Borrowed Crime

Chapter 5

The next day Aunt Frances insisted on indulging me. She brought me breakfast in bed, dug around in her extensive bookshelves for the entire Mrs. Tim series by D. E. Stevenson, and only let me come down for lunch when I promised I wouldn’t try to help with the cooking.

I sat at the kitchen table, watching while she sliced bread off the loaf she’d baked the day before, then watched while she made grilled cheese sandwiches at the same time that she put together a salad of spinach, mandarin oranges, and walnuts.

“Some people,” I said, “say that cooking is therapy.”

Aunt Frances raised one sardonic eyebrow. “Obviously those people haven’t seen you at work in the kitchen.”

“Hey, I can cook.” I thought about that and amended it a little. “If I have to.”

“And how often do you have to?”

She had a point, and I was not about to argue with a woman who said she loved me too much to let me eat my own cooking while I lived under her roof. In the summer, I lived on breakfast cereal, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and take-out meals, along with a healthy dose of leftovers from Kristen’s restaurant.

I grinned at my aunt. “Often enough to remind myself that I’d rather wash someone else’s dishes than cook my own food.”

“Not today,” she said. “After what happened yesterday, you’re going to let me take care of you from sunrise to sunset.” She glanced out the kitchen window at the backyard. “So to speak, anyway.”

I looked out at the gray sky. It was one of those days of low, thick cloud cover, a day during which it would be hard to wake up completely. The temperatures had risen, and the white world was turning into a dripping, sodden mess. It was a day made for reading in front of the fireplace and maybe watching a movie or two. Movies . . . I sighed.

“What’s the matter, my sweet?” Aunt Frances asked. “You never did say why you got home so early last night.”

I shook my head, not wanting to talk about it. Tomorrow, maybe. Or the next day, after I got things figured out.

“Mrr.” Eddie jumped onto my lap, pushing aside my elbows on his way up. He turned once, twice, and flopped down into a tidy meat-loaf shape, his chin resting on my arm. “Mrr,” he said quietly.

“Don’t we have a rule about no cats at the table?” my aunt asked.

I rested my hand on Eddie’s back. “You do, and I do, but I’m not sure he’s signed the agreement.”

“Well.” She put the bread onto the sizzling griddle. “He can stay until the food’s ready. We have to draw the line somewhere.”

I looked down. “Did you hear that, pal? You’ll have to—” My cell phone, which I’d laid on the table after texting Kristen, buzzed and rattled. I picked it up and read the screen. A text from Tucker. I blinked, looked out the window at the soggy afternoon, then steeled myself to read the text.

You were right, it said. Got back at two a.m. I was wrong and I’m sorry.

I texted back, I’m sorry, too.

Tucker: Can we be sorry together sometime soon?

Me, smiling: I’ll have my secretary get with your secretary. This was our code for saying we’d check our schedules and make plans for a date as soon as possible.

Tucker: On it. See you ASAP.

My observant aunt eyed me and said, “Good news, I take it?”

I wrapped my arms around Eddie and hugged him until he gave a squeak of protest. “Very good.”

* * *

The next day I donned my bright red, hooded raincoat and squelched my way over to the library. The grayness of yesterday had evolved into an even grayer today, complete with a rain that, if it continued, would melt the weekend’s snow within a few hours.

“November at its finest,” I said to the wet sidewalk. The sidewalk didn’t answer, which was okay, and perhaps even preferable, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what a sidewalk would have to say.

It probably wouldn’t be concerned about its hair, which would make it different from me. Curly hair and rainy weather are not good friends. By the time I got to the library it would be Frizz City, and there was nothing I could do about the situation except drive instead of walk, and that seemed silly for a commute of less than a mile.

I kept my head down and my attention fully focused on stepping around the puddles and what remained of the snow. Happily, that took a lot of concentration, and I barely had time to think about what the day would inevitably have in store for me.

