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M
arion was my date, and I decided she was the second best date I'd had this week, though always by far the best niece.

Even though she wanted to work late and catch up on her stationery orders, I knew Jimmy would bust an artery if he thought she was left in the store alone, so on the way out I told her to be at Little Blue approximately thirty minutes after I left to help me “prepare.” Chester would be leaving shortly thereafter to pick up Ramona.

She'd arrived on time and ready to help.

“Lasagna and salad?” Marion said as she joined me in the kitchen. “Yum.”

“I picked it up from Tony's.” Despite the repeat in dinner menus, Tony also made great lasagna. Picking it up on the
way home made it a perfect choice for a dinner I hadn't even thought about until earlier this morning.

Tony's Italian Ristorante and Bistro was one of the better Italian restaurants in the entire state. Tony came to Star City directly from Ravello, Italy, a beautiful village on a hill next to the ocean, according to the pictures I found on the Internet. Tony was the blondest Italian I'd ever seen and had a way with anything pasta that made people close their eyes, lean their head back, and savor each and every bite. I'd heard people say they actually ate more slowly when they were at Tony's, just so the meal could last longer.

“I love Tony's,” Marion said. “What can I do to help?”

“Get the table set.” I nodded toward the dining room, where the window wall currently displayed a green mountainside and some white puffy clouds slipping slowly across a sharp blue sky. It was too bad I wasn't a painter.

Two of us made the job of getting ready much easier. Besides, it was always good to have Marion around. She was a much less flippant teenage niece than teenage daughter. I remembered being her age, though, so I tried to persuade Jimmy to cut her a little slack regarding her tone sometimes. Jimmy wasn't interested in parenting advice from his younger, childless sister. It was hard to blame him.

“I'll get it!” Marion said gleefully when the familiar three-rap knock sounded from the front door.

“Marion, my dear,” Chester said. “Ramona, this is my stunning great-granddaughter, Marion Henry.”

“Oh, aren't you lovely,” Ramona said as she pulled Marion into a friendly hug.

I knew Marion wasn't into hugs, but she didn't stiffen too much.

“Come on in,” I said. “I don't mean to be abrupt, but dinner is ready. I picked it up from Tony's, and I decided I could either keep it warm in the oven and risk doing something bad to it or we could just sit and eat.”

“I for one am as hungry as a pretty girl prepping for a pageant,” Ramona said. “Let's eat.”

Dinner was easy and enjoyable. Ramona and Chester liked each other, a bunch it seemed. Ramona shared the story of her former husband's disease and death and how much it had affected her. They'd spent forty years together, and when he died, she spent a whole year just crying. One day she woke up without tears so she packed up a few belongings from her Georgia home and took off to some place where she wouldn't be reminded of her husband all the time. The two of them had never been west of the Mississippi, and the idea of skiing or snow was foreign. Ramona hoped her husband's spirit was laughing at her choice of a house on the side of a mountain in an old ski town.

“Where I come from,” Ramona said at one point, “there's a tendency for widows and widowers to live the rest of their lives alone after their spouse dies, never to date anyone again, but this handsome man made a couple dates too tempting.” She smiled at Chester.

“That's a good thing,” I said.

Ramona looked at Marion and then at me. “I'm not going to try skiing, just so y'all know. It still seems ridiculous, up there on slidey things in the snow. No thanks.”

“What about snowboarding? I can teach you,” Marion said.

“Aren't you the sweetest thing ever created, but no, I don't think so. Thank you though,” Ramona said with a big flourish of her hand. “I would, however, like to ride up and down the thing on the big wires.”

“The lift?” I said.

“Yes, I believe that's what it's called.”

“We'll have to take you up on one of them, or a tram. Those are enclosed and run during the summer too,” I said. “That would be fun.”

I looked at Chester. Never would I have imagined that he would become smitten with someone who had no interest in skiing, someone with red nail polish and soft but sweet perfume. But he was smitten. In a big way.

