Cat With A Clue

Chapter 14

The next day was a bookmobile day. We were in the southeast part of Tonedagana County, and driving the curvy, hilly, narrow roads kept my mind too occupied to tell Julia the tale of the previous afternoon. I’d started to talk about it at the first stop, but we were stampeded by too many children in search of books for me to be able to finish. The moment I started braking for the second stop, however, Julia was pumping me for the rest of the narrative. I obliged, and was to the part where I was walking backward in the lobby, when a carload of white-haired ladies pulled into the parking lot.

“Have to finish this later,” I told Julia, nodding at our incoming visitors. “It’s the softball team.”

Julia’s face, which had started to droop, perked up. “All of them?”

I peered out the window. “No, but more than half. Pitcher, catcher, shortstop, left fielder, center fielder.”

“Oh, excellent.” Julia beamed. “I love these ladies. What shall we give them today?”

A few months earlier, we’d stopped for lunch at a small café in the tiny town of Peebles. The waitress had noticed the mammoth vehicle parked at the curb and asked us about the bookmobile. When I said the phrase “thousands of books,” she’d grinned and said, “I have to tell my mother-in-law about this. Do you happen to have a copy of your schedule?”

Since I always carried a few copies, I pulled one out and handed it over.

“Perfect,” she said, scanning the list. “I bet you’ll see them next week.”

“Them?” Julia and I had asked.

The waitress had just laughed and told us that we’d know them when we saw them.

And we did. No question about it.

The waitress’s mother-in-law happened to be the pitcher and coach of a local softball team, and the entire team, with the exception of one player, had been playing together since they were in high school. How they’d managed to stay a healthy team was a mystery of immense proportions, but their fifty years of experience—each, not total—pushed them to the top of their league every year. Only the catcher was a newcomer, and that was because the original catcher and her husband had retired to Arizona.

“Still playing ball, though,” Corky Grigsby had said that first day, nodding. “What about you ladies?” She flicked an experienced glance over Julia and me. “No time like the present to join a team. Do you play?”

I’d smiled and said I was more the swimming/hiking/bicycling type, but Julia had looked interested.

Now I looked at her as she unlocked the door and pushed it open. “You know Corky’s going to ask if you’ve joined a softball team.”

“And I have,” she said. “You are looking at the new right fielder for the Chilson Swingers.”

“Really? Did you have to try out or anything?”

“They asked how much I’d played, and I told them.” Julia pulled down an imaginary baseball cap and pounded her fist into an imaginary glove.

“Which was how much?” I asked.

“Gym class, back in high school.” She looked at me and grinned. “I’m going to be horrible, but I’m going to have fun.”

Of that, I was sure. If I hadn’t known that Julia was a world-class actor famous in theatrical circles around the world, I would have thought she was a fun-loving party girl who’d never grown up. Of course, it seemed as if there was a lot of overlap between those two things.

Corky and her crew came up the steps into the bookmobile. In a line, they went straight to the front to give Eddie his morning greeting, then came back and stood around Julia and me in a semicircle.

“What do you have for us today?” Corky asked. “And, for crying out loud, don’t give us anything that’ll make us think. It’s summer, you know.”

“Horror,” I said promptly.

The first time the softball team had visited the bookmobile—all nine of them, and I was glad they hadn’t brought any of the backup players, because I wasn’t sure the vehicle could take it—they’d requested that we give them books they’d never read, or books their mothers would have warned them about, or books that would shock their children. All three, if possible. They’d read Fifty Shades of Grey a few weeks ago, and the left fielder said she’d learned only two things, which she thought was pretty good for an old lady.

“Horror? Excellent!” the shortstop said, rubbing her hands together. “This is going to be fun. Give me something that will keep me awake all night. I don’t sleep for beans these days. At least this way I’ll have a good reason.” She elbowed the center fielder in the ribs. “And maybe I’ll wake up Joe and tell him I need comforting. What do you think?”

The ladies laughed, and I told Julia to get the bag of books I’d stashed behind the back desk. She opened the bag, peered in, and looked puzzled. “Lord of the Flies?”

“Wait a minute,” Corky said, frowning. “My kids read this book in school. You’re not trying to educate us, are you?”

“My kids read this, too,” the catcher said. “It can’t be that scary.”

