by Laurie Cass
“What’s that?” she asked. “I couldn’t hear you through that yawn.”
I snapped my jaw shut and gave her a mock glare. “When did the youth of today get so smart-alecky?”
She put on an air of deep thought. “I’d guess it was when the first teenagers were born.” She looked at me. “Um, are you okay? To drive, I mean? You look really tired.”
I smiled. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”
“Mrr!”
Thessie laughed. “I guess Eddie will keep you awake.”
She left and I looked at my feline companion. “Please don’t listen to her,” I told him. “The last thing I need is you howling all the way home.”
“Mrr,” he said quietly.
“Thank you.” I pointed the bookmobile in the direction of Chilson. “She’s right, though. I am tired. But I’m not going to think about it. If I do, I’ll just get more tired and that’s no good, not on such a beautiful day.”
And a beautiful day it was, one of those perfect summer days that northern Michigan seemed to specialize in. Temperatures in the high seventies, a light breeze, low humidity, and a few fluffy clouds dotting the sky. No wonder this area was such a tourist draw.
“Speaking of drawing,” I said, “I wonder how Cade’s doing. Last night couldn’t have been good for him.”
Actually there were a lot of things I was wondering. Having a murder in my happy little town was hard enough to wrap my head around, and I was bothered by the fact that I knew nothing about the victim.
I didn’t know if Carissa Radle had been blond or brunette or redheaded. Didn’t know if she’d been short or tall or pretty or athletic or funny. Didn’t know who was left behind to mourn her. Didn’t know anything about this woman whose life had so unexpectedly intersected Cade’s and now, in a diagonal sideways sort of way, mine.
Those thoughts kept me awake all the way to Chilson. They kept me mostly awake while I tucked the bookmobile in for the night, and they sort of kept me awake as I kept an eye out for Stephen while I moved Eddie into my car and then drove home.
“Yo, Miniver!”
I was halfway between the marina’s parking lot and my houseboat. I had Eddie in his carrier in one hand and my backpack in the other. My longed-for nap was less than a hundred feet away. I slowed but didn’t come to a complete stop. “Hey, Chris. Nice day.”
Chris Ballou, the marina’s manager, squinted at the sky, his weathered skin crinkling. “Yeah. Should stay this way for a while.”
Back before I knew better, I would have thought he was using his years of experience of living next to the water to make such a prediction. “Is that the Weather Channel’s forecast or NOAA’s?”
He took a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth. “Got something I want to talk about. Come on down to the office a second, will ya?”
I hefted Eddie’s carrier. “I’m kind of busy.” And sleep-deprived. Really, really sleep-deprived.
“Ah, it’ll just take a minute.”
Two sentences ago, it had been a second. Then again, Chris rarely asked me for anything, and he was giving me a discount for renting the slip next to Gunnar Olson. “Let me put Eddie in the houseboat and I’ll be right down.”
Chris grinned around the toothpick. “Nah. Let’s bring him with. Bet he fits right in with the guys.” He took the carrier out of my hand and sauntered off, his long and skinny legs covering ground fast. I had to half trot to keep up and I was very glad when the short walk was over.
“Look what we got here, boys.” Chris carefully placed Eddie’s carrier on the shop counter. The four men lounging on ancient canvas director’s chairs and drinking beer turned to look.
Skeeter, a summer boater about my age, went to the effort of lifting two fingers off his beer can in a sort of salute. “Minnie.”
Rafe Niswander grinned. “Hey, it’s an Eddie.” Rafe was my nearest on-land neighbor and a good friend. September through mid-June, Rafe was the principal of the local middle school. Mid-June through August, however, he did as little as possible and played the bumbling Up North hick role to the hilt. “What do you say, Eddie, my man?”
Thanks to Rafe’s tendency of being accident-prone, he was the reason I’d met Tucker, so I could forgive him much, but it was thanks to his propensity for procrastination that the electrical repairs on my boat were behind schedule.
“Mrr.”
