Page 69 of By the Book

And then, like a plot snapping together, the whole thing flashed through my head.

Colleen and the mayor.

George and the diary.

The theft at the auction.

The mayor’s death.

The genealogy room at the library.

The break-in at Hemlock House.

The emails on George’s tablet, and the forgery supplies, and the timing of George’s death.

Mrs. Shufflebottom’s alibi.

The Thomas Crown Affair, and the Pissarro that was actually a Monet. AndThe Maltese Falcon. And my dad’s thrillers.

Even—God help me—an entire genre built around convenient cases of amnesia.

“There it is,” Fox said. “That’s the look.”

I ignored them. “Bobby, call the sheriff.”

Chapter 18

Even with all the lights on, the library felt spooky this late at night. Our footsteps whispered against the high-traffic carpet, and the fluorescents hummed overhead: Sheriff Acosta, Mrs. Shufflebottom, Stewart, and I.

“I don’t understand,” Mrs. Shufflebottom said. “What’s the emergency? What’s going on?”

“Why are we here?” Stewart asked.

“Bear with us,” Sheriff Acosta said. Her tone suggested that she herself was exercising a rapidly diminishing reserve of patience, and I could feel her gaze on me even when I wasn’t looking at her.

I led the way into the stacks, following the path I’d taken—God, earlier that day? The day before? It seemed like an eternity ago. The sound of our steps changed in the narrow aisles, muffled by the books that surrounded us. The smell of old paper grew stronger.

The genealogy room was locked, but Mrs. Shufflebottom opened it for us. We stepped inside. Someone had replaced the register on the vent, but otherwise, it looked unchanged from the last time I’d been here. Stewart’s book truck was even still there—apparently, he’d never gotten around to putting away the rest of the books.

“I really don’t—” Mrs. Shufflebottom began.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll explain. It all started when—”

“You stole the diary!” my dad shouted. He charged into the genealogy room with my mom at his side.

Stewart’s eyes bugged out. Mrs. Shufflebottom flinched, and the color drained from her face. Sheriff Acosta looked like she wasn’t thrilled with this sudden development.

“Hold on,” I tried.

“It’s the oldest trick in the book, so to speak,” my mom said. “You were the one who discovered the book was missing. That means we all had to take your word for it that the book was already gone when you unlocked the door. But it wasn’t, was it? It was still there. And you took it!”

“I know this is exciting for everyone,” I said, “but explaining what happened is kind of my thing.”

“Stewart was so adamant about the diary being a fake,” my dad said, “that you worried he might be right. And if you auctioned off a fake, it could come back to bite you—and the library.”

“Better for everyone,” my mom said, “if the book was stolen. And then you could claim the insurance money, and no one would get hurt.”

“You didn’t know the policy was a scam, though,” my dad said. “But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting the book. And as soon as you could safely get away, you did the only thing you could think of: you came to the library and dropped the book in the return chute. The sheriff saw you on the security footage. You thought it would be safe there until you collected it the next morning. That’s why you were so cagey about where you went the night the mayor was killed; you didn’t want anyone to wonder why you’d stopped by the library.”

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