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I drove slowly back home, thinking about Kyle all the way. When I got home, Fitz picked up on my mood again and leaned his furry body against my leg as soon as I came in. I picked him up and buried my face in his fluffiness. He bumped his head against mine, looking lovingly into my eyes.
“It’s been another crazy morning,” I said to him. Fitz gazed at me in an understanding manner.
I set down the cat and absently made myself something light to eat. Then I phoned Grayson.
“I think your day is about to take a detour,” I said grimly.
“Why? What’s happened? Are you okay?”
I said, “I’m fine. But Kyle Bowman is dead. Murdered at home.”
I could hear movement on the other end of the phone. “You’re right. My day is taking a detour. Thanks for letting me know. You’re sure you’re okay?”
“I’m good. I didn’t find him—the police were doing a wellness check when he didn’t show up for work this morning,” I said.
“I’ll give Burton a call. And maybe see if I can get a quote from Paige Lee.” I could tell his mind was already going a million miles an hour, planning the story.
“I’ll talk to you later. Hope you get everything you need for the article.”
Grayson said, “What are your plans for the day?”
“Well, I was thinking I would curl up with Fitz and read my book. But I’m probably too keyed up right now to get that done. Maybe I’ll work some more on housework or do something in the yard.”
Grayson said, “There’s always the gym, too.”
“Right. I’d forgotten about that.” I wasn’t used to having a gym membership. But now that Grayson had mentioned it, a trip to the gym was sounding very appealing. That would definitely be the way to work off the excess energy I was feeling. “That might just fit the bill. I’ll talk to you later, Grayson.”
I changed into workout clothes and took off for the gym. It was busier than it had been the last time I was there, but there was still plenty of equipment for me to exercise on. I decided I wasn’t in the right mood for a group class, so I headed straight for the weights, then the treadmill.
By the time I left the gym, I did feel better. My head felt clearer, for sure, and I felt like I was ready to make a plan for the rest of my day. I definitely wanted to get my reading time in, but it made more sense for me to do that yard work first, since I was already sweaty from my workout.
So after getting home, I gave Fitz a few rubs as he was happily lying in a sunbeam, then grabbed a pair of gardening gloves, a bucket to dump weeds in, and some pruners, and headed outside.
Although yardwork wasn’t my favorite thing to do, it definitely gave me the same sense of satisfaction that housework did. Basically, it was just good to knock stuff off my list and see the before-and-after effects of what I’d accomplished.
Unfortunately, I managed to stir up pollen in my efforts to tidy the yard. This resulted in a huge sneezing and coughing fit. Hearing me, Fitz leaped up into the window, watching me with alarm. I hurried inside to take my allergy medicine and drink a glass of water, as Fitz regarded me with concern.
Five minutes later, I was pulling up a patch of clover that had implanted itself when I heard a cheery voice say, “Hi there, neighbor.”
I stood, brushing dirt off my clothes, and saw Roger Driscoll standing there. “Hey, Roger. How’s it going? You’ve got the day off, too?”
“I decided it was time for me to take a personal health day. Plus, I pulled something on the job yesterday.” He rubbed his shoulder, then gingerly rotated it, wincing. “One of the hazards of construction life.” He smiled at me. “I guess you don’t have those kinds of problems where you work. Actually, I can’t remember where you work.”
“I’m a librarian,” I said with a smile. Half the time when I disclosed this, I was armed and ready for various librarian jokes. But Roger either didn’t know them or didn’t seem inclined to make them.
“Nice work,” he said. He sounded a little wistful. “You won’t believe this, but when I was a kid, I thought I might work around books. A bookstore, a library. Something like that. My sister and I even ‘played library.’ We’d pretend to check out books, stock shelves. That kind of thing.”
“That all sounds very familiar,” I said. “So what happened to your dream of working with books?”
“Oh, that was just the first of a long line of me choosing different future jobs. Then I wanted to be an archaeologist, an astronaut, and a vet. Finally, I went with what I was best at . . . working with my hands, figuring out how to put things together.” He shrugged. “It’s been a good life.” He gestured to the garden. “Looks like you know something about gardening, too. I guess, if you’re a librarian, you might know a lot about tons of stuff.”
“I guess it comes with the job. Not that I know everything, but patrons ask me questions about topics, and I find out more about them through research. But I can’t really take the credit for this garden. It’s courtesy of my great-aunt, who raised me.”
