She flittered her fingers. “Oh, the usual. Stan had been beaten up something horrible, half the bones in his body were broken, one of his kidneys had been removed, and he wrote the name of his killer on the floor in his own blood, but when you were trying to save him, you stepped on the blood and messed up the writing.”
“The grapevine is batting zero.”
Something in my voice must have given away the emotions I was trying to hold in, because Kristen moved to my side and put a hand on my shoulder. “Was it bad?” she asked gently.
“I really don’t . . .”
Don’t want to talk about it, don’t want to think about it, don’t want to see Stan’s limp body again, don’t want it to have happened. What I wanted was Stan to be alive. I just wanted him back.
“Oh, Minnie.” Kristen’s arms went all the way around me, and it was there, in the comfort of my best friend’s embrace, that the tears came.
• • •
“Bawled my eyes out,” I told Eddie. “Cried like a little kid who’d dropped her ice-cream cone in the dirt. And before you ask, yes, that happened to me once. Chocolate soft-serve. It was a harsh lesson. Would you like to hear about it?”
Eddie’s eyes remained closed.
“I didn’t think so.”
We were cozied up in bed, me sitting up with my arms around my legs, Eddie lying like a meat loaf in the middle of the comforter. If he’d brought a tape measure to bed, I don’t think he could have centered himself more accurately.
“I ended up telling her everything,” I told Eddie. “About you stowing away, then you being the one to run over to that farmhouse. She thinks it was fate. I’m not a big believer in that kind of stuff. What do you think?”
Eddie didn’t move.
“Yeah, you’re right. Fate, shmate. Things don’t always happen for a reason; sometimes they just happen.” I smiled. “Zofia would agree with Kristen, I bet. She said it was fate that brought her to Aunt Frances this summer.” I put my chin on my knees. “You know, Aunt Frances took the news about Stan a little weird.”
I thought back to breakfast, how her hand had left a mark on mine, how she’d eaten hardly a bite of food. “Maybe she’s just worried about me.” It didn’t fit, though. “Well, I’m out of ideas. What do you think, Edster?” No response. “Eddie?”
A low buzzing noise came from my furry friend.
Eddie was sound asleep. And snoring.
Chapter 6
The next morning was bright and sunshiny. “The perfect summer morning,” I told Eddie as I got dressed for work. “Too bad you’ll have to spend it inside.” He opened one eye, then closed it. I wasn’t sure if he’d been saying, “Yeah, and where will you be?” or “I’ll be inside? That’s what you think.”
Though not likely, it was certainly possible that Eddie had found a way to get out. My houseboat was of wooden construction, lovingly assembled in a Chilson backyard years ago, in the days when I was putting freshly loosened baby teeth under my pillow. The only fiberglass on the entire boat was in the shower. I had a feeling my homemade status was what irritated my right-hand neighbor, Gunnar Olson, so much. Why he didn’t get a slip at the marina up by the point for his sleek forty-two-foot cruiser was a great mystery to many.
“You didn’t, did you?” I asked the unmoving curl of black-and-white fur. “Find a way outside?”
He didn’t answer. Of course, if he had figured a way out, I would be the last person he’d tell. I kissed the top of his head, did the whiteboard thing, and headed to work.
The marina where I was moored, Uncle Chip’s Marina (now owned by Chris, Chip’s nephew), was on the southeast side of town. If there’d still been a set of railroad tracks that went through Chilson, Uncle Chip’s would have been on the wrong side of them. Relatively speaking, of course. This was an old resort town, one of those places where the same families had been summering for more than a hundred years, and even the dumpy parts of town were more tired than unkempt.
Back in the late eighteen hundreds, the summer people came up by train or steamer in June and left in early September. In the last few decades, though, most cottages had been retrofitted with insulation and central heating. People came up for the fall colors, for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, stayed through New Year’s, and braved the snow and wind to come up skiing over the Martin Luther King and Presidents’ Day weekends.
Then again, some things hadn’t changed a lick in eons. The Round Table was still the local diner. There was still a Joe running Joe’s Fish Market, and the movie theater, the Grand, was still showing second-run movies and their popcorn was still being popped by Penelope the Popcorn Lady.
I walked to the library trying to think of all the changes someone Stan Larabee’s age had seen. The art galleries and antique stores must have housed other businesses in the forties, but the bank had a 1901 date on its cornerstone. The brick county courthouse had celebrated its hundredth anniversary a couple of years ago, and judging from the dust heaps in the corners of the auto parts store, that particular business had been in existence since the days of Henry Ford and the Model T.
Then there was the library.
Smiling, I trotted up the steps to the side entrance. The two-story L-shaped building had started life as the local school. The town had grown, more kids had enrolled, and the town fathers had decided to erect a new building to house the older students. Time passed, technology changed, and it was time to build a new elementary school. The old building, filled with Craftsman-style details, had been abandoned.
Just before the roof was about to fall in, the library board put a bond proposal on the ballot. “The current library is stuffed to the rafters,” they said. “No room to expand. Let’s take the old school and renovate it into a library that will serve Tonedagana County for the next hundred years.”
And that’s exactly what happened. The millage passed handily, an architect was hired, renovation commenced, and two months after I was hired, the Chilson District Library moved into its new home.
I used my key to unlock the side door. My low heels clicked on the large square tiles of the wide hallways as I walked past the reading room with its fireplace and window seats, past the broad switchback stairs that led to the upper levels of meeting rooms, Friends of the Library book-sale room, and offices.
Or, rather, office. Stephen’s lair was the only office on the second floor. It was a large space with a view of Janay Lake, and when the leaves were off the trees, the view included Lake Michigan. There’d been much muttering when Stephen had staked claim to the space. Let him, I’d thought. Who except Stephen would want to be up there all alone in January when the wind was howling and the snow was blowing? Double-paned windows or not, that corner office was bound to be a cold place to work.
Only it turned out that Stephen had convinced someone to donate insulated curtains and someone else to donate a high-efficiency space heater. November through April, Stephen’s office was the warmest in the building.
I pushed open the hinged solid slab of wood that served as the gate separating the public space from the employee area. My Saturday stint in the bookmobile collection had been productive, but there were a few things I needed to do in here. I’d originally been thrilled at the title of assistant director, but I’d quickly learned what it really meant.
“Minnie.”
I jumped. “Stephen! When did you get here?”
He had the rumpled, harried look of someone who’d been working hard for hours. Which was difficult to fathom. While Stephen was organized, effective, and politically connected, he was also of the firm belief that nothing important got done before ten in the morning, and planned his arrival at the library accordingly.