“You were his Girl Friday, his Right-Hand Gal?” Jodie said.
“Those sound pretty sexist to me, but I suppose in a way they’re accurate,” Brenda said. “I was also the one who kept a close eye on things so I could report to him and we could catch problems before they became too big. He listened to my ideas, and though he always improved upon them, the core of some of the things the company did began with me.”
Jodie nodded. She was the least sexist woman I knew and had, in fact, set me straight a time or two. She’d just been trying to either get a reaction out of Brenda or see just how she handled the question.
“Where did he find the Hoovens?” I said after they spent more than a long moment staring at each other.
“Oh, those! They were found in the basement of a building he bought at auction. He tried to research them, maybe find their owners or relatives of the owners, but to no avail. In fact, it was my idea to give them to you, not his,” Brenda said to me.
“Really?”
“Yes. It didn’t take much to convince him, though, and when he got the invitation to the meeting, he thought the timing was meant to be.”
“So the meeting wasn’t his idea?” Jodie said as she put down a rib and wiped her fingers on a napkin.
“No, what made you think that?”
“I guess Dillon did, but not in so many words,” Jodie said. “So, Lloyd got a real invitation?”
“Yes,” Brenda said. She fell into thought. “Well, he said he was invited. Maybe I’m guessing on the formal invitation part.” She thought again. “But why do I think there was a real invitation?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t be sure. I’ll try to remember and I’ll have some people check his office. Have you gone through the things in his hotel room?”
“We have. No invite. In fact, no mention of the meeting on his laptop calendar or anything,” Jodie said.
“He didn’t give me access to his calendar, so I’m not sure what to tell you about that. I do know he kept most things in his head. He liked memorizing events, times, addresses,” Brenda said.
“Any mention from him at all regarding where the invitation, formal or not, came from, or who?” Jodie said.
“No, but . . . hang on. I remember the day he told me about being invited and I spotted an open envelope in the trash. For whatever reason I spotted the Star City postmark on it and maybe I just assumed it had contained an invitation. Lloyd told me that he and three others were invited to some meetings, but he didn’t mention the other names, and I didn’t ask. I wouldn’t have known the people anyway, unless Clare had been involved, and he would have mentioned that first thing.”
“No idea who the other three are?”
“No. None.”
I wondered if she was being truthful. She seemed to be, but even Dillon had known about Donte, though he said he’d only heard Lloyd mutter the name accidentally. I’d told Jodie what Sarah had said about Howard. It was interesting to watch Jodie play dumb to get the answers. It didn’t seem like a difficult technique, but it was definitely fascinating. One more name and she’d have the entire group.
“What was so compelling to convince Lloyd to come back to Star City for meetings with three people he went to high school with? Three people he probably didn’t get along with, because he was very much a loner, and I don’t think he really had any friends beyond Clare back in junior high,” Jodie said.
“I asked him that.” She fell silent and into thought again. She wiped her fingers and then put the napkin on the table next to her plate. “Despite his brilliance and kindness, Lloyd had a major fault. His ego. He loved his success, and I was under the impression that he was ready to rub in that success with some people who hadn’t been so kind to him in high school. I tried not to let it bother me, his ego, but it did sometimes. I think he had the whole scene planned out in his head. He’d make a grand return to his hometown. Everyone would envy him, and you”—she looked at me—“would fall in love with him.”
“That wasn’t going to happen,” Jodie said. “Did he know that Clare wouldn’t be interested in him or was he off his rocker? That’s a real question, Brenda. Was Lloyd nutty weird or brilliant weird, or just weird weird?”
“Brilliant weird. I think he knew what was real and what was fantasy, but he was probably pretty close to buying into that fantasy world.”
Jodie nodded. “I need that invitation, or the names that were on it if there was one. Can you help with that?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have someone search his office. I’ll try to remember if there was more I saw or heard that day, but it wasn’t an important conversation. There were bigger things, business things on our plates back then.”
“Anyone you can think of who he might have mentioned other than Clare over the years, someone from here he either liked or didn’t like, someone who didn’t like him maybe?”
“He never spoke with fondness about Clare’s boyfriend,” she said with an embarrassed smile. “Which is another way of saying he had a few bad things to say about him.”
“Seth?” I said.
“Yes, but some other guy too . . . Creighton. Sound right?” Brenda said.
“Oh yeah, that sounds about right,” Jodie answered.
“It wasn’t a big thing,” Brenda said. “Please understand that Clare and her boyfriends, whoever they were, didn’t come up in conversation all that much. I’m just trying to remember things, and those things are bigger in my mind right now.”
It was like focusing in on a color or a number and you see it everywhere. Made sense. But I wondered if Jodie was thinking the same thing I was—had Creighton seen or talked to Lloyd recently? She’d questioned Seth, but not Creighton, at least not in front of me.
I was sure we’d . . . I mean she’d find out.
