Classified As Murder

Diesel charmed most of the humans he met. As he grew, people were astonished at his size. No one expected to see a cat the size of a half-grown Labrador. Most people in Athena—including me—had never seen a Maine coon cat before. If I had the proverbial dime for every time someone asked me, “What is that?” I could donate a hefty sum to the library and solve some of its ongoing budget woes.

A gray tabby with dark markings, Diesel still had his winter coat. The thick ruff of fur around his neck, a distinguishing characteristic of Maine coons, made his head look even larger. Short tufts of hair sprouted from his ears, and the visible M over his eyes marked him indelibly as one of the breed. At the rate he was still growing, he might yet hit the forty-pound mark—unusual even for a Maine coon.

A patron claimed my attention then, and I spent about ten minutes showing her how to access and use one of the databases she needed for her genealogical research. Helping people find the door, so to speak, to the vast world of information available online these days is one of the more rewarding aspects of being a librarian.

Leaving the patron happily at a computer clicking through page after page of the U.S. Census for 1820, I moved back to the reference desk. Diesel sat patiently at her feet while Lizzie helped Mrs. Abernathy, an energetic octogenarian who visited the library every day of the week to check out three books. She brought them back the next day and checked out three more. She explained to me once the advantage of being “an old widow-woman.” She no longer had to listen to some old fool nagging at her to “turn off the light and put the dang book away.”

The late Mr. Abernathy, I gathered, had not been a reader.

I chatted with Mrs. Abernathy and Lizzie briefly. Ten minutes after Mrs. Abernathy bustled out, another of my favorite patrons entered. He paused in front of the reference desk and offered me a brief smile.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Harris,” James Delacorte said. “How are you this fine afternoon?” His voice, with its rich Mississippi cadences, had a slight rasp.

Roughly the same age as the widow Abernathy, as far as I could tell, Mr. Delacorte was an old-school gentleman. He always dressed impeccably in a dark suit last fashionable during World War II. He must own a whole closet full of them, all the same style and color. They bore some signs of age but were well cared for, not worn and shabby, as one might expect. They gave off a faint aura of smoke from expensive cigars—perhaps the explanation for his voice.

“I’m doing fine, Mr. Delacorte.” I smiled. “And how are you?”

“Tolerable” was his inevitable reply. Never more, never less. He was personable, but reserved. I sensed a barrier between us when I talked with him. He was never rude or unappreciative, but he impressed me as a man who guarded his privacy and kept the world at a distance.

Ever since I first encountered him in the library, I never saw him use one of the computers, not even to search the online catalog. He was certainly literate, but he evinced no interest in the Internet or anything else to do with computers. The library staff looked things up for him and directed him to the print materials he needed. They all knew his habits.

He might be a Luddite where computers were concerned, but the range of his interests never ceased to astonish me. One month it was the economy of Latin America; the next it was the revolutions of 1848 in Europe. Last autumn he read whatever he could find on the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, and after that he delved into the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and their contemporaries. What would it be today?

“How can I help you? Would you like me to look something up on the computer for you?”

“Yes, thank you.” He regarded me with a faint smile. “Today I would like to find materials on the life of Louisa May Alcott and her family.”

“Let me see what we have.” I started searching the online catalog, building a list of books he could consult. The process took a few minutes, but he waited, ever patient. When I handed him a couple of pages of citations, he examined them carefully for at least a minute.

“You have been truly helpful, Mr. Harris.” He inclined his head, an old-fashioned gesture, but one I found charming. “The thirst for knowledge can lead one down so many interesting byways. I’ve traveled many of them over the years. You might say this library has been my travel agent.”

“That’s a delightful way to put it, Mr. Delacorte.” I smiled. “I started on my own travels as a boy in the old library.”

“As did I.” Mr. Delacorte frowned. “A shame, don’t you think, that the library outgrew its old home?”

“Yes, sir, but a bigger library is a benefit overall.”

“Assuredly.” He nodded. “To everything there is a season, after all. And the seasons pass, all too quickly—even without human intervention.”