Cat With a Clue

Chapter 10

“Excuse me,” said a polite voice.

I jumped. “Sorry,” I said, moving away from the middle of the grocery store’s aisle, which was where I’d parked myself and a small cart. “I was just . . . thinking.”

The sixtyish woman sent a vague smile in my direction and moved on past.

“Good job,” I muttered. “Next thing is you’ll start talking to yourself in public.” I glanced around fast, but I was alone with the spices and baking supplies.

Which, truly, was a strange place for me to be, considering my inclination to cook as little as possible. Then again, even noncooks had to feed themselves once in a while in order to avoid spending too much disposable income in restaurants.

Then I remembered that eating out could be considered doing my bit to help the local economy. Commendable, that’s what it was, not indulgent.

Cheered, I faced the spices and tried to remember what it was I used for the steak dry rub I’d made last summer and liked so much. I shoved my hands into my pockets and tried to think, but my brain kept going back to my chat with Rianne and the conversation about her aunt Kim.

It was easy enough to imagine that a pending bankruptcy could drive almost anyone to do deeds she—or he—would never have considered otherwise. But in this situation, I still had no idea if there was anything involved that was worth a lot of money.

“Maybe whatever it is, it’s worth something that isn’t money,” I murmured. Which led me back to the possibility I’d posed to Ash and Detective Inwood, that this thing someone was looking for might be a tell-all journal. Of course, that didn’t tie back to Aunt Kim’s need for money, so maybe—

“Can I help you?” asked a male voice.

Startled, I whirled around to face the twentysomething store employee who’d asked the question. He wore black pants, a black cap, and a polyester short-sleeved shirt in a color that did nothing for his skin tone. “Uh, no, thanks. I was just . . . looking.” As I manufactured a fake smile, I realized that I’d seen him recently. My fake smile grew fixed. This was the guy who’d looked vaguely familiar at Cookie Tom’s. This was the guy who’d yelled at me for cutting in line. Angry Guy.

The expression on his face shifted from polite to hostile. He was recognizing me, and there was no Cookie Tom around to save me.

I put my chin up. I was short, but I was strong and invincible in many ways, none of which I could remember just then, but if I had a few minutes, I was sure I would. I didn’t need Tom. I had myself.

“You’re that librarian,” he said, making it sound like a swearword. Certainly it was italicized.

I glanced at his name tag. Shane Pratley. “Hi, Shane,” I said politely, holding out my hand. “Yes, I’m the bookmobile librarian. Minnie Hamilton. We got off to a bad start the other day. I understand that you’re upset about the arrangement I have with Tom, but I think I can explain.”

My arm was getting tired from holding my hand out for so long, but I gamely kept it up there. “Tom’s a longtime supporter of the bookmobile, you see. He’s a big believer in getting books to people who can’t come to the library. His margin is so slim that he can’t afford a big donation, even though he’d like to, so giving me a discount on cookies and letting me jump the line is his way of—”

“I don’t care what Tom thinks.” Shane pushed my hand away. “You got no right to take cuts. That’s just wrong.”

What was wrong was his rudeness. This was a man who was desperately needed to borrow an etiquette book from the library. Why was it always the people who needed a library the most were the least likely to visit one?

Of course, this was a tricky situation, because in principle I agreed with Shane; cutting in line was wrong. Then again, if I wanted to provide cookies to the bookmobile folks, and I did, zipping to the front of the line was the only way it was going to happen.

It was a moral question and an ethical dilemma and, for once, the voice in my head that sounded so much like my mother’s whenever one of these situations turned up was silent.

“I understand why you’re angry,” I said. “If it was me in your position, I might—”

“But you aren’t, are you?” He glared. “You’re the fancy librarian, driving around, making yourself queen of the town, looking down on us little people.”

“I . . . What?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, sneering. “I seen you around, your nose up in the air, acting like you’re better than everyone else. You and your friends with the restaurant and the art gallery and the boats and the big houses. You’re not from here. Why don’t you go back where you came from, you and all your rich friends.”

Clearly, young Shane had no idea how little money a librarian made. Or that at least half my friends had been born in Tonedagana County. Yet he knew so much enough about me that my skin itched.

“I live here,” I said firmly. “This is my home. I’m sorry you resent that I’ve moved to Chilson, but—”

“If you were really sorry,” he snarled, “you’d leave Chilson to the people who belong here.”

He spun and marched off, leaving me to gape after him. I’d run into his attitude before, that only people born here truly belonged, but it wasn’t even close to the majority opinion.

