Minnie (tapping hard, after another thirty seconds, as if that would make him respond faster): Hello? Are you there?

Rafe:

Minnie (slapping her forehead after another thirty seconds): Rats. You said you had a board meeting tonight, didn’t you? Never mind. I’ll find out some other way.

Muttering at my stupidity, I tossed my phone onto the dining table and stared out at the lake, thinking.

If I knew Keith Tanaka better, I’d have his cell number and I’d just text him myself, but I didn’t so I couldn’t. So what were my options? Sure, I could wait until Rafe was done with his meeting, but his board meetings tended to run for hours. And, anyway, there was a good chance, since he was Rafe and didn’t always ask people the questions any normal human being would ask, that he didn’t know what Keith had done prior to becoming a teacher.

I wouldn’t be able to get a decent night’s sleep if I didn’t track down the answer right away, so I needed to come up with another way to find out.

“What do you think?” I asked Eddie.

“Mrr,” he said, but it was a soft and sighing kind of “mrr,” which meant he was content with who and where he was and he wasn’t going to help me.

“You’re funny,” I said, rubbing his cheek. “You talk half the day out on the bookmobile; then when I want some help, you curl up like a, like a crustacean.”

As similes went, it was pretty horrible, but I’d heard worse. Somewhere. I was sure of it.

“Anyway,” I went on, getting up from the dining bench and pacing around, “I’ll just keep talking as if you’re listening. How do I find out where Keith used to work? I don’t even know if he’s originally from Chilson. If he’s from downstate, it’s going to be even harder to . . . Hey, cut that out!”

When my back had been turned, Eddie had stirred himself to leap from the driver’s seat to the dining table and was in the act of batting my phone off the edge of said table.

I lunged forward and caught it just before it hit the floor. “Not a toy,” I scolded. Although it could be, because of game apps, but he didn’t need to know that. “This is a very expensive piece of electronics and—” I stared at it. “And its connection to the marina’s Wi-Fi is slow and poky. Eddie, you’re a genius,” I said, kissing the top of his head. “See you later, okay?”

“Mrr!”

“Yes, you’re brilliant.” I pulled on my coat and headed out the door, closing it on another loud “Mrr!”