Free Kilt at the Highland Games by Kaitlyn Dunnett

Liss when she was halfway up the wide flight of stairs that led to the second floor of the municipal building. Like most small town libraries, the one that served Moosetookalook had a limited budget. It was only open three afternoons and one evening a week. A few minutes earlier, Liss had put the BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES sign on the door of the Emporium and scurried across the town square, anxious to pick Dolores’s brain. The librarian was the most inquisitive woman in the entire county, and Liss hoped she would have some notion of where Angie and her children had gone.
    The voice yelling back at Dolores belonged, unmistakably, to Jason Graye. “Who am I? I’m one of your duly elected selectmen, that’s who!”
    Liss hesitated only a moment before she pushed open the glass door with the library’s hours etched on the outside and went in. The combatants were so intent on their quarrel that neither of them noticed her arrival. She’d planned to interrupt, but one look at their faces changed her mind. She decided it would be better to stay off their radar until she figured out what was going on, or until Graye finished venting his spleen and left.
    Taking advantage of their intense concentration on each other, she ducked into a convenient row of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. This gave her a prime view of the action—all she had to do was peer through the space between the books at eye level and the underside of the shelf above.
    Graye barely topped five-foot-ten and was, if not overweight, at least badly out of shape. He compensated by pushing into Dolores’s personal space, his thin lips pursed and jaw outthrust. Red-faced and seething, he looked ready to explode. “I’m doing you a big favor to warn you ahead of time!”
    â€œSome warning!” Dolores didn’t back up. Instead she leaned toward him until they were nearly nose to nose. Hers was needle-thin. His resembled the beak of a hawk. “You’ve already decided to close the library.”
    Liss’s gasp of surprise and dismay gave away her presence.
    â€œWho’s there?” The small, rimless spectacles Dolores wore improved her vision to 20/20. She had no difficulty spotting Liss’s hiding place. “Come out of there, Liss Ruskin. What do you mean sneaking around in my library?”
    Liss felt heat rush into her face as she emerged from the shelter of the shelves. Dolores could give a school marm lessons when it came to putting miscreants in their place. “I, uh, didn’t want to disturb your, uh, discussion.”
    Dolores snorted, but her attitude softened. “How much did you hear? Do you know what this moron wants to do?”
    She did, and the very thought appalled her. She forgot her embarrassment at being caught eavesdropping and rounded on Jason Graye. “How can you even think of closing the library?”
    â€œThis is none of your business, Liss.” He was at his huffy, arrogant best. “Stay out of it.”
    â€œIt certainly is my business,” she shot back. “It’s the business of everyone who uses this library. This public library,” she added for emphasis.
    â€œExactly. The word public in public library means it’s run with public funds, which we can no longer afford to throw away on such trivialities.”
    â€œTrivialities? Would that be just the books?” Liss asked in acid tones. “Or do you mean the computers, too?”
    The library provided two computer workstations at no cost to library patrons. For many in this rural area, the library computers were their only access to the Internet. They came in to send and receive e-mail and do research, to look for jobs and apply for them, to file income taxes, and to put ads on Uncle Henry’s to sell the things they no longer used.
    The terminals weren’t the only amenities tucked in among the heavily laden bookshelves in two large rooms that took up almost all the space on