I took in a deep breath, another one, one more, and went back to my shopping. But when I realized I’d started to add a jar of bay leaves to my empty cart instead of basil, I gave up, returned the cart to the front of the store, and headed back out into the sunshine.

Halfway home, my brain began to unscramble and I started thinking again. I mentally walked back through the events of the past couple of weeks and came to an abrupt realization.

“Huh,” I said. Angry Shane Guy had caught me cutting in line two days before the break-in at the bookmobile garage. He clearly knew who I was and where I worked and, just as clearly, he didn’t like me. Was it possible that he was on a one-man mission to rid Chilson of people who hadn’t been born Up North? It sounded bizarre, but the guy’s anger at someone he didn’t even know was also bizarre.

Was it possible he’d made a mess of the bookmobile just to make my life more difficult?

And if he could do that, could he have killed Andrea?

* * *

“So, what do you think?” I asked Eddie.

My cat, of course, didn’t reply. We were on the houseboat’s front deck, and he was busy staring at my plate, which was on my lap. The two of us had started out on separate lounge chairs, but once Eddie had realized I was eating the sub sandwich I’d picked up for dinner at Fat Boys, he’d moved over to my chair. At first he sat at the end, down by my feet. Then he’d inched closer and closer, ever so slowly, and now that I was on the last two bites, he was on my thighs and practically had his chin on the edge of the plate.

I’d tried to gently shove him away and even onto the floor, but when Eddie decided to become an immovable object, no brute force in the universe could possibly dislodge him.

I tossed in the penultimate bite of veggie sub—see, Mom? I am eating properly—and chewed and swallowed. “No comment?” I asked Eddie. “I would have thought for sure that you’d have something to say about my two suspects.”

The last bite of sandwich was still in my hand, and Eddie’s eyes were intent on following its every move.

“There’s Kim, a DeKeyser daughter, who people are saying is about to declare bankruptcy. If we’re going to assume that Andrea was trying to steal something valuable—say, a book—maybe Kim knew what it was and killed her to get it.

“But wait,” I said, popping in the last bite of sandwich. Eddie watched it disappear. When I’d finished chewing and swallowing, I said, “There’s also Shane. For whatever reason, he’s mad at the world and he’s taking it out on the folks he feels have invaded his town. Is he mad enough to break into places he’s never been before? Did Andrea make him mad, too?”

I thought about that for a minute, wondering how I could find out if Andrea and Shane had known each other.

“Ash needs to know about Shane,” I said, petting Eddie and watching a generous collection of cat hair slide off his back and spin away into the air. “Not sure what good it will do, but you never know.”

One white-tipped paw slowly stretched out long, and I let Eddie try to gather up a crumb from the sandwich bun. “Don’t make this a habit, okay? One time only.”

“Mrr,” he said, and reached out a second time.

“Say, you know what else happened on the way home?” I glanced over to the boat next door. No Eric, which was just as well, because I was about to enter the gossip zone. “Remember that construction site downtown, where they’re renovating that old department store into condos and offices? You’ll never guess who I saw hauling bricks in a wheelbarrow.”

Eddie was paying no attention to me, so I pushed the last little crumb of bun his way. It was a bad idea, though, to let him take food off my plate. With Eddie, all it took was once to establish a bad habit. How long it took for him to establish a good habit, I didn’t know.

“It was Mitchell,” I told my uncaring cat. “Mitchell Koyne. You know, tall and loud and typically unemployed?” It wasn’t unknown for Mitchell to take on summer construction jobs, but if he was working at the toy store, why was he doing hard labor? It was very unlike Mitchell, and I was starting to worry that aliens had invaded his body.

“What do you think?” I asked.

But for once, Eddie had nothing to say.

* * *

After I took care of the dishes (meaning I threw away the foam container and napkins, and washed the plate and the fork that I’d used to eat what had spilled out of the sandwich) I debated on what to do with the rest of my evening.

It was a beautiful night, and even though I could easily continue to sit outside and read, I felt a pull to get up and do something. The absence of yard work on a houseboat was usually a bonus, but today I could have used a few weeds to pull.

I considered the social possibilities. Ash was working. Kristen was working, Aunt Frances and Otto were at a concert in Petoskey’s Bay View, Pam was working, Rafe was sanding drywall and being cranky about it, Holly had houseguests for a couple of nights, and, since it was past seven o’clock, it was too late to start calling around and finding out what my other friends were doing.