I smiled. “Read the first few chapters late at night when no one else is awake. Then come back and tell me how you felt.”

Squinting with doubt, they took the books as I reassured them they wouldn’t be learning a thing. And they probably wouldn’t; they’d all lived long enough to know what people could do to each other.

I pushed away the chill of remembered fear that I’d felt upon first reading the book and turned to greet the person who’d arrived while Julia and I had been busy with the team. He was browsing the natural-history books, and was thirtyish, with long hair pulled back into a tidy ponytail. Though I’d never seen him on the bookmobile before, he looked familiar.

“Hi,” I said, stepping forward. “I’m Minnie Hamilton. Is this your first visit to the bookmobile?” Odds were high that it was, but it was also possible that I’d forgotten one face among the hundreds.

“What’s that?” The guy looked across the top of my head, then looked down. “Oh. Hi. Yeah. It is. Nice bus you got here.”

He smiled, and I got the itchy feeling that he was trying to flirt with me.

“Thank you,” I said politely. “Is there anything in which you’re interested?” Nothing like perfect grammar to turn off a prospective suitor.

His smile went wider. “My name is Jared Moyle,” he said.

The name meant nothing to me, but I nodded. “Nice to meet you, Jared. If you need a library card, either Julia or I can help you with the paperwork. Let me know if you need any help finding a book,” I said, stressing the “book” part ever so slightly.

“Mrr.” Eddie waltzed past me and thumped Jared on the back of the knees.

In the dog stories I’d read, the narrators often gave their canine friends credit for knowing, at a single doggy sniff, whether or not a newcomer was trustworthy. I did not attribute that power of discernment to Eddie. He was mostly likely after one of two things: either Jared smelled like a cat treat or Jared was wearing pants that looked like something Eddie wanted to shed upon.

“Hey, you guys have a cat.” Jared dropped into a crouch and held out his knuckles for sniffing purposes.

“His name is Eddie,” I said.

“We could use a cat at the store.” Jared scratched Eddie on the side of his neck, eliciting a low but steady purr.

“What store is that?”

“I co-own the used-book store in Chilson.” He glanced up. “You been in?”

So that was why the guy looked familiar. “Nice thriller section,” I said. “How are things going?”

“Oh, you know.” He shrugged. “Not great; not horrible. I’m not going to get rich, but it’s a way for me to read a lot without spending a ton of money. Plus, I do caretaking for a bunch of summer people. I get by.” He gave Eddie a last pat, stood, and smiled at me.

“My boyfriend does some of that.” This was loosely true, since his neighbors were seasonal. Ash gave them a neighborly hand with their cottage-opening and cottage-closing chores, and kept an eye on the place through the winter.

Jared nodded. “Lots of that work around these days. Even high school kids are getting into it.” He grinned. “Probably pays a lot better than working at Benton’s did. After a couple of summers of that, you’d think I’d stay away from retail, but here I am with my own store.”

I’d been starting to slide away, but stopped. “Jared, I have a strange question for you. Have you had anyone in looking for old books on flowers?”

His forehead crinkled a little. “Not that I can think of. Of course, I’m not there all the time.”

I was about to warn him about the book-related break-ins—after all, if I’d warned Rianne, I was obligated to warn him, and probably should already have done so, if Ash or Detective Inwood hadn’t—but I noticed that he wasn’t really paying attention to me. No, he was surreptitiously eyeing the bookmobile’s natural-history selection. The part that included wildflowers.

Stooping to pick up Eddie, I said, “We’ve had some recent interest in books about flowers. I just wondered if you were getting the same thing.”

Jared said they hadn’t, at least as far as he knew. He kept talking, and I tried to listen, but what I kept thinking, as I inched farther and farther away, was that I’d just added one more person to the suspect list, because who better than a used-book store owner would know the value of Wildflowers?

* * *

A few hours later, a different man was smiling at me, and the grin on his face was decades younger than the eighty-five I knew him to be. “Now, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” he asked.

I smiled back. Age and wheelchair notwithstanding, Max Compton was ten times the flirt Jared Moyle had tried to be, and was more than ten times as appealing. “Hey there, Mr. Compton. If I’m looking that good, you need to get out more.” It had been a long day, and I knew I was looking like something Eddie had dragged in.

