A Day in Mossy Creek Page 6

  Orville shifted from one foot to the other. “I, uh, remembered how painful briars were when I got some stuck in what you might call one of my sensitive spots, and those things are smaller than a hair plug. So I figured maybe I’d just get me some of that Rogaine. Can’t be any stinkier than linament.”

  “Why not simply clip it short, like Sean Connery or Bruce Willis? Sexy men embrace their baldness.”

  She gave him a once over, rotated her finger, and he actually spun in a circle for her as she sized him up. “I don’t think I’d have any problem finding a woman for you to court. But you will need some new clothes. I’m in the beauty consultation business. Meet me Monday at Hamilton’s Department Store. We’ll pick out a new wardrobe, then swing by Rainey’s for a trim and a facial.”

  Mac snorted at the idea of Orville getting a facial.

  Sandy returned from her pick-up truck at that moment. “And maybe you can join our aerobics class to get in shape. There’s a few single ladies in the class.” She handed Amos the gold-embossed, good-for-a-lifetime, Christmas Decorating Gift Certificate we’d created for Orville. She recited, “We hereby promise to decorate Mr. Orville Gene Simple’s house for Christmas every year, and after Christmas is over, we hereby promise to un-decorate his house. See, Chief, we were telling the truth about storing the lights for him.”

  Amos perused the certificate. “Uh huh.”

  “And you really should make some changes inside the house, Mr. Simple,” Josie said. “The kitchen and baths at the very least need updating. The furniture, too. I took the liberty of making some sketches while I was waiting for the paint to dry.” She handed Orville her interior design card. “I could turn this house into a showcase.”

  “Women like nice houses,” Mac said, then shrugged when Amos frowned at him.

  “What do you say, Orville?” I asked. “Will you let us help you? You know we mean well. And we’re really sorry about the commode.”

  “No, you aren’t.”

  “Okay, so I’m not sorry. I hated that commode more than Sue Ora did.”

  Orville glanced at Jasmine, who winked at him, at Josie, who smiled hopefully, at Sandy, who shrugged, and then he turned his gaze to mine. “Oh, all right, Mrs. Campbell.”

  Mac’s expression was hard to decipher. He looked pleased that I might be off the hook, but worried about Orville. “Since the ladies are willing to help you become one of Mossy Creek’s most eligible bachelors as reparation for the pain and suffering they caused in today’s activities, will you drop all the charges pending against my wife and her partners in crime?”

  Orville sighed. “I guess so.”

  Amos shook his head as Josie whipped out her appointment book and started paging through for a good date. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, Orville,” Amos told him. “You’ll be discussing paint chips and learning white is bisque.”

  Mac clapped Orville on the back. “Congratulations, my friend. You’re now one of Patty’s visionary pieces.”

  Clay offered Orville his hand to shake. “I think I’m a visionary piece, too, and I like it just fine.”

  Orville couldn’t resist. Slowly, he smiled.

  Mossy Creek Gazette

  Volume V, No. 3 • Mossy Creek, Georgia

  The Bell Ringer

  Local Hero Catches Mysterious Library Prowler

  by Katie Bell

  Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot can rest easy now—their books aren’t going to take any more midnight strolls around the Mossy Creek Library. I’m happy to report that the case of the book-loving ghost has been solved. Hannah Longstreet, head librarian, says the culprit was caught, but no charges are being filed.

  “The capture went down as easy as a slug of cold gin on a hot night,” Hannah told me. “Yeah. It was sweet. Sweet like a soft bed in a cheap hotel next to a back-alley diner where the sign flashes EATS in neon the color of a doll’s lips right before she pulls a loaded piece from her purse and . . . excuse me, I seem to be channeling Mickey Spillane.”

  Hannah gives full credit for the caper closure to library intern, Linda Polk, and her daddy, Jimmy. The detective duo set up a sting operation Saturday night and nabbed the ghost red-handed.