Just outside the library, I shook a gallon of water off my coat and onto the sidewalk, then went in, keeping my mind firmly on the tasks ahead.

There would be phone calls to make to reschedule the stops I hadn’t been able to make on Saturday afternoon, there would be the book returns from Saturday morning to reshelve in the bookmobile’s separate circulation room, and that was just the start of it.

I started a pot of coffee and purposefully headed to my office. Lots to do, all sorts of things to do, and I needed to get to work. Focus—that was the thing. Stay focused.

That plan worked fine until the next staff member arrived.

Donna rushed into my office, her arms wide open. “Minnie, oh, Minnie. I’m so sorry!”

I took a deep breath. Here it comes, I told myself, and stood.

She wrapped her arms around me, enfolding me into a great big grandmotherly hug, the kind of hug at which she excelled, since she had (at last count) seven grandchildren. “How are you holding up?” she asked. “What a horrible, horrible thing. That poor man. Poor Denise. And their children—they’ll be devastated.” She sounded as if she was about to cry.

I gave her some calming pats and started to say something, then realized I didn’t know what to say. So I just patted her some more.

“Oh, look at you.” Donna sniffed. “Trying to comfort me when you’re the one who should be getting comforted.” She gave me one last squeeze and stepped back, reaching into the pocket of her cardigan sweater for the tissue she always kept there. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “Do you want to talk about it, or would you rather not?”

I knew I’d have to say something, and, while eating my fortifying Aunt Frances–made bowl of oatmeal, I’d actually planned what that would be. But right at that moment I couldn’t remember a word of it.

“Minnie—oh, my gosh—how are you?” Kelsey rushed in. On her heels was Holly. Donna backed away as the two younger women took their turns at giving me hugs. They were being nice, being supportive, being the best coworkers anyone could want, but I really wished they’d go away and leave me alone.

“I’m fine,” I said, returning their hugs. “Thanks, but I’m fine.”

“We should do something,” Donna said. “I’m sure he’ll be at Scovill Funeral Home. Should we send flowers?”

The three of them started talking about the pros and cons of cut flowers versus live plants, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d already decided to send my own card and flowers, and here at the library it was far preferable to talk about floral arrangements than to repeat the details of Saturday’s events. Telling the story to anyone would be like reliving it, and that was the last thing I wanted to do.

“What about the bookmobile?”

We all turned. Josh was standing in the doorway, with his hands making knobby bulges in his pockets.

“What about it?” I asked.

“It’s okay, right? I mean, it didn’t get shot, did it?”

I wasn’t sure whether to be appalled or touched. Appalled, because Josh was concerned about the bookmobile when the loss of a man’s life was what really mattered, or touched because he cared about the bookmobile so much that he could consider its status in a situation like this.

“It’s fine,” I said, deciding to go with touched. He was a guy, after all, and there were lots of people in the room on the edge of weeping over Roger. It was only reasonable that Josh would be the one to ask about the car. Not that the bookmobile was a car, but it had an internal combustion engine, and that was close enough.

“And how about . . . ?” Josh glanced over to the women, who were talking about fern varieties. He used both hands to give himself what could only be cat ears.

“Fine,” I said quietly, glad that I’d chosen the touched option.

The phone on my desk rang with the short ring of an internal call. I took a quick head count. Everyone who was scheduled to work this morning was in my now-crowded office. Everyone except the library director.

I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Minnie, I need to see you in my office right now.” There was a short click, and then nothing.

Though I’d known this was going to happen, I’d hoped it wouldn’t take place for a few hours. At least until after I’d finished my first cup of coffee. I put down the receiver and looked at my coworkers. “That was Stephen,” I said.

The conversation that had been going on around me stopped in its tracks.

“He wants to see me right now.” I picked up my mug and got down a few healthy swallows.

“Oh, dear.” Donna wrapped her arms around herself. “Oh, dear, dear, dear.”