The rest of the dinner was filled with silent and small-talk moments. I didn’t know this woman who looked like me, and when we didn’t have specific things to discuss, it was weird. The conclusion I came to was that Brenda was all about her job. She had little to no social life, but that might just have been what she wanted us to think because she probably thought dinner with the twin she’d never met before was just as weird as I did. Jodie never did much small talk. She’d had her questions answered and fell into mostly silence as she worked through the new information she’d learned.
She stayed silent as she drove up the hill to Little Blue and finally spoke after I got out of the Bronco. She rolled down the passenger window. “I have an idea. . . . Well, I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said quickly before she turned the truck around and retreated down the hill.
I watched and smiled at the taillights. I always liked it when she had ideas for tomorrow that I got to be a part of.
8
“Clare, please tell me more about the disembodied foot. I mean, the mere use of the word ‘disembodied’ makes the entire set of events interesting to me. Chester only had the highlights. Your best friend is an officer of the law. I’m sure you know more.” Nathan Grimes wore his scarf and cap as he leaned on the corner of one of the workshop tables. His nose was still red, making me think he’d just come in from the cold. “You must share.”
“Good morning, Nathan,” I said. “You here by yourself?”
“I am. Momentarily at least. Your charming grandfather said he’d be back later and Adal had to run to the post office. He said it’s just around the back but that he had to go out the front to get there. He’ll return soon too. I expect my new type to arrive today; the sellers overnighted it, and even though it’s early I didn’t want to chance missing the delivery.”
“Where’s the type coming from?”
“A collector in Boston. He and I spoke on the phone for about half an hour, and I feel I paid him well. I hope it’s in as good a shape as he claimed it to be. Marion had him send us some pictures that Chester and Adal inspected with critical e
yes. They seemed satisfied. It’s not Bridgnorth, but it’s similar. It’s old and expensive. I think the best part is that no one, including the owner, knows the name of the font. It’s a mystery.” He held out a picture for me to look at.
“It could be Bridgnorth . . . no, the C’s and E’s are missing the middle parts.”
“I know.” Nathan smiled.
“Marion did good work.”
“She did.”
Even though I wouldn’t be the one to use the type, there was always something exciting about getting a new box in. Reflexively, I looked out toward the front of the store, but no one was headed this way with a delivery.
“I’m so excited I could barely sleep. Oh!” He stood and stepped back from the desk, waving his hand toward its top. “I brought my Splendid.”
“Ooh,” I said as I stepped around.
The snap-on case was off the typewriter, so I could immediately appreciate its full beauty.
“Here,” Nathan said as he grabbed a piece of the green paper from the scrap stack. “Give it a try.”
I typed a line or two from Hamlet. The keys had the perfect give and snap.
“This is comfortable,” I said.
“It’s perfection. I have it tuned up by a guy back home. I take it to him once a month for a general once-over. If I lived close by Star City, of course I’d bring it here.”
“It’s a piece of art,” I said as I ran my finger over its rounded edges and good-sized keys. As I got to the top, I said, “Oh, a slightly loose paper finger. Want me to tighten it up?”
“Let me see.” Nathan moved behind me as I gently jiggled the metal paper finger, one of the two parts that kept the paper against the front of the platen.
“It’s not bad. Just a little,” I said.
“Yes, please. Thanks!”
“It’s an easy fix.” I reached behind me, grabbed a small screwdriver, and made the quick and easy repair in seconds. “Good as new. Really, almost literally. You take very good care of your typewriter.”
“Thank you. Does that earn me any disembodied foot points? Tell me what you know, and I admit fully that I will probably use the details in a book. I will change names to protect the innocent, though I’ve found that no one is truly innocent.”
“I’m not sure I can tell you much, except that Marion came upon the gentleman who found it on the slopes and I went to school with the gentleman who lost the foot and whose body was also found later. It was murder.”
Nathan blinked at me. “How spectacular. Except for the poor victim, of course. Was the cutting off of the foot the cause of death?”
“I’d better not say more. Details will come out soon, I’m sure.”
“So tragic. Do you know of any clues?”
“No.” I didn’t think the things I knew were really clues anyway.
“You’re not sure how much you are at liberty to say. I understand that.”
I laughed. “Not only am I not at liberty. I’m not qualified. Whatever I know is only because I’ve wormed my way into Jodie’s business or overheard something because I was in close proximity to her. Plus, Marion called me when she found the man who’d found the boot.”
“I see.”
“Uh, Nathan, Marion doesn’t know anything either.”
“I understand.”
But I could see the disappointment in his eyes.
Baskerville hadn’t made an appearance until that moment. He meowed from a spot at the bottom of the stairs that led up to Chester’s apartment.
“Good morning, Baskerville,” Nathan said. “Come on over.”
“He’s not . . .” I was going to say that the cat wasn’t friendly and would probably ignore the author, but I would have been wrong. Baskerville trotted to Nathan and rubbed his head on Nathan’s ankle. “That’s a first, Nathan.”
“I have a way,” Nathan said as he bent over and scratched behind the cat’s ears.
