Page 33 of The Librarians

“When we were leaving, we saw Ryan’s car and I realized that I’d seen it before, parked right here on Game Night, a black Audi with two unmistakable bumper stickers. One says, It’s okay to decay , and the other, The dead know how to speak, if you know how to listen. ”

Sophie starts.

“Really?” Astrid finally sets down the napkin in her hand. She pulls her chair slightly closer to the table. “I don’t remember seeing a car like that.”

“Me neither,” says Jonathan slowly.

“I do.” Sophie’s voice sounds raspy in her own ears, as if she hasn’t spoken in days. “It was parked one over from mine. Elise pointed out the bumper stickers to me. They were creepy.”

“They were, as it turned out, forensic pathologist humor,” says Hazel, her tone still devoid of inflection.

“I left my dessert container in the house. Ryan and I went back to get it. I used the opportunity to question him and learned that on Game Night, Ryan took Conrad’s car and Conrad, who returned unexpectedly from out of town, used Ryan’s car instead. ”

“You didn’t say anything about it on the drive back.” Jonathan’s voice is quiet.

The words he does not say echo in Sophie’s head. Are you okay, Hazel?

“I needed some time to process the information,” answers Hazel softly, in a tone that also says, I don’t know if I am but thank you for asking.

Astrid scoops up the big fat mug in front of her, looking both alarmed and befuddled. “But why was Conrad hanging out at the library on Game Night?”

Sophie is only confused.

Hazel pushes off the door, takes a few of the empty foil wrappers on the table to the sink, and rinses them.

“The question bothered me last night. I woke up this morning and it still bothered me. So I did some digging on the internet and now I can say, with ninety-five percent certainty, that Conrad is Valerian de Villiers.”

The name means nothing to Sophie. Jonathan looks as lost as Sophie. But Astrid shoots out of her chair, nearly upsetting the table. “What? Are you sure?”

“At this point, if he turns out not to be Valerian de Villiers, I would be very surprised.” Hazel shakes the water from her hands, turns around, and explains to Jonathan and Sophie, “Astrid looked up Perry Bathurst and found that he was in partnership with someone named Valerian de Villiers.”

So Hazel’s long-lost ex used to know Astrid’s recently dead ex well enough for them to have a business together.

Sophie’s next thought isn’t about Perry Bathurst or Valerian de Villiers, but that there is enough trust and camaraderie between Astrid and Hazel for Hazel to know what Astrid knows. This is…encouraging. For Sophie, that is. Hazel now bears Astrid’s stamp of approval, a peer-reviewed confidante.

“I always wondered what Perry was doing in Austin,” says Astrid, sinking back down, looking dazed. “I guess he really did have business here.”

“My God,” murmurs Jonathan.

They all turn toward him.

“No, it’s just that when Hazel and Conrad met yesterday, I was there at Peng’s Noodles, too. Conrad walked in first. We said hi. He said he heard that Ryan and I had drinks. We talked about Astrid’s troubles for a bit and—and he never once mentioned that he knew Perry.”

All attention swivels to Hazel. Apparently, this is news even to her. She looks down and adjusts the strap of her watch. “I don’t have anything to add to that. Conrad and I didn’t talk about anything having to do with the cases.”

Jonathan now looks desperate to remove his foot from his mouth. “You know what, I overreacted—it’s not so strange that Conrad didn’t mention Perry to me. He and I met exactly once. He’d be crazy to discuss the ins and outs of his business partner’s death with me.”

That is a reasonable thing to say, but it is also a gallant attempt to make something questionable sound less so.

“Thanks,” says Hazel. “But this makes me wonder even more whether Conrad might have had something to do with the break-in at Astrid’s place.”

They all stare at her.

“Let’s suppose he is in some way responsible for Perry’s death—”

The Den of Calories isn’t large. The sink is right next to Astrid’s chair. Astrid puts a hand on Hazel’s arm. “We don’t have to suppose that.”

