Read Murder at the 42nd Street Library: A Mystery (Thomas Dunne Book) for Free Online Page B

time.”
    “If you make that kind of charge against Max—”
    “I won’t. Don’t let him get at my papers and keep me out of it.”
    “Without a reason?” Harry said.
    “I gave you a reason.”
    “I don’t see how I could do it.” Worry deepened the lines in Harry’s face. “Even at your request, I don’t know how I would. Without a formal request from you, how would I explain? It would be impossible.”
    Yates stood to leave, turning to Ambler. “Maybe you can think of something.”
    “Maybe.” Ambler was thinking of Benny’s plan to push Wagner in front of a bus. He and Harry watched Nelson walk slowly through the door.
    *   *   *
    During the following week, life in the library slowly returned to normal. Ambler spent what free time he had learning more about the murder victim, James Donnelly. Meanwhile, Adele signed a lease for a small one-bedroom in an elevator building in the West Fifties, between Eighth and Ninth avenues. Hell’s Kitchen, once notorious, had gentrified but retained small pieces of its history and character—rent-stabilized apartment buildings on the cross streets and a smattering of storefronts along Ninth Avenue whose tenants had long-term leases—useful stores, like hardware, dry cleaners, and bakeries that hadn’t yet been turned into trendy restaurants.
    “Isn’t it gorgeous?” she asked Ambler. She’d persuaded the landlord to let her fix up the apartment before moving in, so she’d invited Ambler over to help paint her kitchen on Thursday, their day off together. “If you lean over and look out this window,” she bent over the kitchen sink and craned her neck, “you can see the river.”
    Ambler was happy for her but couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for her new place. It was cramped and dark, not much different from a zillion other apartments in Manhattan.
    “Have you found out anything interesting about the murder victim?” she asked, after they got the drop cloth down and the painting supplies set up.
    “He taught English and creative writing at a small liberal arts college—what used to be a women’s college—in Westchester. He’s published a couple of literary biographies; unlike the ones Max Wagner writes, his are scholarly, not celebrity bios. He and Kay Donnelly divorced a long time ago. That’s all I’ve come up with. I haven’t tried the genealogy files in the Milstein Division yet. I’ve been reading his books.”
    “Do you think they’ll tell you why he was murdered?”
    Ambler shrugged. “They’ll tell me something. Mike Cosgrove sent detectives up to the college. Maybe they’ll find he was in the white slave trade or ran a drug smuggling operation.”
    Adele scrutinized his face. “Was that a joke?”
    He nodded and began pouring paint into a roller pan.
    “I’m beginning to think your friend Max Wagner killed the guy out of pure meanness. He’s a real pill. What’s with him?”
    “Max is self-centered. He doesn’t care anything about other people.”
    “Except for that bimbo he’s married to; he follows her like a lap dog.”
    “She isn’t a bimbo.”
    Adele stopped painting and turned to stare at him.
    He was surprised himself by what he’d said. He had no reason to defend Laura Lee McGlynn. “Her looks might be deceiving,” he mumbled.
    Adele turned back to her wall. They worked together in silence, Ambler lulled by the mindless activity of rolling paint onto the wall, while Adele shoved a stepladder about the room cutting the paint into the corners and near the ceiling with a brush. She pretended not to look at him but he could see her watching him out of the corner of her eye. She wore old, ripped jeans and a faded T-shirt that fit tightly across her chest. Her hair was wrapped in a bandana. Her face glowed—you might say she had rosy cheeks—from the exertion, he guessed, but also, despite her momentary petulance, from a kind of happiness he hadn’t seen in her before.
    Fortunately, she couldn’t stay angry or