by Laurie Cass
“Of course I am.” He pushed open the door to his house and stood back, inviting me in. “If you have a few minutes, I have a story to tell you.”
Who could resist a story? I sent a quick text to my aunt (At Otto’s—be home soon) and followed him inside.
Chapter 16
In short order, Otto settled me into a small room that was closer to being a parlor than any room I’d ever set foot in. A pint-sized fireplace sent out a cozy glow over the two wingback chairs that faced it. Occasional tables, small bookcases, and scenic paintings decorated the space in a way that was elegant without being uptight, and I was still admiring it all when Otto came back into the room with two glasses of wine.
He’d shed his coat and was wearing crisp jeans and a smooth buttoned shirt. “I hope you like this,” he said, and cited the year and varietal.
When he started to talk about the vintner, I put up my hand. “Sorry, but I wouldn’t know a smooth finish from sandpaper. My best friend, Kristen, owns a restaurant here in town, and she’s picked all my wines for me since the day she caught me drinking white zinfandel.” Which I still liked, every once in a while, but I would unhesitatingly say I never touched the stuff if she ever asked.
Otto gave me a pained look but said, “You have a cat, so I hope you don’t mind a little cat hair. Though I try to keep this room free of the stuff, it’s a difficult task.”
I laughed and picked an errant Eddie hair from my pant leg. “Here,” I said, handing it over to him. “We’ll call it a draw.”
We exchanged cat names and cat antics for a bit, and when that conversation started to lag, he said with a sigh, “But I lured you in with the promise of a story.”
“You did,” I agreed. “I recommend starting at the beginning.”
“Always a good idea.” Otto sipped his wine. “And I suppose the beginning of this particular story starts last summer with Leo.”
I sat up straight and almost spilled my glass. Which would have been a shame, because the wine was extremely good. Maybe Kristen’s lessons were finally rubbing off. “Leo Kinsler?”
“The very one. Leo and I have been friends since high school.”
Leo had also been one of my aunt’s boarders last summer. He’d driven off into the metaphorical sunset with another of her boarders and, every so often, we’d get e-mails or Facebook posts from the pair.
“Late last spring,” Otto was saying, “Leo told me he was coming up here for the summer, to stay in a boardinghouse, of all places. Now, don’t look at me like that. My images of a boardinghouse were based on my great-uncle’s Depression-era stories. I tried to convince Leo to stay home where he belonged, where we could golf all summer like always, but he was intent on coming north.”
I blinked. “Leo golfs?”
“He’s a seven handicap.”
“Is that good?”
Otto looked at me over the rim of his wineglass. “I take it you’re not a golfer.”
While I was excellent at miniature golf, I suspected that wasn’t what he was talking about. “So, Leo came up here in June, against your advice?”
“Stubborn bugger,” Otto said, nodding. “But he loved it up here. Every time we talked or e-mailed, he’d paint this picture of a northern Michigan Shangri-la. He talked about Chilson, about how it sits on the edge of Janay Lake and next to Lake Michigan, about how the people are open and welcoming. He described the countryside, with its hills and lakes and winding roads. He told me about the boardinghouse, about the maps thumbtacked to the knotty pine walls, about the bell someone always rings before meals. He talked about the other boarders.” Otto studied his glass. “He talked about you, about Eddie, about the bookmobile. And . . . and he talked about Frances.”
With a blinding flash of the obvious, I saw all. Leo had spun Otto a fantasy so vivid that he’d fallen in love with my aunt without ever meeting her. Good job, Leo, I thought sourly.
“I drove up in early September,” Otto said, “and Chilson was everything Leo said it was.”
“Really?” I found that hard to believe. I loved my adopted town dearly, but it was in no way a fairy-tale place. Real people—with real problems and real personalities—lived in it, and real life was often messy.
Otto smiled. “I gave up wearing rose-colored glasses decades ago, Minnie. Too many of my clients were elected officials. I knew Leo’s description glossed over some bumps. But overall, I’ve found that he was right. The second week I was here, this house went up for sale. I told Leo, and he said it was fate.”
