by Laurie Cass
As I neared the desk, I saw that in my absence a man had come in and sat at a computer. “Hi,” I said. “If you need any help, my name is—” I blinked. “Oh, hey. I didn’t recognize you.”
A hatless Mitchell nodded. “Hey, Minnie. What’s up?”
“Not much,” I said, leaning against the barrier that separated the computer carrels from each other. “But I’m wondering what’s up with you?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t believe that.”
He glanced up sideways at me, then turned his attention to the computer, shrugging.
“You’ve been working at the toy store,” I said quietly. “You’re been crewing on a charter boat, and you’re working that renovation construction job.” From what I’d been told, Mitchell had never held more than one job at time in his life, and often not even that.
“Work isn’t so bad,” he muttered, whacking at the keyboard.
I thought about what I might say next, trying to choose words that would sound concerned yet lack any hint of condescension. “Mitchell,” I said softly, “if your girlfriend truly loves you, she loves you just the way you are.”
“Yeah?” He reached up for his baseball hat, but his hand found nothing but air, so he was forced to let his hand flop back down uselessly. “That’s what my sister says, but Bianca, she’s so great, you know? She deserves someone who works as hard as she does. Someone who’s worth something.”
“But—”
Mitchell pushed on through my objection. “You told me to stay busy, remember? And I figured working lots of jobs was the best way to do that. And now I see that I can save some money, you know? I need to show Bianca that I’m worth more than just an attic apartment in my sister’s house.” His voice was full of disgust for himself. “I’ve wasted so much time hanging around and not doing anything much. I need to change before it’s too late.”
Negative point to Minnie for not thinking her advice through. I reached out to touch him on the shoulder, but let my hand drop. “Mitchell, I understand that you don’t want to lose Bianca.”
“She’s the one,” he said. “I love her.”
The stark declaration startled me. I blinked, then said, “It’s great that you’re making a living. But don’t change yourself too much, okay? We like you just the way you are.”
Mitchell faced me. “Do you? Do you really? Or are you just saying so because you like to have me around to make fun of?”
His accusation stung. I didn’t want to think it was true, but I was the least bit afraid there was some truth in what he said. My mother would have been ashamed of me, and for good reason. I flushed. “Mitchell—”
“And you know what?” he said, interrupting, yet another thing that was very un-Mitchell-like. “It’s kind of stupid. All these years people have been telling me to get a real job, and now that I’m working like crazy, people are asking me why I’m working so hard. I can’t win for losing.”
He had a point. A very good one. And when I told him so, he shrugged again.
“Anyway,” he said, “I bet you’re working as many hours as I am at your one job than I am at all of mine put together.”
“That’s different.”
“Yeah?” He grinned, and there was the old Mitchell, right there in front of me. “How’s that exactly?”
I opened my mouth to respond, couldn’t think of anything to say, and closed it again.
Because there was a strong possibility that there was no difference.
* * *
“Your splits are getting faster,” Ash said.
“My what?” I asked, panting. My body was not made for doing splits. The last time I’d tried had been in third-grade gym class and, if I thought about it, the humiliation still stung, so I’d done my best not to think about it for the past twenty-odd years.
“Splits,” he said, not panting at all. “Your mile times on our runs. They’re down almost thirty seconds since we started running together.”
How nice for me. And as soon as I found the breath enough to say so out loud, I would.
But as soon as I had the uncharitable thought, I tried to unthink it. Most runners wouldn’t slow down so much for a friend. This wasn’t helping Ash’s fitness level at all; he was only doing this for my sake. To spend time with me.
And I did enjoy our morning routine. No matter what I did the rest of the day, I could think back to this run and know I’d done something right.
We were about halfway through our normal route, which started out at the marina and went up the hill, through downtown and its outskirts, toward the high-priced real estate on the point, then back along the edge of Janay Lake along the public walkway.
“How about trying for a fast quarter mile?” Ash asked. “Bet you can do under two minutes.”
A few weeks ago, I’d been happy enough to run three miles at all; now I was trying to improve my times. “You think?” I asked, trying not to gasp.
“Sure,” he said easily. “Interval training is the way to go.”
If I’d had the wind, I’d have asked, “The way to go where?” but I didn’t, so I didn’t.
“We can start at the next intersection.” Ash pointed ahead. “Through the last block of downtown, past the gas station, past the church, and up to the Point Road. That’s a quarter mile. I’ve clocked it.”
“Sure,” I said. What the heck. I didn’t mind pushing myself. I might even learn what an interval was.
His running watch made some beeping noises, and when we reached the upcoming intersection, he said, “Go!” at the same time his watch made another beep.
I put my head down and concentrated on my running. Don’t be a rabbit, I told myself. Don’t go out too fast. Set a pace you can maintain for a couple of minutes. You can do anything for two minutes.
So I tried. I really did. But then, in front of the office to the local propane dealer, I saw a man who looked familiar. He must have heard our footsteps, because he turned. “Morning, Minnie,” he said.
