Every eye in the room was turned to Chelle, and she felt a brief moment of hesitation as a half-dozen old men scowled at her for interrupting their meeting. Jack, sitting at the head of the table, was staring daggers at her, and even Mira was shooting her a look that said she’d chosen a bad time.
“Excuse me, young lady,” one of the Trustees said sternly, “We’re in a meeting. Now if you’ll kindly close the door on your way out-”
“What are you doing?” Mira whispered to Chelle, looking anxious and nodding her head toward the door to indicate that she also wanted Chelle to go.
Instead, she stepped further into the room and addressed the Board.
“I’m sorry for bursting in,” she said, still slightly out of breath from racing all the way from the parking lot into the conference room. “But I have something important I need to show you.”
She glanced at Mira, who was furrowing her brows in confusion, then she held up a CD. Mira’s mouth dropped open.
“What is this?” Jack barked from the other end of the table, and Chelle saw that he held an almost identical CD – the only difference was that his CD would destroy Mira’s career, while Chelle hoped that hers could save it.
“Can I play this for you?” Chelle asked the Board, but she didn’t wait for a response – she headed over to the laptop on the table opposite the projector screen.
“What’s going on?” demanded another Trustee as Chelle popped the CD into the side of the computer and then struggled to get the video to play over the projector.
Juanita, sitting at the end of the table with her pen poised over a legal pad to take the meeting minutes, got up and went to Chelle, bending over the laptop.
“What are you doing, sweetie?” She whispered as she took over the task of playing the video for Chelle.
“I’m saving Mira’s job,” Chelle whispered back, which only garnered a quizzical look from Nita. Then she turned around and addressed the Board again. “As I’m sure you’re all aware, the library has had quite a bit of bad publicity lately – from Facebook groups to news crews. I’ve only been working here for a couple of months, but on an almost weekly basis there have been instances of teenage pranksters, boycotts, and even vandalism.
“I can tell you that Miranda Lockhart has lost more than her share of sleep over these problems and done everything in her power to fix them. Her dedication to this library is incredible, and the personal interest she took in my own career path, encouraging me to explore my strengths and advance my education, was above and beyond what’s required of a manager.”
Chelle took a quick glance over at Mira, who was looking wide-eyed at her in a way that seemed to mix embarrassment and bewilderment. She wished that she could reassure Mira of what she was doing in advance, but there just hadn’t been time.
She went on.
“I’m sure you also know that Jack Lawson has had his eye on the director’s job for quite a while, and he wasn’t thrilled when Mira was hired instead of him,” she said, her eyes going directly to Jack as she launched her final attack. He was looking more than a little anxious about the CD that Juanita was queuing up on the projector. Chelle said, “What I think will be news is the fact that Jack has been sabotaging Mira for months in the hopes of stealing her job.”
A murmur went around the conference table as the Trustees whispered to each other, shooting confused looks at Jack. Chelle noticed a raven-haired woman sitting at the table - she was about twenty years younger than the rest of the Trustees, and rather than whispering with the Board, her eyes stayed fixed on Chelle. She thought she caught a glimmer of relief in the woman’s eyes as they flitted momentarily to Mira before coming back to Chelle, and then Juanita tapped her shoulder.
“It’s ready whenever you are,” she whispered, then went back to her seat.
Chelle and Leah had spent the entire weekend sifting through security footage and editing it into a sort of greatest hits of Jack’s misdeeds at the library. She’d never been more ready for anything in her life. She hit play and the video began to play against the opposite wall.
It was a shame that none of the security footage included sound, but Chelle was more than happy to narrate. “I sorted through all the surveillance video the library has recorded since Miranda took the director position, and what I found was evidence that Jack has been behind almost every act of vandalism, negative news article, and emergency that WPL has had in the last six months.”
First up, there was Jack caught on the camera mounted right outside the library entrance, sliding a few dollars into the hand of a homeless man who would have looked familiar to any of the Trustees who happened to catch the news segment featuring the pornography seeking patron. The footage cut to a camera in the library lobby, pointing toward the computer terminals where the news crew was setting up to film. The man from the previous scene came through the lobby, and Jack trailed a few yards behind him.
“Here we have Jack paying a homeless man to lie about watching pornography on the library computers,” Chelle said. A few jaws dropped, including Mira’s, but most of the Board was still looking at her skeptically. Let them, she thought. I’ve got plenty more where that came from.
Next, there was Jack standing in the stairwell to make a phone call, the timestamp on the corner of the screen aligning perfectly with the Westbrook Chronicle’s article on the Internet filter. Then there was a series of shots of Jack alone in the library near closing time, grabbing fistfuls of paperbacks from the Romance and Horror sections and then appearing in various parts of the library, stuffing them haphazardly into the stacks in the hopes that they’d be marked lost and removed from the collection.
The video went on for a full ten minutes, chronicling every single one of Jack’s misdeeds in the last six weeks, and Chelle watched the expressions of her audience change as each subsequent scene drug Jack deeper through the mud. Finally, the video ended with a quick clip of Jack entering the room where the security footage was being stored, the timestamp dating it for the previous Monday just after they’d discovered that the book drop had been flooded.
Chelle stopped the video and said, “I’d bet my life that the only reason we don’t have footage of Jack threading a garden hose through the book drop to flood it is that he got nervous that Mira might alert the authorities and there’d be an investigation into that particular prank. So he went into the security room to erase the footage. It’s too bad he was so sure he was above being caught that he forgot to erase all the other acts of vandalism and sabotage that he’s committed.”
The room was silent for a few moments, most of the Trustees looking baffled back and forth to each other and then angrily at Jack, who had turned beet red. Chelle’s pulse was racing and she knew this was the moment of truth – she’d soon find out whether her big gamble had paid off.
“Well,” the raven-haired Trustee said while the rest of them were still trying to get their bearings, “I think it’s safe to say that we’ll have to place Mr. Lawson on a leave of absence until a decision can be made about his employment status.”
At that, Chelle heard the crack of plastic and looked over at Jack. He’d snapped the CD he was holding in half, the vein bulging out of his forehead again, and a wave of relief washed over her. She looked at Mira, who seemed ready to pass out from the stress of the last twenty minutes, and grinned.
“Yes,” one of the older Trustees was agreeing, “I think that sounds like the proper course of action-”
But Chelle didn’t hear the rest. She walked over to Mira and pulled a folded piece of paper out of the back pocket of her pants. Unfolding it, she tried to wipe the creases out before handing it to her. Speaking under the rustle of conversation going around the conference table, she told Mira, “I want to turn in my resignation, effective immediately.”
She glanced across the room at Jack, who was looking at the broken CD in shock as he listened to the Board deliberate his fate, and then Chelle leaned in a little bit closer to whisper to Mira, “Meet me in your office after the meeting, madam director.”