As soon as I could I extracted Diesel from his cadre of young admirers and led him behind the reference desk where Teresa waited. She had three cats of her own, and she was as fond of Diesel as anyone here.
“Charlie, what are you doing here? This is an unexpected pleasure,” Teresa said. “And Diesel, how are you?” She squatted in front of the cat in order to give him some attention, rubbing his head affectionately.
Diesel purred and warbled while I explained.
“I came to see you,” I said. “I need your help with something.”
Teresa stood. “Sure, come on back to my office.”
Diesel and I followed her. Teresa was the head of reference for the library as well as the assistant director. She also supervised the library’s few volunteers, and I had worked closely with her for almost three years now.
She sat down behind her desk and motioned for me to take a seat across from her. I did so and unhooked Diesel’s leash from his harness. He padded around the desk and climbed up into Teresa’s lap. When he sat up his head was actually a bit higher than hers, and I had to smile at the sight.
“What can I do for you, Charlie?” Teresa said as she rubbed Diesel under the chin.
“It has to do with Godfrey Priest,” I said.
Startled, Teresa looked at me. “That’s odd,” she said.
“How so?”
“I had a call just a few minutes ago from Detective Berry,” she said. “She’s coming in tomorrow morning to talk to me about something to do with Godfrey. She didn’t say what, exactly, just that she needed some information and someone had suggested me to her. Was that you?”
Kanesha had acted more quickly than I expected. At least she had accepted my suggestion, I thought.
“Yes, it was,” I said. “I’m being really naughty in coming to talk to you before she does, but I’m letting my curiosity get the better of me, I’m afraid.”
Teresa laughed. “I promise not to rat on you. What is it you and Deputy Berry want to know?”
“Information on local writers’ groups,” I said. “If there are any, I figured you’d be bound to know.”
“Thanks,” Teresa said. “We do try to keep track of any community activities to be prepared for the inevitable questions.”
“I know,” I said, grinning. “I’ll never forget the time I got a call from a woman—this was in Houston—who was looking for information on an organization for cats.” I had to laugh, just thinking about it.
“What’s so funny about that?” Teresa asked.
“She had heard about a group that knitted socks for cats, she said, and she wanted to join them,” I said. I chuckled again.
Teresa joined in my laughter. “I can’t imagine one of my cats allowing me to put socks on her or him. They’d have a fit.”
“I thought it was pretty funny,” I said. “But of course I couldn’t tell her that. So I found her the name of a contact person for a local cat fanciers’ group. I never heard whether she found what she was looking for.”
“At least you gave her something,” Teresa said, still smiling. “Now, about writers’ groups. Yes, I can think of several. There’s one group that’s been meeting here at the library for about twenty years. They’re all poets, though, and somehow I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for. Not if it has something to do with Godfrey Priest.”
“Right,” I said. “I want to know if there was a group he was ever a part of, or maybe whether he spoke to local groups when he came back to Athena.”
“And you can’t tell me exactly why you want this information?”
“No, I can’t,” I said with regret. “You don’t mind, I hope.”
“I can live with it,” Teresa said wryly. “Okay. Godfrey Priest and writers’ groups.” She frowned as she thought. By now Diesel had settled down in her lap, his head against her chest as he purred in deep contentment. Teresa stroked his head gently.
I kept quiet while she dredged through her memory banks. She had amazing recall—one reason she was such a terrific reference librarian. If there were something to find, she’d find it.
“It has to be at least twenty years ago now,” Teresa said. “Godfrey Priest hasn’t spoken at this library in at least that long. He did participate in a fund-raiser we had about seven years ago, spoke at a Friends of the Library dinner, but that was it.”
“What about twenty years ago?” I said, prompting her gently when she fell silent again.
“There was a group that met here occasionally back then,” Teresa said. “Seven or eight people, I think. They weren’t together that long, or at least they didn’t ask to use our meeting room for long. They could have continued meeting somewhere else.”
“Do you recall who was in the group?” I kept my fingers crossed.
“I can do better than that,” Teresa said with a smile. “I can show you a picture of them.” She scratched Diesel’s head. “But you’re going to have to let me up.” Diesel sat up, butted his head against her chin, and jumped to the floor at her gentle urging.
“A picture would be great,” I said as Diesel came around the desk to sit by my chair.
Teresa got up from her desk. “I’ll be back in a minute. What I want is in one of the filing cabinets behind the reference desk.”
Diesel and I waited quietly for her return. She was gone less than five minutes.
When she returned she handed me a folder. I examined the labeclass="underline" “Library Annual Reports.”
“I put the relevant one on top,” Teresa said as she resumed her seat behind the desk.
I extracted it from the folder and laid the rest aside on top of her desk. The report consisted of only a few pages, and it was on page four that I found the photograph Teresa wanted me to see. It was rather small, and the caption only said, “Writers’ Group Meets with Local Novelist.”
In the center of a group of six people was Godfrey Priest—looking much younger and much less successful than he did when I saw him a few days ago. That was only natural. This picture was taken before he hit it big.
I examined the faces of the others in the group. I recognized two of them right away, and I was stunned as I put the names to the faces.
Julia Wardlaw and Rick Tackett stood on either side of Godfrey, both smiling into the camera.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“You look shocked,” Teresa said. “Is anything wrong?”
“I’m just really surprised,” I said. “I see two people in this group I never expected to see. Two people I had no idea were interested in writing.”
I examined the other faces in the group. Two of them looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place them. If only the caption to the picture had included their names.
I was about to hand the report back to Teresa to ask whether she knew who they all were when I spotted something odd in the picture. I held it closer and squinted. The resolution wasn’t great, but I thought I saw the top of another head peeking out from behind Julia’s shoulder, the one next to Godfrey.
“Looks like there’s another person here in the background,” I said. I held the report across the desk to Teresa. “See what you think. Also, do you know who all the people are?”
Teresa examined the picture for a moment before laying the report aside. She opened one of her desk drawers and rummaged through it. “Ah, here it is,” she said. She brandished a magnifying glass. She picked up the report again and examined the picture with the aid of the glass.
“I think you’re right,” she said after a moment. “That does look like someone’s head. It’s odd, though. Why wouldn’t whoever it was want to be visible in the picture?”
“Beats me,” I said. My heartbeat picked up though, because I wondered if the mystery person behind Julia was X. Based on the letters I had read, X shunned the spotlight, and it could be that he or she avoided having photos taken.