Laurie Cass - Bookmobile Cat 02 - Tailing a Tabby (15 page)

The knowledge was depressing. Though I barely knew Greg, I liked the guy. Thinking that he was hiding something made me feel icky inside.

“And if that’s not a medical term,” I told Eddie, “it should be.”

He jumped up next to me on the chaise longue and rubbed the side of his face against my arm.

“Of course,” I said, pulling him onto my lap, “there are variations of ick. Take the way you just rubbed
Eddie spit on me. That’s also icky. I mean, you don’t catch me doing that to you.”

He bumped his head against my leg, which almost always meant
Pay attention to me. Now!

I started to pet the thick black-and-white fur. Full, purring rumbles began half a second later. “Greg lied,” I said quietly. “But I don’t think he’s the only one.”

Eddie’s mouth opened in a silent
Mrr.

“I agree. I think Hugo Edel and Trock lied, too.” Or at least hadn’t told me everything. Now all I had to do was figure out why.

•   •   •

Saturday morning was unseasonably cool and threatened rain. I pulled on long pants and a fleece pullover and drove up to the library to back the bookmobile out of the garage. It was odd not to have Eddie with me, but the morning’s schedule wasn’t a suitable one for a cat.

Though it wasn’t anywhere near as big as the famous art fairs in Charlevoix or Petoskey, the Chilson version was enjoying a steady growth that boded well for the local arts world. I’d talked the director into believing that having the bookmobile parked at the fair would be an asset and hoped that it would be true.

From eight until eleven, I opened the bookmobile to one and all, answering questions, checking out books, and even giving out a few new library cards. Though the morning was chilly, I was warmed by the many smiles, especially the smile that walked up the steps at eleven sharp.

Tucker looked around. “So this is the bookmobile. Nice. It’s a lot like one of those bloodmobiles they have downstate.”

I nodded. “The company that fabricated this also
does medical vehicles.” I gave Tucker the tour, then said, “All I have to do is drive it back to the garage at the end of the day.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “Lunch first or fair first?”

We discussed the question as we descended the steps, kept discussing it as we browsed through a dozen booths of varying displays of art, and only ended the discussion when we walked up to a trailer selling corn dogs. We kept discussing if that was enough food for lunch until we found a booth offering hamburgers. The dessert discussion ended at the booth selling elephant ears. Tummies contentedly full, we wandered through the booths, admiring most of the work and being puzzled by some, but enjoying the crowd and each other’s company.

And the crowd was large—poor boating weather often made for well-attended summer events. I saw half the regular library patrons and my marina neighbors. I also saw Hugo and Annelise Edel, Greg Plassey and his friend Brett, and though I didn’t see him I could have sworn I heard Trock Farrand’s voice.

Tucker and I had walked through about half the booths when one particular display caught my eye.

“Hello.” A woman sitting on a tall stool smiled at me. “How are you?”

“Excellent,” I said. “How about you? Busy?”

“The little ones are selling.” She waved at the showcases. One case was full of Petoskey stones cut into the shapes of bears, turtles, and wolverines. Another case contained Petoskey stones formed into drawer pulls, switch plates, clocks, and doorknobs. Yet another case was full of raw stones. “You’re familiar with them?” she asked.

I nodded, knowing that the stones were fossilized coral. I also knew it was great fun to find them on the lakeshore. I’d picked up a couple myself. “How expensive are the big ones?” I nodded at the softball-sized behemoths.

When she named the price, my eyes bugged out. She laughed. “Petoskeys that large are hard to find. You typically don’t find them any bigger than small paperweight size.”

Tucker admired the shined-up surface. “I didn’t know you were interested in Petoskey stones, Minnie.”

I gave the price tag one last disbelieving glance, then edged out of the booth. “I’m not, not really. It’s just…”

Tucker put his hand in mine as we walked. “It’s just what?”

Could there be anything nicer than walking hand in hand with your boyfriend? I sighed happily. “Well,” I said, “it’s just that a Petoskey stone was what killed that woman a while back. Remember when that happened?” Tucker nodded and I went on. “The police think that a friend of mine killed her. But there’s no way he did it, none at all.”

