“Sure.” Vance nodded. “Your boyfriend. Owns the pizza place the other side of the Square.”
“Exactly. He’s in desperate need of part-time help, and I was wondering if you or your son might know of any high school kids looking for work.”
Vance looked thoughtful. “Not off the top of my head, but I can ask around. This for delivery or for working in the kitchen?”
“Either,” Katie said, not sure, but willing to gamble that she was right. “Andy’s a great boss, and he pays decent wages, but the kids have to be ready to work hard.”
“I’ll ask Vance Junior,” he said. “And there are a couple of parents I can check with.”
“Thanks,” Katie said. “I really appreciate this.” She smiled. “Maybe I can repay you by swabbing the decks of your boat sometime.”
“My boat?” Vance stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you have a boat?” Katie asked, puzzled. “Someone told me you did. A good-sized one, isn’t it?”
“People around here should learn to keep their mouths shut,” he said fiercely. “Gossip is a nasty habit. I’m surprised that you include yourself, Katie. I thought you were above that kind of thing, but I guess I was wrong.”
“Vance, I—”
But Katie was speaking to his retreating back. She frowned, because despite the whispered comments she’d heard from Edie about Vance’s boat owner status, she hadn’t truly suspected him of anything.
Until now.
Nine
It was unwise to predict how any given day at Artisans Alley would unfold, and that rainy Sunday brought out scores of football widows eager to max out their credit cards—payback for husbands who were glued to the tube instead of paying attention to their loving wives. Of course, that wasn’t a problem for the vendors—or the Alley’s bottom line, either. And that was just another sales anomaly for Katie to study in depth . . . one day.
Of course, that also meant Katie had little time to think about murder, mayhem, and bad art made from dryer lint.
At dinnertime, she headed across the Victoria Square parking lot and, sitting on a stool, chatted with Andy as he made and baked a calzone and served it to her with a flourish. After she’d eaten, they’d stolen into a dark corner for a hug and a kiss, which had been interrupted by whistles and catcalls from his staff.
Laughing, they’d pulled apart, and Katie had gone back upstairs for a classic movie night with Mason and Della, who purred all through the scary parts of The Wizard of Oz, making the flying monkeys not nearly as frightening as they usually were.
Monday morning, Katie woke up refreshed and energized. She felt ready to tackle the world, and she knew just where to start.
The only other cars in the Winton Office Park lot were parked near the office buildings. Employees, Katie assumed, since it wasn’t even eight o’clock. But there was already a car in front of Kimper Insurance. Actually, there was a car and a motorcycle, although the motorcycle was parked on the sidewalk, forcing any pedestrian to walk either onto the landscaping or back down onto the asphalt parking lot.
Katie got out of her car and walked to the front door. It was unlocked, and she pulled it open and started to go inside. Before she got all the way into the small vestibule, however, she heard voices, and they weren’t voices that were getting along with each other. She hesitated, but even as she did, Erikka called out.
“Hello? Did someone come in?”
Katie heard a male grumble. She made the quick decision to keep going. In her tenure as office manager, she’d more than once had to face down angry clients, and having someone else in the room had always helped temper the heat of the moment.
“Hi, Erikka,” Katie said, walking in with a firm smile on her face. “How are you this morning?”
The dark-haired young woman turned away from the man she’d been arguing with and stared. “Katie! Wow, I . . . I didn’t expect to see you again. I mean, I’m glad you’re here and everything, but, I’m surprised, I guess is what I mean. That you’re here.”
Katie smiled at the stumbling rush of words. “I was in the neighborhood”—because she’d driven there—“and I thought I’d stop by. A number of my friends have insurance policies here, and I told them I’d try and get some answers for their questions and save you some time on the phone with each of them individually.”
The man leaning against the wall of filing cabinets snorted. “What’s to answer? The guy’s dead and the business is being sold. Call tomorrow for an update.”
Erikka shot him a glance. “Katie, this is Luke Stafford, my boyfriend. Luke, this is Katie Bonner. She used to have my job.”
“Hi.” Katie gave Luke a polite nod, even though she didn’t feel like being polite to someone who was borderline rude to complete strangers. His attire of black jeans and a T-shirt featuring a band she’d never heard of that was so tight it showed off his substantial shoulder and chest muscles also didn’t endear him to her. Neither did his hair, which was little more than light brown stubble and a bushy, untidy beard.
She tried to tamp down her instinctive reaction to him, knowing that a lot of it came from her own personal history with men who presented themselves like that, and not necessarily from Luke himself, but since he was undoubtedly the owner of the motorcycle parked on the sidewalk, she didn’t feel very guilty about it.
Luke ran his eyes over her and, not saying anything, jerked out a nod.
The slight amount of guilt Kate had been harboring evaporated completely, and she wondered why a nice girl like Erikka would want to date a guy like that. She mentally shrugged—there was no accounting for tastes—and asked, “Is that true, Erikka? The business is being sold?”
