Chapter Five
I arrive at the library at my usual time, already tense. I’ve seen and done a lot of unscrupulous things in my time, and had no reason to be so apprehensive over this whole thing that would probably turn out to be nothing—but I have an uncomfortable feeling about it all the same.
I wait around by the automatic doors, not wanting to make myself visible to the note writer just yet—the librarians’ desks are just around a corner from where I stand.
Amanda comes through the doors a few minutes later. “Have they spotted us yet?” she asks in a loud stage whisper.
I have to laugh, and suddenly realize how ridiculous I’m being. We’re in a library, for God’s sake—what did I think was going to happen?
“I’m laying low for now,” I say, playing along. Yesterday I knew I’d be glad for the conversation starter of the mysterious envelope, and now I am. “Look what came through my mail slot yesterday,” I say, pulling the note and keys from my pocket and holding them out just far enough so she has to move closer to me to inspect them.
“The handwriting on the package they came in was the same as the handwriting on the note you found from inside my library book,” I tell her, noticing as she leans in to take the note and keys from me that she has put on some perfume. Interesting.
“Was the package over-nighted, do you think?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“There would’ve been a special stamp on it. If there wasn’t, that means whoever’s been trying to contact you sent these things before he or she was sure you’d come here today.” She frowned. “That makes this whole thing more ominous, somehow.”
“I knew I invited you along this morning for a reason,” I say, shaking my head. “I never would’ve thought of all that.”
“Not the only reason, I hope,” she says, subtly raising an eyebrow as she hands everything back to me. “What’s with the random letters in this note—do you think it’s some kind of code?”
“I think it’s just what you say—random.” I put the note and keys back in my pocket. “Let’s go find out.”
We stroll casually over to the table and cushy chairs set up for indecisive library patrons and well-intentioned students. “Whoever has been trying to reach me will have a clear view of us here,” I say, sitting down.
Amanda sits down across from me and dumps her purse in the chair next to her. There we wait, looking around for about ten minutes before she breaks the silence.
“Suppose the note isn’t random,” she says slowly. “I mean, it came with a set of keys—and the staff rooms here aren’t numbered, they’re lettered. Look.”
I glance around. She’s right. Kitschy oversized letters hang over the locked doors, driving the point home that we’re in a place of letters. How come I never noticed that?
“It helps to have a new set of eyes,” she says. “Maybe you’re supposed to find this person somehow—maybe you’re not supposed to wait at all.”
“You don’t think someone will notice if we just start trying to unlock all the doors?”
“If we strategize, we won’t have to,” she says. “Pull out that note again.”
I unfold it and smooth it out on top of the table and we lean over it.
“Some of the letters are darker than others,” she points out. She reaches over to her purse and pulls out a notepad and pen.
“Only about seven—no, eight of them,” I answer, reading them off to her so she can write them down.
We look at what she’s written, and then look back around the library.
“It’s all those rooms over there,” I say, pointing to the wall of doors across the room from us.
“How many keys are on that ring?” she asks.
“Seven.”
She stood up and slung her purse over her shoulder. “How much would you bet the keys are arranged in the order of the doors on the wall?”
“Let’s find out.”
No one else in the library seems to notice as we try the first and last keys on the ring to see which fits the first door.
We open the door to a room of filing cabinets, but no people.
The second door is the same.
“What are we looking for exactly?” Amanda whispers.
“I guess we’ll know when we see it.”
The third door is a copy room, the fourth leads outside behind the library, but the fifth door, which has the most stubborn lock and a stuck door that seems to have spent an entire winter freezing shut, opens to reveal a book-keeping desk and a quite aged woman with piercing eyes.
“John,” she says, seeming utterly unsurprised at our entry. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
