Cat With a Clue

Chapter 17

As far as I was concerned, the answer to the why of Andrea Vennard’s death had been answered days ago; she and someone else had been looking for Wildflowers, only that someone else had been willing to kill for the sake of an expensive book.

Now I knew who that someone was.

Well, maybe.

Angry Guy Shane Pratley was still a possibility, as was Jared Moyle, the guy who owned the used-book store, and Kim and Bob Parmalee, but things were lining up that Paul Utley was the guy. Or Monica Utley. Or both of them. Because if they were in financial trouble, wouldn’t they both be scrambling to find an answer to their problem? And why else would someone be talking to a financial consultant on a Friday night?

I waited until I got back to the dubious privacy of the houseboat to call Ash. No sense in people on the street overhearing what I suspected. Because all I had were suspicions. I had no real evidence and no real proof. Ash and Detective Inwood would have to come up with those. Unfortunately, I’d recently received a text from Ash that they’d both just left for a long weekend of law-enforcement training. But, hey, what were cell phones for if not to interrupt people?

“Hi, this is Ash.”

“Hey,” I said, “I know you’re at that training—”

“I can’t talk right now,” his recorded voice said, “but I’ll call you back when I can. Thanks.”

I growled into the phone. When the beep came, I gave him my information about Paul and Monica Utley, that Paul had learned about Wildflowers through his role as attorney for the DeKeysers’ estate, that Paul and Andrea had known each other from high school, and that Paul could have learned about the value of the book through Andrea, so it might be a good idea to check to see if any of her phone calls had been to him. Or if they’d had any other contact. Or something.

When I was done rambling, I said, “Okay, um, that’s about it. Give me a call when you have a minute, okay?”

“Mrr.”

I looked down at Eddie. “What do you think? Should I call the sheriff, too?”

My cat put his head down and whacked my shin. It didn’t help my decision-making process, but it did encourage me pick him up for a snuggle. “How about if I e-mail the sheriff?” I asked. “She might not check her e-mail until Monday, but this can wait that long.” Eddie didn’t disagree with me, so I set him onto the dining bench while I did some tapping on my phone.

It didn’t take long to find Sheriff Richardson’s e-mail address—it was on the county’s Web site—and I sent her a note that replicated the voice mail I’d left for Ash. “There,” I told Eddie as I hit the Send button. “I’ve done what I can, and the rest will be up to the law-enforcement professionals. Want to go to the Friday marina party with me?”

“Mrr?” He jumped on my backpack and scratched at the opening until he’d managed to get himself inside.

“A backpack is not a cat toy,” I said, pulling him away. This was a little mean of me, because I’d watched him strain with the effort to get in and not done a thing to either help or hinder him, but I tamped down my guilt with the knowledge that he’d be sleeping on my head later that night.

“Mrrrr.”

I could hear Eddie latching on to something inside the backpack. I reached out and detached his front claws from whatever it was that he was sinking them into. “Don’t ruin my stuff, okay? Some of those things aren’t even mine, you know, and it wouldn’t look good for me to return books to the library with cat-claw marks in them.”

Eddie wriggled out of my grasp, gave me a dirty look, and jumped down. He stalked across the kitchen floor, thumped down the steps, stamped across the bedroom, and launched himself up onto the bed.

“Whatever,” I muttered. There were, in fact, two library books inside the pack, and I pulled them out. One looked intact and, after wiping off what might have been a small amount of Eddie spit, I started to slide the other book back inside. This one was nonfiction, with the cover a painting of a single pink rose. Though I’d never admit it to anyone, I’d checked out the book solely for the beauty of its cover art. You should never judge a book by its cover, of course, but it sure could give a hint about—

“Oh,” I said out loud. “I am so stupid. I forgot all about calling Amelia.”

“Mrr,” Eddie called from the bedroom.

I dug out my phone and scrolled down toward the end of the alphabet. “Ha,” I said. “Thought she was in there.” I stabbed at the button and waited for the phone to ring on the other end.

Amelia Singer had grown up in Chilson, moved downstate to attend college, worked as a teacher, married, had two children, worked as a school principal, divorced, worked as a school superintendent, and had recently retired and moved back to the town of her youth. She’d cast around for something to do and, when the museum director said he’d had enough after eleven years, which was one year too many by most accounts, she’d stepped in with both feet.