“What does he want?” Kelsey asked, her eyes wide open. “Is he going to yell at you?”

Holly bit her lower lip. “He won’t make you get rid of the bookmobile, will he?”

“He won’t fire you,” Josh said confidently. “I’m sure of it. Who else would he get to work so many hours for so cheap?”

I rolled my eyes. “Gee, thanks for the pep talk.”

Josh snorted. “Like you need one of those to talk to Stephen.”

“Yeah,” Holly said, smiling. “You’re the one who gives them to us whenever we have to talk to him.”

“Which is hardly ever, now that we have an assistant director to run interference.” Josh cuddled an imaginary football and shouldered away an invisible attacker.

“For which we thank you very much.” Donna patted my shoulder.

My relationship with Stephen was, of necessity, very different from everyone else’s. For one thing, I was his assistant director, and took my marching orders directly from him. For another, I’d learned very young that bluster and size were things to ignore. I was five foot nothing. Most people were bigger than me, and by the age of ten I’d become more or less immune to the subtle coercions of size, gender, and voice timbre.

I gulped down the rest of my coffee and headed up the stairs.

Stephen had the only office on the second floor. The rest of the space was occupied by conference rooms and the book-sale room, and Stephen’s aerie wasn’t anywhere I would have liked to work. Sure, he had a corner office with windows that gave a great view of Janay Lake and even Lake Michigan when the leaves were off the trees, but in spite of the heavy drapes and the auxiliary heating unit, to me it still felt like a cold and unwelcoming place.

Of course, that could have been due to the nature of the occupant.

Stephen looked up from his computer when I knocked on the doorjamb. “Ah, Minnie. Come in and shut the door behind you.”

The action seemed pointless. It wasn’t as if anyone was going to be following me up the stairs to eavesdrop, since they all knew I’d soon be sharing everything Stephen said, but I shut the door anyway and stood in front of his desk, my hands clasped together lightly, my head slightly bowed. It was my Penitent Pose, and I’d perfected it as a child. I hadn’t been a bad kid, but I’d hadn’t always seen the need to do exactly what my parents told me to, especially when it came to putting my book down and going to sleep at my prescribed bedtime. I mean, how could I when I was in the middle of a chapter?

I stood there waiting, and eventually Stephen sat back in his chair. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. If I hadn’t known he’d been at his desk fewer than thirty minutes, I would have guessed he’d been laboring for hours. And, judging from past history and the general emptiness of his desk, all he’d been doing was reading online newspapers.

He put his glasses back on and looked up. “Minerva, you do seem to have a knack for finding trouble,” he said, sighing. “Roger Slade was a good man. He will be missed by many.”

A commonplace platitude that held a deep truth. I tried to swallow a sob, but it got stuck halfway down and I had to cough it away. “I didn’t know him very well,” I said quietly. “He seemed like a great guy.”

Stephen peered at my face. “Do you need some time off?” he asked. “Although Roger wasn’t a relative and the bereavement policy wouldn’t apply, I’m sure you have vacation time accrued. I can approve a day, should you need it.”

I murmured my thanks, but said I’d be fine. I’d never used all of my annual vacation hours; why should I start now?

My boss nodded, clearly approving of my ability to keep a stiff upper lip. “But do you realize,” he said, putting his elbows on his desk and folding his hands, “that you have placed the library at risk?”

“I . . . what?”

“Under your direction and care,” he said, “a bookmobile volunteer was killed while on the bookmobile.”

I wanted to point out that Roger hadn’t actually been on the vehicle, but I managed to keep quiet.

“How,” Stephen asked sadly, “could you have let this happen?”

My jaw dropped. “Let it happen? Stephen, it was an accident. A horrible, tragic accident.”

“On your bookmobile. This makes it the library’s problem.”

“It was an accident,” I repeated, this time a little louder. “Awful as it was, it was an accident. We could have an accident here.” I waved at the walls. “A library Friend could be carrying a box of books, trip on the stairs, and fall. Or—”

“Roger Slade is dead,” Stephen said, cutting into my theoretical list, “and his sister is suing the library for negligence.”

