“One night, I happened to mention in class that I wasn’t quite my usual self, that my aunt had just died. My mother died when I was only ten years old, and my aunt and uncle took me in, so she was very close to me. I said I had to leave class a little early, because I was going to stay with my uncle for a few days. He was never very good at looking after himself at the best of times, and now, well, I needed to make sure he was taking care of himself. We have a break halfway through class, and evidently Sheila went to the ShopRite, then she quietly took me aside and handed me this bag with a coffee cake and some bananas and some tea and said, ‘Here, that should get you through tomorrow morning with you and your uncle.’ And you know what she did? She apologized for the coffee cake. Because it was store-bought. Said if she’d known, before class, she’d have made something herself. I was so touched, by her thoughtfulness. Did she ever tell you about that?”
“No,” I said. But it did sound like Sheila.
“This is very hard for me to say to you,” Butterfield said. “I mean, it’ll just seem, I don’t know, maybe it’ll seem strange to you, but I was very much affected when she passed away.”
“Why all the calls, Allan?”
He frowned and looked down at his messy desk. “I made a fool of myself.”
I decided to let him tell it at his own speed.
“I told you, before, that Sheila and I had gone out for a drink one night. That was all it was. Honestly. It was nice, just having someone to talk to. I told her, when I was younger, that I wanted to be a travel writer. That I had this dream of going all around the world and writing about it. And she said to me, she said, if that’s what you want to do, you should do it. I said, I’m forty-four. I have this teaching job. I can’t do that. She said, take a vacation, go someplace interesting, and write about it. See if I could sell the story to a magazine or newspaper. She said, don’t quit. Try to do it on the side, see where it goes.” He nodded happily, but looked as though he might cry. “So, next week, I go to Spain. I’m going to do it.”
“That’s great,” I said, still waiting.
“So after I booked the trip, I wanted to thank her. I asked her out to dinner. I suggested she come early on a class night, and I would take her out. To show my gratitude.”
“And she said?”
“She said, ‘Oh, Allan, I couldn’t do that.’ I realized that what I had asked her for was a date. A married woman, and I had asked her for a date. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was so sorry, so embarrassed by my actions. I just… liked talking to her. She was so encouraging. She made me believe in myself, and then I did something so stupid.”
I still didn’t know what the calls were about, but figured he was just about to get to that part of the story.
“I guess I never felt a single apology was sufficient. I phoned a couple of times, said I was sorry. And then I was worried maybe she would drop the course, so I phoned her again, but she stopped taking my calls.” He looked crushed. “I thought, if she would answer just one last time, I’d make a final apology, but she didn’t. Someone reached out to me, and I ended up pushing them away.” He sighed. “It’s kind of what I do.”
“Do you think she intended to come to class that night?” I asked. “She never said anything to me about not going.”
“It’s kind of what I’ve wondered, too,” Butterfield said. “And she was really liking the course, and looking forward to helping you. The week before, she told me about her plans for a business of her own.”
“What did she say about that?”
“She wanted to run a business from her home, maybe set up a website where people could order things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Common prescription items. I-I told her I wasn’t sure that was such a good idea. That the quality of the goods, it might be difficult to verify, and that if they didn’t do what they were supposed to do, she might open herself up to certain liabilities. She said she hadn’t thought about that, and she would look into it. She said she’d hardly sold anything so far, and if she had reason to believe the drugs were dangerous, she wouldn’t sell them.”
I got up and extended a hand. “Find lots to write about in Spain.”
I was almost to the Milford exit when I called the office.
“Garber Contracting,” said Sally Diehl. “How may I help you?”
“It’s me. You don’t look at call display anymore?”
“I just had a glazed donut,” she replied cheerfully, “and was too busy licking my fingers to notice it was you.”
I wondered if there was a way to find out from her where I might find Theo without letting her know I wanted to murder him.
“You hear back from Alfie?” she asked.
“Not yet,” I lied. “I was hoping to ask Theo a couple of things first. You know where he is?”
“Why do you want to see him?” Sounding defensive.
“I just need to ask him a couple of things,” I said. “No big deal.”
She hesitated. “He’s rewiring a house down on Ward, right near the harbor, around the corner from your place. It’s a huge reno.”
“Got an address?”