“Hi,” I said, when she answered. “Minnie Hamilton. How are you?”

“Minnie!” Amelia boomed. She did a lot of that, and I had yet to figure out if she’d always talked that way or if it was a natural result of her career choices. “Couldn’t be better if I were twins,” she said. “How are you?”

One of the first things Amelia had committed to doing was a faster processing of the multitude of donations that poured in. Not once had she said she’d bitten off more than she could chew, but I’d caught her looking at the vast pile of boxes with more than a small amount of loathing. Still, if anyone could turn the Chilson Historical Museum from a dusty, slightly musty, and ill-lit warehouse of castoffs from the town’s attics into a showpiece, it was Amelia.

I pictured her, my height but about twice my weight, her long reddish brown hair rolled up into a bun, her active mind whirring along at a hundred miles an hour. “Got a question,” I said. “How caught up are you with the donations?”

“Humor is the last refuge of the scoundrel,” she misquoted darkly. “And if you ever remind me that I’d vowed to organize this place by the end of my first year as director, I will never speak to you again.”

Laughing, I said, “I would never do that. I value your advice too much.”

“Advice?” She sighed audibly. “If I’d listened to my friends, I would never have become director of the museum. Why is it that we refuse to accept the experience of others?”

“Because we think we’re going to be different.”

“Why are we so often so wrong?”

“It’s a survival mechanism. If we were completely honest about our chances at completing any given task, we’d never get out of bed in the morning.”

Her laugh was deep and contagious. “How did you get to be so smart at such a young age?”

“It’s not me. It’s Alexandre Dumas, Elizabeth Goudge, and Charles Dickens.”

“Elizabeth Goudge,” Amelia mused. “Sad that so few people have heard of her these days.”

I was doing my best to take care of that, but I didn’t want to get too far off topic. Amelia and I could talk books for hours—we’d met at the library when she’d come in to get a library card—but I had a question for her. “Have you had many books donated lately?”

“You are a cruel, cruel woman,” Amelia said.

I smiled. “Not intentionally, honest. I take it you’ve had a few?”

“Tens of boxes. Hundreds of boxes. Thousands of boxes. Millions of boxes. And none of them are going to St. Ives or anywhere, because they’re all in the museum basement.” She sighed again. “I would love to look through them. I crave to look through them, but all I have time right now to do is open the flaps every so often and gaze at the contents longingly.”

The decision about what to do with my knowledge of the likely whereabouts of Wildflowers gelled into action. If anyone from the sheriff’s office called back soon, I’d pass the information on to them, but I couldn’t tell the family, not when parts of the family were suspects. Which left me, a librarian to the core, with only one possible course of action.

“Amelia,” I said, “I have a favor to ask . . .”

* * *

The next day dawned hot and humid. I debated leaving Eddie at home to nap the day away in the comfort of the cooler lakeside air, but he parked himself on the top of cat carrier and stared at me, unblinking, and it was easier to bring him along than to argue with him.

“Good thing I don’t have children,” I said, lugging the Eddie-filled carrier out to my car. “I’m a pushover. They’d be spoiled rotten kids with no manners and a huge sense of entitlement.”

“Mrr.”

“You’re right.” I opened the car door, set the carrier inside, and buckled it in. “Cats are different from kids. There’d be no teaching you table manners.”

Eddie opened his mouth to object, but I shut the door, for once getting in the last word.

* * *

Julia and Eddie and I spent the day trying to find the deepest shade in every parking lot where we were scheduled to stop. Worst was the asphalt lot of a newly constructed township hall whose only shade came from a spindly sapling that looked as if it could use a good watering. Best was the gravel lot of a rural church whose maple trees cast enough shade to cover the entire bookmobile.

Even still, it was a long, hot, sweaty day, and the three of us were glad to return to Chilson, where the ice-cream cones we’d been talking about all afternoon awaited.

I started my car and cranked the air-conditioning while Julia and I lugged crates of books into the library. By the time we were done, my car was cool enough to move Eddie from the bookmobile.

“See you on Tuesday,” Julia said, and, for the first time since I’d met her, she looked limp and exhausted and every one of her sixty-some years.

“Double scoop,” I recommended. “Mint chip.”