Tucker didn’t say anything for a moment. “How long have you known this guy?” he finally asked.

I glanced up at him. “Long enough to know that he’s not a killer.” My voice had a little edge to it. “You don’t have to know someone very long to know that.”

He stopped, and since my hand was still in his, I stopped, too. The park was full of people, but they walked around us like the water in a stream breaking around a rock. “Minnie,” he said, “I know you’re a smart person, but I also know you like to think the best of people. If the police think your friend killed
someone, have you considered the possibility that they may be right?”

“No,” I said shortly. The afternoon was taking a sudden turn for the worse.

Tucker sighed and shook his head. “Minnie—”

“Hey, Kleinow, you slumming it today?” A tall, broad man was walking toward us.

Tucker squeezed my hand, then let go. “Minnie, this is Dr. Miller Alvord. He’s an orthopedic surgeon. Miller, this is my friend Minnie.”

Friend? Not girlfriend? My stomach clenched and I was pretty sure it wasn’t because of the corn dogs.

“Charmed, I’m sure.” Miller gave my hand a perfunctory shake and turned his attention to Tucker. “Say, I’ve been wanting to talk to you. What do you think about helping me convince the higher-ups to buy a new X-ray machine?”

I stood first on one foot, then the other, waiting for Tucker to finish his conversation. When they segued smoothly into a discussion of treatments for dislocated hips, I told Tucker I was heading back to the bookmobile.

“What’s that?” He looked over at me with a distracted look. “Right. Okay. See you later.”

My thoughts were black as I wandered through the fair. If he wasn’t calling me his girlfriend, what was I doing calling him my boyfriend? And if he wasn’t my boyfriend, why did I already know his birthday, birthplace, and shoe size?

I was so mired in my own miserable thoughts that I was halfway up the bookmobile steps when I realized that I hadn’t unlocked the door.

The bookmobile had been unlocked. Unlocked and unattended for hours.

I pounded up the rest of the steps, freaking out a little, scared that there’d been vandalism or theft or…

Or nothing. I looked around and saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Books, magazines, and CDs all tidy. Computers in place. All was well.

Except for me. I sat down hard into the driver’s seat and tried not to think dreary thoughts. I sighed. What I wanted was Eddie and the comfort of his purrs. Maybe even some of his cat hair.

I looked down and picked an Eddie hair off my sleeve and sat there, just holding it.

•   •   •

The art fair was over, the bookmobile was tucked away, and with the heavy cloud cover, darkness was coming on fast. I typically loved this time of night, just before it got truly dark, when the lights in people’s houses were glowing cozily through their windows and children were being called inside by moms and dads. Evening walks were my second-favorite kind, right after early morning walks, but that which I usually found calm and soothing was lost to me tonight, thanks to the things whirring around in my brain.

I was wandering along, my hands in my pockets, thinking about Carissa and my aunt’s boarders and how Tucker had ditched me to have dinner with Miller and one of the hospital’s biggest benefactors. I was thinking hard and not completely present in the world when a movement caught my attention.

A man was walking out of the shadows and into the light from the downtown streetlights that were shaped like old gas lamps. A man, shortish and rounded on his belly side but with a straight back, a man shaped like the letter
D
. Detective Devereaux.

Now what should I do? The detective and his partner and I were being mutually agreeable to each other at this point, but if Detective Devereaux and I started talking, he was bound to know something was up. He was a detective, after all. They were trained to sense these kinds of things, and I wasn’t ready to share what I knew about Hugo or Trock or Greg without proof. A feeling of ickiness probably wouldn’t count for much to them.

Besides, I didn’t want the detective to tell me to stay out of police business, and what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt me.

I slid sideways into the dark cast by the bank building, then eased even deeper into the darkness by edging toward the narrow walkway that led to a rear parking lot. Silently, holding my breath, I moved behind a tall container plant and waited until Devereaux walked past.

When he was gone, I waited. Waited a little longer. Then, just after I started to feel like an idiot for hiding behind a plant for no good reason, I slipped out of the alley and walked away.

