After considering the question for all of two seconds, he said, “I’m in. When do you want me?”
“Well, I only got the idea this morning. I need to get Jennifer’s okay, but I’ll get back to you.”
He nodded. “Just let me know. Glad to help.”
I looked at him. “You really are, aren’t you? I mean, you’re not just saying that.”
“Honesty is far easier,” he said. “Keeps you from having to keep track of different lies told to different people, and then what happens if the people get together?” He shook his head sorrowfully. “Much easier just to be honest in the first place.”
“So tell me honestly,” I said. “How do you really feel about the boardinghouse?”
A long and increasingly uncomfortable silence followed my somewhat abrupt question. Finally, Otto sipped the last of his coffee, set the cup back on the table, and faced me directly.
“I know it’s a decades-old tradition, I know it’s important to Frances, and I know that many people find comfort in its continued existence. I understand all that, but on a personal basis, I don’t want to have anything to do with running it.”
“Oh,” I said blankly.
“If Frances has her heart set on continuing to run it,” he went on, “of course I’ll support her and do what I can to continue its success. And who knows?” He half smiled. “Maybe I’ll come to love it.” The slope of his shoulders, however, indicated that he was dreading the prospect.
But even as I noted that steep angle, he straightened and lifted his chin. “Enough about that. I shouldn’t have burdened you with this knowledge, Minnie, and I apologize. Can you please forget I said anything?”
Though I murmured agreement, I knew—we both knew—that forgetting would be impossible.
• • •
I walked home from Otto’s house with a tummy full of marinated pork tenderloin, steamed vegetables, redskin potatoes, cornbread, and more coffee served with a lemon square dusted with powdered sugar and topped with a dollop of whipped cream.
“It’s possible I ate a little too much,” I told Eddie as I put my container of leftovers into the fridge.
“Mrr.” He jumped up onto the back of the dining table’s bench seating and settled down to stare at me, all four paws in a short white row.
“How do you do that without falling over?” I patted the top of his head, which made it go up and down like a fur-covered bobble head. “No offense, pal, but you’re not the most graceful cat who ever walked the face of the earth.”
He adjusted himself slightly and continued to stare at me.
“Well, you’re not.” I slid into the seat across from him and stared back. “You have other strengths. Lots of them. It’s okay to admit that you’ll never be a candidate for the first feline gymnastics team to enter the Olympics.”
Eddie’s sides went in and out in a visible sigh.
“Don’t worry,” I told him consolingly. “You can always apply to be a coach. I’m sure they’d appreciate your advice.”
“Mrr!”
“You’re right, you’re an excellent life coach for me and I don’t appreciate your guidance as I should. I’ll work on that.”
Eddie slid down from his sitting stance into a lying down position. This relieved me, because I hadn’t been certain his four-in-a-row was stable enough for the back of a bench seat. “Tell you what,” I said. “Next time you give me advice I vow to take it seriously.”
“Mrr,” he said quietly.
“Good. That’s settled, then.” I turned and unzipped my backpack, which I’d tossed onto the far end of the bench the day before. “Right now there’s some work to do. If you help, we’ll get it done in half the time and then we can do whatever you’d like.”
Eddie’s yawn was wide. And contagious.
“None of that.” I pointed my pencil at him. “There’s work to be done. I promised Aunt Frances I’d make a list for moving up to the boardinghouse and I’m going to do it right now so I don’t forget.”
It was more a timeline she wanted than a list, but I wasn’t sure Eddie would understand what a timeline was. Not that he knew what a list was, other than a piece of paper he could shred into bits the minute my back was turned. Still, pretending that he understood even a portion of what I was saying amused me.
I extracted a spiral notebook from the depths of the backpack. “Okay, are you ready?” I flipped to a clean sheet. “Goal number one,” I informed Eddie, “is to get everything moved into the boardinghouse before the weather turns really cold. Everything includes you and me. Aunt Frances wants a date from us because she needs to plan the changeover.”
Every fall that I’d lived in Chilson, I’d helped my aunt with numerous summer-to-winter tasks. Sheer curtains came down, insulated drapes went up. Light summer blankets were switched to thick comforters. Smooth cotton sheets were changed to cozy flannel. The furnace filter was replaced, the fireplace chimney was cleaned, white and pastel colored couch pillows were changed over to deep autumn colors.
And that was just the inside tasks. Outside there were oodles of leaves to rake, plants to cut down, furniture to store, screens to put away, and firewood to stack. Last, but certainly not least, we ceremoniously took the snow shovels out of the back corner of the garage and put them on the porch.
The whole enterprise took two full weekends if we worked hard. My bookmobile schedule of working on three of four Saturdays, however, made that a little difficult. “That’s why she wants a timeline,” I said to Eddie.
He, however, was more interested in playing with my pencil then listening to what I had to say.
“Speaking of timelines,” I said, holding the eraser end of the pencil out for him to bat, “I’m wondering about the time of Dale’s murder. If it was at the estimated two in the morning on Thursday, why wasn’t he home, asleep in bed? It was a weeknight and he was working the next day.”
Or was he? I realized I had no idea what Lacombe’s normal hours had been. For all I knew, he’d been a night owl and was regularly up at that time. But if he wasn’t, why had he been out so late?
“Something to ask Carmen,” I said, but Eddie was still focused on my pencil and not paying any attention to me. “What do you think?” I asked him. “Does the fact that Dale was out in the middle of the night have anything to do with—hey!”
Eddie grabbed the pencil with his pointy teeth, gripped tight, and tugged it out of my hand.
“What exactly are you going to do with that?” I asked, stretching forward to get it back. “It’s not like you can write with it. You don’t have thumbs, remember?”
He sent a glare that should have instantly evaporated me, jumped to the floor, and ran off with my pencil.
I heard him thump down the stairs to the bedroom and leap up onto the bed. Shaking my head, I got a pen out of my backpack and kept on working.
• • •
On Monday, I kept trying to talk to Jennifer about setting up a library lecture series for senior citizens, but every time I went up to her office for a friendly face-to-face chat, she was either on the phone or cozied up with a library board member.
I spent the afternoon trying not to think about that and wasn’t very successful. I didn’t like that she was talking to the board members individually, didn’t like it at all. It looked like she was manipulating the board, giving them her side of whatever issue she was talking about and preempting what should have been an open discussion during a full board meeting. Stephen, as annoying as he’d been in so very many ways, had never done that.
Halfway down the stairs, I stopped. Was it possible that I was actually missing my former boss?
I stood there, hand on railing and one foot in midair, considering the question, but it didn’t take long to come to a conclusion. No. I did not miss Stephen. I missed one particular aspect of his management style, that was all.