After thanking her again, I walked down the pristine steps thoughtfully.
I now knew all sorts of things about Talia, her husband, and their children. I had numbers and dates, facts and figures, straight data that might or might not be useful. But I didn’t know what kind of people they were. Didn’t know what made any of them tick. Didn’t know what any of them thought important, didn’t know what might move any of them to an act of crime.
* * *
Thanks to Dana’s rapid-fire delivery, I had plenty of time for lunch at Shomin’s Deli. Somehow I’d managed to leave the house without a book in hand, but there was a quick cure for that.
A wide block from downtown, some hopeful soul had recently opened up a used-book store. I went inside, walked around a sixtyish woman haggling with the clerk over a bag of books she wanted to sell, spied a Colin Cotterill book I’d never read, handed over my dollar plus tax, and was out the door in less than three minutes, which had to be a new record for me.
My steps were nearly jaunty. Yes, my library was in turmoil, what with a murder and the unknown leadership issue, and, yes, I had no idea how I was going to keep juggling my interim-director duties and the bookmobile without sliding into permanent sleep deprivation. Yes, the bookmobile, its garage, and the Friends’ book-sale room had all been vandalized, and, yes, my boyfriend’s mother hated me, but I had an unread book in my backpack and almost a full hour in which to read. What was there, really, to complain about?
I hummed a happy little tune as I walked through the first block of Chilson’s downtown. Past the real estate office in an old house, past the shoe store, past the pharmacy with its wood front painted this spring with a fresh coat of a disturbingly bright blue, past the toy store with its display windows filled with rocking horses and pedal cars and—
And Mitchell.
My pace went from Happy Traveler to Grandpa Shuffle. Yes, that was indeed Mitchell Koyne standing in the toy store’s window. If I’d been asked to state a reason why Mitchell would have been in a toy store, I would have laid down money that he’d have been buying something for himself. Beanbags for juggling, maybe, or one of those three-dimensional brainteaser puzzles that would take me hours to figure out, but that my brother could take apart in three minutes flat.
Mitchell, however, wasn’t buying anything. He was wearing the toy store’s signature polo shirt. He had a feather duster in hand, and he was using it to dust. Mitchell was working.
I waved, but his concentration was so focused that either he didn’t see me or he was ignoring me.
Either way, he wasn’t being Mitchell-like.
“Who are you?” I asked softly, “and what have you done with the real Mitchell?”
He didn’t answer, of course, and I moved on, troubled and more than a little sad.
Chapter 6
I worked late into the evening on Friday, but left with plenty of time to hang out at the summer’s first Friday-night marina party. Ash was on duty both weekend nights, but we’d made plans to get together Monday after I got off work. During our last morning run, I’d tried to explain how the dinner with his mother had gone wrong, but, manlike, he’d said not to be silly, that everything was fine, and he’d run off to finish his ten-mile loop, calling over his shoulder to tell me to bring my swimsuit on Monday.
After a night during which even the soft purrs of my furry friend didn’t help me fall asleep, when I got out of bed on Saturday morning, I felt the need for a family connection. “Do you mind?” I asked Eddie. “It’s a bookmobile day, so you’ll have to stay in the car for a little while.”
He yawned, sending bad cat breath straight into my nostrils, and said, “Mrr.”
I took this to be assent and whirled through my morning routine in record time. In short order I was tromping up the steps of the boardinghouse and banging through the front door.
“Hello?” I called. “It’s me.” I found my aunt Frances in the dining room, reading the newspaper.
“Good morning, sunshine!” she said, smiling and reaching up to give me a hug. “I didn’t know you were stopping by this morning. Let me set you a place.” She set down the coffee cup she’d been holding.
“Can’t stay,” I said. “Too much to do at the library before we head out.”
Conversation and the tink of pots and pans filtered out to us from the kitchen. My aunt provided her boardinghouse guests with dinner every night and breakfast six days of the week. Saturday morning, however, was the day she put her guests to work. Co-cooking the occasional breakfast with another boarder was part of the deal, she told her applicants. What she didn’t tell them was that the task was designed to get them to work as a team, which would help them get to know each other, which would nudge them into love.
Aunt Frances gave me a brief appraising look and reached for her mug. “How about some of this?”
I looked longingly at the beverage, but shook my head. “Too many miles to drive and too few bathroom stops.”
My aunt tsked at me and drank deep.
“Cruel, you are,” I said, pulling out a chair.
“But funny.” She waggled her eyebrows, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “So, what brings you to my humble abode this fine morning?”
I shrugged. “Nothing, really. Just felt like stopping by.” She peered at me and I hurried into a question. “Who’s cooking? Is that bacon I smell?”
Aunt Frances had known me all of my life, and knew that I was throwing out a distraction, but she also knew I’d talk about whatever was bothering me when I was ready.
“It’s Eva and Forrest’s turn this morning,” she said.
My night of half sleep and bad dreams had made my brain sluggish, and it took a moment for me to recall the details on Eva and Forrest. Teachers, I finally remembered, although I couldn’t think where or what they taught. In their mid-forties, divorced. Both did a lot of mountain biking. “What’s on the menu?”
“Straight up traditional breakfast,” Aunt Frances said. “But with the twist of freshly made English muffins and clotted cream.” She smiled at me over the top of her coffee. “Perked up at that, I see. You sure you don’t want a plate?”
I glanced at the wall clock. “No time. Maybe next Saturday.”
“How are things at the library?” she asked. “You’ve had a hard week.”
Via phone calls and texts, I’d kept my aunt apprised of the multitude of events. As always, her deepest concern had been for me, and, as always, I’d begged her not to tell my mother about any of it. But though I could have burst forth with a long litany of concerns and questions, I really didn’t feel like talking. “We’re muddling through,” I said. “How about you?”
Her eyebrows went up. “You think I had a hard week?”
“Busy, anyway,” I said. “With the boarders and all.”
“True,” she agreed, her gaze flicking toward the living room. I had a feeling, however, that she was looking through the walls, across the street and into the house where Otto lived.
“How is Otto these days?” I asked.
She gave the vaguest of shrugs. “He’s busy; I’m busy. We haven’t seen much of each other the past few weeks.”
Which was unusual, because they’d been hand in hand since December. I could hardly think of a time in the past six months when I’d seen one of them without the other. “You miss him, don’t you?” I asked.
“Silly old me,” she said with a wry smile. “Live without a man for decades, and now I hate to have a day go by without seeing this particular one.”
We sat there a moment in companionable silence, thinking about things and not thinking about things. Then I got to my feet. “Time for me to go,” I said. “Eddie’s in the car, waiting, and you know how he gets.”