“Mom!” Will’s voice chimed in with the others and I could hear the urgency in his voice. “You better come!”
I ignored him. “You followed me to Olga’s,” I said, pointing a finger at her.
Helen’s face colored. “What? No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did,” I said. “How else would you have known I spoke to her? You really are stalking me.”
“You’re wrong,” she said primly. “But you better know one thing. I asked for the divorce. Plain and simple. Olaf loved me and begged me to stay.” She leaned toward me and her eyes were so wide, they practically bugged out of her head. “Begged me.”
Grace appeared by my side, just visible in my peripheral vision. “Mom, can I keep him?”
Helen glanced at her like she was a piece of trash that had drifted off the pile. She sniffed and turned back to me. “And you better stop following me or you’ll be sorry.”
“You’re insane,” I said. “I’m not following—”
“Mom,” Grace said, tugging at the back of my coat. “I want to keep him.”
I whirled around, completely out of sorts by the conversation with Helen and by the kids all screaming at me.
Grace held up her hands, her face beaming. Something small and dirty squirmed in her clutches. “Can I keep him?”
It looked like a mouse.
“Dear God,” I muttered. “Hold on.”
I whirled back around to let Helen know I wasn’t going take any more of her crap and that if I caught her around me again, I was going to call the police.
But she was long gone.
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.