Private Dick Casefile 01 - Lily White Rose Red

to my friend Charlie Taylor at the library. I wasn’t too popular down at the office of the Las Vegas Review-Journal ever since they caught me trying to boost a section from the archives.
    That meant a stint in the basement of the library, going blind scanning through loops of microfilm on the viewer, but at least Charlie would leave me to it.
    I headed over to the library on 4th and Mesquite and parked around back. I stopped at the front desk to say hello to the head librarian, Mrs. Fielding, and ask where I might find Charlie.
    Mrs. Fielding primmed up her mouth and nodded toward the fiction section. “Shelving books. Hopefully.” I grinned and thanked her. I knew what the disapproving expression was about; Mrs. Fielding thought Charlie could be spending her time better, but even the boss didn’t like to cross Charlie. She was smart, and her tongue had a sharp point to it.
    I plunged into the nonfiction section, peering through the shelves to see a ladder with someone sitting on the platform at the top, and went around to that aisle. Mrs. Fielding’s suspicions proved correct. As usual, Charlie had gotten interested in some book and calmly sat down to read it instead of doing her job.
    I put my hands on the ladder and leaned in closer so I could see her little oval face and nicely pointed chin over the pages. “Hi, Charlie.
    Read any good books lately?”
    She didn’t even glance at me. “Keep your day job, Grey. You’ll never make it as a comedian.”

    Lily White, Rose Red: Grey Randall, Private Dick Casefile #1
    41

    “Good looks will get you anywhere.”
    “Too bad you don’t have any then.”
    Now that the social niceties were over, I got down to business. “I need to get into the basement. Gimme the key.”
    “Please, Charlie, I’m here to beg you for a favor. Would you very kindly interrupt your important work and allow me to do some free research in the archives, which are off-limits to the general public?” she retorted.
    “Please, Charlie. I only asked for the key so you wouldn’t have to interrupt your important work and climb down from there. I know the way.”
    She shut her book with a snap and shoved it onto the shelf between two other books without looking, but I knew it was in its proper place. Charlie didn’t tolerate books wandering away from their appointed Dewey decimal slot. “That’s so kind of you, Grey. I know you wouldn’t want to cause me any inconvenience.” She kicked my hand away and came down the ladder two steps at a time, disdaining my assistance.
    Not that I was stupid enough to offer. Charlie had a temper, and I didn’t want her to rip my head off my shoulders. At least not at the start of a case. “I’ll pay you back.”
    “You don’t have anything I want,” she said with a glance from behind her glasses.
    Those sidelong glances always got to me, but no point dwelling on it. We weren’t an item and we never would be, and she was one of the few who knew why. But we were friends at least.
    She took her glasses off and shoved one temple-piece down the neck of her blouse to hold them in place. Charlie only needed them for reading, and she looked prettier without them, if only because she unerringly chose the ugliest frames in existence. Not that vanity was a driving force in her life. That much was made clear by the brown cardigan she was wearing.
    “I’ll buy you a party dress,” I said by way of witticism. I didn’t think she even owned a dress; I’d never seen her in one, at any rate.

    42

    CATT FORD

    “For the next time I’m invited to the ball, is that it?”
    “Right.”
    She turned and led the way to the back stairs, her wide-legged trousers flaring around her slender legs as she strode purposefully in front of me. She had a big bunch of keys on a ring that she had snapped to her belt, and she used one of them to unlock the door that said “Staff Only.”
    The door led into the staff room, where they took their breaks, and then we went out the other side into a small hallway, where the stairs were located.
    The cellar was cold, perfect for archives. It was always cold down there, even when it was hot as blazes upstairs in summer, with all the windows open and the fans blowing.
    “What are you after?” she asked, frowning at me.
    Her fierce expression didn’t fool me. I knew she was just as happy to be down here, away from the patrons of the library. She might have had to be polite to them up there.
    “ Journal-Review , Monday morning