look dreary; it was nothing like the shiny new superstore that had opened out on the Interstate. Nevertheless, it offered a change from the gray monotony of winter in Maine.
Lucy stopped at the magazine rack and leafed through one of the womenâs magazines but decided she didnât want to get organized and wasnât interested in perking up her wardrobe or spicing up favorite family meals. What she really wanted to know was who killed Bitsy, and why, information she wasnât going to find in Family Circle . She replaced the magazine and slowly pushed the cart along, pausing at the meagre display of fresh flowers and potted plants.
Why didnât they ever have anything but those ghastly carnations? The red color was an unpleasant reminder of Bitsyâs blood, spreading out on the gray industrial tile of the workroom. She picked up a little polka-dot plant in a pink pot and examined it; it didnât look worth three ninety-nine so she put it back.
Dispirited, she pushed on to the produce department, wishing that she hadnât gotten so angry at Miss Tilley. She shouldnât have reacted the way she did; half of what Miss Tilley said was for effect. She loved to shock people, and she had certainly succeeded this morning. Lucy had found the old womanâs callousness toward Bitsyâs death shocking, but sometimes it seemed to her that old people didnât react in quite the same way to death as younger people. She remembered her own grandfather checking the obituaries every morning and his satisfaction when he occasionally discovered heâd outlived a younger acquaintance.
âNever touched a drop and wouldnât eat red meat,â heâd comment. âDidnât do him much good, did it?â
She smiled to herself, remembering a spry old fellow in a plaid flannel shirt neatly topped with a bow tie, and khaki pants held up by suspenders. He certainly enjoyed an occasional glass of whiskey, and insisted on meat and potatoes for dinner every night. Grandmaâs occasional experiments with spaghetti and Spanish rice had not been successful. He had lived to be eighty-five even though he never ate a raw vegetable and considered fruit unfit for human consumption unless it was baked inside a pie crust.
Lucy reached for a bag of oranges and, on further consideration, added a bag of grapefruit. Even if the board members had favored Bitsy, she thought, they would have been thoroughly dismayed by her proposal to sell Josiahâs Tankard. An idea like that would have lost her some friends, that was for sure.
She stopped, resting her forearms on the handle of the cart, and considered a display of cereal. Now that sheâd had time to think it over, Miss Tilleyâs attitude toward Bitsy wasnât really all that surprising. Miss Tilley had devoted her life to the library; she had worked there for fifty years or more. It was much more than a job to her. The library contained everything she held dearest in life, including Josiahâs Tankard. She must have been deeply hurt when she was forced to retire and her job was given to Bitsy. And it certainly didnât help matters that Bitsyâs attitudes were so radically different from hers.
If Miss Tilley was entitled to dislike Bitsy, if she regarded her as an enemy, Lucy guessed she couldnât blame her for taking some satisfaction in her demise. Putting it that way made it seem better, she decided. âDemiseâ was a much nicer word than âmurderâ.
Miss Tilley was just reacting in a very human way. Queen Elizabeth I probably indulged in a chuckle or two when she succeeded in detaching Mary, Queen of Scotsâ head from her neck.
And besides, she was never going to get to the bottom of this without Miss Tilleyâs help, she decided. Miss Tilley knew everything about everybody in town, and who had what skeletons hidden in which closet. She also knew a lot about Bitsy, even though that knowledge was tainted