Borrowed Crime: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery

Chapter 18

Early the next morning, soon after I’d finished dressing and just as I was toweling off my hair, my cell rang. Since I was busy watching raindrops pelt against the window, I decided it was time to get some help from my roommate.

“Hey, Eddie, would you get that, please?”

My cat, who was lying in the exact middle of my bed, which was the same place he’d spent the entire night, no matter how many times I’d tried to gently shove him to one side, didn’t even lift his head.

“Some help you are,” I said, picking up the phone. “And after all I do for . . . uh-oh.” The incoming call was from Donna, my volunteer for the day.

“Minnie?” a voice croaked. “It’s Donna.” There was a pause, and I heard a distant, racking cough. “I’m so sorry,” she said when she came back, “but I woke up sick. I really don’t think I should come out on the bookmobile today.”

“Absolutely not,” I told her. “The last thing you need to do is go out in this weather. Read some of Jan Karon’s Mitford books, and I’ll see you when you’re better.” I ended the call and immediately started another one. “Kelsey? It’s Minnie.”

Two short sentences of explanation later, Kelsey said, “Let me think. My mom’s in Chicago for her annual Christmas shopping trip, and my husband’s working today. I’ll call around and see if I can find a sitter for the kids.”

Which she might or might not be able to find, and, even if she did, there was no way the sitter would be in place in half an hour, which was our appointed departure time.

“Thanks anyway, Kelsey,” I said. “I’m sure I can find someone else.”

But who? I scrolled through the numbers in my phone and called Holly.

“Oh, wow, Minnie. I’m sorry, but I promised the kids I’d take them to the indoor water park at Boyne today. They’ve been excited about this all week.”

I told her not to worry about it, and called Josh.

“You want me to do what?” He laughed. “Let me guess: I’m not going to get paid, either.”

“I’ll pay you myself,” I said, “if that’s what it takes.”

He must have heard the near desperation in my voice. “Hey, I was just joking. I’d help if I could, especially if Eddie’s coming along, but remember? My buddies and I are going to the Michigan State game this afternoon and the Lions game tomorrow.”

The voices and the road noise in the background suddenly made sense. In my half panic, I’d forgotten about the weekend he’d been talking about since August. “Sorry,” I said. “I forgot. Have a good time, okay?”

I stared at my phone. Now what? I’d exhausted all the library staff I felt able to call at this hour on a Saturday morning, Lina was out of town, and there was no way I was going to call Stephen and beg for his help. I’d go back to school, get a PhD in biochemistry, and clone myself before I did that.

I looked at my phone list again. “Hah,” I said. “Got it.” I stabbed at the DIAL button and was surprised when it was picked up half a ring later.

“Morning, sunshine,” Rafe said cheerfully.

I squinted in the direction of the marina. “You sound wide awake.”

“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you’re never awake before ten on Saturdays during the school year.”

“Au contraire,” he said. “I am always awake by seven thirty on the mornings that my kitchen appliances are to be delivered.”

My last hope circled the drain and dropped down. “Oh. That’s nice.”

“Liar,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

I debated lying some more, but knew he’d call me on it. One of these days, I really had to work on increasing my obfuscation skills. “I just needed some help this morning.”

“Sorry about that. I would if I could.”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks anyway.”

I stared at the phone. Sighed. Sighed again, this time so heavily that Eddie went to the trouble of picking up his head to look at me. I dialed one more time.

“Denise? It’s Minnie. I have a big favor to ask . . .”

* * *

Nine hours and eight stops later, I was regretting that I hadn’t given up and simply canceled the day’s bookmobile trip. I was also starting to regret the dark clothes I’d chosen to wear, as they were a perfect magnet for Eddie hair, but I’d been regretting Denise’s presence far longer. I was reaching the end of my patience and I hoped that I could keep my temper in check, at least while there were bookmobile patrons on board.

For eight hours and fifty-five minutes, Denise had been on her smart phone whenever she’d found coverage, texting, creating Facebook posts and tweets—and reading them out loud to me as she typed—about how brave she was to go out on the bookmobile so soon after her husband was killed on it, how important she was to the bookmobile’s outreach, and generally patting herself on the back so hard I was surprised she didn’t have a repetitive-stress injury.

