Permanently Booked by Lisa Q. Mathews

any information she had at all on Lorella Caldwell to Detective Donovan?
    The Resident Services director picked an invisible piece of lint from her skirt. Dorothy carefully snipped the stem of a particularly morbid-looking daisy, waiting.
    “I looked at Lorella’s form quickly this afternoon, but it was mostly blank,” Jennifer said. “Of course, if anyone really needed it, a lot of the get-to-know-you information for new residents goes into our What’s Your Pointe? newsletter when they move in.”
    “Ah yes.” Dorothy busied herself gathering up dead leaves from the sink. “I’ll have to dig up my back copies.” That might be quite a job. Lately, she’d been placing them in the giant green recycling bin at the end of the hall on a fairly regular basis. After she’d read them, of course.
    “So tell me more about Lorella’s plans for the book club relaunch,” she said, bringing two glasses of ice water out to the living room. Mr. Bitey, she noticed, had reasserted himself a paw’s length from the corner of the couch. She seated herself next to Jennifer, just in case she needed to head the jealous kitty off again.
    “Well, we didn’t talk about them much, really,” Jennifer said. “Specifically, anyway. But I do have what Mrs. Caldwell wrote in her article.” She reached carefully across the couch, with a wary glance at Mr. Bitey, and took a brochure from one of the tote bags. “Here’s a copy of tomorrow’s newsletter. Mrs. Caldwell was hoping for a good turnout of residents for the organizational meeting on Friday. But I’ve heard the last time we had a book club here at Hibiscus Pointe, things didn’t go very well.”
    No, they certainly hadn’t. Dorothy quickly perused the article. “It says here that the club will meet twice each month. My, the reading list sounds quite...ambitious.”
    Perfect for anyone who felt inspired to read and discuss some of the longest classic novels ever written within two weeks.
    “Did you go to any of the meetings when Helen Murphy ran the book club here?” Jennifer asked. “That was before I started working here.”
    “Yes, I was a member,” Dorothy said. In its previous incarnation, the Hibiscus Pointe Book Club was a deadly dull affair, and entirely too exclusive, in her view. Strongly opinionated members were unwelcome, as were those whose reading tastes failed to meet with Helen Murphy’s approval.
    In a few short months, Helen had found herself in a book club of one. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately, in Summer’s case—she’d taken up the reins of the Residents Board. Everyone agreed that position was much better suited to her directorial talents.
    “Mrs. Caldwell was really serious about the classics,” Jennifer said. “I guess that’s not a big surprise, since she worked over at Santa Teresa College.”
    So Lorella and Charles Bell had once been colleagues. “My, I see all kinds of literary gems here,” Dorothy said, glancing down at the book club reading list again. Wuthering Heights , Jane Eyre , Anna Karenina ...each to be read within two weeks. “I assume she was in the English department, then?”
    “Yes, as an administrative assistant.” Jennifer said. “That’s what she listed on her information form. But she had a PhD, I think.”
    Interesting. Lorella hardly seemed like the sort of person who might find herself in any kind of serious trouble, Dorothy told herself. But obviously, someone had wanted her out of the way—permanently.
    Had Lorella startled that same person in the stacks, up to no good? But why would anyone be involved in some nefarious activity in such a small—and very public—place? There wasn’t much traffic in the library, and even less in the business center, but still...
    Most likely, the killer had grabbed a weapon from somewhere in the library to do her in. No one carried heavy gold bookends around with them.
    It definitely seemed like a crime of passion, as if the person hadn’t planned the murder.