Someone to watch over me

summer it could be. The icehouse was the tightest-built structure I’ve ever come across. It had to be, to keep the ice cold all summer. Or even if he was put there in the coldest, driest part of a very frigid winter long after it was used for storing ice, the same might apply. I can’t imagine someone moved him in that condition from some desert. His body would have been too fragile to move and keep intact.“
    “And besides, you want to go to the city,“ Walker said. “And so do I.”

Chapter 6

    As Lily and Robert were driving up the hill to Grace and Favor, Robert asked, “What’s really on your mind, Toots? You don’t seem to have much interest in the icehouse discovery.“ He slowed the huge automobile to reach around front and brush a squashed bug off the windshield.
    “A conversation with Mr. Bradley,“ she said.
    “The greengrocer? Is that all?“ Robert laughed. “How could that be more interesting than a dead body almost on our doorstep?“
    “It’s more immediate, for one thing.“ Lily recounted the conversation she’d had with Bradley as she passed his shop. “Robert, he was right.”
    Robert had stopped laughing.
    “I don’t know how to bring this up to Mrs. Prinney, or if I even should,“ Lily said. “I told him I would. I guess I have to live up to my promise.“
    “They’re both afraid,“ Robert said. “Bradley’s afraid of his business going under if people grow their own vegetables. Mrs. Prinney’s afraid his business will fail and we won’t have anything to eat. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy if too many people feel that way. We’re all afraid down deep inside. I think it hits men harder.”
    Robert, a born and raised bon vivant, had frequently said surprisingly wise things since 1929, when brother and sister were forced to get to know each other instead of merely passing through the same homes, sharing the same parents, and meeting mostly at parties. She wondered if he’d always been this perceptive, and just never had to use his brains and heart. Perhaps the trait had lain dormant for most of his life.
    “Including you?“ Lily asked.
    “Nope, not me,“ Robert said.
    He got out and opened the garage and came back and moved the enormous butter-yellow automobile inside. When the Duesie was safely put away, he said, “Let’s go look at the river.”
    Instead of going inside, they went to what Lily thought of as the “viewing bench“ under a tree, where she often sat and brushed Agatha, her perpetually shedding adopted dog, while she contemplated the water traffic passing below. What was inside those barges being pushed along by tugs? Where had they come from? Where were they going?
    When they were comfortably seated, Robert went on as if there hadn’t been a break in the conversation. “I never considered when we were growing up that I’d have to get a job in order to provide heat, food, or a home for a wife and children. I thought I’d wait for the right woman, as rich as we once were, and go right on living the same kind of life our parents did—traveling, dabbling in investments, playing polo, drinking too much, going to parties, wearing outrageously priced clothing.
    “Instead,“ he went on, “I spent the early morning today preparing to tear down a shed in the woods and thinking what great wood it was and what I might be able to do with it. Bookshelves for my bedroom. Another bench like this one.”
    Lily looked askance. She had no idea he thought he knew how to do either of these projects.
    “Of course, I won’t take the wood,“ Robert went on. “It would look selfish and greedy to the Harbinger boys for what they think is a rich man, who obviously doesn’t know how to build a thing, to grab it for himself. The boys will make better use of it than I ever could. Maybe sell it to buy food for their family or make a nice piece of furniture for their mother.“
    “I have the same problem with Jack Summer,“ Lily admitted. “He thinks we own the newspaper. He supposes we’re dopes for always having to consult with Mr. Prinney over newspaper decisions. That we’re wealthy idiots who can’t make a simple decision for ourselves.“
    “And imagine what the townspeople had to say about our guests last April when we made them pay to stay at Grace and Favor.“
    “Do you think people knew they were paying guests?“ Lily asked.
    Robert looked at her for a long moment with astonishment. “Did you suppose they didn’t? Lily, gossip is the