“What about you?” I asked my furry friend. “Want to go for a bike ride?”

Eddie, who was sprawled across the boat’s dashboard, opened one eye a fraction of an inch, gave me a look of utter disdain, and went back to sleep.

“I take it that’s a no?”

His mouth opened and closed silently.

Smiling, I kissed the top of his fuzzy head and headed outside.

* * *

Five minutes later, I was rolling along on two wheels, the sun on my face and the wind in my hair. Which would turn it into a frizzy mess later on, but I wasn’t out to impress anyone, so who cared?

I pedaled up from the marina, riding around the edge of downtown to avoid the ice-cream-cone and fudge-eating tourists, and thought about who, if she or he had been in town, I might actually want to impress.

There wasn’t a sports figure in the universe that I cared about enough to do more than make sure my shirt was tucked in. Same thing for actors, singers, and politicians. If I could go back in history, I’d have loved to meet Amelia Earhart, but wanting to talk to someone and impressing them were two different things.

No, the only kind of people I’d ever consider trying to impress were authors. Barbara Kingsolver, for one. Louise Erdrich for another. Plus Laurie R. King, John McPhee, Ann Patchett, Malcolm Gladwell, Mary Roach, and lots more. But, again, all those folks were people I wanted to meet more than to impress.

Of course, there was one person I’d recently wanted to impress but upon whom I’d totally failed to make a positive impression. And I was uneasily certain the consequences were going to last a long time. Ash was still saying that his mom liked me just fine, but he was wrong about that; he just didn’t realize it yet.

“Seriously wrong,” I said out loud.

“Are you sure?”

I stopped my slow pedaling, squinted, and looked around. Had I really heard someone say something?

“Is ‘seriously wrong’ a proper term?”

It was a young voice, it sounded familiar, and it sounded like it was coming from the sky, which made no sense. I looked left and right and finally focused on where I was. Right in front of the oh-so-symmetrical house in which the prodigy Dana Coburn lived. Only where was he? She?

“Are there degrees of wrong?” Dana continued. “Or is modifying ‘wrong’ as nonsensical as modifying the word ‘unique’?”

“There’s no modifying ‘unique.’” I slid off the seat, straddled the bike, and looked up into a large maple tree.

“Glad to hear that.” Dana slid backward on a large branch until he—she—came up against the massive tree trunk. Sitting up, the child asked, “Is it always going to be painful to listen to people assault the English language? My mom says I’ll get used to it.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”

Dana scrambled down the tree. “That’s not a satisfying answer.”

“No, but it’s an honest one.”

Two small feet hit the ground with a light and very Eddie-like thump. Dana ignored the dirt and bits of tree bark clinging to shirt and pants and faced me. “Explain, please.”

“Sure.” I leaned forward, putting my elbows on my handlebars. “You’ll grow accustomed to some things people say, maybe even most, but there will always be a few things that drive you batty.”

Dana nodded. “I understand. It makes me sad to hear anyone say ‘ain’t,’ but I attribute that to poor education. Hearing people say ‘kind of unique,’ however, makes me want to tear out their hair in large clumps.”

“You’re not alone,” I said.

“You’re not like my mom.” Dana grinned. “You don’t talk to me like I’m a little kid.”

“Well, you’re not mine. That makes it easier.”

“Mom’s always after me to comb my hair and wash my hands.” Dana looked down at the former tree parts still clinging to shirt and pants. “She wants me to wear dresses to Sunday dinner.”

“Moms will do that,” I said, wondering why, now that I had a solid answer to the female or male question, I was so satisfied. It was very possible that I put too much importance on gender. Did it matter so much to attach a pronoun to someone?

“I wish she wouldn’t do so much of it.” Dana kicked at the bottom of the tree. “All she wants to do is change me.”

It was a feeling I understood well, but I also knew that Dana’s mom was doing her best. Which meant it was best that I divert the conversation immediately.

“So I talked to Rianne Howe the other day,” I said. “Have you ever been in the back office of Benton’s?”

Dana’s face lit up. “You’ve been there? I’ve only read about it. Is the ship’s wheel still there?”

For once, she sounded like a normal kid. “I bet Rianne would let you give it a spin, if you asked. Especially since you know so much about her family.”

“No, that’s okay.” Dana’s expression went suddenly still. “I don’t like . . . I mean . . . I don’t go . . .”

Her voice trailed off and her words rose into the treetop and wafted away. Clearly, I’d wandered into territory where I didn’t belong. “Anyway,” I said easily, “the wheel is still there. And there are model ships all over the place. Maps of the lakes, too.”

