AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She hugged him. “You don’t have to do that. I’m not a baby.”
“I’ll be in later.”
She sighed, but didn’t argue further.
Tom and I kissed good-night by the door for a while. We didn’t talk about Keefer.
Tom said, “Be careful” only once. Then I went out to my SUV to drive back to town, offsetting the reluctance to leave them with the pleasure of this bonus evening together.
Charles Dickens nailed it — it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
DAY TWO
WEDNESDAY
CHAPTER TEN
I stopped at the Sherman Supermarket on the way to the station.
It wasn’t precisely on the way and I wouldn’t get anything perishable, but my favorite store-bought cookies — Pepperidge Farm Double Dark Chocolate Milano — never went bad before being consumed. Besides, I mostly stopped for unperishable information.
That came from head checker Penny Cyzlinski.
The information rarely came directly and only when I was in her checkout line, which sometimes required finesse to maximize. The most important factor was having no one behind me, waiting to check out.
On my way to the cookie aisle, I eyed her line — no one behind the person currently being rung up, a woman named Hannah Trusett, a ranch wife and mother of three, who had two heaping carts.
Hoping that would discourage anyone else from getting in Penny’s line, I grabbed five packages of cookies and swooped back to checkout.
Penny had completed the first cart.
As excavation of the second cart started, I waited patiently — semi-patiently — during her free-ranging soliloquy that touched on sparse resources for rural mental health. Either that or migrating bird populations were down. It was a little hard to tell.
Her customer was a robust woman in her mid-fifties, who clearly had her own system and high standing in Penny’s eyes. Because the woman reorganized some of the bags Penny packed and Penny didn’t — excuse the pun — send her packing.
I kept a wary eye out for anyone coming up behind me, but one customer went to the line of the young cashier farther down the row and the rest were still in the belly of the store.
Finally, after Hannah Trusett paid a throat-lumping bill, the longed-for words came from Penny.
“Bye now. Well, hi there, Elizabeth. Out to Elk Rock yesterday. Sad—”
“Yes. And any background you can—”
“—business. Poor soul. Special. Always been—”
“Keefer? How?”
“—that way. Spaces between him and people. Open—”
“But he lived with two women for—”
“—spaces best. Saw things there others didn’t. Always. She was wise enough to accept, give what needed. Did dance close to the edge, but couldn’t know he’d pick up the interest later and—”
The interest? “Keefe’s interest in the treasure?”
“—all those years. Sort of a triangle, could say. But—”
“Brenda and Wendy?” I asked a little wildly. “With Keefer?”