A
fter dinner at a local sandwich shop, I wandered on home, trying hard not to think about Tucker. It was a pleasant walk punctuated by short stops to chat with numerous library patrons from the cane-carrying Mr. Goodwin to the cookie-baking Reva Shomin to the thriller-reading Jim Kittle.

“Must be the cool weather,” I told Eddie, tossing my backpack onto the dining table’s bench, sliding in next to it, and putting my feet up on the opposite bench. “It’s fooling people into thinking that it’s after Labor Day and the summer people are gone.”

Eddie was again on the houseboat’s small dashboard. In spite of the precariousness of his perch, it was now his favorite place for seagull spying.

At this particular moment, however, the only wildlife Eddie could possibly see was himself, since it was dark outside.

“I can’t believe you’re paying more attention to your reflection than to me.” I slid into a comfortable slouch. “Why is it people have cats, anyway? I feed you, water
you, clean up your messes, wear your hair everywhere I go, and what do I get out of it?”

Eddie turned to look at me. Blinked, as if my appearance were a sudden surprise. Then he oozed off the dashboard, hit the floor, sauntered over to me, jumped up on my lap, and immediately started purring.

“Okay.” I patted his head. “You win. Purrs trump all that other stuff, hands down.” I gently picked up one of his front legs and we exchanged a paw-to-palm high five.

He purred a little louder.

There couldn’t be many cats who would let you handle them like that. Eddie didn’t care, however. I could stuff one of his back paws into his ear and he wouldn’t twitch.

I was starting to do just that when my cell phone came to life with a plain old electronic beeping noise, which meant it was a number to which I hadn’t assigned a ring tone. I dug through my backpack and turned it on. “Hello?”

“Minnie, Barb McCade here, and I have the answer to all your problems.”

“You’ve discovered a way to keep all of Eddie’s hairs attached to him? Outstanding.”

“Let me rephrase that. I have the answer to one particular problem.”

“Better than nothing. What do you have?”

“My mother has decided she’s coming north to spend the rest of the summer with us. Mom has more energy than I know what to do with, so I always have a project for her. She is practically giddy with excitement over the possibility of riding along with you on the bookmobile.”

Though I’d never asked, I assumed Barb was in her early fifties, making her mother seventy, at the absolute minimum, and probably older. “Well,” I said slowly, “that’s a wonderful offer…”

“Then we’re settled.” Barb’s voice held a tone that indicated a dusting off of hands after a job well done. “I’ll have Mom drop by the library to get an orientation. Would eleven work?”

I gave up. If Barb’s mother was completely unsuitable, I’d leave her behind at the library and abscond with one of the clerks. As plans go, I’d had worse.

“Of course,” I said to Eddie as I thumbed off the phone, “maybe there’s a good reason Barb is so eager to get rid of her mother.” Frightening images of harridans and shrews pinged into my brain.

Eddie tipped his head up and around so that he was looking at me almost upside down.

“Mrr,” he said.

•   •   •

The next morning I got up bright and early. That is, if eight thirty on a Sunday morning can be considered early, which I did, in spite of the admonitions of my mother all through my youth. It was a known fact that you weren’t a slug on a Sunday morning until the hour hit the double-digit range.

“Comparatively,” I told Eddie, “half past eight is practically dawn.”

The Eddie-sized lump that was under the comforter didn’t say anything. I leaned close to make sure he was still breathing, then slid out. The poor boy needed his sleep, after all. Yesterday he’d barely had eighteen hours.

I was halfway through a bowl of cereal when my cell
rang the
Scrubs
theme song. Tucker. I would have asked Eddie if I should answer it, but I was in the kitchen and he was still on the bed. I would have flipped a coin, but I didn’t have one handy.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to him, but if he was going to break up with me, I might as well get it over with now. That way I could metaphorically dissect him that night with Kristen.

“Hey,” I said into the phone.

“Hey yourself,” he said. “First off, I want to apologize for yesterday. I was being an inconsiderate jerk and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have ignored you like that when Miller and I were talking and I shouldn’t have left you to have dinner with him and that donor.”

