Pouncing on Murder (22 page)

She gave me a light elbow in the ribs. “I can share if you can share.”

I nodded and started to feel a little better. I would probably shed a few tears in the night, but between Kristen’s friendship and Eddie’s purrs, I had the feeling that I’d be smiling again soon.

•   •   •

“Hey, Minnie!”

My right foot had been poised to step onto the dock that led to my houseboat. Rafe’s call, however, startled me enough that I tripped on the small break between concrete sidewalk and wooden dock. I stumbled forward a few steps and saved myself from falling into the drink by grabbing a piling.

“Hey, Stumble Toes, you all right over there? Got a favor to ask you.”

I blew out a breath. There was no good reason for me to be annoyed at him—he probably hadn’t intended to surprise me—but I was still on edge about Tucker and men in general and my irritation level was close to the surface. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, walking back toward his house. When I got close, I asked, “What’s up?”

“Got a question.” He was on his front porch, waving something at me, but in the evening’s dusk, I couldn’t see what it was. “It’s a girl thing.”

“And I’m the only girl you know?” I asked, climbing up the front steps. Last summer they’d been old and
weathered. Now they were solid and sturdy and freshly painted a bluish shade of gray.

“Nah.” He grinned. “You’re just the handiest one. Look at these and tell me what to do.” He held out a small rectangular stack of cardboard pieces at me.

I put my hands behind my back. “Nothing doing. No way am I going to help you choose what color to paint your house.”

“Not the whole house,” he said, fanning the samples out into a rainbow of colors. “The outside is easy. It’s the inside that’s hard.”

I squinted at him. “And you think I can help? I haven’t chosen a room color since I was eight and painted my bedroom dark green because I’d just read
The Children of Green Knowe
and wanted my room to match the cover of the book.”

Rafe looked at the paint samples. “Yeah? How did that turn out? I mean, that’s probably the stupidest reason I ever heard to pick a room color, but dark green might be okay, somewhere.”

My annoyance rushed back. “If you think I’m so stupid, why are you asking me anything? If you want decorating advice, talk to Holly Terpening. She’s all over paint colors.” I stomped down from the porch and was off into the night’s gloom before he could say another word.

•   •   •

My sleep that night was accompanied by a few tears, but by the time I woke up, I was mostly ashamed at how I’d treated Rafe. He hadn’t deserved to be on the receiving end of my little hissy fit, and I needed to tell him so.

“Would a phone call do?” I asked Eddie as I washed out our cereal bowl.

He was back to sitting on the dashboard, but he turned his head a millimeter when I asked the question.

“To apologize to Rafe,” I explained. “Can I just call? Or better yet, send him a text?”

Eddie heaved a heavy sigh and jumped to the floor. He padded the length of the kitchen, down the stairs, and into the bedroom, where he jumped up onto the bed he’d vacated five minutes before.

“Fine,” I said to the sink. “I’ll go over there at lunch.” Somehow I’d ended up with a cat who held me to the same moral code that my mother did. “Not fair,” I muttered, but then started smiling inside, because maybe it was, in fact, eminently fair.

The thought kept me amused all morning, which was good, because it was a day that needed all the amusement it could get. Recalcitrant computer programs, a water leak in the book return, and not a single response to my frantic calls for a new author to headline the book fair didn’t make for a happy Minnie.

I pushed out the door at lunchtime and sucked in a breath of fresh air. It felt so good that I pulled in two more, and then had to stop myself before I hyperventilated. Refreshed, I headed up the hill to the middle school and to Rafe’s office, where I knew he would be at his desk, eating a bologna sandwich with mustard and mayonnaise on white bread.

“When’s the last time you had anything different for lunch?” I flopped into his guest chair. “Kindergarten?”

He gave me an affronted look. “I’ll have you know
that just last year I ate a turkey sandwich. Right here at this very desk.”

“Well, that’s good. I wouldn’t want you to get into a rut.”

“I prefer to think of it as a very deep comfort zone.” He took a bite of sandwich so big that it pouched out his right cheek enough to make him look like a squirrel feeding on a windfall of nuts.

For the millionth time, I wondered how Rafe managed to run a middle school so successfully. “Well, I wanted to stop by and apologize for last night.”

