Booking The Crook

I was still thinking about it when I pulled into the Red House Café’s parking lot. My aunt had spent the night at Otto’s house, and upon waking, I’d decided that a big breakfast was what I needed to fuel me for the rest of what was going to be a long day. And since I obviously wasn’t going to cook my own food, what better place to go than Sunny’s?

There were no other cars in the parking lot, but that almost made sense. It was half past eight, a little late for the early Sunday morning breakfast crowd and too early for folks who liked to sleep in.

Still, it was eerie walking into a completely empty restaurant. Really, really empty. No one was at the front counter; no one was in the dining area. “Hello?” I called. “Is anyone here? Sunny?”

The front door had been unlocked and the lights were on; it was all a little too much Mary Celeste. “Someone’s here, right?” I asked, primarily to hear a human voice. “Anyone?” Back behind the swinging kitchen door, I heard . . . something. Relieved to get a sign of life, I headed back, but when I raised my hand to knock on the door to the inner sanctum, I stopped.

The noise was someone crying. The kind of deep sobbing that racks your insides, the kind that makes you feel as if you’ll be weeping the rest of your life, the kind that comes from despair.

I pushed the door open.

Sunny was on a stool, her face in her hands, shoulders heaving. She looked up and wiped her face with her fingers. “Minnie,” she managed to say. “Sorry, I’m just—” A sob overtook her and she put her face back in her hands.

I hurried to put my arms around her. “It’ll be all right,” I said. “Whatever it is, it’ll be all right.”

She shook her head against my shoulder and talked through her sobs. “No, it won’t . . . It hasn’t been right in years, but I didn’t know . . . I can’t believe I didn’t . . . I’ve tried so hard, but there’s nothing . . . nothing I can do.”

I hugged her tight as she continued to cry. Her sobs eventually subsided and I released her, rubbing her back gently. “If you want to talk about whatever this was about,” I said, “I’m here to listen. If you don’t, that’s fine, too.”

Sunny gulped down a final sob and looked at me. “Come to the Red House Café, where you come in for breakfast and end up with a front full of tears.”

I looked my coat, which was indeed a bit damp. “It’ll dry.” Eventually.

“Sorry you had to see this.” Sunny pulled in a deep breath and let it out shakily. “Breakfast on the house.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said.

“Of course I do.” She stood, expertly tore a single paper towel off a handy roll, and blew her nose. “Let me wash my hands and I’ll make you whatever you want.”

A few minutes later a plate heaped with chocolate chip pancakes was placed in front of me, with a jug of real Michigan maple syrup alongside. I took a bite and moaned with pleasure. “This is amazing. Better than Kristen’s, and I can’t wait to tell her so.”

“Kristen?” Sunny’s eyebrows went up. “You’re not talking about Kristen Jurek, are you?”

I chewed and swallowed, and said, “She’s my best friend. Do you know her?”

“She’s my idol,” Sunny said reverently. “I want to be her when I grow up.”

That, I would not pass on to Kristen. “Well, you make better pancakes than she does, so I’d stick with who you are.”

Sunny looked into the dining area. She’d propped the kitchen door open while she cooked for me, but it was still empty of life. “Not sure that’s a very good choice.” She pulled a stool over. “And not just because I don’t know if my restaurant will make it to summer. I owe you an explanation for my crying jag.”

“Not if you’re uncomfortable with talking about it,” I said.

“Tell you the truth, it might be a relief.” Sunny stared at the counter. “Do you have siblings? Are you close?”

“A brother.” Were we close? Matt was nine years older and he lived in Florida with his wife and three children. “Middling close, I guess.”

“Then maybe you’ll understand and maybe you won’t.” She sighed. “My sister and I are only eleven months apart. We grew up almost like twins. Together all the time, hardly ever fighting. We finished each other’s sentences, traded clothes, all that.”

Her smile faded. “Three years ago, she was in a car accident and hurt her back. To make a long story short, she got addicted to opioids and we’re afraid she’s going to start on heroin.” Sunny’s voice wobbled. “We’re trying to find the money to get her into rehab. The only places with beds open are private facilities, and they’re so expensive. I tried getting a loan, but that didn’t work, so now we’re scraping together what we can. I mean, even a week has to help, right?” Her expression begged me to agree.

“Absolutely. And no matter what, it can’t hurt,” I said.

“That’s what I say.” Sunny nodded. “Mom isn’t so sure, but the rest of the family is on board. We’re trying to keep my sister’s addiction quiet. She works for a big company, she’s in line for a big promotion, and if this gets out . . .” She pounded one fist on top of the other. “We can’t let it get out, we just can’t. It would ruin her reputation.”

The front door opened and closed and the voices of prospective customers trickled into the kitchen.

“Looks like I get to cook some more,” Sunny said, attempting a smile. “Thanks for listening.”

With my fork I speared another small wedge of pancakes, thinking that I’d finally found an answer to the question of why she hadn’t admitted to having an alibi, an answer that I wouldn’t have guessed in a thousand years.

Which led me directly to another question: What else hadn’t I guessed?

• • •

The man sitting at the center of the long curved table banged a small wooden hammer. “The regular meeting of the Wicklow Township Board is now called to order.” He laid the gavel down. “We will now recite the Pledge of Allegiance.”

As one unit, the audience of about thirty people stood, me along with them, hands on our hearts. When the pledge was done, we all sat down. I settled into my hard plastic seat, trying to find a comfortable position and failing completely, and looked forward to an interesting evening. Up front were the five members of the township board. I recognized two: Charlotte, the clerk who’d given the bookmobile permission to stop in their parking lot, and the supervisor, who’d walked out with Hugh Novak.

The board’s names were spelled out in nameplates sitting in front of them, so I could see that the supervisor’s name was Ralph Keshwas. The nameplates of the other board members were hidden by the heads of the many people sitting in front of me, so I mentally gave them names of Young Man (he looked about my age, which made him about thirty years younger than all of his fellow board members), Serious Lady (she was reading the pile of papers in front of her with great concentration), and Eyebrow Guy (his were remarkably bushy).

“Next is approval of the agenda,” Ralph Keshwas said, dropping his reading glasses from the top of his head onto his nose. “Are there any additions to the agenda?”

It turned out there were. Charlotte requested the addition of a budget amendment, Eyebrow Guy asked to add a grant application, and I started to get the feeling this was going to be a long meeting. To my left, a woman was using her purse as a clipboard as she wrote on a piece of paper. I peered at it surreptitiously, and I realized it was a copy of the meeting’s agenda.

Huh.

I turned in my chair and saw, right next to the doorway into the meeting room, a small table with a stack of papers atop. Could it be that I’d walked past the agendas without even noticing? I stood as quietly and unobtrusively as I could, tiptoed to the back, picked one up, and started to read as I went back to my chair. Next would be—

“Public comment,” Ralph said. “Young lady, please state your name and address.”

Dead silence.

I looked up. Every face in the room was turned to me. “Um,” I said. “None, thanks.” The faces stayed stuck in my direction, so I did what I did best in times of stress: babbled. “Public comment, I mean. I got up to get a copy of the agenda, that’s all, I don’t have anything to say, really.” And since that was very clearly true, I sat down as fast as I could.

“Thank you,” Ralph said, so straight-faced that I suspected an underlying foundation of irony. “Next? Okay, I think your hand was first. Step up to the podium.”

“Hugh Novak, 2978 Maple Lane.”

I’d been reading over the agenda, but my head snapped up.

“Tonight,” Hugh said, “you have an action item of ‘New Township Hall,’ and I’d like to cite the reasons you should go ahead with that.”

“Besides it being next to your property?” someone in the audience called out.

Hugh whirled and pointed directly at his heckler. “You’ve lived here two years and now you want everything to stay the same for, what, the rest of your life? If you don’t like the way things are run here, then move back downstate!”

The audience murmured, with some people nodding, others shaking their heads. A sharp rap up front quieted them all. Ralph laid down the gavel. “This is the board’s public comment period,” he said calmly. “Everyone will have their turn to speak, but your comments must be directed to the board and the board only.”

I was sitting in the back corner, so my view of Hugh Novak was from the rear, and I could clearly see his clenched fists.

“As I was trying to say,” Hugh growled out, “here are the reasons you should go ahead with a new township hall.” He listed a number of items, ranging from easier voting access for the elderly to new revenue that would result from rentals of the new meeting space for high school open houses, family reunions, and wedding receptions.

When Hugh had finished his list, he gave the board a long look. “Building a new hall is clearly in the best interest of the township as a whole. Do the right thing.”

He sat, arms crossed, and spent the rest of the meeting staring forward. Even when the board voted to postpone their decision on a new township hall until the next meeting, Hugh continued to stare them down, his face blank and eyes barely blinking.

• • •

“It was weird,” I told Eddie as I climbed into bed. “And not a good weird. More a creepy weird, like how your tummy feels after eating that fourth cookie.”

“Mrr?”

“That was what you call an analogy. I didn’t actually eat four cookies, I was just comparing that feeling to how I felt at tonight’s meeting.” My only purpose for going to the meeting had been to learn what I could about Hugh Novak, and I’d been more than successful.

“Point to Minnie,” I murmured, pulling the sheets and comforter to my chin. I patted the space next to me. Eddie jumped up, completely ignored the space I’d indicated, walked across my legs, and settled down on top of my stomach.

“Okay, then,” I said. “Let’s review the progress to date. There were originally five suspects, and two have been eliminated.” At least by me. I had no idea if the sheriff’s office had the same point of view and wasn’t about to ask.

I looked down at Eddie, waiting for a response. “Right. First is Land Aprelle. It appears that Land and Rowan had a siblinglike relationship and yelled at each other on a regular basis with no lasting effects.”

In addition, I’d discovered nothing that indicated their final argument had been any different, and Land’s oddly furtive behavior was a result of his reluctance to tell the world that he wanted to be a wood sculpture artist. Ergo, there was absolutely no reason for him to kill Rowan.

“Second,” I said. “Sunny Scoles was denied a loan that would have helped her sister, but her family is looking for other ways to raise the money, so why would she kill Rowan? Besides, Sunny had an alibi.”

“Mrr,” Eddie said sleepily.

“Right. That leaves three suspects. Well, four if you count Neil.” I thought a minute. “No, let’s cross Bax Tousely off the list. Now that we know the hardware store thing was work related, the only real reason we have to suspect him is that he was seen driving past the Bennethums’ house over Christmas break.”

I stopped. Could it be that I wanted to cross him off just because he volunteered at Lakeview? That I couldn’t believe a guy who found homes for stray cats could be a killer? That I felt sorry for him because he’d looked so sad?

Eddie purred, making my insides vibrate.

“Not sure your opinion should count on that one,” I said. “I’ll leave him on the list. That gives us four possibles. Going from the least likely to the most, there’s Bax, who might have killed Rowan because he was trying to kill Anya because he thought she was the one who got engaged and he was crazy with jealousy and . . . ow!”

Eddie had extended his claws and managed to drive them through the layers of flannel, goose down, and more flannel all the way to my very tender skin.

“Okay, okay, you’re right. That’s so far-fetched it’s beyond the realm of possibility. Way beyond,” I hastened to add as I saw the paw begin to flex again. “Three suspects, again going up from the bottom. Suspect number three is Neil Bennethum. He certainly resented the relationship between Land and Rowan and could have dreamed up an affair between them, killing Rowan because he was jealous. Plus there’s the fact that he seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.”

The disappearance alone didn’t look good, and it made me think less of the man. His children needed him. Sure, they were nearly college graduates, but they’d lost their mother in a horrible way and Neil’s absence was making everything worse.

I shook my head and moved on. “Suspect number two . . . you know, I don’t know who to put at the top of the list. Stewart Funston, as much as I like him, seems to penalize people heavily for what he considers mistakes. That vandalism in the high school principal’s office, and now divorcing his wife for hiding money? Who knows what happened in the years between?” Sighing, I said, “Of course, I have no earthly clue what Rowan could have done to Stewart that might have made him want to kill her.”

Eddie grunted and got up, using my solar plexus as a base for his efforts.

“Go ahead, use me for leverage anytime you’d like. Tied for suspect number one is Hugh Novak.” I saw again those crossed arms and that intimidating stare. “He kind of scared me,” I said quietly. “He’s a big guy and I felt really small with him in the room. Not that he was mad at me, but if he was . . .”

