“Audry Brant. I help Gayle a couple days a week.” She smiled. “Helping out until I have to move in here myself. Thessie, could you be a big help and take those into the dining room? In through the double doors, then straight on until morning. The readers are ready and waiting. Well, those who aren’t waiting for your cat.”
The odd noise grew odder. I started to turn to look, but Audry laid a hand on my arm.
“Minnie, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” I prepared myself for the standard bookmobile inquiries. What kind of gas mileage does it get? (Awful.) Did you have to get a commercial driver’s license to drive it? (No, but I did take a truck driver’s course.) How do you plan the route? (With difficulty.)
“I hear,” she said, “that you’re—”
She stopped because this time the odd noise was too loud to ignore. Eddie was making enough noise scratching at the window and yowling that people in the next county could have heard.
“Excuse me,” I said to Audry, and hurried into the bookmobile. By the time I’d climbed up the steps, Eddie was perched on the headrest of the passenger’s seat, moving his head around to peer out the side window at who knew what.
“What is the matter with you?”
All cats are masters of the evil eye, but the frozen glare Eddie sent me was in a class by itself. I shook off the foot-thick ice with which he’d tried to cover me. “Will you cut it out? There are a bunch of nice elderly people inside. For some bizarre reason they want to see you, but I can’t take you in if you don’t stop acting like you have ants in your pants.”
He jumped down to the seat and banged his head against the console.
Bonk! Bonk!
“Eddie!” I picked him up. “What is with you?”
He pulled back to look me in the eye. “Mrr!”
“Well, yeah, but I don’t know what that means. I don’t talk cat.”
“MRR!!”
I sighed and stroked his fur. “You know, sometimes I really think you’re trying to tell me something and I’m just too stupid to . . . Oh, sure, now you start purring, you silly cat.” I kissed the top of his head. “Are you ready to make some new friends?”
He snuggled into my arms. “Mrr,” he said.
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“Mrr.”
• • •
The rest of the day went smoothly enough. Polly and a number of the other residents got to pet the kitty, Thessie picked cat hair off her clothes and wondered out loud if it could be spun and knitted, and Brynn—who’d bounded aboard the bookmobile at the next stop wearing a headband with fuzzy cat ears attached—got her Eddie fix while her mother watched with moist eyes. The little girl’s blood count numbers were all where they should be, I was told, and having a regular visit from Eddie was doing wonders for keeping her cheerful.
I drove us back to Chilson. “Eddie’s getting to be more of a draw than the books.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Thessie put another collection of Eddie hair into the plastic bag that had formerly housed her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “Did you see the stacks of books those kids checked out?”
I was thinking about that when I took an evening walk. Could we manage to secretly market Eddie as an attraction for the bookmobile? Eddie as an inducement to reading. The mind boggled. My brain was whirring away as I walked through downtown, which was probably why I didn’t see that I was on track for a collision until I ran smack into someone.
“Oh! Sorry about—” I shook myself out of boggle mode and looked up at the woman I’d almost run over. “Aunt Frances! I didn’t see you.” I started to laugh at myself, but then remembered her abrupt departure on Saturday morning. The phone messages I’d left that she hadn’t returned.
The pause hanging between us grew bigger and fatter and wider. “How are you?” I finally asked.
“Fine,” she said.
The pause, which had shrunk slightly, started ballooning again. I felt it grow larger and larger, wondered if it would pop or just keep expanding forever.
A cane tap-tapped along the sidewalk. “Miz Pixley,” Lloyd Goodwin said, nodding. “Miz Minnie. How are you two lovely ladies this lovely summer evening?”
“Fine,” we chorused. And for some reason, that made us both start laughing. The balloon shrank to nothing and suddenly everything was okay.
“Come on,” Aunt Frances said, taking my arm. “I need to visit someone.”
I resisted her light tug. “You sure you want me with you? Do I know her? Him?”
“It’ll be fine,” she said. Which, of course, made us both laugh again.
• • •
She was right—it was fine. The bag she carried held hand clippers, a dandelion puller, a hand cultivator, and a pair of gloves. She took us straight to the oldest part of the cemetery and held out the clippers.
“Do you mind?”
We stood facing the headstone of Mary Alvord, born 1815 in London, England, died 1877 in Chilson, Michigan.
“It’s the oldest headstone in the cemetery,” Aunt Frances said. “There’s no one around any longer to tend her grave, so I take care of things for her.”
Tears sparked in my eyes. “I had no idea you did this. It’s . . . really nice of you.”
“I just hope that maybe somebody will do the same for me someday. Ready?”
Fifteen minutes later the grass was trimmed, the weeds were gone, and the marigolds Aunt Frances said she’d planted on Memorial weekend were looking tidy again.
“Now.” She took the clippers from me. “As a reward for your labor, I will treat you to a complete explanation of my odd reactions to comments about Stan Larabee. To be honest, I was being an idiot. I just didn’t . . . couldn’t . . .” She sighed. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“At the beginning.” I led her to Alonzo Tillotson’s bench, looking around with mild trepidation. One Eddie was wonderful, but if there were two, and if they met, the universe would surely explode. Or I would.
We settled down and sat in comfortable silence watching the waters of Janay Lake. Boats went this way and that. The wind blew a light breeze. The sun was on our faces.
My eyes were starting to close for a little nap when Aunt Frances started her story.
“It was a family feud,” she said, sighing. “A very private, very old feud inside Stan’s family, and Stan had made me promise not to say anything to anyone about it.”
“That’s not a beginning,” I said. “That’s more like an explanation.”
“I suppose.” She watched a seagull soaring past, her eyes slits against the sharp sun. “Stan stayed with me the winter before you moved up north.”
I made a squeak of surprise, but managed to keep my mouth shut.
Aunt Frances was still focused on the seagull. “He hated hotels. Hated them with a serious kind of hate. He stayed with me while that house of his up on the hill was being renovated. He moved out of my place and into his just a few weeks before you moved up.” She shifted her gaze from sky to me. “He had the corner room near the stairway,” she said. “Just to be clear about things.”
“Crystal,” I said.
“Good.” She looked at me a moment longer, then returned to the lake view. “As far as I know, no one realized that Stan stayed with me that winter. He didn’t want his relatives knowing he was in town and I was willing to keep his confidence.”
At that time of year it would have been easy enough to keep his presence a secret. The houses surrounding the boardinghouse were all summer cottages. The closest year-round residence was almost a quarter mile away, and that was occupied by a couple who worked in Traverse City and were willing to drive the hour-long commute, one way. As long as Stan had a vehicle no one recognized, he could have driven out to the old highway, headed up to U.S. 31, and blended with the traffic before anyone paid any attention.