I shook my head. “Of course. I forgot how information moves around here.”
“Faster than a speeding bullet,” Susan said with a grin. She tipped her head in Mia’s direction. “For the record, best student intern ever.”
“She picked up the computer system like that,” I said, snapping my fingers.
“The story-time kids love her hair. They were all clamoring to sit around her.” Susan pointed to the round table in the children’s department. Mia was scraping gum from under the bottom edge. “Nobody asked her to clean those tables. She volunteered.”
“You think I should offer her the part-time job when she’s done with her work-study?”
Susan nodded. “Yeah, I do. You said at the last staff meeting that we needed more help around here. Why not Mia?”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll think about it.” I looked at my watch. “Do you want to take your break first?”
She shook her head. “I’d rather get these shelved before I do. It’s the last cart. Anyway, I think Mary should go first. She doesn’t exactly seem like herself today.”
The day-care teacher was heading out the door and Mary was on the phone.
“What do you mean, she doesn’t seem like herself?” I said.
Susan poked the crochet hook holding her topknot a little tighter into her hair. Either she was trying to keep it away from the twins so they didn’t put someone’s eye out or Abigail was still trying to teach her how to crochet.
“I don’t know. She seems kind of preoccupied about something. She went to put the coffee on and then came back down without doing it. And she forgot to lock the book drop after we emptied it.” She held up a hand. “That reminds me. Oren put a new strip of metal on the top edge where it was eating magazines. He said to let him know how it works.”
I nodded and made a mental note to make a written one so I wouldn’t forget.
Mary was just hanging up the phone when I walked over to the desk. “You can take your break now,” I said.
She looked blankly at me for a moment, then shook her head. “Sorry, Kathleen. I was somewhere else.”
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, tugging at the bottom of her cream-colored cardigan. The sweater had slipped down on her right shoulder, and the totem pole of scarecrows that decorated that side looked as though it was about to topple over. She sighed. “No, everything’s not all right.”
“Could I help?”
“Maybe you could. Obviously you know that Hugh Davis is dead.”
I nodded.
“Well, yesterday morning I walked over to the Stratton to see if I could help Abigail with anything. It was early and the only car in the lot was hers. I just assumed she was there by herself.” She gave me a wry smile. “At my age you’d think I’d know not to assume anything.”
I knew better than to try to rush Mary. She would get to the point in her own time.
“I thought that Abigail would be in the office at that time of day, so I went in the front.”
“She wasn’t there?”
Mary shook her head. “The auditorium doors were locked, so I decided to just go back outside and use the stage door.” She fingered a button on her sweater. “She was actually standing in the parking lot. I think she was getting boxes out of her car. I was about halfway around the building when I saw her.”
“Mary, did you and Abigail have some kind of an argument?” I asked.
“We didn’t,” she said. “But Abigail and Hugh Davis did.”
“People argue,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “You saw what Hugh was like when he was here yesterday. He couldn’t have been easy to work with. So they had a disagreement. It doesn’t mean anything.” I realized I was trying to convince myself as much as I was trying to convince Mary.
Abigail had lied about knowing Hugh. Mary had heard them arguing. And now he was dead. Big coincidence. On the other hand, I knew Abigail couldn’t kill anyone. Stuff someone in her rain barrel? Maybe. Shoot them? Never.
Mary shook her head slowly. “You don’t understand, Kathleen,” she said, lowering her voice. “This was a lot more than a disagreement. You know how Abigail is. She doesn’t lose her temper. She doesn’t raise her voice. In the last year and a half have you ever seen her get angry?”
“No, I haven’t,” I said.
She picked up a scrap piece of paper from the desk and dropped it into the recycling bin. “Well, I’ve known Abigail a lot longer than that and I’ve never seen her really lose her temper—that is, not before yesterday.”
“So what were they fighting about?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t even realize it was the two of them at first. I could hear the tone of their voices, but I couldn’t really make out the words. Then when I saw who it was . . .” She looked away for a moment. “They didn’t see me, so I just backtracked to the sidewalk and left.”
“And then you found out Hugh was dead.”
There were tiny pinched lines around her mouth. “I don’t mean that I think Abigail had anything to do with that,” she said hastily. Then she sighed. “Kathleen, Abigail and Hugh Davis had some kind of past, but they were both pretending they’d never met.”
“Why do you say that?” I hoped that what I was feeling didn’t show on my face.
“Because of the one thing I did hear her say to him before I got out of there. She said, ‘If I’d killed you the first time you messed up my life, I’d be out of prison by now.’”
8
I called Mom about twelve thirty. She answered the phone on the ninth ring with a sound that was more like a growl than a hello. Her smoky voice was even huskier than usual.
“Katydid, you better be on fire if you’re calling me at this ungodly hour,” she rasped.
“It’s lunchtime here,” I said, grinning and swinging around in my chair so I could see the clouds drifting in over the water.
“How nice for you. Why did you call me, assuming you’re not on fire at the moment?”
I relayed Ben’s offer.
“Hugh Davis is dead?” She sounded a little more awake. “The man was a toad, but still.”
“You knew him?”
“Mostly by reputation, sweetie. What happened?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” I replied, hedging. “What do you mean he was a toad?”
“Long story, Katydid,” she said with a yawn. “I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.”
“So you’ll come?”
“Of course I’ll come,” she said. “I haven’t worked with Ben in years and how could I pass up the opportunity to spend time with you?”
I told her Abigail would be in touch with all the details and promised I’d have her favorite tea and we’d hung up.
When we closed at one o’clock, I walked over to the co-op store to see if Maggie was available for lunch. I couldn’t get what Mary had told me out of my head. I hadn’t been wrong. Abigail and Hugh Davis had known each other. So why did they pretend they didn’t? Could that somehow have something to do with his death? I wanted someone else’s perspective—someone other than the cats. I’d left a message for Mags, but I hadn’t heard back from her so I was guessing it had been a busy morning at the store.
There were four people browsing in the small space. Maggie and Ruby Blackthorne were behind the counter looking after a fifth customer. Ruby was nesting a small earth goddess statue in a box filled with packing peanuts that looked like white cheese curls. They were made out of cornstarch and I remembered how happy Maggie had been to find them on a trip we’d made to Minneapolis with Roma . . . at a business Abigail had suggested she check out.
I needed to talk to Maggie. I needed her to tell me I was seeing connections where there really weren’t any.
She looked up from the cash register, smiled and held up one finger, which meant “Give me a minute.”