She looked dubious. “That’s no big deal.”
“Try it and see.”
Bayroo looked deep into my eyes. I don’t know what she saw, perhaps a mother’s memory of a child’s face at a family birthday table. Each of mine had a favorite cake—lemon for Rob, burnt sugar for Dil.
Bayroo opened the directory, turned the pages until she found a number. She picked up the cordless telephone, shot me an anguished look.
I nodded firmly. “Courage.”
She punched numbers. “H’lo.” Her voice was high and quivery.
“This is Bayroo Abbott. I invited Travis to the Spook Bash and . . .
Hello. Hi, Travis.” She took a deep breath and the words tumbled out. “I’d like to bake a cake for your birthday and I wondered what your favorite is, you know, the kind of cake you like best, but maybe
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you’ve already—white? With chocolate icing. That’s my favorite, too. I make it from scratch, the icing, too. I’ll bring it to your aunt’s house in the morning but I can just leave it on the porch . . . Are you sure? That’d be great!” She hung up and whirled toward me. “He’s really excited.” Her voice was amazed. “I can take it over and he said maybe I’d come in and we’d have a piece together. Gosh, I’d better get to work. I’ll go up and print out my recipe.” Print out a recipe?
Bayroo dashed from the kitchen. I followed as she raced up the stairs.
She darted through the third door on the right. I scarcely had time to appreciate the fresh brightness of Bayroo’s room—one wall painted blue with a cresting white wave, bookcases crammed with books and hand- painted buffalo and sports trophies and dolls, and movie posters—when she thumped into a swivel chair and turned on a machine the twin of the one in the chief’s office and those at use in the library and in each of the library staff cubicles.
She turned it on and the screen glowed. I looked over her shoulder. “What is it and what does it have to do with a recipe?”
“What is what?” She was clicking and moving the oblong on the pad next to the keyboard.
I reached out and touched the screen. “This! I see them everywhere.”
“It’s a computer, Auntie Grand.”
“Computer.” Another new word for me. “How does it work?” Bayroo found what she sought, clicked again, and paper oozed from the machine on the floor.
By the time we reached the kitchen, Bayroo clutching the recipe and explaining computers, I was overborne with information about word processing (a fancy name for typing), e-mails, programs, print-ers, passwords, files, and mouses.
At least the next time I visited the chief ’s office, I wouldn’t be so
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confounded. The next time . . . Should I go there now? But I wasn’t ready to impart the information I’d gained from Daryl’s cell phone.
I had yet to talk to Irene Chatham. I sighed.
“. . . I use butter. It makes all the difference—” She broke off.
“What’s wrong, Auntie Grand?”
I managed a smile. Dear, empathetic Bayroo. I suppose I looked gloomier than the nature-preserve lake on a January day. “I have a problem, sweetie, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Go ahead with your baking.” I tapped my pen on my notebook. I knew what I had to do, but I didn’t see any way to accomplish my task.
“Maybe I can help.” She came and stood by me, hands planted on her slender hips. “I know a lot about Adelaide. What do you need to know?”
I had no idea if she was aware of the senior warden’s demise. In any event, she was much too young to embroil, even peripherally, in a murder investigation. Certainly I couldn’t tell Bayroo why I needed to talk to people. But perhaps if I articulated my difficulty, a solution would occur to me.
I stood and gave her a hug. “You are a help just being my friend.
Let’s get everything out for your cake and I’ll explain.” She pulled up a kitchen chair next to a counter. “You sit here, Auntie Grand. I can do it all by myself. I told Travis I’d make it.” She bustled about the kitchen, retrieving a mixing bowl and measuring cups and spoons and cake tins. A moment later, she’d assembled her ingredients. She propped her recipe sheet on a stand.
I remembered my cooking days. I had a Betty Crocker cookbook that was dog-eared and stained. I settled on the chair. “I have some questions I need to ask some people.” She nodded and poured cake flour into the measuring cup.
“But”—I shook my head—“even if I could go and see them, they can’t see me. And even if they could”—after all, I could appear if it was essential—“I can’t see why they’d talk to me.”
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Bayroo looked thoughtful. “I can see you.”
“I know. Other people can’t.”
She cut butter into the flour-and-sugar mixture. “Way cool. But I thought you could do something special and actually be here.”
“Oh yes, indeed.” Much to Wiggins’s consternation. “I could be here if this were a big city. But in Adelaide, everyone would want to know about that redheaded stranger. You know how small towns are. If someone from the church saw me, they might walk down the corridor outside the parish hall and look at the paintings of the former