I made a rude noise in the back of my throat, and Otto laughed. “That’s more or less what I told Leo, but I bought the house anyway. I’ve been enjoying myself immensely, settling in and getting to know people around town.”
“But not my aunt Frances.”
He slid down in his chair a little, diminishing himself. “No,” he said quietly. “Not her. I’d been working up the courage to knock on her door and I was almost there, but then the other night you told me about her woodworking skills, about her teaching. What does a woman that interesting and accomplished need with a man like me? What can I offer her? I’m a retired accountant. It’s hard to get more boring than that.” His shoulders sagged, and his wineglass came dangerously close to tipping over.
I eyed him. He seemed sincere, but I barely knew the man. What guarantee did I have that he wasn’t some crazed stalker who would make my aunt’s life miserable?
“Here.” Otto pulled a cell phone from his shirt pocket. “Let me call Leo. You can ask him anything you like about me.” He quirked up a smile. “Well, anything except what we did to Mr. Lane’s physics room after school that day.”
He pushed a few buttons and handed me the phone. “Otto!” Leo said. “It’s warm and sunny in southern Texas. How’s northern Michigan?”
“Cold and rainy,” I said, smiling. “And it turns out that Eddie isn’t fond of snow.”
There was a pause. “Minnie.” Leo laughed. “You have got to be kidding me. Otto actually introduced himself?”
Sort of. “To me. Should I introduce him to Aunt Frances?”
“Ah.” Leo chuckled. “He hasn’t worked up to that, has he? Otto is a great guy, and I can say that because I’ve known him for more than fifty years. He’s the best CPA I’ve ever met, but he’s as horrible with women as he is good with numbers. He managed to get married once, but she died years ago and they didn’t have any children. He’s been alone ever since.”
I stood, walked to the fireplace, and kept my voice low. “If my aunt was your sister, would you introduce them?”
Leo snorted. “I did introduce him to my sister, years ago, but she went and married a guy who owns a masonry business. Minnie, all Otto needs is a break. He gets stage fright something horrible when he meets women. I bet you’ve seen him a dozen times, coming out of his house but then going back in.”
Clearly, Leo knew Otto very well.
“All he needs is a break,” Leo repeated. “Do me a favor and introduce them. If things don’t work out, it wasn’t meant to be. But if they do, well, we’ll have two less lonely people in the world.”
I wanted to object, to say that my aunt wasn’t lonely—how could she be with me in the winter and a houseful of boarders in the summer? But I knew better. Every so often, I saw her sadness, saw how solitude scraped at her.
After thanking Leo, I handed the phone back to Otto and asked, “Do you know Denise Slade?”
His blank look instantly convinced me that he didn’t. If he had known her, he would have shown some sort of reaction. Not that a newcomer to Chilson was likely to have killed Roger in an attempt on Denise’s life, but you never knew—anyone can commit murder—and I had to protect Aunt Frances. As much as she would let me, anyway.
“Come over Monday night,” I said. “After dinner. I’ll make the introductions. Now stop looking so scared.” I put my ha
nds on my hips and gave him a mild version of the Librarian Look until he smiled. “That’s better. I’m a very good introducer, and the two of you will be friends in no time.”
Otto got up to fetch my coat. “Maybe this can wait,” he said tentatively.
“Monday night,” I said.
On my way back across the street, I started laughing out loud. I was about to matchmake the matchmaker. If there weren’t the specter of the bookmobile’s demise hanging over my head, and the very real possibility that someone out there was still trying to kill Denise, I would have thought that life was very good.
* * *
The next morning, the rain was falling down so heavily that I drove to the library. I arrived early and scampered through a number of tasks that would look at me sorrowfully and shake their heads in despair if I didn’t get them done. But as soon as I finished the last have-to job, I shut my office door and went back to my desk with one thing on my mind.
Save the bookmobile.
