A chair scraped backward and I knew she’d be standing up. “Not just me,” I said, towing Otto toward the dining room. “I brought an uninvited guest. He said he’s never had a boardinghouse breakfast, and I think it’s high time he gets one.”
“Did you bring Ash?” Aunt Frances appeared in the doorway. Behind her, the sun was streaming through the leaves of the trees in the backyard, slanting into the screened porch and the dining room. Her tall, angular figure was rimmed with sunlight, giving her a dazzling aura and making her look as if she’d walked straight out of the sun.
Otto caught his breath at the sight.
“Not Ash,” I said, shoving at Otto’s shoulder. “Just your across-the-street neighbor. He didn’t want to barge in uninvited, but I made him come over anyway.” I was about to add that I hoped it was okay until I saw my aunt’s radiant smile.
She reached out for Otto’s hands. “Why didn’t I think of this before? Of course you should come over for breakfast. You don’t need an invitation, for heaven’s sake.” She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek, then turned and escorted him to the dining room.
“Everyone,” she said, “this is my good friend Otto Bingham. Otto, going clockwise, that’s Eva and Forrest, Liz, Morris, Victoria, and Welles.”
All six of them greeted Otto with smiles and cheerful ‘nice to meet you’s. In short order, they were sliding chairs around and setting another place. Liz, who was at the buffet, getting out silverware, looked at me. “Minnie, are you eating?”
I shook my head. “Thanks, but there’s no time. It’s a bookmobile day and Eddie’s in the car, ready to go forth and conquer new bookish territory.”
My aunt wrapped a blueberry muffin in a paper napkin and put it into my hand. “Thank you,” she whispered, “for Otto.”
But there was no need for her words. Seeing the happiness on her face was more than thanks enough.
Chapter 11
“It’s a shame your new young man couldn’t make it tonight.” Barb McCade looked at me over the top of her wineglass.
“That’s right.” Barb’s husband, Russell, looked around as if Ash might be sitting somewhere else and waiting for an engraved invitation. “Where is that boy, anyway? Are we going to have to teach him manners?”
The only people sitting anywhere close were a sixtyish couple who were arguing over the price of something in the six-figure range. It seemed to be real estate, but if they were summer people, it could be anything from new landscaping to a new car.
“The boy,” I said, “is close to six feet tall, runs ten miles a day, has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, and is studying to be a detective.”
Barb elbowed her husband. “And he’s a cop. Bet he could take you down, Cade.”
“Of course he could,” Cade said calmly. “I channel my physical powers a different way.”
“You do?” His wife frowned. “What powers are those? I didn’t know you had any.”
“I’m pacing myself.” He grinned.
“Possible,” Barb said. “But probable?” She held out her hand and tipped it back and forth.
Smiling, I shook my head. They were at it again.
I’d met these two clowns last summer when Barb had run in front of the bookmobile, waving me down because her husband was having a stroke. We’d raced him to the hospital, and it wasn’t until I was relaying information to the emergency room via my cell phone that I realized the sick man was none other than the painter Russell McCade, known as Cade to his thousands upon thousands of fans.
Though his critics dismissed his work as sentimental schlock, his fans—which included me—defended it as accessible art. I’d loved his work from the time I’d received a birthday card illustrated with one of his paintings, but had never dreamed I’d actually meet the artist, let along become a friend of the family via a hospital visit and the letter D.
For reasons lost in the mists of time, the McCades had a habit of randomly choosing a letter and then finding words starting with that letter to fit the ongoing conversation. When I’d joined in the game the first time, I’d gone to visit Cade in the hospital, and our acquaintanceship moved into firm friendship. Who cared if they were twenty years older than I was? Who cared if they spent six months out of the year in a place that was warm and sunny? As long as we had the letter D, we were good.
“Pathetic,” Cade said, sighing.
Or the letter P, which was also an excellent word starter.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I asked. “What’s pathetic?”
“A pound would be better. There are profound thoughts up here.” Cade tapped his head.
I searched madly for an appropriate P word, but couldn’t find one anywhere.
“He was talking about you, Minnie,” Barb said. “And you’re not pathetic. You’re preoccupied; that’s all, right?”
Cade started studying me, and I felt myself squirming. Every time he looked at me like that, I was afraid he was thinking about how I’d look on canvas. Though I’d made it perfectly clear that I had no interest in being the subject of a portrait, I wasn’t certain he’d paid any attention to me.
“There’s a lot going on right now. The bookmobile, the library director, not to mention . . . well . . .” I glanced around.
We were in Petoskey, eating at the City Park Grill. One of its claims to fame was that it had once been the hangout of Ernest Hemingway, which was nice enough, especially if you were a Hemingway fan, but what I cared most about were the buttery garlic biscuits served as an appetizer. Warm, buttery garlic biscuits, moved with tongs from serving platter to your own individual biscuit plate by a server who would bring more; all you had to do was ask.
The McCades and I were sitting in the back of the restaurant. Cade wasn’t exactly a recluse, but he didn’t make any efforts to be a noted celebrity, either—much to the dismay of his agent—and I was happy enough to sit in the back corner, where it was a little darker and far quieter. From the six-figure couple, we were hearing an occasional tone of frustration from the man and a sporadic “Bob!” from the woman, but other than that, all was peace and calm. She looked vaguely familiar, and I surreptitiously studied her for a few moments, trying to figure out where I’d seen her before.
“The break-ins,” Barb said.
“And the murder of Andrea Vennard, a former resident of Chilson,” Cade added. “There is indeed a lot going on.”
“You two were out of town when most of that happened.” In Chicago at a show of Cade’s work, specifically. “How did you know?”
“The newspaper,” Cade said. “It’s a marvelous invention. You should try it someday.”
Barb shook her head, making her ponytail of graying brown hair flick around the sides of her neck. “Don’t believe a word he says. He heard it from the neighbors first, then dug through the papers afterward.”
“Corroboration.” Cade sipped at his beer, a draft from Short’s Brewing Company that was so hoppy I could smell it from across the table. “One must have corroboration.”
Suddenly I remembered where I’d seen the six-figure woman. She’d been the woman at the used-book store, haggling with the clerk over books she was trying to sell.
“Does that detective have any ideas?” Barb asked.
“All avenues . . .” I said, then stopped.
Cade set his beer on the table with a sharp bang. “All avenues of investigation will be explored, especially wide-open and freshly paved avenues that could easily lead to the wrong person.”
“Sorry,” I murmured. Cade had been the lead suspect in a murder investigation last summer. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”