“His . . . sister?”

“Tammy Shelburt.”

The name thudded into the middle of the room. Tammy Shelburt was Roger’s sister? My spine lost its starch. I wanted to flop into Stephen’s uncomfortable guest chair and put my head in my hands.

Tammy Shelburt had made a name for herself as one of the region’s most energetic business owners. She’d taken an unsuccessful fast-food restaurant in Gaylord and built it into an extremely lucrative regional franchise. She was known for making hard decisions and for not backing down from any fight she deemed necessary. And there were a lot of them.

My first year in Chilson, Tammy had brought suit against a commercial property owner over a driveway easement adjacent to one of her properties. Two days after she won the lawsuit, a monstrous fence went up that forced her neighbor to rework the entrance to his ice-cream shop. It had been a financial hardship for the well-loved, yet not terribly lucrative, business and Tammy had lost much local goodwill over the incident. Rumor had it that she’d said, “So what? I make my money from the tourists, not the locals,” which had, of course, only made things worse.

On a personal basis, I knew that Tammy had a tendency to return books late and then try to argue her way out of the fines. This didn’t endear her to me, but I tried to look on the bright side. At least she was borrowing books. But what bright side could there be in this case? Roger was dead, and Tammy was looking for someone to pay the price.

“Stephen, I . . .” No words came to fill the empty space. I looked at my boss. I had no idea what expression was on my face, but he softened the slightest bit.

“Minnie, I will have to inform the library board of the recent events.”

Of course he would. He probably already had.

“The board will also be made aware of the progress of Ms. Shelburt’s lawsuit,” Stephen said. “The library’s attorney has already been contacted and has said that there is little doubt that the library will eventually be cleared of any wrongdoing, but Ms. Shelburt will undoubtedly make sure no stone is left unturned.”

I swallowed. The library attorney was eminently qualified for this kind of thing, but his hourly rate was higher than my first out-of-college paycheck. Once again I wanted to say something, but there still wasn’t anything I could think of to say. “I’m sorry.” The words came out in a whisper.

“Yes.” Stephen adjusted his glasses. “Your reaction speaks well for your character, but you cannot let your emotions interfere with what needs to be done. Duties still call, Minerva.” When I nodded slowly, he returned his attention to the computer screen.

I knew, from long experience, that this was my cue to retreat, but halfway down the switchback stairway, I stopped stock-still.

If Tammy was suing the library, was she also going to sue me?

* * *

All through the morning, I brooded over the question. Sure, every volunteer on the bookmobile signed a waiver of responsibility, and the library’s insurance covered bookmobile-related incidents for those on board, but did any of that truly mean anything when something so horrible as a death had happened?

I debated contacting the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services to ask whether anyone had any experience in such matters, but decided to wait. Maybe I was worrying unnecessarily. And maybe Tammy had only threatened to sue. Maybe when she got over the shock of her brother’s death, she’d drift away from the need to make the library pay for what had happened.

Maybe all that would happen.

And then again, maybe it wouldn’t.

I fidgeted away the rest of the morning, and at lunchtime I donned my almost-dry coat and headed out into the rain.

By now the morning’s dripping had rendered the weekend’s snow almost invisible. What little remained was in the piles tossed up by plows and under the shelter of building eaves and trees. It was the time of year when, if you didn’t have a calendar handy, you wouldn’t know for certain whether it was November or early April.

Keeping my head down, I walked quickly through the mishmash of downtown architecture, past the county building, and to the adjacent sheriff’s office.

“Hi,” I said, pushing back my hood and smiling at the deputy at the window. “May I please speak to either Detective Devereaux or Detective Inwood?”

“Detective Devereaux is out on medical leave.” The deputy eyed me. I tried to look tall and confident. This was a hard thing to do when faced with a high counter that reached almost to my chin, but I could, and did, meet the deputy’s gaze with a calm assurance.