But, in general, the stops went smoothly enough while Eddie, from his seat on the console, surveyed his small kingdom with a judicious eye and made the occasional comment.

At the last stop, a busy mother of three small children, who was checking out a pile of picture books, turned to him. “Eddie, what do you think? Is it time for my oldest to start chapter books?”

He studied her for a moment, then said, “Mrr.”

“Thought so,” she said, and added another book to the stack. “Thanks.”

I shook my head. My cat was a better librarian than I was. Of all the things Stephen didn’t need to know, this had to be in the top two.

A few minutes later, I shooed everyone out. Thanks to the heavy rain, we’d arrived at this last stop of the day a little late and, thanks to my disinclination to cut a stop short, it was now past the time we should have closed up shop and headed home.

“Thanks for coming out in this weather,” I said to the last exiting person. “See you soon.” By the time I slid into the driver’s seat, Denise had already encouraged Eddie into his strapped-down carrier and was fussing with her phone.

I started the engine and turned on the headlights. It had been one of those days of rain and low, heavy cloud cover, one of those dark gray days that made you want to stay inside with a book and a never-ending bowl of popcorn. It had never truly gotten light outside, and what little there had been was fading fast.

After peering left and right into the gloom, I pulled out of the parking lot and accelerated slowly.

“Can you believe that Shannon Hirsch?” Denise said, thumbing at her phone and making a gagging noise. “She puts the weirdest stuff on Facebook. Want to hear her latest?”

Short of slapping duct tape over Denise’s mouth or shoving plugs into my ears, there wasn’t any way I’d be able not to. I did briefly wonder why two sworn enemies would be Facebook friends, but there were lots of things I wondered about. The future of space exploration, for one. Why Eddie drank out of the far side of his water bowl, for another.

“She’s talking about the books she’s given away and wishes she hadn’t. Can you believe that?”

I murmured something vague.

“I know, right?” Denise nodded as if I’d agreed with her. “Who cares if she gave away her grandmother’s copy of Little Women by accident? I mean, am I asking for sympathy because my husband put my boxed set of A Song of Ice and Fire in the sale? Can you believe he didn’t know it’s the same thing as A Game of Thrones? I mean . . . What’s the matter?”

She asked this because I was braking hard. When we came to a stop, I turned on the four-way flashers, put the bookmobile into park, and turned to her.

“You gave away a boxed set of George Martin’s books?”

“Weren’t you listening? I didn’t give them away—Roger did.”

“To the book sale upstairs?” I asked. “The Friends’ sale?”

“You’d rather I take them to the Petoskey library? What’s wrong with you?”

“When we were on the bookmobile before,” I persisted, “you said you sometimes write in books. Did you write anything in those?”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” she huffed. “Is that what this is about—you’re worried that the Friends are selling defaced books? Well, gosh, Miss Librarian, I’m so sorry, but, yes, I did write in those books. Anyone who wanted to keep track of all those names would do the same thing. I didn’t know I was going to be graded on—”

“That note you sent to Allison Korthase.” Denise glared at my interruption, but right now I didn’t care about politeness. “That anonymous note. Did you write that by hand or did you print it out on the computer?”

“By hand,” she said sulkily. “So what?”

“The Wednesday before Roger died,” I said, remembering. Mitchell had handed me the key to the mystery without even knowing it. “Allison Korthase bought that boxed set. Did it have your name in it?”

Denise frowned, not understanding, but then her face went flat and white. “Yes. It did. Allison knows what my handwriting looks like,” she whispered. “She’s known for a month.”

The police needed to know, and they needed to know as soon as possible. “Do you have reception?” I pointed at Denise’s phone.

She glanced at the screen. “Not much.”

I turned off the flashers, checked for traffic, and pulled back onto the road. Spotty cell reception was one of the few annoying things about living Up North. I’d have to wait until we got back to Chilson to call the sheriff’s office.