He gave me a look of mock horror. “Mr. Compton? That’s my dad—God rest his soul. You call me Max, or I’ll start calling you Missy.”

“You have a deal.” I held out my hand and we shook on it, me being careful not to grip too tightly around the elderly man’s arthritis. “Ready for the next couple of chapters?”

Last summer, Cade had spent some time at Lake View Medical Care Facility while recovering from a stroke, and I’d visited often enough that the staff learned what I did for a living. One thing led to another, and in addition to dropping off a rotating selection of large-print books, I’d also ended up promising to stop by Lake View once a month to read aloud to a group of residents. Other volunteers did the same thing, and between us we could read through a book in three weeks. The residents chose the book, and I was curious to see the current selection.

Max pulled a volume from underneath the crocheted blanket that lay across his rickety legs. “Looking forward to hearing you do the voices.”

There was a smirk in his own voice, and when I saw the title, I knew why. “Animal Farm? Are you serious?”

“No, he’s not.”

I turned. Heather, a nurse’s aide, walked into the sunroom and handed me a copy of Jan Karon’s These High, Green Hills. “They finished the fifth chapter yesterday—don’t let him tell you any different.”

Max fell against the back of his wheelchair, clutching at his shirt. “I’m having a heart attack!” he croaked. “I can only be saved by hearing a John Sandford book read to me.”

“That’s your stomach,” Heather said, winking at me, “not your heart. And you know darn well that you got outvoted for John Sandford. Better luck next time.”

“Oooh,” Max groaned in fake agony. “My heart . . .”

“Is everything all right?” someone asked from the doorway.

“We’re fine,” Heather said, taking the George Orwell novel from me. “Just a little discussion of book selection, that’s all.”

I glanced over and saw the lawyer I’d met in Rianne’s office, and the guy I’d seen while out running the other morning. “Hi,” I said. “Nice to see you again.” And then, because he wasn’t leaving and I didn’t know what else to say, I asked, “Are you here visiting relatives?”

Heather made a very soft but very rude noise in the back of her throat. He smiled and said, “No, not yet. My parents are hale and hearty. But I have a number of clients here, and I like to check on them every week or two.”

“Well, it was nice seeing you again,” I said.

“Likewise. Say, you still have my card?” He didn’t wait for my reply, but fished one from his pocket and handed it over. “You never know when you might need an attorney.” Laughing, he turned his hand into a pistol and fired off a quick shot at me. “Catch you later.”

As soon as he was gone, Max said, “Now, Heather, you be nice.”

“Is it being mean to state an opinion?” she asked. “Because I can’t stand that guy. He trolls the halls, looking to sign up clients, but when I ask management to toss him out, they say he’s here visiting clients and there’s nothing we can do.”

I looked at the card. Paul Utley. “Why would anyone here need an attorney?”

“Wouldn’t,” Max said succinctly. “Not ninety-nine-point-nine percent of them, anyway. Legal affairs are pretty much wrapped up before you check in.”

“So . . . ?” I gestured after Paul.

“He’s chasing after clients,” Heather said savagely. “Convincing them to sign up for services they don’t need and pay a retainer they can’t afford.”

Max smiled. “Tell us what you really think, Heather.”

“I think he’s the kind of lawyer who gives ambulance chasers a bad name,” she snapped.

“If you weren’t already married,” Max said, “I’d propose to you here and now.”

“And if you did it on one knee, I’d agree, husband or no.” She grinned at the two of us, her lawyer-inspired anger gone as fast as it had come. “Minnie, I’ll go round up the rest of the readers group. Be back in a flash.”

Max and I watched her go. “Is Paul really that awful?” I asked.

“He’s not what I’d call a force for good,” Max said, “but I wouldn’t say he was evil personified, either. In spite of what Heather says, he does help some of the folks here. And not always with legal issues.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his two-day whiskers making a scratchy noise against his hand.

This happened to be a noise that, to me, was the equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard, so I quickly said, “What kind of help would he be giving if it wasn’t legal? Do you have a ‘for instance’?”

