I cleared my throat. “Thank you ever so much, Minnie. You’re the best librarian ever.”
“Huh?” Rafe turned a page. “Yeah. Thanks, Min. See you later, okay?”
I rolled my eyes and walked out. Though the hallways were quiet, I could hear a distant din from the cafeteria. Lunchtime in a middle school. I shook my head, not wanting to remember those days too clearly. To distract myself, I looked into the classrooms through the small vertical windows in the doors, but it turns out you can’t see very much that way.
A blare of music startled me. I looked around, saw an open classroom door, and poked my head inside.
Don Weller was seated at a desk, peering into a computer monitor and singing along with the lyrics pouring out of his speakers.
“. . . Jingle all the way. Oh, what fun it is to ride in a . . .”
He was so busy singing and working on the computer that he didn’t notice my wave and didn’t hear my hello. I came into the room, saw what was on the monitor, and gasped.
Don spun around. “Hey, Minnie. What’s up?”
I knew he was looking at me, but I couldn’t look away from his computer screen. “Isn’t that Denise Slade’s house?”
He laughed. Or it started out that way; halfway in, it turned into more of a snarl that ended as a sneering sort of sigh. “Yeah. She’s my next-door neighbor.”
I considered what my strategy should be. “Rafe mentioned your fence issue.”
“Wasn’t an issue until Denise felt the need to turn me in.” He whacked at the keyboard. “She could have said something, could have said, ‘Gee, Don, did you know you need a fence permit? Just stop by city hall and talk to the zoning administrator.’” He was snarling again. “‘Doesn’t cost much. Paperwork’s simple. Just make sure you get one, because the penalty is a little fierce.’”
He thumped on his computer’s mouse, changing the screen away from the image of Denise’s house, whacked at the keyboard, thumped some more. “But, no, she didn’t do any of that. What did she do? She waited until I finished putting the dang thing up, then made the call. Freaking tattletale,” he muttered, whacking away.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Hang on . . .” He made a few more thumps and whacks, then shoved his chair back for me to see. “Wait for it.”
The screen went black. As I watched, “We Need a Little Christmas” started playing and lines of large white text scrolled up into view. Denise Slade, 1038 Ridgeline View, Tuesday, November 25. The text scrolled up and away; then Denise’s house slowly appeared. The night photo showed a house brightly lit with tiny lights. Red, green, yellow, and blue, the lights outlined every window, every eave, every corner, and every post on the wide porch. It was attractive, in a showy sort of way, but I was glad I didn’t live next door to it.
“That’s a lot of lights,” I murmured.
Don snorted. “You ain’t kidding. But the thing is, she’s violating the rules.”
“There are rules about Christmas lights?”
“Our subdivision has a homeowners’ association,” he said. “No one is supposed to have holiday lights up before Thanksgiving—no way, no how. That there?” He stabbed at the screen. “It’s a flagrant violation of the rules, and after the fence thing, I swore that if she ever stepped out of line for anything—and I mean anything—I’d be on her so fast, her head would spin.”
His head must spin at a very slow rate, because Thanksgiving had been a week ago and his head looked as if it were in the same position it had always been.
I studied the screen and saw that it wasn’t a still image—it was a video, and the lights were starting to blink. “Oh, my,” I breathed.
“Yeah.” He stared at it with a fierce expression. “Right next door. She turns it off at midnight, just like the rules say, but I go to bed at eleven and have to try to sleep with that stuff pulsing away. Doesn’t matter how many curtains we hang up; the lights still get through. By New Year’s, I’m going to be seriously sleep deprived.”
I wished him good luck and walked out, thinking about rules and laws, about expectations and holidays, about families and friends.
And about neighbors.
* * *
Boxless and errand-free, I drove down the hill and back into town. I’d hoped to eat lunch at the Round Table and get the scoop from Sabrina on her new husband Bill’s treatments for his macular degeneration, but there wasn’t time after my conversation with Don.
I snagged a parking spot directly across the street from Shomin’s Deli and five minutes later, I walked out the front door with my new favorite sandwich: green olive and Swiss cheese on sourdough. I also walked out into precipitation. A fairly heavy version. It wasn’t exactly rain, but it wasn’t snow, either. I stepped back into the shelter of the store’s entryway and, one-handed, since my other hand held my lunch, I tried to wrestle my hood out of my coat’s zippered collar.
“Stupid curly hair,” I muttered, wrestling away. Most people’s hair could survive a little wet with no ill effects. Mine would spring into an unshapable mass at the slightest drop.
As I grunted with my hood-raising efforts, an ancient and battered SUV pulled up to the curb. Allison Korthase got out, jogged through the falling slush, and went into the eye doctor’s office next door.
I looked at the SUV, mud covered from bumper to bumper, then at the eye doctor’s. Hadn’t Allison been driving a sedan the last time I’d seen her? I mentally shrugged, and, hood in place, left the shelter of the entryway and started back across the street.
“Minnie?”
I jumped. Allison was standing on the curb, a small white plastic bag in her hand. She looked a little different, and it took me a second to realize the difference was that she was wearing glasses. “Oh,” I said, ever the brilliant conversationalist. “Hi, Allison.”
She nodded. “Thought that was you. Your height and that hair are dead giveaways.”
Which meant that my hair was escaping the hood and would be a mess the rest of the day. Nice. I nodded at the SUV, catching a glimpse of contents that could have passed for the product line of a nice-sized used-sports-equipment store. Hockey sticks, snowshoes, a bow, a gun case, at least two sets of skis, and what might have been a lacrosse stick crowded up against the window, giving the impression that more layers lay underneath. “I didn’t recognize the vehicle.”
She gave a small grimace. “My husband’s. Mine’s in the shop for some recall thing, so I’m stuck driving his for the day. So embarrassing. I asked him to at least get it washed, but you can see how far that got me.”
I smiled and tried to pull my hood up even farther. “Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?” Which I should have asked when I’d seen her at the library the other day, but better late than never.
Allison jiggled her bag. “Would have been nicer if my new contact-lens prescription had come in on time. I spent the day having my glasses steam up every time I opened the oven door.”
Yet another reason to be grateful for twenty-twenty vision. Which I hadn’t had since I was ten, but since the idea of corrective eye surgery gave me the willies, I didn’t see that changing anytime soon. Happily, my contacts and I got along just fine.
“How about your Thanksgiving?” Allison asked.
I was about to answer when the slush suddenly turned to straight rain and began falling in big fat drops. We both said quick good-byes, and I scampered across the street to my car. A few minutes later, I was at my desk, biting into my sandwich and reading the e-mails that had multiplied during the hour I’d been gone.
Josh sidled into my office. “Hey, Minnie, you got a minute?”
As I was nodding, Holly came in after him. I looked from one friend to the other. “What’s up?” I asked.