“As if I didn’t get enough of that from Aunt Frances,” I told Eddie as I pulled a lap blanket to my chin. My aunt was teaching a night class, so Eddie and I had the huge house to ourselves.
Eddie glared at me and jumped down.
“Okay,” I said, “I take that back. Aunt Frances hasn’t ever tried to set me up.” At least not to my knowledge. But given her summer tendencies, I lived with the fear that she was biding her time as far as her niece was concerned.
Eddie must have forgiven my transgressions during the night, because the next morning I woke up on my stomach with him sprawled across my lower back. A few stretches and a long, hot shower later, I was in the car with a piece of toast, heading east to the other side of the state for an interlibrary event in Alpena.
My regional counterparts and I had a nice time talking about cooperative ventures, new programming, and electronic difficulties. We ended the morning with a happy discussion about books, and, despite the invitation to lunch, I made my good-byes and pointed my car back west. There were things that needed doing at the library—book fair–related things—and they couldn’t wait.
Halfway back, though, the piece of toast I’d eaten for breakfast and the mini blueberry muffin I’d had in the library wore off completely. I needed food before I got back to the library and I needed it before I turned cranky from hunger.
I didn’t have time for a full restaurant meal, which was just as well because I was driving through a lightly populated part of the state, an area where towns were rare and commercial establishments of any type were more likely to be boarded up than occupied.
“There’s got to be something,” I muttered, tapping the steering wheel. I’d seen a gas station somewhere along this stretch of two-lane highway on the way over, hadn’t I? I pictured it in my head, a concrete block structure painted a perky light yellow. Gravel parking lot. April-empty flower planters. Two gas pumps, no canopy.
I was starting to think my hunger-saturated mind had mixed it up with a stretch of highway I’d seen in the Upper Peninsula a while back, when the curving road straightened out and there it was. BUB’S GAS AND MORE, read the sign, its paint peeling away from the wood.
There were a couple of cars in the rutted parking lot, so at least the place was open for business. And all I wanted was something to eat. Gas station sandwiches were often suspect, and you had to especially wonder about a sandwich made by a guy named Bub, but Bub was bound to have protein bars. Potato chips, even. Or popcorn. A bag of cheese-flavored popcorn would tide me over nicely.
I was bumping my car across the parking lot, already dreaming of yellowed fingers, when two people, a man and a woman, walked out the front door.
My mouth fell open.
He was very tall and solid. Her head barely reached the top of his shoulder. He wore a baseball cap, a zip sweatshirt, and well-aged jeans. She wore an attractively styled jacket over tailored dress pants and low-heeled pumps. He opened the driver’s door of a sleek sedan, waited while she got in, then shut the door and went around to the passenger’s side.
And while I was pretty sure I’d never seen her before in my life, I knew exactly who he was.
• • •
“It was Mitchell Koyne,” I said.
Josh shook his head. “Not a chance.”
“Over there?” Holly asked. “That’s almost a hundred miles away. I’ve never heard of him setting foot outside Tonedagana County.”
Though I knew Mitchell occasionally went down to Traverse City, I also knew what Holly meant. Mitchell was a library regular and one of those guys who, if he’d wanted to, was probably smart enough to do pretty much anything. The only thing was, what he seemed to want to do most was nothing. He lived in an apartment his sister had created for him in her house and made a little money working various construction jobs in the summer and running ski lifts in the winter. Though he’d spent a few months handing out business cards that proclaimed him an investigator, I wasn’t sure the business had ever, or would ever, generate actual income.
“And he was with a girl?” Josh laughed. “What self-respecting female would go out with Mitchell Koyne?”
“He’s not that bad.” I didn’t know whether it was his height, his cluelessness about life in general, or his untapped intelligence, but there was something about Mitchell that was oddly charming.
“Yeah?” Josh smirked. “I don’t remember you going out with him when he asked.”
“She’s made it a personal rule not to ever date anyone who’s more than eighteen inches taller than she is,” Holly said.
Josh squinted one eye in my direction. “I can see how that could be a problem.”
“You know what else is a problem?” Holly asked. “You.” She pushed a stack of books across the break room table. The pile shoved aside the plate of cookies she’d brought in and came to stop directly in front of Josh. “These are some great books on decorating,” she said. “If you’re buying a house, you need to think about some of this stuff. It’s a lot easier to paint and whatever else before you move in. And I know what you’re like, once you’re moved in, you’ll never go to the trouble of doing anything.” She stopped, but he didn’t say anything. “Well,” she asked. “Are you buying a house or not?”
Josh reached around the books for a cookie. “Closed on it yesterday.”
“You what?” Holly shrieked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Laughing, I said, “I’ll see you two later.”
By the time I reached the doorway, Holly was opening books and pointing at pictures. I walked down the hallway to my office, grinning, because I knew that, at the end of the day, when the library lights were shut down, the books would still be on the table.
Five minutes later, my smile was gone. Vanished. Obliterated completely, and it was all due to a single e-mail.
“Hey, Minnie,” it said. “I’m so sorry, but I won’t be able to design a flyer for your book fair after all. A couple of big rush jobs came in and I just don’t have the time. I’m really sorry.”
I rubbed my eyes and tried to think.
“Delegate,” Stephen had said every time we talked about the book fair. Delegation is a fine art, he’d said, and I needed to learn how to do it well if I was ever going to succeed him as director of the library.
So I’d delegated, and one of the first things I’d given away was the creation of the book fair flyer. Amanda Bell was a regular library patron, and from the conversations we’d had, I’d judged her as cheerful, competent, and willing to help. She’d recently started a Web site and graphic design business, and I’d asked her if she’d be interested in designing an extremely cool and attractive book fair flyer as a donation to the library. She’d jumped at the opportunity, and now . . .
I flopped my arms on my desk and laid my head down. Clearly there was a lot more to the art of delegation than I’d realized. What was I going to do? I had to e-mail the flyer to area newspapers soon or they wouldn’t get printed in time to get inserted. And if they didn’t get inserted in time . . .
I grabbed my already empty ABOS coffee mug and headed back to the break room. Maybe Holly or Josh would still be in there. And no matter what, caffeine would help. Plus, if there was a cookie or two left, how could that be bad?
The break room was empty, which was technically good, because Holly and Josh and everyone else all had jobs to do, but bad for me because I’d hoped for a temporary distraction . . . and there it was.
Mitchell Koyne, whom I’d recently seen dozens of miles away, was standing at the front desk. I could detect no outward sign that a woman was involved in his life; he looked the way he always did. Hands in his pockets, his baseball hat on backward, and stubble on his face. How he managed to have a constant eighth-inch of beard I didn’t know and would never ask.