Dana, who had been studying the tops of her shoes, looked up at me. “Charts. Navigation maps are charts. Are they recent or old ones?”

“No idea,” I said. “Why?”

“The older the chart, the more valuable it is as a collectible.”

I squinted, trying to remember, but gave up quickly as to not tax my limited mental faculties. “They looked very chartlike is all I can say.”

Dana shoved her hands into her pockets. “It would be unlikely that they’re old, given the circumstances.”

“What circumstances are those?”

The kid tipped her head to one side. “Perhaps I didn’t tell you. My mother came into the room before I could completely finish describing the last few years of Talia DeKeyser. Mom says this part is gossip, anyway.”

Before she could go all ethical on me, I jumped in. “Talia’s great-niece was killed. A store has been broken into, along with the library and the bookmobile. Any information might be helpful.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Dana glanced toward her house, then back at me. “As you know, Talia DeKeyser spent the last few months of her life at the nursing home.”

I nodded.

“One of the reasons Talia DeKeyser’s children had her moved to the home was”—Dana looked at the house again—“that she was giving everything away.”

I didn’t grasp why anyone would care what Talia did with her possessions. Then I clued in. “Everything? Heirlooms, you mean?”

Dana nodded. “They weren’t valuable things, just family items. It was when she tried to give the mail carrier a vase that their great-grandmother DeKeyser had brought over from Europe that the daughters caught wind of what their mother was doing.”

“Alzheimer’s,” I murmured, and Dana agreed.

“From my research, I gather that it can be hard to detect when it is late onset, which Talia DeKeyser’s obviously was. I can imagine that it’s easy to attribute forgetfulness to age instead of to consider more dire implications.”

Though I’d already grown accustomed to hearing an adult vocabulary and sentence structure come out of a child, it was a jolt to hear her understand the reluctance to diagnose an elderly parent with a difficult and devastating disease. Not only was the kid bizarrely intelligent, but she also had empathy.

I looked at Dana, wondering if she’d been born this way or if something had already happened in her short life that had instilled that difficult emotion. It was hard to be empathetic; sympathy and pity you could assuage with a check to an appropriate nonprofit foundation. Empathy, though. That could spur you to acts of—

“Minnie? Hi!” Jenny Coburn came out of the house and down the center of the front steps. “How nice to see you. Dana, did you want to invite Ms. Hamilton inside? It’s getting dark; the mosquitoes will be out soon. If you’d like to keep talking, why don’t you come in?”

Dana and I shared a look. I wouldn’t have minded getting to know my young new friend a little better, and I had the feeling she felt the same about me, but doing so under the watchful eye of Mom would be difficult.

“That would be nice,” I said, “but I have to get going. Things to do, socks to wash. All that.”

“Okay. See you later.” Dana walked off to the house, going up the steps the same way her mother had come down them: exactly in the center.

Jenny looked after her, frowning a little, then turned back to me and smiled brightly. “It’s hard to remember what time it is, the sunset is so late up here this time of year. I’m sure she didn’t mean to be rude; she’s just tired.”

I blinked. I hadn’t thought anything about Dana’s abrupt departure and didn’t know what to say. Happily, Jenny kept talking, and I didn’t have to say anything.

“It’s so nice that you’re making friends with Dana. That’s the one thing about this neighborhood; no children.”

I glanced around at the stately homes, most owned by the same families for generations. “Aren’t there grandchildren running around all summer?”

“Yes, but they tend to stay in their family groups, doing the same things they’ve always done with the same people they’ve always done things with.” She sighed. “It’s hard for a well-adjusted adult to break into an established social pattern, let alone someone with . . . someone like Dana.”

“I think she’s a great kid,” I said.

“You do?” Jennifer looked at me. “You really think so? She’s . . . well, you see what she’s like.”

“Different.” I nodded. Which wasn’t what Jennifer had meant, but that was the root of it. “And being different is hardest when you’re young.”

“True.” Jenny sighed. “My husband and I, we’re not like her.”

I flashed back to how both she and Dana had trod the front steps and guessed that mother and daughter weren’t as far apart as Mom thought.

“We try to understand her, but we just don’t.” Jenny looked back at the house again, then at me. “Do you have children?”

I shook my head. “All I can handle right now is one cat.”

“Well, I hope you have kids someday. You have a knack for drawing them out.”

