I pointed my spoon at her. “What’s up?”
She turned a wide-eyed gaze on me. “The price of bacon, if the last invoice from my supplier is any indication.”
Sitting up straight, I pulled out both stops; the Librarian Look and the Librarian Voice. “Kristen Jurek, there is something you’re not telling me and I demand you tell me right this minute, because if you leave for Key West without spilling your guts, you’ll regret it forever.”
The silence lengthened and thickened. I continued to stare at Kristen. She continued to eat her dessert. Leese looked from one of us to the other and didn’t say a word.
Kristen scraped up a last spoonful of custard, swallowed it down, and tidied both the spoon and the ramekin. “I would have sent you a text, but I wanted to see your face when I told you. Then you break up with Ash, so now it’s all a little awkward, and—”
That’s when I knew. Shrieking with happiness, I flung myself at Kristen and wrapped my arms around her.
“Hey, now,” Leese said with concern. “Minnie, leave the poor woman alone. Whatever’s wrong, physical violence isn’t the answer.”
I burst out laughing. “This is a hug, not an attack. Do you know what’s going on?”
“Clearly not,” she said.
“The tall skinny blonde in the room got engaged last night.” I gave Kristen one last crushing squeeze and let go. “Didn’t you?”
My friend sighed ostentatiously, but her face was all smiles. “He flew in yesterday and did the one-knee thing with the biggest bouquet of roses I’ve seen in my life. I figured if he was willing to get dirt on his pants and spend money on flowers that were going to look like crap in three days, it wasn’t a joke anymore.”
Mild pandemonium ensued for a few minutes. At the end of it, Kristen said Scruffy had flown back to New York that morning with her request for an engagement ring—an emerald flanked by two smaller diamonds—and would be returning in another week with the ring and to help her close up the restaurant and pack for Key West.
Kristen called Harvey for a bottle of champagne. After the excitement faded and we sat back down, Leese’s earlier comment about sisters finally rattled around in my brain enough to remind me of something. “How’s your brother doing? Is he back to work?”
Leese, who’d returned to scraping up the last of her dessert, sighed and put her laden spoon down. “Brad is still acting as scapegoat for the brewery.”
Kristen and I exchanged a glance at her bitter tone, but before either one of us responded, Leese said, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Brad says he understands perfectly why he can’t come back to work.” She half smiled. “He said if he was in charge, he’d do the exact same thing. That the reputation of a producer of a food product has to be above reproach.”
I didn’t quite put beer on the same level as bread or milk, but I was sure many people would disagree with me. It was Rafe’s opinion that humankind had shifted from hunting and gathering to an agricultural lifestyle for the sake of brewing beer. After some research, I’d come to the reluctant conclusion that he might actually be right. And clearly the making of craft beer was becoming an important part of the economy in this part of Michigan. It was possible that the damage of one brewery’s good name could reflect on all of them.
“But what about Brad’s reputation?” Kristen asked. “If they can’t figure out what happened, will he be able to work as a brew master?”
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” Leese said fiercely.
“Well, duh.” Kristen rolled her eyes. “I’m just looking at the worst possible scenario.”
“She has a tendency to do that,” I told Leese. “It’s nothing personal.”
Leese nodded. “Okay, but he didn’t do anything wrong,” and this time we could hear the anxiety coating every word.
It was obvious that she was worried about her brother, but I thought there was a lot more to worry about. What about Leese’s own reputation? What would she do if her name wasn’t cleared of any and all connection to her father’s murder? Was Brad being unfairly scapegoated because of the murder? How many Lacombes were going to suffer because of Dale’s death?
Chapter 14
“Mrr.”
I zipped shut my backpack and gave my cat a pat. “Sorry, but you’re not going with me today.”
Eddie laid his ears back and halted the purr action.
“You won’t like it,” I told him. “Trust me. I’m going to drive downstate, talk to some strangers, and drive back. Probably seven hours of driving for an hour of talking.”
“Mrr.”
“Yeah, doesn’t seem worth it, does it? But it’s Monday and I have the day off. It’s a good day for a road trip. I’ve checked out a nonfiction audio book from the library so I get to listen and learn for hours and hours.”
Eddie rolled to put his back to me and curled into a tight ball.
“Love you too, pal.” I kissed the top of his head, picked up my backpack, and was on the road a few minutes later.
Shadow Divers, by Robert Kurson, kept me awake, interested, and occupied my brain so fully that I hardly thought about Rafe as I drove south on US 131 to Grand Rapids. At that point I hopped briefly onto I-96, then down East Beltline to where I turned off to find the address that my former boyfriend Ash had (sort of) helped me find.
When we’d paused to take a break on our bike ride the previous morning, I’d asked about the best way to locate someone who lived in an unknown city in Michigan. If I was going to help Leese and her siblings, I figured the first step was to talk to some of the people I’d put on my mental suspect list. In broad daylight, of course, and as much in public as I could manage. I was still shying away from Carmen as the killer, and I needed to work out the name of the guy from the car accident, so I’d decided to focus on Dale’s lawsuit cases and learn what I could about the cranky building inspector.
Ash had laughed. “Someone who isn’t in law enforcement, you mean?”
Since he was perfectly aware that was what I meant, I ignored his question. “If you were looking to talk to a couple named, say, Gail and Ray Boggs—that’s Boggs with two g’s—and you were pretty sure they lived downstate somewhere, and they’d moved within the last few months and weren’t showing up on any of the Internet searches you’d tried, what would be the best way to find them?”
“You’ve asked the neighbors?”
“That’s how I know the Boggses are still in Michigan. But the neighbor didn’t know where.”
“Hmm.” Ash pulled out his cell phone, tapped out a text, and tucked the phone into his jacket. “Ready?” he asked, putting one foot on a bike pedal.
One of my character flaws I was working to correct was a lack of patience, so I nodded and we went back to riding. And lo and behold, when we were coasting back into Chilson, Ash’s phone dinged with a return text, and my newfound—and most likely temporary—patience was rewarded.
“Okay,” he said, reading the small screen. “If I was looking for Gail and Ray Boggs with two g’s, I’d check the phone listings for greater Grand Rapids.”
Excellent. The only problem was, greater Grand Rapids included probably twenty-five different municipalities. Probably double that, if you were including the Holland–Grand Haven–Muskegon area. “Great,” I said. “That would help a lot, if I wanted to find any Boggses with two g’s.” We made the last turn and came to a stop in front of the boardinghouse. “But if someone wanted to find the Bogg people in a reasonable amount of time, should that someone look in Kent County?”