Smiling, actually. “I had no idea that men had self-esteem issues.”
“Of course we do,” he said. “We just don’t talk about them. I’m breaking the Man Code by even hinting that I wasn’t born with a massive ego.”
This time I did laugh.
• • •
“So you forgave him?” Kristen asked.
We were sitting in her office, spooning up crème brûlée. “When he brought over that big bunch of flowers, it wasn’t that hard.”
“Carnations? Daisies?”
I shook my head. “Roses.”
She whistled. “Not bad. This guy might be a keeper.”
“Still too early to tell,” I said. “Say, have I ever told you how good your desserts are?”
“Only every time you eat one.”
“Come on, I tell you more often than that.” I debated telling her about what Scruffy and Trock had said about stopping by the Three Seasons, but decided not to. No point in getting her all excited over something a TV person said. Maybe it was unfair of me to assume they were unreliable, but professions get stereotyped for a reason.
“So, what have you learned about Carissa?” she asked. Only after she swore on a stack of Bon Appétit magazines to keep her lips zipped had I told her about Cade’s short stay at the county jail and my later vow to help him stay out of jail.
Cade had said I could tell her, that anyone I trusted was guarantee enough for him, but the magazine thing was a requirement for me. Plus, it was fun listening to her make the vow.
“Not enough.” I told her everything I’d learned. Unfortunately it didn’t take long.
“All you have is guesses,” she said. “What you need is some proof.”
I looked at her.
“Yeah, yeah.” She grinned. “Like, duh, right?” She spooned up the last of her custard. “How’s it going with trying to kick Mitchell out of the library?”
I toyed with the sprig of mint that had formerly garnished my dessert. “About as well as you’d expect. Stephen’s really out to get me fired this time.”
She leaned back in her chair. “You know, did I ever tell you about the time I had to kick a state senator out of here?”
“You did not.”
“Did, too. Ask Harvey.”
“That’s not proof. Your sous-chef is so infatuated with you that he’d say anything you wanted.”
She waved off that particular truth. “I must have told you about the time a softball team came in to celebrate some championship game. All women old enough to be my mother.”
Now, that story she had told me, and every time she told it I was sure my curly hair was going to go straight. I settled back, smiling. “Make sure you tell the dancing-on-the-tables part. That’s my favorite.”
We spent the rest of the evening sharing stories and laughing. It didn’t get me any closer to a solution to any of my problems, but I did go to sleep with a smile on my face.
• • •
The next morning, I woke up refreshed and perky. Eddie, not so much. The cool weather was still in full force and he seemed much more inclined to nap on the bed than get up and watch me eat a bowl of cereal.
“I’ll let you lick the bottom of the bowl,” I said.
He opened one eye briefly, then shut it again.
“You do realize that tomorrow you’re going to have to be out of bed at this time if you’re coming on the bookmobile.”
He started purring. I wasn’t sure if that meant Of course I’ll be ready to go at this time tomorrow or That’s twenty-four hours away; why are you bothering me with it now?
I kissed the top of his furry head and left him to sleep the day away.
• • •
Monday mornings at the library could be one of two things, frantically busy or quietly slow, and you never knew which one it was going to be until it started happening.
This particular Monday started out quiet, but half an hour after I unlocked the front door, e-mails started piling up, the phones started ringing, and people started pouring inside. It was All Hands on Deck time, to the extent that Stephen descended from his second-floor office to help out.
I was taking a stint at the reference desk, so when I saw Donna talking to a trim, gray-haired woman and point her in my direction, I readied myself for a reference question.
The older woman strode over to the desk and held out her hand. “Good morning, Minnie.” Her smile was wide and calm. “I’m Ivy Bly.”
“Hi, Ivy,” I said pleasantly. “What can I do for you?”
There was a short beat of silence, and then she said, “My daughter wound me up and pointed me in your direction, so here I am.”
“And I hope I can answer whatever question you have.” I smiled. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
A tiny line appeared in the middle of her forehead. Not quite a frown, but not nearly the smile of a moment ago. “Didn’t Barb tell you I’d be here this morning?”
Light dawned in a great blinding flash. I blinked from its intensity. “You’re Barb McCade’s mother?” This woman didn’t look anywhere near old enough to be the mother of someone in her fifties. Maybe she was a stepmother. Sure, that was it.
She laughed. “Had Barb when I was twenty-five. Give you a piece of advice, Minnie. Slop on that sunscreen and stay active.”
I looked her up and down, admiration plain on my face. “I’ll take that into serious consideration.”
“The best day of my life was when I turned seventy,” she said. “Around here, they practically give you ski passes for free at that age. Do you ski?”
“A little.”
“Keep it up. Do squats every day,” she recommended. “Even if you don’t have time to do anything else, everybody can find a minute to do twenty squats.”
And this was the woman I’d been afraid would be too frail to help out on the bookmobile. Then again, there were other things to consider. “How are you with computers?” All the books got checked out and in through a laptop. If Ivy wasn’t computer-savvy, we had a problem.
“Spent the last twenty years of my career teaching computer programming to inattentive college students,” she said. “As long as you don’t want me to work in Java, I’m okay.”
I was pretty sure she wasn’t talking about coffee, so I moved on to the next question. “Do you get along with kids?”
“Love ’em.”
I looked left and right, then leaned forward. “How about cats?” I whispered.
“Have three of my own,” she whispered back. “They love it at Barb and Cade’s place.”
Which settled the deal. I told her to meet me by the bookmobile garage early the next morning and advised her to pack a lunch. She nodded, sketched a wave, and headed off to whatever her next appointed task might be.
I watched her go, thinking that I suddenly had a new role model for what to be like in retirement.
My thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Stephen standing in front of the desk, his hands on his hips.
“I would like a progress report regarding The Situation,” he said.
Meaning Mitchell. But since I’d made no progress, there wasn’t much of a report to give him. I hesitated, then asked, “In a case like this, what would you do?”
“I,” Stephen said in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “would give the problem to the person who was hired to take care of such things.”
“Oh,” I said. Then I remembered I wasn’t afraid of Stephen and bucked up. “To tell you the truth, I don’t see it as a real problem.”
“What you don’t see,” Stephen snapped, “is the bad side of anyone or anything. Take care of this, Minnie.”
I watched him go, wondering why being optimistic was such a horrible thing. Then the phone rang, I was asked about the origin of the ampersand, and the Moratorium on Mitchell went to the back of my brain.
• • •