Max took his hand off his face and pointed down the hall. “Paul’s the one who noticed that Mary what’s-her-name in that room over there can’t breathe right if the closet door isn’t shut tight. He’s the one who realized that Talia DeKeyser was giving away everything she owned to kids she didn’t even know. And without Paul, I’m not sure anyone would ever have known that the reason old Robert Smith was so upset—the poor man hasn’t had his wits about him in years—was because the picture on his wall was hanging crooked.”

Heather bustled in, pushing a woman in a wheelchair, and half a dozen other folks trailed in after her, and I settled down to read about the doings of the day in Mitford.

But even as I read, my mind kept circling around what I’d learned.

So Paul noticed things.

Interesting.

* * *

After I finished reading, leaving the group—and myself—a little on edge on how Father Tim was going to fix things in Mitford, I got back onto my bicycle and headed over to see what Aunt Frances was doing. The traffic was heavy, which, outside of downtown, meant I had to wait for cars at stop signs and had cars passing me on a regular basis. It seemed that one particular sedan passed me more than once, but since I hadn’t been paying that much attention, I couldn’t have sworn to it. But the third time it passed me, I was sure it was the same one. Unfortunately, the windows were tinted and the license plate was covered with mud.

Though there was undoubtedly a reasonable explanation for that, I cut down a side street, then went through an alley and rolled up to my aunt’s place a little out of breath. I leaned my bike up against a handy tree. “Hey, there. Do you want some help?”

My aunt was half buried in the boardinghouse’s foundation shrubs, her front end working hard at pulling out leaves and sticks and who knew what else. I called again, and again she didn’t hear me, so I walked up next to her and tapped the small of her back.

“Yahh!”

She erupted from the bush, eyes wild and arms flailing. It was then that I noticed the earbuds inserted into her ears and the iPod tucked into the pocket of her oversized gardening shirt.

“Minnie!” She pulled the buds from her ears. “You scared me!”

“Sorry,” I said. And I was. It was also a little funny, but I knew how it felt to be startled like that and it wasn’t much fun. “I didn’t realize you were wired up.” I touched my ears.

“Oh. Yes.” Aunt Frances poked at the iPod, turning it off. “It’s Otto’s. Did you know you can download audio books from the library on these things? It’s wonderful! Like having someone read you a story. I don’t know that I’ll ever wash windows again without this little gadget. Talk about taking away the tedium.”

I laughed. “Audio books as an aid to housework. I’ll have to spread the word.”

My aunt smiled. “Of course you know about borrowing audio books. What was I thinking? You have a silly old woman for an aunt.”

“Don’t you talk that way about her,” I said, giving her a quick hug. “She’s the best.”

“And you’re a silly girl.” She returned my hug briefly, then eased away. “Getting this close to someone who’s been doing yard work all afternoon isn’t the best way to keep your clothes clean.”

I looked down at myself. Small clods of dirt and specks of leaves covered my front. “Not only is my aunt the best aunt in the world, but she might also be the dirtiest aunt ever.”

“Not anymore.” She grinned. “I transferred half of it. Now you can’t say I never gave you anything.”

As I did my best to brush off my clothes, I gave Aunt Frances a thorough but secret visual examination. Fatigue was making her shoulders sag and adding some vertical lines around her mouth.

“Say, what do you think about hiring some help?” I asked. “I bet you could get a high school kid. I could ask Thessie to recommend someone.” Thessie, just graduated from high school, had volunteered on the bookmobile last summer. “You don’t need to work so hard.”

“Minerva Joy Hamilton, you are the best niece in the world, but please do not presume to tell me what to do. I am almost double your age, and I know what’s best for me.”

Knocking off the last of the dirt from my shirt, I said, “I was just trying to help.” It came out sounding sulky, so I added, “And you’re not double my age. Just almost.”

“I rounded up.”

For some reason, I found her firm statement funny enough that, despite my best efforts to stay serious, laughter burbled up and out of me. “You’re horrible. Does Otto know what he’s getting into?”

“Probably not.” The expression on my aunt’s face, which had been a smile, faded into a wistful glance across the street. “I just wish . . .”

“What do you wish?” I asked, oh, so gently.

She shook her head. “Nothing. You know what they say about wishes.”

“Beggars and horses?”

“Bingo. And if everyone had a horse, how would all the manure ever get cleaned up?”

