Gone With The Whisker

Chapter 7

The next morning, I dragged Kate out of bed and up the hill to the boardinghouse.

“But I was just here the other day,” she protested. “Celeste and I had fruit-flavored water and oatmeal cookies on the front porch.”

With her jaw jutting out like that, she looked so much like my brother that I had to hide my smile. “We haven’t been up for breakfast all summer,” I said, “and breakfast is different.”

“How?”

I hemmed and hawed as I considered how much to tell her about past boardinghouse processes and the reconnaissance I was doing for Aunt Frances, trying to determine if those old processes remained intact.

“When Aunt Frances was running the boardinghouse,” I finally said, “Saturday was the only morning she didn’t cook breakfast. The boarders paired up to cook and clean.” Even though I’d never been a summertime boarder, I’d often dropped by for Saturday breakfast, just to watch the fun.

“Huh.” Kate didn’t sound impressed. “But today is Sunday. And it doesn’t sound like much of a boardinghouse if you had to do your own cooking.”

“One meal a week,” I said. “With six boarders, no one cooked more than three or four meals all summer.”

“What if someone was a horrible cook?”

“Then breakfast was horrible. But house rules were that cooks got compliments, not criticism.” I smiled, remembering one memorable time when the eggs had been overdone, the bacon underdone, and the fruit hard as a rock. The dining room had been quiet except for the tinkle of knives and forks until the oldest boarder, a woman who’d retired from decades of teaching kindergarteners, finally said, “I love the way you two folded the napkins.”

“The whole thing seems weird,” Kate said, and this I couldn’t disagree with. “Is Celeste doing the same thing?” she asked.

But since that was what we were here to find out, I couldn’t tell her.

“There you are!” Celeste called from the front porch. “I was just about to call out the dogs!” We climbed the steps and she crushed us into a three-way hug. “You won’t believe the breakfast that Amy and Zach are cooking. Hang on, where’s that nice-looking young man of yours?”

It took me a moment to catch my breath after she released us. “I didn’t know you wanted him, too.”

“Well, of course.” Celeste patted my cheek. “You two are a pair. A matched set. You don’t get one without the other. Call the boy and get him up here. There’s time, if he hurries.”

And because I knew she wouldn’t rest until I did the deed, I started texting. Celeste chattered as she escorted us inside, through the entryway and living room with its pine-paneled walls, massive fieldstone fireplace, and bookcases stacked with books, jigsaw puzzles, and board games, and into the dining room.

Kate immediately went to the sideboard to pour herself a cup of coffee from the carafe, and I allowed myself to be tugged forward by Celeste.

“This is my cousin Minnie,” she announced to the foursome at the far end of the dining table. “She drives the bookmobile with her cat, Eddie. And that’s her niece, Katrina.”

“Kate,” I said before I got the evil eye. “She prefers Kate.”

“Hi, Kate,” the four said, almost at the same time.

“And you too, Minnie,” a middle-aged man said, nodding. “I hear you’re the one to ask about scenic back roads. Yvette here is longing to get my pickup stuck in the most remote two-track possible.”

The middle-aged woman on his left jabbed him lightly with her elbow. “Bert here likes to think I want to have my way with him. Don’t say anything,” she said in a stage whisper, “but he might be on to something.”

An elderly woman with deep brown skin made a harumphing sort of noise. “You two need to get a room,” she said, but her eyes danced with laughter.

“Canary, my dear,” an equally elderly man said, taking her hand. “If they leave, and if Amy and Zach try that breathtakingly athletic kiteboarding they’ve been talking about, and if we can convince Celeste we don’t need anything at all, the two of us will have the run of the entire house the entire day.”

I beamed at the foursome, and continued throughout breakfast, beaming at the boarders, at the food, at Kate, at Celeste, and at Rafe, who showed up just as we sat down to eat.

Afterward, Kate hung back to help Canary and Walter, for that was the name of Canary’s new friend, with putting together a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle of Lake Superior, and Rafe and I walked back to the house for a fun day of sanding and painting.

“She’s added books,” I said to Rafe, who frowned. Clearly, he didn’t understand. “In the living room. There are books mixed in with the board games and jigsaw puzzles.”

Rafe did the one eyebrow thing. “You’re complaining because there are books on the bookshelves? What kind of librarian are you?”

“The kind with an aunt who is having trouble letting go of the boardinghouse.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “You know what you should do, right?”

“Stay out of it.”

“And are you going to do that?”

I grinned. “Not a chance.”

* * *

“What’s that noise?” Julia asked.

