Pouncing on Murder (21 page)

“Oh?” I asked. “What’s that?”

He shook his head, clearing away the memories. “What happens to all of us. We get old, we get sick, and we die.” He smiled, taking away the brutishness of his statements. “Don’t mind me, I can get a little maudlin in April. It’s the weather, you know.”

I blinked at him. It was the first of May, and the weather had turned sunny and bright and close to downright warm. But April can hang on inside you, so I knew what he meant.

At the next stop, I asked Mrs. Dugan, a patron I knew to be chatty, about Neva.

Mrs. Dugan sighed and shook her head, her white curls staying in place with steadfast firmness. “I worry about her, I really do. All alone in that big house with no one to talk to. She doesn’t even have cable television.”

“I heard she was an only child.”

She nodded. “That’s right. Doted on her father. Not sure she ever left home, especially after he got sick. Then he died and her mother just faded away, if you know what I mean.”

“How old was Neva?” I asked.

“When her dad got sick? Goodness, I really don’t know. I was just a little girl at the time, so she was probably somewhere in her twenties. And the poor man lingered so.” Mrs. Dugan sighed. “Probably lasted twenty-five years. Thinking back on it, he probably had multiple sclerosis. So little they can do about it now, and back then there was nothing.”

Which meant Neva was around fifty when her father died. She’d spent the most productive years of her life caretaking her father, then her mother, and never had a life of her own. No husband, no children, and now no grandchildren.

Mrs. Dugan was still talking, so I tuned back in. “How Neva managed to take care of her parents and run that farm I’ll never know. The place has been in her family since homestead days, so I doubt there’s a mortgage, but the property taxes alone must eat her alive.”

Property taxes. Yet another reason to put off buying a house. “It’s a working farm?” I asked.

“If you want to call it that.” Mrs. Dugan half laughed. “She has a few dairy cows and runs a summer farm stand, selling fruits and vegetables. Raises quite a variety, Neva does, with that greenhouse her granddad made. Gets strawberries before anyone else in the county.”

“She does this all by herself?”

Mrs. Dugan shrugged. “Must be. Makes jams and jellies, too. Gets a pretty penny for them, I’ll say that for her.”

But I was stuck back on the idea that Neva was all alone in her endeavors. “What about her other family, and her friends? What about neighbors? Do they help her? Farming is hard work, and . . .”

Mrs. Dugan was shaking her head. “Help Neva Chatham? I wouldn’t risk offering, not if my life depended on it. And honestly I’m not sure she has friends, not to speak of.”

There was a tug at my pant leg. I looked down and saw a small child looking up at me. He was maybe four years old with jet-black hair, big brown eyes, and the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen on a human. “Hi,” I said. “May I help you?”

He nodded. “Miss Neva is my friend.”

“She is?”

Again he nodded. “My mommy takes me to get raspberries. Miss Neva helps me pick the best ones.”

I smiled. “You like raspberries?”

He nodded vigorously. “Lots and lots. With cream. And just a little sugar, not too much, Miss Neva says, or you won’t taste the berries.”

Mrs. Dugan make a
tsk
ing noise and glanced down
the aisle to someone who I assumed was the child’s mother. “His mother,” Mrs. Dugan said, “is perhaps a trifle lackadaisical in her childrearing efforts.”

“What’s lack-a-daisy?” the child asked.

“Something you’ll learn when you grow up,” Mrs. Dugan said, patting him on the head.

The kid glared at her, then spun on his heel and went to his mother’s side.

“Miss Minnie?”

I turned to see a middle-aged man looking at me. “Excuse me,” I said to Mrs. Dugan, and went to help him.

He looked past me, then said in a soft voice, “I heard what Mrs. Nosy-Toes over there was saying and I wanted to make sure you got the whole story about Neva.”

“Okay,” I said, quietly and cautiously.

“No one,” he whispered, “but no one, has been inside the Chatham house in twenty years, not since her mother died.”

I blinked at him. “That can’t be right.”

“Ask around,” he said. “No one has been allowed past the porch since her mother’s coffin left the house. More than a little weird, don’t you think?” He tapped his temple, shook his head, and went back to perusing the bookmobile’s small selection of travel books.

