“No, I don’t,” I said. “I’m not the police, and besides, you heard what Brady said—the police don’t even know how Lewis Wallace died yet.”
“Well, it’s not like he had a car accident or fell down the stairs,” Ethan said.
“The man could have had a heart attack or a stroke. He could have fallen and hit his head earlier in the day.” I thought back to the death of Gregor Easton, which had happened when I had been in Mayville Heights for only a few months. He had died from a head injury. That case was how Marcus and I had met.
“And someone could have killed the guy,” Ethan said flatly.
Hercules made a sound that might have meant he concurred or might have meant he was getting bored with the whole conversation.
“The police will figure that out.” I didn’t like the conversation at all.
“So can you. You’ve done it before.”
I shook my head. “I’m not doing it this time. No.”
He started to say something and I held up my hand. “No.”
Anger flashed in his eyes. “So what? You want to see Derek get railroaded?”
“Do you really think Marcus would do something like that, Ethan?” I asked, my voice icy with anger. “Do you think he’s that kind of person?”
Ethan ducked his head. “I wasn’t saying that,” he muttered.
“Good.” I took a breath and let it out. “I’m not talking about this anymore,” I said.
I went back into the house, trailed by Hercules. I heard the door to the backyard open and close. I figured Ethan had gone outside to either cool off or rethink his plan of attack. I hoped it wasn’t the latter.
I needed to figure out what we were going to have for supper. I peered into the fridge and opened and closed cupboard doors. I had plenty of sourdough bread and enough leftover chicken to make pulled-chicken sandwiches, I decided. And a beet salad because it was fast and easy.
Hercules sat next to the refrigerator and watched me set the table, green eyes following my every move. “It’s not hard to tell whose side you’re on,” I said the third time I passed him.
He glanced in the direction of the porch then looked at me, tipping his head to one side, which he did when he was questioning something or trying to look cute.
“We’re not getting involved in this case,” I said, putting a knife and fork at each place. I kept my voice low because Milo and Derek were in the living room
The cat’s nose twitched.
“I mean I’m not getting involved in this case.”
Hercules continued to stare at me.
It was really disconcerting how long he could go without blinking. “We don’t even know if Lewis Wallace’s death was an actual crime,” I said. I set the salt and pepper shakers in the middle of the table. “And even if it was, that doesn’t mean the police are seriously going to look at Derek.”
The cat’s green-eyed gaze never left my face.
“Why am I explaining myself to a cat?” I asked.
He almost seemed to shrug as if to say, “Darned if I know,” then he yawned, stretched and headed for the living room, where I could hear the guys talking. I had a feeling the cat hadn’t given up on me, either.
Susan was waiting at the bottom of the steps when I drove into the library parking lot in the morning. I parked and walked over to her. She was wearing her black cat’s-eyes glasses and there were two metal straws in her updo. Susan generally wore her thick, curly hair in a topknot at work and I never quite knew what she’d use to keep it secure on any given day. Swizzle sticks, a pencil, a chopstick: It was always a surprise.
Today Susan was carrying a round metal cookie tin in addition to the tote bag holding her lunch. I looked from Susan to the can. Eric would sometimes use us as guinea pigs for whatever new recipe he had concocted. Was there one of his new recipes in that can?
“Maple sugar cookies,” Susan said in answer to my unspoken question.
“You’re my favorite staff member,” I said as I started up the steps to unlock the front door.
She smiled. “You would probably have more credibility if I hadn’t heard you say the same thing to Mary last week when she made doughnuts. But I’ll take it.”
She followed me inside. “I heard what your brother’s friend did at The Brick Friday night.” She gave me a thumbs-up. “Anyone who would kick a service dog deserves to get his as—” She looked at me. “—his assets kicked.”
Her expression changed. “I also heard about the body at the St. James. It was the same guy, right? Lewis Wallace? The guy who wants—wanted—to set up his business in one of the empty warehouses?”
I nodded. “Yes, it was.”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t impressed with his proposal—for one thing I think he was overestimating his profit margins—but no one should have to die alone like that.” Susan headed for the stairs then. “I’ll start the coffee, and then do you want me to make sure the time has changed on all the computers?”
“Please,” I said. I flipped the lights on. “How do the boys handle the time change?”
“Their fiendishly computer-like brains know when it’s five forty-five no matter how many times the clocks get changed,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “They were making pancakes with Eric when I got up.”
“That’s good.”
She shook her head. “No. No, really it isn’t. We’re going to have to paint the kitchen ceiling. Again.”
It was a busy Monday at the library. Patricia Queen came in for a meeting about the upcoming quilt show. Patricia was the president of the seniors’ quilting group that met every week at the library. For the last couple of years all their quilt tops had been pieced in the building before going to Patricia’s home to be finished with her long-arm quilting machine. Their current project was being lap-quilted, which meant all the blocks were quilted by hand and assembled afterward. I knew the finished project would be beautiful under Patricia’s exacting eye.
We sat in my office with a cup of coffee for me, and a cup of tea for Patricia, and went over the proposed schedule. I knew that some people found Patricia a bit . . . challenging to work with. She liked to plan everything down to the last detail. Mary had warned me that Patricia could be a bit obsessive but I liked the fact that she thought of everything. I liked schedules and plans and having things well organized. As Patricia went over her proposed timeline I thought of my own mother telling my third grade teacher, “Katy likes to have all her ducks in a row. That’s not a problem, is it?” in a tone that suggested that there was only one right answer to her question, which hadn’t really been a question at all.
I drank the last of my coffee. “Patricia, do you think it would be possible to add a workshop of basic quilting techniques?” I asked. “I’ve had quite a few questions about something like that since word got out about the upcoming show.”
Patricia set down her pen, nudged her wire-frame glasses up her nose and narrowed her gaze at me. “What were you thinking of?”
“Something like how to pick a design, a little color theory, how to make a basic quilt block. Just enough for people who don’t know anything about quilting to get a taste of what’s involved.”
That was all it took for Patricia’s interest to be piqued. She started listing off ideas: how the workshop could be organized, who would teach, where they could have it, etc. “I’m not sure one class would be enough,” she said. “We could do one on color theory, types of blocks, fabric choice, oh, and of course how to use the rotary cutter.”
“Of course,” I said.
“And then another session on how to lay out the design and sew the pieces together and a third class on constructing the quilt sandwich and doing the actual quilting.”
I felt a little like I might have started a snowball of ideas rolling downhill.