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shocked eyes.
    “You can’t be serious,” I shouted. “That’s absolutely ridiculous. Bertie wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
    “They’re on their way,” Connor said, slipping back into the room.
    “Then we’ll wait,” Butch said, his eyes fixed on Bertie. “Right here.”
    Soon sirens pierced the silence of the room and the night, heading our way, getting closer.
    Bertie snapped out of her empty-eyed stare. She gave her head a good shake and said, “No, Officer Greenblatt. I didn’t kill anyone. I found him”—she gestured—“like that.”
    Butch pointed to the broken glass on the floor. It was from a beer bottle, small neck, brown glass. “Looks like the murder weapon to me. How’d you happen to be holding it?”
    “I came into the room to get Miss Austen’s notebook.”
    A notebook? A Jane Austen notebook? “What notebook?” I asked.
    Butch threw me a look. “I don’t think that’s relevant right now.”
    “Sorry.”
    “I came into the room. Then I saw him. Right there.” Bertie’s hand quivered as she pointed. Her face was very pale, ghostly, almost, in the dim light. “I thought he’d fallen. I knelt down to see if I could help. Then I saw . . . I don’t remember picking up the bottle. I guess I must have.”
    “Librarian’s instinct,” I told Butch. “There are valuable books and papers in this room. Spilled liquid could ruin them.”
    “So could a man’s blood,” Butch said.
    Outside, sirens screamed. We could hear the buzz of excited conversation below us, whispered questions, and shouted demands for information. Then boots on the staircase, and suddenly the room was full of men and women and equipment.
    A man, late forties with a crew cut above a squareface and lantern jaw and cold, unfriendly eyes, approached us.
    “Detective Sam Watson,” Butch said.
    Detective Watson glared at me. “Who are you?”
    “Lucy Richardson. Assistant librarian?” My voice squeaked.
    “You the one who found the body?”
    “No.”
    “You the one who killed him?”
    “Me! Certainly not.”
    “Then I don’t want you here. Downstairs, now. You, too, Mr. Mayor, unless you want to confess.”
    Connor didn’t dignify that with a response. “Come on, Lucy. I’ll help you down.”
    In the four days I’d been working here, I might have dashed up and down these stairs, as well as the main ones, a hundred times. Tonight I was grateful for the offer of assistance. Connor held out his arm and gave me an encouraging smile. But the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
    I glanced across the room at Butch. He was huddled with Sam Watson, talking in a low voice. He pointed toward Bertie and I heard only one word: “threatened.”
    So Butch was a police officer. I felt awful as I realized I’d been so busy talking about myself, trying to cover my nervousness in the unusual situation of being flirted with by such an intensely masculine creature, that I hadn’t even asked him about himself. His accent was definitely Outer Banks—that’s about all I knew. I heard my mother’s voice as clearly as if it were she, not Connor, who had a gentle hand on my arm. “Really, Lucille. A lady never beats agentleman at tennis. And she certainly never monopolizes the conversation to talk about herself!”
    Behind us, I heard Watson telling Bertie she wasn’t under arrest. “At this time,” he added ominously. She was not to leave Dare County. In the meantime, she was to wait in her office to be questioned.
    Connor and I descended the stairs. A female police officer followed, her hand gripping Bertie’s arm.
    Clearly no one had been told what was going on, as we were assaulted from all sides when we reached the bottom. I heard cries of:
    “What’s happened?”
    “Why are the police here?”
    “Is someone injured?”
    “I saw them taking Bertie away. Is she under arrest?”
    Mrs. Fitzgerald had collapsed into a wingback armchair and was calming her nerves with a small golden fan. And a large glass of red wine.
    I