Murder at the Library of Congress - Margaret Truman [93]
“Pretty good, only I have to get over to the main reading room. My shift starts at three.”
“I can do some,” Annabel offered.
“No need,” Sue said, reading a printout of the file she’d been copying. “Dolores said she’d take over for me.” As she said it, Dolores arrived.
“Hi,” Annabel said.
“Hi,” Dolores said, slipping into the chair Sue had just vacated. “Where do I start?”
Sue filled her in on where she’d left off, then said, “Got to change into my fancy librarian duds.”
Annabel couldn’t help but smile as she watched the intern run off to change wardrobes, tripping over a chair because her eyes were on a clock on the wall.
“Great kid,” Annabel said, peering over Dolores’s shoulder as the next file to be copied appeared on the screen. The words, of course, were familiar to Annabel, who had read them at home the night before. “If you get bored, give a yell and I’ll do some.”
Dolores sat up straight and looked up at Annabel, as though her presence was startling. “What? Oh, sure, thanks, Annabel. I appreciate it.”
Sue bounded out of the room she used as her dressing room and came to Annabel and Dolores.
“How do I look?” she asked, pirouetting.
“Like the next Librarian of Congress,” Annabel said.
“I wonder who the youngest one ever was,” Sue said.
“A lot older than you,” Dolores said, never taking her eyes from the screen as she scrolled through the text. Annabel was tempted to suggest that if Dolores kept reading what she was supposed to be copying and printing, she’d be there forever. But she held her tongue. It wasn’t her concern how or when the discs were duplicated and their material printed. That was up to Consuela. Sue left for her other LC life, and Annabel went to her space on the upper gallery to resume work on her article.
Dr. Cale Broadhurst had a last-minute, unscheduled lunch that day, too, with Mary Beth Mullin. After his meeting with Consuela Martinez and Annabel Reed-Smith, the Librarian canceled the date he had on his calendar with a former George Washington University colleague and asked Mary Beth to break her own previous engagement.
Seated at an isolated table at the University Club, where Broadhurst had been a member for years, they explored the legal ramifications of the Driscoll–Michele Paul connection.
“Are you sure Mrs. Reed-Smith is correct in what she says is on the discs?” Mullin asked the Librarian. “It sounds like speculation to me.”
“I don’t think so,” Broadhurst said. “We’ll know precisely what’s on those discs after they’ve been duplicated, and we have a hard copy to read. But it seems prudent to me that we assume the material on them bears on Michele Paul’s murder. I suppose that’s a decision the police will have to make. I’m glad we’re having copies made. At least anything of value to the library will still be in our hands.”
She nodded.
“But I’m not as concerned about that as I am about the public relations ramifications for the library. If David Driscoll, one of its leading benefactors, has been corrupting its professional staff for years, and, if that same David Driscoll was involved in some way with Michele’s murder, and, if the murder was linked to John Bitteman’s disappearance—we’ll be further smeared, this time on every tabloid TV show and in every supermarket rag. The World’s Great Unsolved Mysteries, direct to you from your nation’s library. By releasing the discs to the police, Mary Beth, we might as well hold a press conference to announce to the world that you don’t have to check out murder mysteries from our librarians, all you have to do is hang around and see the real thing.” He said it through tight lips, small muscles in each cheek contracting in anger.
“When will you have the hard copy, Cale?”
“Consuela promised them to me this evening.”
“Good. May I make a suggestion?”
“I welcome all the suggestions I can get.”
“Don’t worry about what handing over the discs to the police will mean, Cale. There’s really nothing else that can be done until you speak with Driscoll.”
A rare smile creased Broadhurst’s face. “The timing is dreadful,