Gingerbread Man

her more closely than before. Because now he'd stopped doubting his twisted-up gut. She had just confirmed his hunch. She knew something.
    "Don't be silly. You were nowhere near me." She pulled a whisk broom and a dustpan from the basket attached behind the mop pail, and briskly swept up the traces of the accident, dumping them neatly into the chief's wastebasket.
    "I got the feeling it was something I said," Vince said, watching her face.
    She brushed off her hands, "You weren't the one speaking."
    It was not, he realized, any kind of an answer.
    "Maybe it's just that I haven't had my coffee," she added with another carefully casual shrug, and she backed out of the room, pulling the mop, pail, broom, and dustpan with her into the hall, and then reached back to close the door.
    Vince stared at the door for a long time after she closed it. "She's a jumpy little thing, isn't she?" he asked.
    "No, as a matter of fact, Holly is the steadiest, calmest person who's ever worked for me," Chief Mallory admitted, and there was real concern in his tone.
    Vince turned slowly toward the chief. "Was it me, do you think?"
    The chief's worry lines didn't ease much with his smile. "Nah. She must just be having an off day. It happens to all of us once in a while... I suppose."
    He frowned at the door in a way that told Vince it
didn't
—at least not to Holly Newman. It told him something else, too. Holly was a fragile sort of woman. Or at least that was how the men in this office perceived her. Weak and fragile.
    "I'll... uh... I'll check in with her mother, all the same. Just to make sure nothing's going on."
    It was an odd thing to hear a police chief say. A personal thing. It crossed Vince's mind that there were more differences between Dilmun and Syracuse than the 60 miles on routes 81 and 13.
    A
lot
more.
    * * *
    CHIEF MALLORY WAITED until he’d watched the stranger go. Then he picked up the phone and dialed Maddie Baker over at the library. She answered crisply, but her tone softened when he said, "Maddie, hon? I need a favor."
    He could almost see her smiling at him, perfect false teeth looking a size too big for her mouth. Maddie could seem as mean as tar to outsiders. Only the locals knew what a sweetheart she was. "What can I do for you, Chief?"
    "There was a fella over there askin' about an overdue library book last night, as I understand it."
    "Why, yes. Yes, there was. I
told
him any records we might have dating back that far would be in the basement, but he just wouldn't give up. I didn't like him. He was pushy, that fellow."
    "Back how far, Maddie?" Chief Mallory asked.
    "Oh, near to twenty years. Said the date due stamped on the book was nineteen eighty-three, for heaven's sake."
    Mallory nodded. "I'll tell you what, Maddie. How about you let me come on over and take a look through those files in the basement, hmm? See if I can figure out what this pushy young fellow is looking for."
    "Well, if you think it's important, Chief."
    "I do. And Maddie?"
    "Yes?"
    "Let's just keep this between you and me for right now. All right?"
    * * *
    THE WIND OFF the lake had kicked up during the morning, and it didn't seem too eager to let up. When Holly walked the fifty-three steps from the police station to the Paradise Cafe, she had to tug her denim jacket's collar up, and bow her head. Leaves flew like flocks of brittle birds, and the air was heavy with unshed rain. Holly walked into the cafe at one minute past twelve, closed the door against the wind, and reached up absently to finger comb her hair. A leaf drifted loose and floated to the floor, landing squarely in the middle of one of the neat square tiles. For a moment her gaze remained on the floor, its perfect checkerboard pattern, straight, predictable lines, square corners.
    Glancing up, she saw her mother sitting at their usual booth, and waved to her as she started across the red-and-white tiled floor. She felt out of sorts and distracted. Even after Vince O'Mally had left the station this morning, her routine had never really fallen into place again. She'd answered the phones, filled out forms, paid bills, done some filing—all the usual things, but she'd done them with the feeling that something was off. She was running behind. Her pattern, broken. And she kept wishing she could undo the day and start it over again, the way she could have done with a row of knitting. Just take the end of the yarn and pull it all out, all the way back to the spot where the pattern had