  “You shoulda seen my daddy,” Linda said. “He tackled that ghost like Hulk Hogan doing a smack-down on the Rock. I’m calling the World Wrestling Federation.”

  Indeed! Check out the accompanying photo, courtesy of Hannah’s digital camera.

  Even pay-per-view can’t show you better wrestling action than this. I think we should give Jimmy Polk a stage name to use in his new sport.

  How about, “The Ghostbuster?”

  Chapter 4

  Books can “talk,” sure, but can they take a walk when you’re not looking?

  The Ballad of the Bookworm

  “LISTEN TO ME, Linda Polk, we are not calling the police and reporting we have a ghost moving books. For goodness sakes, Amos would most likely tell us we were a couple of doughnuts short of a dozen. Besides which, this is a busy Saturday, and I hear he and Sandy and Mutt are getting all sorts of strange calls. I hear that Amos just came back from some fiasco over at Orville Gene Simpson’s place, and you know anything involving Orville couldn’t have been normal. Well, this call would be even stranger! Beyond that, the county library supervisor might find out and fire me for not keeping the library shelves under strict Dewey Decimal System control.” Hannah Longstreet, the head librarian of Mossy Creek Library, adjusted her black-rimmed glasses, the better to stare me down. She wasn’t going to listen.

  “What else can we do? It’s not like we can call the ghost busters or something.” I sighed.

  I’d only been working part-time at the library since before Thanksgiving, and I liked it better than clerking at my Aunt Effie’s fabric store, but so far every time Hannah, I mean Mrs. Longstreet, opened the library and found books rearranged we had the same conversation. Heck, I didn’t mind if we had a word-starved ghost in our midst. Yes, it made a little more work for the rest of us, but on the whole, I thought it was kinda cool. My friends at school would freak if I could tell them I saw a ghost. But Hannah, her being in charge and all, she’d had her back up about it since she’d accused one or all of us high school part-timers (there were only three—Junie Biddly, Willa Sawyer and me) from the Friends of the Library of playing tricks on her. An epidemic of punking had broken out at the Bigelow high school and moved due north to Mossy Creek. So Hannah had started setting traps to catch us, then realized when she’d been the last one out and the first one in the next morning that we couldn’t have shelved the Civil War books next to the Nazi occupation of Europe, or the hunting and survival books next to our collection of local cookbooks. None of us had a key.

  We couldn’t really be upset about her suspicions. After all, what normal ghost would want to learn how to cook?

  And now the ghost had taken to poetry.

  You know, I love my job, reading to kids, helping them pick out books, keeping them from landing blows over the latest Harry Potter. But sometimes, in the dead of winter, especially after all the excitement of Christmas, our younger readers seemed a little possessed themselves.

  These were mountain kids—kids used to being outside and, as my granny used to say, runnin’ wild. So us volunteers had to keep busy staying one step ahead of bored seven-year-olds with library cards. This gave me a whole new respect for my elementary school teacher, Mrs. Hammer. She’d spelling-bee’d us into learning, offering a small prize for the winner.

  Since I was planning on becoming a teacher myself, I had to have a few tricks of my own.

  And the poetry contest was born. Anything to keep them mostly in their chairs and relatively quiet. First, we read poetry and nursery rhymes out loud, Dr. Seuss being voted the favorite for the second year running. The Night Before Christmas comi
ng a close second. Next, we sang nursery rhymes like Itsy-Bitsy Spider, Baa, Baa, Black Sheep, and I had to explain that no, nursery rhymes are not just for babies.

  You get the picture.

  So yesterday afternoon, after reading and singing, I assigned the group to write their own poems using the example of Hey Diddle Diddle. I promised that when they were done, we’d read them out loud and post the best ones by vote on the bulletin board near the front entrance of the library for everybody to read. And the winner would get the cherry flavored Tootsie Pop I carried in my pocket.

