So as soon as I’d showered, dressed, and breakfasted, I was out the door and into my car, stopping only to get my standard provisions of a can of diet soda and a bag of popcorn.
I timed the possible routes while driving at bookmobile speed, and considering the parking options at three new homebound patrons. “It’ll work,” I said, nodding to myself. How I’d manage to squeeze the new routes into the current schedule was a different question, but it wasn’t one I was going to worry about on this gorgeous spring day full of open skies and sun and trees that were growing leaves as fast as I could watch.
But on my way back toward town, while driving over forested hill and lake-filled dale, my mind circled back to Henry and Adam.
How, I wondered, could I find out if Felix was being truthful when he said he hadn’t been on Henry’s property before Henry was killed? Who would be able to tell me? Was there anyone who might be able to—
A small mental lightning bolt zinged my brain all the way awake. “Duh,” I said out loud, and took the next left. Five minutes later, I was puttering up Irene and Adam’s driveway.
Irene opened the door. “Good morning! Is it a bookmobile day?” She peered outside.
“I was driving around, planning some new routes. I have a question for Adam, that’s all. Will he let me come inside if I don’t have any books?” I spread out my empty hands, palms up.
“No,” he called.
Irene laughed and opened the door wide. “Don’t listen to him. He’s only cranky because the doctor just told him he can’t start working again until the full two months is over.”
Which explained why Irene was here and not at work—she’d taken Adam to the doctor. “It’ll be here before you know it,” I told him. “And then you’ll be complaining that you have too much work to do.”
But the worried glance Irene gave her husband made me rethink my casual statement. Adam was self-employed. If he couldn’t get his clients’ work done on time, they’d go elsewhere, perhaps never to return.
There was nothing I could do about that, though, so I perched on the edge of the couch and said, “Adam, I was wondering. Did you see anyone at all near Henry’s property? Not necessarily the day he died, but any time you were out there. A neighbor, a friend of Henry’s who stopped by, a door-to-door salesman, anyone?”
“Do you mean guys only?” Adam asked. “Because I don’t remember seeing anyone other than that redhead.”
“What redhead?” He’d never mentioned her. “When did you see her?”
“Day before Henry died. So, the first Saturday in April.”
“Was she a neighbor of Henry’s?”
Adam shrugged. “Henry said he’d never seen her before, but he also said a couple of houses on the lake had sold over the winter, so who knows?”
“What was she doing?”
“Not much.” He laughed. “Not the way she was dressed. Wearing those stupid little boots that aren’t really boots at all but heels that go past the ankle. No hat, no gloves, jeans tight as paint, and a short jacket that wasn’t long enough to keep her waist warm, let alone her rear end.”
Irene and I shared a glance. “Sounds as if you got a close look,” Irene said. “She was pretty, too, I bet.”
“Not my type,” Adam said, shaking his head. “Seriously high maintenance. And definitely not the kind of girl who’d be able to take down a tree, let alone a huge one in a certain direction at a certain time.”
I wanted to speak up in defense of womanhood, to say that you never knew what people were capable of, that it didn’t do to underestimate anyone, but Adam was getting that “I need a nap” look, so I thanked him and got up to leave.
“I’ll walk you out,” Irene said.
Outside, clouds were sliding over the sun, so instead of a comfortable chat in the sunshine, we stood next to my car, shivering in a rising wind.
Irene hunched her shoulders and rubbed her upper arms. “There’s something I need to tell you. I know I’m probably being stupid and please don’t tell anyone because it’s probably not true, but I have to tell someone, and you know all about this, so I thought you’d be the one to tell.”
“Okay,” I said, not smiling, because in spite of her run-on sentence she seemed deadly serious. “Tell.”
She blew out a breath. “I think there might have been another attempt on Adam’s life.”
• • •
“Here’s where I figured we’d put the big guy,” Gordon said.
Gordon, whose last name I hadn’t figured out, was the owner of the company who was supplying the tents for Saturday’s book fair. Tent rental had originally been my boss’s idea, and I’d objected to the expense at first, saying that it was a small fair, that we could hold it inside the library, but he’d told me to use my imagination. This had, of course, irritated me no end, since I was the one with the imagination, not him, so I’d stood there in his office and closed my eyes, trying to see what he was seeing.
“Ah,” he said with patronizing satisfaction. “You’re picturing it, aren’t you?”
I was, and it was wonderful. In my head, the library grounds had turned into something between a circus and a medieval fair. White tents with high peaks, colored streamers, vendors hawking their wares, and people milling about everywhere.
“You’re right,” I’d said, opening my eyes. “The tents alone will attract interest.”
“Hmm?” Stephen’s attention had already returned to his computer. “Oh, the tents. Yes. See to it, Minnie, will you?”
And so I did. And I was. Which was why I was walking around the library lawn with Gordon, making last-minute placement decisions that I hoped would turn out okay, because a significant percentage of my brain was still thinking about what Irene had said that morning.
“We were at the hospital,” she’d told me, hugging herself against the wind. “They’re doing all that construction, putting on that big addition, remember? I’d wanted to drop Adam off at the door, but he wouldn’t let me, said he was perfectly capable of walking across the parking lot.”
“Sounds like him,” I’d said, smiling.
Irene hadn’t smiled back. “The problem is, with the construction, the sidewalks are all torn up and they want you to walk all the way around that annex building to get to the front door and I could see that Adam was getting tired, so I made him cut across the grass.”
I’d felt my brow furrowing in the effort to picture what she was talking about. “Doesn’t that mean you were walking through the construction area?”
She’d nodded. “It was shorter by at least a hundred yards—you could see a path where a lot of people had gone that way. And there was no one working there, so I didn’t have a problem doing it. When we left the building, we walked back the same way and”—she’d hugged herself even tighter—“and this huge pile of bricks fell on the grass right next to Adam. It almost hit him.”
“Right over there.”
The male voice brought me back to the here and now. I blinked, and there I was, standing on the library lawn, working out the future location of tents. “I’m sorry,” I said. “What was that? My mind was wandering.”
Gordon nodded, a sideways sort of smile on his face. “I bet. You probably have a thousand things to do between now and Saturday morning.”
Actually things were pretty much set, but it was nice of him to be so understanding. “Thanks. Tomorrow I’ll be out on the bookmobile, so it’s today and Friday to finish up.”
“You run the bookmobile?” His face lit up. “I’ve seen it around, but I didn’t realize that was you.”
I beamed. He had a sympathetic personality and he liked the bookmobile. If he hadn’t been a little too old for me and, if the ring on his finger was any indication, already married, I’d have thrown myself into his arms. “We’ve been on the road for almost a year and I get requests for new stops almost every week.”