by Laurie Cass
Zing!
A tiny toy car shot across the kitchen floor, caromed off a chair leg, and came to rest against my foot.
“I’m so glad,” I said to my cat, “you’ve finally found that Monopoly game piece. We’ve been looking for a year and a half.”
Eddie pounded across the floor, slid into a dive, and slammed into the table’s pedestal with a loud thump.
Wincing, I leaned over. “Are you okay? Because that sounded like it hurt.”
Zing!
The toy car skittered to the other side of the kitchen. Eddie scrambled to his feet and ran after it.
Rolling my eyes, I went back to my food. If Eddie wasn’t sound asleep, he was wide awake. There was no dozy middle ground. Were all cats like that? Or were—
I snapped my head around and stared at Eddie. Or more precisely, his new toy.
The car.
• • •
The jump my brain made had seemed reasonable when I’d explained it to Eddie, but the next morning, when I imagined an explanatory conversation with Detective Inwood, I wasn’t so sure.
“A toy car,” he’d say, his voice expressionless.
“No,” I’d say, already impatient with him. “That’s what made me think about it, is all.”
“Your cat is helping you with a murder investigation?” he’d ask.
If I managed to get through that without crawling under the table from embarrassment, I’d move on to the important part. “A while back, Dale Lacombe was responsible for a head-on collision. Have you looked into that accident?”
Inwood would click on his pen. “I’m not familiar with this. How long ago?”
“Twenty-three years.”
The pen would go back into his shirt pocket and I’d get a chillingly polite smile as I was ushered out of the interview room with an admonition to never again darken the door of the sheriff’s office.
“Well, maybe he wouldn’t tell me that,” I said to Eddie as I got dressed, post-shower. “But he’d want to.”
Eddie, curled up on my pillow, opened his eyes and picked up his head. “Mrr!” He closed his eyes and, a second and a half later, was snoring.
“No idea what that meant.” I patted his head and headed downstairs. “Thanks anyway, though.”
The kitchen was dark and empty, which meant that Aunt Frances had stayed at Otto’s overnight. I smiled, wondering if she was rethinking her decision to wait until spring to get married. Then I frowned, because I wondered what the gleam in her eye had meant after I’d encouraged her to sell the boardinghouse.
Putting that aside for the moment, I planned how I’d get solid information about Dale Lacombe’s car accident all those years ago. My most common sources for local history—Kristen and Rafe—weren’t even teenagers at the time and they wouldn’t remember much, if anything. Not to mention the fact that I didn’t really want to talk to Rafe right now. I’d woken up that morning from a dream that featured him as the romantic lead and I was sure my face would turn an embarrassing color of red if I stopped by. I could do it over the phone, but he had an uncanny knack for sensing my discomfort.
“All right, Minnie,” he’d say. “What’s your problem today?”
“Me?” I’d ask, trying to sound surprised. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
“Don’t give me that,” he’d say. “You’re a horrible liar. Tell me your problems and I’ll see if I can laugh at them hard enough to make them go away.”
No, talking to Rafe wouldn’t be a good idea, and Kristen was too preoccupied with the details of closing down the Three Seasons to be a good listener. I debated knocking on Otto’s front door to talk to my aunt, but shied away from the possibility of seeing him in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. Or worse, no slippers.
But there were other sources, especially for this particular kind of information.
Twenty minutes after I’d scarfed down a bowl of cold cereal and headed outside, I presented myself at the office of the local newspaper, just in time to see the editor unlock the front door and hold it open for me.
“Hey, Camille,” I said. “How are you this fine morning?”
Camille Pomeranz, a dark-skinned woman in her late forties, ran the newspaper office with a firm hand. She was a recent transplant, moved north after her large downstate paper slashed their staff by half.
Their loss and our gain, because the Chilson Gazette had gone from a lackluster publication little more than a gossip sheet to a news-gathering organization starting to win national awards. I knew Camille because I often sent her advertising for the library’s events, everything from author talks to book sales, and we’d struck up a solid acquaintanceship that could easily become a real friendship if given proper food and water.
Camille grimaced. “Fine morning, nothing. Have you seen the weather forecast?”
“Never,” I said. “Can’t change it, so why bother.”
“Wise woman.” Camille smiled. “Except don’t you find yourself dressed inappropriately for conditions every so often?”
I patted my backpack. “Travel umbrella, dry socks, and a fleece hat.”
She laughed. “The Boy Scouts have nothing on Minnie Hamilton. What can I do for you?”
“Archive every article from every issue of your newspaper into a searchable database. Please.”
Not missing a beat, Camille reached around and grabbed a small pad of paper and a pen from the nearby counter. “I’ll get right on that,” she said, scribbling. “What kind of time frame?”
“How about noon?”
“No problem,” she said, nodding and still scribbling.
Curious, I sidled up to look at the pad of paper and laughed when I saw that she’d sketched out a stick figure with curly hair and carrying a backpack. Above that Camille had written a single question: Has she lost her mind?!!!
She finished off with an arrow pointing to the curly hair. “I added the exclamation points when you said noon,” she said.