“I’d say.” I smiled. “Tell me more about your book of poetry. I know about the love poems, but do you have any gruesome and scary ones?”
Nathan laughed. “No, they’re love poems only. I tried writing horror poems, but I just can’t. I do, however, love writing love poems, and I’ve got a knack for it, if I do say so myself.”
“That’s going to surprise your readers.”
“Something tells me that most of my regular readers won’t be interested. I understand that. I like love poems and I liked the idea of creating my own book. You can see I’m not in this one for money.”
“I’ve heard that no writer should write for money,” I said.
“True, that, my dear, but then, every once in a blue moon, one of us strikes gold and it all quickly becomes about the money, or purposefully not about the money, like this book of poetry is for me.”
“I see. You’re one who struck gold?”
“I did. Big gold,” he said, but with no tone of arrogance. “It doesn’t happen often, but it happened to me. I’m glad about it now, but I went through some terrible growing pains. Didn’t know what to do with myself for quite some time. I’ve figured it out. I used to always think it so irritating when someone said sudden success and money could take some big adjustment, thinking that it was one adjustment I wanted to try. Well, it is worth it, don’t misunderstand, but it’s . . . discombobulating too.”
His honesty was refreshing.
“Interesting,” I said. I didn’t admit that I’d never had big money ambitions, that working in The Rescued Word was exactly what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be. I never wanted to leave Star City, unless it was for a quick ride down to Salt Lake City.
Adal pushed through the door and into the workshop. He muttered something in German I suspected was a string of curse words.
“Busy at the post office?” I said.
“Yes,” he said after taking a calming breath. “They need more employees, or faster ones maybe.”
He was back to English, but it was sprinkled with a light German accent.
“It’s been an issue for a number of years,” I said. For whatever reason the Star City Post Office is always training new employees. No one seemed to stick around for long. Maybe the workload had grown to be too much as the town had expanded and no other post office had been added to assist the population. Jodie thought it was because the building was so small that the workers became claustrophobic quickly and had to get out of there, so they found other jobs.
“I’m sorry.” Adal shook his head and then smiled. “I was in a hurry. I need to slow down.”
There was more, I could tell. “Adal? What happened?”
Adal smiled weakly as his eyes moved from Nathan to me and back to Nathan again.
“Would you like some privacy?” Nathan said as he stood.
Adal put his hand up. “No, I’m sorry. It was nothing. I ran into someone at the post office, and I was left unsettled. I apologize.” He took another deep breath and let it out.
Nathan and I looked at each other, and it became clear that he didn’t want to leave if he wasn’t asked to.
“Adal?” I said. “What happened?”
“I saw Jodie’s brother, Creighton,” Adal said.
It took me approximately two seconds to understand what must have happened. Creighton was less than friendly to Adal, maybe even downright rude.
“What’d he say?” I said.
“He just reminded me that I’m here temporarily and Jodie lives here, and that it would be a good idea to put an end to our friendship before it went too far.”
“Ah,” Nathan said. “You and the lovely police woman are dating?”
I looked at Adal. This was the first he’d said anything around me regarding any sort of relationship with Jodie. I didn’t want to interject something that might cause him to remember he was keeping mum.
“W
e are close friends,” Adal said. “I’m sorry if I’m causing any strife with her family, though.”
“Oh, dear man,” Nathan said. “We need to read some of my poems together. Do not let anyone get in the way of something that is made of real love. No one!”
I wanted to add, Especially Creighton!, but that would have been immature to the point that I would have had to apologize. Instead I said, “Creighton’s a bunch of hot air, Adal. If Jodie knew her brother said something to you, she’d set him straight.”
“Oh, please don’t tell her,” Adal said. “I didn’t back down, but I should have told him more than just to mind his own business.”
“Next time, slug him in the jaw,” Nathan said.
“He’s a cop; he carries a gun,” I said.
“Oh. Well, say something dreadful to him in German, then,” Nathan said.
We all laughed.
“I can do that,” Adal said.
“Creighton sometimes likes to be tough just because he can, Adal. Don’t let him bother you too much,” I added. “Jodie doesn’t.”
Adal nodded, but the blush that spread on his cheeks told me he was either embarrassed or angry. He’d work it out.
“Okay, well, let’s get to work,” I said.
But, as seemed to be the case lately, my phone buzzed with someone who was sure to cause another delay.
9
“Sorry. Go ahead and get started without me. Excuse me,” I said.
I moved to the still-empty front part of the shop to answer Jodie’s call. Baskerville stayed close on my heels.
“What’s up?” I said.
“Wanna come with me to talk to Donte?”
“Of course,” I said, but I cringed. I knew Adal could take care of the store and Nathan, but I would be neglecting my real duties.
“Be out in front in three point five minutes,” she said.
“Will do.”
Fortunately, Chester reappeared at the two-point-five-minutes mark. I told him about Jodie’s invitation, and Adal and Nathan had come out front, overhearing my conversation with Chester. Nathan encouraged me to come back with details, and Adal walked me out to the Bronco.
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