Lending a Paw

Chapter 5

The next day was Saturday, the day I had a standing invitation for breakfast at my aunt Frances’s house. It was also the only morning Aunt Frances didn’t cook breakfast for her summer boarders. Instead, a boarder cooked for everyone else. It was part of the deal when you stayed there, and learning of the duty had scared off more than one prospective boarder.

“You want me to cook breakfast for seven people?” the shocked inquirer would ask.

“Eight,” Aunt Frances would say. “My niece usually shows up.”

Every summer the niece quickly learned whose cooking was good, whose was awesome, and whose should be avoided at all costs. Since another one of Aunt Frances’s rules was that you ate heartily and complimented the cook no matter what, I’d found it was easier to skip the Saturdays likely to include burned bacon and flat pancakes.

This summer, however, Aunt Frances had hit the breakfast mother lode. Everyone from seventy-year-old Zofia down to twenty-two-year-old Harris seemed to have kitchen skills in abundance. The week before, sixty-five-year-old Leo had wowed us with sour cream and blueberry pancakes accompanied by buttery pecan maple syrup. The week before that, fifty-three-year-old Paulette had us begging for more breakfast burritos.

This particular Saturday, having left Eddie on the houseboat sleeping on the floor in a square of sunshine, I walked through downtown, up the hill overlooking Janay Lake, down a street lined with maple trees, and up the wide steps of the porch that ran across the front of Aunt Frances’s century-old home.

The wooden screen door banged shut behind me. The entry, stairway, and spacious living room were all empty, but laughter drifted in from the kitchen. Wooden floorboards creaked under my weight as I passed through the living room, admiring yet again the pine-paneled walls and ceiling, the end tables and coffee tables built from driftwood, the maps thumbtacked to the walls, and the fieldstone fireplace big enough for cooking a side of beef. It was a room full of calm and ease and I always felt that nothing bad could possibly happen here.

A tall, angular woman appeared in the doorway to the dining room. She smiled. “Thought I heard someone. Good morning, bright eyes. You must have had a long day yesterday with your bookmobile. I thought you’d call and tell me all about it.”

I stood on my tiptoes to kiss her cheek. She’d recently turned sixty, but I’d yet to spy a single wrinkle. “Morning, Aunt Frances.” It was a good time to tell her about the events of yesterday. An ideal time, really, but I couldn’t find the words to start the sad story. After breakfast. I’d be ready by then. “I’ll tell you everything after we eat. Who’s cooking this morning?”

“Dena and Quincy. Everyone else has been banished from the kitchen.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Dena and Quincy? But I thought Harris was being matched up with Dena.”

She sighed. “I know, dear, I know. I’m sure it’ll work out in the end.”

Fine words, but she looked a little concerned. And for good reason: Dena was twenty-five and Quincy had recently hit fifty. My aunt had a secret that I’d sworn on a tall stack of paperback mysteries to never reveal unless doing so would save at least ten lives. Aunt Frances only took boarders who were single and in need of a mate. Her extensive interviewing process, ostensibly to determine compatibility for the unusual environment and living arrangements, was in reality a way for Aunt Frances to start the matchmaking process. None of the boarders ever knew they were being set up, and in her fifteen years of taking in boarders she’d never had a failure.

If a pair she hadn’t intended was forming, all her plans would be toast. “Well, you haven’t missed yet, have you?”

“There’s always a first time,” she muttered.

“You said the same thing last year and that turned out fine by the end of the summer,” I said. “You can’t expect August endings in June. Especially early June. Don’t you always say that building a lasting love is like building Rome? That it can’t be done in a day?”

She hmmed a little, thinking it over. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re so right that I think I’ll stop worrying.” She winked, grinning. “No point in it, anyway.”

It was impossible not to smile back; my aunt had a very contagious grin. “There’s lots of time,” I said.

“Time for what?”

I jumped. Aunt Frances turned to Paulette, the boarder who’d been matched with Quincy, and said, “I was wondering if there was time to have another cup of coffee before breakfast. Do you have any idea what those two are cooking up for us?”

The pleasantly plump, tawny-haired woman scowled. “Nobody tells me anything around here.” She stomped off, her pink flip-flops popping loudly with each stomp.