I slowed to puff out, “Morning!” then worked to return to my former pace, but must have been distracted by trying to remember the guy’s name and missed my target time by ten seconds.
It wasn’t until I was showered, dressed, breakfasted, and walking to the library that something went click in my brain and I remembered why I knew the guy in front of the propane company. Or at least I’d been introduced to him. He was the attorney for Talia DeKeyser’s estate, the one I’d met in Rianne’s pilot’s house of an office. Peter? Paul? Something like that.
For some reason, I was suddenly embarrassed, which made no sense because I had, in fact, said good morning; I just hadn’t remembered his name.
And then, since the thing was done and there was nothing I could do about it, I put the incident from my mind.
* * *
“Long time no see,” Josh commented.
Startled, I jerked the coffeepot and narrowly missed pouring hot coffee all across the counter. “What are you talking about? I was here yesterday afternoon. And all day Friday.” I counted back. “And Wednesday and Monday and the—”
“I mean mentally here.” He picked up the coffeepot I’d set down and filled his own mug. “The past two weeks you’ve been walking around like a zombie, hardly paying attention to anything anybody says.”
My knee-jerk reaction was to deny all, but I had a sneaking suspicion he was onto something. And it was one of those somethings I would address as soon as I had a spare few minutes. Of course, when that might be, I didn’t have a—
“Minnie, I need to talk to you right now.” Denise Slade stood in the doorway of the break room, her arms crossed.
“Have fun,” Josh murmured. “Hey, Denise,” he said in a normal voice. “See you later, okay?”
And he was gone.
“Hello,” I said to Denise. “How are you this
fine morning?”
“What?” She frowned. “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
I could have mentioned a number of reasons, starting with the death of her husband less than a year earlier, moving on to the troublesome situation in the Middle East, and ending with the cost of bacon, but I just smiled and asked, “What’s up?”
“Here.” She uncrossed her arms and brandished a piece of paper. “It’s that list of names you wanted, all the Friends who worked in the book-sale room.” She flapped the paper up and down, which made a bizarrely loud noise.
I walked around the table and reached out to take the paper from her. “Thanks, Denise. This really—” I stopped. The list, which I’d anticipated to have four or five names, had more like twenty. “All of these people worked in the sale room that week?”
“No idea,” Denise said. “Say, can I get a cup of caffeine? I’ll even take it if you made it.” She laughed.
Silently I took a mug from the cupboard, checked its insides for dust, and poured it full of coffee. When I handed it to Denise, I also pushed over the small tray that held creamer, sugar, and a jar taped with a note that said, Please donate to our coffee fund. Ignoring the jar, Denise added two packs of sugar and one pack of creamer to her mug.
Denise stirred the contents of her mug with a spoon and then laid the spoon on the table, where it would leave a small puddle, “That list is all the people who were scheduled to work this month.”
Though it was wonderful that the Friends had so many people who volunteered for the good of the library, the task of calling them all would take a while. “I thought you said you’d know who worked that week.”
Denise paused in the act of sipping her coffee. “I do. They’re on that list.”
I almost looked around for the rabbit hole I must have fallen into. “Which ones?”
“Minnie,” she said, frowning at my obvious stupidity, “I told you already. They’re on that list.”
“But you can’t tell me which ones?”
“Are you nuts? Of course I can’t. Maybe you have time enough on your hands to waste it doing that kind of paperwork, but I have better things to do.”
Don’t take it personally, I told myself. She’s like this with everyone.
“Take last week,” Denise was saying. “Not only did I have to help my neighbor down the street move around a load of dirt, but I ran into Kim Parmalee downtown, and she was all in a tizzy about a bunch of new furniture. She couldn’t decide on fabrics for some upholstery, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s furniture, so I dropped everything to help her. And if that wasn’t enough, my son called and said he was wondering about his dad’s power tools.” Denise made a whuff sort of noise. “So I had to go down to the basement and do an inventory of everything. My son said I didn’t need to, that a couple of pictures would been enough, but I know better.”
She rolled her eyes and though I was tempted to roll mine, too, I maintained my polite, if stiff, smile.
“I absolutely know better,” she said. “First it’s pictures, then it’s what brand, then what model, then he’ll want to know how old everything is. Better off just to do the work now and take care of it at the front end.”
Absently, I nodded, which provided her with enough conversational fuel to move to her next topic: the recently appointed city councilman. Denise had nothing good to say about him—surprise!—and wanted to make sure I knew about his vote regarding the purchase of a new snowplow truck.
“Brand new,” she said. “Do you know how much those things cost? Why can’t they buy a used one? I mean, does that make any sense?”
But I wasn’t listening, not really, because I was back at the fabric part of the conversation, when Denise had said that Kim Parmalee, née DeKeyser, a woman who’d been rumored to be close to bankruptcy, was shopping for furniture.
* * *
Every time I had a spare moment the rest of the morning, I called someone on Denise’s list. I ended up leaving messages at most of the numbers, and every time I did, I wondered if the exercise was a complete waste of my time. The odds of learning something useful felt slim to slimmer.
