“That’s because he’s a conservation officer,” I said. “COs enforce hunting and fishing regulations.” They also protected the state’s natural resources, were often first responders to natural disasters and emergencies, and did general law enforcement. Which was all stuff I’d learned last winter. I might have been born and raised in suburbia, but I was learning.
“Oh.” Irene glanced back at the restaurant. “I thought he was a security guard or something.”
I smiled. “In Chilson? We don’t do security here.”
But the response to that was obvious to both of us: maybe we should.
• • •
After I parked the cookbooks in my office, I headed out to the lawn with Gordon to look at the tents. We were almost done when a movement at the edge of my vision caught my eye. I turned and saw Kelsey, one of our part-time clerks, pointing in my direction.
Gordon noted that my attention had wandered from our discussion of how to flag the tent pegs and guy ropes so that people wouldn’t walk into them. “Problem?” he asked.
“Not sure.” I watched as a large woman barreled across the lawn toward me. Her arms were pumping, her hair was flying all around her head, and there wasn’t a single obvious ounce of that kind intelligence that had been so obvious when I’d met her two days ago.
“Are we all set?” I asked, easing away from Gordon. Because whatever Larabeth had to say to me, I was guessing no one else needed to hear it. “I’ll be back later, to see how things are going.” And then, before he could say anything and just before Larabeth got close enough to start talking—or yelling, as the case might be—I stepped away from Gordon and all the people who were milling about.
“I need to talk to you!” Larabeth shouted, making me wince; she was so close that I could have heard her if she’d whispered.
“Sure. How about over here?” I gestured for her to follow me. We went around the corner of the library into a shaded and secluded nook where, now that it was warm, flowering plants were starting to leap out of the ground. Soon there would be an abundance of lilies and all sorts of other pretty flowers I couldn’t name. Even now, with only a few leaves sprouting from the shrubs, it was a soothing place and I hoped that it would calm Larabeth.
“Let’s sit.” I took one end of a teak bench and nodded for her to join me.
“Can’t,” she said through gritted teeth. “Too mad.” She strode back and forth, arms still pumping, her hands in fists, her face bright red.
“At me?” I asked.
“What?” She whirled around to face me and it was then that I noticed that it wasn’t just her face that was red. “Of course not you,” she said, smearing at her reddened eyes with her knuckles. “I’m only here because I need to find out for sure and you’re the only one I can talk to. You don’t know me, so it’s okay, you’ll tell me the truth, you don’t have any reason to lie, and besides, you’re a librarian.”
How the librarian occupation followed with the rest of her rambling sentence, I wasn’t sure, but it was nice to think that my profession was considered a trustworthy one. “What’s the matter?” I asked.
“It’s . . . it’s . . .” A tear trickled down her cheek. She turned away, muttering, “I’ll be right back,” and strode off.
I sat back and looked up at the sky. Clouds were moving in, but it was still a lovely day. The birds were singing, the grass was growing green, and the book fair was going to happen regardless of whether I ran around like a madwoman these next few hours trying to make sure everything was perfect. So why not take a few minutes to enjoy the day? Why not breathe in the smell of damp dirt and clean air and—
“All right.” Larabeth sat down hard on the other end of the bench. “I’m better now. And all I really have is one question for you. I can see that you’re busy and I’m sorry to take up your time. Normally I would have called first, but I had to get out of the house and next thing I knew, I was on my way here.”
She was almost to the rambling stage again, so I jumped in when she stopped for breath. “You have a question?”
“When you stopped by the other day . . .” Her hands gripped each other. “The other day,” she said carefully, “when you stopped by you asked . . .”
I had a sudden, sick feeling that I knew where she was going. “I asked if your husband had been up North the first weekend in April.”
Larabeth gave a sharp nod. “That’s right. And I told you . . .”
I waited, but when she didn’t say anything, I gave her her own answer. “You told me that Cole had been out West skiing.”
“And that’s what he’d told me,” she said stonily. “That it was going to be the last good skiing weekend, so he and his buddies were going to fly out to Colorado, to Vail, and do nothing but ski and sit in the hot tub. That maybe this would be the time he’d try telemarking, that he wished I could go, but he was glad I understood. Understood!” She snorted. “Took me long enough, but I understand, all right. The rat was up here the whole time.”
She turned and looked straight at me. “That’s the question I have for you. He was up here, wasn’t he?”
Over the years, I’d developed the ability to not tell people everything I knew, but I was a horrible straight-out liar. “Yes,” I said. “He was.”
She nodded, thumping her fists on her thighs. “For months I’ve tried to hide from this. Late nights, long weekends out of town, big batches of money gone. He’s having an affair and this is the proof. There was no reason for him to lie about going to Vail if he’d been coming up here for anything else other than cheating on me.”
I remembered what Adam had said, that he’d seen a redheaded woman that weekend, but kept quiet. That was secondhand information and I didn’t need to add fuel to Larabeth’s fire; she was stoking it along all by herself quite nicely.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had no idea that my question would lead to this.”
“Don’t be sorry.” She banged her fists on her legs one more time and stood up. “I should thank you.”
“For what?”
She flashed a wide smile that reminded me of how Kristen could sometimes look. Sharklike. Predatory. Dangerous.
“Thanks again, Minnie,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”
I watched her stride purposefully across the lawn, then stood up slowly. Larabeth had been so focused on her husband and her hurt that she hadn’t realized the potential significance of her husband’s April weekend at their cottage.
But I did.
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed the sheriff’s office. From memory. It startled me that the number was stuck in my head, but I decided not to think about that fun fact.
“Tonedagana County Sheriff’s Office.”
Not for the first time, I thought that while it was nice that the region’s founders had chosen a Native American name for the county, it would have been even nicer if they’d been able to come up with one that was shorter than five syllables.
“Hi,” I said. “Is Detective Inwood available?”
“One moment, please.”
I was treated to a bout of silence, during which I wondered whatever happened to the ubiquitous hold music that everyone used to enjoy complaining about so much. I’d decided to believe it had been a victory of good taste over poor when the detective himself came on the line.
“Inwood.”
“Good afternoon, Detective, this is Minnie Hamilton.”
“Ah, Ms. Hamilton. Please tell me that you are calling to brighten my day.”
Though I was talking to a sheriff’s detective, I was also watching two of Gordon’s many minions tie bright pink strips of plastic to the tent stakes and guy ropes. The pinkness fluttered prettily in the wind. “That should do it,” I murmured, now sure that no one paying the slightest amount of attention to where they were going would walk into a tripping hazard.