As the bookmobile was, at that point, driving over an asphalt road in need of repair, I couldn’t hear much over the protestations of the springs and shocks and struts. Which were very expensive to repair. I closed my mind to the potential dollar signs and tried to listen for what Julia was hearing, because in the months she’d spent on the bookmobile, never once had she shown any evidence toward mechanical aptitude.

“What noise?” I asked. “All I hear are”—I paused to navigate around a particularly large pothole—“the normal abnormal road noises.”

“I think it’s him.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Julia pointing a dramatic finger at the cat carrier.

“What’s he doing? Shredding his cozy pink blanket? Kicking the door in hopes of escape? Or has his snoring managed to reach a new level?”

“Worse,” Julia said. “Don’t you hear it?”

And then, just as I flicked the turn signal to enter a narrow driveway, I did hear the unmistakable noise of my cat in the early stages of hacking up a hairball and I knew from experience that things would soon get ugly.

“Hang on, Eddie,” I called. “We’re almost there and—”

“Oh, ew,” Julia said, and I inwardly cringed at the noise emanating from the carrier.

“Sorry.” I pulled into the driveway and braked us all to a stop. “You go in. I’ll clean up the mess.”

But Julia was frowning and not moving. “Whose is that?” She nodded at the battered vehicle parked to the side, its nose facing us. “Rupert drives an SUV.”

We were stopping at the Wileys’ because right before his heart surgery, Rupert had stopped at the library to order a stack of books, asking that we deliver them a week afterward. “I’ll be ready,” he’d said. “My wife will say I shouldn’t be picking up something that heavy, but the doctor says it should be fine.”

Since I hadn’t wanted to get in the middle of a spousal argument, even between the very happily married Ann Marie and Rupert, I’d erred on the side of caution and told Rupert the bookmobile schedule would send us out there two weeks after his surgery, and if he didn’t like that, then he should check out some extra books right then. Rupert had laughed his great big laugh, told me to bring a copy of The Historian when we showed up, and now here we were, with a big fat pile of books.

But the cars in the driveway didn’t interest me nearly as much as a fast cleanup of Eddie’s carrier. Luckily, the mess was small and easy to take care of with a couple of paper towels, and in moments both Julia and I were standing on the front porch of the Wileys’ newish retirement home, our arms piled high with books.

“There you are,” Ann Marie said, ushering us inside. “And none too soon. This old codger is driving me nuts. A copy of David Copperfield is just the ticket to keep him quiet.”

“If the bookmobile had stopped by last week like I wanted,” Rupert said from the living room’s recliner, “I would have been quiet days ago.”

His wife sighed so dramatically that Julia gave a nod of approval. “A week ago,” Ann Marie said, “you couldn’t lift a water glass. How do you think you could have held up one of those big fat books you like so much?”

From Julia’s smile of delight, it was clear she was enjoying the argument. I, however, wanted to make sure the teasing didn’t devolve into something nastier. “Whose car is that?” I asked, tipping my head to the front door.

“Courtney’s,” Ann Marie said, since Rupert was busy paging through the top book of Julia’s stack, already deaf to what was going on about him. “Rupert’s home health care aide. A nurse stops by every couple of days, but we hired a little extra help for a few weeks, until he gets on his feet again.”

“My feet work just fine,” Rupert muttered as he switched from Middlemarch to The Goldfinch.

“Feet, yes. The rest of you? Not so much.” His wife crossed her arms. “Remember what happened two days ago with the peanut butter sandwich?”

As Julia made encouraging tell-me-more noises, I stuck my thumb in the direction of the kitchen and mouthed, “Bathroom?”

Ann Marie nodded, and I left Julia alone with the Wileys. If the story was good, she’d tell me later, and her recounting would only improve it. Change it, maybe, since Julia never let the strict truth get in the way of a good story, but I’d learned to live with that.

I crossed the formal dining room and saw the back of a thin woman I assumed was Courtney sitting at the oak kitchen table. “Hello,” I said cheerfully.

At the sound of my voice, she jumped sky high. Her arm swiped across the table and medications skittered left and right and everywhere, bouncing like tiny balls.

“Oh! Oh!” She lunged to catch what she could, but only made things worse as she created an additional ripple of pill movement.

“I am so sorry.” I hurried toward the corner of the room, where I’d seen a small disk roll underneath a plant stand. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m from the bookmobile and wanted to use the bathroom.”

“It’s okay,” Courtney said, although from her tone of voice, it was anything but.

Well, I could understand that. I’d just created a huge mess for her, and with a job like hers, she was probably on a tight schedule. “Here, let me help.” I deposited a small handful of pills on the table and dropped onto my knees to continue the search.