Relief sang through my bones, but I pushed it down. I wanted answers. “If you know you shouldn’t have, then why did you?”

I heard him swallow. “Because I’m stupid.”

Don’t laugh,
I told myself.
Don’t laugh.
“Probably,” I said. “But I’d like a little more detail.”

His sigh gusted into the phone. “Because I’m still new at the hospital. I’ve worked so hard for so long to get this kind of job and I’m worried that if I don’t think ‘hospital’ twenty-four-seven that I won’t be taken seriously.” He stopped. “Minnie, are you still there? What are you doing?”

Smiling, actually. “I had no idea that men had self-esteem issues.”

“Of course we do,” he said. “We just don’t talk about them. I’m breaking the Man Code by even hinting that I wasn’t born with a massive ego.”

This time I did laugh.

•   •   •

“So you forgave him?” Kristen asked.

We were sitting in her office, spooning up crème brûlée. “When he brought over that big bunch of flowers, it wasn’t that hard.”

“Carnations? Daisies?”

I shook my head. “Roses.”

She whistled. “Not bad. This guy might be a keeper.”

“Still too early to tell,” I said. “Say, have I ever told you how good your desserts are?”

“Only every time you eat one.”

“Come on, I tell you more often than that.” I debated telling her about what Scruffy and Trock had said about stopping by the Three Seasons, but decided not to. No point in getting her all excited over something a TV person said. Maybe it was unfair of me to assume they were unreliable, but professions get stereotyped for a reason.

“So, what have you learned about Carissa?” she asked. Only after she swore on a stack of
Bon Appétit
magazines to keep her lips zipped had I told her about Cade’s short stay at the county jail and my later vow to help him stay out of jail.

Cade had said I could tell her, that anyone I trusted was guarantee enough for him, but the magazine thing was a requirement for me. Plus, it was fun listening to her make the vow.

“Not enough.” I told her everything I’d learned. Unfortunately it didn’t take long.

“All you have is guesses,” she said. “What you need is some proof.”

I looked at her.

“Yeah, yeah.” She grinned. “Like, duh, right?” She spooned up the last of her custard. “How’s it going with trying to kick Mitchell out of the library?”

I toyed with the sprig of mint that had formerly garnished my dessert. “About as well as you’d expect. Stephen’s really out to get me fired this time.”

She leaned back in her chair. “You know, did I ever tell you about the time I had to kick a state senator out of here?”

“You did not.”

“Did, too. Ask Harvey.”

“That’s not proof. Your sous-chef is so infatuated with you that he’d say anything you wanted.”

She waved off that particular truth. “I must have told you about the time a softball team came in to celebrate some championship game. All women old enough to be my mother.”

Now, that story she had told me, and every time she told it I was sure my curly hair was going to go straight. I settled back, smiling. “Make sure you tell the dancing-on-the-tables part. That’s my favorite.”

We spent the rest of the evening sharing stories and laughing. It didn’t get me any closer to a solution to any of my problems, but I did go to sleep with a smile on my face.

•   •   •

The next morning, I woke up refreshed and perky. Eddie, not so much. The cool weather was still in full force and he seemed much more inclined to nap on the bed than get up and watch me eat a bowl of cereal.

“I’ll let you lick the bottom of the bowl,” I said.

He opened one eye briefly, then shut it again.

“You do realize that tomorrow you’re going to have to be out of bed at this time if you’re coming on the bookmobile.”

He started purring. I wasn’t sure if that meant
Of
course I’ll be ready to go at this time tomorrow
or
That’s twenty-four hours away; why are you bothering me with it now?

I kissed the top of his furry head and left him to sleep the day away.

•   •   •

Monday mornings at the library could be one of two things, frantically busy or quietly slow, and you never knew which one it was going to be until it started happening.

This particular Monday started out quiet, but half an hour after I unlocked the front door, e-mails started piling up, the phones started ringing, and people started pouring inside. It was All Hands on Deck time, to the extent that Stephen descended from his second-floor office to help out.

I was taking a stint at the reference desk, so when I saw Donna talking to a trim, gray-haired woman and point her in my direction, I readied myself for a reference question.

