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When I’d said no, there wouldn’t be enough room in my small car for books and cat, I’d gotten a universal response. “Thanks for the offer, but we’ll make do until you come around next time.”

So instead of driving around southwestern Tonedagana County, I headed to the library itself to cover for a part-time clerk who was in the Upper Peninsula attending a family funeral.

“You believed that story?” Josh laughed. He was in the break room, up to his elbows in printer parts. Why he hadn’t taken it to his office I didn’t know, but some questions were best left unasked, since if you asked, you ran the risk of getting an answer that included things you didn’t want to know.

“Yes, I believed her,” I said, “and so would you if you’d seen how upset she looked.”

He snorted. “What I see is the U.P.’s weather forecast of eighty degrees and sunny all weekend when it’s supposed to be maybe seventy and rainy down here. They’re saying really heavy rain, too.”

“So young, yet so cynical.” I mock-sighed heavily and left him to his tinkering.

I was deep into the task of processing the Friday night returns when Stephen strolled past. “Good morning, Minerva,” he said. “How are you this fine day?”

“Uh . . .” I stared at the apparition. Though the presence in front of me resembled my boss, it couldn’t be him. Stephen had made it a Thing that he was never at the library on a Saturday. He’d said repeatedly that if he was doing his job properly, overtime hours weren’t necessary. Plus as far as I knew, Stephen had never once wasted time on the casual conversational exchanges made by everyone else in the universe. “Uh, hi. You seem . . . chipper this morning.”

“Why, yes. Yes, I am.” He smiled broadly. “Last night we got the news that my sister and the new baby are going to be fine. Out of the woods and out of the ICU today.”

I blinked. Stephen had a sister? “That’s great. Your family must be thrilled.”

Up until that point, his face had been open and easily read. Now it closed down. “Younger,” he said shortly. “She and her husband live in Oregon.”

I grinned on the inside. Crankmeister that he was, it was good to have the old Stephen back. “Well, I’m glad she and the baby are okay. You must have been worried sick.”

I watched him walk off and snorted quietly. Maybe he didn’t want to admit it to his assistant director, but whatever had been wrong with his sister and her baby, it had been so serious that he’d worried himself almost to the point of illness.

He headed out through the front door and I heard what might have been him singing, and words that might have been a chorus of “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.”

And my teeny tiny worry that Stephen might have been involved in Stan’s death, that he’d been a mess the last few weeks over guilt and fear of getting caught, puffed away into the air and disappeared forever.

The phone rang. “Good morning, Chilson District Library,” I said. “How may I—”

It had been a while since Kristen had called with a job for her personal search engine. I pulled the computer keyboard toward me. “Ready and waiting, ma’am.”

“Kyle says Onaway potatoes are named for Onaway, Michigan, and I say they came from Maine. Who’s right?”

“Hang on.” In a few seconds I found the answer. “You both are. The first seedling came from Maine, but it was sent to Michigan for research and development and named the Onaway potato. Don’t ask me why it was sent here because I don’t know. And who’s Kyle?”

Either Kristen was suffering from serious sleep deprivation or something very strange was going on. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, right,” she said. “I guess you wouldn’t know. Back in high school, Kyle played basketball and the story is, the coach kept calling him Larry because he looked like his uncle Larry, a guy the coach grew up with.” She paused. “He looks like a Larry, I guess, so the name stuck. But it’s just a nickname.”

She chattered on about the new potato dish she was making up, but I didn’t hear much of what she said. Any of it, really, because I was suddenly back on Audry’s front porch, drinking her lemonade, and hearing her say, “And one of them used names that started with
K
. Kevin, Kyle, Karla, and Kendra.”

Late in the morning, the sky clouded up. The rain held off, but started to spatter down as I locked the building at four o’clock. Josh had been right, or at least right about the weather. When I got home, I found Eddie sleeping in a new spot. The seat of the shower stall.

“Okay, sure, I must not have latched the door all the way and this was a brand-new place for you, but still. It’s fiberglass. And it was probably wet.”

“Yeah, well, don’t come crying to me if you wind up with a . . . with a stiff neck.” Did cats get stiff necks? I watched him trot down the steps to the bedroom. He didn’t look as if he had one, but if he did, how would I know?

I tossed together a fast dinner of grilled cheese and a broccoli/cauliflower mix steamed in the microwave. (“Of course I’m eating my vegetables, Mom.”) I ate sitting at the dining table with the company of Eddie and my laptop, which was displaying the local weather. More specifically, the radar.

“Lots of yellow coming across Lake Michigan,” I told Eddie. “Quite a bit of red, too. You know what that means.”

