Page 36 of The Librarians
“I don’t think so,” Hazel says slowly. Then she sees Sophie and beckons her over. “Sophie, will the police investigation affect the normal operations of this branch?”
Once again Sophie pastes on her head-librarian-in-charge face. “At the moment, we are not expecting disruptions.”
“Thank goodness,” says Ayesha Khan. “This is such a great place to work.”
“I agree,” says Hazel smoothly. “And we do apologize for any inconvenience.”
Ayesha Khan, after reassuring Hazel and Sophie that she has not been unduly troubled, departs for the work gallery, where her husband is already back before his laptop, typing away.
“This won’t become a publicity problem for the library, will it?” asks Hazel in a low voice.
Sophie shakes her head. Not that she believes the negative publicity that might arise wouldn’t impact the library at all, but people still go to movies and concerts despite the danger of a mass shooting. It will take a lot for patrons to abandon their favorite library. “The library will be okay.”
Whether Sophie will still be here to oversee the library, however, is a very different question.
“Willyoube okay?” asks Hazel.
A frisson of chill climbs up Sophie’s inner wrist. This is the second time Hazel has asked whether Sophie is okay. Why? Does she know something?
“Yes,” says Sophie with as authoritative a smile as she can manage. “Now I’d better reply to all those emails in my inbox.”
“Hey, Jonathan!” chirps Maryam. Her toned arms are on display in a sports tank top and her face is flushed and slightly damp—she might have just finished a workout before getting on their Zoom call. “I was wondering when I’d finally hear from you. But of course you met up with Ryan first.”
Jonathan’s heart does a somersault. “Did Ryan tell you?”
“He asked me ahead of time—wanted to know if I’d be cool with it.”
That isnotthe same as Ryan calling her afterward with all the deets. Jonathan hopes his disappointment isn’t obvious. “I didn’t know you guys kept up all these years.”
“We didn’t. He looked me up after the reunion—‘Hey, why weren’t you there’ and all that—and we picked up from there.” She leans forward, her dark eyes gleaming with curiosity. “So, are you still into him?”
Jonathan, his face burning, can only defend himself with rhetoric. “What do you mean,stillinto him—when was I ever into him? But enough about me. How are you?”
Maryam, as it turns out, taught middle school for a few years before she decided that seventh graders were the bane of her existence and she’d rather deal with criminals instead. “At least now I can drive past a school without breaking out in hives.”
They chortle over that. Then she says, “So, about your question…”
Sophie, concerned for Elise, who has to speak to Hagerty and Gonzalez, asked Jonathan if he could find out a bit more about the case. Jonathan figured Maryam was the best person to ask.
He pulls his chair closer to the screen. “Yes?”
“Sorry, I don’t have a ton to tell you,” says Maryam. “Theoretically they and we could be working on the same big case—”
“Wait, what?”
“Currently, the link between the two deaths is highly circumstantial but not nonexistent.”
“You mean, they both passed through the library in the final hours of their lives?”
“A bit more than that, but not much. She was found one mile from her apartment, he one-and-half miles from his hotel, and they were found about two miles apart—like I said, not much to go on.” Maryam brings what looks to be a turkey sandwich from offscreen and takes a bite. “Detective Hagerty has stated, in his professional opinion, that Bathurst was an idiot who trusted the wrong dealer in an unfamiliar city. He doesn’t want to waste his time on Bathurst when the real interesting case is Obermann. And he has some pull with management so Jones and I got Bathurst instead.”
Jonathan shoves a forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth, which leads to a digression on what they usually eat for dinner and what they can throw together quickly when they don’t feel like either cooking or breaking the bank ordering in.
All at once it doesn’t feel like decades have passed since they last talked.
It’s ten minutes later that Jonathan remembers he’s not there just to chat with an old friend. “Do you also think that Bathurst is a waste of time?”
Maryam dabs her lips with a napkin and drinks from a water glass. “I was definitely not happy to be saddled with the case, but let’s say I’m not as unhappy as I used to be.”