I had loved my grandmother, deeply in fact. Even though she'd died when I was young, she had been a huge influence on my life, teaching me compassion on a level that, though my family was full of pretty good people, no one else I'd since known had been gifted with.

But she would be fine with Chester finding happiness with someone new. I just knew she would.

As Ramona was showing Marion a diamond bracelet around her wrist, the doorbell rang.

“Excuse me,” I said as I stood.

The only person who ever stopped by my house was Jodie, but she usually called my cell phone first—it was currently in my bag, being ignored through dinner, and I hadn't had a landline in a couple years.

I didn't need to make it all the way to the front to know
that the person on the porch was tall, with brown, unruly hair. I could see that much through the window at the top of the door.

I was suddenly anxious. Now was not a good time, but I didn't want Seth to think I didn't want to talk to him. In fact, I really wanted to talk to him.

I opened the door and immediately said, “I'm sorry.”

He said the same thing at the same time.

We both laughed and then smiled at each other in that goofy way that single people hate. I know, I can relate. I was single just a few days ago and still might be.

“Let me be ungentlemanly and go first,” Seth said, but he was stopped short by a rise of laughter from the dining room. “Oh, you have company.”

“I do,” I said. “Want to join us? There's plenty.”

“No, no. I'll talk to you later,” he said.

“Don't be silly, young man, come inside,” Chester said from over my shoulder. “We'd love to have you join us.”

Seth smiled and blinked.

“Give us one second, Chester. I bet I can talk him into coming inside,” I said.

“Good. Please know you're welcome,” Chester said before he turned and made his way back to the dining table.

“It's me; Chester; his new girlfriend, Ramona; and my niece, Marion,” I said. “Please come in. There's lasagna from Tony's, and you'll love it, even if it isn't as good as yours. I'm sorry about the background report—see, I slipped that in there. Sneaky, huh?”

“Clare,” he said with a smile and a sigh. “I'm sorry I behaved like a child who needed to have a temper tantrum.
I was caught off-guard, but you don't know me, and your best friend is a police officer. I get it. And I would like to explain the stolen geode accusation to you—some day, but not right away, if that's okay.”

“It's very okay,” I said.

“Start over?” he said.

“Sure, if our first kiss can be like the last first kiss,” I said.

“I'm not sure I can duplicate. How about I try for even better?”

“Deal.” I opened the door a little wider.

Seth stepped inside and then stopped. We looked at each other a brief moment, but it wasn't the right time for anything romantic. We shared a shrug of disappointment.

I closed the door. “Follow me.”

Chester had already grabbed another chair and a table setting. He was putting the fork in place just as we rounded the wall.

“Well, hello there,” Ramona said as all eyes turned toward Seth.

I introduced everyone, and we sat down as Seth filled his plate with lasagna and salad, and we were all entertained by Ramona's stories about growing up in the Deep South.

“Why, that brother of mine picked us up in a garbage truck. It was his job, driving the truck and picking up the garbage. We climbed aboard and rode to the baseball game we were fixing to play, and we all stunk like garbage.”

“You played baseball, not softball?” Marion, the athlete of the family, said.

“I did. I loved baseball when I was a kid. I could hit and I could pitch, but no one was as good of a pitcher as Billy Bean Johnson. He could throw strikes like they were lightning shooting right out of his glove, but that was only after he quit hitting everyone. It took a few hitters to let him get adjusted. He was”—she looked around the table, making sure we were all listening—“he was blind as a bat on a cloudy summer night.”

“Blind?” Chester said.

“As in, couldn't see?” I said.

“Yes, he pitched based upon voice instructions. The catcher would guide him, and Billy Bean would strike almost everyone out. But the catcher would always let Billy hit a few kids first. It worked to our advantage.”

“Was this an organized league?” I said.