“Thanks,” she said, and the second time I handed over a colorful heap, I got a small smile.

She was younger than I’d first thought, probably in her early twenties. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, accentuating her sharp cheekbones and square forehead. “It’s just that it takes me so long to count out a week of pills.” She nodded at the multi-compartmented box on the table. “I’m not that great with numbers, my boyfriend says I have numerical dyslexia, so I triple-check everything.”

And I could certainly understand that, too. Despite the fact I was the offspring of an engineer father and the sister of an engineer brother, math had never been my strong suit. I grinned and gave her a final handful of medications. “I feel your pain. I didn’t become a librarian just because I love books.”

Courtney sort of smiled. “Good to know I’m not the only one.”

“You are so not alone. And sometimes I even wonder about my librarian career choice.” I didn’t, not ever, but she was looking uncomfortable, and when that happens, I often start babbling in a regrettable way. “Sometimes I think about other things I could do. Open a store, or become a police officer, for instance, because I think they need the help. The murder of Rex Stuhler, you heard about that? Well, there are things they should be considering and—” I stopped short.

Courtney looked up from her pill counting. “What’s the matter?”

Out the kitchen window, I’d caught a glimpse of Eddie, who I shouldn’t have been able to see, because for me to see him, he’d have to be perched on the windowsill of the side door, which wasn’t wide enough to hold him. “Nothing,” I said, because he’d disappeared—jumped or fallen?—and explaining Eddie would have taken far more time than either of us had.

I apologized one more time, we made mutual it’s-been-nice-to-meet-you’s, and I headed back to the living room in time to hear the end of the sandwich story.

* * *

A few hours later, the dinner dishes—I’d made tacos, and the grocery store spice pack instead of a homemade blend wasn’t nearly as horrible as Aunt Frances claimed—were done, Eddie was contentedly sleeping on the houseboat’s dashboard, and my niece was staring at me with a blank expression on her face. “You want to do what?” she asked.

“Walk up to Three Seasons for dessert.”

“And I’d want to do that why?”

I looked at the ceiling. Give me strength, I asked anyone who might be listening. I’m trying, I truly am trying. I put the last spoon in the drawer, assembled a smile, and turned to face Kate. She was sitting on her sleeping bag, legs sprawled out long, and poking at her tablet, playing a brightly colored video game that seemed to involve a significant amount of muttering punctuated by mild invectives. When I’d once asked what game she was playing, she’d shaken her head and said I wouldn’t know it. Which was undoubtedly true, but still.

“Because,” I said as patiently as I could, “Kristen is making crème brûlée. With strawberries.”

In past summers, Sundays had been dessert night. On Sunday evening, Kristen’s busy restaurant weekend was at an end, and the two of us, and occasionally our mutual friend Leese Lacombe, spent the evening talking and laughing and, every so often, crying. But things were different now. Kate was staying with me, there was Rafe, and Kristen was married.

Kristen and the Scruff were staying at her father-in-law’s summer place for the season and I’d stopped asking about their long-term plans, because they didn’t seem to have any other than the certainty that someday the two of them would create a new cooking show unlike anything the world had ever seen.

I absolutely believed this would happen, but that didn’t change the fact that I still wanted crème brûlée every Sunday, all summer long. Or in this case, Monday, because flexibility was good.

“Don’t you want to see the inside of Kristen’s restaurant?” I asked my niece.

She shrugged and kept tapping her small screen. “Not really.”

“But the crème brûlée . . .”

“I get headaches, remember?” she snapped. “From the smell of cooking food?”

Ah, yes. The famed headaches, the reason Kate couldn’t work any of the lucrative restaurant jobs. I’d called my sister-in-law about the mysterious malady, and she’d said it was news to her.

“Of course I remember,” I said soothingly. Didn’t really believe her, but I remembered. “The kitchen closes at eight, and it’s five past. By the time we walk down there, there won’t be a single scent of cooking in the place.”

Kate heaved a huge sigh. “I don’t suppose you’ll go without me.”

“Nope,” I said cheerfully. “And you’ve met Kristen. It’ll be fun.”

My niece sighed again, stabbed at her tablet a few more times, then swung her feet to the floor. “Then let’s get this over with.”

Her upbeat attitude continued as we walked the wide waterfront sidewalk. She kept her head down the entire way, paying no attention to the bevy of boats on the water, to the eclectic mix of people playing in the adjacent park, or to the gorgeousness of the sun sliding down the edge of the sky, about to dip behind the long line of hills that separated Janay Lake from Lake Michigan.

