Grinning, he continued, “What I can give you is some general information that you could find out easily enough if you wanted to. Like this. Hugh Novak is an insurance adjuster. He looks at cars all over the region. On the day of the murder, what would you guess about his whereabouts?”
Interesting. I thought a minute and said, “I’d guess he had appointments lined up, but there’s no one who can confirm where he was at the key time.”
Ash grinned. “No need to tattle on me to Mom, right?”
“Not this time,” I said, trying—and probably failing—to sound ominous. “Let me know if anything else turns up, okay?”
Sabrina appeared with the bag that held the library’s lunch order, and I went to pay. It was only when I was outside and halfway up the sidewalk that I realized Ash hadn’t actually answered my question.
• • •
The next morning, I got up early. If I was going to make it to the restaurant owned by Sunny Scoles and back to the library to get the bookmobile out on time, I was going to have to scamper.
“What about breakfast?” Aunt Frances asked. “You have to eat something.”
“I’ll get something at the restaurant,” I assured her.
“Who is it you’re meeting?”
Sort of meeting, anyway. I zipped up my coat and picked up Eddie’s carrier. “Sunny Scoles. Do you know her?”
“Don’t know the name at all.” She frowned. “You sure she’s a good candidate for the catering at Kristen’s wedding?”
“Her name came up,” I said, which was the absolute truth. “I can’t imagine Kristen allowing anyone except her own staff to cook for her wedding, but it doesn’t hurt to talk to a few people, right?”
All true, though intentionally misleading. The entire drive to the restaurant, I kept trying not to think that intentionally misleading was perhaps worse than a lie, and not succeeding. Yet another character flaw to improve. “Add it to the list,” I muttered to Eddie, who didn’t comment.
I parked the car near the front door of the Red House Café. “Be back in a flash,” I told my furry friend. “All I’m going to get is oatmeal, so the car will barely even cool down before I’m back.”
“Mrr,” Eddie said, then yawned and flopped on his side.
The restaurant’s exterior matched its name and was solid red with white trim. It was a jumble of multiple additions, and when I went inside, I was clued in to what the original building had been, and why it was red.
“Oh,” I said softly, smiling at nothing in particular and everything in general. “It was a one-room schoolhouse.” All around me was the evidence. Wooden school chairs served as dining chairs, and penmanship instructions were wall art. An entire gallery of lunch buckets rested on a shallow shelf that circled the room, and a school bell hung from the ceiling, right above the front counter.
“Hasn’t been a school for sixty years.” A woman about my age approached from the back, drying her hands on a towel as she went. “It was a house longer than it was a school, but all it took was a little demolition and there were the bones of the original room.”
Her dark blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore a chef’s outfit of black cotton pants and the nifty white jacket that chefs wear, with the name “Sunny” embroidered on the upper left side.
“This place is great,” I said. “I’ve been driving past it for years, but I didn’t know the history.”
She smiled. “I’m hearing that a lot. You can sit anywhere you’d like. Let me get you a menu.”
“Sorry.” I shook my head. “This morning I don’t have time to sit down. But if I could get a carry-out container of oatmeal, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Walnuts?” she asked. “Pecans? Blueberries? Dried cherries?”
Life was full of decisions, some harder than others, and this was one of them. “I like them all. Pick whatever you like best.”
“A little bit of each it is,” she said cheerfully. “I’ll be back in a jiffy. Do you want some coffee, too?” She bustled away, laughing at my heartfelt answer of “Yes” to the coffee question.
When I heard food-related rattling in the back, I put my elbows on the front counter and sighed. What had I been hoping to learn this morning? That Sunny was a nasty person of the type who looked like a killer, meaning she must be one? When I’d decided to drive down here, it had seemed so sensible. Then again, how many one-thirty-in-the-morning decisions were good ones?
Well, at least I now had a new restaurant to try. Oatmeal was great for a workday breakfast, but it didn’t really count as food.
I wandered to the nearest table, looked for a menu, and stopped short. Right there, in a wire rack right next to the salt and pepper shakers, was a stack of sugar packets. The same kind of sugar packet that Maple Staples had sold out of and that I’d recently added my name to a list to buy when available. The same kind that had been at Rowan’s house.
All my theories about limited access to this very special type of sugar vaporized in a second. Everyone had access to them. Everyone.
I was back to the beginning, and I had no idea what to do next.
Chapter 8
What do you think I should do next?” I asked.
Eddie, comfortable on my lap, which was covered with a fleece blanket, closed his eyes and purred.
“Give me a hint, please? Even a little one would help.”
“Help what?” My aunt plopped herself down at the end of the couch. The movement disturbed Eddie enough that he opened his eyes and picked his head up half an inch. “Now look what you did,” I said. “You disturbed his sleep for almost a second.”
Aunt Frances rubbed the fur on Eddie’s back leg. “Sorry, Mr. Ed. Next time you get up, I’ll treat you to a treat.” She turned her head, listening. “He’s purring. I think he forgives me.”
“Cats aren’t big on forgiveness,” I said, “but they can be bought. At least this one can.” I scratched Eddie alongside his chin and the purrs grew even louder.
My aunt smiled. “Tell you what. I’ll bring cat treats and make popcorn if you tell me why you’re asking the fuzzy one for advice instead of your wise old aunt.”
“That’s easy.” I kept scratching Eddie’s chin. “It’s because I don’t want to tell anyone what I’ve been doing.”
“And that is what exactly?”
I gave her a mock-exasperated look. “If I tell you, I’ll have told someone what I’m doing, and that’s what I’m trying to avoid, see?”
“Why?”
Another easy question. “Because I’ll get scolded for doing things I shouldn’t be doing.”
She laughed. “Dearest niece, I know full well that you’re trying to figure out who killed poor Rowan Bennethum.”
“You . . . do?”
“Please.” She snorted. “How long have we lived together? And how long have I known you? Wait, I remember. All your life.”
“Okay, so maybe I’m more transparent than I thought.” I rested my hand on Eddie’s back. “Do you think Rafe knows?”
“You haven’t told him, either?” Aunt Frances’s gaze zeroed in on my face. “Minnie, are you sure that’s wise?”
Right now I wasn’t sure about anything, and I said so.
“Part of being an adult,” my aunt said, nodding. “Which I recognize isn’t reassuring, but at least it’s honest.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “But I don’t see why not telling Rafe about this is a big deal. All I’m doing is a little extracurricular research, that’s all. Just an extension of being a librarian, is how I see it. Why does he need to know?”
“Mrr!”
“Sorry.” I released Eddie’s fur, which apparently I’d started to clutch a little too hard. “You get double treats for that.”
“He wasn’t objecting to your petting methods,” Aunt Frances said. “He was objecting to what could be pending doom for your relationship with Rafe.”