“Yes.” Erikka tucked her hair back behind one ear, then another, a completely unnecessary action because her hair was too short to get out in front of her ears at all. “Mrs. Kimper called me Saturday and said she’d just signed a deal with the biggest agency in Rochester. She was all happy about it. She . . .” Erikka’s voice broke. She swallowed a couple of times, in obvious emotional distress. Her boyfriend stayed where he was, anchoring the filing cabinets and picking at his fingernails. Finally, Erikka recovered and went on. “Mrs. Kimper said she was making a mint and that she was sure I’d get a job with the new owners, that she’d put in a good word for me.”
Luke stared hard at her, then abruptly turned and left the room.
“Sorry about that,” Erikka said. “This is hard on him, too. He used to help Josh out sometimes, doing some of the chores that Josh never had time for.”
Chores that he never made time for, more like, Katie thought sourly. Because he’d always seemed to have plenty of time for golfing and to attend the Buffalo Bills home games, Amerks hockey, and Red Wings games while she toiled away back at the office.
That line of thinking reminded her of the ostensible reason why she was in her old workplace to begin with. She knew the answer, but sometimes it didn’t hurt to play dumb. “So all the people who have policies here will have them transferred to the new owner?”
“That’s right,” Erikka said, looking past Katie to the hall where Luke had gone. She knew the hall led to a storage room, Josh’s office, and a restroom, so Katie couldn’t figure out what he was doing back there unless it was taking a nap on the couch in Josh’s office—or taking a leak.
“I’ve heard,” Katie said, “that Josh had been buying up some smaller agencies around the area.”
“What?” Erikka snapped her gaze back to Katie. “If he was doing that, he didn’t tell me about it.”
“Really?” Katie tried to remember exactly what Don and Nick had said. “Then do you know if he’d been spending a lot of time in Parma? That was one of the towns that I heard mentioned where Josh was buying an agency.”
But Erikka was shaking her head. “Sorry, but I really don’t know.”
“How about
Greece?” Katie asked. “No? Then how about Henrietta?”
Erikka was still shaking her head. “Parma? He was buying an agency there?”
“That’s what I heard,” Katie said.
“Hmm.” Erikka pursed her lips. “The only thing that rings a bell about Parma is that it was one of the boat insurance companies Josh referred clients to.”
“Boat insurance?” Katie echoed. “He referred that out? That wasn’t the way we did it when I was here.”
Erikka shrugged. “He had me give referrals for boat insurance ever since I started, about nine months ago.”
“Why?”
“He told me that marine insurance had turned into a sinkhole and he didn’t want me to write up any policies that had anything to do with boats. He gave me a list of three companies to send people to.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Fairport Insurance, McKinlay Insurance, and Parma Insurance. So if he was going to Parma, maybe it was because he was working with them on the marine insurance.”
Katie didn’t understand. She’d never heard of any of those insurance agencies. New ones popped up every so often, but three in the last year? All in the outlying suburbs? It didn’t make sense. “I don’t understand,” she said. “The entire time I worked here, Josh loved to have me write up boat insurance policies.”
“Josh said . . .” Erikka sniffed, pinched her nose, swallowed, and started again. “Josh said there’s been a big change in how boat insurance, marine insurance, was underwritten, and new policies were guaranteed to lose money.”
It still didn’t make sense to Katie. No type of insurance policy was guaranteed to lose money, not across the board. That’s why people had insurance, to spread the risk so that no one lost big, not even the insurance companies. Josh should have had Erikka writing up as many policies as possible to reduce the risk even further, not referring any possibility of new ones.
“I still don’t understand,” Katie said. “More policies means less risk to the agency. Why on earth would Josh want to—?”
Crash!
Katie whirled around at the racket that had come from what she knew was the storeroom.
“Luke!” Erikka cried, rushing past Katie on the way to her boyfriend. “Are you okay?”
Katie instinctively hurried after Erikka, ready to offer assistance if it was needed. A few steps later, they were both in the storeroom, gaping at the mess. The room had been full of freestanding shelving occupied with boxes and boxes of old client files. Now, all the shelves had been tipped over like a row of dominos. Split boxes and the emancipated trove of papers were scattered everywhere. And there, on the floor, was Luke, sprawled facedown on the hard concrete.
“Oh!” Erikka took in a sharp, audible breath and went down on her hands and knees. “Luke! Talk to me!” she exclaimed as she pawed through the mess to get to him.
“Why?” he asked in a low growling tone. “So you can tell me how stupid I was?”
Katie looked at the horrendous mess, down at Luke, then back at the mess. Someone probably should tell him that he’d been stupid, but she doubted Erikka would, and it wasn’t her place.
“Are you okay?” Erikka reached out, but Luke struggled to sit up and pushed her hands away.
“I’m fine. Quit mothering me. All I did was trip on something.” He rolled to his knees and stood. “I fell into that first shelf, and it was all over.”
Erikka thrashed around, trying to get up, and Katie stepped over to hold out a hand since clearly Luke wasn’t going to help. She pulled the poor woman to her feet.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Erikka asked. Luke didn’t bother to reply, and she looked over what had formerly been a tidy storage room. She sighed. “Looks like we have a lot more work to do than we did a few minutes ago. I’m glad Mrs. Kimper let me hire you to help me box things up for the new owners, Luke.”
