Cat With a Clue

Chapter 12

Detective Inwood stared at me over the top of a coffee mug. He blew off the steam, sending it my way, and lifted the mug toward his mouth. I looked away, hoping somehow that if I didn’t look, I wouldn’t be able to hear the slurping noises as clearly as I had a moment before, but, once again, the technique was a complete failure.

The detective’s swallowing sounds filled the small room. I sat as patiently as I could. After all, it was a Saturday morning, and I’d expected to tell my concerns to the on-duty deputy up front. Once I’d started talking, however, he’d called the detective, and here we were, back in the interview room. Ash was off this weekend, helping his mom with some outside chores, and I hadn’t wanted to bother him.

“My apologies, Ms. Hamilton,” the detective said, setting the mug onto the table. “My daughter and our new grandchild are staying with us for a few nights while her husband is out of town on business. It’s wreaking havoc on my sleep patterns. What do you have for me this morning? More mayhem, with dire complications for the future?”

He quirked up a smile. “And please tell me your cat isn’t involved this time. The sheriff’s been talking about getting an office cat ever since that night she spent with your Eddie.”

That had been months ago. If Sheriff Richardson was serious about an office cat, I was sure she would have brought one in by now, but I put on a thoughtful expression. “I know of a litter of kittens that’s almost old enough to go out on their own. I’ll have to remember to tell the sheriff.”

Inwood gave me a pained look, and I almost laughed out loud.

“What I wanted to tell you,” I said, “doesn’t have anything to do with cats.” My imagination almost saw Eddie picking up his head at the flagrant heresy and sending me a loud “Mrr!” but I plowed ahead.

“You’ve heard what happened at the Petoskey library?” I asked.

The detective frowned. “I have not.” I started to tell him what little I knew, but he put up his hand to stop my flow of words, pulled his cell phone from his inside suit pocket, and pushed some buttons. “Morning, Scott,” he said. “What’s with your library?”

As he listened to Scott, whoever he was, Inwood’s gaze came my way but focused on something behind my head. The wall, maybe, or—I mentally summoned a map of the area—maybe he was seeing far past me, all the way to the library in Petoskey. It was a fairly new building, and I ached for the library director and staff and the hundreds of people who used it regularly. A fire had to be about the worst thing that could happen to a library. Even if the books hadn’t actually burned, there’d be smoke damage or water damage from the sprinklers or firefighters.

I cringed to think of what it would take to bring a library back from a large fire, and started thinking about what we could do to help. First, I’d find out what books they needed most; maybe we had extras, or could at least lend them some of ours. Then, if they needed hands to help clean, I’d make phone calls to the libraries all over northern lower Michigan. For something like this, people would turn out to help in a heartbeat. Then, if they needed—

“The fire,” Detective Inwood said, putting his phone away, “was limited to a meeting room. An exterior window to the room was broken, and an incendiary device of some sort was thrown inside. The smoke detectors went off at two a.m., and a night custodian entered the room. He used a nearby extinguisher to put out the fire, but inhaled enough smoke that he was taken to the hospital by ambulance. He was treated and released.”

Inwood picked up his coffee mug. “The meeting room suffered damage to the furniture, walls, carpet, and ceiling, but there was no damage to any other portion of the building. Or its contents.”

I slid forward on my chair. While I was beyond pleased that the library was essentially fine, that wasn’t why I was here. “It was a diversion,” I said. “Someone who didn’t want to be seen needed uninterrupted time to look at their books.”

The detective’s eyebrows went up, but he didn’t reply until after he’d upended the mug and drank down the last of its contents. “How so?” he asked.

So I told him. I told him about the kindness of a long-ago DeKeyser to an artist wanting to paint flowers. I told him how the artist had sent a copy of the completed book to the DeKeysers. I told him where Cade had seen the book. And, finally, I told him the current value of Chastain’s Wildflowers.

Then I sat back and waited.

Which wasn’t much of a wait, because he immediately said, “The X-Acto knife. That’s why it was in the library. Wildflowers may be worth a lot of money intact, but if you cut it apart and sell it page by page, you probably wouldn’t have to prove your ownership, and it’s possible you’d end up with a lot more money.”

I nodded.

“But why would anyone go to the trouble of doing that?” he asked. “Why wouldn’t she or the killer simply steal the book?”

