The sixtyish woman sent a vague smile in my direction and moved on past.
“Good job,” I muttered. “Next thing is you’ll start talking to yourself in public.” I glanced around fast, but I was alone with the spices and baking supplies.
Which, truly, was a strange place for me to be, considering my inclination to cook as little as possible. Then again, even noncooks had to feed themselves once in a while in order to avoid spending too much disposable income in restaurants.
Then I remembered that eating out could be considered doing my bit to help the local economy. Commendable, that’s what it was, not indulgent.
Cheered, I faced the spices and tried to remember what it was I used for the steak dry rub I’d made last summer and liked so much. I shoved my hands into my pockets and tried to think, but my brain kept going back to my chat with Rianne and the conversation about her aunt Kim.
It was easy enough to imagine that a pending bankruptcy could drive almost anyone to do deeds she—or he—would never have considered otherwise. But in this situation, I still had no idea if there was anything involved that was worth a lot of money.
“Maybe whatever it is, it’s worth something that isn’t money,” I murmured. Which led me back to the possibility I’d posed to Ash and Detective Inwood, that this thing someone was looking for might be a tell-all journal. Of course, that didn’t tie back to Aunt Kim’s need for money, so maybe—
“Can I help you?” asked a male voice.
Startled, I whirled around to face the twentysomething store employee who’d asked the question. He wore black pants, a black cap, and a polyester short-sleeved shirt in a color that did nothing for his skin tone. “Uh, no, thanks. I was just . . . looking.” As I manufactured a fake smile, I realized that I’d seen him recently. My fake smile grew fixed. This was the guy who’d looked vaguely familiar at Cookie Tom’s. This was the guy who’d yelled at me for cutting in line. Angry Guy.
The expression on his face shifted from polite to hostile. He was recognizing me, and there was no Cookie Tom around to save me.
I put my chin up. I was short, but I was strong and invincible in many ways, none of which I could remember just then, but if I had a few minutes, I was sure I would. I didn’t need Tom. I had myself.
“You’re that librarian,” he said, making it sound like a swearword. Certainly it was italicized.
I glanced at his name tag. Shane Pratley. “Hi, Shane,” I said politely, holding out my hand. “Yes, I’m the bookmobile librarian. Minnie Hamilton. We got off to a bad start the other day. I understand that you’re upset about the arrangement I have with Tom, but I think I can explain.”
My arm was getting tired from holding my hand out for so long, but I gamely kept it up there. “Tom’s a longtime supporter of the bookmobile, you see. He’s a big believer in getting books to people who can’t come to the library. His margin is so slim that he can’t afford a big donation, even though he’d like to, so giving me a discount on cookies and letting me jump the line is his way of—”
“I don’t care what Tom thinks.” Shane pushed my hand away. “You got no right to take cuts. That’s just wrong.”
What was wrong was his rudeness. This was a man who was desperately needed to borrow an etiquette book from the library. Why was it always the people who needed a library the most were the least likely to visit one?
Of course, this was a tricky situation, because in principle I agreed with Shane; cutting in line was wrong. Then again, if I wanted to provide cookies to the bookmobile folks, and I did, zipping to the front of the line was the only way it was going to happen.
It was a moral question and an ethical dilemma and, for once, the voice in my head that sounded so much like my mother’s whenever one of these situations turned up was silent.
“I understand why you’re angry,” I said. “If it was me in your position, I might—”
“But you aren’t, are you?” He glared. “You’re the fancy librarian, driving around, making yourself queen of the town, looking down on us little people.”
“I . . . What?”
“Oh yeah,” he said, sneering. “I seen you around, your nose up in the air, acting like you’re better than everyone else. You and your friends with the restaurant and the art gallery and the boats and the big houses. You’re not from here. Why don’t you go back where you came from, you and all your rich friends.”
Clearly, young Shane had no idea how little money a librarian made. Or that at least half my friends had been born in Tonedagana County. Yet he knew so much enough about me that my skin itched.
“I live here,” I said firmly. “This is my home. I’m sorry you resent that I’ve moved to Chilson, but—”
“If you were really sorry,” he snarled, “you’d leave Chilson to the people who belong here.”
He spun and marched off, leaving me to gape after him. I’d run into his attitude before, that only people born here truly belonged, but it wasn’t even close to the majority opinion.
I took in a deep breath, another one, one more, and went back to my shopping. But when I realized I’d started to add a jar of bay leaves to my empty cart instead of basil, I gave up, returned the cart to the front of the store, and headed back out into the sunshine.
Halfway home, my brain began to unscramble and I started thinking again. I mentally walked back through the events of the past couple of weeks and came to an abrupt realization.
“Huh,” I said. Angry Shane Guy had caught me cutting in line two days before the break-in at the bookmobile garage. He clearly knew who I was and where I worked and, just as clearly, he didn’t like me. Was it possible that he was on a one-man mission to rid Chilson of people who hadn’t been born Up North? It sounded bizarre, but the guy’s anger at someone he didn’t even know was also bizarre.
Was it possible he’d made a mess of the bookmobile just to make my life more difficult?
And if he could do that, could he have killed Andrea?
* * *
“So, what do you think?” I asked Eddie.
My cat, of course, didn’t reply. We were on the houseboat’s front deck, and he was busy staring at my plate, which was on my lap. The two of us had started out on separate lounge chairs, but once Eddie had realized I was eating the sub sandwich I’d picked up for dinner at Fat Boys, he’d moved over to my chair. At first he sat at the end, down by my feet. Then he’d inched closer and closer, ever so slowly, and now that I was on the last two bites, he was on my thighs and practically had his chin on the edge of the plate.
I’d tried to gently shove him away and even onto the floor, but when Eddie decided to become an immovable object, no brute force in the universe could possibly dislodge him.
I tossed in the penultimate bite of veggie sub—see, Mom? I am eating properly—and chewed and swallowed. “No comment?” I asked Eddie. “I would have thought for sure that you’d have something to say about my two suspects.”
The last bite of sandwich was still in my hand, and Eddie’s eyes were intent on following its every move.
“There’s Kim, a DeKeyser daughter, who people are saying is about to declare bankruptcy. If we’re going to assume that Andrea was trying to steal something valuable—say, a book—maybe Kim knew what it was and killed her to get it.
“But wait,” I said, popping in the last bite of sandwich. Eddie watched it disappear. When I’d finished chewing and swallowing, I said, “There’s also Shane. For whatever reason, he’s mad at the world and he’s taking it out on the folks he feels have invaded his town. Is he mad enough to break into places he’s never been before? Did Andrea make him mad, too?”
I thought about that for a minute, wondering how I could find out if Andrea and Shane had known each other.
“Ash needs to know about Shane,” I said, petting Eddie and watching a generous collection of cat hair slide off his back and spin away into the air. “Not sure what good it will do, but you never know.”