Peril in Paperback: A Bibliophile Mystery

hair back from her face.
    “What happened?” she whispered, her voice groggy.
    “You don’t remember?” Gabriel asked.
    “Somebody pushed me, hard. I fell.”
    Gabriel cast a quick look at me over his shoulder before turning back to Kiki. “Did you see who did it?”
    Her eyes fluttered open. “No.”
    An hour later, Gabriel and I, with help from Grace and Suzie, had tucked Kiki into her bed. She was conscious and in pain, but essentially on her way to recovering completely.
    Earlier, as Suzie had helped Kiki into her nightgown, I had attempted to ask her a question or two, trying to jog her memory. “Do you remember smelling anything unusual or hearing anything in the seconds before you were pushed?”
    She tried to think, but her head hurt too much. I told her we could deal with it all in the morning. She assured us that she would try, because she was stumped as to who would want to hurt her so badly.
    Wednesday morning I woke up early and dressed casually. Gabriel and I had planned to check out the conservatory this morning in hopes of finding some clue to Bella’s poisoning. I wasn’t sure he’d be up for exploringafter what had happened to Kiki last night. But on the other hand, I should think he would want to find out who the culprit was, since it was probably the same person who had killed Bella.
    I supposed I could go to the conservatory and search on my own, but I really wanted Gabriel there with me.
    After the conservatory, I had been looking forward to spending some time with Nathan in the library, sorting through more books and making repairs. I wanted to check out his computer catalog program, too. I was thinking of investing in a new one for my home computer. But all that could wait.
    As I slipped into a lightweight jacket, I decided to first hunt down Gabriel and find out how Kiki was doing this morning. Then I would plan the rest of my day accordingly.
    I walked out of my bedroom and stopped abruptly.
    “That’s weird,” I muttered, staring at the wall opposite my bedroom door. The paneling looked completely different. My first thought was absurd:
I’m in the wrong hall.
But that was downright goofy, not to mention impossible. I had just walked out of the same bedroom I’d been sleeping in for the past three days.
    I moved closer and realized the panels of the wall had been painted a new color. There was also an interesting art deco–style sconce in the middle of one of the sections. It was new. I was certain I would’ve noticed if it had been there before.
    Glancing down, I saw that a new rug had been laid down over the old Berber carpeting. Or had I just not noticed these rich Oriental designs before? No, it had been wall-to-wall beige Berber yesterday, I was absolutely certain about it. What I didn’t know was why Grace would have changed the carpets in the middle of the night.
    I shook my head. I had to be wrong. Staring at the floor for another minute, I wondered if I’d been thinking of the carpeting in the upstairs hall instead of this one.That was one possibility. The other was that I’d been transported in the night to a parallel universe light-years away. It could happen.
    On the way to breakfast, I noticed a few more odd things. I’d been using a shortcut through the library the past two times I’d gone to breakfast. But now when I opened the door that led to the passageway, there was only about ten feet of hall before it ended abruptly. There was a pretty window at the end, with a nice view of the forest. Still, where was the hallway I’d been using for two days?
    I stared out the window in confusion. I didn’t see the lake, only a forest of pine trees. So I wasn’t facing north, as I thought I should be.
    I suppose I could now relate to what Madge had been going through when I first ran into her. Because I could swear that two days ago, this hall had continued for another thirty feet, leading to another hall that led to the back entrance of the kitchen, where I’d found Merrilee. In fact, Merrilee was the one who had given me directions to come this way. Wasn’t she?
    Obviously I was mistaken. I mean, I’d clearly turned down the wrong hallway. There were lots of hallways in the house. The front south hall, the back north hall, the east hall, the west hall. And that was just on the first floor.
    “Yoo-hoo!”
    I jolted at the sound, then stared down the hall. It was Grace! She was waving to me!
    “Grace! Thank goodness,” I cried. “I’m completely