Last Scene Alive

"Sam thinks she'll come back. If he wasn't already married, and if doing a mixed-race relationship wouldn't be so out of Sam's league, I'd say he was in love with that woman."

Immediately, I felt something click, and I knew Perry was right.

Ultraconventional, ultraconservative lily white Sam Clerrick, married and the father of two, was in love with African-American left-wing former-bombmaker Anita Defarge. If she was his soulmate, God truly had a sense of humor.

I shook my head to clear it. "Perry," I said, "do we actually have any work to do?"

"I guess you could be entering the patron requests," he said, with a sigh. That was a nothing job, recording the patron requests for specific books so we could fit them into our budget. "There's only one patron in the building, Josh Finstermeyer. He's over in periodicals."

I gri

"Mark Chesney?"

"One of the movie people."

"Yes, the assistant director."

"Do you know him very well?"

"Hardly at all. He seems nice enough. I don't think working for Joel Park Brooks would be a job for the fainthearted."

Perry was fiddling with some reserved books. I waited to see what he'd say, with some curiosity.

"He came back in this morning," Perry said.

I tried to think of a neutral response. "Oh?" was all I could come up with. I had a feeling I was about to be confided in. Perry fiddled with the books some more. "Had he found some books he'd overlooked?" I prompted him.

"More things she'd checked out? No," Perry said. "He, ah, wanted to know if I'd go have a drink with him after work tonight."

"Okay." I shrugged. "Are you going?"

"I'd love to talk to him," Perry confessed. "Someone who lives and works in Hollywood. God, that would be so interesting. You know, I've always loved to be in the community theater plays, and I've done a couple of things in Atlanta."

Actually, I had forgotten all about Perry's obsession with the theater.

"I'd always hoped I'd get a chance to talk to your stepson," Perry went on, "but he was only in town so briefly when he came, and I could tell you two didn't have a good relationship."

"That's putting it mildly."

"So now this Mark, wanting to talk to me, it just seems so ... exciting."

"So go."

"But at the same time, it seems like a ... date." Perry flushed dark red. "I mean, why me? Would a regular guy just make a point of coming in and inviting another guy out for a drink?"

In my opinion, no. But I felt totally unqualified to give Perry advice on this issue. I had long suspected Perry had so much trouble maintaining relationships with women because he was backing the wrong horse, orientation-wise— but I sure wasn't going to suggest that to him.

"If you want to go, go. It doesn't commit you to anything," I said at last. "If you don't have a good time, if something happens that—doesn't interest you, that you don't feel comfortable with, get up and leave." I shrugged again.

He brightened as if I'd given the date my blessing. "That's the right way to look at it," he said. "You're so wise, Roe."

That was me—the wise librarian of Lawrenceton, Georgia.

Our evening dragged. We were supposed to get off at nine, and at eight-thirty Perry excused himself to go through his getting-ready ritual, whatever that consisted of.

I heard the drone of an electric razor from the men's rest-room.

No one had shown a face in the library for the past hour, when Josh had left. I'd heard some books thud down into the book drop, but that was the most action we'd had. I began straightening the desk for the morning people. My arm was hurting, and I was looking forward to another pain pill and my own bed. The energy I'd recouped from the nap had long been used up, and I was very tired. I wondered where Robin was, what he was doing, whether he knew suspicion had crossed my mind. I wondered how Barrett was feeling, if he'd gotten over the shock of finding Celia dead. I wondered if he was a serious suspect in Celia's death.

While I was pondering all these things, I found a book with a number of loose pages. One of the day workers had put it on the cart to return to the stacks. I snorted with indignation. That book had to go back to the repair area.

"Mark's here!" Perry called. I turned to look at the front doors. Perry was wearing a black leather jacket and he looked really good. Mark was wearing a fresh shirt and creased khakis. "I'm going to go on and leave if that's okay with you, Roe."

It lacked only ten minutes till closing time. "Sure. All I have to do is lock the back door on my way out." I'd closed the library many times.

Perry and Mark waved as I locked the double glass doors behind them, and they strode off into the night. I began turning out lights in the main room. Of course, we kept some on all night, but that still left plenty to do. I looked around the big room, took one big inhalation of eau de book, and opened the heavy door that led to the new wing of the library. The employee lounge still smelled of Perry's cologne, and I decided that if Perry was putting on cologne and shaving for a drink with a guy, he wasn't as totally clueless of his own nature as he'd tried to appear. I got my purse out of my locker, extracted my keys, and spotted a light still burning in Sam's office. I went to switch it off. Now the employee lounge was the only lit room.

The building suddenly felt very empty, uncomfortably empty.

I heard someone fumbling at the lock outside and I stood in the middle of the floor, paralyzed with sudden fear. The door flew open, picked up by the wind outside. I realized as a leaf gusted in that it was begi

Patricia Bledsoe—I could not think of her by her real name—stepped in from the dark. She was as astonished to see me as I was to see her.

"He hasn't called the police," I said instantly.

She gave a sigh. I thought it was of relief. "I saw your car in the parking lot, but I noticed two people came out the front. I thought you'd gone somewhere with Perry," she said. "Jerome's out in the car. We had to turn back halfway to ... well, halfway, and come back. I forgot something important."

"Get whatever it is, don't mind me," I said. "I'm not even here." I'd dropped my purse on a table, and now I picked it up again. Patricia sped into her office, pulling a drawer out all the way and fumbling under it. Her hand came up clutching an envelope, and I realized she'd had it taped to the bottom of her drawer. How the paranoid live. Though, in Patricia's case, the paranoia was justified.

"Where will you go?" I asked. "Wait a minute, forget I asked that."

And we both heard the back door begin to open. Patricia hadn't locked it behind her.

With a desperate expression on her face, Patricia ducked down below her desk. I stepped out of her office, hoping the light in there didn't show anything suspicious over the half-wall.

To my surprise, Will Weir stepped in. I'd half-forgotten out conversation. His timing was awful.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, not caring if I sounded rude or not.

"I'm glad I caught you," he said, smiling. "I'm sorry if I scared you. Is it illegal, coming in the back way? The front was locked, and it's not nine yet."

No, it was all of 8:58. I felt abruptly uneasy. "You're not supposed to come in this door," I said. I didn't smile back. "You're going to have to wait to come to the library tomorrow. I've shut everything down."

"I just needed to see the books Mark brought in," he said, still smiling. "I see they're over here in the box."

"It's too late. You have to come back tomorrow."