She shook her head. “Waffle cone of Mackinac Island fudge.” Then she grinned. “With a vodka martini chaser.”

The thought of drinking a martini made the inside of my throat go dry as overcooked toast. “I’d rather—” But before I could note my preference for a glass of chilled white wine, my cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket. Amelia Singer, the museum director.

“See you Tuesday,” Julia said, waving, and off she went.

I thumbed on the phone. “Hey, Amelia.”

“Minnie, I’m so glad you answered.”

Amelia’s usually expansive voice was tight.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

“Me?” She forced a chuckle. “Fine as cotton candy. It’s my granddaughter that’s the trouble. The thirteen-year-old. She was out skateboarding with friends, tried a fancy somersault, and didn’t quite make it all the way around.”

My breath caught as I imagined the scene. “How badly was she hurt? Is she okay?”

“No, no she’s not.” The words were spoken through sniffles. “Long-term she should be fine—her mother won’t let her go to the skate park unless she wears protective equipment—but she broke her femur.”

“Oh no.” I touched my thigh. “Does she need surgery?”

Amelia sniffed again. “They’re waiting for some fancy-pants orthopedic surgeon to get off the golf course and into the hospital.”

“Are you on your way downstate?” I asked.

“No, my daughter just called.” Sniff. “I had to talk to you first. We’d set up tonight for you to stop by the museum to look for your books.”

She was worried about me? “Amelia,” I said, “go home and pack. This can wait.”

“But you said—”

I’d told her the book that might have been donated to the museum might be related to the murder of Andrea Vennard, but none of that mattered when a granddaughter was in the hospital. “It can wait,” I repeated.

“Can you come down right now?” Amelia asked. “I’m still at the museum. I’m locking up, but I can wait until you get here.”

I glanced at my car. “We’ll be there in two minutes.”

* * *

Five minutes later, I was walking down the creaky stairs to the museum’s basement. Amelia had asked if I was familiar with the museum’s layout—I was, thanks to time spent volunteering the summer after my high school graduation—and she’d asked me to cross my heart and hope to die if I didn’t make sure everything was locked up tight when I left.

When I’d done the crossing and the hoping, she’d given me a long look, full of fear and anxiety. I’d set the cat carrier on the floor and given her a hug. “It’ll be okay,” I’d said. “They’ll take great care of her, and she’ll be up and around in no time.”

Amelia had returned the hug, muttering, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

I couldn’t help it; I’d laughed, and, after a moment, Amelia had actually smiled.

Now it was just me and Eddie in the museum, a building that had originally housed a dry goods store. When the owner had moved to Traverse City, about seventy years ago, a hardware store had taken its place. That had gone out of business when the owner had passed away, and a pharmacy had come in next. The pharmacy had lasted until its history-buff owner had retired, and he’d sold it to the museum for far less than it could have brought on the open market.

It was a lovely building. Upstairs were wooden floorboards, hand-plastered walls, and oak trim, but downstairs was a cavernous basement that, for reasons now lost in the mists of time, had a nine-foot ceiling.

“There could be lots of reasons,” I told Eddie, hefting the carrier onto a handy chair. “Some people say this building is where the first-ever city council meetings were held. And while that might be true, that doesn’t explain why the basement was built so big in the first place.”

“Mrr.”

“Well, sure, it’s possible that the first owner wanted a massive basement for his cats to play around in, but how likely is that, really?”

“Mrr!”

I considered the current Eddie situation. If Chastain’s book happened to be in the first box I opened, we’d be out of here in a flash. If it was in the last box I opened, we’d be here for days. The most probable reality was that we’d be here somewhere between those two possibilities. Hours, anyway.

“Promise to come when you’re called?” I peered into the carrier through the wire door. Not that he ever had in the past, but maybe today would be different.

“Mrr,” he said quietly.

“Okay, then.” I unlatched the door and let Eddie roam free. “The door to upstairs is closed,” I told him, “so all you can do is wander around down here. And don’t even think of asking if you can go up, because you can’t. There are too many exhibits that aren’t cat toys.” A bear rug for one, a native American headdress for another. And then there were the lace dresses, the carved pew from Chilson’s first church, and the dugout canoe. “Claw marks in any of that stuff wouldn’t be good.”