Still, it was something I could do. I’d considered giving the list to Detective Inwood or to Ash, but they were busy and this wasn’t real investigative work; it was just narrowing down the names. I was saving them time and would tell them so if they found out what I was doing and tried giving me The Look, the one that meant I should leave law-enforcement work to the law-enforcement officers. And I would do that, as soon as there was a true law-enforcement task to get done.
All of which meant that I worked through noon and didn’t realize until about two in the afternoon that I hadn’t had any lunch.
“No wonder I’m hungry,” I said out loud. I’d eaten a small breakfast and had no snack, because I still needed to do my grocery shopping. If I didn’t get some food into me soon, I was going to be cranky all afternoon.
So I snatched up my backpack—holder of my wallet, cell phone, and a spare book, among numerous other things—and headed out to the lobby.
“Hey, Holly?”
My friend looked up from the computer and put her index fingers to her forehead in a parody of concentration. “I’m reading your mind,” she said. “You’ve finally realized you haven’t had any lunch, and now that your stomach lining is starting to digest itself, you’re going to get some food before you keel over from low blood sugar.”
“I was more worried about getting irritable.”
“As you should be,” she said, crossing her arms.
Whenever she did that, she looked like she could be a close blood relative to Denise. But I’d long ago vowed to keep that thought to myself. I smiled and started to walk backward as I said, “I’ll be back in half an hour, if not less.”
Holly’s eyes went wide. “Minnie, you—”
“Twenty minutes, then,” I said, still walking backward. “If anybody wants anything from Shomin’s, call me on my—”
Bam!
My body thumped into something and my backpack went flying. I staggered, my breath leaving me with an oof. My arms wheeled around in circles as I instinctively tried to keep my balance, but it was a lost cause and I dropped to my knees on the tile floor with a wincingly loud crack!
“Good afternoon,” said a resonant male voice.
I looked up and saw the president of the library board. “Oh. Hi, Otis. Sorry about barging into you. I was just . . . uh. . . .” I glanced around. There were three other people standing there: two library board members and a fortyish man in a jacket and tie.
The contents of my backpack were strewn across the lobby floor; I must not have zipped it closed when I’d grabbed it out of my office. Still on my knees, I scrambled to gather everything without looking like an idiot. It was far too late for that, of course, and I knew it, but since my head boss, my vice-boss, a subsidiary boss, and a possible supervisor were all looming above me, it made sense to make an attempt.
“Here,” said a male voice. “Let me help.”
I looked, startled, at the guy who might be the new Stephen. He’d crouched down to my level and was gathering up my scattered possessions. “Thanks,” I said, accepting a small spiral-bound notebook, a handful of pens, and a set of fingernail clippers and shoved it all into the backpack, along with the things I’d already added.
“Is this yours?” The guy held out a packet of Eddie treats.
“Thanks,” I said again, taking the treats. As we stood, me to my five feet of height and him to his not-quite six feet, Otis said, “Graydon, this is Minnie Hamilton, assistant director of the library. Minnie, this is Graydon Cain, one of the candidates we’re interviewing for the directorship.”
Graydon’s face went from politely kind to frozen. He stared down at me. “You’re Minnie Hamilton?”
I blinked. Somehow I’d thought he’d known who I
was. Somehow I’d figured he’d seen my mishap and understood that these things can happen to competent and intelligent people who sometimes didn’t pay quite enough attention to where they were going.
“Yes,” I said, lifting my chin. “I’m Minnie.”
He nodded but didn’t say a word. At least not to me. Instead, he looked at Otis and the other two board members. “Shall we get started? I don’t want to take up any more of your time than is necessary.”
They walked away without a backward glance.
I watched them go, getting a sick feeling deep in my stomach that my professional future was not as rosy as it had been ten minutes earlier.
Chapter 14
The next day was a bookmobile day. We were in the southeast part of Tonedagana County, and driving the curvy, hilly, narrow roads kept my mind too occupied to tell Julia the tale of the previous afternoon. I’d started to talk about it at the first stop, but we were stampeded by too many children in search of books for me to be able to finish. The moment I started braking for the second stop, however, Julia was pumping me for the rest of the narrative. I obliged, and was to the part where I was walking backward in the lobby, when a carload of white-haired ladies pulled into the parking lot.
“Have to finish this later,” I told Julia, nodding at our incoming visitors. “It’s the softball team.”
Julia’s face, which had started to droop, perked up. “All of them?”
I peered out the window. “No, but more than half. Pitcher, catcher, shortstop, left fielder, center fielder.”
“Oh, excellent.” Julia beamed. “I love these ladies. What shall we give them today?”
A few months earlier, we’d stopped for lunch at a small café in the tiny town of Peebles. The waitress had noticed the mammoth vehicle parked at the curb and asked us about the bookmobile. When I said the phrase “thousands of books,” she’d grinned and said, “I have to tell my mother-in-law about this. Do you happen to have a copy of your schedule?”
Since I always carried a few copies, I pulled one out and handed it over.