“What buddy?”
“Noah something. He tutored him, I can’t remember what subject it was. Probably art. Yes, art. That’s what Tom was interested in.”
“Noah Yates?” Minerva asked, clutching the phone close against her ear.
“Maybe. Listen, I gotta run. I’ll pick up his stuff next month. Maybe he might even be back by then, who knows?”
“Yeah, who knows,” Minerva muttered.
She hung up the phone, then began poking into the boxes again, pulling out more books, marked papers, a few CDs. She found a planner and tucked in it there was a printout of Thomas’s tutoring schedule.
“Noah Yates, Tuesdays and Thursdays, sixp.m.,” she whispered. “AMS 513.”
She fished out a course catalogue from under a pile of books and flipped through its pages. AMS 513 corresponded to a special seminar titled Religion in Puritan New England, taught by Christina Everett. It hadn’t been art at all.
A folder containing Thomas’s tutoring paperwork and class materials also had the syllabus for AMS 513, which matched a few, though not all, of the books she’d found on the sheet with the bibliography. Robert Derie’sBell, Book, and Candle: Witchcraft in the New World,which he’d seemed so keen on, was not listed as required reading.
“Crucial,” she said, looking at that sheet again. “Crucial for what? What were you researching?”
She grabbed her laptop and plugged it into the Ethernet port. She jumped onto the NOBLE Libraries page and typed the title into a search box. There was a copy of the book at Stoneridge, but it was checked out. She tried a few of the other titles.A History of Witchcraft Lorewas nowhere nearby. She switched to the Boston Public Library page and the title popped up on the screen. The book had been published in 1928 and one copy was available at the Central Library branch.Bell, Book, and Candle: Witchcraft in the New Worldwas also quite old—1925—which was probably why the books were proving elusive.
She tapped a pen against her notepad then unfolded an MBTA timetable and phoned Noah.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Hey, it’s Minerva. I was wondering if we could meet today.”
“My grandmother’s not in right now. I’m guessing you want to look at papers, but if you need to talk to her, you’ll have to wait. Does that work for you?”
“No. I mean, yes. Yes, I want to look at the papers. And I’m wondering if I could talk to you. I need to take the train into Boston, but I should be back after…” She paused, looking at the timetable. “After six. Is that too late?”
“That’s fine.”
She hung up and quickly dialed Hideo and asked him for a ride to the station. He arrived a few minutes later. Two air fresheners in the shape of palm trees swung back and forth from his rearview mirror.
“Jump in!”
“You’re a lifesaver,” she said, and tossed her backpack onto the back seat. “Thanks.”
“I need to go into town anyway. I’m out of soda. You can’t write a thesis without caffeine and bubbles. What time should I pick you up?”
“I’ll be on the five-fifteen train.”
“That’s great. We can have dinner and do the rounds at nine.”
“Actually, would you mind dropping me off at the Willows on the way back?” she asked.
“Are you going to look at documents again?”
“Yeah. I can’t do dinner, and don’t worry about the rounds, I’ll handle it.”
“I don’t mind going over there,” he said in a tone that indicated it would be easier if she simply agreed to it.
“Okay, I’ll call you when I get back into the house, how’s that? And I got you a little something for your efforts,” she said, holding up a CD case between two fingers.
“Is it the Sneaker Pimps I wanted?”
“No. But you might like it.”