The rain suddenly started pounding down full force times two. I flicked the windshield wipers to high and slowed to a safe speed. Denise wasn’t talking about the elephant on the bus, so I did. “I think Allison killed Roger. And I think she sliced your radiator hose.”

Denise stared through the wet windshield. “Roger was killed by a hunter. Allison didn’t kill him instead of me. It’s not my fault, and you’re being horrible to say so. You’re wrong—just plain wrong.”

I glanced at Eddie. He was sleeping. So much for him coming to my defense. That bond I’d mentioned to Aunt Frances hadn’t exactly stood the test of time. It hadn’t even lasted twenty-four hours.

“Allison is smart,” I said. “And she’s ambitious.”

“Now, that I can agree with.” Denise nodded. “You should have heard her, that day at the Friends, going on and on about how she was going to change things. So I asked her, right in front of everyone, ‘You’re going to do all that here in Chilson?’ She went a little pink and rambled on about how anyone can be a catalyst, but I bet she runs for a state office in a few years.”

And a congressional seat after that, I thought. But only if there’s nothing in her background to stain her. Only if she never writes that letter to the editor admitting that she plagiarized.

The rain slackened and I increased our speed the slightest bit. The sooner we got back, the sooner I could tell Detective Inwood about Allison.

Plus, the sooner I could get Denise’s voice out of my ears, the better. She had started talking louder to be heard over the rain, and even though the rain was slowing, her piercing voice was still penetrating my skin and going straight into my bones.

I shook my head, trying to get rid of the image, but it stuck, just like the last leaves of autumn were sticking to the road’s asphalt.

Denise rattled on about Allison’s shortcomings. “That husband of hers, he comes from money, but, then, so does she.” She managed to make it sound like a bad thing. “Her grandfather made a bundle down in Grand Rapids, I think it was, doing something with furniture.”

She made a gagging noise. “What could be so new about furniture that it makes someone enough money to live out at the point? There’s something seriously wrong with this world when people like that can— Minnie! What are you doing?”

What I was doing was pumping the brakes hard and fast, and there wasn’t anything else I could do to avoid what was surely going to happen.

In front of us, directly in front of us, far too close in front of us, was a huge washout. All the snowmelt and all the rain of the past few days had come down the hills and pounded into the side of the road. The runoff had found a weak spot, and the water had won. The gaping ravine felt acres wide and miles across, and if I didn’t stop the bookmobile in time . . .

“C’mon,” I told the bookmobile. “Stop, already. You can do it.”

Denise shrieked. “Minnie! Turn! You have to turn!”

But I couldn’t. That would be the absolute worst thing I could do. My truck-driver training had taught me that if I swerved while braking this hard, the bookmobile’s high center of gravity would tip us over, flopping us onto the side, or, worse, rolling us over completely. Books would fly off the shelves, each one a dangerous projectile, and we’d tumble over and over. Above all, what I couldn’t do was turn.

“Turn!” Denise shouted.

The tires slipped on the wet asphalt, slipped on the wet leaves, and we kept moving inexorably toward the pit.

“Minnie!” Denise was sobbing. “We’re going to die and it’s all your fault!”

Seriously? If I’d had even a fraction of a second to spare, I would have shot her one of Eddie’s Looks That Could Kill, but I didn’t have that much time. I had to steer us straight and I had to pump the brakes and I had to use all my will and strength and might to stop us. I had to stop us. I had to.

Denise’s shriek went up an octave and she covered her eyes.

Eddie started howling.

I kept braking. I kept steering.

Braking.

Steering.

Braking . . .

I was almost crying from the tension, my lower lip sharp with pain from biting, my chest tight from holding my breath, my hands so tight on the wheel that they’d never come off.

Slower and slower we went, but we were still coming closer to the edge of the gaping maw. How many feet? Too many.

Then the pavement was gone from view and we were still moving forward.

Denise’s shriek escalated to the upper range of an operatic soprano.

Eddie’s howls came close to matching hers.

I breathed a silent prayer.

The bookmobile’s front tires bumped forward over the edge of the washout . . . and then we stopped.

I turned off the engine immediately. The only things I could hear was rain spackling the windshield and the tick-tick-tick of the cooling motor.

