“Sorry, Minnie. I just think it’s pretty far-fetched.”
I stood. “We need to get going,” I said stiffly.
“Don’t be angry,” Julia said, springing up and pulling me into a hug. “And it’s kind of you to be concerned. Thank you.”
I returned the hug, murmuring that I wasn’t mad. Because I wasn’t, not really.
But I was worried.
Chapter 13
Julia’s disbelief had been a bit wounding, so on the way home I vowed to be kinder and more patient with my niece.
“Have I forgotten what it’s like to be a teenager?” I asked Eddie as we made the short drive from the library to the marina. “Can’t be. It wasn’t that long ago.”
“Mrr?” he asked.
“Well . . .” I did the subtraction and came to the stunning realization that it had been sixteen years since I’d been a teenager. How could that be? I did the math backward, adding instead of subtracting, and came up with the same number. “Okay, it was a while ago,” I said lamely, “but it doesn’t feel like it.”
In fact, some days it took very little to summon the self-consciousness that had plagued me all through middle school and most of high school. And if I was going to be completely honest, hadn’t yet faded away to memory.
“Mrr.”
“Thanks, pal,” I said. “I love you just the way you are, too. Although I wouldn’t mind if you kept your hairs to yourself a little more, and—”
“Mrr!”
Smiling, I parked in my reserved spot and carried Eddie inside, all set to have a nice long sympathetic chat with my niece. “Kate, what do you think about . . .”
But I was talking to an empty room. I glanced up at the whiteboard, and lo and behold, she’d written something up there.
Closing at Benton’s tonight. Back by ten.
“Well, there you go,” I told Eddie as I let him out of his carrier. He leapt up to the dashboard and ignored me in favor of watching a flock of seagulls.
He remained on the dashboard while I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, was there when I left to go up to the house to work with Rafe on painting stairway risers, was there when I got back as the sun was setting, was there when Kate got home, and was still there when I left in the morning.
I patted him on the head as I left. “Are you stuck?” I asked softly, because Kate was still sleeping.
“Mrr,” he said quietly, which I took to mean, “Don’t be ridiculous. I just happen to like it here for the time being.”
“You are so weird,” I told him, and headed up to the library with Eddie’s heavy gaze tracking me up the dock. “Well, he is,” I said to the world in general, in case it happened to be listening. Eddie’s weirdness was a solid fact, but maybe broadcasting it wasn’t the way a loyal cat companion should behave. A quality cat caretaker would probably also provide better treats. And brush him twice a day. And never trim his claws.
“Fat chance,” I said, drawing a curious look from Cookie Tom, because by this time I was halfway through downtown.
He was, as always this time of morning, out sweeping the sidewalk in front of his bakery. He cocked his head at my comment and stopped, mid-sweep. “Anything I want to know about?”
I slowed, but didn’t stop. “It’s our new phone system. There’s a glitch with the connection between the VOIP messaging and the ISP—”
“Have a nice day, Minnie,” Tom said, and went back to his sweeping.
Grinning, I walked on. At some point Tom would catch on that I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about when I babbled tech-speak, but for now it was kind of fun.
But what wasn’t much fun was that I also didn’t have a clue how to find a connection between the deaths of Rex and Nicole. I sat at my desk and woke up my computer, wishing I could wake up my brain.
While I was waiting for the computer, I spun around in my chair and looked at the wall calendar I’d purchased from a local nonprofit. Each month had a different photograph of the region, and this month’s was of Chilson’s fireworks from the previous year.
I sighed, remembering what had happened this Fourth of July, then sat up straight. Maybe if I studied the books Nicole and Rex had checked out that last time they’d both been on the bookmobile, I’d see something . . .
But that didn’t make any sense. I slumped back. How could the book checkouts possibly mean a thing? Still, I didn’t have any other ideas, so I launched the software and, elbow on the desk and chin in hand, started looking backward in time to see if the two had any books in common.
They didn’t, of course. Rex had read nonfiction almost exclusively, while Nicole read a wide variety of fiction, including a smattering of legal thrillers.
I sorted their choices by date, Dewey decimal, copyright, and everything else I could think of, but saw nothing that meant anything, at least not to me. Though I hadn’t expected to find anything, I was still disappointed that nothing had turned up, and—
“Hang on,” I murmured. Because there was more to review than book choices. I could also look at who else had checked out books the last time Rex and Nicole had been on the bookmobile together. Maybe there was another bookmobile patron who had crossed paths with both Rex and Nicole. Yes, I tended to think all bookmobilers were fine and upstanding citizens, but maybe there was an outlier, an anomaly, someone who wasn’t honorable, and maybe there was . . . something.
Knowing it was a long shot, I pulled up the day and stop. And sat back in my chair, staring at the screen.
I’d forgotten all about Violet Mullaly.
The first time I’d met the indomitable and irrepressible Violet had been early spring, and I’d just driven the bookmobile through ten miles of sloggy mess of rain and snow and slush. Which was no excuse for anything, but might explain why, when Violet completely rejected every single one of the books I suggested she might like, I formed an opinion of her personality and character I had yet to revise.
It wasn’t fair, of course, and I was still trying to find a way to like the irascible forty-ish woman—we had many things in common, or at least we were the same height, which should have been a special bond—but every time I saw Violet striding down the road to the bookmobile stop, I made every attempt to be busy when she came aboard.
Julia found the situation amusing, and had no problem saying so every time Violet left. “It’s nothing personal; she’s horrible to everyone. Think of her as a character in a play,” she said, turning her palms upward in a stage gesture of openness. “A minor character who wreaks havoc in the lives of everyone else. Or think of her as a foil to display the fine qualities of the other characters.”
“I’d rather not think of her at all,” I said later that afternoon as I drove out of Chilson. Though the day had started out with blue sky, a thick bank of clouds had been creeping across from west to east, and now rain was starting to splatter on my windshield.
When I’d remembered that Violet and Nicole and Rex had been on the bookmobile at the same time, I’d spent some time trying to think of reasons for Violet to commit murder. I hadn’t come up with anything I could take to Detective Inwood, or even Ash, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t be something.
Maybe there was some long-running Hatfield and McCoy thing between the three families and Violet was carrying out her grandfather’s dying wish. Maybe she was a wannabe poet, and Rex and Nicole had seen her copying something out of a book that she was trying to get published as original work. Or maybe Kate had been on the right track with the hired killer idea, and Violet was the hiree.
Because Violet as the killer had a certain appeal. And maybe she had a darker personality than I’d ever suspected. Maybe her angry nature rippled out to widespread anger against humanity, and maybe that day on the bookmobile had tipped her over the edge.