Roger nodded. “Got it. You know, the new place has a pretty nice garden. I’ve thought about taking up gardening through the years. Maybe even making a side-gig out of doing yardwork for other people. But when I was out in the yard this morning, I didn’t know what some of those plants even were. Do you think you could help me identify them? I could take pictures of them to show you.”
“Have you tried doing a reverse Google image search? You could probably find out right away what the plants are and how to care for them,” I said.
Roger shook his head. “I don’t know how to do that, but it sounds useful.”
I said, “It can be. You pull up a Google search, hit the camera icon next to the search box, and take a photo. Then Google looks for a match online. I can show you how to do it.”
“No, that’s too much trouble right now. You’re in gardening mode. Maybe I’ll run by the library sometime and ask you then.” He paused, looking at the yard again. “I really like those plants you’ve got there. Are they lilies?”
“Daylilies,” I said. “They’re pretty, aren’t they? Would you like some of them?”
Roger immediately started shaking his head. “I don’t want you to pull up any of your plants.”
“I wouldn’t have to. Daylilies can be divided at the root. Besides, these really do need to be divided to give them some breathing room. I’ve been putting it off.”
“Only if you can spare them. And only if you have time at some point. I think they’d look good around my mailbox.”
I hid a smile. I supposed this was the monstrous mailbox that Zelda complained about.
Roger was quiet for a few moments. “Hey, I was wondering if you heard all those sirens earlier. Do you know anything about that? It seemed like a lot more sirens than there would be for a regular medical emergency.”
I said, “I’m afraid it was another murder. Kyle Bowman died. He was a medical student who was working at the clinic for one of his rotations.”
Roger looked shocked. “You’re kidding. What’s going on? Was it the same clinic where Victor worked?”
I nodded, and Roger shook his head. “This is getting insane. Does somebody have some sort of vendetta against doctors or something?”
I shook my head. “I don’t have any idea. I’m just guessing that the two murders are connected somehow.”
Roger sighed. “Crud. This is going to mean a return visit from the police, I bet. That’s not going to be fun for my day off.”
“No alibi, I guess?” I asked.
“Nope. I was at home, sleeping in this morning. It happened this morning, right?”
I said, “I don’t know for sure. It sounded like the police were asking people about their last twelve hours or so.”
“Well, last night I went to bed early after I fell asleep watching TV on the sofa. I guess the cops won’t think that’s much of an alibi. But I don’t know this Kyle person. I’ve heard of him, but never met him. That should be a good reason for me not to be a suspect.” He ran a hand through his unbrushed gray hair. “I can’t believe I’m getting yanked into this investigation. And this all happened when I’m trying to move forward and get past everything.”
I gave him an encouraging look, and Roger continued. “I was thinking yesterday about what I was saying to you and Grayson at the block party. My dad always told me when I was growing up that I could get bitter or better. I never had anything to get bitter about until Victor and Cheryl got together, but then I made up for lost time. I’ve been stuck for a while and I realized I needed to find a way to pull myself out of it.”
“What are you planning on doing?” I asked.
Roger said, “To start out, I’m going to go to Victor’s funeral. I want it to be like a new beginning for me. And, maybe, I want Cheryl and other people in town to realize that I have the ability to put the past behind me. After that, I’m going to focus more on my health. Cut back on drinking, try to eat a vegetarian meal or two in a week.”
“Sounds like a great plan.”
He smiled at me. “Thanks. I figure if I can just focus on me instead of worrying about other people and how they’ve wronged me, I should get my head in a better place.” He sighed. “If I can. It seems like this murder investigation is determined to drag me back into the past again.”
“I know last time you were thinking Joel Burns might have had something to do with Victor’s death. Is that still what you’re thinking?”
Roger shook his head. “See, that’s part of the mindset that I need to fix. Trying to blame other people all the time. I like Joel, and we used to be buddies. I feel bad about throwing him under the bus for Victor’s murder. I just haven’t seen the guy for a while. There’s really nothing about Joel that makes me feel like he could have done something like that to Victor.”
I said, “Life gets so busy that sometimes it’s easy to let friendships fall by the wayside.”
“Yeah, but it shouldn’t be that way. I’ve just been so caught up with all the bad stuff going on in my life that I haven’t kept up with friends like I should have. That’s on me. I’m going to try to do better. The fact is, Joel went through a rough time, too. He also lost a marriage. Then he ended up with addiction issues. He could have used a friend, but I was off sulking. Maybe I’ll reach out to him and we can grab a coffee today.”
