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"Not really I er And since she wasn't here most of the time, the entire burden of responsibility fell on Grant's shoulders for the hotel and Mrs Johnson's with regard to the Bed & Breakfast Nevertheless, every issue concerning h my hands and, that way, under Mrs Sloan's surveillance"

"So the person she really, really trusted was you"

"Oh, she wouldn't have hired Johnson and Grant if she hadn't thought them reliable It's just that she hated dispersion She didn't want to have to talk to several people to kno her businesses were doing"

"I still think you had a great deal of power in Mrs Sloan's life"

"I'd rather call it responsibility And I assure you I did my best to live up to her expectations"

"I'm sure of that"

Kathy felt his words meant more than he was now ready to reveal and she didn't want him to feel unco everybody, trying to remember as many names as possible

They decided to have lunch at Henry's Café and invited Patricia Johnson to join them She enty nine years old, divorced, and had been hired by Mrs Sloan a year before, when she'd bought the house next door to this café and turned it into a Bed & Breakfast They had been for, but Kathy re her recent one-week vacation on the island Patricia recognized her too

"Please, call me Pat"

"Pat?"

"Yeah, I know It tends to make people think I'm the owner of the place, but… It's the way I've been called allthat's why she'd hired me Oh, I wish I could've been at her funeral, paid my respects to her family…"

Pat reminded Kathy of Shirley Teathered into a ponytail

"So as it called Patty's?" asked Kathy, not very sure who she should be addressing the question to

"Patty was my mother," answered Ms Johnson "I'm an only child, so when she died I inherited the house - my father had passed away several years before By then, I had just got divorced and the three of us -at my aunt Libby's

After my mother's death, I didn't have a job so I decided to sell the house toto maybe study to become a hairdresser and open ht it and explained toit into a Bed & Breakfast It was a nice, big, Victorian-style house, and so it sounded like a ht She named it after rateful to her"