Land. A builder turned handyman/caretaker; had thick gray hair with a streak of white straight down the middle. Years ago, he’d fallen off a ladder, been knocked out, and hadn’t woken up for three days. Afterward, he was fine except for that white streak of hair. He also was clean shaven in summer and grew a bushy white beard in winter because, with the addition of pillow stuffing and a costume, he transformed from a guy who hardly talked to the area’s best Santa Claus.
Maybe that was why I was having a hard time imagining him as a killer. But I also had a hard time seeing him in a shouting match with Rowan, and that had apparently happened. Could Land have killed Rowan because of an argument? Or should the question be, what kind of argument could have led to murder?
Hal Inwood’s favorite motives were money or love gone wrong, with the most powerful motive being a combination of the two. Could Land and Rowan have been having an affair? Could Land have been stealing from the Bennethums?
I had no idea and had no idea how to find out. Hal and Ash knew about Neil’s suspicions, though, so they were most likely looking at Land, no matter what Neil thought.
On to Stewart Funston. Who, unbeknownst to me, was a cousin of Rowan’s. I made a mental note to ask my aunt about the Funston family tree. No, wait. Stewart had said his mom and Rowan’s dad had been siblings and I’d never known Rowan’s maiden name. Another note went onto my mental list—librarian, start your research!—and I carried on with my cogitating.
What reason could Stewart have to kill his cousin? Using the second of Hal’s classic motives, love, was too impossibly icky, but some other kind of love could be at play. Could there be some weird competition for parental love? Was it possible that either Rowan or Stewart had been raised in the other’s family and was harboring resentment for not being treated as full family? Possible, but why would that kind of anger come into flower now, so many years later?
The other reason was money. Rowan and Neil seemed comfortable enough, but there was no ostentatious display of wealth. No big boat, no fancy vacations, a house they’d owned for years, and two kids in college.
I blew out a breath, creating a soft ball of steam that disappeared as quickly as it had formed.
Hugh Novak. Since I didn’t know the man, I felt myself wanting him to be the best candidate on my very short list. It was intellectually lazy and morally reprehensible, and I was ashamed of myself the moment I realized it. Yet there it was.
I let myself in the front door and called out my normal greeting. “I’m back!” From upstairs came a sleepy “Mrr.” Eddie was in serious winter mode, and unless I shook his treat can, it was unlikely he’d venture off my bed anytime soon.
As I began to divest myself of outerwear, I almost hoped that Aunt Frances was out. Though she was the best aunt ever and I loved her dearly, I could feel a mood descending, a mood with a capital M. It would pass, but a night on the couch with Eddie and Netflix might make it pass even quicker.
“Hello, Minnie. How are you this evening?”
“Oh, hey, Otto.” I glanced behind my aunt’s fiancé. “Where’s the beloved relative?”
“Someone called about selling some bird’s-eye extremely cheap and she was out of here before I could figure out why she could possibly want bird eyeballs.”
I laughed and my mood started to evaporate. Maybe human companionship was what I needed, not a burrowing in. “It’s a relatively rare kind of hard maple that looks swirly.” I glanced around and found some. “Like this.” I pointed at an end table’s drawer front. “See? Swirly. And please don’t ask me what causes it because I have no idea.”
Otto nodded and tapped the end table. “Did you know that your aunt doesn’t want to take any of this furniture across the street when we get married?”
“No, but I’m not surprised.” I spread my arms wide, gesturing at the room. At the entire house. “This furniture has been here for years. Decades. Taking away even one piece could change the magic recipe.”
“You sound like Frances,” he said.
I flopped down on a couch. “Well, there are reasons for that. And I’d name some, but you just sounded the teensiest bit grumpy, so I won’t.”
“Thank you.” He sat on the couch across from me. Even in jeans and a zip sweatshirt, he still looked as if he’d stepped out of a magazine advertisement for what the elegant senior gentleman should look like. “I recognize that Celeste will need the bulk of the boardinghouse furniture, but I think not taking anything is a mistake.”
“Why’s that?”
“I want the house across the street to be our home. Ours together. I don’t want her to think of it as my house, a place she just happened to move into.”
Smiling at him fondly, I said, “If she changes her mind about marrying you, I wouldn’t mind being second choice.”
“Dear Minnie. Rafe Niswander would have my guts for garters.”
I laughed at the English expression. “Then we’ll have to leave things as they are.”
“Except for the furniture,” he said. “I fully expected to donate half my furniture to the church’s resale shop. She needs to bring something from the place she’s lived in for so many years.”
“Does Eddie hair count?” I picked a few examples off my sleeve.
Otto, sensibly, ignored me. “Could you talk to her? Tell her I’m thinking of our future, that I don’t want her to resent living in a house that doesn’t feel like hers. Please?”
It sounded as if he’d already made his arguments and that she’d already rejected them. Still, he had a point. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll talk to her. But I can’t promise it’ll change her mind.”
He smiled, looking satisfied. “I know you’ll do your best, and that’s all anyone can ask. Thank you, Minnie.”
But I knew he was wrong. Doing your best wasn’t always enough. Sometimes it wasn’t anywhere near enough.
• • •
After Otto went home, I ate a dinner of leftovers—hardly any dishes to wash, how handy!—and carried Eddie downstairs to help me watch a couple episodes of Detectorists. It was a BBC show that amused me immensely, and now I had a mission, to see if anyone on the show ever said ‘guts for garters.’
Though I didn’t hear anything about garters, the show made me laugh and distracted me nicely, so it was a surprise when I spent the night tossing and turning so much that Eddie abandoned me. Come morning, I found him on the dining room buffet. “Really?” I asked. “That’s where you spent the night? Perched on a hard piece of wood? Sleeping there was better than snuggling with me?”
My cat looked at me and didn’t say a thing.
“Love you, too, pal,” I said, planting a kiss on the top of his head as I went past.
In the kitchen, Aunt Frances was a whirlwind of activity. Coffee was brewing, her lunch was on the counter only half made, and the microwave was counting down to zero.
“Morning.” I went to the silverware drawer for spoons. “How was the bird’s-eye?” I’d already been in bed when I’d heard the front door. “You were out late. What did you do, start a project with it already?”
“Good morning,” she said. “Could you get the oatmeal? Thanks. The wood is wonderful, but I need to move it right away. Death in the family, house is sold, and if I don’t get it out before the closing date, it’s the property of the new owners.”
“Would they even want it? Maybe they’d be fine giving you an extra week or two.” I was no woodworker, but even I knew that moving wood was a laborious process.
“Don’t know, and I don’t want to ask. It’s bird’s-eye.” She spoke almost reverently.
“Do you have any place to store it?”
She nodded. “There’s room in my storage unit. I just have to move a few things.”
My aunt’s storage unit was on the north side of town and contained nothing but wood. Rough-sawn wood, planed and milled wood, stumps, bits of specialty woods from faraway places, and even some pedestrian two-by-fours. I’d been there only a handful of times, and though the contents changed, the volume always seemed the same. Packed to the gills. I tried not to think about it because there was an inevitability about the fact that someday I would have to deal with the contents.