“We’re . . . not dead?” Denise uncovered her eyes.

“Not even close.” But I wasn’t sure how stable we were. The washout looked wide, but the light was so poor that I couldn’t judge the depth. Ten feet? Twenty? I didn’t know and couldn’t guess. And if so much of the road had already washed away, how much more might go with it? “We need to get out, okay? Slow and easy.”

“I’m out of here.” Denise flung off her seat belt and scrambled for the rear door.

“Easy, pal,” I told Eddie. He was cowering in the back corner of his carrier. “Sorry about the noise. I’ll make sure it never happens again, okay?”

He hunched back ever farther, clearly not believ- ing me.

“Yeah, can’t say I blame you.” I released his carrier and lifted him free. “You were even closer to her than I was, and your ears are a lot more sensitive than mine.”

“Mrr.”

“You are such an Eddie,” I said, lugging him the length of the bookmobile and down the steps. “You really couldn’t be anything else, could you?”

“Now what are you talking about?” Denise demanded. “Are you talking to that cat again? That’s so weird. I like cats and all, but you—”

Eddie said, “Mrr!” at the same time I heard an odd metallic thunk! kind of noise, and before my brain could register what the noise was, the report of a rifle reverberated back and forth across the hills.

Someone had shot at us. At the bookmobile. At my cat.

Denise screamed and ran around to the other side of the bookmobile. Even in the murky dark, I could see her arms waving in the air as she scuttled to safety. Eddie’s carrier was firmly in my hand and I walked hurriedly to where Denise was crouching behind a tire. I thought fast and hard, trying to push down the red-hot fury that was rising in me.

Someone had shot at Eddie, dammit, and whoever it had been was going to pay and pay hard.

I took a deep breath and tried to assess our situation in a calm and rational manner. This was difficult, because I was so angry that I wanted to charge up that hill, shouting angrily at the top of my lungs, but I knew that would be stupid in the extreme.

Calm. I needed to stay calm and figure out how safe we were behind the bookmobile. But I had no idea. All I knew for certain was someone up the hill was shooting at us. Then again, maybe the shooter was already gone, but from here there was no way to know.

“Wh-what are we going to do?” Denise asked.

Her teeth were chattering, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t from cold. I felt a surge of sympathy for her. Three weeks ago today, her husband had been killed, and here she was, afraid for her own life, her children one parent away from being orphans. Sure, the children were adults, but they still needed their mom.

I looked at her. “Do you have your phone?”

“My what? Oh. My phone.” There was a rustling as she searched her pockets. “No, I must have left it . . .” She gasped out a giggle. “It’s in my hand. How stupid—here I am looking for it and it’s in my hand.”

Now was not the time to give Denise a hug and tell her it was okay to be stupid once in a while. “Do you have any reception?” I asked. “Call nine-one-one. Tell them we’re disabled and that a shot—”

Ping!

We ducked, because we couldn’t help it, and as the rifle’s report echoed, Eddie thudded up against the back of his carrier, hissing.

“That shots have been fired.”

“I know how to call nine-one-one,” Denise snapped, thumbing the phone, which lit her face with a faint blue glow. “And the reception’s crappy. I can’t believe you got us stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. Of all the places to run into a washout, you— Oh, hi,” she said into the phone. “What’s my emergency? Well, I have a couple of them going on.”

Ping!

This time, the bullet slammed into the ground at the back of the bookmobile.

Denise shrieked, and I felt sorry for the person at the other end of the phone.

I laid a hand on Eddie’s carrier and knew what I had to do. “Here you go, bud.” I unlatched the door and swung it open wide. “Can’t have you trapped in there.” In the short time we’d been outside, my eyes had started adjusting to the dim light. Objects were beginning to have defined edges, and Eddie’s carrier was one of them, making it a clear target for anyone inclined to turn it into it one.

“Half an hour?” Denise asked loudly, even as I tried to shush her. “What do you mean it’ll take someone half an hour to get here?”

