by Laurie Cass
I looked down at Eddie, waiting for a response. “Right. First is Land Aprelle. It appears that Land and Rowan had a siblinglike relationship and yelled at each other on a regular basis with no lasting effects.”
In addition, I’d discovered nothing that indicated their final argument had been any different, and Land’s oddly furtive behavior was a result of his reluctance to tell the world that he wanted to be a wood sculpture artist. Ergo, there was absolutely no reason for him to kill Rowan.
“Second,” I said. “Sunny Scoles was denied a loan that would have helped her sister, but her family is looking for other ways to raise the money, so why would she kill Rowan? Besides, Sunny had an alibi.”
“Mrr,” Eddie said sleepily.
“Right. That leaves three suspects. Well, four if you count Neil.” I thought a minute. “No, let’s cross Bax Tousely off the list. Now that we know the hardware store thing was work related, the only real reason we have to suspect him is that he was seen driving past the Bennethums’ house over Christmas break.”
I stopped. Could it be that I wanted to cross him off just because he volunteered at Lakeview? That I couldn’t believe a guy who found homes for stray cats could be a killer? That I felt sorry for him because he’d looked so sad?
Eddie purred, making my insides vibrate.
“Not sure your opinion should count on that one,” I said. “I’ll leave him on the list. That gives us four possibles. Going from the least likely to the most, there’s Bax, who might have killed Rowan because he was trying to kill Anya because he thought she was the one who got engaged and he was crazy with jealousy and . . . ow!”
Eddie had extended his claws and managed to drive them through the layers of flannel, goose down, and more flannel all the way to my very tender skin.
“Okay, okay, you’re right. That’s so far-fetched it’s beyond the realm of possibility. Way beyond,” I hastened to add as I saw the paw begin to flex again. “Three suspects, again going up from the bottom. Suspect number three is Neil Bennethum. He certainly resented the relationship between Land and Rowan and could have dreamed up an affair between them, killing Rowan because he was jealous. Plus there’s the fact that he seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.”
The disappearance alone didn’t look good, and it made me think less of the man. His children needed him. Sure, they were nearly college graduates, but they’d lost their mother in a horrible way and Neil’s absence was making everything worse.
I shook my head and moved on. “Suspect number two . . . you know, I don’t know who to put at the top of the list. Stewart Funston, as much as I like him, seems to penalize people heavily for what he considers mistakes. That vandalism in the high school principal’s office, and now divorcing his wife for hiding money? Who knows what happened in the years between?” Sighing, I said, “Of course, I have no earthly clue what Rowan could have done to Stewart that might have made him want to kill her.”
Eddie grunted and got up, using my solar plexus as a base for his efforts.
“Go ahead, use me for leverage anytime you’d like. Tied for suspect number one is Hugh Novak.” I saw again those crossed arms and that intimidating stare. “He kind of scared me,” I said quietly. “He’s a big guy and I felt really small with him in the room. Not that he was mad at me, but if he was . . .”
My voice trailed off. Though I owned a concealed pistol license, I’d never felt the need to actually buy a weapon and carry it. But if I got on the bad side of somebody like Hugh Novak, maybe it was time to reexamine that attitude. Maybe it was—
Something bounced onto the floor, rolled across the carpet, and came to a rest under the bed.
I glanced around and saw that Eddie had jumped onto my dresser and was now looking in the direction of whatever it was he’d sent to the floor. When he realized I was looking at him, he sat up straight.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
In response, his right front paw reached out in a hook and sent another something to the floor.
“Seriously?” I flung the covers back. “Stop whatever that is and . . . oh, brother.”
Due to a convenience-store snack on the way to the meeting, I’d ended up with coins in my pants pocket instead of in my car, where I usually put my loose change. I’d set it on the dresser, intending to move it to the car in the morning.
“Not a cat toy,” I said, moving Eddie back to the bed. I picked up the dime and the penny he’d pushed to the floor, and tossed all the change into my sock drawer. “None of it is a cat toy, understand?”
“Mrr!”
I crawled back into bed and, with my cat perched on my hip staring down at me like a furry bird of prey, drifted into a sleep that was punctuated by dreams of Collier, at the altar with his bride, staring at the gaping dark space where his parents should have been.
Chapter 17
The next day, Rafe and I met for lunch again, but this time it was brown bags in his office.
“It still surprises me sometimes,” I said, removing the cover from my nifty new sandwich container. My mom, who was constantly trying to get me to cook more and eat out less, had given me a nice set of storage doohickeys for Christmas. I’d used this one and a cube-shaped version, which I’d recently discovered was perfect for leftover restaurant oatmeal. The other eight containers were awaiting their opportunities for a useful life.
“What does?” Rafe was sitting in his desk chair with his feet propped on an open lower drawer. He asked the question around a mouthful of baloney sandwich and followed it with a chaser of bottled water. At some point we needed to have a chat about table manners, but since he had a meeting with the president of the school board in fifteen minutes, I decided to give him a pass. For now.
“That you’re a middle school principal.”
“Surprises a lot of people,” he said. “Me, my parents, my grandparents, my aunt and uncles, my cousins, all of my friends, and every teacher I ever had, including Sunday school.”
