Leese glanced at me, sending a visual apology.
“None that I know of,” I said. “All I’m doing is—”
“Don’t want to hear about it.” Kristen put her hands over her ears. “Especially if I’m not around to put the pieces back together. Even if I beg, you’re not going to walk away from this, are you?”
“Well, no.” I sat up straight and glared right back at her. “Anya and Collier asked me to help. They’re just kids and they need to know what happened to their mother. If I can do anything to help them, I’m going to do it, and everyone else should, too.”
Kristen stared at me a moment longer, then picked up her beer mug and swallowed the last of it. Her silence was acknowledgment that I was right, that she understood I was right, but that she didn’t like what was going on and wasn’t going to make any pretense that she did.
Which was all fine and I was glad we’d reached this point so soon in the weekend and didn’t have to dance around it for another day or two.
“So what are the detectives saying?” Leese asked. Her father, though she’d had little contact with him for years, had been murdered just a few months earlier and she was familiar with the process. “Anything they’re releasing yet?”
“No.” I hesitated, trying to remember precisely what they’d said about the names of the possible suspects. Could I talk about them? Should I? “There are a few names that have come up,” I said.
Leese leaned forward, and even Kristen looked interested. “Can you say who they are?” Leese asked. “I don’t live far from the Bennethums. I can keep an eye out, if you want.”
“Just keep it quiet, please,” I said, and named the names. Sunny Scoles, of the Red House Café. Bax Tousely, the city worker wannabe postproduction video maker. Hugh Novak, insurance adjuster. Stewart Funston, Rowan’s cousin. Land Aprelle, handyman.
Kristen, of course, zeroed in on the important thing. “How is Sunny’s restaurant doing? If I did breakfast, I’d want to be like her. She makes this amazing maple glaze with walnuts and puts it on French toast.”
Leese, however, had an odd expression on her face. “Bax Tousely. He drives a pickup, doesn’t he? Chevy Silverado, maybe ten years old?”
“No idea.” I was lucky if I remembered what I drove, let alone someone I’d never met. “Why?”
“Because I’m pretty sure I saw him driving past Rowan’s house almost every day, right before she was killed.”
Chapter 9
I told Leese I’d pass on the information about Bax Tousely to the sheriff’s office, and added the task to my mental to-do list. The rest of the evening passed with the mild hilarity that so often accompanies any time that good friends gather together, and I stayed out far later than I normally would have on a night when I had to work the next day.
On the plus side, there was no real reason for me to show up at the library two hours before it opened, so I didn’t even bother setting an alarm when I crawled into bed.
Eddie, however, either hadn’t heard me or hadn’t listened when I’d told him I was going to sleep in. He woke me with a paw pat to the face and a loud “Mrr!” all of ten minutes past my usual get-out-of-bed time.
I looked at his furry face. “When I get up early, you give me a look that could kill. But when I want to sleep in, I get this?”
“Mrr.” He sat on my chest and stared at me. “Mrr.”
Clearly, he wasn’t going to let me sleep, so I tossed back the covers, pulled on a bathrobe, stuffed my feet into slippers, and stumbled downstairs to the kitchen, yawning all the way.
“Top of the morning to you!” Otto toasted me with a steaming mug of coffee. “Would you like a cup? Or would you rather have tea?”
“Morning.” I dropped into a chair. Eddie jumped up onto the chair next to me and immediately curled up into an Eddie-size ball. Still yawning, I put my elbows on the table and my chin in my hands. “Coffee would be wonderful, thanks.” In the last couple of months I’d grown used to finding Otto in the boardinghouse at any time of the day or night. Almost, anyway. “Where’s Aunt Frances?”
“Off to the college half an hour ago. She had prep work to do for a class.” He slid a mug of nirvana in front of me and I gratefully wrapped my hands around it. “Frances made me a delightful breakfast of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon and I stayed behind to clean up. There are some leftovers I could heat, if you’d like.”
I consulted my stomach, and it told me to stay away. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
“Ah. Yes. You were out late with Kristen and Leese.” His smile was tinted with understanding. “How about a piece of dry toast?”
Another consultation. This time my stomach gave a thumbs-up. “That would be wonderful. But you don’t have to wait on me.” I started to stand, but he waved me down.
“Sit, sit. I have an ulterior motive for feeding you.”
“Excellent.” I sipped my coffee. “Nothing better than ulterior motives with dry toast.”
“That’s what I’ve always said.” The toaster popped up two slices of multigrain. He put them both on a plate and put it in front of me. Sitting, he said, “There’s a bit of a problem with the wedding.”
I froze, a piece of toast halfway to my mouth. “Don’t tell me you want to back out.”
“What?” His gentle blue eyes flew open. “Of course not. I said a problem with the wedding, not the marriage.”
“Oh. Right.” I relaxed. “Sorry. It’s just . . . well, never mind.” The night before, after Leese had abandoned us, Kristen confessed she’d been getting wedding jitters. We’d talked it through, and though I was pretty sure she was nervous about the menu and not the man she’d chosen to marry, since I’d never been married myself, how would I know for sure? “What’s the problem?” I asked.
Otto slumped, his shoulders sagging. This was troubling, because he rarely had anything but perfect posture. Whatever he was about to tell me was going to be bad. I pushed toast and coffee aside. “Tell me,” I said. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”
He shook his head. “Remember the hotel in Bermuda? The one Frances had her heart set on for our wedding?”
The use of past tense made me clutch. My aunt and Otto had studied dozens of websites and written numerous e-mails before choosing this particular hotel. “‘Had’?” I repeated cautiously. “What do you mean?”
“They had a fire.” He sighed. “An electrical fire that damaged the building extensively. They called me yesterday morning and I spent most of the day looking for another location on that date and within our budget. There’s nothing available.” His shoulders heaved as he sighed again. “Absolutely nothing.”
Out in the dining room, the clock on the buffet ticked and tocked. “You haven’t told her, have you?” I asked.
“Tonight. She’s going to be . . . disappointed. I just wanted you to be prepared.”
Prepared for what, exactly? Still, his heart was in the right place. “Thanks for telling me. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”
He nodded glumly. “Thanks, Minnie. I appreciate that.”
I wolfed down the rest of my toast, put our dishes in the dishwasher, touched his shoulder, and went back upstairs to shower and start the wintry day.
• • •
Julia gasped. “The hotel burned down?”
“Don’t know about down,” I said, “but burned enough so they can’t have the wedding there.”
“Oh, poor Frances.”
I wasn’t so sure. Yes, of course she’d be a little disappointed, but in all the years I’d known my aunt—which was all of my life—she’d never let anything truly upset her. She was the person I wanted to be; she stayed calm, never panicked, and always kept a sense of perspective. I was pretty sure she’d spend a moment being shocked and surprised, and would then roll up her sleeves and figure out another way to reach the goal. It was my aunt’s fiancé I was more worried about. “Poor Otto, too,” I said.