Lending a Paw: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery (Bookmobile Cat Mysteries) by Laurie Cass Page B

her long legs over the corner of her garage sale desk. “Do we or do we not share all the important events in our lives?”
    “No.”
    She sat up a little, frowning. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
    “You never did tell me about what happened between you and Danny Stevens behind the high school gym.”
    “And I never will. Larger point. Are you planning to tell me about finding Stan Larabee before hell freezes over, or after? You’ve been here five minutes already, Minnie. Start talking.”
    “I . . . don’t know how.” There were no words, no way to express what I needed to say, nothing that would help, nothing that would change what had happened, nothing that would change the pictures in my head.
Oh, Stan . . .
    “Minnie,” she said gently. “Talk to me.”
    A large silence dropped down between us. I watched it expand and grow to fill all the space in the room, to take up all the air. I was starting to struggle for breath when the office door opened and Harvey, the sous chef, bustled in with a plate in each hand.
    “Ladies,” he said. Behind him rushed a waiter carrying a small table. The table went down next to me. The waiter, who’d had a white tablecloth over one arm, flung it out and over the table. Out of one apron pocket came linen napkins; out of the other came flatware. He backed away and Harvey set the plates on the table gently, turning the entrée so it would be closest to the edge of the table. He whisked a small vase of flowers out of his back pocket and centered it on the tablecloth. “Is there anything else I can get you?” He looked expectant.
    “No, thanks. That’s it.” After hovering a moment, Harvey shuffled out, and Kristen pushed her rolling chair back from her desk and came around to a stop in front of the other plate.
    I’d already bellied up to the table. “That guy is so in love with you he can hardly see straight.” I stuck my fork into the lightly browned lake trout.
    “Huh. Does that explain why he dropped a tray of dinner rolls the other night?”
    I stuffed my mouth full. “Oh, man, do you know how good this is?”
    “It’s my creation, isn’t it?”
    “Yeah, but . . .” I waved my empty fork in the air before I plunged it once again into the entrée. “But you get jaded, eating this kind of stuff every day. It’s only people like me, who only get to eat like this on rare occasions, who can truly appreciate it.”
    “It wouldn’t be rare if you’d let me feed you more often.”
    “Let’s not go there,” I said.
    “You can eat here every day for free. Twice a day. Three times, if we had breakfast.” She put her arms flat on the table and looked at me hard. “I know how much I owe you, don’t think I don’t.”
    “You don’t owe me anything,” I said in a low voice.
    “Yes, I do.” Kristen banged the table with her fist, making the flatware bounce and the plates rattle. “You’re the only one who believed in me. My parents didn’t, my former fiancé didn’t, and for sure my former evil corporate employer thought I was nuts. Only you believed. Not only that, but you did all the research on—”
    I cut her off. “You don’t owe me a thing. You’re my friend. That’s what friends do.”
    “There are friends and there are friends.” She sat back. “But since you obviously don’t want the fun of an argument, I’ll say you don’t owe me anything, either. Except for one thing.”
    I picked up my fork again. At age twelve, she’d welcomed a downstate stranger into her life and had never once turned her back on me. She was wrong. I owed her far more than I could ever repay. “Okay, one.”
    “Tell me what happened with Stan Larabee. Tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and I’ll never ask you about it again.”
    “Never?”
    “Well, I’ll
try
not to ask you about it again.” She smiled the half smile that always made me giggle. “And this isn’t idle curiosity—it’s simple clarification of what the