spread out with the dictionary when I went back to the reference section. From there, I followed you into the office.”
“Lower your voice, please, Mr. Dunham, or I shall be forced to ask you to leave and bar you from the premises. You must have taken them with you when you received your telephone call. Perhaps they are in your pocket.”
Which was ridiculous as I was wearing canvas work pants and a denim shirt. No pockets big enough. I was certain the papers were not in the office, but I pushed past her desk and walked into the office without knocking. The old bat who roosted there was talking on the telephone. It didn’t sound like English, but I didn’t catch enough of what she was saying. She covered the handset when I walked in. “May I help you, sir?” she asked in a tone that could have frosted glass.
“I need to find a manila envelope with some documents. Miss Weeks thinks I may have left the materials in here.”
“I have no such envelope in here.”
“Are you sure?” That hot, angry feeling was building in me, matching my sweaty face and racing pulse. My game leg started to ache, too, a sure sign I was in deep trouble.
“I suggest that you leave this library, Mr. Dunham,” she said. “Your presence here is disruptive and no longer welcome.”
“But my envelope —”
“There is no envelope here, Mr. Dunham. I am sure you have done something else with it. Now I believe that you have business with the Deputy Sheriff?” It was clear she would find some business for me with Deputy Morgan if I didn’t exit gracefully.
The Chief Librarian stared me out of her office. I backed out, shutting her door, and looked around for Marion Weeks. She was nowhere to be seen, vanished just like my envelope of documents. I slowly turned and walked out the front door of the library and down the old flight of wooden stairs bolted to the outside wall of the city building.
There had to be a connection between Army CID talking to Dad and someone stealing my documents out of the library. Taking the envelope wasn’t Floyd’s kind of prank. He wouldn’t be willing to compromise our little project, not even in the name of scaring the pee out of me. Nobody else in Augusta, Kansas could possibly have wanted anything from those Nazi documents. They wouldn’t mean anything to anyone here except me. Or a military intelligence officer. CID wasn’t M.I., but the broken-armed Captain Markowicz could be playing a double role. I would if I was him.
I wondered why the CID man wasn’t bringing criminal charges against Dad for assault and battery. I would.
Chapter Four
O llie Wannamaker, newly minted Augusta police officer, sat at the desk in the police department’s cramped waiting room. Two benches flanked the desk, war bond and ration posters on the wall. The sandstone floor was blotched with odd stains, and someone was snoring inside the barred cell barely visible through a cracked open door behind Ollie’s desk. It sure sounded like Dad’s rattling breath, music to an entire childhood’s worth of sleepless nights.
“Oh, hey, Vernon. How ya’ doin’?”
Before the war, Ollie had been a moon-faced, big-boned kid with an unfortunate tendency to sprout blackheads. He’d gone through high school with me and Floyd. He even dated Mary Anne for a while, when we were all juniors and she was mad at Floyd for two months running. After graduation, Ollie went into the Army. Uncle Sam made him a military policeman in Hawaii, dragging drunks off beaches and patrolling nightclubs. At the end of the war, Ollie came home to Kansas — thin, tough, and tanned right out of his skin condition. He became a police officer — the natural thing to do given his service as a military policeman. I knew his Seventh Day Adventist parents weren’t too pleased about the career choice, but Ollie was a good cop who cared about the folks he had sworn to serve.
“I’m here for my dad, Ollie.”
Somewhere behind Ollie, the old man snored.
“Lower your voice, please, Mr. Dunham, or I shall be forced to ask you to leave and bar you from the premises. You must have taken them with you when you received your telephone call. Perhaps they are in your pocket.”
Which was ridiculous as I was wearing canvas work pants and a denim shirt. No pockets big enough. I was certain the papers were not in the office, but I pushed past her desk and walked into the office without knocking. The old bat who roosted there was talking on the telephone. It didn’t sound like English, but I didn’t catch enough of what she was saying. She covered the handset when I walked in. “May I help you, sir?” she asked in a tone that could have frosted glass.
“I need to find a manila envelope with some documents. Miss Weeks thinks I may have left the materials in here.”
“I have no such envelope in here.”
“Are you sure?” That hot, angry feeling was building in me, matching my sweaty face and racing pulse. My game leg started to ache, too, a sure sign I was in deep trouble.
“I suggest that you leave this library, Mr. Dunham,” she said. “Your presence here is disruptive and no longer welcome.”
“But my envelope —”
“There is no envelope here, Mr. Dunham. I am sure you have done something else with it. Now I believe that you have business with the Deputy Sheriff?” It was clear she would find some business for me with Deputy Morgan if I didn’t exit gracefully.
The Chief Librarian stared me out of her office. I backed out, shutting her door, and looked around for Marion Weeks. She was nowhere to be seen, vanished just like my envelope of documents. I slowly turned and walked out the front door of the library and down the old flight of wooden stairs bolted to the outside wall of the city building.
There had to be a connection between Army CID talking to Dad and someone stealing my documents out of the library. Taking the envelope wasn’t Floyd’s kind of prank. He wouldn’t be willing to compromise our little project, not even in the name of scaring the pee out of me. Nobody else in Augusta, Kansas could possibly have wanted anything from those Nazi documents. They wouldn’t mean anything to anyone here except me. Or a military intelligence officer. CID wasn’t M.I., but the broken-armed Captain Markowicz could be playing a double role. I would if I was him.
I wondered why the CID man wasn’t bringing criminal charges against Dad for assault and battery. I would.
Chapter Four
O llie Wannamaker, newly minted Augusta police officer, sat at the desk in the police department’s cramped waiting room. Two benches flanked the desk, war bond and ration posters on the wall. The sandstone floor was blotched with odd stains, and someone was snoring inside the barred cell barely visible through a cracked open door behind Ollie’s desk. It sure sounded like Dad’s rattling breath, music to an entire childhood’s worth of sleepless nights.
“Oh, hey, Vernon. How ya’ doin’?”
Before the war, Ollie had been a moon-faced, big-boned kid with an unfortunate tendency to sprout blackheads. He’d gone through high school with me and Floyd. He even dated Mary Anne for a while, when we were all juniors and she was mad at Floyd for two months running. After graduation, Ollie went into the Army. Uncle Sam made him a military policeman in Hawaii, dragging drunks off beaches and patrolling nightclubs. At the end of the war, Ollie came home to Kansas — thin, tough, and tanned right out of his skin condition. He became a police officer — the natural thing to do given his service as a military policeman. I knew his Seventh Day Adventist parents weren’t too pleased about the career choice, but Ollie was a good cop who cared about the folks he had sworn to serve.
“I’m here for my dad, Ollie.”
Somewhere behind Ollie, the old man snored.
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