“Bugger,” Aunt Frances muttered.

“No, it’s good,” I said softly. “Paulette is already in love with Quincy. She’s nuts with jealousy.”

“But how does that help with Dena and Harris? And how does it get Quincy to quit pretending he’s twenty-five when he’s fifty?”

“You’ll figure it out. You always do.”

A bell rang, clear and bright. Years upon years ago, the bell from an old train engine had been hauled up into a maple tree outside the kitchen porch. One end of a rope was tied to the top of the bell; the other end was attached to the porch. The sound of the bell meant summer, blue skies, and food.

A dark-haired woman poked her head through the dining room doorway. “Ah. There you are. Good morning, Minnie. Come on in, breakfast is ready.”

“Hi, Zofia,” I said. Seventy, spry, and widowed for five years, Zofia had finally loosed herself from her children’s clutches long enough to scamper north for the summer. “I’ll be staying with an old friend,” she’d told them, lying through her teeth.

“Coffee’s fresh.” Zofia waved us into the dining room and gestured at the wide-planked pine sideboard. “Tea water is hot, orange juice is cold.”

Aunt Frances took her seat at the head of the table. “Zofie, you haven’t been helping, have you? You’ll get your turn next week.”

“What, me, be useful?” Zofia put her palms flat against her collarbone and opened her eyes wide.

With a name like Zofia and her tendency to flowing skirts and dangling earrings, anyone would have guessed her to have been an actress, a Gypsy fortune-teller in a carnival, or at the very least a high school drama teacher. In reality, Zofia had married her childhood sweetheart, stayed home to raise their four children, and supported her husband in his career as a vice president for a major car company.

I took Aunt Frances a cup of coffee and greeted the others as they came in through various doors. Harris, the just-graduated college kid, from the back porch. Leo, whom Aunt Frances had matched with Zofia, came in through the living room, the morning newspaper in his hand. Paulette followed Leo, still stomping.

“And heeeeeere we come!” Quincy pushed open the swinging door between the kitchen and dining room. His mostly bald head was red with heat. “Ready or not!” He held the door open for a willowy young woman who was the triple threat of thin, beautiful, and smart. It was a combination that made me long to hate her, but I hadn’t figured out how to. She was too nice.

Dena smiled up at Quincy. “Thanks,” she said, maneuvering around him. He beamed and I started to share some of Aunt Frances’s worry. Dena was carrying a plate in each hand and another up each arm. She’d learned the trick, she’d told me, while waitressing in college. “Hash browns, bacon baked with maple syrup, fried eggs, and melon slices.” She gave Aunt Frances the first plate. “Nothing burned and nothing raw except what should be.”

After a few moments of pleasurable eating, Aunt Frances turned to Leo. “Did you get the newspaper?”

His mouth full, he nodded.

The paper! I’d forgotten all about it. News of Stan’s death was bound to be on the front page. I had no idea if my name would be in print or not, but it very well could be. I mentally kicked myself for not calling Aunt Frances last night. And Kristen. I really should have told Kristen. And my . . . well, not my mom. I wasn’t ready to deal with her concern. I loved my parents dearly, but Mom’s mothering method involved a lot of what, in my teenage years, I’d called smothering. There was more than one reason I lived a five-hour drive away from my parents.

My aunt piled her fork full of hash browns. “Anything important in the paper this morning? These are outstanding, Dena, by the way.”

“Um, Aunt Frances? Could I talk to you a minute in the kitchen?” The breakfast table didn’t seem like the best place to discuss finding a dead body.

“Hang on, kiddo.” She was watching Leo, who’d picked up the newspaper and was waving it at her.

“A guy was killed out in the east part of the county.”

“Oh?” Aunt Frances’s eyes were going up and down, matching the flapping of the newspaper as she tried to read the headline. “What was his name?”

“Don’t remember,” Leo said. “But he was murdered.”

Surprised murmurs ran around the table.

“Bar fight?” Zofia asked.

“Bet there was a girl involved.” Paulette sniffed.

“Um,” I said.

