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.”