I used my forearm to push him away. Like a boomerang, he came right back. “It means a lot of rain. Hard rain that could wash away any of those quad tracks out by the farmhouse.” There’d been rain since Stan’s death, but not the heavy, driving stuff that was coming. “I should get out there,” I murmured. “See if there are any tracks. I’m sure the detectives haven’t been out there.”

“Could have told you you wouldn’t like broccoli,” I said. “Cats don’t do vegetables. Your pointy teeth don’t chew them up right.”

When the kitchen was tidied, I dumped the contents of my backpack out on the bed and repacked with new items. “Flashlight, check. Bottle of water, check. Cell phone with charged-up battery, check. Map, pen, granola bar, all check. Am I forgetting anything?”

“Right.” I snapped my fingers. “A book. Good idea.” I picked through my To Be Read stack and selected a Frost mystery by R. D. Wingfield. When I turned around, Eddie was slithering into the backpack.

“Hey!” I grasped him around the middle and pulled him out. “This isn’t a cat carrier. At least not today.”

I blinked. “That was quite a howl. Did I hurt you?” He squirmed out of my arms, thumped to the bed, and said, “MRR!”

The guilt that had been advancing retreated fast. “Well, sorry if I injured your feline dignity, but you can’t go with me. I’m going to be tromping around the woods and going up and down hills, and that’s just not your style.”

I winced at the cat breath and tried to give him a good snuggle. Nothing doing. He struggled away, jumped to the floor, and ran down the short hall and up the steps.

Fine. After I made a note on the whiteboard, I put on my rain gear and slung the backpack over a shoulder. “Hey, pal. I’m headed out and—”

And there was Edward, sitting on the boat’s dashboard, poised to jump out the door as soon as I pushed it open half an inch.

“Not a chance,” I told him. I stood in front of the door and turned my back to the dashboard. Slowly and carefully, I pushed the door open and slid one foot outside, then eased my body out, too, using the other foot and the backpack as a cat barrier.

Eddie thudded to the floor. Tried to jump over the backpack. “MRR!” His claws slid off the nylon.

I shut the door before he could gather himself for another effort.

“MMRRR!!” He stood on his hind legs and scratched at the glass door.
“MRR!!!”

I was a horrible kitty mother. Clearly, he needed to get outside more. Maybe I’d get a cat harness and take him for walks. We could walk to get the mail, or down to the ice-cream shop for double dips of black cherry.

“See you, Eddie.” I waved at him. “I’ll be back before you know it. We’ll go harness shopping tomorrow.”

“Mrr!” He was sounding less like he was complaining and more like he was crying out a question. He kept crying as I walked off the dock and across the parking lot, and I almost thought I could still hear him as I drove out of town, the windshield wipers keeping time with his cries.

• • •

The farmhouse didn’t look any different than it had the last time I’d seen it. I tromped up the driveway, following the path the emergency vehicles had created, and kept my gaze high. The last thing I wanted was to catch even a small glimpse of what was still on the ground. Even if rain had fallen for forty days and forty nights, I’d be able to see the red stains.

I stood near the back porch and looked out at the tall grass. Looked hard. Squinted and looked some more and saw nothing but grass waving in the light breeze. If there had been a path, I couldn’t see it.

“A tracker I’m not,” I murmured, and cautiously climbed up onto the far corner of the porch. Maybe an elevated view would help.

And, oddly, it did. Or something did. I closed my eyes, not seeing anything, trying to think of blank slates and flat lakes and smooth expanses of snow. When I opened my eyes and saw the hills rising up behind the house, I immediately saw the grassy trail. Not a very distinct trail, and maybe not even a trail at all, but maybe, just maybe, it was something to follow.

“Hey, Eddie, check it out!” I looked around my feet, all excited to share, then remembered that I’d left him home.

That’s what happens when you start talking to cats. You think they actually understand what you’re saying. And sometimes you even think they might be contributing to the conversation when, in reality, what they’re saying is “Mrrr.”

I adjusted my backpack’s straps and started trudging across the open field. It was dotted with the scrub trees that grow up after a farm field lies fallow for even a few years. I tried to picture the young Stan of the high school photo driving a tractor up and down, up and down. Couldn’t quite do it.

Through the wet field I went, heading for the trail I might—or might not—have seen. At the edge of the field, which was the bottom of the hill, there were rocks. Lots of rocks. Whoever had cleared the field had tossed all the fieldstones into a large heap exactly where the hill had started turning a serious slope. Not so dumb.

I took a look up at the steepness, wished I hadn’t, and started climbing through the drippy rain.

