“What about Allison Korthase?”
She huffed in a breath, but didn’t say thing for a moment. Then . . . “What about her?”
“Would Allison want to kill you?”
“Well, she might if she knew. But she doesn’t.”
“Denise,” I said warningly.
“Oh, keep your shirt on. All I meant was, there’s no way Allison could know it was me.”
“Know what was you?”
She sighed. “When Allison was running for city council, she came to a Friends meeting. She talked about literacy and the importance of libraries, and how if she was elected she’d support the library any and every way she could.”
“That was a problem?” I asked.
“It wasn’t that she showed up,” Denise said. “It was what she said.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Her speech,” Denise said impatiently. “Part of it sounded weird. Different from the rest of what she was saying. Right off the bat, I thought she’d copied it from someone, so I started writing it down. When I got home, I typed it into the Internet and I was right.” She chuckled. “Allison had pulled from one of Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats. She didn’t think anyone would notice, but I did, so I sent her an anonymous note.”
The insides of my palms were tingling. “Then what?” I asked.
“Nothing.” Denise puffed a breath of air into the phone. “In the note I told her that people knew what she’d done and she needed to clear her conscience if she was ever going to amount to anything. I said she needed to write a letter to the editor and admit she’d stolen that speech. She didn’t, of course, because there’s no way that woman would apologize for anything, but I did my duty. Still. There’s absolutely no way she could have known it was me who wrote the note.”
It all made an icky sort of sense. Denise was seeing her anonymous request as a way of righting a wrong, but Allison would have seen the completion of that request as grounds for public vilification.
I remembered the high-quality signs she’d posted far outside the city limits. Remembered the biographies of female heads of state she’d checked out of the library. Remembered her comment about Washington, DC.
This was a woman with lots of ambition. A woman who wouldn’t let anything get in her way.
I was pretty sure my mother wouldn’t approve of anonymous notes that were almost poison-pen letters, but I was glad Denise hadn’t signed her name. It meant Allison didn’t have any reason to do anything to Denise. “Her plans go far beyond Chilson,” I murmured.
“What’s that?” Denise asked. “Never mind. I have to go. I’m missing dinner.” She hung up, Stephen style, and I was left with a silent phone in my hand.
Eddie bumped his head against my shin. I looked down. “I don’t suppose you have an opinion on what really happened the afternoon Roger died. You were there, after all. Do you remember anything?”
He stopped cleaning and sat very, very, still, looking at me intently.
“Go ahead,” I encouraged. “You can tell me.”
“Mrr.” He shifted forward a little and said it again, a little louder. “Mrr!”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured.” I sighed and patted him on the head. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours, okay?”
“Mrr.”
I gave him one more pat and started down the stairs. “Of course I’ll drive carefully.”
“Mrr!”
“Yes, I promise to be home before midnight.”
“MRR!”
I grabbed my coat, pulled my wallet and keys out of my backpack, and opened the front door. “Yes, I promise not to do what the cool kids do just so I can try to be cool, too.” And I slipped out the door and shut it before he could finish one more “Mrr.”
* * *
Half an hour later, I was checking the time on my cell phone and walking into Charlevoix’s hospital. Five minutes ago, assuming there were no emergencies that needed tending to, Tucker would have gone on his dinner break.
He didn’t know I was coming, but we’d had such a nice time last night at Grey Gables that I figured he wouldn’t mind a surprise visit. If he wasn’t there, then no harm, no foul. I’d go home and call Kristen.
I trotted down the stairs, one hand on the cool metal railing, thinking about our good-night kiss. It has started out as polite, had gone into the tender mode, then had suddenly taken a hard turn into passionate. Where this was going I wasn’t sure, but I was liking where we were right now. A lot.
The cafeteria wasn’t crowded, and I spotted Tucker almost immediately. He was sitting with his back to me, a tray of food in front of him. He was leaning forward, obviously talking to someone, but there was a half wall blocking my view of his dining partner.
I slowed, not wanting to interrupt what might be a private medical conversation. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Some people didn’t like surprises, and maybe Tucker was one of them.
A woman’s laugh rang out, and Tucker laughed, too.
My slow walk became an even slower shuffle.
Fingers reached out toward Tucker. Female-shaped fingers. He took the woman’s hand and squeezed it.
I stopped dead. My mouth opened to say something, anything, but although my face muscles moved, no words came out. For an eternal moment I stood there, locked in place, sure that there was no world outside of my bubble of shock.
Then a nearby clatter of silverware broke me free. I could breathe again, and I could move.
So I did. Out the door; up the stairs; and into a cold, rainy night.
* * *
An hour later, I was sitting in the living room with Eddie at my side, watching a DVD of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when my phone bleeped.
“Incoming text,” I murmured to Eddie. “Think it’s important enough to interrupt the movie?”
Eddie yawned and rolled over. Since I had no idea if that was a negative or positive response, I leaned forward to pick the phone up off the coffee table. It was time for Aunt Frances to leave the college—it was possible she was having car trouble. Or maybe it was Kristen, responding to my earlier message. Or my mom, although we usually talked on Sunday nights. Or any number of library employees, calling in sick for the next day.
“Or not,” I said out loud. It was Tucker. I thumbed open the message.
Sorry, can’t make the movie tomorrow night. Call you later.
I tossed the phone, sending it skittering across the table. My toss had been a little too hard, and it fell off the other side, dropping onto the carpet with a small thud.
“It’s over,” I said quietly.
Eddie stood and climbed into my lap. I gave him a few pats and felt his purr start to rumble. But even the strength of an Eddie purr wasn’t going to do the trick—not tonight, not now.
I kissed the top of his head. “I’m headed out for a walk, okay? I’ll be back in a little while.”
* * *
The night’s chill air bit into me as I went down the porch steps. I zipped my coat to the top, where it brushed the bottom of my chin in a slightly uncomfortable way. Staying warm was always a trade-off in winter, since it so often involved being uncomfortable, whether through too many layers of clothes, just the time involved to put on proper boots, or the squishing of your hair with a warm hat.
I stopped halfway down the front walk and looked up. While rain clouds still covered most of the sky, there were spots where stars were spangling through, twinkling down from so many unimaginable miles away. Many people found perspective while looking at the stars; I usually found myself wishing I’d brought out a luminous star chart. I was okay with identifying the simplest constellations, the dippers and Orion, but I wouldn’t have been able to find Cassiopeia on a double bet with Rafe.
The stars twinkled, the Milky Way glowed, and since it was too early to expect to see any northern lights and my toes were getting cold, I headed for the sidewalk. A jaunt of a few blocks would help set my mind straight. If Tucker had found someone else, well, I’d learn how to move on. I’d done it before; I could do it again.