The third and fourth guys laughed. Number three had a shaved head and looked to be in his mid-fifties; number four had light brown hair and was in his mid-forties. I’d never seen either one of them before.
“I think he said quit asking such stupid questions,” the older one said. “How you doing?” He stood, and turned into a very tall man. He held out his hand, and I realized he was a very tall man with very large hands.
We shook and, since no one else was doing the honors, I introduced myself. “Minnie Hamilton. Are you renting a boat slip?”
“Greg Plassey,” he said. “Need to buy a boat first. And this is my bud Brett Karringer. He does something with computers that I don’t understand and plays some really bad golf.”
I nodded at Brett. There was a beat of silence. Rafe held his hand out, palm up, to Chris. “Hand it over.”
“Come on, Min,” Chris pleaded. “Tell me you know who Greg Plassey is. I got five bucks on this.”
“Sorry.” I smiled at Plassey. “No offense, but I’ve never heard of you. Should I have?”
Chris groaned and dug out his wallet.
Rafe laughed. “Told you. This girl don’t know jack about baseball.”
Or pretty much any other professional sport; I was more the toss-around-a-Frisbee-on-the-beach type of person. In short order, I learned that I’d just dissed a Major League Baseball pitching star. Sure, he’d been retired for more than fifteen years, but the human males in the room were still astounded that I didn’t recognize the name of the guy who’d helped pitch the Detroit Tigers to two American League championships.
I shrugged. “How can you gentlemen not know who won the Newbery Award last year?”
Skeeter lowered his beer. “That a new hockey trophy? No, wait. Golf.”
“Golf?” Chris slapped Greg on the shoulder. “Too bad you’re not as good a golfer as a pitcher.”
Greg grinned. “Doesn’t hurt any worse than a line drive.”
I stared at him. “You were hit by a golf ball?”
“By a ball his buddy there smacked,” Rafe said.
Brett Karringer nodded sheepishly. “Hit it off a tree and it caromed into the back of his head.”
“You got to work on your aim,” Skeeter said. “Next time see if you can get him right between the eyes.”
For some reason, the men found that hilarious. When the laughter faded, I turned to Greg. “Did you go to the hospital?” I asked. “Head injuries aren’t anything to mess around with.”
“Being hit with one more ball isn’t going to do me any damage.” Greg smiled. “I’m fine.”
I wasn’t sure how he could be so sure, but it was hard enough to get my male friends to take care of themselves, let alone practical strangers, so I let it go. I looked at Chris. “You wanted to talk about something?”
“Oh, yeah.” He reached into the carrier to scratch Eddie’s chin. “You know our other marina, the one at the east end of Janay Lake? It’s full up this year and I’m looking to keep them happy enough to come back. So I was wondering if you could talk your boss into getting the bookmobile to make a stop out there.”
My boss? Maybe someday I’d get used to being underestimated. But I doubted it. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said dryly.
“Yeah?” Chris smiled, his teeth showing white against the leathered skin. “Cool. Thanks, Min-Tin-Tin. You’re all right, for a girl.”
If I’d been more awake, I’d have come back with a sna
ppy rejoinder, but fatigue was turning my brain into mush. “And you’re… not so horrible for a boy.” Lame, so very lame. I nodded at the other boys, slid the cat carrier off the counter, and headed home for a long afternoon’s nap.
“Hang on, Min, I’ll walk out with you.” Rafe got up and took the carrier from me. “I’d like to stay, guys, but there’s a house that needs working on.”
Rafe owned what you would call, if you were being kind, a fixer-upper. When he was done redoing the siding, wiring, HVAC, and plumbing of the century-old house, it would be a showpiece, but for now it was more a blot on the landscape.
“How’s your cut healing?” I’d taken him to the Charlevoix Hospital after an accident with a reciprocating saw.
“Never better,” he said promptly. “You should quit worrying so much. If you’re not careful, you’re going to grow up into a regular old girl.”
“I can think of worse things to grow into,” I said mildly.
“Five bucks says you can’t come up with ten by the time we get to your dock.”
