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The thought of a husband slowed me down in my walk to the car. Maybe he was a huge hulking man who won arm-wrestling contests all over the country. Or maybe he was one of those militia guys and had high gates circling the property, owned lots of guns, and was prepared to shoot trespassers on sight.

“Don’t be stupid,” I told myself. If I saw any signs of that, I’d drive by, that’s all. Same if there were big growling dogs or chickens. Large groups of chickens scared the snot out of me, and by large groups I meant any number more than zero. They’d peck me to death, given half a chance, I just knew it.

By the time I turned onto Valley Road, I’d imagined Audry’s house as a ramshackle 1960s ranch with aluminum siding that had needed replacing for twenty years and a roof that was rough with age and stained with pine needles. There’d be no porch, just concrete steps, and the garage would be so crowded with junk that the cars—a rusted pickup with bullet holes in the side and an ancient Oldsmobile that didn’t run most of the time—would be parked outside.

Which was why I drove right past Audry’s house. I was so intent on finding the horrible picture I’d imagined out of absolutely nothing that it wasn’t until I saw the mailbox numbers were in the 15000s that I stopped and turned around.

House number 17981 was far from a broken-down ranch. It was an old farmhouse with a Centennial Farm sign out front. The roof was new and white trim set off the warm clapboard siding’s yellow paint. The wide porch that ran across the front of the house held a set of wicker furniture, swing included, with flowered cushions. The window boxes were filled with happy red geraniums that bobbed in the light breeze. And there, in the front yard, was Audry on her knees, weeding an exuberant flower bed.

Since there was no sign of a hulking husband, firearms, or any other sort of weapon, I pulled into the driveway and got out of the car.

Audry stood, putting her hands to the small of her back and wincing. “It’s the bookmobile girl,” she said, smiling. “What brings you out my way?”

“Stan Larabee,” I said simply, and watched her smile change to wariness. “Once upon a time,” I went on, “you were married to him. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Why?” she asked.

I saw a shadow of stubbornness starting to form on her face, but I also saw what looked like a question. And something that might have been sorrow.

“He was my friend,” I finally said.

She looked at me the same way I’d looked at her. Then, “Come on up.”

• • •

We sat on the front porch, glasses of lemonade in our hands, drinking in the view. This part of Michigan had been carved out by glaciers ten thousand years ago. Ice a mile thick had scoured the land underneath, then retreated, leaving high hills running north and south with valleys and lakes between. Audry’s house was nestled in the flat of one of those valleys, looking north across the valley’s expanse and up the length of the hills.

I sat there, enjoying the view, while Audry assembled lemonade and cookies. She set a tray on the small table between the two cushioned porch chairs. “Here we go. Yes, please go ahead and pour.” She settled into the empty chair and took the filled glass I offered. “So, you know about my first marriage. Odd that a stranger should know when everyone else has forgotten. Bill and I have been married for so long I’d bet even my brothers don’t remember I was married before. How did you find out?”

In a few short sentences I’d told her about my hunch that Stan’s death had to do with his past, and my searching into the newspaper archive. She nodded, then asked, “You say you were Stan’s friend? How did that come about?”

I explained about the budget situation at the library, the closings of the small outlying libraries, the idea of the bookmobile as a solution, then Stan’s donation and his wish to be involved with the planning and purchase of the bookmobile.

She settled back, the white wicker creaking about her. “Sounds like Stan. He always had to be in the thick of things.”

That, I knew. What I didn’t know was anything about his past. “I hear there was some sort of feud between Stan and his sisters. Do you know anything about that?”

Audry gave me a measuring look.

“It’s not idle curiosity,” I said quickly. “It’s just . . . Stan never mentioned his sisters. I met with him almost every day for nearly a year and I didn’t know anything about his six sisters and the nieces and nephews he must have. The great-nieces and great-nephews, there must be lots more of those. He didn’t have any pictures of them on his desk; he never talked about them at all.”

Audry gave a deep sigh and looked out at the hills. “Ancient history,” she said heavily. “What can it matter now?”

I let the silence sit a little, then said, “Maybe it’s the reason he was killed.”

“After more than fifty years?” She shook her head. “I can see one of his sisters taking a frying pan to him back then, but now? They’re too old for that kind of thing, the ones who are left. We’re all too old.”

“Are you sure?” I asked quietly. “The police haven’t arrested anyone for Stan’s murder. Do you want to take even the smallest chance of letting his killer go free?”

“Of course not.”

“Then . . . tell me.”

She sighed and kept her gaze on the hills.

I waited. Waited some more.

The ice cubes in the lemonade had melted to tiny bits before she started to talk. “Back then,” she said, “no one understood how ambitious Stan was. He’d talk on and on about making pots of money, but everybody laughed at him. He was a farm kid, how was he ever going to make the money to buy all those things he wanted? No, he was going to be a farmer, just like his dad and grandpa before. That was the future everybody saw for him.”