“Is it serious?” I asked. The detective and I weren’t what you might call friends, but we had a relationship that was working, more or less, and I hoped whatever was wrong was fixable.

“He won’t be back until after Thanksgiving,” the deputy said.

“Then how about Detective Inwood? Is he around?”

“Let me check.” He asked for my name, reached for his phone, and dialed. Though he spun away from me to talk, he glanced at me once over his shoulder.

I smiled brightly, and he turned away. My interior self, which was not nearly as polite as my exterior self, snorted. I could just imagine that conversation. The detectives and I had a history, some of it positive, much of it not. They saw me as impatient and interfering. I saw them as slow and stolid, especially when it came to law-enforcement issues involving people whom I knew were law-abiding citizens of the sort who would never be late returning a book to the library, let alone anything as violent as—

“Ms. Hamilton? He says you can go back.” The deputy pushed a button, the door to the inner sanctum unlocked, and I went on through.

Inside, Detective Inwood was waiting. “We thought we’d be seeing you.”

I squinted up at him. It was a fair ways up. The first few times I’d met the two detectives, they’d always been together. You’d think that I’d have been able to keep their names straight, considering that one was tall and thin while the other was shortish and round, but it hadn’t been until a sympathetic deputy had told me that Detective Inwood, the tall and thin one, looked like a letter I and that Detective Devereaux looked like a letter D that their names got stuck properly in my head.

“We?” I asked. “I heard Detective Devereaux is out on medical leave.”

Detective Inwood nodded and ushered me toward another door. “Knee replacement.”

I winced. My primary cold-weather activity was downhill skiing, and I’d heard enough tales from former mogul jumpers to make me want to avoid the surgery at all costs. “He’s doing okay?” I asked.

“Says he’s getting bored watching so much TV.”

I made a mental note to put together a selection of suitable reading materials, and entered the small meeting room that held a table, four chairs, and nothing else. It pained me on a deep level to see a room without a single book, but I kept my thoughts to myself and pulled out a chair.

“When I said ‘we,’” the detective said, “I meant myself and Deputy Wolverson. You might recall that he’s training to be a detective.”

As if on cue, the man himself walked into the room. “Sorry,” he said. “I got caught with a phone call.” He slid into the seat diagonally across from me and smiled. “Hi, Minnie. Sounds as if you had a rough time on Saturday.”

I glanced at Detective Inwood, who was settling into the chair opposite me. I wanted to tell him that his much-younger coworker here had the right attitude, that a little kindness could go a long way, but once again I kept my thoughts inside. Which probably wasn’t an entirely good thing, because someday they might come hurtling out of me in a manner I wouldn’t be able to control. But why color today with the pending doom of tomorrow?

“It was a lot worse for Roger Slade,” I said. “Do you have any idea who shot him?”

Deputy Wolverson glanced at his senior officer, so I knew what was coming. “I know, I know,” I said. “This is only the beginning of the investigation, all avenues will be explored, and you won’t rest until you get the right guy.”

A small grin formed on the deputy’s face. Detective Inwood, however, simply nodded.

“Exactly right, Ms. Hamilton. I’m glad you understand our position. All possibilities will indeed be considered.”

Something in the phrase sounded off to me. “What do you mean, ‘all possibilities’?”

He steepled his fingers and stared at them intently. “The obvious is, of course, the most likely answer: a tragic hunting accident. We are interviewing property owners in the area about hunting permissions and we’re talking to other parties who might have knowledge of poachers. However, there is another possibility.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, frowning.

Detective Inwood’s eyebrows rose. “Surely, Ms. Hamilton, with your recent experiences, you’ve thought about the one other thing that could have caused Mr. Slade’s death.”

I shook my head slowly, ever so slowly. I didn’t want to hear this. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

“It could have been murder.”