Halfway up, I stopped to rest. While Josh’s weather forecast might have been right about the rain, the temperature part was way off. The cool he’d promised was instead a hot heavy humidity that made it hard to breathe.

On up I climbed. And climbed. Slipping on the wet grass, clutching to it to keep from skidding back downhill, wishing Eddie had suggested I bring cleats instead of a book, climbing, climbing, head down and feet moving, thighs aching, lungs working hard.

At long last, the burning in my legs fell from a hot fire to a slow ache. I looked around and found I’d reached the edge of the hill’s top. Not the tippy-top, but close.

I squinted into the deep, dark forest. The thick cloud cover was making night fall before its time, and up ahead, thick canopies of maple leaves blocked out even that dusky light.

Well.

I looked back and saw the wet trail I’d just laid. Looked ahead to the murky forest. Shivered, then extracted the flashlight from my backpack. My dad had given me this LED light when I’d bought the houseboat, gravely telling me that no homeowner should be without one.

With a push of the thumb it went on, and I flinched as the bright light turned the night practically to day. Since I’d never used the flashlight before, its range amazed me. I danced the beam up the trees, down on the ground, and all around in a giant circle. “Wow,” I murmured, “this thing is awesome. Thanks, Dad.”

I aimed the light forward. Maple tree trunks a foot and a half in diameter. A few scattered bushes. The occasional tuft of grass. A thin carpet of leaves from last autumn. Moss. Not much else. Following a weeks-old quad trail through the woods wasn’t going to be easy. Or . . . was it?

Bouncing the light off the ground, I saw some rips in the pea green moss. Long rips that were in a direct line with the trail behind me. The rips curved, then faded to dents.

Well, there you go. Tracking wasn’t so hard; all you had to do was pay attention.

I took out my cell. Using one hand to shield it from the rain, I clicked off a few pictures, then followed the mossy trail to the very top of the hill. From here, I could see nothing at all except more trees. When the leaves were down, the view must be stupendous, but now there was nothing but green.

The trail wound around the trees, zigging for an occasional monstrous maple, zagging every so often for a large rock, zigging again for a fallen tree, but always trending in the same direction. South, I was pretty sure. Another thing Eddie should have suggested was to bring a compass. Not that I owned one, but I could have downloaded a compass app to my cell.

On through the greenish murk I went. Every so often I lost the trail and had to circle around to find it. Every so often I’d be fooled into following a deer path that would peter out to nothing, and back I’d go until I again found the moss dents.

At one point I stopped to drink some water and glugged down half of it before sense came into my brain. I didn’t know how much farther there was to go; drinking all the water now would be worse than dumb.

I capped the bottle and started walking again. Intent as I was on following the moss trail, I didn’t notice the bush with the very sharp thorns until I was in the middle of it.

“Ow!” The stinging pain flared up hot. Muttering to myself about the stupidity of city folk who like to pretend they know what they’re doing out in the woods, I used the flashlight to push the branch this way and that, trying to loosen its thorny grip. I stepped back, oh so carefully, gritting my teeth at the scratches, then came to a sudden stop.

There, right in front of my eyeballs, was a cluster of long threads. “Huh,” I said. Someone else had been caught by the clutching bush. And there, down at my feet, was another denting impression of quad tires.

A clue!

I wiggled my way out of the bush, then tucked the flashlight into my armpit, unzipped the backpack, and took out my cell phone.

Tempting though it was to pull off the threads and take them with me to dangle in front of the detectives, I didn’t want to mess with the chain-of-evidence thing. So I clicked off a few pictures, the phone’s flash lighting up the trees and sucking up battery power. E-mailing pictures to the detectives wasn’t as good as dangling, but it would have to do.

Pictures taken, I reshouldered the backpack and went back to following the trail.

How far I walked, I wasn’t sure. My normal walking pace (3.4 miles an hour, according to the last treadmill I’d been on, back in graduate school) was worth nothing in this situation. I wasn’t even sure how long I’d been walking—the sky gave no hints and my cell was on my back.

Flashlight searching, feet moving, I made my way across the forest floor. The sky was so dark that when I at last emerged into open ground, I almost didn’t notice. What tipped me off was the moss fading away to nothing and the grass coming back.

I looked up, and out. Far, far out and away. Miles of river valley to the left of me, miles to the right, and straight ahead, distant over the wide valley, was another rise of hills.

A USGS quadrangle map was in my back pocket, but I didn’t need to pull it out to know where I was. This was the Mitchell River Valley, hundreds of acres of state land dotted with the occasional private property. There wasn’t a paved road inside the entire valley, just gravel roads and an extensive trail system.

