The Sign of Seven Trilogy by Nora Roberts Page B

o’clock. Got beer. Bring food that’s not pizza.
    Best he could do, for now, Cal thought. Because life just had to keep rolling on.
    Â 
    Q UINN WALKED BACK TO THE HOTEL TO RETRIEVE her laptop. If she was going to the library, she might as well use it for a couple hours’ work. And while she expected she had most, if not all, of the books tucked into the town’s library already, maybe this Mrs. Abbott would prove to be a valuable source.
    Caleb Hawkins, it appeared, was going to be a clam until the following day.
    As she stepped into the hotel lobby she saw the pert blond clerk behind the desk—Mandy, Quinn thought after a quick scroll through her mental PDA—and a brunette in the curvy chair being checked in.
    Quinn’s quick once-over registered the brunette with the short, sassy do as mid to late twenties, with a travel-weary look about her that didn’t do anything much to diminish the seriously pretty face. Jeans and a black sweater fit well over an athletic build. Pooled at her feet were a suitcase, a laptop case, a smaller bag probably for cosmetics and other female necessities, and an excellent and roomy hobo in slick red leather.
    Quinn had a moment of purse envy as she aimed a smile.
    â€œWelcome back, Miss Black. If you need anything, I’ll be with you in just a minute.”
    â€œI’m fine, thanks.”
    Quinn turned to the stairs and, starting up, heard Mandy’s cheerful, “You’re all checked in, Miss Darnell. I’m just going to call Harry to help with your bags.”
    As was her way, Quinn speculated on Miss Gorgeous Red Bag Darnell as she climbed up to her room. Passing through on her way to New York. No, too odd a place to stop over, and too early in the day to stop a road trip.
    Visiting relatives or friends, but why wouldn’t she just bunk with said relatives or friends? Then again, she had some of both she’d rather not bunk with.
    Maybe a business trip, Quinn mused as she let herself into her room.
    Well, if Red Bag I Want for My Very Own stayed more than a few hours, Quinn would find out just who and what and why. It was, after all, what she was best at.
    Quinn packed up her laptop, added a spare notebook and extra pencils in case she got lucky. Digging out her phone, she set it on vibrate. Little was more annoying, to her mind, than ringing cell phones in libraries and theaters.
    She slipped a county map into her case in the event she decided to explore.
    Armed, she headed down for the drive to the other end of town and the Hawkins Hollow Library.
    From her own research, Quinn knew that the original stone building tucked on Main Street now housed the community center, and the gym she intended to make use of. At the turn of the current century the new library had been built on a pretty rise of land on the south end of town. It, too, was stone, though Quinn was pretty sure it was the facing used on concrete and such rather than quarried. It was two levels with short wings on either side and a portico-style entrance. The style, she thought, was attractively old-fashioned. One, she guessed, the local historic society had likely fought a war to win.
    She admired the benches, and the trees she imagined made shady reading nooks in season as she pulled up to park in the side lot.
    It smelled like a library, she thought. Of books and a little dust, of silence.
    She saw a brightly lettered sign announcing a Story Hour in the Children’s section at ten thirty.
    She wound her way through. Computers, long tables, carts, a few people wandering the stacks, a couple of old men paging through newspapers. She heard the soft hum-chuck of a copier and the muted ringing of a phone from the Information Desk.
    Reminding herself to focus because if she wandered she’d be entranced by the spell she believed all libraries wove, she aimed straight for Information. And in the hushed tone reserved for libraries and churches, addressed the stringy man on