Leo shook his head and held the newspaper out at arm’s length so he could read it. “He was some rich guy, born and raised here.” He scanned the article. “Says here that he was found by—” He stopped. “By the bookmobile librarian.”

Everyone suddenly focused on me. The silence was so sudden that I thought my ears had stopped working.

“Minnie?” my aunt asked softly. “Is this true? Are you all right?”

Her kindness almost undid me. I nodded and gripped my coffee cup tight. “Ed . . . we’d . . . I’d stopped by that old township hall . . . and . . . and heard something. It was at an old farmhouse. I called 911, but it was too late.”

“Poor Minnie.” Aunt Frances put her hand over mine. “How horrible for you.”

“Yes. And Stan . . .” I swallowed. “I knew him.”

The boarders murmured sympathy. The pressure from Aunt Frances’s hand grew intense. “You knew him? Stan . . . ?”

“Stan Larabee. He’s the one who donated the money for the bookmobile, remember? You said you didn’t know him, last fall when we started planning everything.”

“Yes, I remember saying that.” She released my hand. I stared at my skin, where a white mark showed how her hand had lain.

“You poor thing,” Paulette said, “having to see something like that.”

The others chimed in, asking questions that ranged from who, to how, to why, to when, and to where. All of them asked something, all of them except Aunt Frances, who sat through the remainder of the meal without eating another bite of breakfast.

• • •

I spent the rest of Saturday in the library and barely noticed the passing hours. This was easy to do since the bookmobile’s circulation was separate from the main library and had been shoehorned into a windowless space that had once been the newspaper archives.

My idea had been to get the newspapers microfilmed and donate the print copies to the local historical society to free up the space. Stephen’s objection had been predictable. “Who’s going to pay for the microfilming? It’s not a cheap endeavor, Minnie. Not cheap at all.”

After I’d found, applied for, and been awarded a grant that covered a majority of the costs, Stephen had said, “Even if it’s empty, that room isn’t big enough to house a bookmobile collection.” After I’d found a system of shelving that went floor to ceiling, Stephen had sighed. “Now, Minnie, please don’t take this the wrong way, but height is not one of your sterling qualities.” But I’d been ready for that objection and handed over a catalog of library ladders before he finished his sentence.

The room was high and stark and I loved every inch of it. A few weeks back I’d convinced the janitor—with the help of some fresh doughnuts—to install a tiny drop leaf desk for one of the bookmobile’s laptop computers. I puttered away the rest of Saturday morning, the afternoon, and half the evening, moving from desk to shelves to desk, comparing the main library’s top circulating items against what was checked out on the bookmobile, comparing the checkouts against the lists of top bookmobile books other librarians had sent me, poking around, researching, thinking, and poking some more.

Early on, I tried to call Kristen, but was dumped into her voice mail. I sat there, gripping my cell phone, surprised at the depth of my disappointment. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted to talk to my best friend. I left a short message to call and went back to work.

The huge breakfast I’d eaten lasted me until midafternoon, and I ignored the gnawing in my stomach until I got a headache. By the time I walked home, took some ibuprofen, and ate cold cereal for supper, I was tired enough to crawl into bed with a book and an Eddie. I drifted to sleep so fast that I didn’t have time to wonder why I’d worked so hard all day.

• • •

Sunday morning, I woke to darkness and rain dripping off the eaves of the houseboat. A morning made for sleeping in. I rolled over, vaguely heard an Eddie-squawk, and closed my eyes.

Bright sunlight in my face woke me. I squinted at the clock. “Half past ten?” I grabbed the clock and pulled it closer. Sure enough, most of the morning was gone. By the time I was showered, dressed, and full of another bowl of cereal, the sky was so blue it was hard to believe it had been pouring rain three hours earlier.

My left-hand neighbor, Louisa Axford, nodded at me as I came out on deck. “Rain before seven, done by eleven,” she said from the comfort of her chaise lounge. “You must be busy up there at your library. I haven’t seen you in days, seems like.”

“Friday was the first bookmobile run.”

“That’s right.” She smiled. Everybody did when you mentioned the bookmobile. “Shakedown cruise. How did it go? Any problems?”

