Julia glanced at me across the bookmobile console. “I’ve only met him a couple of times. Frances and I keep trying to set up dinner dates, but you know how those things can go. What’s he like?”
Though I knew my aunt and Julia had known each other for decades, I sometimes forgot how time had shifted their relationship. Back in the day, when she was still getting leading roles on the New York stage, Julia had spent her spare time in Chilson. She and Aunt Frances had developed a solid friendship, but things were different now. I lived with Frances, Otto was in the picture, and Julia and her husband lived here year-round, which you’d think would let you see your friends more often, but the reality of life’s busyness has a way of interfering with good intentions.
“What’s Otto like?” I repeated. “Well, what do you think?”
“Charming,” she said immediately. “Smart, but not the kind of smart that has to show off. He can listen. And I think he has a very clever sense of humor, but I haven’t seen it come out yet. Maybe he’s hiding it until he gets to know us better.”
I smiled. “All that. Plus, he loves Aunt Frances very, very much.”
“Ah.” Julia tapped the top of Eddie’s carrier with a booted foot. “Did you hear that, Sir Edward? Otto loves Frances. Do you agree, and think that he will take care of her in the manner she deserves? Will he love, honor, and cherish her as long as they both shall live?”
“Mrr!”
Julia nodded and settled down in her seat. “Okay then. If Otto gets the Eddie stamp of approval, who am I to disagree?”
I rolled my eyes. Sometimes Julia took our so-called conversations with my cat a little too seriously. “You do realize he was just complaining about you thumping the top of his carrier.”
“Your interpretation is yours and yours alone. I prefer mine. Right, Eddie?”
“Mrr.”
If she’d tapped the carrier that time, I couldn’t detect it. I shook my head and said, “If we’re running on schedule this afternoon, I’d like to make a short detour on the way back to town.”
Julia clapped her hands and smiled like a small child being offered ice cream. “Ooo, a detour. Anywhere fun? Please, please, let it be fun!”
I smiled. “You’ll just have to wait and see, little one.”
• • •
The final bookmobile stop of the day had wrapped up exactly on time, an anomaly for that particular stop because Lisa and Mort Neely, a downstate couple who had retired Up North the previous summer, tended to linger.
They were very nice people, but Julia and I agreed they were still getting acclimated to winter. People who only spent summer and perhaps early fall up here didn’t tend to recognize how sparse humans were for eight months at a stretch, and it was a harsh reality for many.
More than one retired couple, whose original intentions had been to live up here the rest of their lives, ended up finding a place to live in Florida or Arizona in the dark months and came north only when all chance of snow was gone. Julia was betting that the Neelys would turn into snowbirds, but I’d caught a calm look from Lisa as she’d gazed out the bookmobile window at the snowy landscape and was sure they’d be staying.
That afternoon, Mort had come to the bookmobile alone. “Lisa’s in a cleaning frenzy,” he said. “Our youngest is coming up with her boyfriend for a skiing week. Apparently a house that’s clean enough for us isn’t anywhere near clean for them.”
“Well, of course not,” Julia said.
I nodded agreement. “Especially when there’s a boyfriend involved. He might turn into a husband, and then you’ll have his family members up to stay. Standards must be established early.”
Mort gave us a pained look. “Then I truly hope she doesn’t marry this one. He has seven siblings.”
We laughed and a few minutes later he checked out the small stack of mysteries and thrillers they’d reserved online, stuffed them into his backpack, and went out into the cold for his short walk home.
Julia turned to me. “Is it detour time?” she asked, her face bright and shiny.
“You got it,” I said, closing the door on Eddie’s carrier and buckling myself in. “Let’s roll.”
Twenty minutes later I steered the bookmobile into the parking lot of the Wicklow Township Hall, a fieldstone building I’d never set foot inside. Julia scrunched up her face. “This is the detour? Seriously?”
I laughed. “Did I say it was going to be fun?”
“Well, no, but detours should be entertaining, at the very least. This isn’t a detour, it’s . . .” She frowned. “What is this?”
“Work,” I said. “You know the church lot where we normally park? I got a phone call the other day that their guy who plows the lot for free broke his shoulder blade skiing. He can’t plow the rest of the winter. The church has a snowblower, but the whole lot is too much for it, so they’re not clearing the back part.”
Julia nodded, following along with the saga. “And if they don’t blow the snow back there, the bookmobile doesn’t have room to turn around, so we need a new stop spot.”
“You are just as smart as you look,” I said. “This shouldn’t take long. I’ll leave the engine running and you and Eddie can stay here.”
The suggestion was unnecessary, as Julia had already unbuckled her seat belt and was wriggling around to get comfortable. “Hand me that new book by Kent Kruger, will you, please?”
Inside, the township hall felt a lot like it looked, as if it had been here for a hundred years without many changes since construction. Wood floor, wood paneling, wood ceiling, all had been put in place during the boom years of lumber, when the cheapest possible building material was whatever they were hauling out of the closest woodlot.
A bulletin board next to the front door was posted with agendas of upcoming meetings and minutes of past ones. In a place of prominence was a memo noting the day property taxes were due. To the right of the small lobby were the double doors of a meeting room; to the left was a hallway leading toward offices where I could hear a rumble of male voices.
“Hello there, dear.”
And at my immediate left was an office separated from the lobby by a counter with a sliding glass window above. A generously sized sixty-ish woman with thoroughly blond hair was smiling. “Can I help you?”
“If you’re Charlotte, you can. I’m Minnie Hamilton. I called the other day about using your parking lot for a bookmobile stop.” With my thumb, I gestured over my shoulder. “If you want to see it, it’s out there.”
Charlotte leaned over to look, but didn’t get up. “You drive that big thing?” she asked. “And you’re such a little scrap of a girl!”
I smiled. This was a familiar conversation. “Power steering and an automatic transmission make life easier for everyone.”
“Isn’t that the absolute truth?” she said, laughing. “I talked to the supervisor and the other board members, and no one sees any problem with you stopping here, so let’s figure out schedules. Come in and have a seat.”
Ten minutes later, we were wrapping up dates through the end of the year. I could have shifted the stop back to the church when all danger of snow had passed, but I didn’t want to move the location twice in one year. Just as we were making sure the December dates worked for both of us, the male voices I’d heard before grew louder, to the point where I could make out what they were saying.
“We’ll have to see what happens at the meeting, Hugh. I’m only one vote.”
“But you’re supervisor.”
“And I cast all of one vote,” the supervisor said mildly. “There are four others. Democracy and all that.”
“Yeah, I suppose. See you at the meeting.”
“Will do. Say, don’t forget your hat.”
Footsteps came toward us down the hall, then whooshed past without slowing down. I got a glimpse of a dark winter coat worn by a tallish man with brown hair just starting to go gray. In one hand he carried a hat, a fedora with an oddly low profile and with earflaps down. I smiled. Apparently Stewart wasn’t the only one around with that new hat.