I thought about Mackinac Island, where, outside of winter, the only motorized vehicles allowed were emergency types. There were lots of horses and the island cleanup crews took their jobs very seriously, but even still, pedestrians spent a fair amount of time watching where their feet went.

Then again, if everyone had a horse, would there even be pedestrians?

I started to puzzle out the problem to my aunt, but she was headed back into the shrubbery. “You sure I can’t help?” I asked.

“Go play,” she said. “Have fun. Ride your bike along a road you haven’t been down all summer.”

That sounded like an excellent idea, but still I hesitated. “I can stay.”

“Go!”

And so, grinning, I went.

* * *

It was a beautiful evening, and if I went home I would feel compelled to clean the bathroom, so I decided to take my aunt’s advice and ride aimlessly around town. Off in the distance, I heard the tower clock of the Catholic church chime once. Eight thirty, then. At this time of year there was another hour of daylight left, if not an hour and a half, so I had plenty of time to both bike and clean, if I wanted.

Which I didn’t, but if the bathroom went uncleaned for much longer, the ghost of my maternal grandmother would haunt my dreams until I took care of what needed to be done.

But it was hard to care about the cleanliness of bathrooms when the evening sun was golden, when backyards were full of children shrieking with laughter as they played the games children had always played, and when the warmth of summer felt as if it would last forever.

A deep sense of contentment filled me as I cruised the streets of my adopted town. Life was good, would continue to be good, would always be—

“Watch out!”

I braked hard, skidding sideways with a shuddering screech of my tires, trying to avoid hitting the soccer ball that had rolled in front of me.

“Sorry!” A young boy scurried out, snatched up the ball, and ran back to his house. “That wouldn’t have happened,” he called, “if you’d been paying attention!”

Though this was undoubtedly true, his ire seemed a little harsh. After all, I’d never met him.

“I told you I didn’t want to play.”

Ah. The kid was yelling at a girl, who looked about seven years old. I hadn’t noticed her until now because she was standing in the middle of a lovely country flower garden. The garden almost filled the space between two Victorian-era homes and was bursting with blooms, none of which I could identify except for the daisies the girl was clutching in her hand.

“Better not let Mom catch you picking stuff from there,” her brother said.

The girl ignored him and plucked off another white-petaled flower. “It’s Mrs. Talia’s garden, and she told me I could pick any flower I wanted any time I wanted.”

I blinked. Blinked again as I looked at the house next door. Yes, there was the L-shaped front porch. There were the ornamental cornices, fish-scale gable siding, stained-glass windows, and complicated brickwork foundation that Barb and Cade had mentioned. And, if I remembered correctly, Rianne and her family lived in the house now, keeping it in the family for at least another generation.

It was a nice concept and one with a satisfying continuity, but I was glad my family didn’t own a house like that. After all, it was hard enough for me to find the time to clean a single bathroom; how on earth would I have managed a house that, when it had been built, had undoubtedly been maintained with the assistance of daily help?

As I stood there, musing about the social changes in the past hundred years, a rattling pickup truck pulled into Rianne’s narrow driveway. A man with graying hair got out and gave me a hard look. “You got a problem?” he asked sharply.

“What? No, I was just—”

“Yo, Steve!” The front door opened and another man, one I assumed to be Rianne’s husband, came out. “It’s about time you showed up, Guilder. The beer’s going to get warm if you don’t get a move on.” He was carrying a cooler and tossed it into the back of the pickup. “There’s a bunch of guys who said they’re playing tonight. Hope you’re up for seven-card stud.”

So. Not only was Steve Guilder back in Chilson, but he was a friend of Rianne’s husband. Did that mean . . .

No. The police were taking care of this end of things. There was no need for me to get involved. None whatsoever.

I hopped on my bike and pedaled away from the DeKeysers and back toward the marina, where my houseboat and my cat waited for me.

* * *

“Mrr!” my cat said.

I looked at him. “You know, when I was riding back through town just now, I was thinking how nice it was going to be to walk in and be greeted by my loving, furry friend, who was longing to be snuggled and petted and perhaps even kissed by his favorite human. Instead, I walk in and find you there.”

Eddie, who was sitting on the kitchen counter, sat up even straighter as I finished walking through the door.

“Get down,” I said firmly. “There aren’t many rules in this house, but No Cats on the Kitchen Counter is one of them and it’s at the top of the list.”