My voice trailed off. Though I owned a concealed pistol license, I’d never felt the need to actually buy a weapon and carry it. But if I got on the bad side of somebody like Hugh Novak, maybe it was time to reexamine that attitude. Maybe it was—

Something bounced onto the floor, rolled across the carpet, and came to a rest under the bed.

I glanced around and saw that Eddie had jumped onto my dresser and was now looking in the direction of whatever it was he’d sent to the floor. When he realized I was looking at him, he sat up straight.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

In response, his right front paw reached out in a hook and sent another something to the floor.

“Seriously?” I flung the covers back. “Stop whatever that is and . . . oh, brother.”

Due to a convenience-store snack on the way to the meeting, I’d ended up with coins in my pants pocket instead of in my car, where I usually put my loose change. I’d set it on the dresser, intending to move it to the car in the morning.

“Not a cat toy,” I said, moving Eddie back to the bed. I picked up the dime and the penny he’d pushed to the floor, and tossed all the change into my sock drawer. “None of it is a cat toy, understand?”

“Mrr!”

I crawled back into bed and, with my cat perched on my hip staring down at me like a furry bird of prey, drifted into a sleep that was punctuated by dreams of Collier, at the altar with his bride, staring at the gaping dark space where his parents should have been.

Chapter 17

The next day, Rafe and I met for lunch again, but this time it was brown bags in his office.

“It still surprises me sometimes,” I said, removing the cover from my nifty new sandwich container. My mom, who was constantly trying to get me to cook more and eat out less, had given me a nice set of storage doohickeys for Christmas. I’d used this one and a cube-shaped version, which I’d recently discovered was perfect for leftover restaurant oatmeal. The other eight containers were awaiting their opportunities for a useful life.

“What does?” Rafe was sitting in his desk chair with his feet propped on an open lower drawer. He asked the question around a mouthful of baloney sandwich and followed it with a chaser of bottled water. At some point we needed to have a chat about table manners, but since he had a meeting with the president of the school board in fifteen minutes, I decided to give him a pass. For now.

“That you’re a middle school principal.”

“Surprises a lot of people,” he said. “Me, my parents, my grandparents, my aunt and uncles, my cousins, all of my friends, and every teacher I ever had, including Sunday school.”

“So pretty much everyone you’ve ever met.”

“Well, there was this one girl,” he said meditatively. “She told me I had a lot of potential, but if I didn’t shape up, I was going to end up a complete loser and die a lonely and bitter old man.”

A surge of jealousy leapt into my throat. I batted it down and, as casually as I could, asked, “Oh? Anyone I know?”

He grinned. “She runs this restaurant in town. You might know it. Three Seasons?”

I stared at him, then started laughing. “Seriously? Kristen said that? When?”

“First summer I met you.”

Still laughing, I said, “When I was, what, twelve?” Kristen and Rafe were a year older than I was, but the three of us had formed a summertime trio throughout our adolescence. Our bond faded during college and the first postcollege years, but when I moved to Chilson full time about the same time Kristen chucked her fancy science job with a large pharmaceutical company, we’d slid back into the comfortable old ways.

“You were short then, too.” He bit into his sandwich.

“Some people see consistency as a virtue.”

Rafe shrugged. “And some people play with rattlesnakes.”

The link between consistency and rattlesnakes was so thin as to be nonexistent, but when I’d started this conversation, I’d wanted to say something specific, so I pulled away from poking holes in his analogy. “Like I said, it sometimes surprises me that you’re a middle school principal, and—”

He made a rolling motion with his sandwich. “Move on.”

“Trying,” I said. “But what I want to say is I’m not surprised you’re a good one.”

His sandwich stopped mid-roll. “You’re . . . what?”

“I always knew that once you’d decided on what you wanted to do with your life, you’d be successful at doing it.” Awkward sentence, which only proved something I’d known for years, that I should rehearse anything important I ever wanted to say to anyone, ever.

Plunging on, I said, “It’s just that you have all these great qualities—some incredibly annoying ones, too, so quit smiling—and I’m not at all surprised that the teachers, kids, and parents think you’re the best principal this school has ever had.”

He shoved a dangling piece of lettuce back into his sandwich. “That’s because people have short memories.”

It wasn’t. In the last few months more than one teacher who’d reached early retirement age had stopped me on the street to tell me they were planning on continuing to teach for another few years, and it was all due to Rafe Niswander. “Who would have thunk it?” Mr. Conant had said wryly. “The kid who drove me batty in seventh grade is now my boss, and I can’t imagine having a better one.”

“Speaking of short memories,” Rafe said.

He shoved the last of his sandwich in his mouth, then, thankfully, chewed and swallowed. That last bite had been huge, and though I’d been trained in emergency first aid, I’d never had to perform the Heimlich maneuver in a real-life situation.

“Speaking of short memories,” I prompted, because he’d taken his feet off the drawer and was reaching for his computer mouse.

“Yeah. That.” He clicked away. “There it is. Take a look.”

I wolfed down the last of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, came around, and looked at the screen. It was filled with a busy spreadsheet. “Is that your suspect list?”

“Columns are the suspect names, rows are the different bits of clues, evidence, and whatever other information we think might be useful.” He tapped the screen. “You know, this might be better in a database than a spreadsheet. What do you think?”

What I thought was that he would have been better off spending his time finishing the drywall in the upstairs bathroom, but I kissed the back of his head. “This is great. Can you e-mail it to me?”

“Yes, I could, but no I won’t, because I’m going to put it into Google Docs. That way we can both work on it at the same time, see? I’ll e-mail you the link.”

Um. “Sounds . . . great.” I peered at the screen and saw that he’d added rows titled “Alibi,” “Background,” “Motive,” “Movements,” and “Previous Incidents.”

“This could be really useful,” I said, starting to warm to the idea. “Especially the ‘Background’ and ‘Previous Incidents.’ Those are things I have to find out, but for people like you who grew up around here the information is practically imprinted into your DNA.”

He sat back, putting his hands behind his head. “And here you thought this was a waste of time.”

“I didn’t—” Well, I had, actually, so I took a deep breath and said the magic words. “You were right and I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

He smacked a kiss on the side of my face. “And now I’m afraid I have to kick you out. My meeting starts in three minutes and this guy is always on time.”

We exchanged a long kiss that made me want to lock his office door for an hour, but we eventually separated and I headed out. A quiet “Hey” made me stop and turn around. Rafe was fiddling with his mouse. “Thanks,” he said, not looking up. “For what you said. About not being surprised that I’m successful.”

Even though the clouds outside were thick and unyielding, sunshine suddenly filled me. “You’re welcome,” I said softly, and left him to his meeting.

• • •

Julia zipped Grant Jelen’s last book through the scanner. “And there you go,” she said, piling The Historian onto a teetering stack. “Sure you have enough to last until next time?”

Grant, gray-haired but tall and straight, started moving his books from her desktop to the empty backpack he’d brought in. “No,” he said. “But I can borrow e-books if I have to. Prefer print, though.”

“Ah.” Julia glanced at me, and her blank face was a clear request for help. Her gift with patrons was more in the line of jollying along the slightly cranky ones; I usually took over when patrons were reluctant to communicate at all.

This was Grant’s second trip to the bookmobile. We knew two things about him—that his name had never been in the library’s computer, and that his driver’s license, which he’d used to get a library card five weeks ago, had a downstate address.

Smiling, I said, “Looks like you’re making up for lost time. Are you a new retiree?”

“End of December.” He eyed the contents of his backpack, eyed the books still remaining on the counter, and reached into the backpack to rearrange its contents. “Spent thirty-five years working my hind end off, trying to make it to the top of the freaking corporate ladder, and all I ever got was vice president.” He made a rude noise. “Worked so hard my wife divorced me and my kids hardly talk to me except to ask for money.”

A little wildly, I looked at Julia. Now that he’d started talking, how did I get him to stop? We didn’t need this much personal information. Sure, what happened on the bookmobile stayed on the bookmobile, but sometimes when people told you too much, they regretted it afterward.

Julia leaned forward. “Sounds like you didn’t get what you deserve.”

“True story.” He shoved the last book into his pack and, with some effort, zipped it shut, book corners bulging through the nylon. “All I want to do now is read and work on my cars.”

The reading I approved of wholeheartedly; it was how I’d like to spend a large share of my own far-off retirement. The cars, however . . .

I knew better than to ask what kind of cars he owned; we didn’t have that kind of time left at the stop. So I just blurted out the question: “Are there any junkyards close by?” It was a non sequitur to end all non sequiturs, and I braced myself for raised eyebrows and a surprised look that a little girl would be interested in something like that.

“Sure,” he said. “Buster’s. On Lolly Road, a few miles out of Peebles. Model Ts to Hummers and everything in between. Buster’s place is half the reason I moved here.” Grant hefted his backpack onto his shoulders, nodded, and headed out.

“Buster’s,” I said to myself.

Julia flipped the laptop shut. “You’re not still looking for that headlight, are you?”

“And what if I am?” I asked, helping her stretch the bungee cord around the rolling chair, which would wander all over the bookmobile if we forgot to strap it in place.

“Because if you were still looking,” Julia said, “I’d advise you to remember the reactions of the other junkyard owners you’ve talked to lately.”

I winced. More than one junkyard owner had laughed in my face when I’d asked the question. “You’re kidding, right?” the most memorable had asked as he’d puffed a large cigar.

I’d edged out of the way of the smoke. “No, I’m very serious. It’s important.”

He’d puffed out another smoke signal. “I keep records as good as anyone, but tracking down to the headlight level isn’t how I want to spend my time.”

Looking around the small, poorly lit office, I’d wondered how he whiled away his hours. “Do you walk around the yard a lot? To keep thieves away, I mean?”

He’d hacked out a laugh. “You’re from downstate, aren’t you?”

Soon after, I’d fled, and it had taken me two days to gather up the courage to step into another junkyard. That owner didn’t smoke, but the end result had been the same.

Now, I pulled out my cell phone and opened a mapping application to find Buster’s. “This will work just fine,” I said, nodding.

Julia rolled her eyes dramatically and said, “Let me guess. Since I wanted to get dropped off in Peebles, you driving to Lolly Road is the handiest thing ever.”

“Mrr,” said Eddie, who’d been perched on the driver’s seat headrest. “Mrr!”

“Exactly.” I beamed at them both. “Sometimes things just work out.”

• • •

The weather, however, wasn’t cooperating with my new plan. What had been a mild thaw—two degrees above freezing for almost eight hours—was quickly dropping to a more seasonable temperature. In general, this was fine with me, but any of the side roads that hadn’t been scraped free of snow (and that was most of them) were now developing the kind of conditions that made people move away from northern Michigan.

“Not us, though,” I said to Eddie, soon after I’d left Julia at the out-of-the-way restaurant where she was meeting her husband for dinner. “We’re brave and intrepid.”

“Mrr!”

“Exactly. We’re ready for anything”—I paused to navigate the bookmobile through a nasty stretch of rapidly freezing slush—“for anything Mother Nature dishes out.”

The daylight, which had never been all that bright in the first place, was inching toward dusk by the time I saw the sign for the junkyard. BUSTER’S, just like Grant had said. The sign was simple—black paint on a piece of framed plywood—but it did the job well enough, and I was pleased to see that Buster’s parking lot was not only big enough for the bookmobile, but also plowed.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I told Eddie. He eyed me, but didn’t say anything. “Thanks for the encouragement,” I said. “It’s just what I needed.”

“Mrr.”

As the door of the junkyard’s office closed behind me, I blinked in surprise. “Wow,” I said. “This isn’t . . .” I trailed off, pretty sure I was about to say something offensive.

The man behind the desk, who was about my age and wearing a sleek zipped black sweater with a Buster’s logo, looked up. “Let me guess. You expected dark paneling, a clutter of car parts and paper, calendars with scantily clad women sitting on vehicle hoods, and cigarette smoke sticking to everything.”

He was right, I had expected that. These office walls, however, were painted a warm blue gray and decorated with huge framed photos of antique cars on the streets of what could have been Chilson. His desk was piled with a single stack of papers, and the only car parts to be seen were in a glass display case.