“Mrr.” Eddie leaped out of the carrier and onto the concrete floor.

“I agree with you, pal,” I said, blatantly lying. “Claw marks make everything look better. It’s just some of that stuff hasn’t had any claw marks in it for a hundred years or more, and Amelia prefers it that way.”

As I talked, I studied the boxes that were strewn about. Some were labeled; some were not. Some were taped shut; some were not. There were boxes on chairs, boxes on tables, boxes on shelves, boxes in the maze of storerooms that some said had once housed alcohol during the Prohibition years.

I turned around in a small circle, trying to make sense of the arrangement. Amelia had started to explain the sorting system, but I’d shooed her out the door, telling her that I’d figure it out. And I would.

Eventually.

“How about this one?” I asked, but Eddie was nowhere to be seen. When he wanted to, he could make himself smaller than a cat hair–covered washcloth. So, without Eddie’s assistance, I flapped open the first box and peered in.

I hadn’t honestly expected to find Wildflowers in the first box, but when I saw a collection of linens, I was still disappointed. “Rats,” I said, after reaching inside and making sure there were no books tucked into the folds of aprons and tea towels. “So much for serendipity.”

I put my hands on my hips and looked around. “It would have been helpful,” I told my invisible cat, “if the date of the donation had been written on the box.” Amelia had said they kept a log of the donations, who they were from, general contents, dates, and so on, but they hadn’t written any of that nice data on the boxes, since the moment the donations were taken out of the box, it didn’t matter.

This made sense, but it wasn’t very helpful for someone like me, who was looking for something larger than a needle in something that was bigger than a haystack. Then again . . .

“How big is a haystack, exactly?” I asked.

Eddie didn’t answer, of course. I was tempted to whip out my phone and ask my favorite search engine the question, but no. I was here to find a book. A very valuable book. A book that someone had been killed over.

I rubbed my arms, trying to smooth down the goose pimples. “It’s chilly down here. Good thing you have a fur coat, Eddie.”

“Mrr,” came the muffled noise.

And I started opening boxes.

* * *

A while later, I was tired of opening boxes. The day had been long and hot, and I was tired and hungry and in need of a shower. “Can we go home now?”

Eddie had climbed onto a set of shelving in a back room and fit himself between the top box and the ceiling. “Mrr.”

I sighed. “You’re right. This is important, and I shouldn’t give up so easily.”

“Mrr,” he said, and started purring.

“Easy for you to say,” I said, but I went back to the boxes and, as I should have expected, I grew fascinated with things I was finding. It didn’t take long, and I soon lost track of time, forgetting about food and water and sleep and even ice cream.

“Look at this!” I held out a framed photo so Eddie could see. “It’s Abraham Lincoln—I’m sure of it!” The image was a crowd scene, but President Lincoln was front and center, stovepipe hat and all. “I wonder where it was taken?” I looked closely but couldn’t see any identifiers in the photo. “But that guy sitting next to him looks familiar, doesn’t he? If I could figure out who he is, I might be able to figure out when and where this was taken and—”

“Mrr!”

I sighed. He was right. We were here to look for Wildflowers. President Lincoln had waited this long; he could wait a little longer.

“Don’t you get tired of being right all the time?” I asked, reaching for the 1974 newspaper in which the photo had been wrapped. “I mean, being perfect must be exhausting. No wonder you sleep so much.”

I cocked my head, waiting for his response.

Thud.

I frowned in the direction of the noise I’d just heard, which had sounded a lot like someone stepping onto the bottom creaky step. Amelia had said she’d lock the doors, that I just had to let myself out the side door, which would lock behind me. I hadn’t bothered to make sure she’d locked up, and given her state of anxiety, I now realized I should have.

“Hello?” I called out. “The museum is closed.” I carefully set Lincoln back into his box and headed for the storeroom’s narrow door. “Sorry, but the door must have—”

There was a small click.

The basement went black.

I stopped. If given a few minutes, I might be able to think of a dozen reasons why all the lights had suddenly gone out. A power outage, for one.

But combined with that footstep, there was only one reason; whoever was after Wildflowers had figured out what I was doing and had followed me.

“This is so not good,” I whispered to myself.

Because I was now alone with Andrea’s killer.

In the basement of an empty building.