I headed back downstairs and joined Mary at the circulation desk. She was putting books to be reshelved on the cart while I sorted through the ones that had come in on reserve. The third book I picked was for Leo Janes.
“We can cancel this one,” I said to Mary. “It was for Leo.”
She took the book from me and turned it over to look at the back cover blurb. “I suggested this one,” she said. “Leo came back in the morning he was . . . The morning he died. I got him set up with a temporary card and he asked me if I knew anything about theatrical makeup.” She raised an eyebrow. “I told him I knew a few things about being onstage.”
I was guessing that Mary had learned a lot of things from dancing at The Brick. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what they all were.
She handed the book back to me. “I suggested this book and requested it for him.”
I put the book on the counter to be returned to the library it had been requested from. “Why was Leo interested in stage makeup?” I asked.
Mary shrugged. “He didn’t say, but I know that Mia is thinking of getting involved in the spring production at the high school. It was probably just his way of staying involved in her life. According to Mia he was interested in whatever she was doing.”
“From what I heard about the man, he was a good grandfather.”
Mary nodded. “What happened to him wasn’t fair.”
I glanced at the makeup book that Leo would never get to read with Mia. “Life really isn’t fair sometimes,” I said.
“I’ve always hated that,” Mary said with a wry smile. She looked over her shoulder toward the computer room. “Change of subject. So, did Maggie figure out where she’s going to display those old photos?”
“I think so,” I said. I pointed at the side wall. “I think she’s going to use that wall.”
Mary was wearing her favorite fall-themed sweater—orange and brown with big embroidered yellow and red leaves. She brushed some bits of paper off the front. “I’m looking forward to seeing those old photos framed.”
“Me too,” I said. “And Maggie’s convinced both Thorsten and Harrison to let her display the mail they received.”
Mary laughed. “Well, in Thorsten’s case I don’t think it was the first card like that he received. He cut a pretty wide swath when he was younger.”
Since rumor had it that Mary herself had been part of that swath I decided not to comment.
She was still staring across the room with a thoughtful look on her face. “You know, if this were a movie something dramatic would have happened because someone didn’t get their mail when they were supposed to,” she said.
“Mary Lowe, do you have a secret romantic side?” I teased.
“I like a good happily ever after once in a while,” she said, her eyes gleaming.
“So have you heard of anything romantic happening because of a piece of that found mail?”
She shook her head. “Burtis got a note from the school about Brady. But I don’t think there were any love letters found. I don’t think there were that many pieces of mail behind the wall. You know about Thorsten and Harrison.” She started ticking off names on her fingers. “One of Lita’s cousins got something—another Christmas card, I think—and then there was Leo and maybe two or three other people and that’s it.” She’d started stacking books on the cart again.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Leo got one of those pieces of mail?”
Mary nodded but she didn’t turn around, so she didn’t see what had to be a shocked expression on my face. “He said it was nothing important.”
Meredith Janes had written a letter to her best friend that had ended up behind that wall at the post office. Now I wondered, could she have written one to her husband as well?
• • •
Marcus had hockey practice so I headed home to Owen and Hercules when the library closed. Harry had left a note telling me that he’d fixed the side of the raised bed in the backyard and he’d be back on Monday with some topsoil and mulch to replace what had been lost.
I told the boys about my conversation with Oren. “And Leo Janes got one of those pieces of mail that were found at the post office,” I said as I changed into yoga pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. “Do you think it’s possible it was from Meredith?”
Hercules made a face. It seemed he wasn’t sure, either.
“You know, all we seem to have is a bunch of random facts and no way to connect them all together.” I rubbed the space between my eyebrows. “This just gives me a headache.”
“Mrr,” Hercules said, heading for the door. He stopped and looked back over his shoulder before heading for the stairs, his way of saying a treat would probably make me feel better.
Who was I to argue?
By the time I’d finished half a mug of hot chocolate and two pumpkin-spice chocolate-chip cookies I did feel better. I had about an hour before Marcus was going to be finished at hockey practice. I set my laptop on the table. “Right now we don’t have any way of finding out what the piece of mail was that Leo got. But we could see what else we can find out about Celia Hunter.”
Herc jumped up onto my lap and put one paw on the cover of the computer. We were in agreement.
Between my skill with a search engine and the serendipity of Hercules randomly touching the keyboard and somehow finding something useful, we learned quite a bit about Celia Hunter.
For one thing, she was in a relationship with a man named Edmund Holloway. Holloway was a successful businessman in his early seventies who owned, among other things, the largest organic baby food company in North America. He had seven children and twelve grandchildren. He and Celia had met at the 55+ Games, where both had been part of the dragon boat team. Celia, it seemed, had been a competitive rower in college. Edmund Holloway had taken up cross-country in college. I found a photo of the dragon boat in one of their races, crew straining as they sliced through the water toward the finish line, half a boat length ahead of their closest competitor.
Hercules seemed to study the image. He put his paw on the screen.
“Yes, I see that,” I said. Celia Hunter had strong arms. Were they strong enough to have picked up that sculpture and killed Leo Janes?
chapter 14
Susan came hurrying down the sidewalk as I got out of my truck the next morning. As she got closer I saw that she had a pair of plastic scissors and an emerald-green pencil crayon stuck in her topknot, which just gave a bit more credence to my theory that her twins did her hair in the morning.
“Kathleen, do you remember seeing my car keys yesterday?” she asked.
I shook my head as I unlocked the doors and turned off the alarm system. “No,” I said. Then I noticed she had a key ring in her hand. “What are those?” I asked.
“House keys,” she said.
“You don’t have them both on the same ring?”
She nudged her black cat’s-eye glasses up her nose. “Thank goodness, no. Now I wouldn’t have my house keys, either.”
“Right,” I said, thinking that I’d worked with Susan long enough that what she’d said actually made sense to me.
She moved inside and began flipping on the lights. Behind me I heard a soft knock on the outside door. I turned to let Mia in.
“Hi,” she said. She was carrying a round metal cookie tin.
“What did you bring?” I asked.
“Coffee cake,” she said with a smile. “I could go put the coffee on and you could try it before we open.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” I said.
Susan was standing in the middle of the floor looking around the room as though she expected her missing car keys to suddenly fall at her feet.