“Theodore,” she said dolefully.
“Well, he can’t help the name he was born with,” I said. “And Ted isn’t so bad. I have a neighbor named Ted and he’s—”
But Josh was shaking his head. “He doesn’t go by Ted. It’s Theodore.”
He spoke the syllables in a round, full, sonorous tone, and I got a mental image of what Theodore must look like. Which was ridiculous, because who ever looked like their name?
“Minnie!” Donna hurried into the break room. “Did they tell you?”
“About what?”
“About Thee-o-door,” she said. “He was awful. You can’t let the board choose him as the new director—you just can’t.”
Holly and Josh, when grouped together during the morning break time, had a tendency to exacerbate any given situation. I’d been taking their comments about yesterday’s interviewee with a large grain of salt, and had been thinking about stringing them along with hints that the board had thought highly of Theodore. But if Donna was agreeing with the Dual Voices of Doom, I had to take the situation seriously. “Tell me what happened.”
“Thee-o-dore,” Donna said, “was too friendly.”
“Way too,” Josh said. “The guy was creepy. Pretending like he knew us, calling us by our names even though he’d never met us before.”
Okay, that was weird. It meant the guy had done his homework—there were pictures of the staff on the library’s Web site—but it was weird not to let yourself be introduced first.
“And he kept talking about what he’d like to do here,” Holly burst out.
“What’s so bad about that? Any library director will have goals.”
“You’re not getting it,” Josh said. “He was talking about the changes he was going to make.”
That was different.
“Want to know the first thing he’s going to do?” Holly asked. I didn’t, not really, but short of running out of the room and locking my office door behind me, I wasn’t sure how to avoid hearing. “He wants to get rid of the—”
I steeled myself to hear the word “bookmobile.”
“—sculpture garden.”
My mouth dropped open. The library’s sculpture garden was a labor of love for the entire town. Local artists had submitted designs, school art classes had constructed the pieces, and the installations had been celebrated events attended by hundreds.
“He doesn’t know what it means to Chilson,” I finally said. “That’s all. Once he finds out, he’ll change his mind.”
Josh made a rude noise. “He said it was a waste of maintenance dollars.”
I blinked. Gareth, our maintenance guy and my fellow junk-food maven, loved the sculptures. He took care of them on his own time, saying that it was his civic contribution to Chilson. The sole cost to the library was the occasional bolt or small can of paint, and I wasn’t sure Gareth charged even that to the library.
“And,” Holly ruthlessly went on, “he said it would save money to move the sculptures to commercial venues. That we’d be better off with a bigger parking lot.”
“After that,” Donna said into my look of stunned disbelief, “the next thing he wants is to get rid of all the DVDs. Says they have no place in a library.”
“Are you sure he wasn’t just nervous?” I asked. “That could make anyone act unusually.”
“When he walked out,” Holly said, “he was whistling.”
It was hard to imagine a whistle coming out of someone who was anxious. “What was he whistling?” I asked, still trying to find a way to make excuses for this guy.
“The theme music to that last Superman movie.”
Oh, dear.
“Minnie, you have to apply,” Josh said.
“You mean you haven’t?” Donna practically shrieked. “We need you. Thee-o-dore was horrible. What’s-her-name wasn’t much better. I’m not holding out much hope that the other interviewees will be any improvement.”
“If you love us even a little,” Holly pleaded, “put in your application. You have it ready, don’t you?”
“Apply,” Donna said. “Please?”
It was the question mark at the end that got me. Donna wasn’t big on asking for favors, even when she really needed the help. I needed to tell them what I’d decided, and I needed to stop putting it off.
“Sorry, but I’m not going to,” I said. “If I’m director, I can’t drive the bookmobile, and that’s too important to me.”
There was a long silence.
Holly heaved a huge sigh. “I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand.”
“I get it,” Josh said, nodding slowly. “But I’m with Holly. I don’t like it.”
I looked at Donna, who grimaced. “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Same as those two.”
I smiled, glad to have the bad news delivered and done with. “Don’t look so gloomy. Things will work out.”
“Or not,” Donna muttered, but I chose not to hear her comment, and went back to my office.
* * *
At lunchtime, I pushed back from my computer. I’d been staring at the screen for two hours straight and needed a break. Outside, I looked around, smiling at the high white clouds, blue sky, and sidewalks that were beginning to crowd up with the summer folks. It wouldn’t get avoid-downtown-at-all-costs busy until the Fourth of July, but there was enough foot traffic to make it impossible to walk in a straight line.
I stopped outside Pam’s store and peered in. Her clerk was showing off a collection of antique aprons, and Pam herself was at the register, totting up purchases with one hand faster than I could have with two.
When she finished, I popped my head in the front door and waved at her. When she waved back, I asked. “How about lunch?”
She looked around her store. At least half a dozen customers were milling about, and I moved aside to let two more inside. “How about tomorrow?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Bookmobile day.”
One of the women who’d just walked in whirled around. “You have a bookmobile here? How wonderful!” She elbowed her female companion. “Did you hear that, Susie? They have a bookmobile.”
“That settles it,” Susie said. “I’m moving up here next week.”
I laughed. “Hope you like snow.” I looked back to Pam. “Lunch on Friday? No? Saturday is probably too busy for you. How about . . .” I had plans for Sunday, didn’t I? And it seemed as if I had something on Monday. Tuesday was another bookmobile day, which left—
“How about September?” she asked, laughing.
I smiled at her ruefully. “Sounds about right.”
“We’ll figure out a day soon,” she said. “And I’m paying. I owe you big-time for Sunday—don’t think I’m going to let you forget it. All that work, not to mention the hospital trip.”
Susie and her friend, who were still standing close by, looked at the two of us curiously. “Hospital?” Susie asked. She gestured at Pam’s sling. “That’s recent?”
“Fresh as a daisy,” Pam said. “And it’s all thanks to Minnie here that the store is even open today.”
I could see where this was going, and I didn’t want any part of it. “Nice to meet you,” I said to the two women, “but I hear the library calling.” I smiled and hurried off before I was forced to listen to any of Pam’s tall tales about my good deeds.
Outside, I walked past the insurance agency and the shoe store, pausing only to use a stranger’s cell phone to take a picture of said stranger’s family, all of whom were posing under the new clock. As I handed the phone back and listened to their thanks, I eyed the large store across the street. Speaking of deeds, good and bad, there was Benton’s, the store the DeKeyser family owned. And, I’d recently learned through a text from Rafe, still owned through a granddaughter whose name I’d come up with in a minute.
As I crossed the street, I remembered her name. “Rianne,” I said out loud, and earned a sideways glance from a man wearing shorts, a polo shirt, and deck shoes. “Howe,” I added, nodding.
“How do you do?” he asked pleasantly enough, but he kept to the far side of the sidewalk and didn’t slow down.