And to think I’d ever bemoaned the fact that people didn’t read the local newspaper. “The bookmobile ran fine,” I said. “No scratches, no dings, no generator issues, no engine problems.”

“Good for you.” She pushed back a strand of her long, gloriously white hair. Louisa and her husband, Ted, had owned some sort of manufacturing business downstate before they sold it and retired. Their houseboat was bigger and newer than mine, but not by much. I’d never figured out exactly what the business had been, but they affectionately referred to it as the cash cow. It had taken me some time to realize that they could have afforded Stan Larabee’s aerie. Could have afforded it, but didn’t want it. They preferred to travel, and did, at great length from September through May, all over the world. “Stop on by for a drink later on,” she said, “and we’ll celebrate.”

“I will, thanks.”

What Louisa and Ted didn’t do, however, was read. When I first met them and learned of their lifestyle, I’d assumed they were readers. All those airport waits, all those hotels. Perfect for lots of reading. But they’d smiled and demurred when I’d recommended Lee Child’s books. “No, thanks, hon. We’re not readers.”

I’d blinked. Not readers? They were smart and funny and had plenty of time—how could they not want to read? In spite of this, we got along fine as neighbors, to the point where we’d exchanged front-door keys, because you never knew what could happen. My right-hand neighbors, though . . .

“Have you seen the Olsons?” I asked.

Louisa laughed. “Have you seen the calendar?”

“I know they hardly ever come up until the end of June, but—”

“Try never.” Louisa picked up a glass of ice water. A wedge of lemon was perched prettily on its rim. “In the ten years we’ve owned this boat, they’ve never once been up before the Fourth. And am I complaining? No, I am not. Gunnar Olson is a horrible excuse for a human being and I will be forever grateful to you for occupying that boat slip. We see far too much of him, otherwise.”

She made a face. “Before you leased that slip, he made our lives miserable. Did I tell you he complained to the city that our boat’s engine violated the noise ordinance? And every time my Ted went on deck to smoke his pipe, Gunnar made sure to stand on his deck and make a show of coughing and wheezing. And that fuss he made over Holton’s dog, remember?” She cast a malevolent glance Olson-ward. “The man is a menace. Happily, he bothers you these days instead of us.” She toasted me with her water. “Thank you, dear. Thank you, thank you.”

Remember the low price of your boat slip, I told myself. Cheap is good. And Gunnar wasn’t up north all that often. “But if the Olsons haven’t been up, then . . .” I frowned.

“Then what, hon?”

“Nothing.” The boat lights I’d thought I’d seen on Friday night must have been the product of my weary and troubled mind.

Not that I wanted to see the Olsons. Mrs. wasn’t so bad, as far as I could tell from what little I saw of her. Mr., though, was as bad as Louisa said. There’d been a reason the lease for my boat slip was so cheap; I just hadn’t known what it was until Gunnar Olson showed up. Full of bluster and condescension, he’d spent his sixty years being sure that his opinions were the correct ones.

The day Gunnar berated me for not coiling my ropes properly—“They’re lines, little miss, lines!”—I went to talk to Chris Ballou, the marina’s second-generation owner, manager, maintenance guy, and boat repair guy.

He’d grinned, his teeth bright white against his sun-worn skin. “Piece of work, ain’t he? But you can handle him, Min. That’s why I let you take that slip.”

I’d looked at him sourly. “And why you leased it to me at a discount? You could have warned me.”

“And ruin the surprise?” He’d laughed and gone away whistling.

Now Louisa tipped her ice water in my direction. “Mr. Ballou was here earlier, looking like he was ready to burst. Said he needed to talk to you.” She took a sip and made a face. “Isn’t it five o’clock yet?”

“Did Chris say what he wanted?” Maybe he’d finally tracked down a used bilge pump for me. Chris was many things, but speedy wasn’t one of them. My boat’s bilge pump had been wonky since the end of last summer and I’d rather have the thing replaced cheaply before it died than expensively after the fact.

Louisa shook her head and turned her face up to the sun, closing her eyes. “Get some SPF fifty on, young lady, or you’ll end up like me, wrinkled as an old prune.”