Katie was glad to hear that Luke had a reason for being in the agency, but given the frozen look he sent his girlfriend, Katie wasn’t sure he was going to be much help during the cleanup.
“I’d better leave you to it,” Katie said, but all she received was a distracted return farewell from Erikka and no response at all from Luke. She left the building and headed back to the parking lot and her car. But all the way back to McKinlay Mill, Katie mulled over what she’d been told, because no matter how she looked at it, nothing made sense to her.
When Katie got back to Artisans Alley, she went straight to her office and fired up the computer, but she couldn’t decide what task needed doing the most. She flitted from one thing to another, and when half an hour had passed without her getting anything of any substance done, she pushed herself back from the desk and got up. Maybe a cup of coffee would help her focus.
She was in the act of stirring creamer into her coffee when Duncan McAllister walked into the vendors’ lounge, startling her. After all, although the other businesses in the building were open, Artisans Alley was closed on Mondays. Had she left the front door unlocked? “Good morning,” she said.
“And a fine morning it is,” he replied cheerfully.
Katie eyed him. While she wasn’t a night person by any means, she’d never been much of a morning person, either. Afternoons were her best time, but there didn’t seem to be a personality classification for that.
“I guess it is nice,” she said.
“Autumn is my favorite time of year.” Duncan took the coffeepot off the burner and poured the dark stuff into the mug he’d brought along. “Not hot, not cold, the leaves are falling, harvest time is coming. All is right with the world.” He beamed at her, and his expression was so contagious that she found herself grinning right back.
“Harvest time?” she echoed. “Are you a farmer?” Katie realized that she didn’t know anything about her newest vendor, aside from the exquisite bird sculptures he made. How those big hands could fashion such small and intricate details, she had no idea, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know, since it would take away some of the mystique of his efforts.
“In a way.” Duncan put the pot back on the burner with a bit of a thunk.
Katie waited, but he didn’t say anything else, so she asked, “In what way?”
He sipped from his plain white mug, then said, “I was a teacher.”
“Oh? What did you teach?”
Duncan smiled. “Kids.”
“Were you a teacher around here?” she asked.
A shadow crossed his face briefly. “No. Upstate. In the Adirondacks.”
She felt a wall close off that subject, so she just said, “Pretty up there.”
“If you like trees.”
Katie smiled, but he didn’t respond in kind. “Trees are nice enough,” she said, a little flustered, “but I prefer the water. I wouldn’t like to ever live very far from one of the Great Lakes, or maybe an ocean.” She took a sip from her own mug, then said casually, “I think someone told me you own a boat. Is that true?”
He gave her a hard look. “Yes,” he said shortly. “A wooden one.”
“That’s nice.” She smiled, nodding. “I have a friend who owns a sailboat that he keeps at Thompson’s Landing. We went out quite a few times over the summer. He took it out of the water last week, though. Do you keep your boat at a marina, or do you trailer?”
Duncan didn’t say anything, so she kept on going.
“It’s nice to be able to take a boat anywhere you want to go boating,” she said, “but that’s so much extra time and hassle. It’s a lot easier just to have a boat in a slip, walk right up to it, and go out for a ride on the water.”
“Life isn’t about the easy way out.”
“No, it isn’t. But it shouldn’t always have to be hard, either.” She put on an even wider smile. “So, do you trailer your boat or do you have a slip in a marina?” she repeated.
Duncan emptied his coffee mug into the sink and t
urned on the water to rinse it out. When he was done, he turned and said, “Ms. Bonner—”
“Please, call me Katie.”
He gave a sharp nod. “Katie, I’m sure you’re just being the polite and friendly person that folks say you are, but I’m the kind of person who keeps myself to myself. I’m just here to tend to my booth and meet with a few potential customers. I’m not here to make new pals. Nothing personal, but I’d really rather not answer any of your questions.”
“I just—”
“Have a good day,” he said and walked off.
“You, too. And please lock the front door when you leave!” she called after him, none too happy.
“He left me standing there with my mouth hanging open,” Katie said to Andy that night. She’d tried not to let the incident annoy her, but every time she thought about it, her temper started rising once again. Though as far as she knew no one else had heard the exchange, going over it in her head made her cheeks hot with embarrassment.
Andy poured dressing on the salad she’d made, studied the effect, then added another generous dollop. “Did any flies get in?” he asked.
“Very funny,” she groused. “Don’t you think it’s weird that someone wouldn’t answer some basic questions? It’s not as if we’re complete strangers. He’d been in a number of times this summer, talking to Rose and Edie and some of the other vendors before he approached me about renting a booth.”
“That was all business, though, right?” Andy asked, adding more cheese to his salad.
When he was done with the bowl of Parmesan, Katie reached out for it but pulled back. She hadn’t had any exercise that day, other than walking across Artisans Alley, which didn’t count for much. Giving up the extra cheese on her salad should make up for at least part of that lack.
“Yes,” she said, thinking about Andy’s question. “I suppose every conversation I’ve had with Duncan—Mr. McAllister, I mean—had to do with him being a vendor, but what does that have to do with anything? Business conversations are how you start, then you move into personal conversations. That’s how relationships are built.”
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