Which meant figuring out who killed Roger. Which, I was sure, meant figuring out who wanted to kill Denise.
There was the tiniest twinge of Mom-induced guilt that hovered in a back corner of my brain, but I told it to go away. Yes, I was at work and could have been expected to be, well, working, but keeping the bookmobile on the road was my job, too.
I grabbed my purse and, for the first time ever, left the building without telling anyone.
Forty-five minutes later, I was standing at the edge of the Jurco River, looking at the Jurco Dam. I was also shivering, because I wasn’t dressed properly. Jeremy had said he’d been here the day Roger was killed, and I’d seen his car about ten miles away from the gas station. If he was here at the time he’d said he been, there wasn’t enough time for him to get in place to shoot Roger, not with the condition of the gravel road I’d just traveled.
I glanced back at my poor little sedan, which was now coated with thick spatterings of mud, courtesy of the rutted road.
So now my only problem was: How could I confirm or deny the time Jeremy had been here? If he hated Denise enough, he might have overcome his aversion to blood and guns.
I stood at the end of the small dam, watching the water rush through, down, and away. Checking water levels, he’d said. Water levels above the dam? Below the dam? Both? There were so many things I didn’t know; dam knowledge was just one more.
“Hang on,” I said out loud.
There, fastened to the end of the dam, about three feet off the ground, was a metal object that looked like a really boring mailbox. I stepped sideways down the shallow slope toward it. The gray metal box was about eighteen inches tall and a foot wide.
I slipped on the slushy ground and slid sideways against the box, grunting as my hip hit a sharp corner. Score one for being short. If I’d been taller, the box would have smacked me in the thigh instead of my softest part.
“Please don’t be locked,” I said on a breath, feeling around for a catch on the box. “Please . . .”
My fingers found a fastener. With a quiet click, it released, and I swung open the door. Inside was a clipboard with a pen attached. On the clipboard was a stack of papers warped from dampness. On the papers were a series of numbers and dates and times and abbreviations.
I pulled the whole thing out and started studying.
“Hello.”
I jumped and almost dropped the clipboard to the wet ground. Up above me was a woman about my own age, dressed in a warm-looking dark knit hat, heavy boots, dark green pants, and dark green winter jacket, to which a gold shield was pinned. “Hi,” I said. “I was just, um, looking at the data.”
The conservation officer nodded. “Jeremy Hull’s work, mostly, but I take the readings when I’m over here. So does the other CO for the county, Officer Wartella. I’m Officer Jenica Thomas.”
Wartella had been the CO I’d talked to what seemed like months ago. “Really?” I asked. “Taking readings is part of your job?”
She nodded but didn’t say anything.
“This is my first time out here. Can you explain this?” I pointed to the sheet. “The dates and times I get, but some of these others don’t make a lot of sense.”
“No problem.” She scrambled down to me, sure-footed on the wet, muddy surface. “Date and time, as you said. Those are the initials of the person recording the data.” She pointed. “Next is an abbreviation for the weather condition. Sunny, raining, and so on. Then temperature, then the elevation above and below the dam, which is plus or minus from a mark on the dam wall.”
Now that it was explained, it all made sense. “How accurate are these?” I asked. “I mean, what if someone writes down a wrong number or something?”
Officer Thomas pulled in a breath. “Incorrect elevations should show up as an anomaly.”
“What if it was the wrong time?” I persisted. “What if it was, say, the time-change weekend and someone wrote down the old time instead of the right one?”
The CO considered my question seriously. “It’s possible,” she finally said, “but unlikely. The people trained to take these elevations are competent and conscientious folks who take this effort seriously. None of us is likely to compromise the data by making an error.”
“Why a clipboard?” I asked. “Why isn’t it entered into a computer?”
“It is,” Officer Thomas said. “We have an extensive data set for this monitoring project. We just like to have the paper copy in case it needs to be used in a court of law.” She waited a beat. “Do you have any other questions?”
“No. All set.” I tucked the clipboard into its home and shut the door. Jeremy couldn’t be the killer. I knew it for sure now.
