evidence against theman, only theories. But she did it so that they would have all the relevant information—and perhaps to pave the way for Sophie to come clean?
Certainly Sophie does not think that Hazel misjudged in taking the three librarians present into her confidence. Nor does it surprise her in the least that they are all doing their best to be supportive and worthy of her trust.
Astrid rubs her face, looking as tired and underslept as she must feel. “So if we do pass on what we know about Conrad, we’d have to tell not only Detective Shariati but Detective Hagerty too?”
Sophie grips the front of her tracksuit.
“Detective Hagerty is a bulldog,” says Hazel. “I never knew Jeannette Obermann existed until Game Night, and still he thought it suspicious that I started working at the library right before she died. I would not want him to have any goods on me. It would—”
“Help!” The word that Sophie has been screaming into the universe finally leaves her lips, a low, hoarse syllable.
Astrid turns toward her in bafflement. Jonathan, who’s known Sophie longer, looks both alarmed and concerned. Hazel, her hands braced against the counter behind her, waits patiently.
Sophie isn’t one hundred percent sure that she would have told Hazel the truth had their scheduled meeting not been preempted by unexpectedly running into Jonathan and Astrid. Perhaps she would have taken the plunge; or perhaps she would have chickened out in the end and made up some bullshit story about why she was talking to Jeannette Obermann in the parking lot, on the last night of the latter’s life, forty-five minutes after the library closed.
But now she walks herself to the edge of that cliff—and leaps over.
“Detective Hagerty will have the goods on me very soon,” she says, her nails once again digging into the palms of her hands. “That is, if he doesn’t already.”
Chapter Nineteen
Game Night
“Ms. Claremont, can I have a word with you?”
Sophie turns around. It’s the woman with the third eye. The sodium vapor streetlight at the edge of the library’s parking lot casts a yellow glow on her face and gives the photorealistic eye that takes up her entire forehead a sinister tinge. “Yes?”
“Great, thanks,” says the woman—and walks away to an SUV that’s even more loudly orange than the scarf on her head.
Sophie doesn’t see what the woman could have to say to her that Elise can’t hear. But she’s in a good mood and willing to indulge a patron who helped to make Game Night a success.
“I’ll be just a sec,” she says to Elise, who probably wants to spend some quality time with her phone, in any case.
Elise slides into the passenger seat of Sophie’s Mini Cooper with a cheerful “Okay!”
Sophie approaches the woman. “Can I help you?”
“Hi, I’m Jeannette.” She grins and points to the name tag on her chest, to which she affixed an Austin Public Library sticker, given out during Game Night. “It’s nice to meet you.”
She is pretty enough but Sophie is wary of the keenness in her eyes—this is someone who wants to know stuff and Sophie prefers a little less curiosity.
“Hi, Jeannette,” she says, her tone noncommittal.
“We’ve never met but I know a lot about you.” Jeannette, her left hand braced on her RAV4, leans forward. “I met Jo-Ann Barnes in an LGBTQ-friendly tabletop gaming club in Albany, New York.”
A grenade goes off inside Sophie’s head. “You’rethe one who sent me those notes?”
Jeannette holds up both hands. “I didn’t mean anything by them, I swear.”
Grenades are still going off but one thing is clear to Sophie. “I have to drop my daughter home—she has school tomorrow. But I will be back here in twenty-five minutes.”
Perhaps Sophie’s tone is too grim. Jeannette chortles awkwardly. “Actually, we can talk another time. It might be a bit dangerous for me to wait here by myself for that long.”
“You can wait somewhere else but I’ll be back here in twenty-five minutes.”
For the worst conversation of her life, Sophie realizes, as her shock turns into a frantic dread.
“At least give me your phone number, in case some axe-wielding murderer charges through here and I have to hide somewhere,” wheedles Jeannette.