Hazel smiles slightly, a meaningless yet proficient expression, as if she’s trained for it the way a CrossFitter deadlifts.

“I’m not saying I believe he is Perry’s killer—I fervently hope he isn’t.

But can we confidently declare that Conrad being here on Game Night had nothing to do with Perry being in the area on that same night? ”

No one can say that.

But Astrid bites down hard on her slightly chapped lower lip, giving away her continued reluctance to regard Conrad as a culpable party—and she’s never met the guy.

“Maybe he was looking for Perry,” suggests Jonathan. Another romantic.

“If he was,” answers Hazel, her tone soft yet implacable, “then shouldn’t he have been talking to his roommate?

After all, if your business partner goes missing, and your roommate works for the county medical examiner’s office, wouldn’t you ask him to keep an eye on John Does arriving in the meanwhile?

And if Ryan knew that Conrad was looking for Perry, and he already learned from Jonathan that Perry was in touch with Astrid right before he died—”

“Then I should have heard from Conrad,” says Astrid slowly, her nail scraping at the stubborn salsa stain on her hoodie. “He would want to know what Perry was doing with me and what I might be able to tell him.”

“An extremely reasonable supposition,” deems Hazel. “And it didn’t happen.”

“But Conrad was out of town last night, wasn’t he?” asks Jonathan, still unwilling to go down this path all the way. “That was why Ryan invited us over, to take advantage of his absence. If he was out of town then he couldn’t have been the intruder in Astrid’s condo.”

“Ryan is Conrad’s roommate, not his mom. If Conrad says he’s going out of town, Ryan isn’t going to get a flight manifest for verification.”

Jonathan rubs his knuckles along the grain of his beard. “So you think that Conrad, who was supposed to be out of town, stayed in Austin and broke into Astrid’s condo?”

This isn’t even Sophie’s problem, yet her nails are digging into the palms of her hands—she can barely conceive Hazel’s distress.

By Hazel’s own admission, she hoped for years that she and Conrad would find each other again.

And listening between the lines, she said only that he wasn’t interested in rekindling anything, which meant that she was.

Less than twenty-four hours ago, she wanted them to be together.

“It’s a possibility,” says Hazel.

“I don’t believe it!” Astrid cries. Then, as if embarrassed by her small outburst, she reduces the volume of her voice.

“Okay, we have no evidence one way or the other as to the identity of the intruder. But I don’t think it’s that weird that Conrad was hanging out near the library yesterday.

Or on Game Night. He could have been in the area in the hope of meeting you, Hazel. ”

Under different circumstances Sophie would have been the first to pooh-pooh the idea. But now she almost wishes that Hazel would at least consider it.

Hazel does not refute it outright. She even smiles briefly—or perhaps it’s only an upward flick of the corners of her lips, meant to imitate a smile.

“Sure, that’s also a possibility, which is why I have no idea what to do next.

But I don’t need to do anything right now.

You , on the other hand, Astrid, you must decide whether you’re going to call the police about the break-in. ”

Astrid grimaces. “I already looked at the online submission form for residential incidents and I don’t know that it’ll be any use at all.”

“I think Hazel means,” says Sophie, “if you plan to tell Detective Shariati about the break-in.”

“Oh, God, I haven’t even thought about that.” The expression on Astrid’s face is outright horror at the notion of dealing with homicide investigators again. “Do I have to? I really don’t want to.”

She looks at everyone in turn, seeking permission from one of them—or perhaps all of them—for her to turn her back on the police.

Sophie, at best an awkward hugger, badly wants to hold Astrid and tell her that she understands exactly how she feels.

“If you hold off getting in touch with Detective Shariati, I’ll be grateful.

Because if you do, you’ll probably have to tell them what you now know about Conrad.

And—” Hazel exhales. “And I’d like a little time to find out more about his involvement in all this before we sic the police on him.