Ramona laughed. “No, nothing was organized back then. We all just played outside. Some of us played baseball; some of us played other things. Most of the girls didn't play the way I played. They were more interested in pretty dresses and finding a husband. I just wanted to hit and throw baseballs. Funny thing is, that's where I met my husband. We were sixteen and we both played. Met each other when I struck him out.” Ramona laughed. “It's a good memory, and I became all girly shortly thereafter.”

“Sixteen?” Seth said. “That's not little league. Throwing strikes and getting hits are harder.”

Ramona leaned over the table toward Seth sitting on the other side and said, “I was really good.”

“I bet you were,” he responded with a knowing smile.

“You played?” Ramona asked.

“I did, through college actually, but I wasn't all that good. Well, nowadays good has to be great to get very far. I was a first baseman. I played all of high school but stayed in the dugout for most of college. Got some playing time my senior year.”

I tried to envision Seth as an athlete. He hadn't struck me as physically awkward—nerdy maybe but not awkward.

“Batting average?” Ramona asked.

“Senior year was .333.”

“Very good.”

“Just okay compared to the others.”

Chester and I smiled across the table at each other. Not that we were worried or would have cared that much, but it was obvious that Seth and Ramona were going to get along just fine.

Interrupting what I thought was turning into one of the most interesting conversations regarding a sport I'd never paid any attention to, the doorbell rang again.

“You want me to get it?” Marion asked.

“No, I got it,” I said.

I hurried to the front door again and saw only the very top of Jodie's blond head through the window.

“This should be everyone,” I muttered to myself before opening the door.

“Hey, Clare,” she said as she walked in and directly past me. “Omar told me about your ideas regarding the doors on the shelves. Can you explain better?”

Again, before I could speak, the buzz of conversation reached us from the dining room.

“Oh, I'm sorry. I'm interrupting,” Jodie said. “Who's here?”

I smiled. “You want some lasagna?”

“No, I ate.”

“Come on back anyway,” I said.

“Jodie! Come on in. There's plenty. Want some dinner?” Chester said.

Once Jodie was seated and after she made sure that I knew she was pleased about Seth's appearance (she did this with an obvious eyebrow lift my direction—everyone else saw it and Seth smiled too), I repeated the ideas I'd shared with Omar.

“Maybe another piece of the puzzle, but I don't know how it all fits together,” Jodie said. “We're getting a list of the old mine locations, and we'll see if the number combinations work with any of them. What do you think, there's a mine out there waiting to be mined? Full of silver or something?” Jodie gave in and spooned a serving of lasagna onto a plate.

“And someone killed for the location?” Marion said.

Everyone was looking at me. “I really don't know, but it sure seems like something to be explored.”

As if we'd all been cast in a black-and-white comedy film from the last century, the doorbell rang again.

“I have never been so popular,” I said as I stood and excused myself once more.

As with Seth and Jodie, I recognized the person on the other side of the door by the small part of them that I saw through the window. Creighton's uniform-clad shoulder
told me that the dinner party was about to become too crowded.

“Hi,” I said as I opened the door.

“Hi, Clare. Is Jodie here?”

“Yeah, you want to come in?”

“No,” he said. I was sure he heard the noises from the other room too. “I just wonder if you could send Jodie out here.”

“Sure. One second.”

I gathered Jodie and sent her to the front porch. I closed the door behind her, leaving them alone, but I didn't want to. Something was up. Creighton could have called Jodie. He came and got her. It seemed like a sign of a big deal.

I could hear their voices but couldn't distinguish their words. There was no laughter, just seriousness. Just as I turned away from the door to give up trying to eavesdrop, Jodie swung it open and stuck her head through.

“Gotta go,” she said.

“What's up?” I said.

“Something out at Homer Mayfair's. I'll have to give you more details later.”

She shut the door again before I could comment. I hurried to the front window and watched as both she and Creighton got into his police car. The second the engine started, Creighton also turned on the flashing lights atop the roof and the siren. He made a quick, tire-squealing turn and then zipped down the hill, I assumed toward Purple Springs Valley and Homer's house.