He twisted around to look over one of his shoulders, then the other. “I heard what your boss said. You got two weeks to fix something or he’s going to fire you.”
Only the library board could terminate me, but Stephen could definitely make my life uncomfortable. And if he truly wanted me gone, he could turn the situation into a case of insubordination, tell the board I was impossible to work with, and convince them to give me the boot.
The muscles at the back of my neck tightened into taut cords. No matter how much I disagreed with Stephen’s point of view regarding Mitchell, Stephen wanted it dealt with and I was his assistant. I should be doing what he asked me to do. Only… how?
Mitchell shuffled close enough that I could see how badly his beard needed trimming. “I can help,” he whispered loudly enough for anyone within fifty feet to hear.
“You can?”
“Sure,” he said. “I know Stephen can be a pain to work with. Just tell me what the problem is and I’ll be glad to help. What are friends for, right? And hey, I’m pretty good at figuring things out. Like that Carissa Radle? I’m real sure she was killed by her boss. You ever met him? Anyway, he’s a real jerk and it’s got to be him. I’ve told the sheriff’s office, so I’m sure an arrest is coming soon.”
Though it was almost out-loud laughable that Mitchell was volunteering to help me get rid of Mitchell, I was touched that he wanted to help me. However, the last thing I wanted was Mitchell’s help for almost anything. “Um… ,” I said.
“Hey, sports fans,” Josh said, walking up to us. He turned his head and gave me a wink. “Well, not you, Minnie. I’m talking to Mitchell here.”
“What’s up?” Mitchell asked. “Did you see the game last night?”
Two Tigers fans and me standing in a group. There was no way I was going to get in a word edgewise. I started to slip away, but Josh winked at me again.
“Great game,” he said. “But I wanted to tell you about this really great Web site. They have tickets to minor league ball games for next to nothing. If you can get a little bit of cash together, you could spend the rest of the summer driving around the country, going from ballpark to ballpark. Sounds pretty cool, don’t you think?”
Mitchell rubbed his chin. “Sounds okay. But it might be good to have someone to share the driving, you know? What are you doing the rest of the summer?”
Josh’s mouth flopped open, but nothing came out.
I walked away, quietly snorting with laughter.
• • •
After work, I walked to the marina office to pay Chris Ballou my monthly slip rental. Typical for this time of day, Chris was comfortably seated. “Just leave your check on the counter,” he said. The other three men in the office, Skeeter and Rafe and Greg Plassey, looked just as comfortable and just as unwilling to move.
I looked at Rafe. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing that last work on my boat?”
“The day’s young,” he said lazily, tipping back in an ancient director’s chair, wood and canvas creaking underneath him. “Say, how you coming along with the next draft of the after-school reading program?”
“I’d be coming along a lot faster if I knew my boat was going to get fixed before school started.”
“And that, gentlemen,” Skeeter said, “is why any permanent relationship between a woman and a man is doomed.”
The four men clinked their beer cans. I rolled my eyes.
“So, what’s the story with your doctor boyfriend?” Chris asked.
“Yeah,” Skeeter said. “Hardly ever see him around. You sure you two are dating?”
“Now, boys.” Rafe smirked up a smile. “I saw him just the other day. Course, he didn’t stay long, and come to think of it, he left in kind of a hurry.”
While that hadn’t been Rafe’s fault, I didn’t see any harm in saying so. “It was you he was trying to get away from,” I said.
The other three hooted and tinked beer cans. The tightness that had snaked up my back when they mentioned the Tuckerlessness of my life eased a little. It was our schedules that was the problem: both of us working some evenings and some weekends and the twain was hardly ever meeting. Except for the day after tomorrow. We had plans and they were etched in stone this time.
And these men weren’t trying to hurt my feelings; they were just being guys, and in spite of their extreme guyness, I liked them very much.
“Speaking of not around,” I asked Greg, “where’s your friend Brett? I thought he was a part of this motley crew.”
“Downstate,” Greg said.
“Sucker.” Chris grinned. “What could be better than this?”
I squinted at him. “You could be outside in the fresh air and sunshine instead of sitting in this dingy, poorly lit office that hasn’t been cleaned properly in decades.”
“Hey, now,” Rafe said. “I saw Chris here wiping down the countertop just last month.”
Skeeter smirked. “Only because he spilled his coffee all over it.”
“Chris drinks coffee?” I asked. “When does he do that?”
“After the Fourth of July,” Chris said, wincing. “Man, I’m getting too old to stay up all night.”
I left the Four Stooges to their stories of all-night parties and headed to my houseboat for a quick dinner of nacho chips and cheese. With salsa, which would count as a vegetable with anyone except my mother.
While I ate, I pondered the looming cloud on the horizon that was Thessie’s upcoming college trip. All the people I’d already called had pleaded houseguests or other commitments and I had no idea what I was going to do.
After dishes and a see-you-later hug for Eddie, I set out to visit Cade at Lakeview to let the volunteer problem bounce around in my head. There were a couple of people interested in taking over from Thessie once school started, but in summer it was difficult to get people to donate their time.
I yearned for the day that Stephen was going to recognize how much the bookmobile was doing for the library. Outreach, image, and presence were all improving in an anecdotal evidence sort of way, and circulation was up compared to this time last year.
“October board meeting,” I said out loud as I walked into Cade’s room.
“Why wait?” he asked. “Do it in September.”
“But you don’t want to rush things, either,” Barb said. “Maybe November would be better.”
I looked from one McCade to the other and laughed. There was no possible way they could have known what I’d been mumbling about, yet they’d joined into my narrative without a pause. “Can’t do September,” I said, “because I won’t have time to get the August circulation numbers into report form before the meeting. And by November everyone is concentrating on the holidays.”
“Sounds as if you have whatever it is well in hand.”
“Don’t I wish.” I sat down. “But my most immediate problem is that I’m losing my bookmobile volunteer for a week and the library board insists on having two on board.”
Sadly, it had to be two humans. There had been one time that I’d danced closely with prevarication and led Stephen to believe that there were two people on board when it had actually been just Eddie and me, but I didn’t want to push my luck.
“Does this volunteer actually drive the bookmobile?” Barb asked.
I grinned. Thessie kept trying to convince me that letting her drive made sense—“for backup, just in case you break both feet, or something”—but it wasn’t going to happen. “Library policy is employees only,” I said, “and any driver has to take a commercial driver’s license class.” Truck-driving school would have been better, but it was a long and expensive course. “The bookmobile volunteer checks materials in and out, helps patrons find books. Normal library stuff, only it’s on a bookmobile.”