After all, there is a chance he is not involved. ”

And now it’s Hazel whom Sophie wants to hug, Hazel who feels that she must game out all the worst possibilities so that she will not be ambushed by them. Sophie understands that too—all too well.

Astrid sets her hand on Hazel’s sleeve again. “Even if I do go to the police, I don’t need to say anything about Conrad.”

Hazel presses two fingers between her brows. “But if you don’t say anything and I don’t say anything, even if the police eventually figure out that Valerian de Villiers lives in Austin, there will be nothing to tie him to not just one but possibly two suspicious deaths.”

Sophie notes how Hazel is careful not to say the word “murder.” The next second she feels as if someone has run her through with a lightsaber.

Two suspicious deaths—Hazel is putting Jeannette Obermann’s death on her never-quite-lover too?

“But I thought Jonathan already asked Detective Shariati and the police are treating the cases as separate.”

“Separate until they learn otherwise,” Jonathan adds hesitantly. “That was the impression I got.”

“I didn’t consider the cases connected—frankly I didn’t ponder the cases at all except for their impact on everyone here—until I found out that Conrad is Valerian de Villiers and that he was here that night.”

Hazel does not say this, but Sophie knows what she means: At that time, Jeannette Obermann was also in the library’s parking lot.

Hazel turns to Astrid. “Remember the night when we stayed behind at the library? I asked you to show me where you live on Google Maps.”

“Yes?”

“I drove past Twin Courtyards this morning, after I picked up breakfast tacos, and your gated community was right across the street. If Perry was waiting for you to come home on Game Night, he could have parked either right outside Twin Courtyards Apartments or somewhere on the grounds, since it’s not gated. ”

“Ryan did mention that Perry was found in an apartment complex in Northwest Austin,” says Jonathan. “He didn’t say which one though.”

Was that the possible connection between the two cases, that both Perry Bathurst and Jeannette Obermann might have been at Twin Courtyards that night?

Hazel glances at Sophie but doesn’t say anything.

Sophie’s heart thumps. Her head is a cacophony of half-formed ideas. She is desperate for Detective Hagerty to latch onto someone else. But what if this Conrad guy was no different from her, just another hapless individual who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

It occurs to her that Hazel didn’t need to say anything at all about Conrad, especially not in front of everyone. There is no evidence against the man, only theories. But she did it so that they would have all the relevant information—and perhaps to pave the way for Sophie to come clean?

Certainly Sophie does not think that Hazel misjudged in taking the three librarians present into her confidence. Nor does it surprise her in the least that they are all doing their best to be supportive and worthy of her trust.

Astrid rubs her face, looking as tired and underslept as she must feel. “So if we do pass on what we know about Conrad, we’d have to tell not only Detective Shariati but Detective Hagerty too?”

Sophie grips the front of her tracksuit.

“Detective Hagerty is a bulldog,” says Hazel. “I never knew Jeannette Obermann existed until Game Night, and still he thought it suspicious that I started working at the library right before she died. I would not want him to have any goods on me. It would—”

“Help!” The word that Sophie has been screaming into the universe finally leaves her lips, a low, hoarse syllable.

Astrid turns toward her in bafflement. Jonathan, who’s known Sophie longer, looks both alarmed and concerned. Hazel, her hands braced against the counter behind her, waits patiently.

Sophie isn’t one hundred percent sure that she would have told Hazel the truth had their scheduled meeting not been preempted by unexpectedly running into Jonathan and Astrid.

Perhaps she would have taken the plunge; or perhaps she would have chickened out in the end and made up some bullshit story about why she was talking to Jeannette Obermann in the parking lot, on the last night of the latter’s life, forty-five minutes after the library closed.

But now she walks herself to the edge of that cliff—and leaps over.

“Detective Hagerty will have the goods on me very soon,” she says, her nails once again digging into the palms of her hands. “That is, if he doesn’t already.”