“Mrr.”

“Down,” I said, raising my voice.

Eddie blinked at me.

“Down!” I dropped my backpack and clapped my hands. It was a noise Eddie hated. He glared at me and jumped down with a loud thump!

“How do you do that?” I asked. “That was a louder noise than I would have made and I weigh . . .” I tried to do some quick math in my head, failed, felt a little embarrassed about the failure, then remembered that I was a librarian and mental math wasn’t a required duty. “And I weigh a lot more than you do.”

“Mrr.”

“Talkative tonight, are you?”

Eddie, who had been walking toward me in a straight line, suddenly swerved and went around my feet in a wide arc, and returned to his straight path, the end of which was to jump on the pilot’s seat and sit on top of my backpack. “Mrr,” he said, settling in.

“Thanks. A little more Eddie hair on my stuff is exactly what I needed. Because, really, can you ever have enough of—”

From deep inside the backpack, my cell phone rang.

Eddie jumped and scrambled onto the dashboard. When he arrived safely, he turned and gave my pack the evil eye. If the world had been a just place, the backpack would have spontaneously combusted. But since the world was unfair, even for Eddies, I patted him on the head and reached for the phone.

The number wasn’t one I recognized, but it was local, so I thumbed it on. “Hello?”

“Is this Minnie Hamilton?”

“Yes,” I said. The voice was female and elderly, but it wasn’t one I recognized. “This is. How are you this evening?”

“Well, isn’t it nice of you to ask,” she said, and I could hear the smile in her words. “I’m so glad I decided to call. I knew it was a cellular phone, and in general I don’t like to talk to the things—that time lag is wretched if you want to have a meaningful talk.”

“I know what you mean.” I’d made a strategic error in starting a conversation before I knew who was on the other end of the phone, and it was too late to ask her name. Nicely done, Minnie. Very nicely done.

“Anyway,” she said. “My Thomas said you’d rung the other day when I was downstate visiting our daughter. He said it sounded important and that I should call you as soon as I got home.”

And then I knew who was on the other end of the phone. I stood by the dashboard and gave Eddie a few absent pets, watching stray hairs fly up into the air. “Thank you for calling, Mrs. Panik. It is important.”

“Well, then. What can I do for you?”

Lillian Panik was the longest-serving Friend of the Library. She’d volunteered under more presidents than . . . well, not more presidents than Eddie had hairs, but probably more than he had whiskers. I made a mental note to count them later and said, “It’s about the break-in in the book-sale room.”

Mrs. Panik sighed. “That was so sad. I’ve never seen anything like it. Such a mess, and for what?”

I had a pretty good idea for what, but said, “I was just wondering if you’d noticed anything unusual in the days just before it happened. Odd phone calls, strange questions, someone in there you’d never noticed before—anything, really, that was different.”

“You’re sleuthing!” Mrs. Panik exclaimed. “How wonderful! You young girls nowadays will turn your hand to anything.”

I didn’t think I had a thing on Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. “Can you think of anything?”

“Well, now.” She hummed a tune that sounded a lot, but not quite, like the theme song to Dragnet. “I don’t see how this could have anything to do with it, but I know that Monica had someone substitute for her.”

Monica? Who was Monica? Denise kept recruiting new volunteers, which was fantastic, but she didn’t always bring them around to meet the library staff. I asked for Monica’s last name, but Mrs. Panik didn’t know it.

“Tell you what,” she said, lowering her voice. “I’ll make a few inquiries. If I discover anything, I’ll call you right back.”

I stood straight. “Mrs. Panik, please don’t—”

“No trouble at all,” she said. “Good-bye, Minnie.” And she was gone.

For no good reason, I was uneasy at the thought of the petite, white-haired, and very proper Mrs. Panik playing Bess Marvin to my Nancy Drew. All those stories turned out okay in the end, but there was a time or two in every installment where you weren’t sure.

“Well, rats,” I muttered. There was no help for it. I’d have to go clean the bathroom.

The shower was almost clean when the phone I’d shoved into my pocket rang. I dropped my sponge and pulled it out. It was Mrs. Panik. I thumbed it on fast. “How are you?” I asked.

“Just fine, Minnie. But how are you? You sound a touch breathless.” She paused. “And a little hollow.”

