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Mrs. C. looked between them. Her eyes narrowed. The librarian look intensified into something considerably sterner, the expression of a woman who had broken up thousands of arguments between children in her career and was not about to tolerate one in her living room.

“Now you listen to me,” she said, in the voice that had once kept an entire community library in perfect silence. “Both of you. I told Emily what I remember, which is very little, and I will not have my words twisted into ammunition for whatever this is.” She gestured between them. “Gary Alders is a good man. And I will not be put in the middle of a feud that should have died out years ago.”

She picked up her teacup with finality.

“More tea?” she asked, in a tone that made it clear the previous topic was now permanently closed.

Emily opened her mouth.

“More tea would be great,” Cole said, before she could speak.

He sat in the chair opposite Mrs. C., accepted a fresh cup, and did not look at Emily once.

Whatever, Emily thought. That’s one check mark in the guilty column, no matter what Mrs. C. said afterward.

Cole could avoid looking at her all he wanted; he couldn’t outrun the truth. A fact that she prayed only applied to him, because she still had a snowmobile ride back to the bakery to contend with. And a mind that left nothing whatsoever about Cole Alders to the imagination.

TWELVE

COLE

Monday, December 14th

Cole shouldn’t have been surprised. It was just like Emily to go behind his back and interrogate Mrs. C. while he had his head under a car hood. And his family was the one who were supposed to be dishonest. Right.

He thought about Emily’s snide remark about his grandfather being at the scene of the crime. The smug little smile she’d given him, like she’d won something. So his grandfather had been at the bakery that morning. So what? Gary Alders had fixed things at that bakery for years. Hinges, shelves, the bell above the front door. He ran the hardware store. People called on him. That was what he did.

Besides, his grandfather didn’t need to steal those sugar and spice cookies. His spice cake entry was better. Hands down. Everyone in town knew it.

“Did you say something?” Emily asked.

They’d just pulled up in front of Norma Steigler’s house, and Cole hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud.

“What? No.” He cut the engine. “Grab the basket, will you?”

“A simple ‘please’ wouldn’t kill you.”

“Don’t lecture me on manners after the stunt you pulled back there.”

Emily made a sound that was somewhere between a scoff and a growl, but she grabbed the basket.

Norma’s place was a few streets deeper into the residential side of town, a tidy little house with snow piled up to the window boxes. Cole clocked the fresh tire tracks in the driveway. Kit had been there this morning, which meant the fire was probably going and the fridge was stocked. Good.

Norma’s cranberry-colored sedan sat farther up the drive, closer to the garage, buried under a thick blanket of white. It wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

Cole scanned the street out of habit. Christmas lights hung loose from Norma’s eaves, one end swinging free where the weight of ice had pulled the hooks from the gutter. Two houses down, the same thing. Across the street, a wreath had blown off its hook and was sitting in a snowdrift. He added it all to the mental list, the one that never seemed to get shorter no matter how many items he crossed off.

They walked up to the front door in silence. Cole knocked.

A small dog on the other side began yapping manically. Cole would bet money the dog didn’t weigh more than five pounds, but it was absolutely going to defend its house from intruders.

Cole smiled despite himself. He thought of Captain back at the station, probably halfway through destroying something by now. He needed to get that dog out for a run before the day was over or he’d come back to find the bunkroom in pieces.

It took a couple of minutes, but eventually the door opened.

Cole cocked his head.

Norma Steigler stood in her doorway wearing what appeared to be tennis rackets zip-tied to her snow boots.