I was pretty sure she was wrong. Most days I had no idea how to treat kids other than as short adults. People said when I had my own children it would be different, but I was also pretty sure I wasn’t nearly mature enough to have kids. Besides, they’d be embarrassed to death if people knew that their mom talked to cats.

“Stop by again,” Jennifer said. “Anytime.”

I told her I would, wished her a good night, and pedaled off into the darkening evening, thinking about chance encounters and inappropriate gifts and about Talia and about the great mystery of what the future holds for all of us at the end.

* * *

“Minnie? Is anything wrong?” Otto, in jeans and a polo shirt, peered at me the next morning.

I was standing on his front doorstep, my skin prickly in the chill air. “It’s time for breakfast,” I told him.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes it is. It is definitely that time of day.” He raised his eyebrows, still waiting for an answer to the question he’d asked.

“Have you been to breakfast this summer?” I asked, nodding at my aunt’s place.

“Well, actually, no.” He looked at the big house across the street. “I haven’t been invited, and I didn’t want to barge in without being asked.”

My aunt was an idiot. “Come on.” I grabbed his hand and tugged. “I’m inviting you.”

“I can’t possibly.” Otto pulled out of my grip. “Frances will—”

“When’s the last time you saw her?” I asked, crossing my arms. “How many times have you seen her since the guests arrived?”

“Well.” He rubbed his chin. “We had dinner . . . No, that was the day before the first one arrived. I think we had lunch last week. We were supposed to go to a concert in Petoskey the other day, but there was a plumbing emergency at the boardinghouse and she had to cancel.”

“Otto, it’s only June,” I said. “If you don’t make yourself part of the group, you’re not going to see anything of her until after Labor Day.”

He continued with the chin rubbing. “That’s not what she led me to believe.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s because she doesn’t quite get how much work running that place is. Trust me. I’ve been watching this for four summers in a row. If she ever has the time to go out and do something with you, she’s going to be too tired to do it.”

“That sounds remarkably unappealing,” Otto said. “I’d hoped to spend a lot of time with her the next few months.”

“Well, then.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Get over there.”

“Minnie, I’m not sure I should—”

“You may not be, but I am. Come on.” I tugged at his hand a second time, and this time didn’t let go until his front door was closed and we were crossing the street.

The entire way, he was hemming and hawing and sounding more like he’d sounded last December. Back then he’d been hesitant about introducing himself to my aunt, then, after a little push, had blossomed into the confident man who’d been squiring her around town for the past six months.

I ignored every one of his worried comments and practically dragged him up the steps and through the boardinghouse’s front door. “Good morning,” I called out. “Any chance you have a little extra?”

When I’d opened the door, I’d heard a congenial babble of voices and the tinkling of silverware. As soon as I spoke, however, the noises ceased. “Minnie?” my aunt said. “Is that you?”

A chair scraped backward and I knew she’d be standing up. “Not just me,” I said, towing Otto toward the dining room. “I brought an uninvited guest. He said he’s never had a boardinghouse breakfast, and I think it’s high time he gets one.”

“Did you bring Ash?” Aunt Frances appeared in the doorway. Behind her, the sun was streaming through the leaves of the trees in the backyard, slanting into the screened porch and the dining room. Her tall, angular figure was rimmed with sunlight, giving her a dazzling aura and making her look as if she’d walked straight out of the sun.

Otto caught his breath at the sight.

“Not Ash,” I said, shoving at Otto’s shoulder. “Just your across-the-street neighbor. He didn’t want to barge in uninvited, but I made him come over anyway.” I was about to add that I hoped it was okay until I saw my aunt’s radiant smile.

She reached out for Otto’s hands. “Why didn’t I think of this before? Of course you should come over for breakfast. You don’t need an invitation, for heaven’s sake.” She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek, then turned and escorted him to the dining room.

“Everyone,” she said, “this is my good friend Otto Bingham. Otto, going clockwise, that’s Eva and Forrest, Liz, Morris, Victoria, and Welles.”

All six of them greeted Otto with smiles and cheerful ‘nice to meet you’s. In short order, they were sliding chairs around and setting another place. Liz, who was at the buffet, getting out silverware, looked at me. “Minnie, are you eating?”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but there’s no time. It’s a bookmobile day and Eddie’s in the car, ready to go forth and conquer new bookish territory.”

My aunt wrapped a blueberry muffin in a paper napkin and put it into my hand. “Thank you,” she whispered, “for Otto.”

But there was no need for her words. Seeing the happiness on her face was more than thanks enough.