* * *

The possibility that Roger’s death could have been something other than an accident hadn’t entered my head until Detective Inwood shoved it there.

“Thanks a lot,” I muttered as I squelched my way back to the library. An accident was horrible enough, but murder? Roger was the nicest possible guy. He worked for a construction company that had a fantastic reputation. He’d helped his kids build tree forts and volunteered his time with Habitat for Humanity. How could anyone want to kill a guy like that?

With my thoughts not on what was in front of me, I stepped straight into a puddle deep enough that I felt wetness across my instep. Sighing, I trudged onward.

An accident seemed much more likely than murder. We’d been out in the middle of your basic nowhere, and it had probably been a bullet from a deer hunter with very bad aim that had struck poor Roger. Then again, maybe there’d been some wacko up in those hills who’d felt like using a human for target practice. Things like that made you think there was no safety anywhere.

My breath sucked out of me, and I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. I turned in a small, damp circle, suddenly seeing threats where seconds before I’d seen only a quiet downtown.

What was behind that fence?

Was someone lurking around the corner of that building?

Had I heard someone following me?

“Of course not,” I said loudly, but my voice came out much thinner and weaker than I would have liked. I cleared my throat and almost said it again, but decided that would sound like I was talking to myself.

Not that there was anyone to hear.

Was there?

I stood for a moment longer, willing myself to not be a scaredy-cat, then squared my shoulders and walked briskly back to the library.

Once inside, I shut myself in my office. “Think, Minnie,” I told myself. If I was ever going to get to sleep that night, I needed to reassure myself that Roger’s death was an accident. Only . . . how?

Everything I knew about guns came from an in-depth series of self-defense classes I’d taken last summer, and most of what I’d learned had been about handguns. Up here, deer hunters used rifles, and my extremely limited experience with those—an hour on the range with a .22—wasn’t going to help much. What I needed was to talk to a hunter.

I picked up the phone and dialed. “It’s Minnie. Do you have a minute?”

Rafe Niswander clucked at me. “You say a minute, but is that what you really mean?”

“No.”

“That’s women for you,” he said. “Never saying exactly what they want, always leaving us poor men to guess at what’s going on up in their heads. No wonder there’s such a communication gap.”

I put my feet up on my desk. “You’re making assumptions about my entire gender based on a single colloquialism?”

“Oooh, big college word.”

“The right word,” I said firmly. “And you have as many degrees as I do.”

“Don’t remind me.” He sighed. “It’s embarrassing sometimes.”

I snorted. For whatever reason, Rafe liked to pretend he was a country bumpkin, fresh off the farm and clueless about almost everything. It was an act that his middle-school students ate up.

“Fifty seconds already,” he said.

Whatever. “I take it you heard about what happened Saturday?”

“Yeah.” Rafe’s voice was quiet. “I meant to call you, but . . .”

Rafe was good at many things, from being a school principal to home improvement to boat repairs, but handing out sympathy wasn’t part of his skill set. “I know,” I said. “It’s okay. Anyway, I wanted to ask you a couple of things.”

“Fire away.” He paused. “Um, I mean, go ahead.”

“You remember where that gas station is, right?” I asked, my heart suddenly pounding hard. “Do you know any guys who hunt around there?”

“Nope. There’s no state land in that part of the valley. Most of the property out there is owned by a timber company, and they don’t like guys hunting, because of liability reasons.”

“What about poaching?” I persisted. “Do you think there’d be much of that going on?” A guy hunting illegally—it would make sense for someone like that to have killed Roger.

There was another pause. “Minnie,” Rafe said slowly, his voice sounding suddenly serious. It was an odd way for him to sound and I wasn’t sure I liked it. “Why are you asking?”

“I just . . . I just want to know who . . .”

This time the pause lasted a lot longer. “Tell you what,” he finally said. “I’m going to give you two phone numbers. One is a guy who lives out there; the other is the conservation officer for that part of the county. And, for crying out loud, don’t tell them who gave you the numbers. I have a reputation to keep up.”