I’d thought about that. “They probably assumed the security at the library is a lot tighter than it really is. Most downstate libraries have a chip embedded in the book that sounds an alarm if it’s not deactivated at checkout. And she probably figured we have security cameras that get reviewed for theft. Seeing someone walk out with a book in the middle of the night would be a huge red flag. Just seeing someone walking?” I shrugged. “If the cameras existed and we noticed it, we’d probably wonder, but if there wasn’t anything missing, I doubt we’d do anything.”

“Well.” Inwood started to lift his mug, realized it was empty, and stood. “Now, that’s worth brewing a new pot of coffee for.”

He smiled at me, but I couldn’t manage to return it.

Because I couldn’t stop thinking that, somewhere out there, a killer was on the loose. And if he’d killed once in search of this book, would he hesitate to kill again?

* * *

Ten minutes later, my knees were underneath the large dining table at my aunt’s boardinghouse, and I was enjoying the ebb and flow of conversation while eating a breakfast frittata made by the cooking team of Liz and Morris. I’d deciphered enough healthy ingredients in the dish—asparagus, tomato, and broccoli—to count it as my recommended daily allowance of vegetables. Plus, there were fresh strawberries and cubes of melon that looked good enough to be served in Kristen’s restaurant. Breakfast didn’t get much more nutritious, and I felt virtuous about my adultlike meal.

On a Saturday morning like this, the talk inevitably centered around what everyone was going to do with such outstanding weather. The forecast was for sun, light winds, and a high of seventy-seven degrees, a Chamber of Commerce kind of day.

Eva and Forrest, the fortysomething mountain bikers, were planning to ride the Little Traverse Wheelway between Charlevoix and Petoskey. Liz and Morris, once the kitchen was cleaned up, were headed east, over to Lake Huron, to explore the beaches near Alpena. Victoria and Welles, the couple in their sixties, had announced their intention to tour the Music House Museum, just north of Traverse City.

Aunt Frances, who hadn’t eaten much but had spent most of the meal looking out the windows to the screened porch and beyond to the trees of the backyard, blinked at the mention of the Music House. “If you’re going there,” she said, “you should stop at Guntzviller’s.”

“What’s Guntzviller’s?” Victoria asked.

I grinned. I’d stopped there once and had been entranced by the blend of retail, taxidermy, and museum featuring wildlife and Native American artifacts. “Don’t be scared by the howling,” I said, then wouldn’t say any more.

Welles, the retired dentist, who with his fit frame and white blond hair, didn’t look nearly old enough to be retired, glanced at my aunt. “What are your plans for the day, Frances?”

She started at the question. “Me? I’m afraid I have chores to do.”

“How annoying,” Eva said, grimacing. “I hope they’re outside ones, at least.”

Aunt Frances smiled, but it didn’t last long. “I’d best get going.” She rose, but when she started stacking her dishes, Liz put out a hand to stop her. “Forrest and I will take care of this. It’s our day, right?”

Typically, everyone cleared their own place, but this time my aunt simply nodded at the violation of her own rules. The seven of us sat and listened to her footsteps cross the living room, climb the stairs, and enter her room. When there was a light thud, indicating that her bedroom door had shut, the six boarders all turned to face me.

“What’s wrong with your aunt?” Victoria demanded.

I blinked. “Umm . . .”

“We’re getting concerned,” Morris said. I’d almost grown accustomed to hearing a well-known voice at my aunt’s dining table, but there were times when I had to force myself to stop looking around for the radio.

“Um . . .” I said again, not sure where this was going.

“The scrapbook,” Welles said.

And then everything became as clear as the summer day outside.

The first year my aunt took in boarders, she’d purchased a scrapbook and invited everyone to fill it up. It was the perfect activity for a rainy day, and past guests had created pages of drawings, notes, postcards, ticket stubs, restaurant napkins, and cardboard coasters. Most of the pages had handwritten comments about the fun times, the weather, the lakes, the food, even the late-night card games and board games that often took place on the screened porch.

There were also, I remembered, many entries about my aunt. My aunt, who, in previous boardinghouse summers, was a participant in the games. Who, in the past, had often sat on the front porch swing with a guest or two. Who, for as many summers as I could remember, spent many an evening crouched in front of the living room’s fieldstone fireplace, convincing her boarders that s’mores were best with a mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

“She’s not the same as in the scrapbooks,” Eva said.

I shook my head, not so much disagreeing as not wanting to talk about this.

“In the books,” Forrest persisted, a frown of concern on his face, “she was more active. Participating with guest activities almost every day.”

“But she’s not doing that,” Liz said. “Not this year. So we’re wondering . . .” She bit her lower lip.

