I sucked in a quick breath, not quite believing what I’d heard. But once again, no one else at the table seemed surprised.
“Nothing new there.” Brad very gently bumped the top of his sister’s head with one of his fists.
“But this time I said he was wrong.” Mia’s shoulders rounded. “This time I told him that I was a grown woman, that I thanked him for his concern but my career decisions were mine and mine alone.”
Brad and Leese exchanged surprised glances and Carmen stared at her daughter. None of them said a word.
Mia either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “He said he was my father and that he’d always have a say in what I did.” She looked up and now the tears were flowing fast. “I told him he didn’t have a say. I told him I’d been living on my own since college, that if I wanted his advice, I’d ask for it, but that I didn’t see it happening. Ever again.”
Though it sounded as if it had been past time for Mia to stick up for herself, the timing was unfortunate.
“Don’t you see,” she said wildly. “It’s my fault he’s dead. He must have been so mad at me, so upset, that he wasn’t being careful on some building site and he . . . he fell. It’s my fault.”
That didn’t make a lot of sense, since he clearly hadn’t fallen straight into Leese’s pickup, but I kept quiet. And how, exactly, had she known he’d fallen to his death? But even as the question popped into my brain, I answered it. Detective Inwood must have said something about it when he’d been interviewing her.
Leese hitched her chair around so she could sit next to Mia. “Sweetie, it’s not your fault. There’s no way it’s your fault. Someone put him into the truck, so that same someone probably pushed him. We don’t know what happened, but the one thing we do know is you didn’t have anything to do with it.” She wrapped her arm around Mia’s slender shoulders and sent Carmen and Brad a look full of meaning.
“That’s right,” Brad said. “He died days after you left for Florida. How could there be any connection?”
Leese then looked pointedly at Carmen, who rolled her eyes and said, “Mia, stop being so dramatic. It wasn’t your fault. I don’t know why you have to—”
“Mia, have you talked to Corinne?” Leese cut in.
When Mia shook her head, her brother said, “Talking to Corinne is a great idea. If you want, I can call and make an appointment for you. Around lunchtime?”
“I don’t want to,” Mia said quietly.
“Of course you don’t,” Carmen almost snapped, “but it’s what you need.”
It suddenly dawned on me that they were talking about Corinne Napier, a psychologist with an outstanding reputation who practiced in Chilson.
Mia shrugged, but didn’t say a word.
“Then it’s settled,” her mother said. “Brad, you call Corinne first thing tomorrow and let us know what time the appointment is. Mia, you know what’s going to happen, don’t you?”
“Yes, Momma,” she said almost mechanically. “I have to be there ten minutes ahead of time and I have to ask Corinne to sign a note that I sat through the whole hour.”
Seriously? I glanced around, but as before, no one else seemed to think this was unusual.
“Good,” Carmen said and I watched the tension drain out of her face. She smiled and patted her daughter’s hand. “Now, how about another bowl of ice cream?”
“Coming right up,” Leese said, jumping to her feet.
“I’ll help,” Brad said, collecting the bowls from the table.
I got up and wielded the can of whipped cream and the talk turned to guessing what was going to be the peak fall color weekend, but though I played along with the conversation, I kept wondering about all the things this family hadn’t said.
Mia had been a patient of Corinne’s. Was it for her anorexia, or something else?
Their father apparently had a history of fighting with his adult children. Why?
But most of all, I wondered why they were finding it so easy to believe that Dale had been murdered.
Chapter 8
The next morning, my desk phone rang as I worked through the amazing number of e-mails that had accumulated since the last time I’d sat at my computer. Some were pure spam, some were solicitations, some were from other librarians, others were from patrons who thought an e-mail to me was the best way to get the library to purchase a new book.
And it probably was the best way, since the mention of any book I hadn’t heard of sent me straight to the nearest search engine for more information. One of my New Year’s resolutions had been to put all those requests into a separate folder and go over them when I had time, but here it was October and the habit had yet to get started.
“No time like the present,” I told myself, and clicked on my e-mail program’s “New Folder” function. After typing “Book Requests” as the folder’s name, I started moving e-mails around. Three went into the new folder, six got deleted, and then there was . . .
I studied the subject line. “Software Pricing Request,” it said, from a salesperson I’d met a few times.
Odd. I hadn’t requested any software pricing. And I never would have requested anything from this particular company. Their stuff was fantastically expensive and was designed for large library systems with multiple branches.
Frowning, I clicked on the e-mail. “Dear Jennifer,” it started. “Congratulations on your new position with the Chilson District Library. We’re so glad you reached out to us regarding our new and comprehensive product line. Enclosed you will find materials that will explain what we can do for—”
My phone rang. Still reading, I picked up the receiver. “This is Minnie. How can I help you?”
“Have you read your e-mail this morning?” Jennifer demanded.
I sat back. “I have, and I was just going to call you.”
“There was no reason for Dave to copy you on that e-mail,” she said. “I certainly didn’t tell him to.” She waited, but since she hadn’t asked me a question, I didn’t say anything. “I suppose you’ve read it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“So you know why I’m trying to cut the library’s budget.”
“Not really,” I said slowly.
She blew out an annoyed breath. “If I’m going to drag this library into the twenty-first century, we need this software. It can do a wide variety of things that we can’t do now, and if we’re going to grow, we need to make this kind of capital investment.”
Absolutely it could do things we couldn’t; the question was, did we need to do them? What was the return on the investment? What would we have to sacrifice to make the purchase, and would the sacrifice be worth it?
But I’d worked with her long enough to know that if I asked those questions, she’d accuse me of throwing up roadblocks instead of finding a way to make her idea work. So instead, I said, “The library board looked at this software during the renovation. At that point they decided it wasn’t a good fit.”
“Good,” Jennifer said. “Then they’re already familiar with the company. This is a more recent product line. It’s much better than the old one. You should see all features it has!”
She sounded excited, so I sat up and started scrolling through the e-mail. Dave the sales guy, however, had made a strategic error—he’d put the price sheet first. I gasped at the five-figure number, but Jennifer was still talking.
“Once it’s up and running, it’ll save money. I’m familiar with the earlier version of this software system—the last library where I worked had invested in it and I’m sure the same thing will happen here.”
As she went on, blithely talking about all the wonderful things the new system would do for us, I started thinking about all the horrible things that could happen.
Because I wasn’t sure how spending thousands and thousands of dollars could save money.