“So pretty much everyone you’ve ever met.”
“Well, there was this one girl,” he said meditatively. “She told me I had a lot of potential, but if I didn’t shape up, I was going to end up a complete loser and die a lonely and bitter old man.”
A surge of jealousy leapt into my throat. I batted it down and, as casually as I could, asked, “Oh? Anyone I know?”
He grinned. “She runs this restaurant in town. You might know it. Three Seasons?”
I stared at him, then started laughing. “Seriously? Kristen said that? When?”
“First summer I met you.”
Still laughing, I said, “When I was, what, twelve?” Kristen and Rafe were a year older than I was, but the three of us had formed a summertime trio throughout our adolescence. Our bond faded during college and the first postcollege years, but when I moved to Chilson full time about the same time Kristen chucked her fancy science job with a large pharmaceutical company, we’d slid back into the comfortable old ways.
“You were short then, too.” He bit into his sandwich.
“Some people see consistency as a virtue.”
Rafe shrugged. “And some people play with rattlesnakes.”
The link between consistency and rattlesnakes was so thin as to be nonexistent, but when I’d started this conversation, I’d wanted to say something specific, so I pulled away from poking holes in his analogy. “Like I said, it sometimes surprises me that you’re a middle school principal, and—”
He made a rolling motion with his sandwich. “Move on.”
“Trying,” I said. “But what I want to say is I’m not surprised you’re a good one.”
His sandwich stopped mid-roll. “You’re . . . what?”
“I always knew that once you’d decided on what you wanted to do with your life, you’d be successful at doing it.” Awkward sentence, which only proved somethin
g I’d known for years, that I should rehearse anything important I ever wanted to say to anyone, ever.
Plunging on, I said, “It’s just that you have all these great qualities—some incredibly annoying ones, too, so quit smiling—and I’m not at all surprised that the teachers, kids, and parents think you’re the best principal this school has ever had.”
He shoved a dangling piece of lettuce back into his sandwich. “That’s because people have short memories.”
It wasn’t. In the last few months more than one teacher who’d reached early retirement age had stopped me on the street to tell me they were planning on continuing to teach for another few years, and it was all due to Rafe Niswander. “Who would have thunk it?” Mr. Conant had said wryly. “The kid who drove me batty in seventh grade is now my boss, and I can’t imagine having a better one.”
“Speaking of short memories,” Rafe said.
He shoved the last of his sandwich in his mouth, then, thankfully, chewed and swallowed. That last bite had been huge, and though I’d been trained in emergency first aid, I’d never had to perform the Heimlich maneuver in a real-life situation.
“Speaking of short memories,” I prompted, because he’d taken his feet off the drawer and was reaching for his computer mouse.
“Yeah. That.” He clicked away. “There it is. Take a look.”
I wolfed down the last of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, came around, and looked at the screen. It was filled with a busy spreadsheet. “Is that your suspect list?”
“Columns are the suspect names, rows are the different bits of clues, evidence, and whatever other information we think might be useful.” He tapped the screen. “You know, this might be better in a database than a spreadsheet. What do you think?”
What I thought was that he would have been better off spending his time finishing the drywall in the upstairs bathroom, but I kissed the back of his head. “This is great. Can you e-mail it to me?”
“Yes, I could, but no I won’t, because I’m going to put it into Google Docs. That way we can both work on it at the same time, see? I’ll e-mail you the link.”
Um. “Sounds . . . great.” I peered at the screen and saw that he’d added rows titled “Alibi,” “Background,” “Motive,” “Movements,” and “Previous Incidents.”
“This could be really useful,” I said, starting to warm to the idea. “Especially the ‘Background’ and ‘Previous Incidents.’ Those are things I have to find out, but for people like you who grew up around here the information is practically imprinted into your DNA.”
He sat back, putting his hands behind his head. “And here you thought this was a waste of time.”
“I didn’t—” Well, I had, actually, so I took a deep breath and said the magic words. “You were right and I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
He smacked a kiss on the side of my face. “And now I’m afraid I have to kick you out. My meeting starts in three minutes and this guy is always on time.”
We exchanged a long kiss that made me want to lock his office door for an hour, but we eventually separated and I headed out. A quiet “Hey” made me stop and turn around. Rafe was fiddling with his mouse. “Thanks,” he said, not looking up. “For what you said. About not being surprised that I’m successful.”
Even though the clouds outside were thick and unyielding, sunshine suddenly filled me. “You’re welcome,” I said softly, and left him to his meeting.
* * *
• • •
Julia zipped Grant Jelen’s last book through the scanner. “And there you go,” she said, piling The Historian onto a teetering stack. “Sure you have enough to last until next time?”
Grant, gray-haired but tall and straight, started moving his books from her desktop to the empty backpack he’d brought in. “No,” he said. “But I can borrow e-books if I have to. Prefer print, though.”
“Ah.” Julia glanced at me, and her blank face was a clear request for help. Her gift with patrons was more in the line of jollying along the slightly cranky ones; I usually took over when patrons were reluctant to communicate at all.