“Well, precedent counts,” I said, smiling. “And that’s what the offices of the other five junkyards in the area looked like. How was I to know you’d be the single solitary exception to the rule?”

The guy laughed. “Point taken. Sorry about that; you’re the first person I’ve seen today and I’m told that I can forget to be polite.” He stood and held out a hand. “Rob Caldwell.”

I introduced myself and said, “Nice to meet you. Um, if you’re Rob, who’s Buster?”

“No idea. I bought this place a couple of years ago and never changed the name. It’s been Buster’s for decades. So what can I do for you? I hope you don’t want parts for that,” he said, nodding at the office window, through which the bookmobile was visible. “I specialize in unusual parts, but all I have for that is a recommendation to contact a yard in Ohio.”

“I’m looking for an SUV headlight.”

“That I can do.” Rob sat down and tapped his computer to life. “Make, model, year?”

“No idea,” I said, then jumped ahead of his protest. “What I’m wondering is, has anyone else bought a headlight in the last few weeks?” Rob frowned, but his fingers were still on the keyboard, so I kept talking.

“There was a . . . crime committed just over a month ago, and someone saw a car with a broken headlight driving away. The sheriff’s office is following up, they’re checking auto parts stores, but they’re pretty much convinced that whoever it was ordered a new one online and they’ll never be able to track that.” I took a deep breath. “So I’m talking to the junkyards, figuring that maybe, just maybe, that’s where the guy bought a replacement.”

Rob leaned back. “I don’t have to look that up. No one has bought a headlight from me since before Christmas.”

“Oh.” My shoulders slumped. “Well, it was worth a try. Thanks for your time.”

“Hang on,” Rob said, and I turned back. “I said no one bought a headlight, and that’s true.” He half smiled. “But someone did steal one. And before you ask, no, I never reported it to the police, because who’s going to arrest anyone for stealing a ten-dollar headlight from a junkyard?”

The insides of my wrists tingled. “From an SUV?”

“Don’t remember, but I could tell you if—” The telephone sitting on his desk rang. “Buster’s Junkyard, we have exactly what your wife hopes you won’t find. How can I—oh, hey, honey. What’s up?” His gaze flicked to me. “I have a customer here, but—okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Love you, too.”

He hung up the phone. “Sorry, but I have to get going. My husband’s family is coming up for a long weekend and half of them showed up early to beat the weather.”

“You started to say something, that you could tell me it was an SUV if . . . what?”

Rob clicked his mouse, making the familiar motions of tidying up his computer desktop before leaving for the day. “Not without looking at the security video. I can do that for you on Monday. Just give me a call.”

“Could you please take a minute and do it now?” I asked.

“I really have to go. Sorry.” He stood.

“Please?” How could I convince him? How could I communicate how important this was? “This isn’t about the headlight. That crime I mentioned? It was a murder,” I said flatly. “And your headlight thief could be the killer.”

Rob sat down slowly. “Murder? I heard something about a woman who was poisoned. Is that what this is about?”

“If you could just look at the security video,” I said. “Please.”

He glanced at the wall clock. Hesitated, then said, “Sure. I’ll have to do some explaining, but sure.” He started clicking away on the keyboard and chatting about the security measures he’d put in place since he’d bought Buster’s. He talked about fencing and lights and how a fresh coat of paint could deter thieves and, still clicking, talked about how he’d decided to buy cameras after he’d noticed an absence of hood ornaments. “The system I installed out there is a glorified trail cam. The cameras cover the entire yard and only turn on when there’s motion. I get raccoons mostly.” He smiled as he clicked. “Cute little buggers, unless you’re trying to keep them out of your garden. Last year Tony was at his wit’s end with—ah, here it is.”

Rob angled the monitor so I could see. “Yeah, that’s an SUV he’s pulling it out of. I meant to get out there and take a look so I could revise my inventory, but haven’t got around to it yet.”

I leaned forward. On the screen was the fuzzy image of a man who looked to be about six feet tall, in a dark coat wearing dark gloves and a hat. A very distinctive hat.

“Thanks,” I said quietly. “One more thing. Could you please e-mail that video clip to the sheriff’s office?”

Chapter 18

Mrr.”

I buckled my seat belt and started the engine, talking to Eddie as I did so. “How was I supposed to know that video clip was too big to e-mail? If I have tech questions, I ask Josh, and he’s not here, now is he?” Luckily, because I was sure he would have made fun of me for my lack of knowledge.

“Mrr!”

“Sure, I could have called him, but it’s a little late now, isn’t it? And anyway, until we get out of this valley, there’s no cell service.”

“Mrr!”

I slid a glance over at Eddie, turned on the headlights, and dropped the transmission into gear. “If you’re asking about what I saw on Rob’s video, you’ll be glad to know there’s no way it was Neil.” Neil wasn’t that tall, and he was far bigger around.

But my sigh of relief had frozen when I’d studied the image more closely. The man had been wearing a dark winter coat resembling coats worn by Hugh Novak and Stewart Funston. Far more telling was the hat, that unusual earflap fedora I’d seen both men wearing, a kind I’d never seen on anyone else’s head.

“It was either Hugh or Stewart,” I said out loud, easing my foot onto the accelerator and exhaling with relief when the bookmobile’s tires found traction and inched us forward. Yes, we had great tires and the weight made winter driving reasonably easy, but the current road conditions were less than stellar. “Let’s think about motive.”

“Mrrr!”

“Exactly.” I steered us out of the gravel parking lot. “We haven’t the foggiest idea why Stewart might have killed Rowan, but we know what Hugh’s motive probably is. At the township meeting, Hugh was furious at that guy in the audience. And if you’re that angry in a public meeting, what would it take to tip you into murder?”

I thought about it as I looked both ways—no traffic, such a surprise!—and pulled onto Lolly Road. “Whoa, speaking of tipping . . .”

The time I’d been in Buster’s had been long enough to turn the dusk into complete darkness and, unhappily, to freeze the road’s slush to ice. The bookmobile, usually the epitome of driving stability, seesawed left and right on the slick surface. “Don’t, don’t, don’t,” I murmured in a sort of a prayer as adrenaline shot through me. “Please don’t . . .”

After a few more slips back and forth, we hit a patch of actual asphalt and straightened out.

I blew out a breath and tried to release the tension in my neck. “Anyway, it was either Hugh or Stewart. Thanks to Rob, I have the video clip on a flash drive, and as soon as we get into cell phone range—and find a place to pull over because, as you know, I don’t use my cell while driving the bookmobile, per library policy—I’ll call Ash.” Or Hal, but I’d rather talk to Ash.

“Mrr!”

“What’s that? Hugh’s exact motive? Huh. I thought I told you. Rowan had been organizing people to speak up against the new township hall. After the meeting, I talked to a few people, and they said she’d gone door to door, handing out information about building costs and advising folks to make up their own minds. Apparently she told everyone that if they felt strongly one way or the other to show up at the board meetings for public comment.”

Even over the noise of the bookmobile, I heard the unmistakable sound of Eddie’s body as he flopped against the wire door of the cat carrier. “Well, I agree with you, a new township hall doesn’t seem worth murdering over, but if it’s built, Hugh could make a lot more money from a business on his property if a new hall goes in.”

Eddie’s head clunked against the door.

“Why do you do that?” I asked. “One of these days you’re going to give yourself a concussion.”

“Mrr,” he said, then, from the sounds of it—I didn’t dare look away from the road, so sounds were all I had to go on—he started chewing the door.

“You are so weird. But back to murder motives. I’ve read that domestic disputes are the number one reason for murder, with money number two, but it sure seems to me that there’s a lot of overlap. I mean, aren’t most fights between couples about money? And if a fight gets bad, isn’t . . . oh, geez.”

I eased my foot off the accelerator and said in a voice even I could hear was tight with tension, “Okay, this could be bad. Really bad.”

“Mrr?”

I ignored Eddie’s question. Not intentionally, really, it was just my brain was too busy trying to figure out what I was going to do in the next three seconds. Because up ahead, gusting toward us furiously, was a nearly solid wall of white. Snow. Snow coming down thick and fast. So thick and so fast that all I could do was hold tight and pray that we’d make it through.

The snow hit the windshield and we were instantly inside the whitest whiteout I’d ever endured. All the other whiteouts I’d driven through and thought were the worst had nothing on this.

“Oh, geez,” I heard myself murmuring again. “Oh, geez, oh, geez.” I also heard a low growl that must have been coming from Eddie, but either the snow and wind were transforming his sounds, or he was making a noise I’d never heard.

“We’ll be okay,” I said, almost shouting to make sure he could hear me over the noise of the snow and wind and road. “All we have to do is get through the next few miles.” I wasn’t exactly sure where we were, but my guess was we were halfway between Rob/Buster’s place and a highway that was bound to be in better condition than Lolly Road.

“Sure to be,” I murmured. “Has to be.” Because if it wasn’t, we might spend the rest of the winter out here, encased in a snowbank, waiting for the spring thaw.

“Rrrrrrr,” Eddie said, his growl growing louder.

“Doing all I can, pal.” I peered through the windshield and saw what I’d been seeing—white. “We’re still on the road. Down on the right, there, I can see the edge of the asphalt.” Not the actual asphalt, since everything was covered in snow, but I could make out the change in elevation from roadway to ditch. As long as I could keep that in sight, we’d be fine. At least that was my plan.

“Rrrrr!”

Once again, I ignored my cat. “You know, I used to complain about not having a white line on the edge of these roads, like on highways, but maybe it’s better on these roads. What good would it do, really, and—”

“RRR!!” Eddie’s growl turned into a spitting hiss, sounding like he was in a fight for his life.

“Chill, buddy,” I said. “We’re okay. Honest. We just have to—what in the—”

Out of nowhere, an SUV had appeared, pulling up alongside the bookmobile.

Seriously? Someone was trying to pass in these conditions?

I shook my head and inched the bookmobile as far to the right as I dared, but the SUV didn’t go around. Instead, it moved closer.

“You have got to be kidding.” Trying to give the driver the benefit of the doubt—maybe it was a guy with a wife in labor and he was trying to rush her to the hospital but she was terrified of passing the bookmobile in the snow so he was trying to get more space to go around—I steered us a teensy bit farther right and instantly felt the tires ride over the outside edge of the asphalt.

The SUV moved closer.

I did about the last thing I wanted to do—took one hand off the steering wheel. I jammed the heel of my hand into the middle of the steering column and laid on the horn.

It did no good; the SUV moved even closer, its headlights merging with ours. If it moved any closer, it would hit us and there was nowhere to go. Except . . .

I took my foot off the accelerator and started a gentle brake. Let him go around if he wanted to drive that much faster. Eddie and I weren’t in a hurry. Getting back safely was far more important than getting back on time.

But the SUV slowed, too.

And moved closer.

Frightened that it was going to hit us and furious at the driver’s stupidity, I did an equally stupid thing. I slammed on the brakes.

This, of course, violated a vitally important rule of winter driving, which is: Never, ever slam on your brakes. If you’re on an icy road, all it’s likely to do is put your vehicle into a slide in a direction over which you have no control.

Which was exactly what happened.

It was a long, slow slide and I had plenty of time to review all the mistakes I’d made, not only that day, but throughout my life, starting with the time I’d cut my own hair at age four and ending with not checking the weather forecast before driving out to Rob/Buster’s.

“Hang on, Eddie!” I called, because there was nothing else to do. I felt a bump, and the bookmobile slid off the road, onto the narrow shoulder, and thumped into the ditch.

Hundreds of books, CDs, and DVDs tumbled to the floor, Eddie howled, I yelled, and a thousand years later we came to a stop.

I unbuckled my seat belt and scrambled over the tilting console. The strap holding down the cat carrier had done its job; the carrier was still in place and Eddie looked up at me, unblinking.

“Are you okay?” I opened the wire door. “Please tell me you’re okay.”

Eddie leapt out of the carrier and onto the console, purring and rubbing his chin against my shoulder.

“Thank heavens,” I said, snuggling him close. “I never would have forgiven myself if anything had happened to you.”

“Mrr,” he said, still rubbing.

