“Here.” Otto pulled a cell phone from his shirt pocket. “Let me call Leo. You can ask him anything you like about me.” He quirked up a smile. “Well, anything except what we did to Mr. Lane’s physics room after school that day.”
He pushed a few buttons and handed me the phone. “Otto!” Leo said. “It’s warm and sunny in southern Texas. How’s northern Michigan?”
“Cold and rainy,” I said, smiling. “And it turns out that Eddie isn’t fond of snow.”
There was a pause. “Minnie.” Leo laughed. “You have got to be kidding me. Otto actually introduced himself?”
Sort of. “To me. Should I introduce him to Aunt Frances?”
“Ah.” Leo chuckled. “He hasn’t worked up to that, has he? Otto is a great guy, and I can say that because I’ve known him for more than fifty years. He’s the best CPA I’ve ever met, but he’s as horrible with women as he is good with numbers. He managed to get married once, but she died years ago and they didn’t have any children. He’s been alone ever since.”
I stood, walked to the fireplace, and kept my voice low. “If my aunt was your sister, would you introduce them?”
Leo snorted. “I did introduce him to my sister, years ago, but she went and married a guy who owns a masonry business. Minnie, all Otto needs is a break. He gets stage fright something horrible when he meets women. I bet you’ve seen him a dozen times, coming out of his house but then going back in.”
Clearly, Leo knew Otto very well.
“All he needs is a break,” Leo repeated. “Do me a favor and introduce them. If things don’t work out, it wasn’t meant to be. But if they do, well, we’ll have two less lonely people in the world.”
I wanted to object, to say that my aunt wasn’t lonely—how could she be with me in the winter and a houseful of boarders in the summer? But I knew better. Every so often, I saw her sadness, saw how solitude scraped at her.
After thanking Leo, I handed the phone back to Otto and asked, “Do you know Denise Slade?”
His blank look instantly convinced me that he didn’t. If he had known her, he would have shown some sort of reaction. Not that a newcomer to Chilson was likely to have killed Roger in an attempt on Denise’s life, but you never knew—anyone can commit murder—and I had to protect Aunt Frances. As much as she would let me, anyway.
“Come over Monday night,” I said. “After dinner. I’ll make the introductions. Now stop looking so scared.” I put my hands on my hips and gave him a mild version of the Librarian Look until he smiled. “That’s better. I’m a very good introducer, and the two of you will be friends in no time.”
Otto got up to fetch my coat. “Maybe this can wait,” he said tentatively.
“Monday night,” I said.
On my way back across the street, I started laughing out loud. I was about to matchmake the matchmaker. If there weren’t the specter of the bookmobile’s demise hanging over my head, and the very real possibility that someone out there was still trying to kill Denise, I would have thought that life was very good.
* * *
The next morning, the rain was falling down so heavily that I drove to the library. I arrived early and scampered through a number of tasks that would look at me sorrowfully and shake their heads in despair if I didn’t get them done. But as soon as I finished the last have-to job, I shut my office door and went back to my desk with one thing on my mind.
Save the bookmobile.
Which meant figuring out who killed Roger. Which, I was sure, meant figuring out who wanted to kill Denise.
There was the tiniest twinge of Mom-induced guilt that hovered in a back corner of my brain, but I told it to go away. Yes, I was at work and could have been expected to be, well, working, but keeping the bookmobile on the road was my job, too.
I grabbed my purse and, for the first time ever, left the building without telling anyone.
Forty-five minutes later, I was standing at the edge of the Jurco River, looking at the Jurco Dam. I was also shivering, because I wasn’t dressed properly. Jeremy had said he’d been here the day Roger was killed, and I’d seen his car about ten miles away from the gas station. If he was here at the time he’d said he been, there wasn’t enough time for him to get in place to shoot Roger, not with the condition of the gravel road I’d just traveled.
I glanced back at my poor little sedan, which was now coated with thick spatterings of mud, courtesy of the rutted road.
So now my only problem was: How could I confirm or deny the time Jeremy had been here? If he hated Denise enough, he might have overcome his aversion to blood and guns.
I stood at the end of the small dam, watching the water rush through, down, and away. Checking water levels, he’d said. Water levels above the dam? Below the dam? Both? There were so many things I didn’t know; dam knowledge was just one more.
“Hang on,” I said out loud.
There, fastened to the end of the dam, about three feet off the ground, was a metal object that looked like a really boring mailbox. I stepped sideways down the shallow slope toward it. The gray metal box was about eighteen inches tall and a foot wide.
I slipped on the slushy ground and slid sideways against the box, grunting as my hip hit a sharp corner. Score one for being short. If I’d been taller, the box would have smacked me in the thigh instead of my softest part.
“Please don’t be locked,” I said on a breath, feeling around for a catch on the box. “Please . . .”
My fingers found a fastener. With a quiet click, it released, and I swung open the door. Inside was a clipboard with a pen attached. On the clipboard was a stack of papers warped from dampness. On the papers were a series of numbers and dates and times and abbreviations.
I pulled the whole thing out and started studying.
“Hello.”
I jumped and almost dropped the clipboard to the wet ground. Up above me was a woman about my own age, dressed in a warm-looking dark knit hat, heavy boots, dark green pants, and dark green winter jacket, to which a gold shield was pinned. “Hi,” I said. “I was just, um, looking at the data.”
The conservation officer nodded. “Jeremy Hull’s work, mostly, but I take the readings when I’m over here. So does the other CO for the county, Officer Wartella. I’m Officer Jenica Thomas.”
Wartella had been the CO I’d talked to what seemed like months ago. “Really?” I asked. “Taking readings is part of your job?”
She nodded but didn’t say anything.
“This is my first time out here. Can you explain this?” I pointed to the sheet. “The dates and times I get, but some of these others don’t make a lot of sense.”
“No problem.” She scrambled down to me, sure-footed on the wet, muddy surface. “Date and time, as you said. Those are the initials of the person recording the data.” She pointed. “Next is an abbreviation for the weather condition. Sunny, raining, and so on. Then temperature, then the elevation above and below the dam, which is plus or minus from a mark on the dam wall.”
Now that it was explained, it all made sense. “How accurate are these?” I asked. “I mean, what if someone writes down a wrong number or something?”
Officer Thomas pulled in a breath. “Incorrect elevations should show up as an anomaly.”
“What if it was the wrong time?” I persisted. “What if it was, say, the time-change weekend and someone wrote down the old time instead of the right one?”
The CO considered my question seriously. “It’s possible,” she finally said, “but unlikely. The people trained to take these elevations are competent and conscientious folks who take this effort seriously. None of us is likely to compromise the data by making an error.”
“Why a clipboard?” I asked. “Why isn’t it entered into a computer?”