With me in the lead, mainly because Kate continued to lag behind, we barged in the back door of Three Seasons. Once upon a time, the building had been a Chicago family’s summer cottage, but they’d long ago abandoned it in favor of a larger place on the secluded and exclusive point. When Kristen renovated it to restaurant use, she’d magically kept the charm of the original structure, but the kitchen itself she’d gutted from top to bottom, enlarged, and made into a gleaming space of white and stainless steel.

Harvey, Kristen’s devoted sous-chef, smiled without looking up from what he was doing. This was a good thing because he had a long, undoubtedly sharp knife in his hand and was slicing strawberries. “She’s in her office,” he said. “I’m almost done with the dessert.”

After Kristen’s engagement, I’d been a bit worried about Harvey’s reaction, since for years I’d been convinced he was deeply in love with Kristen and would fall into the depths of despair when he realized there was never any chance of romance between the two of them. She’d always waved off that opinion, and she was right, because Harvey was still happy as sous-chef and was now dating one of Kristen’s cousins, who’d been a bridesmaid.

“Come on,” I told Kate, who was still lagging.

“She doesn’t like me,” Kate whispered.

“What?” I stopped in the narrow hallway and turned. “What are you talking about?”

“Your friend. Kristen. She doesn’t like me.”

I stared. What on earth could have given the child that idea? “Of course she does.”

“She’s always yelling at me,” Kate said.

“Always” was a stretch, since the two had met only a handful of times. “That’s Kristen’s default.” I smiled and patted my niece on the shoulder. “It’s not personal. She yells at everyone. You should hear her with Harvey.”

Kate crossed her arms over her chest. “She doesn’t like me,” she repeated.

It would have been better if she’d mentioned this earlier, when I would have had time to straighten everything out. But we were now walking into Kristen’s office and it was too late to do anything about Kate’s misconception.

“About time you two got here.” Kristen tossed a three-ring binder to the floor and picked up her desk phone’s receiver. “Harvey, are they done or not done? Not done, and you’re fired.” She slammed the receiver down. “Hard to get good help these days.”

I grinned. If Kristen didn’t fire Harvey at least three times a week, there was something wrong with the world. But his job was safe for the day, because almost before Kate and I sat, he was walking in the door with a folding stand and a tray of delectable dessert.

Harvey set up the stand and laid the tray atop.Kristen rolled her chair around, squinted at the ramekins of yumminess, and pronounced him hired until next time.

“Yes, your worship,” Harvey said, backing out with a bow.

Kristen snorted and distributed spoons and linen napkins. “That boy is a trial, I tell you.”

Kate looked at me, wide-eyed, and I sent her a reassuring smile. “How was your weekend?” I asked Kristen. “Good, I assume, with the Fourth just last week.”

She tossed her long blond ponytail off her shoulder. “If by ‘good,’ you mean busy, then yeah, it was good. But have I mentioned how hard it is to find supplemental staff? My people are working themselves into the ground and there’s no end in sight.

“And you,” Kristen said, banging her spoon on her desk and glaring at Kate. “I hear you get headaches from the smell of cooking food. You must be the first in the history of the world. What’s up with that?”

“I don’t . . . I can’t . . .” Kate leapt to her feet and ran out of the room. A few seconds later, the kitchen door slammed.

Kristen half stood, then sat back down. “I’m such an idiot. Sorry, Minnie. I’m used to being able to say whatever I want around you. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I gave my crème brûlée a longing glance, picked the strawberry off the top, popped it in my mouth, and went after my niece.

* * *

The next morning I wasn’t scheduled to work until noon, so I made a Real Breakfast for Kate and me. Omelets—egg and cheese only because that’s all there was—and fried potatoes. I didn’t burn a thing, and Kate ate hers without a single complaint.

The night before, after I’d caught up with her halfway back to the boathouse, she’d agreed to return to Kristen’s only after I convinced her that though Kristen was crusty on the outside, inside she had the proverbial heart of gold. Or if not gold, at least high-quality silver. Kate had dragged her feet all the way back, but once there, Kristen turned on the charm and had her laughing in minutes. She laughed the hardest at Kristen’s stories of a young Minnie’s attempts to play basketball, and I was so glad to see her laughing I didn’t mind the ridicule a single bit.

Now, Kate finished her glass of orange juice and put her dirty dishes next to the sink. “I’m working late,” she said. “Don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“Are you at the toy store?” I asked, turning to look at the whiteboard, but it was blank. “Kate, you didn’t write down—”

“Mrr,” Eddie said, just as the door shut. I felt the deck of the houseboat shift as Kate jumped to the pier and was gone.