I said, “I saw Joel recently, and he was looking great.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” said Roger, sounding like he meant it. “That’s actually really inspiring, that he was able to lift himself out of where he’d been. Because I think he’d been in a very dark place.” He gave me a smile. “Well, thanks for the chat. I better let you get back to your yardwork.”
“Thanks. I’ll run those daylilies by soon.”
Roger said, “No hurry on that. But thank you.” He frowned, glanced swiftly down the street and said, “I’d better run. Talk to you later.”
I glanced curiously to see who might have caused him to flee like that, and saw, naturally, it was Zelda, stomping down the street. He must have wanted to avoid any conversations pertaining to inappropriate mailboxes and questionable yard art.
Ordinarily, I’d have tried to avoid Zelda too, but she’d already spotted me. She bared her teeth in a smile. “Hi, Ann.”
“How’s everything going, Zelda?”
“Better than it’s going to go for that Roger Driscoll when I catch him. The man is avoiding me.”
I said, “I think he was in a hurry to run an errand or something.”
Zelda growled, “He’ll have to be around at some point. Then I’ll tell him a thing or two.”
Wanting to get off the subject before Zelda really started getting warmed up on HOA violations, I quickly said, “How did the free dinner at Quittin’ Time go?”
Zelda grunted. Then she said, “Okay, I guess.”
It was hardly a rave review. “Did you run into any problems redeeming the meal?”
“No, nothing like that,” she said. “But you know. It was Quittin’ Time.”
“Sadly, we don’t have a whole lot of choices around Whitby,” I said.
Zelda looked tempted to go off on a tangent about that very problem, but managed to restrain herself.
“The clientele isn’t great, either,” she said with a sniff. “It’s a real mixed bag. This woman at the table next to me was wearing a perfume that gave me a headache. Too strong! You’d think people would be aware of that.”
“That can be awful,” I acknowledged. “Lots of people are allergic to scents, too.”
Zelda appeared not to be concerned about the other people. She shrugged a thin shoulder. “Linus asked me what he should get, and I told him the burger, since it was the safest thing on the menu. If they try to cook fancy food at Quittin’ Time, that’s when stuff goes wrong.”
“Fancy?” I couldn’t imagine what might qualify as fancy food on their menu.
Zelda barked, “Quiche! Beef stroganoff!”
I nodded, because she clearly required agreement. “But the burger was good?”
“Acceptable,” she said shortly. “I had to ask them to modify it, of course, and they messed that all up. I told them to put the pickle on the side, and they didn’t. I told them I didn’t want any of that brioche bun nonsense. I wanted a sesame seed bun, toasted but not too crispy. I wanted cheddar cheese on top, but not dripping off the side. The lettuce needed to be crisp and the tomato fresh.”
I had the funny feeling that Zelda’s burger hadn’t come out exactly as she ordered it.
Zelda scowled. “It was all a mess. A mess! Nothing the way it was supposed to be.”
I was still trying to look for a silver lining. “But there was a live band, though, right? I know they usually have them.”
“They were atrocious. The music was too loud and the singer couldn’t sing to save her soul.”
I finally decided that perhaps it would be best for Zelda to find the bright spot in the evening. “Did anything go right?”
Zelda reflected on this. She said grudgingly, “Linus was a real gentleman. He was always holding doors, pulling out my chair for me to sit, helped me with my coat. Nice guy. And real interesting.” She paused. “Guess it’s all those books he’s reading.”
Zelda, despite her interest in shelving books and hanging out at the library, was not much of a reader. It was extraordinary to me that she was as good at trivia as she was.
Zelda continued, “Yeah, we had real interesting conversations. He asked me a lot of questions, too. He thought it was intriguing that I knew so much about mythology.”
“How do you know so much about mythology?” I asked. Again, because I’d seen no evidence that Zelda had ever read a book of mythology.
She shrugged. “My parents. They told me the stories. Smart folks.”
“What did they do?” I asked.
“Dad was an English professor, and Mom was an archaeologist.”
The conversation with Zelda was getting more and more surprising as it went on. “I had no idea,” I said slowly. I kept feeling as if I’d walked through the looking glass.
Zelda glowered at me. “You can’t know if you don’t ask. Anyway, Linus was nice. We don’t want to romance each other, but he’s great. I wouldn’t mind chewing the fat with him another time.” She was quiet for a few moments. “Of course, he did show up looking like he was about to cut the ribbon at a bank opening.”
I smiled. “He’s pretty attached to his suit and tie.”
“It stands out a little at Quittin’ Time. Maybe I can work on that.” Then she said gruffly, “Those hydrangeas need trimming,” and stomped away.