“Thanks,” I whispered. Coughed, then said more loudly, “You’re not so bad for a misogynistic, prejudiced redneck wannabe.”

“And you’re not so bad for an uptight know-it-all.”

His voice was sounding normal again, which was a small relief. I wrote down the numbers as he read them off, thanked him again, and started dialing.

* * *

Dinner that night was an Aunt Frances–inspired creation of seafood, coconut milk, and who knew what else. My contribution was washing the baby spinach for the salad.

“Another outstanding meal,” I said, dipping my soup spoon into the hearty mix. “I don’t know how you find the energy.”

“Oh, it comes and goes.” She covered her mouth to hide a yawn. “And right now it’s going. Tell me a story to keep me awake.”

Normally I would have a funny library story for her, but not today. So I told her about Stephen’s tale of a pending lawsuit and I told her about my trip to the sheriff’s office. I also told her about my phone calls to Rafe, plus my calls to the guy who lived near the gas station, and the conservation officer.

“The sheriff’s department had already talked to both of them,” I said. “The guy who lives there was gone that weekend, and the conservation officer, the CO, is already following up on some leads.” It was an active investigation, the officer had said, so he couldn’t talk about it. Though he was nice enough, I hadn’t learned much.

“I’ll keep asking around,” I said, “but with the sheriff’s office and this CO working on it, I’m not sure I’ll be able to find out anything they don’t already know.” I looked at her hopefully. “Unless you have some ideas?”

My intelligent and thoughtful aunt frowned. I waited, anticipating words of wisdom or reassurance, or both. Preferably both. Both would be excellent.

“That Deputy Wolverson,” she said. “Is his first name Ash?”

I blinked at her. “Sounds right.” I knew it had something to do with fires, but couldn’t remember exactly what. “Do you know him?”

“Not him.” Aunt Frances ground more pepper onto her salad. “I know his mother. She lives in Petoskey.” She yawned again.

I looked at her fondly. She was too tired for niece reassurances, and, besides, I didn’t really need them. Wanted them, sure, but that was different.

After dinner, I encouraged her toward the living room couch and started a fire. I brought her a book, a blanket, and an Eddie, and asked whether there was anything else I could get her. “I could open the TV if you’d like.”

Throughout the summer, my aunt’s television was hidden away in a clever cabinet that looked so much like an extension of the fireplace mantel that the summer boarders didn’t even know it was there. “Summers aren’t for television,” Aunt Frances always told them. “Go outside and play.” Even in winter, we didn’t use the TV much except for watching movies and the weekly episode of Trock’s Troubles, the cooking show that was sometimes filmed in Chilson.

“Not tonight, thanks.” Aunt Frances smiled down at Eddie as he settled on her legs. “You sure you don’t want him?”

I did, but I was trying to learn how to share. Plus, the rain had stopped while we were eating dinner. I’d even seen a few stars while I was doing dishes, and I felt the need to get outside and see some open sky.

When I told Aunt Frances as much, she pulled the blanket up to her neck. “Have a nice time, dear. I’ll be here when you get back.”

I looked at Eddie. “How about you? Will you still be here?”

He closed his eyes at me and didn’t even bother to say “Mrr.”

Outside, the air had shot up at least ten degrees since my walk home. Hard to believe that two days ago we’d been swimming in snow, but these things happened in November. I stood on the porch steps for a moment, enjoying the warm air that must be at least fifty degrees. It wouldn’t stay this way, and I didn’t really want it to, but there was no reason not to enjoy it while it lasted.

The front door of the house across the street opened and shut. I peered into the dark, but I couldn’t see if Otto Bingham had come outside or if he’d been out and gone in.

I came down the rest of the creaky wooden steps and headed across the street. It was just plain weird that neither Aunt Frances or I had ever talked to the guy. He’d lived there for weeks, and at this time of year he was our only neighbor for a block in either direction.

