Miss Zukas and the Island Murders

Avon Books

On Friday, when the letter arrived, Miss Helma Zukas was seated at her desk in the overcrowded workroom of the Bellehaven Public Library.

On her desk blotter lay a week-old newspaper article listing ten books a local group, calling themselves Save Your Kids, demanded be withdrawn from the library collection. Two of the books, including Madonna's Sex, weren't even owned by the library, although twenty-three patrons had requested them since the article, appeared in the Bellehaven Daily News.

In her precise penmanship, Helma Zukas listed the remaining eight books, intending to research their publishing histories for a possible well-documented rebuttal to Save Your Kids.

It was the second week of February and the third day of a relentless cold rain that had blown inland off Washington Bay.

Bellehaven, Washington, a temperate city where the inhabitants grumbled that snow was about as likely as sunshine, was saturated. Mists clung to the hills and obscured the Cascade range behind the city; the ground squished; water seeped through concrete walls; buoyant hairstyles wilted flat. And in the library, the heating system ran hot and cold.

The wind rattled a roof fan and Helma Zukas buttoned the top button of her green wool sweater and pulled her hinds inside her sleeves.

Miss Zukas, although possessing a sense of fashion, was not a follower of fads. She wore a touch of pink lipstick but no eye makeup. Her ears were not pierced, nor were her nails tinted with any polish but clear. Not that she was without indulgences. Barely visible from beneath the hem of her green dress was the lacy edge of a teal satin slip that matched other intimate apparel she ordered from a very expensive catalog that arrived wrapped in plastic in her mailbox.

"Fan mail!" Eve sang out, swooping into Helma's cubicle as if she, were on roller skates. She dropped a haphazard stack of mail into Helma's empty desk tray, her eyes sparkling. "Pretty cruddy day, huh?"

Helma glanced at the rain spattering dully against the library's windows. "You sound almost happy about it, Eve."

Eve, the youngest librarian on the staff, was in charge of the fiction collection. She lived above a pizza parlor with her boyfriend and thrived on pizzas customers ordered and then neglected to pick up.

"I have this fantasy," Eve said, dropping her voice and pushing back her yellow curls, "that if this stuff would only keep up, certain people would run screaming back to their homeland."

Eve meant Ms. Moon, the new library director, hired from California last year by the library board in their stated effort to import "new blood" into the Bellehaven Public Library system.

Eve pointed to the Save Your Kids article on Helma's desk and stuck out her lower lip. "Why ban Little Red Riding Hood? What did she ever do?

"I believe it was the wolf who did it," Helma said. "But don't worry, she's safe. Fortunately, the Constitution's still in effect."

"Yow!" Eve yelped and jumped farther into Helma's cubicle, rubbing her hip.

"Whoops, sorry," Curt, one of the pages, apologized, grinning widely as he pulled a loaded book truck to the side of the aisle. "There's not enough room back here to get through."

"Yeah, sure," Eve told him. "Likely story."

Curt shrugged and continued on his way, still grinning.

Eve leaned close to Helma. "You'll never in lion years guess who I saw coming out of the pizzeria last night."

"Is this gossip, Eve?" Helma asked.

Eve giggled. "I hope so."

"I really don't care to listen to gossip."

"Then I won't tell you, but picture two of our unlikely comrades gazing moonstruck into each other's eyes." Eve battled her own lashes in an exaggerated flutter. "And that's all I'll say." She waved her hand and sing-songed "See ya!"e L.

Helma straightened the stack of mail Eve had delivered. Two of their comrades? There were six librarians and it wasn't Eve or Helma so that left . . . Helma shook her bead. It wasn't any of her business. She slipped an M & M from the Chinese enameled box on her desk to her mouth, discreetly holding it beneath her tongue, and opened the first envelope: an ad for noiseless pencil sharpeners. She dropped the brightly colored brochure into her wastebasket.

Curt was right; there really wasn't enough space in the workroom. On one side, cramped cubicles for four of the six librarians were arranged against the wall, one after the other, separated by low bookshelves. At the end of the workroom, Ms. Moon, the director, occupied the only office with a door and located next to her was the awkwardly small librarians' lounge. At the opposite end of the room, George Melville's cataloging struggled to create order out of overloaded book trucks, stacked cardboard boxes and haphazard labeling stations, not to mention the disarray caused by the ongoing card catalog conversion to computer.

The next envelope held an interlibrary loan request that should have been routed to Mrs. Carmon. Helma jotted Mrs. Carmon's name on the envelope and set it aside.

In the cubicle beside Helma's, Patrice, the social science librarian for whom the staff had thrown a retirement party last fall before she changed her mind and returned, spoke on her extension in a coaxing, soothing voice.

Helma wasn't listening--not at all--but she couldn't help but catch the word, "Binky." Every morning and again after lunch, Patrice phoned home and talked to Binky, her French poodle, over her answering machine. "He won't eat his dinner if I forget," she'd once explained.

The next piece of mail was a legal-sized envelope with Helma's full name, "Miss Wilhelmina Cecelia Zukas," typed above the Bellehaven Public Library's address. There was no return address.

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Excerpted from Miss Zukas and the Island Murders by Dereske, Jo Copyright © 2004 by Jo Dereske. Excerpted by permission.
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