I kissed the top of his head and looked out the windows to see what I could see. “Uh-oh.” Though I was mostly seeing the white of blowing and gusting snow, I could also make out the headlights of the SUV that had run us off the road. One of the bumps we’d felt while sliding must have been it hitting the bookmobile’s bumper. It had spun around and was in the opposite ditch. Facing us. With a broken windshield.

My hand automatically reached for my cell phone. It usually lived on the console, but the Ditch Episode had moved it elsewhere. I scrabbled around on the floor, found it on the far side of Eddie’s carrier, and turned it on.

There was, of course, no service. At all. I’d figured as much, but I’d had to try.

“First things first,” I said. “Yes, it’s best to stay with your vehicle in a situation like this—because it’s way easier to find a bookmobile in a snowstorm than it is finding an efficiently sized human like me—but I have to go see if that driver is okay.”

“Mrr?”

“Well, no, I don’t particularly want to,” I said, pulling my hat down and tugging on my mittens, “but it’s the right thing to do. I’ll be back in a minute.”

At least I hoped I would. If the driver was hurt, I’d do what I could to help, but if he or she was hurt badly, I’d have to run back to Rob’s place. And if he was gone, because his house could be in the opposite direction, I’d break in and use his landline to call for help. Then again, it might be Rob over there in the ditch. He had been in a hurry to leave, hadn’t he?

I walked a zigzag path around the fallen library materials, and opened the door. This was harder than normal, because the floor was tilted at a ditch-defined angle and I had to push the door open over a snowbank. My brain was doing another type of pushing, that of pushing away thoughts about damage to the poor bookmobile. I would think about that later.

Outside, away from the headlights, I realized how dark it had become. And how much the temperature had dropped. And how hard the snow was coming down. And how hard the wind was blowing.

I shivered and sincerely hoped I wouldn’t have to run to Rob’s. “Hello?” I called as I walked across the road. The SUV had stopped at a steeper angle than the bookmobile, and even from the road, I could see that the passenger-side fender was a crumpled mess.

“Hello?” I approached the driver’s door. “Um, are you okay?” I peered in through the tinted window. The front seats were filled with released air bags . . . and nothing else.

No one else.

What on earth had happened to the driver?

I frowned and looked down, hoping to see tracks I could follow. Maybe he or she had been dazed by the crash and wandered off into the snow. I couldn’t let that happen. Without shelter, in this weather you wouldn’t last overnight, maybe not even a few hours, depending on how you were dressed.

The tracks were there, but they were already filling with snow. I followed them, head down, to the back of the SUV, around the back bumper, and—

“There you are,” said Stewart Funston. “Took you long enough.”

“Stewart! What are you doing out here? You were driving that SUV? What were you thinking? But you’re okay, right? Eddie and I are shaken up, but we’re fine, and—”

My slightly anxious babble came to an abrupt stop when Stewart stepped closer. By the red of his taillights, I could see he was holding up his right hand in an oddly familiar position.

He was pointing a handgun at me.

Since I was Minnie and didn’t always think before I spoke, I said the first thing that came into my head. “You’re kidding, right?” Because maybe he had one of those weird brain tumors that was making him act out of character. Or maybe he’d banged his head when his SUV had spun into the ditch and thought I was an enemy.

“I’ve been watching you,” Stewart said, his voice sounding just like it had when we were chatting in the library about books. “Ever since you asked about that damage to the principal’s office, I’ve been watching you.”

“You . . . have?” I goggled at him. Not once had I noticed anything unusual. Either I was the worst ever for paying attention to what was going on around me, or Stewart had amazing stealth powers.

“Mostly by proxy,” he said. “Chilson is a small town and it’s easy to find things out if you ask the right people the right questions.”

I desperately wanted to know who’d been blabbing, but it could have been anyone. It could even have been me. I’d been resisting the idea of Stewart as Rowan’s killer, so I’d been cutting him slack all along. During one of our casual talks, could I have given him information he’d been slyly trying to obtain? Yup. No question about it.

“Everybody in town knows you’ve been helping Inwood and Wolverson with the murder investigation,” he said, shifting his grip on the gun.

I knew from my self-defense classes that handguns were heavier than they looked and it took a lot of strength to hold them up for any length of time, especially with one hand. Though there was a possibility I could take advantage of that, the possibility was too slim. He was at least six feet away and the odds were far better that, if he were to pause to readjust his grip, he’d see me coming and simply whack me upside the head with the gun, no shooting needed.

“Oh?” I asked vaguely, trying desperately to form a plan, but not getting any further than . . . well, not getting anywhere, really. “Does everyone know who we were investigating?”

“No, but I do.”

He sounded proud of himself, and I realized he was one of those people who thought he was smarter than everyone else, which always carried with it an accompanying truth: that he must be an incredibly boring dinner companion.

Stewart didn’t wait for a response—another indication of an overly healthy ego—but continued on. “It was easy for me to see,” he said comfortably. “All that time you spent at that restaurant the Scoles kid opened up, when you’d never gone there before? Oh, don’t worry, I haven’t been following you very long. But it’s easy to ask someone questions when you’re the only one in their otherwise very empty restaurant.”

So Sunny had blabbed. No surprise there. I probably would have done the same thing if I’d been stuck by myself for hours on end.

“And Hugh Novak,” Stewart said. “Almost too obvious, with that property he owns, and the fuss Rowan was putting up to a new township hall. I almost suspected him myself, and I’m the one who killed her.” Stewart laughed. “Talk about bullies. He’s a classic, isn’t he?”

How was it I’d never noticed Stewart’s self-absorption? Had his support of the bookmobile been enough for me to forgive deep personality flaws? I hoped not, but what other explanation was there? Well, maybe that he’d been able to hide his true self until he’d committed murder, and that had opened his personal Pandora’s box. Something to talk over with an experienced psychologist, next time I ran into one.

“Anyone else?” I asked, inching away oh-so-slowly. It was so dark, maybe I could run off into the night and make it to Buster’s before Stewart found me.

“What I don’t understand is why you suspected Mitchell Koyne. He didn’t even know Rowan.”

No, Stewart wasn’t nearly as smart as he thought he was. And if there was a way I could use that to my advantage, I would. If only I could think of a way to do that.

“For a while it looked like you suspected Bax Tousely,” Stewart mused. “But that’s ridiculous. The kid can hardly kill a fly, let alone a human being. Tousely’s about the least likely person in the world to kill the woman he keeps hoping will be his mother-in-law.”

Interesting. So he’d missed my suspicions of Land and Neil. Not very useful, but interesting.

Stewart stepped forward, closing the gap between us to an arm’s length and eliminating any possibility of my escape.

I risked a quick glance over my shoulder. The bookmobile looked stable enough, in a tilted fashion, but it was going to take a great big tow truck to get it out of the ditch. Squinting into the dark, I could just make out the fuzzy shape of my cat, who had tucked himself into the corner of the dashboard and was plastering his furry face against the inside of the windshield. Eddie . . . Stewart started talking again and I faced him with my chin up.

“It was only a matter of time,” he said, “before you started pointing your stubby little finger at me. And I can’t have that, so it’s time for you to have an accident. Sorry,” he said, not sounding the least bit apologetic, “but there’s no alternative.”

My first reaction was to shout that my fingers were not stubby. They were perfectly proportional to my compact frame, and if he couldn’t see that, he needed to pay more attention.

That thought faded as I realized something about Stewart’s basic nature. He punished people he felt had wronged him. Divorced his wife, who’d done little more than save money. Destroyed the office of his high school principal for kicking him off the football team. Was trying to kill me for finding out about Rowan. And had killed Rowan because . . . because why?

I looked past the gun because I couldn’t stand to look at it any longer, and past Stewart’s face, because I certainly didn’t want to see his expression, and fastened my gaze on his hat.

And then I suddenly knew why he’d killed Rowan. Or at least had a good idea.

“Rowan had something you wanted,” I said. “A family heirloom. You couldn’t take it before your divorce, because then you would have had to split its value with your wife. And you had to kill Rowan because . . . because she was the only one who knew what it was worth.”

Stewart shook his head. “You have it all wrong.”

Well, I’d been wrong before. And I’d undoubtedly be wrong again, if I lived through this.

“She never should have had it,” he said. “I only took what was mine by right.” His voice grew increasingly dark and threatening. “And if you hadn’t come along, no one would have known the difference.”

I had no clue what he was talking about, but at this point that didn’t seem particularly relevant, because the direness of my situation was finally sinking into my tiny little brain. Until now, I’d been half convinced that if I could keep Stewart talking long enough, he’d back off with the threats, maybe even laugh about being in a bad mood, and we’d go our separate ways. That merry little scenario, however, was looking less and less likely.

It was time for me to make a move. Unfortunately, I had no idea what that should be.

“You talked about an accident.” I was pleased that my voice was relatively clear and almost free of wobbly fear. “What kind? Because if you’re planning an accident with a gun, that’ll never work. Everybody knows I don’t own one.”

“Everybody? That’s one of the worst things about you millennials.” Stewart snorted. “You exaggerate all the time.”

It seemed to me that what he’d just said was itself an exaggeration, but I managed to keep my mouth shut.

“But no, there won’t be a gun accident,” he said. “Well, not unless there’s an accident.” He laughed. Actually laughed out loud. I did not. “What I have planned for you is far more realistic, with the benefit of being seasonal.”

I glanced around at the blowing snow. Which suddenly felt even colder. A shiver roiled up my back, and I had to grit my teeth to keep them from chattering. “Stewart, let’s talk about this,” I said as pleasantly as I could. “You don’t want to kill me, I’m sure you don’t. Surely the two of us can find a compromise.”

“Not possible,” Stewart said flatly. “You’re never going to keep quiet that I killed Rowan. And if I run, where am I going to go? What am I going to do? Anyway, I’m not about to leave everything I’ve worked for. It’s bad enough giving half of it to my ex-wife.” He half smiled. “Well, not quite half of it. But since you’re the only one who knows, that doesn’t count.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I was far happier with him talking than with him threatening me, so I said, “You’re a smart guy. I bet with a little head start you could get some money together, get a fake identity, and make a new life somewhere. There will be details to work out, but—”

“Take your hat off,” he said suddenly.

“Um.” I reached up and touched my nice warm hat. “It’s maybe twenty degrees out here, and getting even colder. Plus the windchill is—”

Stewart reached out and roughly yanked the hat from my head. “Take off your mittens.”

Real fear coursed through me. “Stewart, please . . .”

“Off,” he said, and even in the dim light cast by the bookmobile headlights, I could see the emotionless expression on his face. “Your coat, too.”

Without a word, I shed all of my outer gear and in seconds started shivering. I stood there, hugging my arms to my chest in a pointless attempt to keep my body warmth where it should be. In my body.

He gestured at my feet. “Boots.”

“Stewart . . .”

“Boots!” he roared, pointing the gun at my chest.

Quickly, I toed them off and put my stocking feet, one by one, into the accumulating snow.

“Now walk,” he ordered. “Not on the road. Into that swamp over there and no turning back.” He sounded way too satisfied with himself. “In this cold, dressed like that, you’ll lose all feeling in your fingers and toes in five minutes. Fifteen minutes and you won’t feel your arms and legs. Twenty minutes from now you’ll stumble and fall to the ground and never get up.” He smiled. “Half an hour from now I’ll be safe, so get going. There’s a hockey game tonight I don’t want to miss.”

I stared at him. He was sending me to my death, but what mattered most was hockey? The man was a lunatic. But he was a lunatic with a gun.

He loomed over me. “Get. Going,” he commanded, then reached out and pushed at my shoulder. I staggered, back across the road, and in front of the bookmobile that I longed to retreat into, but with Stewart and his gun so close, it wouldn’t be anywhere near safe, even if I could manage to get in the door.

Truly the last thing in the world I wanted to do was walk into that flat and frozen swamp, dark and thick with cedar trees. I glanced up at the bookmobile as I passed and saw Eddie’s face peering down at me.

Eddie, I’m so sorry.

I waded through the deep snow in the ditch, looking back only once.

“Keep going,” Stewart said, waving the gun around. “Twenty minutes from now you won’t feel a thing.”

I turned back around and faced the forest. Every step I took, the sound of the wind increased. Snow pelted my face. I was so cold I could hardly breathe.

The last thing I heard before the sounds of the storm closed around me were the plaintive howls of my cat.