Outstanding. Denise’s voice carried like no other. If the shooter was listening to us—and there was every reason to assume so—the shooter now knew we were sitting ducks for thirty minutes. Even if someone showed up in half that time, there was still plenty of time to . . . to . . .

I soft-footed it to the rear bumper. Unless the shooter had a night scope, there was no way my small and dark shape could be seen. And if the shooter were good, Denise would have been picked off the second she’d fled the bookmobile.

My breaths were short and quick as I stood there, convincing myself of my safety. I studied the hillside, looking for signs of life, looking for anything, really, and there, not a hundred feet away, was a slight widening in the treetops. A narrow trail. Perfect.

As noiselessly as I could, with my hair pulled forward to cover my pale face, I slipped out from behind the bookmobile.

Behind me, Denise was still talking to the 911 dispatcher. For the first time, I was glad her voice was so loud. Her talking would focus the shooter’s attention. I could quietly make my way along the trail and carefully sneak up to see who was doing the shooting. All I needed was an identification. All I needed was to see if it was Allison or Shannon or someone I’d never considered.

Because maybe I didn’t know who was shooting at us. Maybe I’d never met this person. Maybe I’d never once checked out his books or answered his questions about how to set up an e-mail account. Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as I’d thought.

Slightly cheered, I walked slowly across the road and started up the hill. Eyes detected movement like nothing else, so I made no sudden moves and tried not to think about how stupid I was being. On a scale of one to ten, this was probably way on the high end. Eddie would have an opinion on that, but he’d skittered under the bookmobile when I’d opened the carrier door, and I hoped he’d stay there until this was all over, one way or another.

The leaves under my feet were saturated with water, and I was suddenly grateful for all the rain we’d had. Wet leaves were quiet; dry leaves were noisy. Then again, if we hadn’t had so much rain, the road would never have washed out and we wouldn’t be in this mess, so I stopped the efforts of appreciation.

Every few steps I took, I stopped and listened. Denise was still talking, rain was still dripping down, and, unless spontaneous combustion was a dark and soundless reality, whoever had shot at my cat was still on this hillside.

I pressed on, moving ever closer to the shooter, treading quietly up the path, feeling my silent way in the gloom through trees and brush and rocks.

She had to be up here somewhere. Had to be—

Bang!

The rifle fired, and I saw a flash of light. From the end of the gun’s barrel, I realized. By shooting, the shooter had revealed her—or maybe his—location: off to my left and slightly down the hill.

Excellent.

I edged closer. But not too close. All I wanted was a positive identification. I wasn’t hero material. All I wanted was to see who this person was.

I was practically tiptoeing through the forest, which was silly, but I couldn’t stop myself. With my gaze fastened on the spot where I’d seen the flash, I took slow steps closer and closer. I heard the rustle of fabric—the shooter was moving!

Not breathing, I froze solid until there was another rustle and some metallic noises that I couldn’t identify. Something gun oriented, no doubt, and I suddenly wished my self-defense classes from last summer had included working with rifles in the dark.

Then my brain clicked.

Reloading the magazine. The shooter was filling up the rifle’s magazine with new bullets. Which was bad, but there was a good side. Her—or his—attention would be on the work at hand, not on what might be approaching from the rear.

I edged forward, oh, so quietly, breathing slowly and evenly, my skin tingling with tension. Every cubic inch of me was wide awake and alert.

Closer . . .

Just a little closer . . .

There was a plastic-sounding click, and a tiny circle of light appeared. The beam from a tiny flashlight danced around, illuminating the ground, a small pile of bullets, the magazine, the rifle, and a hand gloved in black.

Show me your face, I thought fiercely. Show your face!

The flashlight dropped to the ground and the shooter muttered a low curse. Another black glove reached to pick up the flashlight, and, as it picked it up, the beam skidded across the shooter’s face.

I gasped, loudly enough to be heard.

The shooter picked up the rifle and pointed it in my direction. “Who’s there? Come out right now, or I’ll shoot!”

There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to go. No possible place to hide, and there was a gun pointing straight at me. How could I have been so stupid?