So, according to the adults, Neva Chatham was an eccentric recluse who shouldn’t be allowed near children. According to the child, Neva was a friend. What I needed
to do was talk to the boy’s mother and get another adult point of view.

But when I turned around, they were both gone.

•   •   •

“You have reached the Carters’ landline. Please leave a message at the tone.”
Beep.

“Hi, Rachel,” I said. “This is Minnie Hamilton from the bookmobile.” I’d asked Mrs. Dugan the name of the young woman with the little boy and she’d told me all about Rachel and her husband and Rachel’s mother and father. She would have gone on, I’d been sure, to share decades-old gossip about Rachel’s grandparents, but I’d cut in as politely as I could and thanked her for the information.

But this was the second time I was leaving a message and I was starting to wonder if I was ever going to hear back. I left a brief message, gave my number, and asked her to call, then hung up.

“Well,” I said, “what do you think?”

Eddie, who was sitting on the houseboat’s dashboard, turned his head ever so slightly in my direction. He might have been responding to my question, but he also might have been watching the seagulls wheeling over the blue waters of Janay Lake.

It was late on Sunday morning, a beautiful day in early May, and I had yet to decide what to do with myself. Eddie and I had stayed in bed for a decadently long time, him snoring, me reading a lovely long mystery by Charles Todd and wishing for a restaurant that delivered breakfast.

But eventually I’d crawled out from under the covers
into a bright blue day, showered, and walked up to the Round Table, where I’d indulged myself with their new offering of sour cream blueberry pancakes with a side of bacon brushed with maple syrup. The food was remarkably tasty, and the only problem was now I didn’t feel like doing anything.

“Vacation mode,” I told Eddie. “That’s the problem with going out to breakfast. It makes me feel as if I’m on vacation. Now I don’t want to do anything except play. Which is tempting, but there are things I should be doing.”

Eddie turned his head and, this time, looked directly at me.

“Not you,” I assured him quickly. “I’d never expect you to do anything. Honest. It’s me who should do something productive with my day. Since I have thumbs and all that.” I waggled said appendages at Eddie.

He stared at me with unblinking eyes. “Mrr!” he said sharply, and returned to his seagull contemplation.

Smiling, I slid into a comfortable slouch on the booth’s bench and peered at the stack of books I’d piled up during the week. Eventually I’d get up and do some laundry. Go for a walk. Go see Kristen. Something. But for now I was content to sit and read.

I was three chapters into
All the Light We Cannot See
by Anthony Doerr when my cell phone, which I’d put on the table, beeped with the incoming text tone. Since I was a happy little reading camper, I wasn’t sure I felt like responding to whoever was on the other end, but since you never knew when an emergency might turn up, I twisted my head around to look at the screen.

Tucker.

I pulled the phone toward me and tapped at the screen to view his text.

Hey, guess what? Been invited by boss to go to his condo on Lake Tahoe!

Multiple emotions flared at once. Pleasure, that Tucker got along so well with his boss that he’d be invited to a vacation home. Annoyance, that I obviously wasn’t part of the invitation. And puzzlement, because while I was sure Lake Tahoe was beautiful, why would you bother traveling so far to a lake when there were plenty in Michigan?

“Sitting on top of one right now,” I said to Eddie while I looked out at the wind riffling the tops of Janay Lake’s waves. And beyond the dunes, the mass of Lake Michigan lay just to the west. Clear water, clear skies, and not a single expressway within fifty miles. Maybe it wasn’t Lake Tahoe, but it was right here, right where my job and my life were.

I tapped out a message:
Sounds like fun. When are you going?

I’d returned to my book and was half a dozen pages into the next chapter when Tucker’s next text came in.

Same week in July I was going north. Sorry, but I can’t pass up the opportunity. I’m sure U understand.

Oh, I understood all right.

I started thumbing a message full of fury and bitterness and scorn and hurt. Halfway through, my mother’s voice tapped me on my mental shoulder.
Minnie, are you sure you want to do that?

“Absolutely,” I muttered, and kept tapping.

Minnie,
she said, drawing out the vowels.
How absolutely sure are you?

I cleared the text, tossed the phone to the table, and got up. I needed to move, to do something physical, and to not think for a few minutes.

