TWENTY THREE
“I think it’s actually a hamster,” I said to Grace, crouching down and inspecting the small creature cradled in her hands.
“Even better!” she said, her eyes growing wider. “Can we keep it?”
Jake stuck his head around the corner and Sophie and Will burst ahead of him, running toward us.
“Can we keep him?” Sophie asked. Her hard hat hung drunkenly off her head and she shifted it back into position.
“Can we keep what?” Jake asked.
Will wrinkled his nose. “The rat Grace found.”
“The rat?” Jake asked, looking at Grace’s hands. His face paled a little. “How did you get your hands on a rat?”
“Mom was yelling at that lady,” Will said.
I glared at him. “I was not yelling at anyone.”
Jake turned to look at me. “Who were you not yelling at?”
“No one.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “So you were talking to yourself?”
“Can we please keep him?” Grace pleaded. “Please?”
“Go find a box,” I said to the three kids. I pried the small animal out of Grace’s hands. “Like a shoebox.”
Will stared at me blankly. “This isn’t a shoe store, Mom.”
I waved my animal-filled hand in frustration. “There are mountains of trash as big as Mt. Everest out there. I’m sure you can find a small container to house this creature.”
“We’re not allowed out on the floor,” Sophie reminded me.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said, frustrated. “Go find a mug in the workroom. A copy paper box in the copy room. Just find something!”
They all looked at each other and took off. Brenda was standing a few feet away with her kids and they took off running after mine.
She shook her head, an amused smile on her face. “I’m not even going to ask…”
I nodded gratefully.
“How did she pick up a rat?” Jake asked.
“It’s a hamster,” I said, inspecting the ball of fur in my hands. “And I was…otherwise occupied.”
“With?”
“With Helen Stunderson,” I said.
He thought for a moment. “The woman from the library? The dead guy’s ex?”
“Yes,” I said. Jake’s expression darkened and I quickly explained how she showed up out of nowhere.
A look of relief washed over his face. “Okay,” he said. “So she works for the school.”
“Don’t you think that’s weird?” I asked. “That she showed up here the same day as me?”
“Not if she, you know, works for the school.”
“And she knew about me talking to Olga yesterday,” I said, nudging him with my leg. “Don’t you find that the least bit problematic?”
He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I don’t know, Daisy. But, jeez. I told you to let it go and let the police do their job. Or look into getting your private eye license.”
I straightened. “You didn’t tell me that was an option.”
“Because it’s not,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Because, you know,
kids
.”
On cue, they came running back. Sophie was holding the bottom of a copy paper box and Grace was holding the lid. Derek was trailing after them, tears running down his beet-red face, shrieking, “Mine! Mine!”
“This was the only one we could find,” Will said, his cheeks red from exertion. He huffed and puffed a little. “We got it out of your office, Jake.
“Sophie found it,” Grace said. “Not you.”
“Whatever,” he said.
Derek tried to rip the box out of Sophie’s hands but Brenda swooped in. “Not quite sure why he has a box fetish,” she said, wrangling the toddler with a cowboy’s expertise.
“Probably because he’s two,” I told her.
Jake leaned down and looked into my hands. “We are not taking a rat home.”
I held it up and he shrank back. “I told you,” I said. “It’s a hamster.”
“Whatever it is,” Jake said. “We don’t need to bring it home. I like our home rabies free.”
“Hamsters don’t carry rabies,” I said, taking the box from Sophie. I set it down on the ground and gently placed the hamster inside. Grace was ready with the lid and squashed it on top of the box. “Besides, if we leave him here, you guys will recycle him or something.”
“No,” Jake said, shaking his head. “He’ll live in the trash with the other rodents until they get flushed out of here by trucks and loud noises.”
The kids crowded around the box and Will lifted the lid. I hovered over them, trying to get a good view. The little hamster was gray with brown spots and he scurried about, investigating all four corners of the box, his tail and whiskers twitching with every movement.
The kids giggled and a smile blossomed on my face, too. I turned to Jake, who was waiting with a look of resignation.
“We’re keeping him.”
He sighed. “Of course we are.”
“I’m glad you see it my way.”
“Don’t I always?” he asked, shaking his head. “But I’ll tell you one thing.”
“What’s that?”
He smiled at me. “If you end up in jail because of your new found investigating hobby, I’m not feeding that thing.”
TWENTY FOUR
We finished the field trip at the recycling plant without incident and made it home in time for lunch. I cooked up a plateful of quesadillas and the kids wolfed them down, anxious to go play with their new pet and to decide on a name.
As I did the dishes, I couldn’t help but think about Helen and our confrontation. I was getting two distinctly different points of view from both her and Olga. I tended to believe Olga because, despite the clowns, she’d come off as the more rational of the two. But I didn’t really know either of them. As I rinsed off the last of the glasses and set them in the strainer, I decided I needed to know more about the one person that actually mattered.
Olaf.
I toweled off my hands, laid the towel on the sink to dry and plopped down on the couch with my laptop.
The truth was that I remembered very little about Olaf. I remembered that he was nice and that we had decent conversation over dinner. He was polite, with a good sense of humor. But I couldn’t recall many details about his life. That made me feel bad, like I hadn’t really participated when we’d gone to dinner and I wondered if maybe I hadn’t really engaged. Not that it would’ve changed anything, but maybe I hadn’t paid as much attention to him as I should’ve.
I pulled up the Around The Corner dating website. I hadn’t been on it since the night I’d accepted Olaf’s invitation. I’d set it up with my usual email address and a simple password, so it was easy to get back into my account. It was strange to see the picture I’d posted of myself and to see the words I’d written to describe myself. I’d been so unhappy at the time and it felt like I was looking at a different person. I was grateful for Jake and the turn for the better my life had taken.