“Good idea,” I said, and went to hunt down Chris. I found him behind the counter in the marina’s dusty parts shop, sitting in an ancient canvas director’s chair, his feet up on an equally ancient cardboard box. He was deep in a conversation about fishing lures with Rafe Niswander, a mutual friend and neighbor from up the road, and a boat owner who went by the name Skeeter. Whether that was a nickname or his given name I had no idea and had never asked. Some questions are best left unanswered.

Since Skeeter and I were both the same age and were both single, half the marina had been trying to get us together since last summer when he’d first rented a slip. We’d even made a desultory attempt at a date, but there’d been no spark of interest flaring up, no flame of romantic heat, no nothing. We’d ended the evening as we’d begun: friends.

“Hey, Min Tin Tin.” Chris toasted me with a bottle of motor treatment. “What’s doing, girl?”

If I had to make a guess, I’d have said Chris was in his early forties, but he had that whippet-thin body that meant he’d look forty when he was sixty. From his speech patterns, however, you’d think he was twenty.

“Louisa said you were looking for me.” I nodded hellos to Skeeter and Rafe.

“Oh, yeah.” Chris dropped his feet to the concrete floor and half stood to reach for something underneath the counter. “Before I spread any more rumors, I got to find out if they’re true.” He held up the newspaper and stabbed a finger at the article about Stan. “Says here the bookmobile person found old Stan Larabee. Was that you? My money’s on it.”

I stared at the article. Why did Chilson have to have the only newspaper in the area that still ran a weekend edition? Was there really enough news in the county to print a paper six times a week? Once a week would surely be enough.

“Leave her alone, Ballou,” Skeeter said quietly.

Chris stabbed the paper again. “I knew it, I just knew it. Everybody was saying so, right, Rafe?”

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

“You know.” Rafe shrugged. “Everybody.”

I crossed my eyes at him. For a smart man, Rafe could be exceedingly inarticulate when he chose, and outside of his working hours, he typically chose the path of inarticulateness.

“At the bar last night,” Chris said. “Larabee being killed was all anyone talked about. Well, that and who’s going to get all his money.”

Of course Stan’s death was the hot topic. How could it not be? The hometown boy had made good, come home to retire, and was murdered by person or persons unknown. Every occupant of every barstool in town had probably laid claim to knowing Stan and having an opinion on the murder. “Your buddies figure out who killed him?”

Rafe shot me a half grin, but my sarcasm was lost on Chris.

“Could have been a lot of people.” Chris dropped back into the director’s chair. “You better watch out. Killer’s going to be after you, next.”

I snorted. “Really.”

“Well, sure. It’s all over town. Stan was beat up real bad and then shot, right? And you’re the one who found him, so he must have told you who did it before he died. Bound to have.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And does everybody also know why the police haven’t arrested the killer?”

“Well, sure, there’re a couple reasons.” Chris’s feet went back up on the cardboard box. “The guy’s in hiding, for one. I mean, who kills somebody and goes to work the next day? And maybe all Stan gave you was a first name and it’ll take some time to figure out which one it is. Some names are real common, you know.”

“Like ‘Chris’?”

“Nah. There aren’t that many . . . hey! You ain’t saying I killed Stan Larabee. No way are you saying that. He didn’t really say a Chris killed him, did he? Hey, Minnie, don’t walk away like that. You got to tell me!”

Out of sight of Chris, I winked at Rafe and Skeeter. “It’ll take some time to figure it out,” I said, deadpan. “You might want to come up with an alibi.”

“An alibi? For when? Minnie . . . hey, Minnie!”

But I was already out the door.

• • •

The rest of Sunday I spent taking care of the mundane details of life. Balanced the checkbook, hauled a pillowcase full of dirty clothes over to the marina’s coin laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and wiped down the houseboat’s many railings. Eddie followed me around, criticizing my efforts as only a cat is able to do. His unwavering stare clearly meant That’s as clean as you can get it? Please.

“If you think you can do better, go ahead,” I told him.

He sat down and licked his chest.

I popped my cleaning rag in his direction, but he didn’t flinch. “Why is it that I clean the whole place and get nothing but grief, but the only chore you have is cleaning yourself and if I comment on that, I get ignored?”

