In spite of the hour, I was wired from Cheryl’s visit and wished Skip would come by. I felt it would be disloyal to Maddie if I called him myself, but I’d be blameless if he showed up and asked me to share.

Until I could unload all the little findings of the past day, I’d have trouble sleeping, I knew. Sometimes writing things down helped me let go, so I made a list of what I needed to tell Skip.

I wrote my cryptic notes: room box journey from hotel to woods; e-mail chronology off; Larry? Cheryl?

I surprised myself by putting Larry Esterman on my list. Rosie’s father, a murderer? I doubted it, but as more and more people told me how angry he was at the students who perpetrated the terrible humiliation on his daughter, I found it hard not to entertain the possibility. Carrying a grudge for thirty years could make anyone snap.

The last, Cheryl? referred to a nagging bit, a possible clue I’d thought of while Cheryl was here. It might not even have had to do with her, but something that came to me by my looping, associative mind.

I took the notes with me and put them on my night table.

There. Now I could sleep and let some other force do its part.

Chapter 23

Maddie was torn between two good options on Wednesday morning.

She swung her cereal spoon to her left. “I really want to go to class today because I have big things going on with my project.” She swung the spoon to her right. “But I don’t want to miss anything.” She aimed the spoon at me. “Do you promise not to go to Uncle Skip’s office before I’m out of school?”

“I do.”

She paused a minute. “Do you promise not to invite him here?”

“I do.”

More thinking. “Do you promise-”

“Sweetheart, I promise to wait before I talk to Uncle Skip about what you and I, mostly you, figured out, until you are by my side.” That ought to cover it. It took fewer words for many legal procedures.

“Okay,” she said. “I won’t crab anymore.”

She kept her promise through breakfast and even on the short ride to the Rutledge Center.

I was grateful for a cooler day in the forecast as I headed for the library. I much preferred to have all the windows open in my car to using the noisy, windy air conditioner. Maddie, on the other hand, wanted the air conditioner all year long, it seemed. You might have thought she grew up in the Bronx as I did, and hadn’t been cold since leaving the Grand Concourse.

My morning would be taken up with a tutoring session at the library with Lourdes Pino. Otherwise, I’d have bitten my nails to the core waiting for permission from my granddaughter to contact my nephew.

It never took me long to refocus when I met Lourdes Pino. Her enthusiasm and energy for studying was contagious. If she’d been in any of my high school English classes at ALHS, she might have inspired some of the duller students whom I was unable to reach.

Although Lourdes had earned her GED last spring and was ready to start her first year of community college, she asked if we could continue our weekly sessions in the Lincoln Point Library.

“I want a leg up,” she said, grinning. “Is that the right saying?”

“You could have said, ‘I’m eager to pursue a course of study that will give me a competitive advantage over less zealous students.’”

It was always good to start a session with a laugh.

Lourdes showed me the catalog description of one of her classes, an English class that “integrates reading, critical thinking, and writing assignments.” It sounded good to me and we drafted a plan for me to work with her through the semester, helping her with homework as needed.

Today Lourdes and I met in the new wing of the library, where small meeting rooms were perfect for tutoring sessions. We were glad for the sorely needed upgrade to the facility. Week after week, Lourdes and I had met in a tiny room that had also served as the mailroom and the office supply closet. It was now possible to have comfortable space available outside of regular library hours, for community meetings and educational programs such as Literacy for All, which had brought Lourdes and me together several years ago.

The new room was nicely appointed, with poster-size photographs or drawings of literary giants on the walls. Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf, among others, looked down at us.

The wall directly beside us was devoted to a children’s project. A set of posters titled California Authors caught my eye. The young students had compiled a collage of photographs of famous west coast writers: William Saroyan, Robinson Jeffers, Jessica Mitford, Gertrude Stein, Eugene O’Neill, and many others, whom, I was sure, the children would appreciate only later in life.

The photograph of Wallace Stegner seemed to have loosened from its backing. I looked closely and saw that many of the photos and clippings were coming undone. Another case of poor craftsmanship, like the posters at the thirty-year reunion, managed by Cheryl Mellace.

A bell went off in my head, loud as the sound of the beginning of class. I raised my eyebrows in a silent aha moment. I knew what had been nagging at me.

Lourdes picked up on my change of mood. “What’s wrong, Mrs. Porter? A spelling mistake on the poster?”

I smiled. “Something like that. I hope you don’t mind, but I have to leave a little early, Lourdes.” I stood and packed my notes and books. “I’ll type up our schedule and drop it by Willie’s later today. Is that all right with you?”

“Yes, yes, Mrs. Porter. You have something very important to do, I can tell.” Lourdes shot me an exaggerated wink. “For the police, yes?”

I wished I weren’t so transparent.

The Lincoln Point Library is only one building away from the police department. If it weren’t for my need to follow up on my flash of awareness, it would have taken all my willpower not to take a detour to the LPPD building and see if Skip was around. I’d been disappointed that he hadn’t called. I had to balance that with how pleased Maddie would be when we traveled together to talk to her uncle.

With the promise of a breakthrough at the front of my mind, I headed home.

For once my lack of organizational skills paid off-I hadn’t cleaned out my tote bag since the reunion weekend. I rummaged around in it now and hoped I still had the program.

I breathed a long sigh when I found it between a package of glue gun sticks and a bag of M &M’s. More good luck: the program listed the decorations committee: Cheryl Mellace, chairperson, and, under her, Allison Parker.

Allison, who still lived in town, was a customer of Rosie’s. I’d run into her several times in the bookshop, making it easy to approach her for a favor. I rushed to the bedroom to find the updated yearbook Rosie had produced, found Allison’s phone number, and called her.

Another stroke of luck, when Allison picked up the call. “Hi, Mrs. Porter. I was sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to you at the reunion. It was just crazy wild, and then that awful thing with David, it was so upsetting, I almost didn’t go to the banquet on Saturday night, because my husband was sick besides, but I figured David wouldn’t want everyone just to stay at home and not get together, which he was so looking forward to.”

Now I remembered. Allison was a lot like Linda, with record-breaking run-on sentences and nonstop rambling. When Allison took a breath, I offered my few words, commiserating about the loss of David Bridges. It bothered me that I never seemed to take very long to grieve before wanting to get back to the investigation of his murder. I hoped that could be counted as respect for the dead.

“I don’t remember seeing you at the groundbreaking,” I said. As if I’d been keeping track.