I squinted at him. “How is sitting in your truck doing nothing a cool thing?”
“Clearly, you have no idea what’s cool and what isn’t.”
This was true, and had always been. My career choice alone made that obvious, but there was also significant backup evidence: my preferred entertainment (reading), preferred beverage (lemonade made by my aunt), and preferred method of travel (tie between a bookmobile and walking).
“Let me guess,” I said. “You are the arbiter of coolness in Chilson.”
“No, but I’m good friends with who is. And so are you.”
Ah. Kristen. He was right, she was very cool. “Should I text her and ask her to rate our current activity?”
“No, no,” Rafe said, yawning. “I’m confident she’d agree with me.”
I made a mental note to ask next time I saw her. But I hadn’t seen much of her this summer due to her restaurant’s surging success, and I wasn’t sure I’d remember to ask in September, when things would slow down. Then again, Rafe was probably counting on that, so I pulled out my phone and added a reminder to my calendar.
“Are you really texting Kristen?” Rafe asked, leaning over.
“Nope.” I saved the reminder and tucked the phone away. “Do you really think we’re going to learn anything doing this?”
Two hours earlier, after I’d gone back to the houseboat, given Eddie a snuggle and a treat, and read on the whiteboard that Kate was working until close at Benton’s and would be going out afterward to eat at Fat Boys with the store’s staff, I’d headed up to the house and told Rafe the air conditioner story. And how my dusty toe had led me to, if not direct dot connection, the coalescing of old facts into new arrangements. Pink bumper stickers. Courtney Drew. Home health aide. Access to medications. Nicole’s back pain.
He’d hugged me tight, then called Ash. “Hey, buddy. I hear Minnie almost got squished by an AC unit.”
I started to sputter indignantly, saying that if he didn’t believe me he could just say so instead of calling the cops, but he rolled his eyes and slung his free arm around my shoulders and kissed the top of my head. “Shh,” he whispered, and said into the phone, “What’s the deal?”
Due to having one ear against Rafe’s chest and the other ear covered by his arm, I couldn’t hear Ash, and heard Rafe’s voice mostly as a deep rumbling vibration. What I could hear, though, was along the lines of “Any idea who did it?” and “Any chance of catching whoever it was?” and “Don’t worry. I’ll keep her safe.”
I burrowed deeper into his warmth. Not that I needed to be any warmer, really, but being so close to him felt good. Discounting the winter months I spent with Aunt Frances, I’d lived more or less on my own since college. I’d grown accustomed to it. Had even enjoyed the solitude and the time spent learning to be myself. But now it seemed I was entering another phase in my life, one including that I would, every so often, be taken care of by a man named Rafe Niswander.
And it was turning out that I didn’t mind the feeling. As long as he didn’t get too carried away.
“Safe,” I’d murmured into Rafe’s shoulder. “You really think you can do that?”
“Yes.” He’d kissed the top of my head and I’d closed my eyes against a rush of emotions that made my throat swell.
“It’d be easier, though,” he’d added, “if you’d be okay with being encased from head to toe with bubble wrap.”
I hadn’t been, of course, and now the two of us were whiling away the evening sitting in his truck and watching the front door of an apartment building from half a block away. More specifically, the apartment building where Courtney Drew lived.
We’d been parked on the street outside Chilson’s take-out Chinese restaurant for more than an hour, watching cars drive past, watching cars pull into the building’s parking lot, watching people walk up to the building, watching people walk out of the building. It was remarkably boring.
“Let’s do a list,” I said.
Rafe squinted at me. “A bucket list, you mean? Number one is all the pro football fields in the country. We’d start with the current ones, but to do it right, we’d need to visit the sites of the previous fields, too. And while we’re at it, we should visit all the major league baseball fields and hockey arenas. Maybe that’s where we’d start, with the original six national hockey league teams. Yeah, I like that a lot.”
He would go on for hours if I didn’t stop him, so when he took a breath, I cut in. “A list of murder suspects.”
“Excellent idea,” he said, stretching and yawning. “The husband. The wife.”
I pulled out my phone and started typing into the Notes app. “Dominic Price. Fawn Stuhler.”
In short order, we had what we figured was a full list. In addition to Dominic and Fawn, we had Barry Vannett, Lowell Kokotovich, Violet Mullaly, Courtney Drew, Mason Hiller, and John and Nandi Jaquay.
“That’s eight,” I said. “Nine if you count the Jaquays separately.”
Rafe leaned over and looked at my phone. “Let’s rank them.”
“Do what?”
“A one-to-ten scale. One for not very likely to be the killer, ten for very likely.”
“What if we don’t agree?”
“We’ll add the points and do an average.”
It sounded reasonable, and we started with the spouses. We both gave them sixes and I tapped the numbers into my phone. “Next is Barry Vannett. His motive is murky, but I think he should be a six, too. He disappeared right before the fireworks on a beer run when they already had plenty of beer. So he had time to kill Rex.” I couldn’t remember if I’d mentioned this to Rafe earlier, but better late than never.
“Hang on,” Rafe said, frowning. “You want to give the guy a six because he wanted more beer?”
“There was plenty in the cooler.”
My beloved shook his head and pulled out his phone.
“Who are you texting?” I asked.
“Jon, my buddy who runs the party store down by the Vannett cottage. He was working the night of the Fourth, and he’s one of those guys who knows the names of all his regular customers.” He pushed the Send button. “Just asked him if Barry was there that night, and if he knew the time.”
“You really expect him to remember?”
Rafe shrugged. “Jon has a great memory. Birthdays are his favorite.”
Before I could point out that recalling when a particular customer came into your party store on the busiest night of the summer was nothing like remembering a birthday, Rafe’s phone dinged with an incoming text.
He read it out loud. Vannett here that night to get six of Short’s Bellaire Brown for BIL. Had to get it from the back, so I remember.
I puzzled out the acronym as brother-in-law. “Okay, then I guess Barry’s down to pretty much a zero. Lowell’s next.”
“Not enough information,” Rafe said.
It was the same with Violet, Courtney, Mason, and the Jaquays. We simply didn’t know enough. I slumped down. “The only person we’ve eliminated is Barry Vannett.”
Rafe studied my phone. “Any progress is still progress. And maybe we’ll learn more tonight.” He nodded at the apartment, which was absent of human activity.
I sighed. “Are you sure this is where Courtney lives?”
“According to her old neighbor’s sister, who is dating my cousin Jim, yeah. Though who knows if the information is good. I usually figure Jim’s girlfriends have to be a little off to date him in the first place.”
“Kristen and I said that for years about your girlfriends.” I wriggled around to get more comfortable. No exterior or interior of any pickup truck had been designed for a person of my size, not ever.
“And you were right.” He yawned again.
“So what does that say about me?”
“That you have excellent—” He stopped. “Is that her?”