Since the answer to that was obvious—I’m a cat—I didn’t expect a response. And that’s exactly what I got.

I made the standard Sunday call to my mom and dad, stumbling a little over Mom’s question of “Did anything fun and exciting happen to you this week?” but recovered quickly enough that she didn’t sound suspicious when I said the guy who’d donated the money for the bookmobile was dead.

“Oh, Minerva, I’m so sorry. Did you send a note to his wife? He was elderly, as I recall. Cancer, was it? So many people get cancer these days—it’s all this plastic, I just know it. The other day I was reading about this woman who—”

From long experience, I knew the only way to get a word in edgewise was to interrupt. “It wasn’t cancer, Mom.”

“It wasn’t? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” The word “murder” hovered on my lips, but I brushed it away because I knew what would happen if I said it out loud. Mom would say, “Minerva Joy, are you sure you’re all right?” and escalate rapidly to “You’re not fine, I can hear it in your voice. Bob? Get the luggage, we’re driving up to Chilson right now.”

After they got here, it would take me days to reassure my mother that, yes, I was fine, that, no, I didn’t need therapy, and that I wasn’t going to fall on their necks weeping with anxiety and sorrow and loss and beg to be taken home with them for an extended stay.

So I didn’t say that Stan had been murdered. I dealt with the guilt by vowing that I’d tell Dad all about it. And I would. One of these days.

“Just because he didn’t have cancer,” Mom said now, “is no reason not to stay away from pesticides. Speaking of toxic chemicals, how is Kristen doing with getting organic pork?”

The conversation stayed permanently diverted. The call came to a close with Mom’s typical “I worry about you, honey. Are you eating enough vegetables? And are you still writing the notes? Please tell me you are.”

I reassured her on both counts. As soon as we said good-bye, I made a quick call to Aunt Frances and asked her not to tell her sister-in-law and her brother, aka my dad, anything about the end of Friday’s bookmobile trip. Since Aunt Frances had known my mother longer than I had, it didn’t take much persuading.

Somehow, it was inevitable that Kristen would call when I was on the phone. I picked up her message: “Sorry I didn’t call earlier, had to take a fast trip down to Traverse to test a new cheese. Stop by tonight, okay? See ya!”

I stowed my cell phone in my purse, patted a sleeping Eddie on the head, scrawled a note on the whiteboard, and headed out.

• • •

The name of Kristen’s restaurant, Three Seasons, was a direct result of her vow to specialize in serving locally grown foods. When she was working up her business plan, she decided to draw up sample menus from each season. Spring was full of greens, asparagus, lamb, and fish. Summer ranged from cherries to corn to peaches to tomatoes to pork and fish. Fall was apples and squash and potatoes, beef, and fish. It was when she started work on the winter menus that she ran into problems.

“I can’t serve frozen vegetables!” She’d thrown her arms in the air, making her tall self even taller. “What am I going to do?”

We’d been at the sideboard in Aunt Frances’s dining room, our backs to a winterscape of white lawns and naked trees, our fronts facing Kristen’s pages and pages of spread-out scribbles. “Shut down in the winter,” I said. “Go somewhere warm. You don’t like snow that much, anyway.”

“What?” She’d put her hands to her sleek hair. “I can’t do that! How can I be closed four months out of the year?”

“Okay, close after New Year’s, open on April Fools’ Day.”

“How can I be closed three months of the year?”

“Who’s going to eat there in February?” I’d asked. “Besides me and Aunt Frances, I mean. The snowbirds are all gone after the holidays and we’re too far from most of the ski resorts to be a destination.”

“I can’t be closed three months of the year,” she’d said, but it was almost a question.

“Why not? Lots of restaurants around here are closed in winter.” I ran roughshod over the objections she was starting to think up. “Interview the people you want to hire and tell them right off what you’re thinking. If they shy away, well, maybe you’ll have to stay open to keep your core staff. Why not at least try? But this way you’ll only need to come up with menus from three seasons.”

By then she was starting to think about it. “Three seasons,” she’d said. “I can do three, easy.”

