Лори Касс - Gone With The Whisker

“Do you have anything new?” I asked. Then, because I knew I was about to get the can’t-discuss-an-ongoing-investigation talk, added, “Anything that you can tell me about?”

“Well.” Ash rubbed his chin, roughing the stubble. For me that noise was equivalent to the proverbial fingernails on a chalkboard, so maybe the answer to our nonspark was simpler and far more shallow than I wanted to think.

He gave his chin one last rub. “There’s one thing I could tell you, because it happened in public. The afternoon and night of the Fourth, Rex Stuhler and his wife, Fawn, were on Janay Lake with friends. On a big pontoon boat. You know that parking lot where the city is letting food trucks park? Well, someone from the boat placed a food order and they dropped Rex off so he could pick it up. Only he never got there.”

“This was during the fireworks?”

“The order was sent in about an hour before. But Rex sent a text to his wife that the food truck was backed up, and that he was going to walk around for a bit. That he’d let them know when he picked up the food, so no one thought too much about how late he was.”

The implication was clear. “So Rex’s wife—what was her name, Fawn?—was on the boat and didn’t murder him.”

“That’s the way it looks.”

I grinned. “Spoken like a true law enforcement officer. Reassuring, yet leaving your options open. You sure you don’t want to go into politics?” An odd expression came and went on his face so quickly it took me a second to interpret.

My smile went even wider. “You’re thinking about sheriff, aren’t you?”

“Shh!” He made frantic quiet-down motions with his hands. “Don’t say that out loud! Sheriff Richardson is a long way from retiring.”

I stood. “Your secret is safe with me. And for the record, I think you’d make a great elected law enforcement official.”

He gave me a pained look, which made me laugh, and smiling, I headed back outside.

* * *

The sheriff’s office was just up the street from Chilson’s main downtown blocks. I stood there for a moment, considering my options. I could drop into the toy store to see how Katrina—Kate—was doing, but there were two drawbacks to that. One, it would annoy her, and two, now that it was late morning, the sidewalks were packed with tourists.

Tourism was a critical part of the Up North economy, and I appreciated every dollar they spent in our town, but there were days that I just plain didn’t feel like elbowing through the crowds, and today was one of them. So I headed up the hill to the boardinghouse, tracing a path I’d walked many times before, a path I would probably walk less and less in the future.

This made me sad, and I decided not to think about how life changes were never one hundred percent positive, that even changes you desperately wanted came along with things you’d miss. Instead I focused on how I was going to get into the boardinghouse without being seen by Aunt Frances, who now lived right across the street.

Not that it really mattered if she saw me, of course. She was a reasonable adult, and if I wanted to stop by the boardinghouse she’d run by herself for decades, there was no reason to assume that if she caught me going in she’d buttonhole me afterward, quiz me on what I’d seen and heard, ask what was different, and roll her eyes at the answers.

Then again, that was pretty much what she’d done the last time I’d popped in to say hello to Cousin Celeste. If I’d been thinking ahead, I would have contacted Otto and asked him to get my aunt into the kitchen, where she couldn’t see the street, or even better, out of the house altogether.

But I hadn’t, and it was too late now, so I squared my shoulders and prepared myself for the doom that could soon await me.

I climbed the boardinghouse steps and onto the wide wooden porch. A swing at the far end swayed lightly. It was a bit ghostly, but then I saw the newspaper open on the swing’s seat.

“Well, hello there, Minnie honey.” Cousin Celeste popped out the front door. “How are you?” She nodded at the tray of drinks and cookies she was carrying. “It’s like I knew you were coming. Have a sit.”

“Um.” I glanced over my shoulder at Otto and my aunt’s house. “Have you seen Aunt Frances this morning?”

“She and Otto left about an hour ago on a tandem bicycle after loading what looked like a dandy picnic.” Celeste set the metal Coca-Cola tray on a small table and sat in the swing, patting the seat next to her. “Now sit.”

Feeling slightly disloyal, I lowered myself as Celeste handed me a glass filled with water, ice, blueberries, and strawberries. I took it, feeling a pang of loss for the lemonade my aunt had always served on the porch, but as soon as the berried water went down my throat, I forgot all about it. “This is wonderful!”

Celeste beamed, crinkling her weathered face into tiny wrinkles. Her long gray hair was tidied up in a braid that she’d rolled into a bun and secured with magic. Sitting or standing, we looked each other straight in the eye. It was immensely refreshing to know I wasn’t the only person in our extended family who didn’t have an excessive amount of height.

“Thought you’d like it.” Celeste nodded decisively. “The guests can’t get enough. After all, they’ve never been here and they don’t know Frances used to serve lemonade.”

Some might, if they read the scrapbooks from previous years, and sometimes the children of previous boarders came up to stay, but I kept drinking to avoid a response.

“I hear you were mixed up with that sad business at the waterfront the night of the fireworks,” Celeste said.

“Only peripherally.” I told her what had happened.

“That poor girl!” Celeste put a hand to her throat. “Is she going back home?”

“She started working at the toy store this morning, so not today anyway.”

Celeste smiled. “Ah, the resiliency of youth. Do the police know who killed that poor man?”

“They’re working on it.”

“Well, I’m sure they’ll figure it out soon,” she said comfortably.

For a moment we swung gently to and fro, then Celeste sighed. “Minnie, your aunt is a wonderful woman, but I need to talk to someone about her and I don’t know where else to turn.”

I’d known this was coming. It was, in fact, why I’d walked up here, when I would rather have returned to the houseboat and spent the rest of the morning reading. I half smiled. “Aunt Frances is driving you nuts, isn’t she?”

“And how,” Celeste said fervently. “I thought we had an agreement. She said she’d be hands off, that this place was mine to run and that whatever I wanted to do was fine by her, and that she wouldn’t say a word about how I was running the boardinghouse.” She stopped. “Well, I suppose that’s true in fact. She hasn’t said anything, but she stops and gives me that look. You know the one.”

I did indeed. My aunt was an imposing figure, and not just because of her height. Years of teaching community college woodworking to classes of young men who thought they knew more than she had given her the ability to quell an unruly mob with a single glance.

“And she’s sending me text messages.” Celeste offered me a plate of butterscotch cookies. “Reminding me about things I’ve already done. I’m being polite as I can, but I’m afraid it’s going to get worse.”

I made sympathetic noises around bits of cookie, and braced myself for what was sure to come next.

“Minnie, I hate to ask, but can you talk to her?” Celeste turned, beseeching me with her light blue eyes. “Please?”

And there it was.

On the outside I smiled. On the inside I heaved a huge sigh. “I’ll do what I can,” I said.