I stepped out of the tiny shower stall. “Is this better?”

“Much. Now, I have something to tell you, and it’s a little disturbing. I hope you’re sitting.”

Anyone who’d reached the age she had undoubtedly knew the best way to deliver bad news. I walked the few steps to my bed and slowly sat down. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s Monica Utley,” Mrs. Panik said. “I don’t know if this is against the rules or not, but she asked someone to substitute for her the Saturday before the disturbance at the sale room. Someone who wasn’t a Friend of the Library.”

“Denise would know,” I said. “About the rules, I mean.” Not that I was going to ask her. “Do you know who Monica asked to substitute?”

“Yes, I do. Now, mind you, I didn’t talk to Monica about this. I learned it from Stella, who heard it from Peggy, who talked to Edith about it.”

I’d had high hopes at first, but with each degree of separation, my hopes went lower. “I see.”

She took in a deep breath. “From what I hear, you have a nice relationship with that fine young Ash Wolverson, so I will assume that you’ll take any pertinent information straight to him.”

“Yes,” I said cautiously. “Of course I will.”

“Then that’s all right. Now, here’s the difficult part.” Her words, which had been measured, began to run into each other. “The person who substituted for Monica was Andrea Vennard, that poor woman who was killed in the library, and I know you know all about that, you poor thing, and I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it’s best that you know. You have a good night, and now that I’ve passed on this information, I’ll be able to sleep easier.”

I held the phone to my ear long after Mrs. Panik had hung up, thinking about what she’d said. Then I pulled out my laptop and did something a thinking person would have done days ago: used a search engine to look up Andrea Vennard’s obituary. It didn’t take long, and a paragraph in, I found the name of the business Andrea had owned downstate: VM and Associates. Which didn’t tell me much, so I looked that up, too.

“No kidding,” I murmured, reading the screen. Andrea and her business partner, Jayna Molina, owned a company that provided personal assistants and housekeeping staff. E-mail addresses were provided for the partners and key personnel, so I sent a short one to Jayna, telling her I was sorry about her partner’s death, that I had been the one to find her, and that if there was anything I could do, to just call.

When the phone rang an hour later, Eddie and I had been about to turn in for the night. “Is this Minnie Hamilton?” a woman asked. “This is Jayna Molina. I wanted to thank you for your kind e-mail. It meant a lot to me.”

“Oh. Sure.” What, exactly, would Emily Post have recommended in a situation like this? Since I had no idea, I forged ahead on my own. “I’m sure Andrea’s death was a shock.”

“To all of us.” Her voice was a little shaky. “The police told me they’re doing everything they can to find her killer, but I thought I’d ask if you knew how that was going.”

“They’re working on it,” I said, which was weak, but it was all I had. “They told me they were looking into her business. Was there anything you could tell them?”

“Nothing useful.” She sighed. “Our clients are wealthy and they value their privacy. Everything we do for them is confidential. If we breached confidentiality, we wouldn’t have their business any longer. Andrea knew that better than anyone.”

“I’m sure she did.” I thought a moment, then asked, “Did you have any new clients? Someone who might have wound up with the wrong idea about Andrea?”

“That’s funny,” Jayna said. “Your nice detective asked that, too.”

Nice? Detective Inwood? That wasn’t a descriptor I would have used.

“I can’t divulge our client list,” she was saying, “but I can say we had two new clients last month. One is a very nice lady who spends a lot of time in Europe, and I’m not sure Andrea ever talked to her outside of the time she called to hire us. The other is an elderly man who was an executive at one of the car companies. Andrea went out to meet him because he’s not very mobile. She said he was very interesting.”

“Oh?” I asked. “Did she say why?”

“Well, he collected books,” she said. “Old and rare ones. She said his house was more library than house. But it was his cars that interested Andrea.” Jayna had a smile in her voice as she talked about the Duesenbergs the man owned.

I listened and made the right noises in the right places, but I was quietly working the keyboard. A few links later, I was reading about the retired Ford Motor Company executive who had turned from collecting old cars to collecting books, and who had been the last person to purchase a copy of Chastain’s Wildflowers.

I sat back. Finally, I’d established how Andrea could have learned about the value of her great-aunt’s book.

But what was I going to do about it?