“You found her? What were you doing in the library?” Bing asked.

I explained how I’d seen the light on, gone in to investigate and found her lying at the bottom of the steps. I left out the part about all the blood.

“Oh dear, that must have been terrible for you,” Cordelia clucked.

“That must have happened early on.” Josiah scrunched up his weathered old face. “In all my years as postmaster, I don’t recall Lavinia ever gettin’ to the library before eight o’clock.”

“That’s true,” Hattie and Cordelia said at the same time, then looked at each other and giggled.

“Seems odd she fell. She got along pretty good every time I saw her around town,” Josiah added.

“But it must have been a fall,” Bing said. “No one would want Lavinia dead.”

I half-listened as the four of them rambled on about the subject, distracted by the swirling gray mist that was forming over by the mystery section. A prickly feeing of uneasiness settled over me—I knew what that gray mist was.

Pandora hopped off the counter and trotted over to the mist, batting at it playfully.

“Right, Willa?” Bing’s question tore my attention away from the swirly mist.

“Huh?”

“Lavinia came in early sometimes when she had a backlog of returns or books to catalogue.”

I thought about the question as I watched Bing weave a large gold coin in between his fingers. A retired magician, he was always fiddling with coins and doing impromptu tricks with various objects. I’d known Bing since I was a little girl, and he taught me a few of his tricks. Some of them I still practiced, but there were quite a few more of them, the ones he wouldn’t teach me, that had me baffled. I couldn’t figure out how he did them. It was almost as if he really was using magic.

The effect of the coin was mesmerizing. I watched it weave in front of his index finger, then behind his middle finger, then in front of the Magicians Guild ring he wore on his ring finger then behind the pinkie and around, making its way all the way back to his index finger. As I watched, I contemplated his question. Had Lavinia come in early sometimes? I was having a hard time remembering.

“I’m not sure, Bing. I can’t remember.” I looked at Josiah. “Do you remember, Josiah?”

Josiah looked like he was about to nod off. He tilted his head and looked up at the ceiling. I was about to prompt him again when he finally spoke.

“I can’t say for sure. I think one time she did come in early but that was before a big book sale,” he said. “Was she fixing to have a book sale?”

We all looked at each other and shrugged.

“I have no idea,” Hattie said.