She flashed me a short smile and glanced at the card. “Thank you, Minnie. Thank you so much for everything.”
I fell back. Everyone else went through the hospital doors and was gone.
For a long moment I stood there, watching the doors and seeing nothing, hearing nothing except my own heart beating too fast. I’d done what I could, and now… what? Tucker and the rest of the ER staff would take it from here. There was nothing left for me to do.
“Mrr.” Eddie bonked the back of my leg with his head, purring loud enough for me to feel it in my knees.
“What’s that?” I asked, scooping him up. “You’re saying of course there’s something to do, because there’s always an Eddie to pet?”
He bonked my forehead. “Mrr.”
I smiled into his fur and suddenly wanted to cry. “Yeah, ‘Mrr’ to you, too, pal.”
Chapter 3
I whiled away the evening by attending the annual Post–Fourth of July Party my left-hand neighbors had been throwing ever since they bought their boat and found a summer berth at Uncle Chip’s Marina in Chilson.
The Axfords played big band music, hauled in tubs of fresh oysters, and handed out plastic champagne flutes to hold the freely flowing beverage. They were wizards at making sure their guests had a good time, and I wasn’t surprised when I felt Louisa Axford’s firm hand on my shoulder as I stood at their boat’s bow, looking out over the dark waters of Janay Lake. The sun had gone down half an hour earlier and the last remnants of daylight still glowed on the horizon.
“Minnie, is anything wrong?” she asked. “Don’t tell me that Chris finally managed to offend you.”
I could hear the smile in her voice, but I knew she was studying me closely. I made a laugh. “The day he offends me is the day I go online and order up a new sense of humor.”
Chris Ballou was the manager of Uncle Chip’s Marina, and was the most politically incorrect human on the planet. Taking him seriously would be as sensible as thinking Eddie could actually understand what I said to him.
Louisa patted my shoulder. “Good. I heard him call you Minner Dinner the other day. That seemed a little over-the-top.”
Chris found my name a great source of amusement, and within minutes of our first meeting, he’d started playing rhyming games with it. Min-Tin-Tin was one of his favorites, but he also favored Min-Bin and, of course, Minnie-Ha-Ha.
I reached around to give her a quick hug. “I don’t get mad,” I said. “I get even.”
Louisa threw back her head and laughed, the ends of her white hair curling onto her shoulders. “You are my role model,” she said. “Let’s go on back to the party. Now, I know you’re dating that nice Dr. Kleinow, but I’d appreciate it if you could spend a few minutes with that startlingly handsome young man over there. He’s new to town and could use some advice on Chilson’s social scene.”
Though I let her take me back to the festivities, my thoughts remained where they’d been, back at the hospital with Russell McCade and his wife.
• • •
Sunday I dawdled away by sleeping late, exchanging text messages with Tucker that reassured him I was fine after being a temporary ambulance driver, reading the newspaper, hauling dirty clothes to the marina’s coin laundry, doing all the other household chores that had piled up on my little houseboat during the week, hanging out with my best friend, Kristen, at her restaurant and telling her about Saturday’s events.
I wanted to ask Tucker about Cade but knew I couldn’t. I wouldn’t want him to violate the privacy laws and I certainly didn’t want to put him in the position of having to tell me he couldn’t tell me anything.
“Maybe Cade’s wife will call,” I told Eddie, who was on the dining table, basking in a square of sunshine. “By the way, you know you’re not supposed to be up there. At least not when I’m home.”
His eyes, which had been open to small slits, closed completely. It was too much work, apparently, for him to say, “Mrr.”
• • •
On Monday morning, the air was thick with fog. My walk through the streets of downtown Chilson, normally a journey I enjoyed for the sheer pleasure of looking at the oddly cohesive blend of old and new architecture, was instead a damp passage through a gray world. The fog was so thick it was impossible to make out the wording on the store’s signs.
If I hadn’t known better, the Round Table, a diner extraordinaire, might have been Bound Town, Thorington Jewelry could have been Tonedagana Jodhpurs, and if you squinted a little, Tom’s Bakery turned into Tim’s Eatery.
The exercise of renaming the downtown businesses amused me, and I was in a fine mood as I settled myself in my office and got to work. After all, the fog would clear off soon, the sky would turn blue, and surely Cade would make a full recovery. No doubt about it. I nodded to myself, turned on the computer, and lost myself in spreadsheets.
“Minnie.”
A chill froze my perkiness. “Hey, Stephen.” I looked up from the half-completed fall activities schedule. “How are you this fine morning?”
He frowned. “There’s a thick fog.”
That was Stephen, always one to find the dark lining in a silver cloud. I gave him a quick scan, trying to find a clue to his mood. Dour countenance, snugged-up tie, buttoned shirt cuffs. Though I couldn’t see, his pants were most likely ironed to sharp creases and it was certain that his shoes were shined. All normal. At least for Stephen.
Here in the land we called Up North, the only men who wore neckties on a regular basis were attorneys, and even then their ties only came out on court days. Most men were glad to foreswear the nooselike encumbrances, but Stephen wasn’t most men.
While I thought my typical summer library wear of unconstructed jacket, dress pants, and loafers was an excellent display of Up North professionalism, Stephen would, no doubt, have preferred that I wore low-heeled pumps, nylons, and skirt suits of navy blue and black. Wasn’t going to happen. Ever.
“A fog, yes,” I said, pointing at the ceiling, “but the sun is above, doing its best to shine through.” He looked puzzled, so I gave up my attempt to humanize him. “What can I do for you?”
The puzzlement retreated and was replaced by a much more familiar expression, that of displeasure. “We have a problem, Minnie, a serious problem.”
“We do?” To the best of my knowledge, the library had been problem free for days, if not weeks. Well, if you didn’t count that minor episode in the children’s section with the three-year-old and the scissors, and that had ended easily enough with a time-out and a check to replace the damaged books. “What’s up?” I asked.
“Mitchell Koyne.” Stephen put his forefinger on the edge of my desk. “He’s been spending far too much time in this library. He’s keeping the staff from their duties with his endless questions and it must stop.”
“Ah.” Mitchell was indeed a fixture in the library. A large one. He was one of the tallest men I’d ever met, though he didn’t seem to know it, and it was hard to overlook his presence. From what I’d heard, Mitchell had various seasonal jobs—construction, snowplowing, ski lift operator—but he had more employment gaps than employment and none of us knew how he managed to feed and clothe himself. Not that his wardrobe of jeans, T-shirts, flannel shirts, and baseball caps could cost a tremendous amount, but still, you had to wonder.
Actually there were a lot of things about Mitchell that I wondered about, the first one of which was his true level of intelligence. At times he came across as one of the dumbest people you’d ever met, but at other times he’d say something that made you think he was one of the smartest people you’d ever met. Sometimes both would happen in the same conversation.
Plus, conversations with Mitchell tended to go on for five minutes longer than you wanted them to, and Mitchell seemed completely clueless that the library staff had job functions that didn’t include answering his questions, which could range from “What’s the longest suspension bridge in the world?” to “What’s mascarpone?”