Thus the restaurant’s name was born. The location, after weeks of searching for a perfect place that I was convinced existed only in Kristen’s head, was locked in when a rambling bed-and-breakfast that had once been a family cottage went on the market. “Cottage” being a loose term, since in this case it referred to a mammoth five-thousand-square-foot structure.

Kristen’s bank had kicked loose the loan when she barged into the bank president’s office and served him chicken piccata, asparagus with morel mushrooms, and an apple tart. Four months later the restaurant opened to great acclaim.

This Sunday evening, I walked in through the back door, simultaneously greeting and staying out of the way of the sous chef. I nodded at various staff members and wound my way through the pantry to Kristen’s office, where she was working away at her computer.

“Hey.” I sat in the chair opposite her desk. Now that the time had come to tell her all about Friday, I didn’t know how to begin. “How’s the new chef working out? He’s been here two or three weeks now, right?”

Kristen kept clicking keyboard keys. “Why can’t I get a steady supply of strawberries? It’s June, for crying out loud.” She ranted on about her supplier, calling dire threats upon his head, his children’s heads, and his children’s children’s heads.

When she took a breath before making a new threat, I asked again. “New chef?”

She squinted at the computer, then pushed herself away from it. “The jury is still out, but I think he’ll be fine.”

“How was the cheese?” I asked. “Wasn’t that why you went down to Traverse City?”

Sighing, she shook her head. “Why is it so hard to find exactly what I want?”

I’d been Kristen’s personal search engine for years due to her need to use both hands while cooking, but this wasn’t a question that took any research. “Because you’re a prima donna restaurateur who is so persnickety that you can’t be satisfied with anything less than the absolute best?”

She considered my question. “Sure, that could be it.”

“Or it could be that you’re a persnickety grouch who won’t be satisfied with anything, even if it is the best.”

This, too, she considered. Then she grinned. “Nah. I don’t see it.”

“And I don’t see why anyone would want to run a restaurant.”

“No?” Still smiling, she picked up her phone. “Hey, Harvey, bring me a couple of specials.” She shut down her laptop and crossed her arms. “Before we eat, I want to clear up one or two small points. And get that puzzled look off your face. You know what I’m talking about.”

I hung my head. “Yes, I do, and I don’t know what came over me, but I promise never to eat processed cheese ever again.”

She smothered a laugh. “Do it one more time and I’ll feed you goat cheese for a month.” A real look of terror must have shown on my face because she laughed outright, then said, “Small points. Are we or are we not best friends?”

“We are.” Kristen had grown up in Chilson and I’d been a regular summer visitor as soon as I’d been old enough to be put on a bus headed north. Since my mom’s job as a guide at Dearborn’s Greenfield Village was busiest in the summer, it hadn’t taken much whining to get sent up to Aunt Frances. Kristen and I had discovered each other at the city beach the summer I’d turned twelve and we’d been friends ever since.

“Okay, then.” She leaned back and draped her long legs over the corner of her garage sale desk. “Do we or do we not share all the important events in our lives?”

“No.”

She sat up a little, frowning. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“You never did tell me about what happened between you and Danny Stevens behind the high school gym.”

“And I never will. Larger point. Are you planning to tell me about finding Stan Larabee before hell freezes over, or after? You’ve been here five minutes already, Minnie. Start talking.”

“I . . . don’t know how.” There were no words, no way to express what I needed to say, nothing that would help, nothing that would change what had happened, nothing that would change the pictures in my head. Oh, Stan . . .

“Minnie,” she said gently. “Talk to me.”

A large silence dropped down between us. I watched it expand and grow to fill all the space in the room, to take up all the air. I was starting to struggle for breath when the office door opened and Harvey, the sous chef, bustled in with a plate in each hand.

“Ladies,” he said. Behind him rushed a waiter carrying a small table. The table went down next to me. The waiter, who’d had a white tablecloth over one arm, flung it out and over the table. Out of one apron pocket came linen napkins; out of the other came flatware. He backed away and Harvey set the plates on the table gently, turning the entrée so it would be closest to the edge of the table. He whisked a small vase of flowers out of his back pocket and centered it on the tablecloth. “Is there anything else I can get you?” He looked expectant.

