Page 12 of Booked for Murder

“Well, that’s something. What’s the timeline on the new floors opening?”

“You have until the end of the year.”

While the open floors needed shelves and books, they didn’t need a huge amount of restoration work, and I’d be using the budget to give the place a facelift. With over half a year to work with, I could get a lot done without overspending, too. “Seriously, Beatrice. What’s the catch?”

She chuckled. “Beyond my boss breathing down your neck about every payment you want to make during the renovation work?”

“Yes, beyond that.”

“You’ll likely have to deal with the donor when the floors officially open, but that’s it.”

Ew. “I will do it for the sake of the library.”

“I figured you would. So, tell me everything you know about Senator Godrin’s death. We want to be prepared when the police come knocking at our door.”

I almost pitied Beatrice and the main branch. Should the police come knocking at their door, no amount of preparation would spare them from the scrutiny of law enforcement seeking the killers of a pure adept.

Four

I still liked fast cars.

I really needed to purchase a cell phone. I’d opted against getting one, not because of the money, but because it represented a lot of things I didn’t want in my life. When I’d worked as Bradley’s bodyguard, a cell phone had shackled me to my job. Every moment, waking or otherwise, I worked. My life hadn’t been my own, and I’d known that going into the contract. I’d agreed to it for a lot of reasons, but making certain my parents could retire and live long, happy lives had been my top motivation.

I wondered how they’d taken news of the crash.

I wondered if they even knew about the crash.

In the months following the accident, I’d taken care to keep from wondering what Bradley had done after he’d walked away. I’d only cared he’d walked away, which he had. It’d been my first coherent question. It’d also been my last question about my boss and my former life.

Unless I could fully return to my work, which I couldn’t without a miracle, there was no point worrying about it. My parents were protected, and that was all I cared about.

The only thing my real rating was useful for was producing children, and I needed a man for that. Unless I developed some strong desire to locate a suitable man, I’d just wistfully think of having kids and leave my options open. Leaving my options open seemed silly to me, as while I could afford a child, I lacked the time to have one without a man around to pull his weight in the relationship.

As cell phones were easier than kids, I bit the bullet and headed to the nearest store to the main branch to get one. With no life and living as frugally as I could, I could afford any one in the store, even the ridiculous models Bradley favored. I’d always picked a lower-end phone, something functional, practical, and easy to replace if it were damaged in the line of duty.

Fuck practical.

I’d pull a Bradley and choose the kind of phone he’d like, something the me from the past would never do. She liked fast cars and doing her job well.

I still liked fast cars and doing my job well, but I’d changed.

I would indulge and pick a good phone. I’d get every bell and whistle I could get my hands on, because while I was a librarian, while I lived like I was poor, I could afford some luxuries, including a ridiculously expensive doodad I’d put in my pocket and use to play on the internet more than I’d make calls on it.

My boss and co-workers would love me, too. Nobody would have to come around my place and leave me letters if they wanted something—and I wouldn’t have to make the hike to work if I contracted some sort of plague, which I managed once every three or so months.

Stalking one of the staff, I pointed at the sort of phone Bradley would cart around with him and asked the teen, who likely barely squeaked over the age of employment, to show me the latest and greatest.

At almost two thousand dollars, the latest and greatest better last me three years without a single hiccup. The case dinged me an extra hundred dollars, but it was leather and designed to look like a book. Fleeing the store, I returned to Beatrice’s office long enough to snatch one of her business cards while showing off my new toy. She gave me two thumbs up while listening to someone on the phone, and I staged my exit to indulge in some time among the books before beginning the tedious process of protecting myself—and my fellow librarians—from being booked for murder.

Snooping into police investigations took skill, and the work began with the media. Often, the media helpfully provided the name of the investigators looking into the death of a prominent member of society. With the investigators’ names, I could use some of my less savory skills to poke my nose where it didn’t belong.

According to the media, the investigation was a joint effort between the local NYPD and the FBI, which would complicate matters for me. Snooping on the cops would cost me twenty minutes, as their internal network was about as secure as using a laundry basket to protect Fort Knox. The FBI took their cyber security seriously, making tunneling into their systems difficult at best.

I took over one of the public computers, logged in with a throwaway public account with ‘accidental’ administrative privileges, and installed the software I needed to tunnel into a different computer in the system. I repeated this process five more times before selecting an unused computer on the other end of the main computer room. From there, I tested an old login I’d pilfered from a cop while working for Bradley to discover it still worked.

Someone needed to tell the cops they needed to change their vpn logins at least every few years.

If the cops had a good system administrator, they might notice my login, so I got to work, checking the most probable places I could think of for information on the senator’s murder.