I immediately started counting on my fingers. “A person who doesn’t read. A narrow-minded person. Someone who doesn’t understand the necessity of an occasional day off. Someone who doesn’t know how to laugh at herself. Someone who doesn’t like chocolate. That’s five. Someone with no sense of humor. With no appreciation for architecture. With no appreciation for art. Or with no love of beauty. Or someone who cares so much about a single issue that they forget about everything else in their life. Ten.”
Rafe handed me the five-dollar bill he’d so recently won from Chris, but I wasn’t done. “I’d rather be a girl than someone who doesn’t like girls, or someone who thinks girls are useless. And I’d rather be a girl than—”
“You won, already,” Rafe said. “See you later, Minnie.” He handed me Eddie’s carrier and headed off, shaking his head.
“And,” I told Eddie, “I’d much rather be a regular old girl than someone who doesn’t like cats.”
Eddie didn’t say anything, but I’m sure he was pleased.
• • •
On Saturday evening I walked up to Kristen’s restaurant. Kristen Jurek and I had met on Chilson’s city beach at the age of twelve. Though Kristen was a born and bred local, she’d committed the unusual act of taking a summer kid under her wing. I’d never forgotten her kindness, and every time I said so, she rolled her eyes and said I’d paid her back a zillion times over and to forget about it, okay?
I would reply that offhand suggestions I’d made three years ago about what to name her restaurant hardly counted in the grand scheme of things, and she’d say that karma was karma, no matter who did what, and to shut up about it or she’d stop making crème brûlée for me every Sunday night.
That was a threat I didn’t want to risk, so I kept quiet. At least for a little while.
I said, “Hey, guys,” through the kitchen’s screen door and went on in. Even late on a Saturday night, the staff was hard at work. Cutting, chopping, cooking, baking, all those things I rarely did and made a mess of when I tried. The one time Kristen had tried to explain the importance of presentation was two hours of my life I could have spent reading. I still regretted the time lost.
A fortyish woman in a tall white hat and a white jacket glanced up at me, her face sharpening at the sight of a stranger in her midst. But the sous-chef, his assistant, and one of the summer interns all nodded to me and/or said, “Hey, Minnie,” and the woman’s face relaxed.
“Hi,” I said to her. “I’m Minnie Hamilton. Is Kristen in her office?”
“Misty Overbaugh,” she said in a gravelly voice. “And I’d be careful if I were you. She’s wrestling with the menu for next week.”
My eyebrows went up. Kristen never waited until the last minute to work up a menu. Never.
“Somebody called with a special deal on chicken breasts,” Misty explained. “She said she couldn’t pass it up.”
I grinned. That was Kristen. “Nice meeting you,” I said, and headed back to the office. I navigated the maze of short hallways and storage rooms that were a direct result of Kristen’s insistence during the remodeling phase that the kitchen be the best possible kitchen, forget the expense, full speed ahead.
What had once been a massive summer cottage was now one of the finest restaurants in Tonedagana County. Diners ate food grown and produced in the region while seated in the rooms where wealthy summer people had formerly spent their leisure hours. Nothing served in the restaurant was frozen, and nothing edible was shipped in from outside the state of Michigan. Well, she did make an exception for spices, but there wasn’t much she could do about that and it was noted on the menu.
I stood in the doorway, looking fondly at my fair friend. Kristen, at nearly six feet tall and Scandinavian blond, was the reverse image of five-foot, curly-black-haired me. “I hear chicken nuggets are popular,” I said.
She looked up at me with bleary eyes. “Why didn’t you stop me from ordering all that chicken?”
“Because I like to see you suffer.” I dropped into the rickety wooden contraption that served as the guest chair. “That, and even if I’d been here you wouldn’t have listened to me.”
“I would, too, have.”
“You think?”
She pushed herself away from the computer and stretched. “No. I would have said what makes you think you know anything about running a restaurant when you can’t even pop microwave popcorn without burning it.”
“My skills are more in the peanut butter and jelly range.”