“Huh?” He swallowed hugely, then asked, “What are you talking about?”

I really should have known better. Some guys were sensitive to the moods of women, but most were not. Rafe fell deep into that second category. “I was a little cranky about the paint colors. If you really want help, I’ll do what I can.”

He squinted at me. “Cranky? You? How did that happen? Wait, I know. You lost your spot in a book and had to start over again.”

And to think I’d wasted my lunch hour coming over here. I started to stand, but froze in place when I saw his wall calendar.

“What?” he asked, his mouth once again full of sandwich.

“Your calendar.” I sat back down. “It’s wooden boats.”

“Yeah, so? It was a Christmas present. I like woodies. I’m not wacko about them like some people, but they’re pretty cool.”

Wacko. Like some people. Exactly. I looked at the
calendar. Looked at him. Looked at the calendar again. “How do you feel,” I asked slowly, “about doing me a favor?”

•   •   •

A few minutes later, I’d explained what I wanted and Rafe was looking at me with an odd expression on his face. “Can I ask why you want me to do this?”

“Sure,” I said, and sat there, smiling.

He rolled his eyes. “So I can ask, but you’re not going to tell me why you want me to do this tremendous favor for you that will take up so much of my valuable time and pull me away from my many duties as a responsible and supportive school principal.”

“Exactly.” I beamed at him. What I wanted was to figure out was if Neva Chatham had brandished her gun at me because of trespassing, or because she was being protective of her boat. If it was the boat, maybe she was unhinged enough to have killed Henry and tried to kill Adam. “And quit with the whining. It’s a simple phone call and won’t take you more than five minutes.”

He heaved out an Eddie-quality sigh, pulled a tattered phone book from his desk drawer, and flipped though the flimsy pages. After giving a grunt when he found the correct entry, he picked up the phone and dialed.

“Good afternoon,” he said jovially. “Is this Neva Chatham? Hi, Neva, my name is Rafe Niswander. I live
in Chilson—what’s that? Yes, Dave’s my cousin.” He squinted at me. “Well, sorry about that. He’s got a pretty good reputation for the plumbing work he does and—” He waited for her to finish. “Well, again, I’m sorry about that. I’ll be sure to mention it next time I see him.”

His eyebrows went up. “Sorry, ma’am, I can’t say for sure when that will be, but—” Again he waited. “Yes, ma’am. I will quote you exactly, you can count on it. Now, the reason I called is a friend of mine happened past your house a while back and saw a wooden boat out front. I’m a huge wooden boat fan”—he rolled his eyes at me—“and I was just wondering if your boat was for sale. I’d be—”

Even from halfway across the room, I could hear Neva’s voice coming through the receiver.

“You leave that boat alone! I have a shotgun, young man, and I know how to use it, so keep your distance or I’ll be after you next.”

Rafe hung up the phone and looked at me. “I don’t think she’s interested in selling.” Then his straight face broke up and he started laughing. “Did you hear that? ‘I have a shotgun and I know how to use it.’” He slapped his paper-filled desk with the flat of his hand. “Where’s a pen? I need to write that down. Hey, what’s the matter?”

“I am so sorry,” I said. “She knows who you are, and she can probably figure out where you live.”

“What?” Rafe stared at me, then started laughing again. “You think she’s going to come after me? The woman must be seventy-five years old and might weigh a hundred pounds, dripping wet. What’s she going to do, have a heart attack on me?”

I stood and gave him my Librarian Look. “She is obviously unbalanced. Who knows what she might do? I am very sorry I asked you to call her, and please be careful.”

Rafe snorted. “Right. Okay, I promise to look both ways before crossing the street, although since it’s only the first week of May I really don’t need to look even one way, but if it would make you feel better . . .”

“It would.” I apologized again, got another eye roll, and headed back to the library with Neva’s words ringing in my ears.

•   •   •

I walked down the hill, thinking about the phone call I’d persuaded Rafe to make and about what Neva had said.

“I’ll be after you next.”

I pulled my cell phone out of my coat pocket and stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to push the appropriate buttons. Some people could practically do data entry with their phones while walking, but every time I tried to do that I started feeling as if I were on the teacup ride at Disney World and wishing for an emergency stop button.

