Eddie rolled over, clearly not finding me amusing.
Cats.
But I kept quiet, too, on the way back to the library, and didn’t say a word as I finished the bookmobile cleanup and transferred Eddie back to my car. I was thinking dark, dreary, and depressing thoughts about the likelihood of finding Roger’s killer, about the end of the bookmobile, about the end of my job, and about the prospects of ever finding another job that I liked as much as this one.
So when I saw Denise Slade leave the library and walk toward the parking lot, I was more than ready to quit with the depressing stuff and find some answers.
“Denise?” I called. “Hang on a minute, will you?”
Her sigh was visible from fifty feet away, but she waited. “What do you want?” she asked when I got close enough to see the whites of her eyes.
“I heard a story today about Roger that I find hard to believe. About the summer he totaled three cars. Is that right?”
“Right after he learned to drive.” She rolled her eyes. “My dad almost didn’t let me go out with him because of it. The guys at school called him Triple for months. But from then on, he didn’t get a single ticket, not even for parking.”
“The other day,” I said, “when Allison Korthase was walking out, you didn’t have a good word to say about her. I just wondered why. She seems nice enough.”
Denise sighed. “Not that it’s any of your business, but we don’t see eye to eye on politics.” The sigh turned into a glare. “Why are you being so nosy, anyway? If you don’t have enough to do, you should help out with the Friends more. When was the last time you spent any time in the sale room? Or signed up to work any of our fund-raisers? From the amount of time you spend on the Friends, it seems like you want us to disappear.”
Recent widow or not, I needed to straighten things out with this woman. “That’s not true, and you, of all people, should know it. You’re the one who wanted the library staff to step back from the Friends operations, and you’re the one who requested that the Friends be independent from the official library functions. How can you possibly blame me for not involving myself?”
“If you really cared about the Friends, you’d find ways to help.” She spun on her heel and marched away.
This time, I let her go.
I also added Allison Korthase to the list of suspects. Politics? Please. Whatever the real reason for their enmity, the fact that Denise didn’t want to talk about it was itself suspect.
The list of possible killers was starting to grow, but if I added everyone who’d had a fight with Denise, I’d have to add myself. It was becoming clear that a lot of people had developed, and possibly even nurtured, a long-term hatred of Denise.
The problem wasn’t going to be finding suspects; it was going to be narrowing the field down to one.
Chapter 13
On Sunday morning, after I spent Saturday night intermittently texting with Tucker—who was, of course, busy at the hospital—and to Kristen, who was tending an extremely busy bar in warm Key West, Aunt Frances filled me with stuffed French toast, slightly crispy bacon, and apple slices. Then, when I’d finished the dishes, she told me to go outside and play.
I looked at her. “How about Eddie? Are you going to kick him out into the cold, too?” Outside the kitchen window was a stiff north wind and scattered clouds that had the look of snow.
Aunt Frances smiled. “Eddie and I are going to start our Christmas lists, aren’t we?”
My cat, who was sitting up tall on the seat of a chair, rearranged his feet a little and wrapped his tail around himself. “Mrr.”
“You know,” I said, “all his list is going to be is cat treats, cat toys, and fancy cat food.”
“Then we’ll have plenty of time for watching reruns of Trock’s Troubles.” She patted Eddie on the head, and he leaned into her, purring.
Those two were clearly ready for a day on the couch. Well, Eddie almost always was, but Aunt Frances was rarely off her feet for that long, and she deserved a quiet day, if that was what she wanted.
“I’ll have my phone,” I said, “if there’s anything you want.”
Ever so nicely, she shooed me away. “Get out of here, youngster. Do I have to count to three? One . . . two . . .”
Laughing, I went to the front closet for my coat, and pulled my wallet and cell from my backpack, which was hanging on a hook. “Are you sure you don’t need anything?” I called to the living room.
“Git!”
“Mrr!”
Outside, the crisp air stung the inside of my nose and sharpened my eyesight. I breathed in the scent of winter and smiled. Aunt Frances, in her infinite wisdom, had known I needed to get outside. How she’d known, I wasn’t sure, since I hadn’t realized it myself, but that’s why she was the best aunt in the world.
As I walked, thinking about this and that, I nodded and exchanged good-mornings with a woman walking her dogs, a middle-aged couple dressed in church clothes, and a skinny young man out running.
Though I thought I was walking with no particular destination in mind, I soon realized that my feet were taking me to the marina. This time of year, the marina was shut down and deserted, except for the ubiquitous seagulls. Which meant if I wanted to talk to anyone, there was only one person possible.
I picked my way carefully up the front steps of the house next to the marina and knocked on Rafe’s door. The steps had been sturdy and fully functional the last time I’d been up them, but with Rafe, you never knew. A project that looked fine to 99.99 percent of the people in the known universe could have a teensy-tiny flaw that would make Rafe shake his head and rip the thing apart.
When Rafe finally finished renovating his house, it would be the most beautiful home in Chilson, but the end date kept moving farther and farther away. After three years of work, he’d managed to wrangle an occupancy permit, but it wasn’t the kind of occupancy most people would be interested in.
I made a perfunctory knock on the front door, a heavy thing of oak and leaded glass, and went in. “Hey, are you home?”
“Minnie, you are the answer to my prayers.”
I looked in the direction of his voice, which had come down the wide, stripped-down wood stairs. “What were you praying for, exactly?”
“Someone to bring me another tube of caulk. There’s a box in the kitchen.”
If you could call it a kitchen. How he’d convinced any inspector to sign off on a house whose kitchen possessed only a utility sink, electricity for a refrigerator, and a series of milk crates for storage, I would never know.
I tromped through the bare studs in the living room and dining room and into the mess. “Had to be a man,” I said, still thinking about the inspector. I took two caulk tubes from the box and made my way up the stairs.
Rafe was in a back bedroom. Then again, it might have been the master suite’s sitting room. With so many walls gone, moved, or stripped to the studs, it was hard to tell. He’d shown me the blueprints dozens of times, but he’d also made so many changes on the fly that I was pretty sure the house bore little resemblance to the original plans.
I waved the tubes around. “I brought two, just in case. Where do you want them?”
“Anywhere,” he said, grunting a little with effort, “just so I won’t step on the buggers.”
The grunts weren’t surprising, because he was standing on a short stepladder, just past the DON’T STEP ON OR ABOVE THIS LEVEL step, trying to caulk a window frame and maintain his balance at the same time.
“You know,” I said, “if you went downstairs to the kitchen, got the properly sized ladder, and brought it up here, you wouldn’t be running the risk of falling and breaking your neck.”
“Risk is my middle name,” he said, putting on a deep, gravelly voice.