Two hours later, every window on the houseboat was sparkling clean, inside and out. I stood outside on the front deck, hands on my hips, studying my efforts. “What do you think, Eddie?”

“Mrr,” he said.

“You’re right.” Cheerfully I patted his furry head. “I’m pretty sure they’ve never been so clean.” I went inside and picked up the phone, ready now to do what needed to be done, what couldn’t—or at least shouldn’t—be done via a text message.

I entered his cell number and, when he answered, started talking before he even got in a greeting. “Hey, Tucker. It’s Minnie. I think it’s time we call this relationship quits.”

Chapter 14

K
risten took one look at me across the crowded kitchen and grabbed the closest bottle of wine. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’m sure it will be better with a hefty dose of Merlot.”

I plopped myself on a tall stool and eyed the stemmed glass she was filling. “Alcohol does not cure problems.”

Without a word, she whisked away the glass and the wine bottle. “How about a big bowl of chocolate ice cream?”

“Can I have chocolate syrup?” My voice was plaintive.

“And whipped cream—the real stuff, not the kind you use—and chocolate sprinkles and a cherry on top.”

I sighed. “You are the best friend ever.”

“Of course I am.” Kristen nodded to Harvey, her sous-chef, and he went to work on what Kristen had ordered for me. For a couple of years, I’d thought that Harvey was in love with Kristen, but he seemed unfazed by her attachment to Scruffy.

“So, what’s up?” she asked. “Family issues? Are your parents okay?”

I’d already told her about the book fair cancellation, so there wasn’t much use in pretending that was what
had drawn me to her restaurant hours ahead of the time I usually showed up on Sundays. “It’s Tucker,” I said, and her face went quiet.

Around us, the kitchen staff kept on doing kitcheny things. Misty, the head chef I’d greeted on my way in, kept slicing big bits of meat into smaller bits. The two seasonal hires, a middle-aged woman and a young man, both of whom I had yet to meet, continued to chop whatever it was they were chopping. Harvey placed a perfectly presented bowl of ice cream and a spoon in front of me and wafted away.

“So . . . ?” Kristen asked.

I picked up my spoon. Not so very long ago, when I was washing windows, I’d been sure I was making the correct decision. So how was it that now I was waffling? I picked up the spoon and shoved a far too big bite of sugary goodness into my mouth.

“Broke up with him,” I said through the ice cream. Speaking with my mouth full was a transgression my mother would never have tolerated, and one I did try to avoid ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, but somehow telling Kristen I’d ended a semi-long-term relationship with my mouth stuffed full of her food made it easier.

She muttered something I didn’t quite catch. “What was that?”

Kristen grinned, showing her teeth, white against the tan she’d accumulated in Key West. “I said it’s about time. You’re far too good for him and he didn’t deserve you. No, don’t go all sympathetic and say your schedule
was just as wacky as his and half of the problems were your fault, because I won’t believe any of it.”

A small smile tickled one side of my face. “You won’t?”

“Not a chance. How many times did you make plans with him and then cancel? Zero, I bet, yes? Yes. And how many times did he make plans with you and then cancel? No, don’t start using your fingers and toes to count, because I’m sure you don’t have enough digits.”

“It wasn’t just that,” I said, shoveling in another bite.

“No, it was also because he thought his job was the one that counted. And that attitude was turning into whatever he wanted was what counted, whether or not it had to do with his job.”

I blinked at her. She was right and I’d never seen it. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Because I am the best friend ever.” She thumped herself on the chest.

Once again, she was right. If she’d told me what she really thought about Tucker, I would have gone all defensive and stuck to him just to prove her wrong. It was a part of my personality I didn’t care for, and someday I’d try harder to do something about it.

“So now you can go out with Ash Wolverson,” Kristen said. “You want me to call him, or will you?”

“Give me a couple of days, okay?” The idea didn’t sound horrible; matter of fact, it sounded quite good, but I knew that jumping out of one relationship and into another wasn’t the best idea. I pushed my bowl toward her a couple of inches. “Want some? I hear it’s the best in town.”

“Do I get my own spoon?” she asked.

“You can have mine,” I said, handing it over, “if you don’t mind sharing.”