  Besides complaints of “Nothin’ goes with diddle,” the assignment went well. Mossy Creek kids learn how to compete on their mommas’ knees since none of us knew when we’d be called upon to best those snooty Bigalowans. At least it occupied eight kids for nearly forty minutes. At the end we had four readable examples due to an overuse of piddle. One of the diddle dissenters wrote:

  Hey, diddie, diddie,

  You look like a biddy,

  Your hair looks just like a broom.

  I didn’t take this personally since I knew my hair looked just fine. That lesson in beauty I’d gotten last year from Miss Jasmine Beleau, Mossy Creek’s sophisticated image consultant, had settled over me in permanent fashion. I never went out of the house now without primping just a bit. I could almost hear Miss Jasmine’s voice, “You never know who might wander into the local library.”

  Then there was:

  Hey diddle, diddle,

  a cat can’t play the fiddle

  and my dog Spenser barks at the moon.

  Also:

  Hey diddle, diddle

  I don’t care if you’re little

  Put your dish away with the spoon.

  This from one of the girls who did a lot of babysitting for her younger brother.

  And, my own personal favorite:

  Hey, who are you callin’ diddle?

  My name is Joe.

  Boys just don’t get poetry.

  There you have it, the whole enchilada of our Mossy Creek poetry talent in the ten-and-under group. That is until Hannah opened the library this chilly Saturday morning and while posting the new book list for the week, found an extra poem tacked up with the rest. This poem hadn’t been written by the children. She showed the carefully written verses to me as soon as I came in.

  Ballade of the Bookworm

  Far in the Past I peer, and see

  A Child upon the Nursery floor,

  A Child with books upon his knee,

  Who asks, like Oliver, for more!

  The number of his years is IV,

  And yet in Letters hath he skill,

  How deep he dives in Fairy-lore!

  The books I loved, I love them still!

  —Andrew Lang

  I held the paper by one corner in case it did something weird like disappear or flutter on its own. I might think it was cool for the library to have a ghost, but I didn’t necessarily want to shake hands with him, if you know what I mean. “So our ghost’s name is Andrew Lang?”

  “I don’t think so,” Hannah replied. “Andrew Lang died in Scotland around the turn of the century. I don’t see why he’d be haunting our library.”

  I gingerly placed the paper on the counter. “We have a book on handwriting, don’t we?” I wasn’t going to suggest calling the police again so they could dust the paper for fingerprints like they did on CSI. Especially with my own big ol’ thumb print on one side. “I could see if the book says anything that would help us figure it out,” I offered. But even I knew there was a slim chance the author knew anything about the handwriting of a ghost.

  “We did have a handwriting analysis book, but I think Sandy Crane borrowed it.” She wrote Sandy’s name on a piece of paper and underlined it twice. “I think I’ll call her.”

  “Excellent,” I said under my breath. Calling Sandy in most cases was even better than calling Amos. I settled near the counter to listen in.

  “Sandy, this is Hannah over at the library. Do you still have that handwriting analysis book you checked out last year?”

  There was a long space of silence on Hannah’s part. I imagine the air time was being filled up by Sandy making an excuse for not bringing the book back. Everyone in town knew Mrs. Longstreet guarded the books and her library territory with the jealous eye of a pit bull in charge of the dumpster behind Mama’s All You Can Eat Café.

  Then Hannah said, “Well, we need it because—” She caught herself and glanced at me. I pretended to be totally busy checking in the books that had been left in the overnight box. “Never you mind what we need it for. The overdue fine must be at least five dollars.”

  More silence.

  “I see. Well, no. No need to have the chief call. I suppose I can make an exception for books used in a criminal investigation but you need to bring it by—oh. Yes, I know you have other calls—important calls, but we—”

  I had to do my best to hide my amazement. Someone was actually getting away with a known overdue book.

  “I also wanted to ask you about a problem we’re having.”

  This time I did stop, book in hand, to look at her.

  “Yes, I believe we have a prankster in the library. No. Not really vandalism. It’s . . . someone is moving books, and I want to find out who it is.”