“It’s good to know your strengths.” She picked up her phone. “Harvey, can you…” She gave me a thumbs-up and grinned. “You’re the best, kid,” she said, then hung up. “Two crème brûlée desserts being prepped right now.”
“Have I ever told you how much I like having a restaurant owner for a best friend?”
“Only almost every Sunday evening, May through November.”
Kristen’s restaurant was named the Three Seasons because it was only open for three seasons. Come winter she closed everything down and hied herself to Key West, where she tended bar on the weekends and did absolutely nothing during the week.
“Sure, but tonight is Saturday.”
She flicked her index finger at me. “Only because I have to drive down to Cadillac tomorrow for my grandmother’s birthday party. For you and me, this is Sunday.”
“How’s the new chef coming along?” I asked. “Misty, right?”
“So far, so good.”
Harvey knocked and bustled in with a tray of dessert, decaf coffee, cream, and silverware. He unloaded it all on the small table in the corner, asked if we needed anything else, and bustled away.
“Have you heard if the restaurant is going to make it onto Trock’s Troubles?” I asked.
“No, and every time I think about it I start to hyperventilate, so let’s change the subject, yes? Yes.” Kristen pushed the latest newspaper over to me. “Did you hear about this?” Since I’d already read the article she was pointing at, I didn’t reach to pick it up. But even from five feet away, I could easily read the main headline, blaring its bad news in big black type: LOCAL WOMAN MURDERED.
“The weird thing?” Kristen asked. “I knew her.”
“You… did?” While our circles of friends didn’t completely overlap, I’d thought I was familiar with all their names.
“Sort of. She came in to apply for a waitressing job when I first opened.” Kristen pulled the newspaper back toward her and stared at the article. “It’s weird knowing someone who was murdered.”
“Yes,” I said quietly, “it is.” We sat for a moment, thinking our own thoughts. Then I asked, “What was she like? Do you remember?”
She smiled a little. “Most of the time I don’t remember the ones I don’t hire, but she was different. It was too bad she didn’t have a lick of w
aitressing experience. If she had, I’d have hired her in a flash, but I had to have people who knew what they were doing. I didn’t have time to train a complete newbie.” A strand of hair had escaped Kristen’s ponytail, and she brushed at it impatiently. “Makes me wonder. If I’d hired her, would things have turned out differently for her? Would she have been killed?”
Kristen was starting down a path that shouldn’t be taken. Diversionary tactics were required, stat. “Why did you want to hire her if she didn’t have any experience?” I asked.
“Personality,” my personality-loaded friend said. “Beyond the basic waitstaff skills, personality is what makes a waiter memorable. Carissa was loaded with it. Funny, smart, charming.” Kristen sighed. “And gorgeous, too. I should have hated her, but I couldn’t find a way.”
Someone had, but the fact was too obvious, and too painful, to say out loud.
“What other jobs were on her résumé?” I asked, but Kristen didn’t remember.
I wanted to talk about Cade, about my run to the police station, about Detective Inwood and Daniel Markakis and Barb and the letter D. But I didn’t want to share that information without Cade’s permission. Though I didn’t like keeping secrets from Kristen, this wasn’t my secret to tell.
“Let’s eat,” I said. “Our crème brûlée’s going to go stale.”
Kristen frowned. “Are you trying to distract me from dark and depressing thoughts?”
I grinned. She was getting in some good D words and I hadn’t even told her about the game. Maybe it was time to set up rules. “Is it working?”
She picked up her spoon and cracked the sugar. “Getting there.”
“Maybe it’ll help if I tell you how the bookmobile’s candy guessing game is turning into a debacle.”
“Now you’re talking.”
So I did, and soon the sadness that had been filling the room flowed out and away.
• • •
“You got quite a mess down here, Minnie.” It was Sunday morning and Rafe’s head and upper body were deep into the houseboat’s engine compartment.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said gloomily. It would have been nice if I could have afforded the fees the marina charged for boat repairs, but without going into serious credit card debt, something I sincerely hoped to avoid, paying Rafe the peanuts he’d charge me was my best option. “Please tell me you’ll have it finished before you go back to school.”