But somehow I didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to relive it all, didn’t want to go back there, even in my head. Tomorrow. I’d talk to them tomorrow. I’d be ready in another day. Two at the most.
Eddie sauntered past me, trotted down the three stairs, past the bathroom, jumped up on the set of drawers I’d put in front of the back door, then leapt onto the bed.
Or I could go to bed. It suddenly seemed like an excellent idea.
Ten minutes later, clad in old shorts and a tank top and teeth brushed, I slid into bed. I picked up a copy of Karin Slaughter’s latest thriller. Two pages in, I put it down in favor of the next book on my To Be Read stack: Gravity’s Rainbow. That lasted two paragraphs. Then I tried Lorraine Bartlett’s most recent cozy mystery. But even that mostly happy little world didn’t keep me from reliving the events of the day.
Sighing, I sat up and hugged my knees. Sounds of boater revelry wafted in through the open window. A flickering of lights glinted on the ceiling, lights that seemed as if they were coming from the big boat next door. Which didn’t make sense, because the Olsons never came up before July, a fact for which everyone at the marina was grateful. I was watching the lights, trying to figure out their source, but somehow I saw only the flashing red beacon of the ambulance.
Oh, Stan. Of all the people in the county, how could it have been me that had found him?
Eddie chirped and rearranged himself. I petted his fur smooth. “Whatever it was that sent you running to that farmhouse, I’m guess I’m glad.” Did cats have ultragood eyesight? Some birds did. And some dogs had super-duper smelling powers. And there was hearing. What animals were good at hearing? Maybe Eddie had a special combination of all three?
I looked at him. Nah. If Eddie’s sensory powers were anything special, I wouldn’t startle him into a four-legged leap every other time I opened the nonlatching closet door, against which he’d started taking his afternoon naps.
“Poor Stan,” I said quietly. Then, all at once grief rose up in me. Oh, Stan. I swallowed down the sobs and tried to think. What would Stan want right now? What would he want me to do?
Eddie twisted his head around and looked at me upside down. “Sorry, big guy.” I patted him gently and he closed his eyes.
“It was murder,” I said softly. “Someone killed Stan. Maybe I could . . . ?” I shook my head before finishing the sentence. I was a librarian, for crying out loud. I could classify, alphabetize, plan outreach programs, sort staff schedules, and make sense of service contracts, but putting murderers in jail was outside my job description. “That’s what the police do,” I said, stroking Eddie’s back.
He twitched, as if my touch were ticklish.
“Sorry.” I smoothed down the fur he’d ruffled up. “I told that deputy everything. It wasn’t much, but what else can I do? I can’t go poking around doing the job of the detectives. They know what they’re doing, and I’m a librarian.”
Then again, I knew Stan and they didn’t. Maybe I didn’t know much, but I knew the things he laughed over. I knew what he liked to eat for lunch and what clothes he wore. I knew that he liked buying cars and I knew that he hated buying clothes. I knew that he liked chocolate and I knew that he liked to take long drives.
Eddie picked up his head and stared straight at me.
“But still . . .” I thought out loud. “What was he doing in the other side of the county? Why was he in that particular farmhouse?”
“Mrrorrw!” Eddie jumped onto my lap, thumped my chin with the top of his head, and started purring.
“Well, finally.” I slid back down into the sheets, rolled on my side, and fell asleep with my arm around a rumbling cat. But even Eddie’s purrs couldn’t chase away my dreams, dreams that were haunted with sights I didn’t want to see and sounds I didn’t want to hear.
Chapter 5
The next day was Saturday, the day I had a standing invitation for breakfast at my aunt Frances’s house. It was also the only morning Aunt Frances didn’t cook breakfast for her summer boarders. Instead, a boarder cooked for everyone else. It was part of the deal when you stayed there, and learning of the duty had scared off more than one prospective boarder.
“You want me to cook breakfast for seven people?” the shocked inquirer would ask.
“Eight,” Aunt Frances would say. “My niece usually shows up.”
Every summer the niece quickly learned whose cooking was good, whose was awesome, and whose should be avoided at all costs. Since another one of Aunt Frances’s rules was that you ate heartily and complimented the cook no matter what, I’d found it was easier to skip the Saturdays likely to include burned bacon and flat pancakes.
This summer, however, Aunt Frances had hit the breakfast mother lode. Everyone from seventy-year-old Zofia down to twenty-two-year-old Harris seemed to have kitchen skills in abundance. The week before, sixty-five-year-old Leo had wowed us with sour cream and blueberry pancakes accompanied by buttery pecan maple syrup. The week before that, fifty-three-year-old Paulette had us begging for more breakfast burritos.
This particular Saturday, having left Eddie on the houseboat sleeping on the floor in a square of sunshine, I walked through downtown, up the hill overlooking Janay Lake, down a street lined with maple trees, and up the wide steps of the porch that ran across the front of Aunt Frances’s century-old home.
The wooden screen door banged shut behind me. The entry, stairway, and spacious living room were all empty, but laughter drifted in from the kitchen. Wooden floorboards creaked under my weight as I passed through the living room, admiring yet again the pine-paneled walls and ceiling, the end tables and coffee tables built from driftwood, the maps thumbtacked to the walls, and the fieldstone fireplace big enough for cooking a side of beef. It was a room full of calm and ease and I always felt that nothing bad could possibly happen here.
A tall, angular woman appeared in the doorway to the dining room. She smiled. “Thought I heard someone. Good morning, bright eyes. You must have had a long day yesterday with your bookmobile. I thought you’d call and tell me all about it.”
I stood on my tiptoes to kiss her cheek. She’d recently turned sixty, but I’d yet to spy a single wrinkle. “Morning, Aunt Frances.” It was a good time to tell her about the events of yesterday. An ideal time, really, but I couldn’t find the words to start the sad story. After breakfast. I’d be ready by then. “I’ll tell you everything after we eat. Who’s cooking this morning?”
“Dena and Quincy. Everyone else has been banished from the kitchen.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Dena and Quincy? But I thought Harris was being matched up with Dena.”
She sighed. “I know, dear, I know. I’m sure it’ll work out in the end.”
Fine words, but she looked a little concerned. And for good reason: Dena was twenty-five and Quincy had recently hit fifty. My aunt had a secret that I’d sworn on a tall stack of paperback mysteries to never reveal unless doing so would save at least ten lives. Aunt Frances only took boarders who were single and in need of a mate. Her extensive interviewing process, ostensibly to determine compatibility for the unusual environment and living arrangements, was in reality a way for Aunt Frances to start the matchmaking process. None of the boarders ever knew they were being set up, and in her fifteen years of taking in boarders she’d never had a failure.
If a pair she hadn’t intended was forming, all her plans would be toast. “Well, you haven’t missed yet, have you?”
“There’s always a first time,” she muttered.
“You said the same thing last year and that turned out fine by the end of the summer,” I said. “You can’t expect August endings in June. Especially early June. Don’t you always say that building a lasting love is like building Rome? That it can’t be done in a day?”