“But it wasn’t the future he wanted,” I said.

“He wanted money,” she said flatly. “He wanted to be lord and master of the manor. He wanted every single person who’d laughed at him in high school for smelling like manure to come crawling to him for money and then he’d turn them down and laugh in their faces.”

I blinked. That didn’t sound like the Stan I’d known. And yet . . . and yet . . . he turned down almost everyone who’d come to him for a loan. He’d bought and renovated that huge house up in the hills, its windows showing little but lake and property that he owned. Lord and master.

“Do you know how he got started as a developer?” I asked.

Audry gave a smile, but it wasn’t a pretty one. “Unfortunately, yes.”

I swallowed. I’d liked Stan. I didn’t want to learn things about him that weren’t nice; I wanted to remember him as my exuberant friend who tried hard to get good things done. “What do you mean?”

“Stan’s mother died when he was in grade school, complications from another pregnancy if you can believe it. His dad died the year he graduated high school.” She looked pensive. “In April, during maple syrup season. He had a heart attack out in the sugar bush. Stan was the one to find him.”

“That must have been hard.”

She gave me a sardonic look. “You’d think, wouldn’t you? By the next spring, Stan had sweet-talked his sisters out of their share of the farm, got it put in his name only, and sold it to a man he’d found from downstate who had big dreams about turning the property into some kind of ski resort. Stan took off for Florida with the money and his sisters never talked to him again.”

My jaw went slack. “Stan stole the family farm from his sisters?”

“That’s not the way he looked at it. He said he’d pay them back. With interest.”

“Did he?”

“Eventually.” She made a gesture that suggested frustration, sadness, and tolerance. “He always needed more money, Stan did. Another property he needed to buy, another building with great potential, another whatever. By the time he got around to repaying his sisters, he had buckets of money to spare, but the damage was permanent. They took the money, of course,” she said with a twisted smile, “but they wouldn’t talk to him. Not even after he bought them houses and who knows what else.”

Just as Caroline had said. “Did you go with Stan to Florida?”

Her merry peal of laughter filled the porch. “No, I didn’t go to Florida. Stan was a good-looking son of a gun, but I got over that two weeks into the marriage. And once he sold the farm? I was done. Smartest thing I ever did was divorce that man and find my Bill.”

“How did Stan take your divorcing him?”

She snorted. “The way I heard it, he found a second wife before he’d unpacked his suitcase down there in Florida. If a man gets money, he can get a wife, easy enough.”

“You weren’t interested in his money?”

She gestured to the stupendous view. “I’ve woken up to this every day for almost fifty years. How could I get any richer? And Stan came back to this, in the end. Who’s to say which one of us was more successful?”

I looked at the green hills and the arching blue sky above, felt the peace and the calm, breathed in the clean air, heard nothing except birds and the rustle of leaves on the trees. Who indeed?

“So,” I said, “the feud started when Stan sold the family farm?”

“I wouldn’t call it a feud, really.” Audry considered her lemonade. “More of an ‘us against Stan’ attitude. His sisters all hated him and taught their children to hate him.”

“And unto the next generation?”

“I imagine.” She sighed.

Up until that point, I hadn’t considered her as old, but she suddenly looked every inch of her seventy years. I knew I should leave, but there were questions I needed to ask. “Are his sisters still alive?”

“Goodness.” Audry squinted at the horizon. “Four of them moved either downstate or out of state years ago. The other two . . . ? I really have no idea. One moved to Petoskey, the other down to Traverse City.”

I studied her, wondering if she truly didn’t know or if she was protecting a friend. “Do you know anything about Stan’s nieces and nephews? The great-nieces and nephews? Do any of them live in Chilson?”

She gave a small shrug. “I know almost nothing about that group. About all I know is that whole family tended toward having lots of children, and they liked naming the children all with the same first letter. Don’t ask me why, it’s just what they did.”

I blinked. “You mean all the sisters had names starting with
S
?”

“Sarah, Shirley, Stella, Sadie, Sylvia, and Sophie,” Audry recited, smiling faintly.

“There’s a niece named Gwen,” I said, remembering the friend of Aunt Frances.

“One of Sarah’s, as I recall. She had boys named Gordon and Gerard. And one of them used names that started with
K
. Kevin, Kyle, Karla, and Kendra.” She frowned. “Or was that the next generation down?”

As she’d said, lots of children, all of whom turned a year older every twelve months. Was this the definition of multiplicity? I found it hard enough to keep track of the ages of my brother’s children, and there were only three of them.

“But there is one thing that’s been bothering me,” Audry said slowly.

The weight she was giving to the words made the insides of my wrists tingle. “What’s that?”

“The farmhouse where you found him? That was where he and his sisters grew up.”

Lending a Paw: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery (Bookmobile Cat Mysteries) (18 page)

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