She reached forward, broke a cookie in half, and handed me the larger share. “And it’s what my grandmother always brought me.”
It was a cozy thought. We rocked back and forth, eating cookies and sipping lemonade, enjoying each other’s company in companionable silence.
Finally she said, “I’m worried, Minnie. Nothing is working out like it’s supposed to.”
Never before had I seen my aunt look so anxious. It didn’t suit her at all. “Things will work out,” I said.
“Do you really think so, Minnie?” Her light blue eyes gazed at mine with intensity. “Do you really?”
I had no clue if it would or not, but at that moment I would have done almost anything to wipe that look of desperation from her face. “Absolutely.” I hesitated, then said, “And I’ll do everything I can to make it happen.”
“Oh, Minnie!” She reached out and hugged the stuffing out of me. “You’re the best niece ever!”
“And you’re the best aunt,” I said into her shoulder. I gave her a squeeze. “Thessie had an idea. What do you think about hosting a party?”
My aunt looked dubious. “What good would that do?”
“Invite dozens of people, including the boarders. Then we’ll prime people to say how nice Deena and Harris look together, how Paulette and Quincy seem like the perfect couple, and how Zofia and Leo already seem as if they’re married. If we can get those thoughts into their heads…”
But Aunt Frances was shaking her head. “It’s not a bad idea, but either one or another of them has day-trip plans the next three weekends. After that it’ll be too late.”
“Okay. Let me think a minute,” I said, deciding not to mention any of Thessie’s more outlandish theories, especially the one about love potions. I was almost sure she’d been joking, but not completely.
My thoughts brushed up against the ideas of love and companionship and friendship, and how it can be found in the most unexpected places. Look at me; who would have thought I’d find a boyfriend while taking Rafe to the emergency room? And then there were people who looked too hard for a companion.
Was that what Carissa had been doing with Hugo Edel? He said no, but Faye had said they looked cozy, and that was a hard thing to mistake.
Edel had to be at least fifteen years older than Carissa, but age didn’t matter. I glanced over at Aunt Frances. I knew her well enough to be sure that she wasn’t concerned about the age differences between her mismatched boarders; it was just that they weren’t setting up to be the matches she’d so carefully constructed.
“Maybe it’s time for a more direct approach,” I said, getting to my feet.
In the living room, Deena and Quincy were still pseudostudying the scrapbook. I plopped down on the couch across from them. “Hi,” I said. “Where’s Paulette?”
They looked up at me. “Uh…” Quincy blinked. “Paulette?”
“You know,” I said. “Nice lady, early fifties, likes to wear flip-flops, could make a fortune selling her needlework projects online. Her.”
Deena laughed. “She reminds me of this neighbor of my parents, only Paulette doesn’t have eight cats.”
“How do you know?” Quincy asked. “Have you ever asked Paulette if she has cats?”
For some reason, the two found this hilarious.
They were still laughing when Harris came in through the front door. I called to him. “Come on over,” I said. “Have you seen this scrapbook?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m going kayaking and I need to get changed.” He waved and headed up the stairs.
“Kayaking,” I said brightly. “Doesn’t that sound like fun, Deena?”
She squinched a face. “Sounds wet and probably cold. I hate being cold.” She gave a fake shiver.
“We can’t have our Deena cold,” Quincy said. He put his arms around her. “Is that better?”
The stars in her eyes told me the answer to that question, and more. I murmured a good-bye that they didn’t hear and went to report my failure to Aunt Frances.
• • •
On Tuesday, I’d sent Rafe a first draft of his after-school reading program, so that night he was finishing up the electrical work on my boat. Or what I hoped was the finishing up of the work. School was starting in less than a month and soon he’d be too busy doing middle school principal–type tasks to think about much else for weeks. Not that you could tell. Maybe someday, somewhere, Rafe would look harried and frantically busy, but right now he looked as if he had all the time in the world.
“You know,” I said, “this would get done a lot faster if you didn’t stop to look at every good-looking female who walks past.”
“Not every one.” He glanced up from the spaghettilike tangle of wires that surrounded him. “I skip right over any female who looks younger than twenty.”
Which was probably true. Rafe was many things, but he would never dream of being age-inappropriate. On the low end, anyway. “Do you have an upper age limit?” I asked.
“Nope.” He pulled out a long wire and eyed it critically. “I mean, someday I’m going to be old. Wouldn’t make sense if I couldn’t appreciate the female form in its later years. Plus, have you taken a close look at your neighbor?” He tipped his head in the direction of Louisa and Ted’s boat. “I don’t care how old she is, she’s downright hot.”
“I’m sure her husband would appreciate the sentiment,” I said.
Rafe was impervious to the sarcasm. “Yeah, he probably would. I mean, who wouldn’t like to have a hot wife?”
He went on about the happiness of hotness, but I’d gone backward a little, to thinking about neighbors. “Hey, Rafe?”
“What’s that?”
One nice thing about Rafe was that he didn’t mind switching topics in the blink of an eye. Did that come of working with middle school kids? Or was it his innate ability to do so that made him good with the kids? I pushed the questions away. “Do you know a Rob Pew? He lives in a duplex up the hill, in the unit next door to where that woman was killed a few weeks back.”
“Pewey Lewey?” Rafe grinned, his teeth showing white against his skin, which, since it was late summer, was a deep burnished red. “Sure. He’s one of my hunting buddies, come November.”
Ha. I knew what “hunting” meant for any group of guys that included Rafe. It meant a week of staying up late, playing cards, imbibing copious amounts of adult canned beverages, sleeping late, then waking up and doing it all over again. “When was the last time you actually got a deer?”
Rafe’s grin went even wider. “Need-to-know basis, Miss Minnie. Anyway, what about Pewey?”
I started to frame my question, but Rafe was still talking. “Wonder if Pewey’s going to make it up to deer camp this year. He works nights for what’s their names, that company making interior panels for cars. They got a big new contract and Lewey’s been signed up for double shifts, afternoon and midnights for over a month now.” Rafe squinted at a green wire. “Nuts, if you ask me, but he’s trying to save money for a log cabin up near Newberry. Why do you want to know?”
So there was no way Rob Pew could have killed Carissa. And so much for that gut feeling of imminent danger that I’d had when he answered the door in such a surly fashion. All I’d been reacting to was the man’s response to extreme sleep-deprivation, just as Abby had said. Still, I was glad I’d corroborated with a second knowledgeable source. “Does anyone call him Rob?”
Whistling, Rafe picked up his wire cutters and stripped off the end of a yellow-coated wire. “Not even his mother.”
• • •
At noon the next day, I pushed back from my desk and looked at what I’d accomplished so far.