How she’d come to that bizarre conclusion, I had no idea. But since I also didn’t care to learn how Denise’s thought process worked, I just said, “If you could send me the list, I’d appreciate it.”
“Well.” Denise sighed. “I suppose. But that stuff is at home, and I’m doing the flowers at church this morning, then I have a volunteer shift at Lake View this afternoon, and tonight my friend Bobbi is hosting a euchre tournament, and she always says she can’t play cards without me, so I can’t promise when.”
“Whenever you have a minute is fine,” I said, edging away. “Thanks.” And I fled before she could start talking about her Monday schedule. During my hurried walk, I went past Benton’s, stopped, turned around, and stepped up to the front door. The store wouldn’t be open for almost another hour, but maybe Rianne was in. I knocked loudly and, sure enough, Rianne’s head poked out of the back doorway.
She saw my frantic gestures and came forward to unlock the door. “Minnie, what’s up?”
“Do you have a few minutes?”
“Sure,” she said, glancing outside at the big clock. “Would you like some coffee? I was just going over some inventory numbers. Come on back.”
As we settled ourselves in her office, coffee in hand, I trailed my fingers across a few spokes of the ship’s wheel. “Do you remember a book about wildflowers at your grandparents’ house? It was on the sideboard.”
“Flowers?” She blew steam off her coffee. “I guess so, but I was more of a Boxcar Children fan. Why do you ask?”
“Because I think that book is why Andrea was killed.”
Rianne stopped midsip. “I don’t understand.”
“This is going to sound impossible, but the book Wildflowers, by Robert Chastain, is potentially worth a lot of money.”
“How much is a lot?” Rianne went back to sipping.
“If it’s in mint condition, half a million dollars.”
Rianne’s mouthful of coffee blew out in a spray all over her desk. “Half a million? That can’t be right. No way did Deke and Granny have anything worth that much. No way.”
I told her that Cade himself had seen the book. “Plus, I think that’s why Andrea was in the library that night. Somehow she knew the value of the book and was trying to find it. And I think someone is still trying to.”
“Why didn’t they put it in a safety-deposit box?” She looked around a little wildly. “Get it insured? Something. Anything.”
“I’m not sure they believed Cade about its value. To them it was just a book that had been sitting on the sideboard.”
“Now, that I can believe.” Rianne pulled a tissue out of a box and dabbed at the coffee-colored spray on her papers. “But why would anyone think the book ended up in the library?”
“Because in her later years, your grandmother gave away a lot of things. Because I’m guessing it isn’t on the sideboard anymore.”
“Let’s find out.” Rianne put down her coffee mug and reached for the phone. “Honey? Can you go into the dining room? You know that pile of kids’ books on the sideboard? Is there a book about wildflowers in there?”
“Wildflowers of Northern America,” I said.
She nodded, passed on the title, and, after a few moments, said, “Thanks. I’ll tell you about it tonight.” She hung up the phone and looked at me. “It’s not there. And there’s nowhere else in the house it would be. It’s gone.”
Though that was what I’d expected, it was still a punch in the stomach.
The skin around Rianne’s mouth was tight. “Did Granny give it away, or did someone steal it?”
“If someone had stolen it from the house, Andrea wouldn’t have been in the library, looking for it.” At least that was my assumption. “I think your grandmother gave it away.”
Rianne relaxed a fraction, but only a fraction. “So, someone out there is willing to murder for the sake of this book?”
“For half a million dollars,” I said.
She blew out a long sigh. “My grandparents had a lot of people in that house over the years. It could be almost anyone. I just . . . I just hope it isn’t anyone I know.”
For her sake, I hoped so, too.
* * *
“Keep your elbows in.”
I nodded at Ash’s instruction, trying not to think that he sounded like my father had, years back when I was being taught table manners. I still didn’t honestly see why it was such a horrible thing to put your elbows on the table when you were eating a hamburger, especially if you were like me and had elbows that ended closer to the tabletop than most people’s, but I still couldn’t do it without feeling guilty.
Speaking of parents . . . “How did it go at your mom’s?” I asked.
Though Ash was about twenty feet away, over the flat water that was between us, there was no need to speak any louder than if he’d been right next to me. We were in kayaks, sitting low, and the world looked different from the way it did from a standing position. Though I’d canoed many times, this was my first-ever kayak outing, and I was already a convert. The only thing I had to unlearn from my earlier canoeing efforts was the elbow thing.
“All set,” he said.
He’d gone to his mom’s house to help her plant trees that a landscaping company had delivered the day before. Maples, to replace the ash trees that had been killed by the emerald ash borer. Since Ash’s name had come from how much his mother had loved those trees, it had only made sense that the human Ash work on the replacements.
“I would have been glad to help.” Digging hard into the water with the paddle’s blades, I sent the kayak scooting forward fast.
“Hey there, Speedster!” Ash laughed and caught up to me in seconds. “I told Mom you’d be happy to help, but she said she didn’t want to bother you.”
There was a small kernel of worry tucked away in a corner of my tummy. It was a stone kernel that had the name Lindsey Wolverson etched into its surface, and I had no idea what to do about it. Maybe it was a personality thing and we would never get along. Or maybe it was something I’d done, but I had no idea what. Then again, it was possible that she just didn’t like short people.
“What’s so funny?” Ash asked.
I glanced over. In the year that I’d known him and the few weeks we’d been dating, the thing I liked most about him was that he kept an open mind. There was no possible way that he had been raised by a mother who was prejudiced.
“Lots of things are funny,” I said. “Take the duck-billed platypus, for—”
The low growling sound of a big boat’s motor came up fast behind us. “Boat coming up,” Ash called. “Turn to face it diagonally, okay?”
Without too much flailing around, I did as he said, and was in proper position to take the boat’s wake when it passed underneath us.
The boat itself was a charter fishing boat headed for the channel and the open waters of Lake Michigan. On board were the typical passengers: men in their forties to early fifties, wearing jeans, fleece jackets, and baseball caps with downstate team names. A grizzled man was behind the boat’s wheel, his skin crinkled from too many years without enough sunblock. The boat’s single crew member was a tall man who was busying himself by stowing coolers and checking fishing gear, joking with the passengers, and constantly adjusting his hat.
Mitchell Koyne.
I watched the boat slide past and stared at Mitchell the entire time. When it had gone by and we’d ridden out the bobbing wake, I turned to Ash. “Did you see that?”
“Yeah,” he said, watching the boat’s stern grow ever more distant. “A bunch of guys out having a lot of expensive fun.”
His tone was a little envious, and I hoped that the next activity he taught me wasn’t going to include rods and reels and sharp hooks, because I didn’t see the attraction to sitting in a boat for hours on end, hoping you were clever enough to outsmart a fish. “Mitchell Koyne was crewing.”