Chapter 19

Snow and darkness swirled around me. Every step I took felt like a journey of a thousand miles. Every step took me farther away from the road, from the bookmobile, from Eddie.

I made my way through the drifted thigh-high snow and clambered up the far side of the ditch. There, I paused to catch my breath. “Get moving,” Stewart’s voice called through the wind. A sharp gunshot rang out. I ducked. Which wouldn’t have helped me escape a bullet, of course, but you can’t help your instincts.

“Next time I’ll be aiming for you,” Stewart shouted. “Keep going.”

“Jerk,” I muttered. And kept going.

The sun was long gone, but the moon must have been rising somewhere, because even through the snow, I could detect the vague shape of the line of cedar trees. When we’d been driving past at forty miles an hour, the thicket of cedar trees had seemed to be an impenetrable wall of green. Now that I was up close and personal, even in the almost-dark I could see that wasn’t quite the case. There were gaps and holes where bigger trees gave way to baby trees. I slid in through a gap and immediately learned two things. One, the snow wasn’t nearly as deep inside the cedar forest, and two, and an even better thing, the wind barely penetrated.

Not that I was going to do a jig about my situation. I had no hat, no mittens, no coat, and no boots, and I was stranded in the middle of nowhere during a blizzard. But I was youngish and healthy and at least Stewart had only taken all my outerwear. If he’d taken all my clothes, I’d be truly desperate instead of just desperate.

“Right,” I said out loud. It was time to make a plan. And it needed to be a good one.

I risked a glance over my shoulder. If I couldn’t see Stewart, there was no way he could see me, especially since my eyes were now adjusted to the dark and he was trying to see through the bookmobile’s headlights. I could make out everything in front of me, which at this point was exclusively snow-laden cedar trees and the occasional vine.

Ignoring the very real possibility that I’d been walking through a thicket of poison ivy, I hugged myself tight, holding in as much body warmth as I could, and through my shivers, tried to think.

What was the biggest problem? That I was cold and rapidly getting colder. I wasn’t sure Stewart had his facts right about how quickly I’d succumb, but he probably wasn’t far off. We were five miles from anything and I wasn’t at all certain I’d be able to walk that kind of distance.

The only solution? Get back to the vehicles and, once there, figure a way out of this mess.

What was the problem with that solution? Stewart was standing there, waiting for me to come back. What had he said, in half an hour he’d be safe? All I had to do was wait for thirty minutes.

“Rats,” I said out loud. For the first time in my life, I regretted not wearing a watch. My cell phone was back in my coat pocket and I had no way to tell time. How long was half an hour? If you were reading a wonderful book, it went by in a flash. If you were standing in line to get your driver’s license renewed, it was forever.

How long had I been standing in the cedar trees already? I had no idea. Five minutes? Probably not even that.

I counted out the seconds the way my dad had taught me to count the time between flashes of lightning and thunder—one, one thousand; two, one thousand—but that was so boring I stopped at thirty.

“Be conservative,” I said out loud. At the sound of my own voice, I hunched down, making myself a smaller target, I suppose, for a bullet from Stewart’s gun. But that was silly since the storm was so loud I’d barely heard my own footsteps. Then again, with stocking feet, maybe my footsteps were somehow noisier in the snow than booted feet and—

“Stop that,” I muttered.

Now wasn’t the time to worry about what I couldn’t change. Well, technically, I shouldn’t ever worry about that kind of thing, but now was what mattered. I needed to summon everything I could remember about cold weather survival from every book I’d ever read and from every person who’d ever mentioned a trick about staying warm during ice fishing.

Rafe . . .

Through chattering teeth, I said, “Stop that,” a second time. I needed to focus. If I was going to get out of this, I needed to be more than smart; I needed to be . . . savvy. Not a term that typically applied to me—and never had, I was pretty sure—but if there was a time to marshal my inner resources, it was now.

I nodded to myself. Good. Inner pep talks were an excellent idea. Next I needed to capitalize on that, and to stop wondering if the cold was already impacting my brain because a word like “capitalize” was running through my head when on the edge of survival.

I had library and information science degrees, not business, though none of those would be any use in this particular situation. What I should have majored in was outdoor recreation. Or maybe I should have joined the military. Then again, if I’d done either of those things, I wouldn’t be out here in the cold in the first place.

And I was cold. So very, very cold.

How long had it been? It seemed like forever that I’d been standing here, doing nothing but thinking in circles, but how long had it been really? Ten minutes? Could it have been fifteen? Probably not.

I shoved my hands into the pockets of my sweater . . . and found a pair of gloves. Glory hallelujah, the last time I’d worn this sweater had been during the mild thaw and I’d done the books-to-library hauling without my outer coat. A huge smile spread over my face. Sure, they were thin gloves and might not do much good, but they were far better than nothing.

It took a minute to fumble the gloves onto my hands. Once they were on, though, confidence surged through me. I could do this. I would do this. Stewart not-so-fun Funston wouldn’t be the cause of my death. He would not get off scot-free for killing Rowan. He would not win.

I stomped my feet, left, right, left, right, trying to keep the blood flowing, trying to keep frostbite out of my toes, because I liked wearing summer sandals, and if my toes fell off, none of my sandals would fit for beans.

“Okay,” I said. “It’s time to get going.”

All the books I’d read about surviving in the wilderness noted how easy it was to get lost, wandering about in circles for hours without a clue where you’d really been going.

That wasn’t going to happen to me, mainly because I knew that a river curved around to the east, north, and south, and the road was behind me to the west. Then again, I might freeze to death before I got anywhere.

With that not-so-comforting thought, I started walking, one foot in front of the other.

Time and distance. I didn’t want to walk far, but for at least the next fifteen minutes, I needed to keep moving or I’d turn into a Minnie-cicle. Assuming my back was to the road, if I turned to the right ninety degrees, I’d be walking parallel to the road, heading back toward Buster’s and the closest likely human contact.

“Keep going,” I said, mimicking Stewart’s voice.

Stewart. The muscles in my jaw bunched at the thought of him. He had a lot to answer for, and it was up to me to make sure that happened.

“Just go,” I told myself, and went, counting steps and using my fingers as an abacus of sorts. Every step used up roughly a second. Ten steps and I extended one finger. Another ten steps and I extended a second finger. Six fingers out and I’d walked for one minute. How far? Sixty feet maybe, since I was tramping through snow and stepping over branches and downed trees.

So not very far and not for very long.

I took a deep breath, coughed as the cold seared my lungs, and walked for sixty feet. Did it again. And again.

When I’d reached ten minutes—with my right hand now full of the twigs I’d picked up to track the time since I’d run out of fingers—I started veering back toward the road.

Or where I thought the road was. Fifty steps later I wasn’t so sure. Another fifty and I was sure I was completely lost and doomed to die a frozen death. Then, through the trees and their wind-whipped tops, came the most beautiful noise I’d ever heard, faint yet indubitably distinct.

“Mrr!”

I shifted direction immediately, turning a bit to the right, and twenty paces later I could see, ahead and high up, a lightening in the darkness. The road, a wide swatch cut out of the cedar forest, lay directly ahead of me.

“Thanks, Eddie,” I whispered.

As I edged out of the tree line, I heard another unexpected noise—the bookmobile’s engine starting up.

“No, no, no . . .” I hopped into a run.

Stewart was trying to get the bookmobile out of the ditch. He wanted to drive it somewhere else to throw the suspicion in another direction. But Eddie was in there. Alone with Stewart.

I couldn’t let it happen, couldn’t let anything happen to my cat, my fuzzy friend, my pal.

Panting, I hurtled through the blizzard, running toward the man who’d just tried to kill me, running toward the cat who’d saved me in so many ways. “Eddie . . .” I gasped out. “Hang on, bud, I’ll get you. Just hang on.”

Large taillights appeared through the snowy murk, rocking back and forth, back and forth.

Perfect.

I slowed and, with an eye on the bookmobile, jogged over to Stewart’s SUV. He’d slid it into the ditch, but it wasn’t in all that deep, and I bet he’d left his keys in the ignition. With his four-wheel drive, I’d be out of there in no time. Less than ten minutes of frantic driving and I’d be at Buster’s, where I’d break in if I had to and use his phone to summon help. Ten minutes from that point and help would arrive. Twenty minutes and Eddie would be safe. Twenty minutes were all I needed.

It was an excellent plan and I was almost smiling as I reached the SUV and took hold of the door handle.

“No . . .” I whispered, staring. “He didn’t. He couldn’t have.”

But he had. The SUV’s door was locked.

• • •

Bad words circulated in my head as I frantically tried the other doors. Rear driver’s side door, back door, both passenger side doors—all locked. What kind of person locked his vehicle before setting off to commit murder? Who did that?

I thumped the heel of my hand against the front passenger door, the door most hidden from the bookmobile—I didn’t want the gun-holding Stewart to have any inkling where I was—hoping against hope that the thing was just frozen shut, not locked, but it didn’t budge.

More bad words trickled into my brain. But saying them out loud wouldn’t help anything, so I let them go and tried to think. Was there another way in? Maybe I could smash a window . . . I knelt on the snow and scrabbled around for a rock.

The third time I grabbed an icy chunk of snow, I gave up. There were rocks down there, but I didn’t have time—Eddie didn’t have time—for me to find something suitable. Besides, if he’d locked his vehicle, he’d probably taken the keys. There had to be a different way. And if there wasn’t a different way, I had to make one.

A shiver roiled through me, from bottom to top, a shiver so strong that I almost fell to my knees. I’d been doing my best to ignore my shivering body, but I wouldn’t be able to do so much longer. Maybe Stewart had been closer than I’d thought with his half-hour estimate.

The bookmobile’s engine revved up and down as Stewart did his best to move it forward and backward. After one look at how deep the tires were ground into the snow, I could have told him it would be no use, but I wasn’t about to tell him, and even if I had, he wouldn’t have listened to me. He was that kind of guy.

I stood there, on my tiptoes to peer over the top of the SUV, trying to think through the numbness of every body part I owned. With escape in Stewart’s vehicle out of the picture, the number of possible options had been cut in half. The only thing left was to sneak aboard the bookmobile, incapacitate Stewart, and figure out some way to summon help.

Piece of cake.

“Keep going,” I said, and forced myself to smile at my own inside joke. Not that it was funny, but poking fun at Stewart made me feel a little better, and at this point, that was enough.

I hunched down low enough to be fairly sure the top of my head was out of sight of the bookmobile’s side mirror and crab-walked across the road to the bookmobile’s rear bumper. If I tried to get in the side door, the door we used ninety-nine percent of the time, odds were good that the motion of opening the door would catch Stewart’s attention, which was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do since he was bigger, stronger, and almost certainly still had that gun.

That left the door in the rear of the bookmobile, the door that provided access to the handicapped lift. Most people didn’t even know it was there, and I prayed Stewart was one of them.

I reached up with shaking fingers and flipped open the tiny door, revealing the keypad, and also revealing my complete inadequacy as a human being. Because I couldn’t remember the code. Couldn’t remember the last time I’d used the code. Couldn’t remember when I’d last used this entrance. I couldn’t remember anything, I was going to freeze to death out here, Eddie was going to freeze and—

“Stop that,” I whispered.

And then remembered the four-digit code. It was the day I’d started working at the library, June 14, better known to the keypad as 0614. How could I have forgotten? I tapped out the numbers and waited for the quiet chunk of an unlocking door.

Nothing happened.

“Don’t do this,” I muttered and tapped the numbers again.

Still nothing.

On my third time through, it occurred to me that my fingers were too freaking cold to make the thing work. It seemed like I was pushing hard enough, but I’d lost most of the feeling in my fingers long ago and it was hard to tell. I considered and discarded the idea that the cold was a problem for the mechanism, because I had no way around that. But if it was just me . . .

Still hunched down, I inched backward into the dark. When I was convinced that Stewart wouldn’t be able to catch my movements through any of the mirrors, I skittered across the ditch and into the cedar trees, where fallen branches were strewn across the snow.

I picked up a stick that was a half inch in diameter, stepped on it to break off a foot-long length, and hurried back to the bookmobile. With one end of the stick positioned against my shoulder, I aimed the other end at the keypad and pushed 0.