Camille often talked about the need for a database of the newspaper archives, but a lack of time, money, and personnel was going to keep it a dream for the foreseeable future. The only articles online were from 2009 forward, which was when the owner had made the leap into the twenty-first century. The library had the oldest newspapers, some of which were microfilmed, but the year that concerned me was housed here at the Gazette’s office.
“I’m looking for information about a car accident about twenty years ago,” I said. Twenty-three, to be exact.
“We might have an article on that, and we might not.” Camille made some finishing touches to her drawing, then tossed the pen and pad onto the counter and nodded for me to follow her. “Depends on what else was going on that week. Sometimes car accidents hit the front page, sometimes they don’t.”
She led me to the back of the office and up a creaky set of wooden stairs. A single light switch brought fluorescent illumination to the room, and I blinked at the number of shelves filled with boxes, books, newspapers, and dusty equipment that I didn’t recognize.
“Twenty years ago?” Camille asked, walking toward the back corner of the room. She switched direction slightly when I said twenty-three years and motioned me over to a stack of newspapers.
“Look all you like,” she said. “Use the table, take pictures, whatever. But if you rip a single page, the ghost of Katharine Graham will haunt you the rest of your life.”
“Scout’s honor,” I said, performing the salute.
“Good enough.” Camille gave me a steady look. “Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”
“If it’s a real story, sure.” Then I considered my words and made an amendment. “At least someday.”
She scowled. “Not what I wanted to hear.”
“Yeah, I know, but it’s the best I can do right now.”
There was a short silence. “Okay,
” Camille said, setting a foot on the top stair. “See you later.”
And she left me alone with the dusty history of Chilson.
• • •
It didn’t take long for me to find what I was after. I had the year and, knowing the other car had been a convertible, could assume that the accident had taken place during the Up North convertible season of May through September.
An hour after I’d gone up the steps to the newspaper’s second floor, I was walking into the library, ready to hit the search engines.
“Hello? Are you in there?”
I started. “Oh. Hey, Donna. I didn’t see you.”
“Or hear me,” she said from behind the counter, laughing. “That’s the third time I said hello.”
“Sorry.” I stopped, a little embarrassed. “I was thinking.”
“Anything you want to talk about?” She tipped her head in the direction of Jennifer’s office.
“What? Oh, no. I was just . . .” My voice trailed off as it sank into my tiny brain that I was talking to a longtime resident of Chilson. “Do you remember when Dale Lacombe got into a bad car accident?”
“Now that was a long time ago.” Donna leaned forward and put her elbows on the counter. “The kids and Dale were fine, as I recall, but the man driving that little car was hurt badly.”
“Simon Faber,” I said.
She nodded. “I didn’t know the man, but my neighbor knew him through a golf league.”
“Do you remember anything about him?”
“He was seasonal. Had a place on Janay Lake.”
That much had been in the newspaper. “Anything else?”
“It was a long time ago,” she said, her gaze shifting inward. “But if I recall correctly, his injuries from the car accident were the kind that change your life. Multiple operations, pins and screws in all sorts of places. Don’t remember if he had internal injuries, but it seems likely.”
“Is he still around?”
Donna shook her head. “He sold his place after the accident. All those surgeries took a lot out of him. Orthopedic, internal, eye, plastic, and who knows what else.” She sighed. “That poor man was certainly in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
I deflated a little, but decided to keep following through. “Could you do me a favor? Ask your neighbor if he’s seen or heard from Simon Faber in the last few months. Any information would be good.”
“Sure,” she said, shrugging, “but why—”
I cut into her question, not wanting to explain. “Thanks, Donna.” And with a quick smile, I headed to my office. There were all sorts of things I had to do that day, but now there was one more task.
Find out everything I could about Simon Faber.
Chapter 17
In my search for knowledge, I poked around with Google, used every type of social media in my librarian’s arsenal, and made phone calls to everyone I could think of who might have any useful information.
What I found out from my lunchtime Internet efforts was a Simon Faber owned a house in Independence, Missouri, that had been listed for sale at $245,000. I found a Simon Faber who’d been listed as a speaker to the Rotary Club of Sacramento, California, on the topic of how increasing accessibility would increase retail sales. I also learned that Simon Faber had self-published a book on growing roses. Whether or not any of these Fabers was the right one, I did not know.
In the afternoon, all the voice mail messages I’d left at noon came rolling back. Kristen told me she remembered the car accident, but couldn’t have given me Simon Faber’s name if her life had depended on it. “I was maybe twelve years old,” she said. “Did you really expect me to remember?”
“You can remember every amount of every ingredient in every dish you’ve ever cooked,” I replied. “Why not one guy’s name?”
“Duh,” she said. “I care about the cooking. People, not so much.”
There was a bizarre disconnect in her logic, but I let it go.
“Does this have anything to do with Dale Lacombe’s murder?” she asked, suspicion strong in her voice.
“Not sure,” I replied, and said a quick good-bye before she could start scolding me.
My aunt Frances was next to call back, apologizing for leaving me all alone the previous night in the boardinghouse.