  Mrs. Longstreet yanked off her glasses and rubbed one eye. I’d seen her do that before. It usually meant she was gathering words for a storm. In this case I was willing to bet my volunteer salary that she’d love to just hang up the phone.

  “Security camera?” The eye-rubbing stopped and the glasses were resettled. “I’m not spending good library funds on cameras. Why, the Grim sisters would roll over in their graves, especially Sadie.” Everyone knew Miss Sadie and Miss Sarah Grim had donated money for the library with the stipulation that only Hannah would decide how to spend it. “The money the Grim’s left was only for books and book-related technology. If I use my tech budget to buy security cameras, I won’t be able to buy new bar code scanners this year—”

  Sandy must have cut her off at that point, because Mrs. Longstreet met my open-mouthed attention and scowled. I looked down quickly and concentrated on the book in my hands. The title was: Scottish Poetry.

  “Holy—” I dropped the book.

  “Linda!” Mrs. Longstreet admonished. Then to Sandy, “I have to go now. I’ll think about what you suggested. Goodbye.”

  Then she was picking up the book I’d dropped. “I’ve told all you volunteers to be careful with our books. One good drop to the floor can break the spine—”

  My first impulse is always to confess. In fact, back before I’d met Miss Jasmine I’d even confessed to some things I hadn’t done, just to make everybody happy—everybody meaning my daddy. In this case, pure startlement overcame my usual claim of guilt. “I’m sorry Mrs. Longstreet, but read the title.”

  She looked down, and I heard a small intake of breath. She fanned the book open to the index. “A sampling of Scottish Poetry.” One finger skimmed down the page. “Andrew Lang, 1844 - 1912. Ballade of the Bookworm.” Turning the book over, she examined it as if it might give us a clue.

  Nothing.

  “I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” she declared. “If I have to watch the shelves twenty-four hours a day.”

  Before I could offer to help, she assigned me a job. “Linda, I want you to forget what I taught you about always helping people find books. Let Junie do that. You and I are going to watch the shelves.”

  She tucked the Scottish poetry book under her arm like someone might snatch it away from her. “It should be safe for you to watch the 200’s to the 500’s, mostly philosophy, religion and the sciences, and I’ll watch the 600’s to 900’s. Whoever this is, they seem to be partial to the arts and h
istory. If you see something strange come and get me.”

  “Maybe it’s the Grim sisters?” I whispered. “They sound like they’d make good local ghosts to me.”

  Mrs. Longstreet looked like she was actually giving my question some thought. Then she shook her head. “No. Sadie and Sarah loved this library. They’d never do anything ‘out of order’ to it. Now go find a good place to set up a watch.” She patted the poetry book like our little secret. “We’ll catch this prankster red-handed.”

  We watched all day and as far as I could see, nothing happened except Junie got mad at me for ‘shirkin.’ In other words, making her do more work while I supposedly lounged around. I couldn’t tell her what I was really doing, so she’d just have to get over it. When it was time to close up and go home I helped shut down the computers at the front desk. Mrs. Longstreet was busy making some kind of list.

  “Do you want me to stay awhile longer? I could call my mom—”

  “No, that won’t be necessary, dear. I’m going to run out and pick up a few things from home. I’ll drop Rachel off at the Blackshears’. She loves to play with Li. Then I’ll come back. I’ve decided to spend the night here.”

  “Spend the night in the library?”

  She stopped writing and arranged her glasses to look at me. “Yes. I told you I intend to get to the bottom of this. After watching the shelves this afternoon, I realized this ghost or vandal—whoever—usually does his dirty work after the library is closed. So, I’ll lock up like I always do, but instead of going home, I’ll wait at my desk and see once and for all what goes on when the building is empty and quiet.”

  For some reason Mrs. Longstreet’s plan to stay alone in the darkened library worried me. Enough so that I spoke before thinking. “I could come back and stay with you.”