A glorious beep filled my ears. This was going to work; it was really going to work! Grinning, I punched the rest of the code and heard the sweet sound of the lock unsnicking. “I’m coming, Eddie,” I breathed softly. “Just hang on.”

My fingers still weren’t working for beans, so I pushed at the door handle with the side of my palm, lifting it up. It clicked open so noisily that I crouched down even smaller.

All I heard was a string of curse words coming from the front, words that sounded a lot like what had gone through my head when I’d found Stewart’s SUV locked. His dealt more with the uselessness of snow tires and the weight of books, but the gist was the same.

He shifted the transmission back and forth, back and forth, but there was nothing for the tires to grip except icy snow, a substance notorious for being gripless.

I slowly cracked open the back door, waited until he was in the middle of a shift, and slithered inside, or with as close to a slither as I could do being nowhere near the skinniness of a snake and half frozen to boot.

The mechanism of the wheelchair lift provided some visual shelter from Stewart’s view, but as soon as all of me was on board, I clicked the door shut and scurried behind the rear desk. For a moment I hunched back there, panting as quietly as I could while a semblance of warmth crept back into my limbs. It wasn’t exactly toasty back there, but at least it was out of the wind. I tried to flex my hands and was cheered to see my fingers obey my mental command by moving all of an inch.

Excellent. Though it would take more time for my fingers and toes to warm up than I had to spare, at least I had some control.

“Mrr?”

I heard the double thump of Eddie’s feet as he jumped up onto the desk and looked up to see him looking down at me. With an index finger that I couldn’t completely straighten, I made the universal Shhh! gesture. Of course, since I was making it to a cat, there was a large chance the gesture wasn’t nearly as universal as I’d like, but there wasn’t much else I could do.

“Mrr,” Eddie said softly.

We’ll get out of this, I promised him silently. Don’t know how exactly, but we’ll be fine.

Up front, Stewart was still focused on shifting back and forth. I tried not to think about the damage he could be doing to the transmission and unhooked the bungee cord that held the desk chair in place. The warmer I got, the more my brain was starting to work. If I was lucky, soon I’d be able to do simple addition. And since that was the only kind of addition at which I was competent, that would clearly mean my mental ability was at full capacity.

Two plus two is four, I thought to myself. Four plus four is eight. A plan was starting to gel, but what if it was a horrible plan conjured up by a panicking librarian? If I waited a little longer, would I come up with a better plan?

Eddie oozed down to the floor. His mouth opened in a silent “Mrr” as he whacked my ankle with the side of his head.

I let my hand rest on his back for a short moment, thinking how sorry I was to have gotten him into this mess, but at the same time I was grateful for his presence. His warmth seeped into my palm, and my fingers started to tingle with what would be a painful coming-back-to-life process.

But there was no time to think about that. At some point Stewart would abandon his pointless efforts, and when he turned, he would see me. I had to make my move and I had to make it now.

Taking a deep breath, I rolled the chair in front of me and, on my knees, started the long journey forward.

Since Stewart was taller than I was, I couldn’t be sure what he could see in the rearview mirror. Would he see more floor or more ceiling? If it was ceiling, I was fine. If it was floor . . . well, if he glanced up, it would take him a moment to register why the chair was there and why it was moving, and I’d have to take advantage of that pause.

I tried to work out the mirror angles in my head but didn’t like the conclusion, so I stopped thinking about it.

Inch by slow inch, I moved ahead, around all the fallen items, past the children’s books and puppets, past the magazines and DVDs, past the young adult books, and into the nonfiction and adult fiction. The plastic runner we put down on the carpet in winter was blessedly quiet under my knees and I moved as fast as I could.

Questions kept popping into my head, questions for which I desperately wanted answers but had no way of getting:

Where was the gun?

What was Eddie doing?

How long was Stewart going to keep trying to rock the bookmobile?

What would he do next?

And back to, Where was the gun?

The bookmobile lurched backward. “Hah!” Stewart shouted. “I knew I’d get it!”

My mouth went dry. This was not part of the plan. The plan could not be carried out if the bookmobile was moving. If that happened, I’d have to come up with another idea and this one was already on the outside edge of possible. What could—

There was another lurch. The bookmobile rolled back to where it had been and settled in for a long winter’s nap.

Stewart cursed a long colorful streak, then growled out, “If I did it once, I can do it again,” and dropped the transmission into Drive.

It was now or never.

I shoved the chair away from me, spinning the seat so that it would make as much noise as possible. I was still on my knees, trying to stay out of his line of sight. This was the first tricky part. I needed a few seconds, just a few seconds was all, but wasn’t sure I’d get them. If Stewart kept turning around, he’d see me. If he had the gun handy, it was all over. If, if, if . . .

Stewart’s head snapped around. “What the—” His gaze fastened on the chair. It zoomed toward the passenger’s seat, thumped against it, and toppled to the floor.

I was already moving, but Eddie was faster.

“MRR!!” He jumped on top of the passenger’s seat headrest and faced Stewart. “MRR!!” He spat and hissed and growled.

“Shut up,” Stewart said. “Why do people have cats anyway? Dogs are the only pets people should have. Cats are useless, all they do is—urk!!”

I tightened the bungee cord I’d slid around his neck. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said breathlessly, hauling hard. “I’d say he was quite useful in distracting you while I snuck up from behind.”

“You . . . can’t . . . do . . . this,” Stewart gasped.

“Pretty sure you’re wrong about that. Oh, look, your face is turning a lovely shade of red. Do you think it’ll turn blue soon? How about I take your gun and then I’ll think about not choking you to death.”

“It’s . . . in the . . . SUV.”

I tsk’d at him. “Try again,” I said, pulling a teensy bit harder, which made me feel queasy.

“Pocket,” he said in a . . . well, in a choked voice. “Right pocket.”

I put both ends of the bungee cord in one hand and reached for the gun with the other. “Oh, my favorite, a Beretta. Is that the PX4 Compact? How handy that you have the same kind of gun I always use on the gun range. Now we’ll—”

Stewart jabbed out with his elbow and knocked the gun out of my hand.

I dropped the bungee cord and lunged for the gun. Stewart was doing the same thing, but I was ahead of him, reaching. He grabbed my ankle and hauled me backward. “No little girl is going to get the best of me,” he snarled, and elbowed me in the ribs so hard that I cried out in pain.

“MRR!!!”

“Oww! Get off me, cat!!”

Stewart’s grip on my ankle released and I scrabbled the last few feet for the gun. When I had it in my hands, I kept moving away from Stewart, farther out of his reach, but I needn’t have gone to the effort, because when I turned around, Stewart was still wiping the blood out of his eyes, proof that Mom was right when she’d told me that scalp wounds bleed a lot.

Eddie, for his part, was already sitting on the console licking his front paws.

“Here.” I tossed Stewart the roll of fishing line I’d picked up from the floor, very pleased that we’d started lending ice fishing equipment that winter. “Tie your ankles together.”

“I will not.” He rubbed his sleeve over his face and started to get to his feet. “Because you’re not going to use that gun. Even if you know how to use it, you wouldn’t be able to shoot a human being. The pain you’d inflict? The mess you’d make?” He shook his head. “Just don’t see it happening.”

The gun’s barrel wavered as I thought about it. Maybe he was right. But then I thought about what he’d done to Rowan. What he’d done to Neil and Collier and Anya. What he’d tried to do to me. What he almost certainly would have done to Eddie.

I clicked off the safety and pointed the gun at his chest. “Are you willing to take that chance?” My voice was calm. Measured. Confident. “Sit down and tie your ankles.”

For the merest fraction of a second, he hesitated. And then he did what I’d told him to do.

Ten minutes later, I’d bound his hands together, taken his phone and car keys out of his coat pockets, and was starting his SUV with Eddie at my side. It didn’t take much to get out of the ditch and then we were up and away.

At the top of the next hill, I called 911 and did my best to tell them where I was and what had happened. As soon as the dispatcher said deputies were on their way, I thanked her and said I needed to call someone else.

“Please stay on the line, ma’am,” she said. “I’d like to make sure you’re okay until the deputies arrive.”

“Thanks, but I have to go.” I ended the call, started the next, and reached out to pet Eddie, his purrs filling my ears and heart.

“Minnie?” Rafe asked. “Where are you? I thought we were meeting at six. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “We’re fine.” And then, suddenly and unexpectedly, I began to cry.

Chapter 20

My aunt looked at me across the kitchen table, which was practically groaning under the weight of the food she’d piled onto it. Scrambled eggs, bacon, and waffles. Hash browns, sausage, and biscuits. And then there was the sourdough toast and fresh-squeezed orange juice. The four of us sitting at the table hadn’t a chance of eating it all, but I was going to do my best to do justice to my aunt’s post-traumatic cooking. “So would you have done it?” she asked. “Shot him, I mean?”

The evening before, Rafe, Aunt Frances, and Otto had gathered together in the boardinghouse living room while I’d huddled on the hearth in front of a roaring fire with my hands around a mug of hot chocolate and Eddie on my lap. I’d stayed awake long enough to outline what had happened on Lolly Road, but now it was morning, the same group was gathered, and my aunt wanted details. So, being the kind and generous niece that I was, I did my best to oblige.

“I’m not sure.” Anticipating the expression she was about to assemble her face into, I kept going before she wasted all that energy. “If he was going to hurt Eddie, absolutely. If he was going to hurt me . . . probably. But I might have kept wondering if he’d really do it, might have kept thinking about a different way out. So . . . I just don’t know.”

Just at that moment, the jar of orange marmalade called to me, so I busied myself with toast and knife as the trio exchanged looks.

“You’re nuts,” my loving aunt said.

I kept slathering on the marmalade. Eddie, who I’d left on my bed, snoring, wandered into the kitchen and flopped on the floor next to me. I angled my foot to touch him and felt his breaths going in and out.

Rafe was next. “You could have,” he said confidently. “In some part of that quick-moving brain, you would have figured out there wasn’t any other option and done it.”

The marmalade was getting thick, but I kept laying it on.

Otto stirred. “There’s no point second-guessing. Minnie did an outstanding job in a difficult and frightening situation.”

“Mrr!”

“And it goes without saying,” Otto continued, almost without a break, “that we’re grateful she had Eddie with her yesterday. Without his critical assistance, she might not be here this morning.”

“Mrr,” Eddie said, apparently mollified.

Aunt Frances handed around a bowl of scrambled eggs. “But what I don’t understand is the why. Why did Stewart kill Rowan?”

Last night I’d been too tired to explain. Had actually fallen asleep while describing how the responding sheriff’s deputies had found Stewart, with hands and ankles still bound, hunting for a hidden spare set of bookmobile keys so he could start the engine. He was getting cold, he’d said.

My sympathies had not been with him, and I was very glad that two different law enforcement vehicles had arrived because I would not have been happy to share a backseat with the man who’d tried to kill me.

Once we arrived at the sheriff’s office, the story eventually came out. It had taken a while, but the combined questioning of Hal and Ash and Sheriff Richardson, with perhaps a bit of pressure from the glowering presence of myself and Eddie (in his carrier), got results.

“It was a cover-up,” I said, forking off a piece of sausage. “He was covering up that he’d stolen something from Rowan.”

“You mean something valuable?” Rafe asked.

After chewing and swallowing the yummy maple-flavored sausage, I said, “That’s the thing. She didn’t know it was worth more than a penny. Only Stewart did.”

My aunt sighed. “The cold has addled her brain. We can only hope that someday she’ll recover completely.”

Rafe pushed a stack of blueberry pancakes in my direction. “Have some carbs. They can’t hurt and might help.”

Otto smiled and added coffee into my mug. “Tell us more,” he said.

I added a pancake to my plate, ladled a generous dollop of maple syrup over it, and told the rest of what I knew.

“When Stewart and Rowan’s grandparents died, Rowan, as the oldest grandchild, inherited their grandmother’s coin collection, a collection all the cousins had played with as kids.”

The trio was nodding, so I went on.

“Collier and his girlfriend got engaged at Thanksgiving, remember? And the big family dinner was at the Bennethums’, so there was a lot of talk about family and heirlooms and Rowan remembered the coin collection, which she’d almost forgotten about.”