“Eddie kept me company,” I said. “Besides, it’s expected that affianced couples spend the night together every so often. That’s if they’re not already cohabitating.”
“Shacking up?” She laughed. “At my age?” Then she told me what she could recall about Simon Faber. “He lived out on the north shore road, a few doors down from a cousin of Everett’s.” She paused at the mention of her long-deceased husband, then went on. “I remember Everett’s cousin saying Simon was strictly Memorial Day to Labor Day. Nothing before, nothing after. It was far more common back then. Now folks come up all year round.” She sighed. “Almost makes you want to move to the Upper Peninsula.”
I’d heard that comment many times from others, but no one ever seemed to pack up and go. I loved the UP, but I loved Chilson more. “Anything else?” I asked. “About Faber?”
“He was a big antique car buff,” she said. “He built a garage at his cottage, which in those days was very unusual, because he didn’t want his cars to get any unnecessary exposure to sun and rain and wind.”
Rafe’s return call that evening, on the other hand, was less useful. I was on the couch reading, with Eddie on my lap, when my cell phone rang. I glanced at the screen and went all tingly when I saw Rafe’s picture smiling at me. I took in a long breath and thumbed on the phone. “Hey.”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” he said.
“You don’t remember Dale Lacombe’s car accident?”
“I’m lucky if I remember what I had for breakfast this morning.”
“You always have the same thing for breakfast,” I pointed out.
“See my problem?”
My laugh turned into an inexplicable sob that I forced into a cough. “You really don’t know anything?”
“Nope. Why do you want to know?”
“Just looking into some things for Leese,” I said vaguely. “Do you know anyone who might know what happened to Simon Faber?”
“Nope,” Rafe said. “I was just a pup back then and he was a summer guy who lived out on Janay Lake. We didn’t cross paths.”
“You are no help,” I said. “But thanks for calling.”
“Anytime I can be less than useful, you know where I live.”
I shut down the phone, knowing that my former habit of dropping by his fixer-upper was gone for the foreseeable future. To keep from dwelling on that depressing topic, I made myself think about who else might have information about Simon Faber.
“You know what?” I asked Eddie, who was happily putting my legs to sleep. “I should ask Dana Coburn.”
A few months ago, the geniuslike young Dana had helped me with the history of one of the original Chilson families. Since then, she and I had texted each other on a regular basis (with her parents’ permission, of course), and we were developing a solid friendship.
I sent a quick text to Dana. Know anything about a Simon Faber? Car accident 23 years ago, east of Chilson. Sure enough, a few seconds later, I saw the sequence of fading in and fading out dots that meant she was texting me back. Then the message came through: No.
Thanks anyway, I texted in return, and was about to tuck the phone away when she came back with: Want me to find out?
My reaction was immediate and instinctive. No. The last thing I wanted was for Dana to get mixed up in a murder investigation, even peripherally and from her winter home in Chicago. Just wondered. Have a good night.
After a short pause, she texted: U 2. And Eddie.
Smiling, I tapped Eddie on the head with the phone. “Hear that?
The smartest kid in the world wants you to have a good night.”
“Mrr,” he said sleepily, and arranged himself deeper into the folds of the blanket.
My final lunchtime efforts had been to leave messages for two other people: my attorney, Shannon Hirsch, and Mr. Goodwin, a library patron in his mid-seventies. Donna had told me that she called her neighbor and he hadn’t heard from Faber in years. “He sounded relieved,” she’d said. “I asked him why, and he said Simon just wasn’t the same after the accident. Too many scars, mental and physical.”
Neither Shannon nor Mr. Goodwin called me, but as I told Eddie the next morning when hauling his carrier out to my car, “I just asked them to call if they knew anything. And I didn’t say it was urgent. So I might never hear from them at all.”
“Mrr!” Eddie said in a harsh way that sounded like criticism.
I shut the door on his second comment and we didn’t speak to each other until we arrived at the bookmobile’s garage, whereupon I apologized for slamming the door on what he had to say and he purred. I did a quick pretrip check of the vehicle, Julia arrived, and the bookmobile got on its way.
A few miles outside of town, Julia pointed out the front windshield. “What fresh you-know-what is this?” she asked in a deep, dark tone.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Pay no attention to it and it’ll go away.”
Julia made a hmphing sort of noise. “Putting your head in the sand. Let me know how that works out.”
“Mrr,” Eddie said.
“Thanks so much,” I told him. “The support and encouragement you provide is second to none. Without you . . .” I sighed and reached out for the windshield wipers, because it was now an undeniable fact that the low heavy clouds were releasing snow. Lots of snow.
“Time for a new theory?” Julia asked.
“It’ll go away,” I muttered. “Eventually.”
In morose silence, we drove through the thickly falling white stuff and parked at a gas station and convenience store whose owner had been happy to have her place become a bookmobile stop. The first patrons aboard were two youngsters squealing with joy at the weather conditions. As their father climbed the steps, they ran to the front, where Eddie was perched on the passenger’s seat headrest, gave him some pets, then ran back to me.