Possibilities flashed through my mind. It was dark. If I ran, there was a good chance the bullets would completely miss me. And there was a good chance there weren’t any bullets in the rifle anyway, with that magazine on the ground. Maybe there was one in the chamber, or maybe there were two magazines. I didn’t know enough about guns to know what was most likely, but I did know I wasn’t going to stand here and get ordered around by the person who killed Roger Slade.

“It’s Minnie, isn’t it?” Allison Korthase said.

I heard a sound behind me, from down low. Not a swish, exactly, but not a rustle, either. Something in between, or maybe a combination. A swistle? Could there be such a thing? And if not, why? More to the point, why was I having such inane thoughts when a gun was pointed at me?

“I know it’s you,” Allison said, her voice growing louder. “Where are you?”

Right. Like I was going to tell her. Do that, and I might as well mark my location with a flare while screaming “Shoot me!”

Allison’s small flashlight beamed into life. “I know you’re there, Minnie. It can only be you. I can still hear Denise down there, yapping away to nine-one-one. I’m so cold,” Allison whined in a Denise-like voice. “I’m so scared. I’m so worried about being killed.” Allison dropped the mimickry. “Like anyone cares.”

The flashlight danced closer to my feet. I edged backward. If I could get a little farther away, I’d make a run for it, bullets or no. In my opinion, which wasn’t exactly expert but was all I had, Allison was ready to kill again, and I needed to get clear of her murderous intentions.

“Come on,” she said impatiently. “I know you’re just a librarian, but there’s no reason for you to be such a scaredy-cat.”

Just a librarian? I opened my mouth to argue the point, but before I could say a word, my retreating heel found a rock and I fell to the ground hard, arms windmilling, the air rushing out of me in a painful “Oof!”

“There you are.” Allison chuckled, and her voice turned snide and sarcastic. “What were you trying to do, run backward? How stupid are you? You’d have thought that someone with a job like yours would be at least a little smart, but here you are, in the woods alone, up against someone like me, who is smart and has a gun. Stupid.” She practically spat the word. “Stupid!”

I’d been pushing myself back, trying to get out of her reach, moving away from where I’d fallen, doing my best not to be stupid, when the swistle noise ran past me and toward Allison, a low, rumbling growl moving along with it.

“Eddie!” I shouted, scrambling to my feet. “No! Get back!”

Allison screamed. “Get it off! Get it off!” The rifle clattered to the ground.

In the last vestiges of the day’s dim light, I could see her waving her arms, flailing at Eddie, who was growling, hissing, and climbing up her back, all at the same time.

I ran forward and scooped up the rifle, momentarily unsure whether to hang on to it or to fling it into the woods, where neither one of us would be able to find it until daylight.

“It’s a bobcat,” she yelled. “It’s a mountain lion. It’s going to kill me! Minnie, get it off!”

She was in a full-blown panic. Allison, I suddenly realized, was afraid of cats. She wasn’t allergic, as she’d claimed to Denise. She was scared.

I turned and placed the rifle behind a tree.

“Minnie!” Her shrieks were becoming tinged with desperation. “You have to do something!”

Oh, I’d do something all right.

“You’re a good boy,” I told Eddie. He was on the back of Allison’s neck, clutching onto the collar of her coat for all he was worth and howling into her ear. “If you can hang on a little bit longer, we’ll be good.”

“MRRR!!” he said, which I took for agreement.

I lifted up my coat, unbuckled my belt, pulled it off, and pushed the belt’s length though the buckle, creating a loop. I stepped forward and bumped into Allison, making her scream just a little louder.

Grabbing one of her arms, I looped the belt around her wrist and pulled it tight. She struggled, but I held hard and reached around for her other arm. “Now would be a good time,” I panted to Eddie, “for you to help out just a little more.”

He scrambled up off Allison’s back and onto her shoulder, where he gripped hard and yowled like the hounds of hell. Even I was a little startled by the volume of noise coming out of my thirteen-pound cat.

Allison sank to her knees, whimpering.

I took hold of her free arm, pulled it behind her back, and wrapped my belt tight around both wrists, looping and tying it firm.

“Get him off,” she whispered, tears in her words. “Please, just get him off.”

And after a minute, I did.