Ash had corroborated this by calling Neil (who hadn’t answered) and Anya and Collier (who had). I took in one bite of pancake and another of eggs. “When it came time for dessert, along with the pumpkin and apple pies, Rowan put Grandma’s coin collection on the table for everyone to see.”

“What kind of collection was it?” Otto asked. “From a certain time period? Civil War? Or gold coins?”

I shook my head and smiled as I picked up a piece of bacon. “It was the most romantic coin collection ever. Grandpa had given Grandma a brand-new uncirculated coin as an anniversary present for every year they’d been married, starting in 1936.”

“What kind of coin?” Aunt Frances asked. “Half-dollars?”

I paused for coffee. “What he gave her were pennies.”

“Pennies?” Otto laughed. “Not much of an anniversary present.”

“Family lore says it started as a joke and just kind of continued on.”

Rafe took my coffee mug and topped it off. “Bet I know how it started. That movie Pennies from Heaven came out in 1936.”

I blinked. He’d said it with such assurance that I believed him implicitly. It could have been a ruse, but since I’d almost died less than twenty-four hours ago, I didn’t think he’d be trying to scam me for at least another day. “How do you know that?”

Looking serious, he tapped his head. “Steel trap. Never forget a thing that’s unimportant.”

“Good to know,” I said, toasting him with my mug. “Anyway, with all the pennies out on the table, there was plenty of opportunity to take a close look at them, and Stewart did.”

“That boy was always looking for get-rich-quick schemes,” Aunt Frances mused. “A few years after he graduated from college, back in the late nineties, he quit the company he was working for and started one of those dot-com companies. And don’t ask me what they were supposed to be doing, because I have no idea.”

Otto chuckled. “Exactly. I still find it hard to believe so much money was invested in dot-coms. A classic speculation bubble. We can all be fooled some of the time.”

“The pennies,” Rafe said, dragging the conversation back to center. “What was with the pennies?”

I held up two fingers. “It wasn’t all of them. Just a couple of very special ones.”

Aunt Frances cut into her waffle. “How special can pennies be? I’ve heard of silver dollars worth a couple of hundred dollars, and you see those special offers in magazines for commemorative coins, but I don’t remember anything about a penny.”

“In Grandma’s collection,” I said slowly, because I was trying to remember the details and didn’t want to get any of it wrong, “were a mint condition 1944 steel wheat penny and a mint 1943 copper Lincoln penny.”

I waited a beat because Otto was getting a faraway look on his face. But he didn’t say anything and I carried on.

“Together, the two of them are worth more than three hundred thousand dollars.”

Coffee spewed across the table as my aunt started choking. Otto patted her on the back until her spasms eased and Rafe got up for paper towels.

I cut and ate my sausage and, when the fuss died down, started talking again.

“That’s just the amount of money Stewart needed for the boat he’d been dreaming about for years, the boat his now ex-wife would never let him buy. He thought he could sneak the pennies out of the collection, replace them with garden-variety 1943 and 1944 pennies, and no one would ever know.”

“So what happened?” Rafe asked. I’d paused, because the next part was the hardest to tell.

I sighed. “At the family Christmas party, Rowan told Stewart she’d decided to hand over the coin collection to Collier as an engagement present, and that she’d do so when he and his fiancée came up during Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend. Stewart . . .” I stared at my plate.

“That was when,” I said quietly, “Stewart realized time was running out. Up until then, he thought he’d have time to find replacement coins. But now that he only had three weeks, he decided it was easier to just kill Rowan. He knew she had heart issues, so he put together a cocktail of medications he’d accumulated, crushed the pills, stopped by her house, and dropped the powder into her coffee, hoping that the stimulants would give her a heart attack.” Which it did. “With Rowan dead, Stewart had all sorts of time to replace the pennies since the coin collection was pretty much the last thing on anyone’s mind.”

There was a long pause, at the end of which Aunt Frances said, “In the back of the shop, there’s a stack of cherry that came out of the orchard down the road from the Bennethums’ house. What do you think about me making Collier and his fiancée a clock out of it for a wedding present? A grandfather . . . no, a grandmother clock.”

“Sounds like a grand idea,” Otto said. “Let me know when it’s time to sand. That seems to be my forte in the woodworking area.”

Rafe nodded. “Great idea. I can take a few days off from the house if you need some help.”

I almost couldn’t breathe. The sensations rushing through me were a tangled mess. I was sad, but joyful. Unhappy and happy at the same time. Tired, yet energized. But I knew one thing for certain. I was lucky to have these people in my life. So very, very lucky.

My aunt looked at me. “What do you think, Minnie?”

And all I could do was smile.

• • •

Otto and Rafe headed out after breakfast, Otto to an appointment with a nonprofit agency that would undoubtedly land him some volunteer work as their bookkeeper, Rafe to the school, because somehow it was Friday and the world was continuing as it normally did.

Aunt Frances told me to sit and drink coffee while she finished the dishes, but I felt an urge to move. Last night, Ash had driven me to the hospital, where they’d pronounced me fit to continue life. Rafe had arrived just as I was checking out, sweeping me into a huge hug that had warmed my heart, but my body racked with the occasional shiver all the way home.

“I’m fine,” I’d told the three of them last night as I’d sat close to the fire. My aunt had paid no attention to me, and as soon as I’d told the bare bones of what had happened, she’d shooed me upstairs and tucked me into bed, taking my e-reader out of my hands and putting Eddie on my chest.

This time I wasn’t about to let her coddle me, so I ignored what I assumed was a suggestion and started to dry the dishes as she washed.

Aunt Frances rolled her eyes, but didn’t actually force me back to the table and put the coffee mug in my hands. “When did Darren say they were going to get out there?” she asked.

Darren was the bookmobile’s mechanic and he’d been the first number I’d called after dialing 911 and Rafe. I’d called Darren even before I’d called Aunt Frances, a tiny little fact that she had no reason ever to learn.

I glanced at the wall clock. “The tow truck should be on its way. I’ll know after lunch what Darren thinks the damage will be.” And then I’d be on the phone with the insurance people. My afternoon would be nothing but fun.

Aunt Frances dropped a handful of silverware into the strainer. “Sometimes I wonder if I should have gone into the car repair business instead of woodworking.” She grinned. “But then I remember I can’t stand the feel of grease under my fingernails.”

Before I could acknowledge that could be an occupational difficulty, she said, “Forgot to tell you. Celeste must have read about your bookmobile escapade on Facebook. She sent me an e-mail this morning and her exact words—her only words—were, ‘Tell Minnie to keep her feet warm.’”

I smiled and wiggled my toasty-warm toes. Cousin Celeste understood priorities. It was entirely possible we’d get along just fine.

My phone, sitting in the middle of the table, dinged with an incoming text. I wandered over to look. It was from Trock: Had my scout look at Red House Café, like you said. Will fit in perfect for a spring episode since we need a replacement restaurant for one that closed. (Off to buy a tux for the wedding. Always wanted one, couldn’t justify until now. Life is good.)

I texted him a quick thanks with lots of exclamation points, and hummed a happy tune. It was good to have friends, and every once in a while it was great to have a friend who was the star of a popular television restaurant show.

Aunt Frances, still washing, said, “Forgot to tell you. Yesterday I met up with Land Aprelle.”

My ears perked up. “You did? How did that go?”

“Seems odd he’s only a year younger than I am,” she said. “But age is a funny thing. Anyway, I did what you suggested, stopped at his house and didn’t go away until he showed me some of his pieces.”

I waited, but she didn’t say anything. She’d fallen into a fast and sudden silence, and it was clear from the way she was missing half the soapsuds as she plied the spray nozzle that her mind wasn’t on what she was doing.

“And?” I prompted. “What did you think of Land’s work?”

“What?” She blinked out of her trance. “Oh. It’s outstanding. Truly amazing stuff. I’m still trying to figure out how he did the interior hinge work on that box. He said he didn’t use a biscuit joiner or a hand chisel, so how on earth . . .”

She went quiet again, but before she went to a mental dimension where I couldn’t follow, I asked, “The big summer art show. Is his stuff good enough?”

My aunt gave a very unladylike snort. “Are you kidding me? He’ll be the star of the show and I’m going to make sure he prices his pieces right. He has a dining table inlaid with the state of Michigan, showing inland lakes, for crying out loud, that he had priced for a few hundred dollars. He’s an idiot if he doesn’t sell that one for thousands.”

Smiling, I dried and put things away as she talked. After last night, hearing some good news was soothing. “You’re still my favorite woodworker,” I said. “Especially since you’re making that wedding present for Collier.”

“Ah, he’s a decent kid,” she said. “By the way, I hear Anya and Bax Tousely are talking again.”

“Really? Where did you hear that?” Social media wasn’t her thing.

“I have my sources,” she said airily. She glanced at me and relented. “Emily Tousely, one of my students, is Bax’s younger sister. Before class started, I heard her chatting with a friend. She was all excited that her brother was talking to Anya again. He’d been worrying about it for days, trying to get up the courage to call, and he finally did.”

Then that day at Lakeview, the look on his face probably hadn’t been sadness or guilt, but anxiety. So much for my powers of observation.

But at least a few things were starting to right themselves for the Bennethums. Rowan’s killer was behind bars, which should help Collier come to grips with his mother’s death; Anya and Bax might get back together; and the mystery of Neil’s absence had also resolved itself.

Last night at the sheriff’s office, just as I was getting ready to leave, he’d returned Ash’s call and apologized for his recent noncommunication, saying that he wasn’t dealing well with Rowan’s death and had checked into a personal retreat center, and one of the conditions of staying there was to leave all electronics behind. He’d told Anya and Collier where he was going, but being one of those guys who felt therapy wasn’t manly, he’d asked them to keep quiet about it.

I almost felt guilty about briefly suspecting him of his wife’s murder, but not quite, since I still thought he’d let down his children by leaving when they needed him most.

“Speaking of weddings,” I said, “we should talk about yours.”

My aunt scrunched up her face. “Do we have to? Because I’d really rather not.”

“Yes, because I have the answers to all your problems.”

“How nice,” Aunt Frances muttered. “I can hardly wait.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” I said, and I was probably smirking a bit, because I really did have all the answers. They’d come to me as I was tromping about in the cedar forest, fully formed solutions to problems that, compared to freezing to death while running from a guy with a gun, were easily solved.

“Problem number one,” I said, “is the wedding and honeymoon venue. You wanted it to be in Bermuda, but that just isn’t possible. The solution is to have the wedding here—and I’ll offer the library’s community room as a location—and have the honeymoon in Bermuda. You don’t get to have a destination wedding, but you still get to go to Bermuda, and isn’t that what you really wanted?”

I knew it was, because she’d talked about visiting Bermuda for years. The destination wedding angle had been a spark of an idea that had managed to find enough fuel to grow, but it was time to toss a final bucket of water on it and move on.

“Hmm.” Aunt Frances slowly slipped the plates into the sink. “You know, you could be right.”

“The other real problem,” I said with confidence, “isn’t directly a wedding problem, but is more of a post-wedding problem. You hate Otto’s kitchen and can’t stand the idea of cooking in it.”

“I’ll get used to it,” she said stoically. Then she completely undercut the stiff-upper-lip attitude by sighing and adding, “Eventually.”

“Or not.”

Aunt Frances frowned. “Don’t toy with me, young lady. What are you talking about?”

“Last night when you were making hot chocolate, Otto and I had a little chat. No, don’t look like that. He said he always suspected you hated the kitchen and was already planning a renovation. He’s just going to move it up a little, is all. Give him the name of your favorite kitchen designer and he’ll get an appointment as soon as possible.”

My aunt stared at me, slack jawed. “You didn’t. He didn’t. He’s not.”

“He is,” I said. “And if the timing works out—and if you make decisions as fast as you normally do, it should—the work can happen while the two of you are in Bermuda.”

Though her jaw moved up and down a couple of times, no words came out. Since I didn’t know what else to do, I kept going.

“And if you want, I’ll do the project supervision as a wedding present, and send you photos every day.” Her expression was unreadable. A funny feeling started forming in the bottom of my stomach, so I quickly added, “Only if you trust me, of course. I mean, you know how I feel about cooking and kitchens and hardware, but supervising your project would be different. All I have to do is pretend to be you, and—ooff!”