“We hope she’s not ill,” Welles said, sighing, and I had the sudden and frightening thought that, as a dentist, he must have seen dozens or hundreds of patients who’d been seriously sick. Was it possible that Welles had detected something about my aunt’s health that I didn’t know? Had she been diagnosed with something so life threatening that she didn’t want to share it with anyone?

My throat constricted so tight that I had to cough it loose. And, in doing so, I rattled my brain enough that some thoughts fell out.

“If she was sick,” I said, “she would have told me.” She also would have made me promise not to tell my parents, which included her brother, until she was good and ready. “We made a pact about that very thing when I moved to Chilson.”

This was true. It had started as kind of a joke. Aunt Frances had been reading a novel about a man diagnosed with a fast-moving internal cancer, but he hadn’t told anyone, even his wife, until the day he collapsed while walking up their basement stairs, carrying a wooden stool he’d just finished mending. He’d died two days later, and the bulk of the novel was about the wife trying to forgive him.

My aunt had looked at me over the top of the book and said, “I promise I’ll tell you if you promise you’ll tell me.”

“Deal,” I’d said, and we’d bumped knuckles to seal the pact.

It had been a lighthearted moment, but since then, we’d both made references to the promise. It was reassuring, in a way I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about much, so I usually didn’t.

Now I looked at the concerned faces. My heartstrings were well and truly tugged. These folks cared about my aunt. They wanted to know that she was all right, and they certainly looked ready to step in and roll up their sleeves if she needed any help.

But I knew what my aunt needed, and there wasn’t any help they could provide.

* * *

Instead of taking a direct walk back to the marina, where I was going to meet Ash in a couple of hours, I wandered through downtown. It was still early; the only places open were Cookie Tom’s and restaurants that served breakfast. This meant the sidewalks were empty enough of tourists that I could walk without paying too much attention to where I was going.

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that, when I was staring up at the few clouds in the sky, wondering if the wind was going to stay low or if it was going to whip up into something that would put a damper on the afternoon’s activities, I didn’t hear Denise Slade calling until she planted herself smack in front of me.

“If you paid more attention to where you’re going,” she said, “you might get a lot further in life.”

“And where would I want to go?” I asked cheerfully. “I’m pretty happy right here.” I flung out my arms, narrowly missing a light pole.

Denise rolled her eyes. “It was a metaphor.”

I wasn’t sure it had been, but whatever. I’d learned not to take Denise’s comments personally; she was caustic by nature, and there was no reason to think she treated me any differently from anyone else. Denise, if she’d been face-to-face with Bill Gates, would demand to know why Microsoft products locked up so often. If the most famous author in the world moved to Chilson and wanted to volunteer with the Friends, Denise would have asked for qualifications. If the most—

Something jogged in my head and I mentally snapped my fingers.

“Say, Denise. I could do with a favor.”

She sniffed. “Maybe. Maybe not. What is it?”

Of all the Friends of the Library presidents in all the world, Denise had to be president of Chilson’s. “Do you keep track of who volunteers in the book-sale room?”

Denise tossed her hair. “Of course I do. What kind of operation do you think I run?”

With great restraint, I didn’t say what I really thought. “Could you please e-mail me a list of everyone who was working that week the books were thrown off the shelves?”

Denise’s eyes came together into narrow slits. “You can’t think that one of my volunteers did that. That’s just stupid.”

“I don’t think anything of the sort. But I would like to talk to each of them, ask if they noticed anything different.”

“Hmph. It’s about time you did something about that.” Denise gave me a quick look up and down. “It’s because you’re getting a new library director, I bet. You’re afraid the new guy is going to fire you for letting a murder and two break-ins happen on your watch.”

How she’d come to that bizarre conclusion, I had no idea. But since I also didn’t care to learn how Denise’s thought process worked, I just said, “If you could send me the list, I’d appreciate it.”

“Well.” Denise sighed. “I suppose. But that stuff is at home, and I’m doing the flowers at church this morning, then I have a volunteer shift at Lake View this afternoon, and tonight my friend Bobbi is hosting a euchre tournament, and she always says she can’t play cards without me, so I can’t promise when.”

“Whenever you have a minute is fine,” I said, edging away. “Thanks.” And I fled before she could start talking about her Monday schedule. During my hurried walk, I went past Benton’s, stopped, turned around, and stepped up to the front door. The store wouldn’t be open for almost another hour, but maybe Rianne was in. I knocked loudly and, sure enough, Rianne’s head poked out of the back doorway.

She saw my frantic gestures and came forward to unlock the door. “Minnie, what’s up?”

“Do you have a few minutes?”