This was Grant’s second trip to the bookmobile. We knew two things about him—that his name had never been in the library’s computer, and that his driver’s license, which he’d used to get a library card five weeks ago, had a downstate address.
Smiling, I said, “Looks like you’re making up for lost time. Are you a new retiree?”
“End of December.” He eyed the contents of his backpack, eyed the books still remaining on the counter, and reached into the backpack to rearrange its contents. “Spent thirty-five years working my hind end off, trying to make it to the top of the freaking corporate ladder, and all I ever got was vice president.” He made a rude noise. “Worked so hard my wife divorced me and my kids hardly talk to me except to ask for money.”
A little wildly, I looked at Julia. Now that he’d started talking, how did I get him to stop? We didn’t need this much personal information. Sure, what happened on the bookmobile stayed on the bookmobile, but sometimes when people told you too much, they regretted it afterward.
Julia leaned forward. “Sounds like you didn’t get what you deserve.”
“True story.” He shoved the last book into his pack and, with some effort, zipped it shut, book corners bulging through the nylon. “All I want to do now is read and work on my cars.”
The reading I approved of wholeheartedly; it was how I’d like to spend a large share of my own far-off retirement. The cars, however . . .
I knew better than to ask what kind of cars he owned; we didn’t have that kind of time left at the stop. So I just blurted out the question: “Are there any junkyards close by?” It was a non sequitur to end all non sequiturs, and I braced myself for raised eyebrows and a surprised look that a little girl would be interested in something like that.
“Sure,” he said. “Buster’s. On Lolly Road, a few miles out of Peebles. Model Ts to Hummers and everything in between. Buster’s place is half the reason I moved here.” Grant hefted his backpack onto his shoulders, nodded, and headed out.
“Buster’s,” I said to myself.
Julia flipped the laptop shut. “You’re not still looking for that headlight, are you?”
“And what if I am?” I asked, helping her stretch the bungee cord around the rolling chair, which would wander all over the bookmobile if we forgot to strap it in place.
“Because if you were still looking,” Julia said, “I’d advise you to remember the reactions of the other junkyard owners you’ve talked to lately.”
I winced. More than one junkyard owner had laughed in my face when I’d asked the question. “You’re kidding, right?” the most memorable had asked as he’d puffed a large cigar.
I’d edged out of the way of the smoke. “No, I’m very serious. It’s important.”
He’d puffed out another smoke signal. “I keep records as good as anyone, but tracking down to the headlight level isn’t how I want to spend my time.”
Looking around the small, poorly lit office, I’d wondered how he whiled away his hours. “Do you walk around the yard a lot? To keep thieves away, I mean?”
He’d hacked out a laugh. “You’re from downstate, aren’t you?”
Soon after, I’d fled, and it had taken me two days to gather up the courage to step into another junkyard. That owner didn’t smoke, but the end result had been the same.
Now, I pulled out my cell phone and opened a mapping application to find Buster’s. “This will work just fine,” I said, nodding.
Julia rolled her eyes dramatically and said, “Let me guess. Since I wanted to get dropped off in Peebles, you driving to Lolly Road is the handiest thing ever.”
“Mrr,” said Eddie, who’d been perched on the driver’s seat headrest. “Mrr!”
“Exactly.” I beamed at them both. “Someti
mes things just work out.”
* * *
• • •
The weather, however, wasn’t cooperating with my new plan. What had been a mild thaw—two degrees above freezing for almost eight hours—was quickly dropping to a more seasonable temperature. In general, this was fine with me, but any of the side roads that hadn’t been scraped free of snow (and that was most of them) were now developing the kind of conditions that made people move away from northern Michigan.
“Not us, though,” I said to Eddie, soon after I’d left Julia at the out-of-the-way restaurant where she was meeting her husband for dinner. “We’re brave and intrepid.”
“Mrr!”
“Exactly. We’re ready for anything”—I paused to navigate the bookmobile through a nasty stretch of rapidly freezing slush—“for anything Mother Nature dishes out.”
The daylight, which had never been all that bright in the first place, was inching toward dusk by the time I saw the sign for the junkyard. BUSTER’S, just like Grant had said. The sign was simple—black paint on a piece of framed plywood—but it did the job well enough, and I was pleased to see that Buster’s parking lot was not only big enough for the bookmobile, but also plowed.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I told Eddie. He eyed me, but didn’t say anything. “Thanks for the encouragement,” I said. “It’s just what I needed.”
“Mrr.”
As the door of the junkyard’s office closed behind me, I blinked in surprise. “Wow,” I said. “This isn’t . . .” I trailed off, pretty sure I was about to say something offensive.
The man behind the desk, who was about my age and wearing a sleek zipped black sweater with a Buster’s logo, looked up. “Let me guess. You expected dark paneling, a clutter of car parts and paper, calendars with scantily clad women sitting on vehicle hoods, and cigarette smoke sticking to everything.”
He was right, I had expected that. These office walls, however, were painted a warm blue gray and decorated with huge framed photos of antique cars on the streets of what could have been Chilson. His desk was piled with a single stack of papers, and the only car parts to be seen were in a glass display case.