“What am I doing wrong?” I asked my cat as I washed the dishes.

He jumped down from the nest he’d made of Kate’s sleeping bag and, purring, bumped my shin.

“This summer isn’t anything like I imagined,” I said, picking him up and giving him a good snuggle, one guaranteed to get Eddie hair all over my clothing.

“Mrr!” He squiggled out of my grasp, jumped to the floor, and pelted down the steps and into my bedroom.

Nice. Even my cat couldn’t stand me. “Love you, too, pal,” I called. I brushed off what feline hairs I could, grabbed my backpack, managed to drop it, picked it up again, and headed out into the sunshine. Rafe had left at oh-dark-thirty for a short fishing trip with some friends, but I looked at the house as I walked by, somehow hoping to catch a glimpse of him even though I knew he was gone.

“Silly,” I murmured, shaking my head at myself. Had I really come to this? That a single day without him was too long to endure? Was this what love could do?

I decided to think about it later and turned my face to the morning sun, the better to enjoy my walk. The last few days, I’d been thinking about John and Nandi Jaquay and how Polly from the chamber of commerce had said they’d seemed intent on putting Rex out of business. Even though I’d passed that information on to Ash, I’d thought of a way that I, as a private and concerned citizen, could learn more about the Jaquays without raising anyone’s suspicions. It could be that Kate’s unhappiness with me was due to associating me with finding a murder victim, and if I could help find the killer, maybe she’d shift from angry adolescent to nice niece.

The alliteration was pleasing, but it wasn’t quite right, so instead of going straight to the front door of the Tonedagana County Building, which was right in front of me at this point, I wandered a bit on the county’s complicated system of sidewalks, thinking about other possibilities. Radiant relative? Kind kin? Friendly family?

“It’s Minnie, right?”

I jumped at the gravelly voice. In the shade of a large maple tree, a man was sitting on a picnic table bench. He was thin, with long, sun-streaked hair and was smiling at me over the innards of a lawn mower. One of Ash’s friends, and last summer he’d helped teach me to water-ski. Sort of.

“Hey, Tank.” I eyed his uniform of dark blue pants and a light blue short-sleeved shirt with a name embroidered on the left pocket. “Is your name really Cecil?”

“Yeah, and if you call me that, I’ll never talk to you again.” He smiled, wiping his greasy hands on a rag.

I laughed. “No worries. I didn’t know you worked here.”

“Maintenance for almost three years, did roofing before that. What brings you to the county building?” he asked.

It occurred to me that my plan of going up to the building department could be revised. I’d met the head of the building department last year and had hoped to expand our acquaintance this morning, but maybe Tank could help me. “Do you know John and Nandi Jaquay?”

Tank’s easy smile faded fast. “Why do you ask?” His voice was wary.

And now was the time to trot out the not-quite-true story I’d dreamed up for the building department. “I have a friend who’s thinking about doing some work for them, but I’ve heard—”

“If whatever you’ve heard is bad, then it’s right.” Tank pulled a screwdriver out of his pocket and leaned forward to replace the lawnmower’s housing. “Those two are why I ended up here at the county. Things came out okay for me, but the roofer I worked for lost his business. Lost his house and his wife, too.”

“That sounds horrible.” I sat across from him. “Do you mind telling me what happened?”

He snorted. “We put a top-of-the-line standing seam metal roof on their house and never got paid because those two said our work was substandard.” He said the word in almost a growl. “Substandard, my . . . my aunt Fanny. We did quality work, the best in the area, and because we finished a week late, they wouldn’t pay.”

“That can’t be right.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Tank finished tightening and put the screwdriver in his pocket. “My boss took them to court, but it didn’t do any good. The Jaquays had all these lies the judge believed and we didn’t get a dime. Worse, those two spread the word that our roofing was crap, and before you knew it, business dried up and we were done.”

I stared at him. “That’s awful!”

He nodded. “So tell your friend to stay away.” Standing, he said, “The only people I know to win against the Jaquays were Rex and Dawn Stuhler. They ran this huge social media blitz and got the Jaquays to back down. Of course, now Rex is dead.” Tank shrugged. “You never know, do you?”

I thanked him for his information and time, and left as he pulled the lawnmower to life, but the engine’s roar didn’t drown out my thoughts.

The Jaquays were small-minded, grasping, and vindictive toward more than just ABK Pest Control. On the plus side, Rex and his wife had fought back and won against the Jaquays.

But had the fight cost Rex his life?