“Sure,” she said, glancing outside at the big clock. “Would you like some coffee? I was just going over some inventory numbers. Come on back.”

As we settled ourselves in her office, coffee in hand, I trailed my fingers across a few spokes of the ship’s wheel. “Do you remember a book about wildflowers at your grandparents’ house? It was on the sideboard.”

“Flowers?” She blew steam off her coffee. “I guess so, but I was more of a Boxcar Children fan. Why do you ask?”

“Because I think that book is why Andrea was killed.”

Rianne stopped midsip. “I don’t understand.”

“This is going to sound impossible, but the book Wildflowers, by Robert Chastain, is potentially worth a lot of money.”

“How much is a lot?” Rianne went back to sipping.

“If it’s in mint condition, half a million dollars.”

Rianne’s mouthful of coffee blew out in a spray all over her desk. “Half a million? That can’t be right. No way did Deke and Granny have anything worth that much. No way.”

I told her that Cade himself had seen the book. “Plus, I think that’s why Andrea was in the library that night. Somehow she knew the value of the book and was trying to find it. And I think someone is still trying to.”

“Why didn’t they put it in a safety-deposit box?” She looked around a little wildly. “Get it insured? Something. Anything.”

“I’m not sure they believed Cade about its value. To them it was just a book that had been sitting on the sideboard.”

“Now, that I can believe.” Rianne pulled a tissue out of a box and dabbed at the coffee-colored spray on her papers. “But why would anyone think the book ended up in the library?”

“Because in her later years, your grandmother gave away a lot of things. Because I’m guessing it isn’t on the sideboard anymore.”

“Let’s find out.” Rianne put down her coffee mug and reached for the phone. “Honey? Can you go into the dining room? You know that pile of kids’ books on the sideboard? Is there a book about wildflowers in there?”

“Wildflowers of Northern America,” I said.

She nodded, passed on the title, and, after a few moments, said, “Thanks. I’ll tell you about it tonight.” She hung up the phone and looked at me. “It’s not there. And there’s nowhere else in the house it would be. It’s gone.”

Though that was what I’d expected, it was still a punch in the stomach.

The skin around Rianne’s mouth was tight. “Did Granny give it away, or did someone steal it?”

“If someone had stolen it from the house, Andrea wouldn’t have been in the library, looking for it.” At least that was my assumption. “I think your grandmother gave it away.”

Rianne relaxed a fraction, but only a fraction. “So, someone out there is willing to murder for the sake of this book?”

“For half a million dollars,” I said.

She blew out a long sigh. “My grandparents had a lot of people in that house over the years. It could be almost anyone. I just . . . I just hope it isn’t anyone I know.”

For her sake, I hoped so, too.

* * *

“Keep your elbows in.”

I nodded at Ash’s instruction, trying not to think that he sounded like my father had, years back when I was being taught table manners. I still didn’t honestly see why it was such a horrible thing to put your elbows on the table when you were eating a hamburger, especially if you were like me and had elbows that ended closer to the tabletop than most people’s, but I still couldn’t do it without feeling guilty.

Speaking of parents . . . “How did it go at your mom’s?” I asked.

Though Ash was about twenty feet away, over the flat water that was between us, there was no need to speak any louder than if he’d been right next to me. We were in kayaks, sitting low, and the world looked different from the way it did from a standing position. Though I’d canoed many times, this was my first-ever kayak outing, and I was already a convert. The only thing I had to unlearn from my earlier canoeing efforts was the elbow thing.

“All set,” he said.

He’d gone to his mom’s house to help her plant trees that a landscaping company had delivered the day before. Maples, to replace the ash trees that had been killed by the emerald ash borer. Since Ash’s name had come from how much his mother had loved those trees, it had only made sense that the human Ash work on the replacements.

“I would have been glad to help.” Digging hard into the water with the paddle’s blades, I sent the kayak scooting forward fast.

“Hey there, Speedster!” Ash laughed and caught up to me in seconds. “I told Mom you’d be happy to help, but she said she didn’t want to bother you.”

There was a small kernel of worry tucked away in a corner of my tummy. It was a stone kernel that had the name Lindsey Wolverson etched into its surface, and I had no idea what to do about it. Maybe it was a personality thing and we would never get along. Or maybe it was something I’d done, but I had no idea what. Then again, it was possible that she just didn’t like short people.

“What’s so funny?” Ash asked.

I glanced over. In the year that I’d known him and the few weeks we’d been dating, the thing I liked most about him was that he kept an open mind. There was no possible way that he had been raised by a mother who was prejudiced.

