The Suspect - L R Wright by L. R. Wright Read Free Book Online

more try. She
would get Phyllis to help her rewrite the ad. Maybe she had made too
modest a self-presentation. God knew, she didn't mind admitting it,
she would dearly love to meet an agreeable male person. It had been
far, far too long.
    At seven that evening she was in the library, and at
seven thirty George Wilcox came in, a bunch of irises in his hand.
"Cassandra," he said, presenting her with the flowers. "I
like saying your name. Never known another girl with that name."
    " I'm not fond of it, actually," she said,
smiling at him. "I'd have preferred being called something more
ordinary."
    " It's got a nice lilt to it," said George,
"you've got to admit that. How would you like to have a name
like mine, now? George. In your case it would be Georgina, or
Georgette, or some damn thing. It sounds like your mouth's full of
porridge, George does."
    "But it's what it means that's important,”
said, Cassandra.
    "Not what it sounds like. " She put down
the irises and whisked a dictionary out from under the counter. "Mine
means the unheeded bearer of bad tidings, that's what it comes down
to. But yours—” She looked it up. "Earthworker,” she
announced, triumphantly.
    "Farmer,” said George.
    "Or gardener,” said Cassandra. She closed the
dictionary with a snap and stuffed it back under the counter. "It
suits you.”
    " Maybe,” said George, grudgingly, and he
wandered off among the books.
    When the library had moved two years ago from its
old, cramped, musty quarters in the basement of a church to the new
building, Cassandra, eyeing the six wide floor-to-ceiling windows,
had gone off immediately to buy several large plants. Included in the
order were three Ficus benjamina, five or six feet tall, shivery and
graceful. Two days after they were set in place, they let loose a
shower of leaves. George Wilcox was waiting at the front door when
she arrived to open the library that day and was witness to her
dismay.
    "They don't like being moved, that's all,"
he told her. "Just leave them alone. Mist them a lot—squirt
them with water. They'll be all right."
    And they were. Cassandra took to consulting him
whenever she had worries about the plants, which she considered a far
weightier responsibility than the books, since she knew nothing about
them.
    George Wilcox was one of her more regular customers.
His preference among books was biographies, while hers was novels.
Eventually, casual conversation as he checked out his books led to
her reading some that he recommended and to his trying an occasional
work of fiction.
    He had started bringing her things a year ago:
flowers from his garden, interesting shells from his beach, sometimes
small potted plants which he told her sternly were for her house, not
the library. When his wife became ill in November, Cassandra helped
him choose books for her. And when she died, in March, Cassandra
appeared at his door with a chicken casserole, feeling stupid and
helpless, and in his kitchen she wept with him, and he patted her
shoulder and made her coffee.
    She wondered now, putting the irises in water, what
he would think if he knew about her ad in the paper. They had had few
personal conversations—although he had once told her, uneasy but
determined to speak his mind, that he was sure her mother would
survive quite happily in Sechelt without her. Cassandra, shocked to
find he had read her situation so accurately, didn't reply, and he
hadn't mentioned it since. She put the vase of flowers on the counter
and went to hunt up three romance novels for Mrs. Wainwright, whose
husband would stop by later to pick them up for her. Mrs. Wainwright,
a bustling, large-boned woman of fifty, was a practical nurse whose
hours seldom allowed her to visit the library in person. Cassandra
found George Wilcox scanning the shelves of mysteries and was
surprised.
    " It's that business with Carlyle," he said,
by way of explanation. "It's turned my mind to crime." He
jabbed his finger toward the shelves. "Who's