I scrolled through my messages and shuddered. There were so many messages from random men that were just flat-out creepy. I remembered reading them the first time and just shaking my head, disbelieving that I was back in the dating pool. They were rude, they were arrogant and they were thoughtless. Olaf’s message was the first one that came through that sounded like he had both a brain and respect for women. It was why I’d responded to him and no one else.
I clicked on his profile pic, a shot of him smiling and holding a can of soda. His page came up, revealing a larger sized profile pic and his little caption about himself, as well as all of his likes and dislikes in a bunch of different categories.
He liked animals, dessert and the occasional beer.
He disliked liars, vegetables and white wine.
And he worked for a taxidermist.
That finally rang a bell for me. I remembered him telling me that he worked for a local taxidermist and that one of his on-call jobs was to collect animals that had been injured and killed on roads. He brought the ‘clean kills’ to the taxidermist for preserving but dropped the others off at a local wolf sanctuary for…consumption. I thought his job was at odds with his stated love of animals, but he’d told me at dinner that he looked at it as just the opposite. He liked animals—all animals—so delivering carcasses to the wolf sanctuary provided much needed food for the animals that lived there. The ones he was able to bring back for preservation were an added bonus, he’d said. What better way to honor an animal than preserve it in the afterlife, to display at nature centers and in homes for people to appreciate and enjoy. I remembered thinking that was a nice way to look at the untimely death of animals.
I looked through more of the information on his page, but didn’t find much that told me anything significant about him. I returned to the main page with his job information and stared at it for a minute.
Then I opened up another tab and started looking for a taxidermist in Moose River.
One popped up immediately.
Stuff It.
How appropriate.
I clicked on the link for Stuff It’s website. It was a bare bones. single page site that showed the address, the times they were open and a giant picture of a deer head. There was no email contact or phone number. It looked like it had been thrown together in about five minutes. I was pretty sure Will could’ve put together a more elaborate site.
My instinct was to jump in the car and drive across town to Stuff It. But Jake had specifically asked me to stop playing amateur detective. And I was home and I needed to do more laundry and figure out what we were having for dinner.
Stuff It was going to have to wait.
I closed the laptop and dove back into the world of running a family and home. I got the laundry done. I took chicken out for dinner. I made bread in the bread machine. I played Twister with the girls and nearly threw my back out. I chatted with Emily when she came home from school about her math test. By the time Jake walked in the door, I felt like the epitome of a domestic goddess.
“Smells good,” he said, dropping his keys on the shelf in the kitchen. He kicked off his boots and joined me at the stove. Not to peer into the pots simmering on the stovetop but to put his hands over the rising steam, warming them.
“Hopefully, it tastes good, too,” I said. I turned around and kissed him lightly on the mouth. His stubble rubbed my cheek.
“As long as you tell me we aren’t eating that hamster for dinner, I’ll be excited.”
“I thought you’d like hamster on a stick,” I told him.
“I would not.”
“Then you’re safe,” I said. “Chicken, rice, veggies and homemade bread.”
“Perfect,” he said. “I’m gonna jump in the shower before we eat.”
The shower kicked on and when I heard it shut off a few minutes later, I started getting the food together. I sliced the loaf of bread and transferred the rice and vegetables into serving bowls. Emily appeared and, unasked, help bring food to the table. I wondered what favor she needed. I called up to the other kids and told them to hurry down. I was pulling cups from the cupboard when Jake strolled back in, laptop in hand. He’d donned track pants and a long-sleeved Notre Dame t-shirt and he smelled all after-shavy and looked all athletic and all I wanted to do was snuggle up next to him and breathe him in.
“So, what’s this?” he said, holding up the computer.
I spread the cups out on the counter. “The laptop?”
“Funny,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “I mean the website you left up. I went to check my email.”
I pulled the water pitcher from the fridge. “Oh, I can explain. Stuff It is a taxidermist here in town. I know you told me not to
—”
“I’m not talking about a taxidermist,” he said and thrust the laptop at me. “I’m talking about this.”
I looked at the screen.
Which currently displayed the home page for Around The Corner.
Blood rushed to my face. “Because I had to look up Olaf to find the taxidermist.”
“So you weren’t trolling for more dates?” he asked, arching his eyebrow.
“Oh, please.”
“Well, you didn’t tell me about the date with Olaf,” he said, shrugging. “So how do I know?”
Emily made a noise. “This is getting awkward.”
Jake grinned. “Just wait until it’s
your
dates we’re discussing.”
Her cheeks reddened and she darted out of the kitchen.
Jake closed the laptop and set it on the counter. “Just tell me why. Why did you feel the need to look up Olaf and his job at a taxidermy shop?”
I thought back to the conversation we’d had at the recycling plant and the fact that my husband was absolutely not on board with my investigating. “Um, well
—”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said.“You aren’t going to listen to me are you?”
I reached for him, wrapping my arms around his neck. “It’s not that I don’t listen. I absolutely hear you.”
His arms encircled my waist. “You just disregard everything I say.”
“Not everything.”
“Mmhmm.”
I laid my hands on his chest. “Look. I’m just poking around. Nothing to worry about. But this Helen woman has totally invaded my space and I want to know why. I won’t do anything dumb and I won’t do anything dangerous. But I want to know who’s telling the truth.”
He made a face at me. “And if I ask you not to, you’ll conveniently ignore me, correct?”
“I’d never ignore you,” I said truthfully. “But I might selectively remember what you asked.”
He fought back a smile. “Selectively remember. That’s a good one.”
“Right? I thought so.”
He sighed. “Fine. I give up. But stay off the damn dating websites. Please.”
I held up my hand. “Scout’s honor.”
“You were never a scout.”
“Fine,” I said, smiling at him. “Sex goddess’ honor.”