“Lots of things are funny,” I said. “Take the duck-billed platypus, for—”

The low growling sound of a big boat’s motor came up fast behind us. “Boat coming up,” Ash called. “Turn to face it diagonally, okay?”

Without too much flailing around, I did as he said, and was in proper position to take the boat’s wake when it passed underneath us.

The boat itself was a charter fishing boat headed for the channel and the open waters of Lake Michigan. On board were the typical passengers: men in their forties to early fifties, wearing jeans, fleece jackets, and baseball caps with downstate team names. A grizzled man was behind the boat’s wheel, his skin crinkled from too many years without enough sunblock. The boat’s single crew member was a tall man who was busying himself by stowing coolers and checking fishing gear, joking with the passengers, and constantly adjusting his hat.

Mitchell Koyne.

I watched the boat slide past and stared at Mitchell the entire time. When it had gone by and we’d ridden out the bobbing wake, I turned to Ash. “Did you see that?”

“Yeah,” he said, watching the boat’s stern grow ever more distant. “A bunch of guys out having a lot of expensive fun.”

His tone was a little envious, and I hoped that the next activity he taught me wasn’t going to include rods and reels and sharp hooks, because I didn’t see the attraction to sitting in a boat for hours on end, hoping you were clever enough to outsmart a fish. “Mitchell Koyne was crewing.”

“Heard he was working hard this summer.” Ash turned his kayak to run parallel with the lake’s shore, and I did the same. “Maybe he’s trying to save enough money to buy a house. He’s lived with his sister for how long? I bet her husband’s ready to see him go.”

Though that last part was undoubtedly true, I was fairly sure Mitchell’s new work ethic wasn’t a product of his brother-in-law’s urgings.

“I’ve been thinking about what you told Hal this morning,” Ash said.

For a moment, I had no idea what he was talking about. Hal who? I almost asked, then, at the last second, I remembered that Detective Inwood, unlike Lieutenant Columbo, did indeed have a first name, and that it was Hal.

When Ash had arrived at the marina with two kayaks, I’d given him the same spiel I’d given the detective as we wrestled the boats off the top of his SUV and into the water.

“And?” I asked now. “Please tell me you had a magical leap of insight. A brilliant flash. Any kind of flash.”

“Sorry.” Ash leaned back and rested his paddle across the kayak’s cockpit. “What I was thinking was that almost everybody in town worked for Benton’s at one point in their life. I grew up in Petoskey, so I don’t know for sure, but from what I heard, the DeKeysers treated all of their staff like family.”

“A dysfunctional family?”

Ash laughed. “What other kind is there? No, what I meant was that I’ve heard people who worked at Benton’s say it wasn’t unusual for staff to be invited to the DeKeyser’s house for lunch or dinner.”

Outstanding. “So anyone who ever worked at Benton’s could have noticed that copy of Wildflowers.”

“Yup.” Ash glanced over. “Which means the people who might know about the book’s value could be anyone from all the DeKeysers to Shane Pratley to Rafe to the mayor.”

“Shane worked at Benton’s?”

“Well, sure.” Ash frowned. “I thought you knew. He was more or less in charge at Benton’s when Deke and Talia handed over the management to Rianne. Shane was fine with that until Rianne moved back to run the store hands-on. He quit cold and went to work at the grocery store.”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t know.” But suddenly Shane’s anger made . . . well, not sense, but at least now I knew there was a reason behind it. But was he angry enough to kill? I looked up at the big blue sky. Though it sent no answers, it was clear that Ash needed to know about Shane’s temper. I sighed. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

When I described the encounter I’d had with Shane at the grocery store, Ash went still. “And you didn’t mention this at the time because?”

I shrugged, because I wasn’t sure why. “He was just letting off steam.”

“You don’t know that.”

He was right. “Sorry,” I said. “I should have told you.”

“Okay.” Ash nodded. “I’ll tell Hal and see what he wants to do with it.” He twirled his paddle in his hands, started to dig the blades into the water, then stopped and looked at me. “Just so you know, we are looking at Steve Guilder.”

“Andrea’s high school boyfriend?”

“That’s the one.” Ash nodded. “We’re looking, so leave that alone, okay? He moved back to Michigan about a year ago. We’re trying to track him down.”

“Is he in Chilson?” For some reason I glanced around. “Do you know where he’s working?”

“We’re trying to track him down,” Ash repeated. “We’ll find him. Don’t worry.”

It was a beautiful summer day with hardly a cloud in the sky, and worrying had been the furthest thing from my mind.

Until then.