“Mr. Bingham?” I crossed the street, looking for nonexistent traffic both ways because I couldn’t make myself not check. “How are you tonight?”

The man, because there was indeed a man standing at the bottom of his porch steps, looked straight at me. But as I got closer, I could see that he wasn’t smiling the polite neighborly smile I’d expected. Instead he was giving me a look that was more deer in the headlights than anything else.

Which was weird, but now that I was standing in front of his picket fence, I was already committed to a conversation. “I’m Minnie Hamilton.” I considered holding out my hand, but eyed the distance and decided against it. There were unwritten rules about handshake distances, and I was pretty sure the gap between Mr. Bingham and me was outside the appropriate range.

Then again, since he hadn’t said anything, it was getting awkward even without the handshake. “Um, you are Mr. Bingham, aren’t you?”

He nodded in a vaguely friendly way. Well, it wasn’t unfriendly, anyway.

“Okay, good. Like I said, my name is Minnie. I live at the boardinghouse in the winter, with my aunt, Frances Pixley.”

Mr. Bingham jumped visibly when I said my aunt’s name. I frowned. A mention of my aunt usually made people smile, if anything. What was with this guy? I studied him a little closer. Well dressed, handsome enough—if you didn’t mind a cleft chin—with salt-and-pepper hair, and, judging from the distance between porch railing and the top of his head, tallish. He had “retired successful professional” written all over him. So why was he jumpy?

Puzzled, I went on. “I work at the library here in town and”—I paused for my coup de grâce—“two or three times a week I drive the bookmobile.” I waited for his reaction. If this guy didn’t respond to the mention of a bookmobile, he was a lost cause.

He wasn’t. His lips started to curl up at the corners, curving into what ended up as a very attractive smile.

“Minnie?”

I turned. Aunt Frances stood on the porch, waving a cordless phone at me. “Phone call for you, dear!”

“Be right there,” I called, turning back to Mr. Bingham.

But his front door was already closing with a soft click.

I squinted at it, then shrugged and trotted across the street.

“Who is it?” I asked, taking the phone from my aunt’s hand.

She started doing what generous people might have called a hula, so I knew it was Kristen on the other end of the line. Not that anyone did the hula in Key West, but, then again, I’d never been to Key West, so what did I know?

“Do people do the hula down there?” I nodded a thanks to my aunt, who had opened the front door for me.

“Da dah dah daaaa,” Kristen sang.

“Seriously?”

She snorted. “No idea. Us locals don’t pay attention to that touristy stuff. We’re too busy enjoying the sunshine and warm air.”

“It was warm here today,” I protested.

“I can Google your weather reports, you know. Plus, that webcam the city has downtown showed all sorts of snow on Saturday. And now rain.”

That darn Internet. “I like snow.”

“Yeah, and I like beating my head with a hammer because it feels so good when I stop.”

With our standard opening greetings done, there was a pause. “So, what’s going on down there?” I asked. “Anything fun?”

“Not really,” she said, but instead of launching into her usual litany of snorkeling, sunset watching, bike riding, and hammock napping, she hesitated, then said, “Just wanted to make sure you’re okay. After Saturday and, all that.”

That was Kristen, crusty on the outside, tender on the inside, just like the sourdough bread she loved to make. I couldn’t imagine a better best friend. I started to tell her so, but stopped just in time. She’d be embarrassed, I’d feel bad for making her feel embarrassed, and why clutter up our conversation with that kind of thing?

“Yeah,” I said, slipping off my coat. “I’m okay.”

“More or less?” she asked.

Less, really, but I’d been doing well at faking it since Saturday night. “More?” I suggested.

“Bzzz!” Kristen said. “Wrong answer. Try again.”

So I hung up my coat, headed to the bright lights of the kitchen, and told her everything.

It’s good to have friends, and it’s really good to have a best friend.