The girl looked disconcerted for a moment, then thoughtful. “Well, while I was trying to do my term paper, I had some ideas about a different way to do the distribution analysis I thought were good. So I came here to get that done, while the ideas were fresh in my mind.”
“All right,” Kate said. “But you need to balance that. We don’t want the work experience counselor revoking your privilege to spend mornings here. Tonight you work only on your paper.”
The girl perked up. “Okay. I think maybe I can finish the rough numbers today, and that will be enough to get it out of my head so I can concentrate on my paper.”
“If you can’t get around the roadblock, sometimes you just have to tear it down,” Kate said.
Mel’s nose wrinkled. “Is that another one of your grandfather’s old sayings?”
Kate grinned. “Yep. He prefers to think of them as axioms of wisdom.”
“Is that a weapon of some kind, an axiom?”
“It can be,” Kate said. “Look it up when you’re done with your paper,” Kate added.
“Yeah,” the girl said, then sighed somewhat morosely. “So, where can I find those shipping figures?”
“They’re in the distribution spreadsheet. It hasn’t been closed out for the quarter yet, so it’s in the open files.”
“Okay. I’ll move out to the other computer.”
“I’ve got some manifests to work on, so if you want to use mine, you can have it for about a half hour.”
“Great! It’s hard to concentrate out there,” she said, gesturing toward the outer office where Kate’s assistant had his desk, and held vendors, salespeople and job seekers at bay until their appointment times.
A few minutes later Mel’s maroon-streaked head was bent over the keyboard as she brought up the spreadsheet she needed. When the student started working here, she hadn’t been familiar with the software program Redwood used, but she knew computers and had quickly figured it out. The girl was bright enough, quite, in fact, but she was also chafing against the restraints of living in a small town that didn’t even have a movie theater. Kate had recognized the signs, which was why she’d offered herself as the girl’s mentor when she’d signed up for the program at her school.
Why Mel had accepted, she wasn’t quite sure. There had been people in other parts of the county who had volunteered for the mentoring program, places where there was much more of what Mel called “civilization.” But she’d chosen Kate, right here in Summer Harbor, the very place she wanted so desperately to escape.
And that, Kate thought, was the first thing that had made her suspicious. That and the occasional flash of anger she saw in the girl, anger at being stuck here in the place she derided with a very descriptive and obscene term. Kate had had to tell her she could curse up a storm anywhere else she could get away with it, but not inside Redstone. And then realized she was going to have to live up to her own rules and rein in the occasional “damn” that escaped her.
But when the thefts had started, she’d wondered. Wondered if there was another reason Mel had chosen her as the person she wanted as her mentor. If perhaps it wasn’t her, or her work that had attracted the girl at all, but Redstone, and getting on the inside. Kate didn’t like thinking that way, but she couldn’t help the questions that popped into her mind when the girl complained about tiny Summer Harbor.
Now that would be just peachy, she thought sourly, if she’d actually invited the thief into the nest, as it were.
She turned to look at the girl again. “Mel?” The teenager looked up. “Why did you pick me?”
“What do you mean?”
“You could have picked someone in L.A., Chicago or even Seattle. The kind of place you want to go. But you chose me, here.”
Mel nodded.
“Why?”
“Because you got out. Those others were always there, so they didn’t have anywhere to get out of. But you did, and you got out, even if you came back. That’s what I wanted to learn.”
It made a certain kind of sense, Kate thought. Teenage sense, but sense.
Of course, that didn’t mean she wasn’t involved in the thefts. It could just mean that part came later.
Kate began to sort the cargo manifests. As she organized them, part of her mind was still, as it had been since the start of this trouble, occupied with trying to solve the riddle of the thefts.
“Kate? Oh, she’s a good one,” the grocer said with a smile. “Not many who’d leave a big career like she had and come home to take care of her grandparents when they started having health problems.”
“Is that why she did it?” Rand had dropped by to thank the man for pointing him toward the Crawford’s room for rent, and had grabbed the chance to pump him a bit, since he seemed more than willing to talk.
“Well, she’ll tell you she got homesick, didn’t like the big-city life.”
“Some don’t,” Rand said neutrally, even as he was thinking that going from Denver to this small town would be more than a major adjustment.
“I know I couldn’t take it,” the man behind the counter agreed, his tone a bit fervent. “Lived over in Seattle for a while, and even that about made me crazy.”
“But you don’t think that’s Kate’s real reason?” Rand gently nudged the conversation back in the direction he needed.
“Well, it may be true she didn’t like the city, but the real reason is she loves her grandparents and knows they need her now.”
Well, that’s noble, I guess, Rand thought. Too noble to be believed?
He didn’t know.
“So, she wasn’t running away from any trouble or anything?”
The grocer’s expression suddenly changed. His eyes narrowed, all trace of the warm, small-town welcome vanished now. “Kate’s not the kind to run from trouble, if she were the kind to get into trouble in the first place.”
Rand knew immediately he’d made a mistake. Hastily, he backpedaled. “It just seemed she was a bit edgy, when I met her. I didn’t want to make it worse by saying something out of ignorance.”
“Oh. Well. Then.”
The man stopped short of an actual apology, but his demeanor quickly shifted back to the genial storekeeper.
Hmm, Rand thought as he purchased a soda and departed.
His next stop was the only other establishment of any size in town, a carries-everything hardware store. He got much the same reaction there; open friendliness, liking for Kate Crawford and an instant withdrawal behind a screen of seeming protectiveness at the slightest suggestion she was anything less than a beloved local girl who made good and then came home.
It was the same everywhere,