The older woman strode over to the desk and held out her hand. “Good morning, Minnie.” Her smile was wide and calm. “I’m Ivy Bly.”

“Hi, Ivy,” I said pleasantly. “What can I do for you?”

There was a short beat of silence, and then she said, “My daughter wound me up and pointed me in your direction, so here I am.”

“And I hope I can answer whatever question you have.” I smiled. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

A tiny line appeared in the middle of her forehead. Not quite a frown, but not nearly the smile of a moment ago. “Didn’t Barb tell you I’d be here this morning?”

Light dawned in a great blinding flash. I blinked from its intensity. “You’re Barb McCade’s mother?” This woman didn’t look anywhere near old enough to be the mother of someone in her fifties. Maybe she was a stepmother. Sure, that was it.

She laughed. “Had Barb when I was twenty-five. Give you a piece of advice, Minnie. Slop on that sunscreen and stay active.”

I looked her up and down, admiration plain on my face. “I’ll take that into serious consideration.”

“The best day of my life was when I turned seventy,” she said. “Around here, they practically give you ski passes for free at that age. Do you ski?”

“A little.”

“Keep it up. Do squats every day,” she recommended. “Even if you don’t have time to do anything else, everybody can find a minute to do twenty squats.”

And this was the woman I’d been afraid would be too frail to help out on the bookmobile. Then again, there were other things to consider. “How are you with computers?” All the books got checked out and in through a laptop. If Ivy wasn’t computer-savvy, we had a problem.

“Spent the last twenty years of my career teaching computer programming to inattentive college students,” she said. “As long as you don’t want me to work in Java, I’m okay.”

I was pretty sure she wasn’t talking about coffee, so I moved on to the next question. “Do you get along with kids?”

“Love ’em.”

I looked left and right, then leaned forward. “How about cats?” I whispered.

“Have three of my own,” she whispered back. “They love it at Barb and Cade’s place.”

Which settled the deal. I told her to meet me by the bookmobile garage early the next morning and advised her to pack a lunch. She nodded, sketched a wave, and headed off to whatever her next appointed task might be.

I watched her go, thinking that I suddenly had a new role model for what to be like in retirement.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Stephen standing in front of the desk, his hands on his hips.

“I would like a progress report regarding The Situation,” he said.

Meaning Mitchell. But since I’d made no progress, there wasn’t much of a report to give him. I hesitated, then asked, “In a case like this, what would you do?”

“I,” Stephen said in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “would give the problem to the person who was hired to take care of such things.”

“Oh,” I said. Then I remembered I wasn’t afraid of Stephen and bucked up. “To tell you the truth, I don’t see it as a real problem.”

“What you don’t see,” Stephen snapped, “is the bad side of anyone or anything. Take care of this, Minnie.”

I watched him go, wondering why being optimistic was such a horrible thing. Then the phone rang, I was asked about the origin of the ampersand, and the Moratorium on Mitchell went to the back of my brain.

•   •   •

“What’re you doing, Minnie?”

I looked away from the computer screen to see Mitchell’s hands flat on the front of the reference desk.
Classic Mitchell: on the edge of rude, but not so far over the edge that you had to say something.

“Research,” I said, pushing back from the computer. And I’d been at it way too long. Not only was it more than an hour past my scheduled work time, but it was past my stomach’s preferred suppertime. I started to stand.

“What are you researching?” he asked, leaning around to look at the screen.

“Grants,” I said. “I’m looking for operational funds for the bookmobile.” I’d also been trying to find anything that might help prove Cade’s innocence, but that wasn’t something you could put into a search engine.

Mitchell didn’t appear to be interested in the bookmobile problems. “Say,” he said, “know what I found out?”

“No idea.” This time I stood all the way up.

“Let me show you.” He came around and sat in the chair I’d just left.

I sighed. “Mitchell, you can’t use the reference desk computer.”

“Hang on, this will just take a second.” He tapped rapidly at the keyboard. “Remember I said the police were going to arrest Carissa’s boss? Well, looks like the real killer was someone else.”