A Merciful Secret (Mercy Kilpatrick #3)(57)

If Truman were to look up librarian in a dictionary, there would be a picture of Ruth Schultz. She looked as if a Hollywood studio had outfitted her to play a cranky librarian. Gray hair in a bun. Reading glasses on a chain around her neck. Cardigan, slacks, dull shoes. But she was one of the kindest women he’d ever met. Constantly in motion, full of chatty conversation, and a fountain of knowledge on any random subject.

“I’m surprised you’re open today,” Truman said after her hug. “Two-thirds of the businesses are closed on account of the snow.”

Ruth dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand. “Of course I’m open. The city pays me to be available, so I’m going to be here. A little snow won’t stop me.”

“Did you clear the steps?”

“First thing when I got here. We get a lot of older patrons. I can’t have someone slipping and breaking a hip.” Her pale-blue eyes twinkled. “It’d be hard to get them to the hospital today.”

“Next time call the station. I’ll send Lucas or Royce to take care of your snow.”

“Now aren’t you polite.” She nodded in approval and leaned forward to whisper, “How about sending Ben Cooley? I haven’t chatted with him in forever.”

Truman knew why she hadn’t seen his senior officer. Ben was terrified of Ruth. Even though he’d been married over fifty years, Ruth still flirted with him as if they were teenagers. He froze and clammed up every time he saw her. A silent Ben Cooley was a wonder to behold.

“I hear you had a problem.” Truman knew it was time to change the subject.

“Absolutely. After I did the steps this morning, I went to shovel off the concrete slab at the back door and discovered the lock was broken. The door was closed, but anyone could open it.”

“Anything missing?”

“I immediately checked my little cash box. It doesn’t hold much. Just enough to make change when someone pays their overdue fees. It hadn’t been touched.” She frowned. “There isn’t much of value in here to steal. Why steal a book when you can just borrow it? Seems like a lot of work to break into a library when you could stroll right in.”

“Any cameras?”

Ruth snorted.

“I know. Your budget,” he admitted. “But I had to ask. Did this happen last night? Or at least sometime after you closed up yesterday?”

“I wasn’t open yesterday. We’re on a reduced schedule and only open three and a half days a week now. Tax cuts, you know,” she said with disdain. “But I know the door was locked when I left the evening before last. It’s part of my closing routine to check it.”

Truman took a slow look around the library. Ruth was right. He didn’t see anything to motivate someone to break open the door. His brain wouldn’t let him ignore the fact that two nights earlier someone had broken into the church. Someone who possibly drove a car similar to Salome Sabin’s. Did she break in here too?

He was jumping to conclusions.

“What about rare books?” he asked.

“I sent them to the county library. They have the facilities to take proper care of them.”

“I wonder if someone was looking for a place to get out of the cold.”

“That was my thought too once I didn’t see anything missing.” She paused. “But there was one unusual thing I noticed . . . but possibly I didn’t take care of it before closing.”

Truman waited.

“Two microfiche rolls left out near our machine.” A frown flitted across her face. “I swear I checked that table before we closed.”

“Microfiche? People still use that?” Truman remembered the old system from his high school library. A dated technique of preserving newspapers and magazines on film.

Ruth sniffed. “We don’t have the money to transfer the film records to a digital system. I won’t replace something that isn’t broken.”

“Where is it?”

She led him to the far end of the library, where a table holding what looked like an ancient computer monitor sat on top of a film feeder. Next to the table was a long wooden storage unit with dozens of small drawers. “Is that where the films are filed?” He noted the drawers didn’t lock.

“Yes.”

“What publications are on film?”

“Well, I have decades of The Oregonian going back into the eighteen hundreds, but once they started digitizing their records we no longer got new ones. I also have the Bend Bulletin up to about twenty years ago and our own local paper, which goes back to the middle of the century. It used to be published every day, you know. But about five years ago, it dropped to a weekly paper. Pretty soon that will probably be my library’s schedule.”

“I hope not,” Truman told her. “I know you do an important service.”

“No one researches in books anymore. It’s all available online. Even our fiction circulation has dropped. People are switching to digital book subscription services.”

“There will always be a place for libraries.” Truman hated the sad look in her eyes.

“I still see some regulars every week, and moms bring in their toddlers for story time, but I never see teenagers.”

“You said some rolls of film were left out. Do you remember which ones?”