“No, thanks. That’s it.” After hovering a moment, Harvey shuffled out, and Kristen pushed her rolling chair back from her desk and came around to a stop in front of the other plate.

I’d already bellied up to the table. “That guy is so in love with you he can hardly see straight.” I stuck my fork into the lightly browned lake trout.

“Huh. Does that explain why he dropped a tray of dinner rolls the other night?”

I stuffed my mouth full. “Oh, man, do you know how good this is?”

“It’s my creation, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but . . .” I waved my empty fork in the air before I plunged it once again into the entrée. “But you get jaded, eating this kind of stuff every day. It’s only people like me, who only get to eat like this on rare occasions, who can truly appreciate it.”

“It wouldn’t be rare if you’d let me feed you more often.”

“Let’s not go there,” I said.

“You can eat here every day for free. Twice a day. Three times, if we had breakfast.” She put her arms flat on the table and looked at me hard. “I know how much I owe you, don’t think I don’t.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” I said in a low voice.

“Yes, I do.” Kristen banged the table with her fist, making the flatware bounce and the plates rattle. “You’re the only one who believed in me. My parents didn’t, my former fiancé didn’t, and for sure my former evil corporate employer thought I was nuts. Only you believed. Not only that, but you did all the research on—”

I cut her off. “You don’t owe me a thing. You’re my friend. That’s what friends do.”

“There are friends and there are friends.” She sat back. “But since you obviously don’t want the fun of an argument, I’ll say you don’t owe me anything, either. Except for one thing.”

I picked up my fork again. At age twelve, she’d welcomed a downstate stranger into her life and had never once turned her back on me. She was wrong. I owed her far more than I could ever repay. “Okay, one.”

“Tell me what happened with Stan Larabee. Tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and I’ll never ask you about it again.”

“Never?”

“Well, I’ll try not to ask you about it again.” She smiled the half smile that always made me giggle. “And this isn’t idle curiosity—it’s simple clarification of what the grapevine has already told me.”

“Which is . . . ?”

She flittered her fingers. “Oh, the usual. Stan had been beaten up something horrible, half the bones in his body were broken, one of his kidneys had been removed, and he wrote the name of his killer on the floor in his own blood, but when you were trying to save him, you stepped on the blood and messed up the writing.”

“The grapevine is batting zero.”

Something in my voice must have given away the emotions I was trying to hold in, because Kristen moved to my side and put a hand on my shoulder. “Was it bad?” she asked gently.

“I really don’t . . .”

Don’t want to talk about it, don’t want to think about it, don’t want to see Stan’s limp body again, don’t want it to have happened. What I wanted was Stan to be alive. I just wanted him back.

“Oh, Minnie.” Kristen’s arms went all the way around me, and it was there, in the comfort of my best friend’s embrace, that the tears came.

• • •

“Bawled my eyes out,” I told Eddie. “Cried like a little kid who’d dropped her ice-cream cone in the dirt. And before you ask, yes, that happened to me once. Chocolate soft-serve. It was a harsh lesson. Would you like to hear about it?”

Eddie’s eyes remained closed.

“I didn’t think so.”

We were cozied up in bed, me sitting up with my arms around my legs, Eddie lying like a meat loaf in the middle of the comforter. If he’d brought a tape measure to bed, I don’t think he could have centered himself more accurately.

“I ended up telling her everything,” I told Eddie. “About you stowing away, then you being the one to run over to that farmhouse. She thinks it was fate. I’m not a big believer in that kind of stuff. What do you think?”

Eddie didn’t move.

“Yeah, you’re right. Fate, shmate. Things don’t always happen for a reason; sometimes they just happen.” I smiled. “Zofia would agree with Kristen, I bet. She said it was fate that brought her to Aunt Frances this summer.” I put my chin on my knees. “You know, Aunt Frances took the news about Stan a little weird.”

I thought back to breakfast, how her hand had left a mark on mine, how she’d eaten hardly a bite of food. “Maybe she’s just worried about me.” It didn’t fit, though. “Well, I’m out of ideas. What do you think, Edster?” No response. “Eddie?”

A low buzzing noise came from my furry friend.

Eddie was sound asleep. And snoring.