Plus the new little trail I was following, now twin paths of bent grass going down down down the hill.

I stared at it, then hitched up the backpack. Well. This was what I’d come out here for. Not much point in turning back now.

Down I went, following the curving trail around the side of the hill, picking my way across the wet grass, trying not to fall on my behind, trying not to think how I’d get back to my car in the dark.

The farther down the hill I went, the quieter I tried to move. Somewhere up ahead there was a house or a barn or a something that the quad had come from. I was pretty sure that ownership of a quad could be traced. The police would find out if the owner had a connection to Stan. Would find out if the owner had a reason for murder. Then, Stan’s voice would stop whispering in my ear, Holly could get some sleep, and Aunt Frances would stop eating herself up with guilt.

Down and down the hill. My ears strained to hear a car, the voices of strangers, anything, but the only thing I heard was my own footsteps.

Then, finally, around another curve and down a little more, there was a small house tucked into the side of the hill. The slope was so steep that the uphill roof almost touched the ground. A storybook house, if it weren’t for the decaying shingles and peeling paint. If this was Gunnar’s hunting cabin from the days of yore, it had become something else in the interim.

I turned off the flashlight. No lights were on in the house. And no lights on in the large weather-beaten barn standing to the side and slightly behind the house. The tracks led to a door in the side of the barn. I took one step forward. Stopped.

Should I?

Could
I?

The needle of my moral compass bounced between
GO AHEAD
and
GO HOME,
spent a lot of time on
G
O HOME,
then swung firmly to
GO AHEAD.

I edged close to the house and peeked in through a kitchen window. No one was in sight. Excellent. I tiptoed to the barn, one eye on the house, one eye on the steep and rocky driveway. The light breeze I’d felt up on the ridge’s top was nonexistent down here and my forehead beaded with rain and humid summer sweat. I got the sudden urge to use the bathroom.

No noise, no lights, no nothing. I made it to the barn undetected by anyone save a grasshopper or two, grasped the door handle, and pulled.

Nothing happened. I gaped. Locked? People locked their barn doors? A wave of complete defeat drained all the energy from my body. I’d come so far. . . .

No. There had to be a way in. I took a closer look at the door. No hinges. Duh. I pushed instead of pulled, and it creaked open.

A musty smell rushed out to greet me. I stepped inside quickly and shut the door.

Complete darkness.

I reopened the door a crack and let in enough light that I was able to spot the quad parked in the middle of the large space. Shadows all around suggested smaller rooms and old animal stalls, but I didn’t bother poking around. I wanted to get back over the hill to my car and home.

Dumping my pack on the ground, I unzipped it and hunted around for my cell. I walked fast around the quad, snapping a few flash pictures, zooming in on the Off-Road Vehicle tag slapped on the front fender.

Done. Time to skedaddle. If this wasn’t enough proof for the detectives, I’d have to keep my promise to Holly some other way.

I squatted down to put the cell back into my backpack. Just as the zipper hummed shut, complete darkness descended in front of my eyes.

“What . . . ?” My hands went up. Found cloth. “Hey!”

An unforgiving grip grabbed at my wrists and pulled them back behind me, one, then the other.

“What are you doing? I was hiking up in the hills and got lost. I thought maybe—”

My spur-of-the-moment lie was cut short when I felt my wrists being bound with something strong and sticky. Tape of some kind. Duct tape, or, even worse, the Gorilla Tape that Rafe always went on about. “Strongest tape ever made,” he’d bragged, brandishing a roll. “This stuff won’t ever come off.”

“Listen,” I said, “whatever you’re doing, there’s no harm done at this point, right? Cut me loose and I’ll leave. Maybe spend a night in the woods, which will be unpleasant, but I’ll live, and in the morning I’ll find where I parked my car and no one will have to know anything about this and—”

I felt a small rush of air on my face. He was lifting whatever it was that he’d used to cover my head. “Thanks,” I said gratefully, even though he hadn’t lifted it very far. I still couldn’t see, but it’d be okay in a minute. “It was getting a little stuffy in there.” I gave a weak chuckle. “If you—”

He pushed my jaw shut and slapped tape over my mouth. My yell of protest got as far as my teeth and went no farther. The bag came back over my head and was tied down. I kicked, and hit only air. I tried to pull away, but his grip held me fast. I turned into a kicking, yelling, pulling, shoving, screaming, panicking, sweating mess of a human being. And nothing I did made any difference.

Lending a Paw: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery (Bookmobile Cat Mysteries) (23 page)

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