* * *
A few minutes after I snuck back into my office, there was a knock on the door. Holly poked her head inside. “Minnie, it’s break time. I made cupcakes yesterday for Wilson’s classroom, and there are a few extras.”
“Sounds good,” I said vaguely, not taking my eyes off the monitor or my fingers off the keyboard. “I’ll be there in a little bit.”
Holly said something, I made an ambiguous noise, and she retreated, shutting the door softly behind her.
* * *
There was another knock on the door.
“I’ll be there in a second,” I said, still typing.
“Don’t go yet.” Mitchell slipped into my office and shut the door behind him. “Slipped” being a subjective word, of course, because it was hard for anyone that tall to be unobtrusive. “I got something to show you.”
“What are you doing here?” I squinched my eyes shut and opened them again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that you’re never at the library before noon.” I leaned back, rotating my shoulders and flexing my fingers, all of which I suddenly realized were very, very stiff.
“True that.” Mitchell nodded seriously. “Why ruin a good morning by getting out in it, is what I say.”
I frowned and, for the first time in hours, looked at the clock on my computer. Half past one? How can that be?
“What’re you doing, anyway?” Mitchell came around my side of the desk. “Working? Hey!” He pointed to the monitor before I could bring up another file to cover what I was doing. “You’re working on who killed Roger, too.” He put his hands flat on the edge of my desk and started reading. “Huh. You got a lot of the same stuff I did, only with more extra stuff. Like lots of details.” He read the narrative I’d been constructing all morning, the story of everything I’d learned about Roger and Denise.
He grunted and stood more or less straight. “How come you’re doing this?”
For a brief moment, I considered confiding in Mitchell. Telling him about the library board’s ultimatum, about my flashes of empathy for Denise, about my guilt and my responsibility for Roger’s death, about the possible end of the bookmobile.
My sanity restored
itself a nanosecond later. The absolute last thing I needed was Mitchell’s bumbling, though well-intentioned, assistance.
“Just trying to help,” I said. Which wasn’t much of an explanation, but with any luck, he’d accept it.
“Yeah, I can see that.” He nodded. “That’s like what I’m doing here,” he said, pulling a pile of yellow legal pad sheets from where he’d stuffed them inside his coat. “Can you guess what this is? Just read; see if you can figure it out.”
It was another multipage listing of names, and this one was even longer than the list he’d prepared of all the people Roger had ever known. Much longer.
I scanned the handwritten sheets. Most of the names I didn’t recognize, but every few lines I’d pick out one that I did. Pam Fazio. Kelsey Lyons. Josh Hadden. Don Weller. Holly Terpening. Jeremy Hull. Donna Beene. Allison Korthase. Bruce Medler. Sondra Luth. Otis Rahn. Shannon Hirsch. Stephen Rangel. Minnie Hamilton.
I squinted up at Mitchell. “What’s my name doing here?”
“Yeah.” He grinned. “What kind of list do you think it is?”
As far as I could tell, it was a list of all the people who lived in Chilson. “I have no idea.”
Mitchell picked a pen out of my old ABOS coffee mug and, as he wrote a title on the top page, said the words out loud. “Anyone Who Has Ever Said Anything Bad about Denise Slade.”
I started to object, but stopped and felt ashamed of myself. Yes, every so often, I ignored my mother’s oft-repeated maxim about not saying anything if I didn’t have anything nice to say. I’d probably said uncomplimentary things about Denise, and if I’d said them within Mitchell’s hearing, I should be doubly ashamed.
“Yeah.” With a finger riddled with hangnails, Mitchell tapped at my name. “Once I heard you say that Denise sees everything in black and white. It didn’t sound like a compliment, you know? So I had to put you down.”
Thinking about it, I had to agree.
Starting at the top of the list, Mitchell began telling me exactly why each of the names were included. Ten minutes later, he flipped to page two. “And Bruce Medler? That library-board guy? Well, this one day, I heard him—”
