On Wednesday morning a woman refuses one of my breakfast boxes because she thinks I have been cleared.
It takes me a moment to understand.
“I bought them to support you,” she tells Dina. “But now they say the cook was never under suspicion, so all that fuss was for nothing.”
Dina is behind the espresso machine. I am at the end of the counter with the delivery sheet, holding a pen that has stopped working.
“Who says?” I ask.
The woman recognizes me and looks embarrassed. Then she turns her phone around, as if showing me the screen transfers responsibility for what is on it.
A local community post says a witness has placed Dale at the scene. It describes the food evidence as pointing to his kitchen and says an arrest is imminent. No name appears under the post, only a small picture of the harbor and an account called Saltbreeze Watch.
The comments have supplied Dale’s name, his address, his daughter’s school, and the kind of certainty that requires no one to leave a chair.
I read the first three and stop.
“That is not what the witness saw,” I say.
The woman takes back her phone. “I didn’t write it.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Dina finishes the latte she is making and hands it across the counter. Then she turns to me.
“What do you want me to say if people ask?”
“That the police are investigating. That I don’t know who killed him.”
Saying it aloud feels like abandoning Agnes. I say it again so I cannot pretend the first time was an accident.
“I don’t know.”
The woman leaves without buying a box. Dina crosses out the eighth delivery on the sheet and tells me she will eat it herself.
“You don’t have to.”
“I skipped breakfast. That is not an act of charity.”
Outside, I call Davenport and give her the account name. She asks whether I supplied the details to anyone. I tell her about every conversation I can remember. Marina knows the car sighting because I told her. Lily knows I suspect Dale. Agnes and I have discussed the food, the receipt, the gloves. Nothing in the post is so private that it identifies the person who wrote it.
“Don’t accuse anyone of posting it,” Davenport says. “And don’t correct it by publishing the rest of the evidence.”
“What can I do?”
“Ask for speculation about witnesses and family members to be removed. Keep it general.”
I send a message to the page administrator. Then I stand on the pavement waiting for a reply, as if the internet might reward me for looking sufficiently sorry.
The reply comes in six minutes: Public interest. No laws broken.
I put the phone away before I type something that will make me feel better for thirty seconds and make everything else worse.
Lily finds me outside the gallery.
“Come in,” she says. “You look like you’re about to argue with a parking meter.”
Inside, the little harbor painting is on the work table, face down while she secures its new backing. A shipping label addressed to Patricia lies beside it.
“Did you see the post?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Did you share it?”
Her hands stop. “No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you asking everyone, or just people who were stupid enough to trust Victor?”
The anger surprises me, then shames me. I came into her shop and made my fear into an accusation before she had offered me a chair.
“Everyone,” I say. “But that doesn’t make it better.”
She picks up the screwdriver again. “I posted something about him yesterday. About a painting he bought. Three people asked whether he was sleeping with the librarian too.”
I sit down.
“We keep turning him into a clue,” she says. “Maybe he helped. He kept turning people into sources. But he was also a person who phoned his mother from my bathroom because the signal was better there. She’d tell him to put a coat on. He’d complain and then put a coat on.”
I look at the brown paper waiting to wrap the painting.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Why would you?”
It is not a criticism. That makes it worse.
I tell her I asked the administrator to remove speculation about Dale’s family. She nods without praise.
“Emma’s a child,” she says. “Whatever he did.”
For a while I hold the frame while Lily tightens the fittings. We discuss nothing except whether it is straight. The work gives us a way to remain in the room together after the apology.
When I leave, Marina is outside the library with a box of books for the street display. She calls my name.
“I saw that awful post.”
“I asked for it to be taken down.”
“Good. It must be frightening for Agnes.”
“And Dale’s daughter.”
Marina lowers the box onto the bench.
“She’ll have people to support her.”
“That doesn’t make it harmless.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
We stand beside the books. A paperback has a broken spine, and I straighten it because I need something to do with my hands.
“Whoever wrote it knows things I told people,” I say. “I’ve helped this happen.”
“You asked questions. You didn’t kill anyone.”
“That isn’t the only way to hurt someone.”
She looks at me as though I have changed the subject unfairly.
“Dale threatened you.”
“Yes.”
“He helped bury my father.”
“Yes.”
“Then why does everyone become tender about him the minute he might face a consequence?”
“His daughter isn’t a consequence.”
A mother and small boy approach the library steps. Marina turns immediately, smiles, and tells the boy the book he requested has arrived. She remembers the title without asking. He runs ahead of his mother, delighted.
When they have gone inside, she picks up the box again.
“I have to work.”
“I’m sorry about your father.”
“I know.”
She carries the books through the door. I look at the empty bench and wonder why I offered the apology. Not because I am less sorry than I was yesterday. Because I used it to end an argument whose existence frightened me.
At home, Agnes is writing a statement for the booking page. It says we will not discuss the investigation and asks guests to direct questions about reservations to her. No claims about innocence, guilt, or imminent arrests.
“Will that stop it?” I ask.
“No.”
“Then why bother?”
“Because it’s what we can say truthfully.”
I sit beside her and help remove a sentence that sounds defensive. Then I tell her about the conversation with Marina.
“She has reason to be angry,” Agnes says.
“She does.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything she does with it.”
The statement goes up. Two reservations remain canceled. One guest writes to say she appreciates our approach and still intends to come. Agnes prints that message and puts it under the cash drawer, where she can find it when she needs to.
I take the scones for Eugene from the cooling rack. Davenport has asked whether he can come in tomorrow to record his account fully. He isn’t answering his telephone. I told her I would carry the message, and this time I intend to carry only the message.
Before leaving, I cross out the sentence in my notebook that says Eugene places Dale in the house.
He saw a car. He saw a light. The rest is what I wanted.
I leave the crossed-out sentence visible. I need to remember how easy it was to write.