“Are you saying I’m a liar?” Felix thundered.
The scent of coffee-flavored breath assailed me, but I looked at him calmly and didn’t step back. There were many occasions for which I was grateful for being height-efficient, and this was another one. A lifetime of being shorter than everyone over the age of thirteen had inured me to intimidation by size and/or voice.
“No,” I said evenly, “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”
Felix, now at the head of the line, turned away from me and tossed a bill on the counter. He looked back over his shoulder and said fiercely, “Anything that’s going on is none of your business, little missy. Just keep yourself to yourself.”
He snatched up the cardboard container that the young man at the register had pushed toward him, then stormed out.
“That was weird,” I murmured. I’d anticipated either a blank look or a smiling evasion, but to be blasted with vitriol over a simple question was so unexpected that I wondered what was going on inside Mr. Felix Stanton. Not that it was necessarily murder-oriented, but you had to wonder.
“Don’t take it personally,” a familiar voice said.
I turned and saw that Pam Fazio was standing behind me. “Thanks,” I said, laying down the money for my upcoming sandwich. “I appreciate that. I certainly didn’t expect to be berated in public by someone I barely know.”
“Well,” Pam said, opening her wallet, “I’ve known him for quite a while and he gets like this every so often.” She grinned. “He’s being even more Felix-ish than usual, is all.”
“Here you go, Minnie,” the counter kid said. “One Swiss cheese and olive on sourdough with Thousand Island dressing.”
I thanked him and took my sandwich. “So,” I asked Pam, “I shouldn’t lose any sleep over this?”
She shook her head, tossing her short black hair around. “Nah. He’s like that with everyone these days, right, Evan?”
The counter kid rolled his eyes. “You got that right.”
I shook off the icky feeling that had crept onto my skin during the unexpected confrontation. Onward and upward—there was something else I needed to do. “I have a quick question for both of you, if you have a second.”
“Sure.” Pam handed over her money to Evan, who nodded.
“A little while ago,” I said, hoping the story I’d manufactured was believable, “there was this guy in the library, and I think he left something behind. A nice leather notebook.” This wasn’t completely a lie—I had indeed found a notebook. Last summer, but still. “He was short, not much taller than me, with bright red hair.”
“Sounds maybe familiar,” Evan said, “but I haven’t seen anyone like that, not that I can remember.”
Pam grinned. “Short, eh? Looking to pick on someone your own size for a change?”
“No one’s my size.” I sighed dramatically. “I gave up on that a long time ago.”
“Well, like my grandma says,” Evan said seriously, “you never know what’s around the corner.”
This was true, and a good thing to remember.
I thanked them both and walked out, thinking hard.
• • •
After stopping at a few other downtown businesses, asking after a short red-haired man, and receiving similar answers to Pam and Evan’s, I walked back toward the library slowly, so slowly that I figured I could save some time by eating and walking simultaneously. The first bite, however, was so good that I knew I wanted to be mentally present for every chew. I looked around for a place to sit that was in the sun and out of the wind, and found one in a narrow park that ran from downtown to the waterfront.
The sun on my face felt almost warm as I sat, and I mentally crossed fingers and toes, legs and arms, that the weather would be this nice for the book fair, coming to a library near me in one week, two days, and twenty-one hours. Or thereabouts.
But there was nothing I could do about the weather other than worry, and since one of my life goals was to worry as little as possible, I pushed weather thoughts aside and thought about Felix Stanton.
Thought about the chances of Henry being killed because he wouldn’t sell his property to Felix for the construction of a condominium project.
Thought about the odds of Felix assuming that Henry’s sons would sell the property. Looking at it from Felix’s point of view, selling the property only seemed reasonable. Mike, Dennis, and Kevin lived hundreds of miles away and returned to Michigan once a year. Why wouldn’t they want to get rid of what would be an encumbrance to them? That property would only be a financial drain; it only made sense to sell.
If Felix had designs on Henry’s property, if Henry had refused to consider selling, and if Felix had, in fact, killed Henry to get access to the land, the fact that Henry’s sons wanted to hang on to the property had to have been a bitter blow.
Then again, maybe Felix had been telling the truth about not working out a plan for the property until after Henry’s death. Which meant one of two things about Henry’s neighbor Cole Duvall. Either Cole hadn’t remembered correctly about Felix talking to Henry last fall, or Cole had intentionally misled me.
I tried to remember exactly what he’d said, and, three bits of sandwich later, it came to me.
Stanton has been trying to talk Henry into selling since last fall.
Which meant that if Cole was telling the truth, Felix wasn’t. Conversely, if Felix was telling the truth, Cole was definitely not.
One of them was lying.
And that raised the big question: why?
I sat there, staring at my sandwich, knowing that a possible answer was “To hide a murder.” A sudden wind gust made me grab for my napkin. I looked up at the sun and watched it disappear behind the leading edge of a massive bank of low clouds.
Fifteen seconds ago I’d been happy to sit outside, but with the wind shifted and the sun gone, inside was suddenly much more appealing.
I tossed the last of my meal into a nearby garbage can and headed back to the safest place in the world, where cold winds never blew, where people were friendly and polite, and where things were interesting but not scary.
The library.
Chapter 13
Thursday, a bookmobile day, was a happy day of children who laughed, adults who smiled, and an Eddie who not only supervised the activity with aplomb, but who willingly participated in any event that seemed to need his assistance. Which, that day, was a toddler who wanted to clutch at the “’itty ’itty” with both hands and an elderly man who said he’d never liked a cat in his life until he’d met the bookmobile cat.
I was a trifle concerned that all the attention might go to his head, but on the way to Chilson, Julia began a recitation of Mr. Mistoffelees from T. S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” which I was pretty sure took the wind out of Eddie’s sails, especially when she finished the poem and described the onstage antics of the Mr. Mistoffelees from the Cats Broadway musical version.
“Poor Eddie,” I said, laughing. “He’ll never be the dancer Mr. Mistoffelees has to be.”
“Eddie has his own special charm.” Julia blew him a kiss. “Don’t you, my fuzzy little friend? We love you just the way you are.”
“Mrr,” he said agreeably.
“I think he said he loves us, too,” Julia said, laughing.
Most likely he was saying that he wanted a treat, that he deserved a treat, and that if he didn’t get a treat he was going to sleep on my head that night, but I let Julia keep her anthropomorphic point of view. Why disillusion her? She’d realize soon enough that Eddie, charming though he might be, was just a cat and not a small furry human.