Free Murder Brewed At Home (Microbrewery Mysteries Book 3) by Belle Knudson Page A

came off, and I was met with the coldest stare this side of Mount Everest. It was as if she thought I was a fluffy bunny rabbit looking for food, and then took off her glasses, and cleaned them, and put them on again, and then saw that I was in actuality a carny geek who bit the heads off chickens and was looking to graduate to something less beaky.
                  Her answer was an emphatic, "All patron information is confidential."
                  Had not her opinion of me as an intrusive identity thief already been firmly established, I would have offered her some free beer as a bribe. Luckily, better angels stayed my mouth.
                  She stared at me, as if the sheer force of her gaze was capable of willing me away. It worked, and I sidled off feeling as dejected as a wallflower.
                  Before I got too far, I heard someone trying to get someone else's attention. " Psst ."
                  I looked over and saw a pudgy man in his fifties, dyed-brown hair and beard, thick glasses, and...
                  "Mitch?" I said.
                  He was peering at me from the reference shelves. He had some kind of computer programming manual in his hands.
                  "What's the matter with you?" he said quietly, but sharply.
                  "Mitch, did you follow me here?"
                  "No, it's my day off."
                  "You spend your days off in the library?"
                  "No, I'm spending today in the library."
                  "Huh," I said.
                  "Don’t let her see you talking to me. Come around here into the stacks."
                  I ducked around the corner and there, surrounded by a wealth of computer knowledge, received a scolding from Mitch.
                  "You can't just go up to a librarian and ask her to see someone's private information."
                  "It's not private. It's their IP address."
                  "It's associated with private information."
                  "What if the person was in violation of their rules of online conduct?"
                  "Do you have proof of that?"
                  I hesitated. "No."
                  He nodded. Then looked around the corner. "You have the IP address written down?"
                  "Yeah," I said, starting to feel somewhat annoyed by the interrogation.
                  "Let me see it," he said, snapping his fingers impatiently.
                  I handed it to him with a dagger shooting out of my eyes.
                  He looked at it, and then said, "Wait here."
                  I watched him approach the library custodian, an older man in overalls – another character out of central casting – with a sad, friendly face and a couple of days' worth of salty stubble on his face. Mitch whispered to the man. The two smiled and laughed. The conversation seemed interminable. And then the miracle happened. Mitch handed the man the slip of paper on which I'd scrawled the IP address.
                  "I'll be over in Reference," Mitch said to the custodian in a normal voice as he walked back toward me.
                  "Do you mind filling me in?" I said.
                  " Shhh ," Mitch said with a smile. "Watch."
                  I did. I watched the custodian make his way over to the information desk, dragging a large garbage pail behind him. I watched him empty the wastepaper baskets from under the desk into the larger receptacle. Then he chatted with the librarian for a moment. And the two shared a chuckle. And then, while she busied herself with something or other, the custodian went to a computer over on the far side of the desk and typed, alternately shifting his gaze