The air whooshed out of me as my aunt grabbed me and gave me a massive hug. And it was possible, although it was almost too hard to believe, that she was crying.

• • •

Whistling a happy tune, or at least doing something relatively close to whistling, I walked downtown. The sky had cleared, the sun was out, and it was a beautiful winter day in northwest lower Michigan, specifically in Chilson, and there was no place else on earth I’d rather be.

“Hey, Minnie!” Mitchell’s head popped out of the toy store. “Come in a minute. Coffee? No? Well . . .” He peered down at me. “You look okay, but I just wanted to make sure. I mean, I heard that . . . that . . .”

“I’m fine,” I said. “No frostbite for me or Eddie, and the bad guy is in jail.” I gave a few more details and hoped he wouldn’t ask any more questions, because I’d have to tell the story at the library and there were only so many times I wanted to talk about it.

“Good to hear. So . . .” He rubbed his face with his hands. “I probably shouldn’t bother you with this right now, but have you figured out anything else about Bianca and me? Because I really think she’s going to break up with me.”

“Mitchell, you’ve been worried about that since you started dating. What’s changed between now and last week?”

He shuffled his feet. “Well, nothing that I know of, but that doesn’t mean there’s not something.”

“Talk to her,” I said. “Talking is the only thing that’s going to clear this up. The sooner the better.”

“Sure, but—”

“Talk!” I said in my Librarian Voice, hardening my heart to his protest. “Do it today,” I added in a softer tone, then murmured some words of encouragement, which didn’t seem to make a dent in his unhappiness, but he sighed and said he would.

Outside on the sidewalk, I saw that the blue sky had managed to grow even bluer. Smiling up at the boundless infinity, I decided to take the gorgeous morning as a sign that Mitchell’s troubles were transitory.

“Morning, Minnie!” A blond woman waved at me energetically. “How are you this fine morning?”

“Hey, Bianca.” I smiled. “How’s business?”

“Horrible, but I don’t care. I’m going to get engaged today,” she said cheerfully.

“Um, congratulations.” I almost winced, because I was pretty sure I’d sounded like I was asking a question.

Luckily, she didn’t seem to notice. “My Mitchell is such a lovable lug,” she said, laughing. “I am so tired of waiting for him to ask me to marry him. I thought he might pop the question at Christmas, but nothing happened. This morning I woke up and saw this blue sky and decided today was the day. I’m going to propose to him!”

She pulled a small box out of her pocket and opened it, right there on the sidewalk. “These are my great-aunt’s rings, the aunt I’m named after. Mitchell might want to buy me something new, but I’d rather wear these than anything from a store. What do you think?”

The question was asked almost shyly. “I think they’re wonderful,” I said. And they were. The engagement ring’s largish diamond sparkled, glinting with the colors of the rainbow, and the tiny diamonds in the wedding band twinkled cheerily in the sunlight. “Mitchell’s a lucky man.”

“Hah.” She snapped the box shut and put it back in her pocket. “I’m the lucky one.” She grinned and headed off to her future.

I watched her go, tempted to follow along and watch the fun through the window, but I strong-mindedly pushed aside the temptation and went on my way. My coworkers had been texting me all morning and I’d only kept my cell phone from wearing out by telling them I’d be in before noon and would explain everything.

So that’s what I did. As soon as I walked in, I pulled Donna aside and promised her a special telling if she’d man the front desk solo for fifteen minutes, then assembled the rest of the interested staff—which was everyone except Graydon, who was closeted upstairs with Trent—in the break room.

After I’d finished, there was a moment of stunned silence. Then the questions began.

Holly came in first by half a syllable. “Is Eddie okay? You would have said if he wasn’t, but you didn’t say for sure, so I need to hear you say it.”

“Have you heard from Darren?” Josh asked. “About the bookmobile, I mean?”

“And how about you?” Kelsey asked, handing me a mug of coffee. “Don’t worry, I didn’t make this pot. How are you doing? Being cold like that . . .” She shook her head.

Smiling, I answered all their questions. “Eddie is indeed okay. He slept on my feet through the night, and when I left the house, he was still sleeping.”

I turned to Josh. “Darren says there is some minor body damage, but the engine and transmission are fine.” Which was a huge relief as big expensive repairs were not part of the bookmobile’s budget. They should have been, but I’d decided to push what extra bookmobile money there was into a fund for the eventual purchase of a replacement vehicle.

After taking a deep sip of the dark life-giving liquid, I said, “And I’m fine. Really.” This was essentially true, but I had briefly considered driving downtown instead of walking.

“What did you tell Graydon?” Holly asked. When I didn’t respond, she asked a bit hesitantly, “Um, Minnie? You did tell him, didn’t you?”

I had. But last night’s conversation had been odd, filled with hints and undertones I hadn’t understood, though at the time I’d put it down to mild hypothermia and fatigue. However, in the bright light of the break room, surrounded by friends, I realized I still didn’t understand what he’d been getting at when he’d told me things would be changing. I’d been too tired to ask what he meant, but now I was itching to find out.

First, what would be changing? He couldn’t be talking about ending the bookmobile, could he? Or letting staff go? What was so horrible here that he and Trent needed to change anything? Had we done such a terrible job that the board was going to reorganize everything? Sure, there was always room for improvement, but to talk about a need for massive changes was ridiculous!

It had taken all of two seconds for me to stoke my irritation and anger up from embers to a steady flame.

“There you are.”

All heads turned. Graydon was in the doorway. “The board is asking for you,” he said, nodding at me.

“Right now?” I asked. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to be at work for another half hour.

“They’ve called a special meeting.” He sounded almost apologetic, which made the insides of my palms tingle. Why would Graydon need to apologize for anything? There was only one possibility: The board wanted to fire me. I’d crashed the bookmobile too many times, gotten involved in murder too many times, dragged the library’s name into the mud . . . it had all added up and now they wanted me out.

I nodded, since my suddenly-dry mouth made it impossible to use actual words, and accompanied by the sympathetic glances of my coworkers, I went up to meet my doom.

• • •

I let myself into Rafe’s house—our house, I reminded myself—and set Eddie’s carrier onto the entry mat I’d bought a few weeks ago. “We’re here!” I called out, unlatching the wire door.

As I divested myself of outerwear, I watched the feline progress. First, Eddie’s nose came out, then his head, ears twitching. One front paw reached out to rest gently on the mat, then the other came out to meet it. Then, in a sudden leap to the floor, all of Eddie was out of the carrier.

“In the kitchen,” Rafe called back. “Hope you’re hungry.”

“How odd,” I said to Eddie. “This particular kitchen is the last place I’d expect to find food.” But Eddie was too busy sniffing his new environment to pay any attention to anything I said.

I put my coat in the front closet, slipped into moccasins I’d bought last month, and picked Eddie up, using my legs to lift because he really was a pretty big cat. “Come on, buddy. Let’s go see what Rafe hunted and gathered for our sustenance tonight. I wonder if—”

My words came to a halt, just like I did. Eddie and I had walked through the living room and the dining room, and now an amazing sight greeted us.

The last time I’d seen the kitchen, it had been a mostly empty room, empty because the cabinets were still somewhere else, nowhere near completion. There still weren’t any cabinets, but in the middle of the room stood a square table and two dining chairs. On top of the table was a white tablecloth, china, and flowers, all lit by the soft glow of candlelight.

Rafe, dressed in paint-splattered jeans and sweatshirt, stood behind one chair. “Would you like to be seated, miss?” He pulled out the chair smoothly.

I grinned and let a squirming Eddie drop to the floor. “Why, yes, I would.” Now that my eyes had adjusted to the dim light, I saw that the tablecloth was actually a drop cloth, that the china was made of paper, that the flowers were silk poinsettias that looked suspiciously like the ones from the Christmas wreath we’d bought, and that the candles were stuck into the bottoms of cut-off tubes of caulk. Still, he’d gone to a fair amount of effort, and knowing that he’d done it just for me was making me a little wobbly.

“Dinner will be served momentarily,” he said as I sat and hitched forward to the card table. “I hope sandwiches from Fat Boys will be to your liking?”

“How could they not?”

He turned, reached into a white bag that was sitting on a pile of paint cans, pulled out two foam boxes, and uncrated our dinner.

“Mrr.”

“Don’t worry, young lad,” Rafe said. “Yours is next. Hope you’re okay without a plate.” Out of the white bag came a smaller foam box.

I couldn’t quite see the box’s contents, although from the sound of it, Eddie was plenty happy with whatever it was. “What did you get him?”

“Piece of fried fish with all the breading taken off.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’ll probably be his favorite from now on.”

“Thought I already was.” Rafe sat. “So what happened at the meeting?”

After I’d come back downstairs from my board summons, I’d texted him that there’d been a special meeting and I’d tell him about it over dinner. “It’s kind of a long story,” I said slowly.

“They’re not firing anyone, right?” he asked. “And not getting rid of the bookmobile?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “That wasn’t it at all. It’s just . . .” I paused, because old emotions, ones I’d thought had long since faded, were coming back to life. I swallowed. “Remember Stan Larabee?”

“Well, sure.” Rafe nodded. “His donation to the library paid for the bookmobile. And he’s the . . .” His voice trailed off, because he’d come to the sad part.

“And he’s the one,” I said, “that I found in that farmhouse almost two years ago, just before he died.” It had been a difficult time, but Stan’s killer had eventually been brought to justice. And soon after, it turned out that Stan had willed the bulk of his substantial estate to the library. However, the relatives had come out of the woodwork to contest the will, and it had been in the hands of lawyers ever since.

“The estate has finally been settled,” I said. “That’s why the board had a special meeting. Graydon and Trent have been handling the settlement details, and they were announcing it to the board.”

“And they invited you, too?”

I nodded. “Because the bookmobile was mentioned specifically in the will. Stan . . .” A knot in my throat caught my words and I had to cough it out. “Stan wanted to create a foundation with enough capital to buy a new bookmobile every ten years.”

And that was why, when I’d first met Trent, he’d been asking so many questions about the bookmobile. Otis, the outgoing president, had handpicked Trent as the new president because Trent’s attorney skills included handling large bequests. In addition to the bookmobile, Stan’s wishes also included some other odd details that hadn’t been explained fully to me, but I wasn’t going to worry about those right now.

Rafe put his sandwich down, got up, and came around the table. He pulled me up into a massive hug and twirled me around. “I always knew I liked that Stan,” he said, after putting me down and giving me a big smacking kiss.

“Yes,” I said, sniffing a bit, but it was a happy sniff. “Me, too.”

The board had also apologized for keeping me in the dark about Stan’s will, Graydon and Trent especially.

“We know you’re the soul of discretion,” Trent had said, “but until the decision was final, the attorneys all insisted that the board and the director be the only ones to know.”

I’d been fine with that—mostly—and had forgiven them completely when I’d seen the number of zeros on the check the library would receive even after the bookmobile foundation was set up. Soul of discretion I might be, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep that kind of news to myself.

Rafe gave me one more hug. “So all’s well that ends well, right?” he asked, ushering me into my chair again. “But there’s one thing we have to talk about,” he said.

“What kind of thing?”

“You came very close to becoming Stewart’s second murder victim. I know you’re fine, but it was a close call and thinking about it scares me.”

Rafe’s face, normally full of humor and mirth, was filled with worry and concern. “You said you can’t walk away from friends who ask for help. I understand that. And I love you for it. But we have to think up a different way to do this.”

I frowned. “To do what?”

“To fight crime and stuff.”

“‘And stuff’?”

He shrugged. “Don’t want to leave out any possibilities. So here’s what I’m thinking. If a friend comes to one of us with a problem, big or small, we work on the solution together. Me and you. You and me. We’re a team.”

I smiled, my heart full to bursting with love for this wonderful, though sometimes annoying, man. “A team. You and me.”

“Mrr!”

Without missing a beat, Rafe made the necessary correction. “You and me and Eddie.”

My furry friend jumped onto my lap and I hugged him tight. “The best team of all,” I said. “The absolute best.”

About the Author

Laurie Cass is the national bestselling author of the Bookmobile Cat Mysteries, including Wrong Side of the Paw, Cat With a Clue, and Pouncing on Murder. She lives on a lake in northern Michigan with her husband and two cats.

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