The Book of Death (Bourbon Kid 4)

sleepless
night tossing and turning as she tried to cast her mind back to the previous
day’s events. She had wracked her brain trying to work out what could have
happened to it. Eventually in the early hours she had come to the conclusion
that her teenage assistant, Josh, a dimwit of the highest order, must have
stuck it on one of the shelves somewhere by mistake.
    Fortunately the following
morning the library was quiet, which afforded her the time to hunt for the
book. For two hours she had searched in vain. It was nowhere to be found. After
one last look around her desk area she gave up and decided to phone Josh to see
if she could get any sense out of him. These were desperate times indeed. She
was relying on Josh, a total idiot, to remember something from the day before.
Normally he couldn’t remember anything from five minutes before.
    She sat at her desk and dialled
his home number on the office phone, tapping impatiently on the desk with one
of her long bony fingers. Eventually after about eight rings, Josh’s mother
answered the phone.
    ‘Yeah,’ she said.
    ‘It’s Ulrika Price at the
library.’
    ‘Fucking hell. Hang on a minute.
I’ll go get him.’
    Josh’s mother knew better than
to waste time making idle small talk with Ulrika. The two of them had exchanged
harsh words in the past after Ulrika had once described Josh as a mindless
baboon in one of her written appraisals of his performance at the library.
Through the phone’s earpiece Ulrika heard some shouting and cussing and the
sound of someone dropping the phone.
    Eventually Josh’s irritating
voice came through loud and clear. ‘Hello, Miss Price.’
    ‘Hello Josh, you moron. I need
to know what you did with The Book of Death yesterday.’
    ‘The what?’
    ‘There was a book on my desk yesterday,
it’s called The Book of Death, and it’s gone missing. You must have put it
somewhere, or given it out to a customer.’
    ‘Oh.’
    He sounded as gormless as ever,
much to Ulrika’s annoyance. ‘Well,’ she snapped. ‘What have you done with it?’
    ‘I don’t remember.’
    ‘Try to remember, please.’
    A brief silence followed before
Josh replied. ‘Was that the Sesame Street annual?’
    ‘No. Why would a Sesame Street
annual be called The Book of Death?’
    ‘That’s what I was wondering
when I put it back on the shelf.’
    Ulrika perked up. ‘So you have seen it?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘What did it look like?’
    ‘It was a big black book, just
said The Book of Death on the cover. You’re the one who said it was a Sesame
Street annual.’
    ‘Why would I say that?’
    ‘I don’t know, but you told me
to put it back on the shelves before I went home last night. I remember because
it’s the last thing I did.’
    Ulrika breathed a sigh of
relief. ‘Okay, so you thought it was a Sesame Street annual. Therefore is it
safe to assume you stuck it on a shelf in the children’s section?’
    ‘No. I think I stuck it in
Reference.’
    ‘Why would you stick it there?’
    ‘Because I stick all the books
in the Reference section.’
    ‘Prick.’
    ‘I did put it under A though,
for Anonymous.’
    Ulrika rolled her eyes. Talking
to Josh was exasperating. ‘Well that’s something. Thank you. By the way, don’t
bother ever coming back to work here, Josh, you’re not welcome.’
    ‘Fine by me. Is that all?’
    ‘Yes, goodbye and thanks for
your incompetence.’
    ‘Oh, Miss Price, before you go,
there’s one last thing.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘You smell.’
    Josh hung up. Ulrika slammed the
receiver down in frustration. However, in spite of Josh’s rudeness and general
ineptitude, at least she now knew where to find the missing book. She hurried over
to the Reference books and began scouring the section marked A for Anonymous.
    There were some pretty decent
books written by anonymous authors, but the only one Ulrika was interested in
was The Book of Death. Unfortunately after scouring the shelves for ten
minutes, she came up empty handed. Either Josh had given her incorrect
information or someone had borrowed the book from the library after he’d stuck
it on the shelf.
    The only person who had come
into the library after Josh had left the previous night was Sanchez Garcia, the
bartender from the Tapioca. Ulrika thought back to his appearance. She had
caught him loitering suspiciously in the Reference section, then he had
borrowed a book called The Gay Man’s Guide to Anal Sex, an odd choice of book for
him, she