“Adam?” I asked. “It’s Minnie. Got a question for you. When you and Henry stopped to look at Neva Chatham’s boat, did you take a close look at it?” I’d asked him earlier about it, and he’d said Henry had looked closely at the boat, but that he hadn’t. Now I wanted to know exactly what that meant.

“Got close enough to see that it was too big a project for me,” Adam said.

“Sure, but how close was that?”

There was a pause. “I didn’t crawl around on the ground, if that’s what you mean. What are you getting at?”

“Well . . .” I wasn’t exactly sure how to say what I was thinking—excellent preparation, Minnie!—so I didn’t say anything for a moment. Adam, however, was happy to fill the conversational gap.

“But if I had the skills, I’d pick up that boat in a heartbeat. Did you see what it was? It’s a 1934 Hacker, triple cockpit. Hardly any of those are left and it’s a crime it’s in such rough shape. This baby is twenty feet long, and I looked it up, it has a six-foot, seven-inch beam. Too small for the big lake, but it’d be perfect for Janay.”

“It would?” I asked vaguely.

“Nothing better. Now, it’ll probably need a new engine, but if it were me, I’d put in a Chevy MerCruiser, a two-hundred-and-sixty-horse. It’d probably top out around thirty-five miles an hour, and that’s a nice speed for a twenty-footer.”

He started to go on about the kind of varnish he’d use when I interrupted. “I think Neva might have been the one who almost ran you over.”

Dead silence. “You . . . what?”

I repeated what I’d said. “Are you laughing?” I asked suspiciously.

“A little,” he said, sputtering. “Thanks for your concern, Minnie, but I’m pretty sure I could handle Neva Chatham. I mean, do you really think that frail little old lady could have cut down the tree that hit Henry? She’s not even five foot tall!”

“Size doesn’t matter,” I said, “when it comes to murder.”

Adam was quiet for a moment. “You’re right,” he said, sighing. “And I suppose it could have been her driving that car, easy enough. It’s just so weird, to think someone I’ve actually met might have tried to kill me.”

There were oodles of statistics out there that informed us that the vast majority of murders are committed by someone who knows their victim very well indeed, but I didn’t say anything. Adam probably knew it anyway.

I felt basically useless. “Take care of yourself,” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “You, too.”

The phone went silent, but I continued to stand there for some time, just thinking.

If size didn’t matter when it came to murder, what did?

What was I missing?

Chapter 15

T
hanks to being suddenly short-staffed because of illness and my continued and fruitless phone calls in pursuit of another big-name author, my lunch hour was reduced to the time it took to eat the sandwich I’d made that morning and the time it took to make a few phone calls to more downtown businesses, telling my tale of the man who might have left a nice leather notebook at the library, a man who was short and had bright red hair.

I heard the same thing that everyone else had said, that though the man sounded like someone familiar, no one had seen anyone like that, not that they could remember.

In the evening, I went downtown and asked a few more questions about a red-haired man, but heard nothing that would confirm the presence of Seth Wartella. The closest I got was the owner of the jewelry store, who squinted at the ceiling. “Red hair? A while back there was a guy in here, looking for a present for his wife, but that was around Valentine’s Day. And he was tall, not short.”

Just because I couldn’t find anyone who remembered seeing Seth didn’t mean that he hadn’t been in Chilson, but I’d run out of time Monday for asking around, and
Tuesday would also be out because it was a bookmobile day.

“But this is our favorite kind of day, isn’t it, Eddie?” I nudged my feline friend, who was sitting on the carpeted step. It ran the length of the bookmobile on both sides, making a handy seat and an even handier step for those on the bookmobile who needed an extra few inches to reach the top shelf. This included me and almost all the children under the age of seven and a few of our elderly patrons who’d started doing the shrinking thing.

Eddie and I were sitting on the step, doing our combined best to encourage a number of small children to come on over to the picture book section. We were parked at a new stop, which had been squeezed in because how could I turn down a request from a day care provider who said she wanted, more than anything, to show kids how wonderful books could be?

The only problem was, the kids seemed more interested in climbing up and down and up and down the bookmobile steps than in books.