“Excuse me?” Detective Inwood asked.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was talking out loud, but I do have some information of interest for you.”
He exhaled loudly. “Please say this isn’t going to turn into more work for me.”
Probably. If I was right, almost certainly. I told him everything I’d learned the last few days, about Irene’s likely mistake about Seth’s presence in the area, about Felix’s shaky financial status, and that Cole Duvall had been at his cottage the weekend Henry died.
I hesitated, then added the critical part: Larabeth’s certainty that her husband was having an affair. Spreading gossip went against everything my mother had ever taught me, but this was information that could be critical to an investigation.
After I said all that, I waited for a response. When I didn’t get one after roughly a year, I asked, “Detective? Are you still there?”
“Hang on,” he said. “I’m writing . . . okay, got it.” There was a creak and I imagined him leaning back in his chair. “Good leads, Ms. Hamilton. You sure you don’t want to join the department?”
“Not a chance. I think I might be scared of Sheriff Richardson.”
He made a noise that might have been a tired laugh. “We all are. Now, I have to tell you that we’re still understaffed. It might be a couple of days before I have time to track down Duvall and talk to him.”
“Sure,” I said. “I understand. Besides, I don’t see how a day or two could make any difference.”
At the ripe old age of thirty-three, you’d really think I’d know better than to say things like that.
• • •
“Gordon,” I said, “you are amazing.”
He grinned. “Can I quote you to my wife?”
“Give me her phone number and I’ll tell her myself.”
The two of us were standing on the sidewalk that ran in front of the library, surveying the assemblage of canvas. Gordon has masterfully set up the tents of varying sizes to entice the fairgoers further up and further in by placing the smallest one closest to the main street and decorating it to the hilt with streamers and a huge sign that proclaimed to one and all that this was the “First Annual Chilson District Library Book Fair.” The tents grew larger and larger as you walked through, inexorably drawn to the largest tent of all, where Trock would be in all his glory.
The visual spectacle alone was enough to draw in anyone who happened near the library. All day, cars had been slowing down long enough to see what was going on, and many had stopped to ask. I was hopeful that word would spread to anyone who hadn’t seen the last-minute notice in the paper or the social media blitz we’d been pushing the last few days.
“Well,” Gordon said, “since I can’t think of anything else to do, I guess I’ll head home. I’ll be here at daybreak to make sure everything’s still good.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” I asked, and glanced at him.
He wasn’t looking, as I’d supposed, at his expensive tents. Instead he was studying the sky. “Weather,” he said. “There’s something coming in.”
These days, I rarely paid attention to the forecast. Driving the bookmobile across the county had shown me that the weather in Tonedagana County could change dramatically from one side to the other and the best I could do was to be prepared at all times for three seasons of weather, if not four.
“Rain?” I asked.
He sniffed at the air and shrugged. “Let’s hope.”
I was going to ask him what he meant, but he headed off before I could frame the words.
At home, I asked Eddie about it. “What do you think he meant? Better rain than . . . what? Snow?” The thought was painful, but a May snowfall wasn’t unheard of. “Hail?” I hoped not. Gordon had insurance, but the hassles would be hard for him and his business.
“Mrr.”
Eddie jumped up onto my lap. I was sitting at the houseboat’s dining booth, watching the sky. I had no idea what Gordon had been watching, but all I was seeing was the sun setting over the ridge of land that separated Janay Lake from the waters of Lake Michigan. The sun was a soft glow above the dark ridge of treetops and—
“Wait a minute,” I said, going very quiet and very still. “That’s not trees. That’s clouds.”
As I watched, the line of black clouds rushed past the sun, turning the evening’s soft glow to darkness in a matter of seconds.
“Oh, jeez . . .”
I dumped Eddie onto the floor and ran outside. “Eric!” I shouted. “Eric, are you in there?” I didn’t wait for an answer, but rushed about my small foredeck, picking up seat cushions and feeling a little like Dorothy when the tornado was headed straight for Auntie Em and Uncle Henry’s farmhouse. “Eric!”
“Hey, Minnie,” he said, poking his head outside the side door of his boat. “What’s up? Need a doctor?” He grinned.
I pointed westward. “Storm’s coming. Better batten down your hatches.”
He laughed. “I’m not sure I have any. Or that I’d know what one would look like if—” A gust of wind tore his words away, sending them east at about thirty miles an hour. “Good Lord,” he said, or at least that was what I imagined him saying, because I couldn’t hear a thing he said over the noise of the wind and waves.
“Will you be okay?” he shouted, pointing at my boat, which suddenly seemed very tiny.
Clutching my cushions to my chest, I nodded. My boat had seen decades of storms, including the famed summer storm of 1968. Of course, I’d never been on board during a big one, but it was too late to do anything about that now.
Crack!
Eric and I both jumped as lightning struck Janay Lake. Electricity sizzled in the air, and I didn’t even reach a count of three before the thunder boomed.
“Inside!” Eric shouted.
But I was already halfway through the door. I didn’t need some surgeon to tell me to stay inside during a wind-driven lightning storm.
“Mrr!”
I dropped the cushions on the floor and picked up my cat. “Sorry, pal, but I’m afraid it’s going to be a wild night. Thunder and lightning and wind and—”
Crash!
Somewhere outside, a tree thumped to the ground. I hoped it wasn’t the big maple outside Rafe’s house. With the wind, that tree could easily have fallen straight onto the front porch.
The houseboat rocked back and forth and up and down. I sat at the dining bench, told myself that we were tied up firmly to the dock at four corners, and snuggled Eddie close. He didn’t purr, but he didn’t pull away, either.
We stayed like that, waiting for the storm to pass. The electricity went out thirty minutes later and I carried an unprotesting cat to bed.
Soon enough Eddie was purring, and then snoring, but I lay awake for hours, listening to the wind and the lightning and the thunder.
Chapter 19
I fell asleep at some point during the night, but when morning finally came, I felt as if I hadn’t slept at all. Fatigue filled my eyes, and my arms felt twice their normal weight.
Of course, that could have been because I was lying on my side and Eddie was flopped across both of my arms.
I kissed the top of his fuzzy head and slid out from underneath him. “Thanks for staying with me,” I whispered. The night had been grueling, but at least I’d had the comfort of a cat to keep the worst of my fears at bay.
Now, however, I had to face those fears.
Fear number one, that there’d no electricity and I’d have to go to the book fair unshowered and grungy, was happily untrue. The bathroom light went on, I had hot water, and in a few minutes I was dressed and blotting as much dampness as I could out of the curly mess that was my hair.
I trotted up the stairs to the kitchen and steeled myself to look outside and face fear number two.