“Not fair,” he grumbled, but slapped down two fives onto the center of the table to match the ones we’d laid out. “But you can’t interfere.”
The waitress approached. “So what can I get for you three?” she asked.
“Ladies first,” Rafe said, nodding in Kristen’s direction.
I smiled to myself and settled in for an entertaining evening. My concern for Leese and the events of the previous day faded to the back of my mind.
Almost.
• • •
The next day was a bookmobile day, and our formerly perky trio of two people and a cat was decidedly unperked. Our shared dour mood could have been due to the weather, which though still warm, now included a layer of clouds so thick it was hard to believe the sun had come up and so low that if it dropped a few more feet it would be fog.
It was an indication of things to come. Thanks to the long periods of constant cloud cover in this part of the state, fall and winter were times when seasonal affective disorder roared through Tonedagana County at an epidemic level. Snow, with its reflective brightness, helped abate the worst of the symptoms, but I knew more and more people who were purchasing light therapy lamps. The results, I was told, could be impressive and I was thinking of getting one for my office.
But today, I was pretty sure it wasn’t the weather that was dampening our collective spirits. No, I would have bet the five dollars I’d won from Rafe that it was the memory of what had happened the last time we’d been out—finding Dale Lacombe’s dead body.
As we drove, time and again I tried to think of a conversation to start, and every time I came up with something that seemed too stupid to bother with. We didn’t need to talk about the weather; it was right there in front of us. Same thing with the changing colors on the trees. You can only point and say “Pretty!” so many times without feeling like a toddler overusing the one word in your vocabulary.
I could feel Julia glancing over at me every so often, and I knew she was also wrestling with what to say. Neither one of us wanted to talk about it, and neither one of us wanted to remember it, but the discovery of Dale Lacombe’s body was all we could think about.
Then, just a few miles before our first stop, I knew what I had to do. It was going to be ugly and I risked ridicule, but Julia and I had long ago made a pact that what happened on the bookmobile stayed on the bookmobile. I took a deep breath and started singing.
Julia’s head snapped to the left so fast I was worried about whiplash. “Seriously?” she asked.
I nodded and launched into the second line of the theme song to Gilligan’s Island. It was one of the few songs I knew from start to finish. My brother and I had been huge fans of the sitcom. Somewhere along the line, I’d also developed hand gestures to go with the words, but I couldn’t do those while driving.
Shaking her head and smiling, Julia started singing along and we pulled into the parking lot of the Village of Dooley’s fire station just as we finished the closing line. Timing is everything.
“Mrr.”
“Was that a criticism?” Julia asked, unbuckling her seat belt and leaning forward to unlatch the door of Eddie’s carrier. “Or were you asking for an encore? When you don’t enunciate your consonants, it’s hard to tell the difference.”
“Mrr!”
“Saying the same thing only louder doesn’t help me translate,” she said, watching as he leaped from floor to console to dashboard. “And don’t I wish I could move like that.”
“He’s young,” I reminded her. “When you were three and a half, you could probably—” I stopped and studied her. Though tall, lanky, and graceful, Julia had never struck me as the athletic type. “Sure is a nice day, isn’t it?”
She hooted with laughter. “You are one of a kind, Minnie Hamilton.”
“Mrr,” said our new dashboard ornament.
“You, too, of course.” Julia stood and patted him on the head, making his face bounce a little. After two pats, he ducked away, jumped down, and trotted to the rear of the bookmobile, where he sat down and stared at the back door.
“Does he think we’re going to keep it open again today?” Julia sounded amused.
“Please don’t ask me what a cat thinks,” I said. “Especially that one. His head may be big, but I’m not sure he’s always using the brains he has up there.”
Just then the bookmobile’s door opened.
Julia laughed. “Here you are, assuming he’s scamming for a chance to get outside when all the time he was serving as a watchcat, warning us of approaching patrons. And here’s our first of the . . . oh.” Her voice gave an unusual squeak. “Good morning, Leese. It’s . . . nice to see you.”
“And you.” Leese’s face, which two days earlier had been a cheerful and rosy-cheeked tan, now looked worn and pale. She heaved herself up the last two steps, leaned down to give Eddie a pat, then stood tall, squared her shoulders, and looked at me.
“I know this isn’t where I usually meet the bookmobile, but I found the route schedule on your website and drove out here. I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes, if you have time.” She nodded at Julia. “Both of you.”
The door opened again and small feet clambered up the stairs. “Is the bookmobile kitty here?” a high-pitched voice asked.
“I want to pet Eddie!” called a different child’s voice.
“Say good morning to the bookmobile ladies first,” said a man.
“Good morning, bookmobile ladies,” kid number one said.
“Morning,” said kid number two. “Can I pet Eddie now?”
Julia glanced at Leese and me. “Talk away. I’ll take care of them,” she said, and moved off to do so.
“Shall we adjourn to my office?” I asked, and we walked to the front. I unlocked the driver’s seat and rotated it to face the back.
Leese sat on the carpeted step and looked up at me. “I owe you some explanations,” she said.
But I was already shaking my head. “You don’t owe me a thing, so please don’t say anything you’re not comfortable telling.”
She half smiled. “And that’s why I owe you; because you don’t feel I owe you anything.”
“That almost makes sense,” I said, “but not quite. Either way, feel free to not explain.”
She looked at the floor, then up at me. “How about if I want to?”
“Different story altogether. If you need a friend, if you need to talk, then talk away.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “My local friends are old ones, but they’ve built lives that don’t have room for me right now. And though I’m making new friends, that takes time.”
“I know.” And I did. I’d had the luck to fall back into instant friendship with Kristen and Rafe when I’d made the permanent move to Chilson, but it had taken months and years to develop new relationships. Small towns meant small tight circles of friends, and if you didn’t have children in school or a workplace to meet people, finding friends could take a lot of work.
She waited a beat, then nodded. “First I have to thank you for calling and checking up on me. I should have called you back right away, but . . .” She sighed. “I wasn’t up to it and I’m sorry.”
I remembered the message I’d left for her to call. I’d worried a little about the silence, but had decided to wait another day or two before trying again. “No need to apologize,” I said.
“Okay, then. First off, no matter what you hear, they didn’t arrest me. I was held for twenty-four hours in the county jail for cause, and was released after the medical examiner’s preliminary findings came out. My father had been dead longer than they’d thought. With so much time having passed between the murder and finding him in the truck, the window of opportunity expanded exponentially.”
I’d followed her words, but got lost in the syllables toward the end. “So what you’re saying is anyone could have done it?”