Cat With A Clue

Chapter 1

After almost thirty-four years of living, my most important discovery was that there are remarkably few things I absolutely had to do.

Yes, I had to feed and clothe and house myself, but besides those basics, there wasn’t much that couldn’t be put off for the sake of sitting for a few minutes in the morning sunshine, especially when said sunshine was smiling down on your very own houseboat, which was resting comfortably on the sparkling waters of a lovely blue lake that sat alongside Chilson, a picturesque town in northwest lower Michigan, which happened to be my favorite place in the whole world.

I lay flopped in my lounge chair, eyes closed and soaking up the sun, content with pretty much everything and everyone. Life was good, and there wasn’t much that could make it better, other than making this particular moment last longer. Peace and quiet reigned throughout my little land. Nothing I had to do that day was so important that a minor delay would matter much and—

“Mrr!”

Of course, my idea of what defined important didn’t always match my cat’s.

I opened my eyes and looked at Eddie, my black-and-white tabby, who was approximately three years old and who had placed his nose two inches from my face.

“You know,” I told him, “if you’d gone running with us, you wouldn’t have so much energy.”

For the past few weeks, I’d actually been exercising. Sweating, even. I’d been meaning to start something like this for a long time, but it had taken a number of gentle suggestions from Ash Wolverson, my new boyfriend, to get me to invest in some decent running shoes. A few more suggestions, and I’d started hauling myself out of bed early three times a week to run with him. Luckily, he swung by the marina four miles into his own run, so he’d already had a good workout by the time we got together.

“Think about it,” I said to Eddie. “You’ll sleep even better during the day.”

He blinked.

“Right.” I patted him on the head. “You never have trouble sleeping during the day. It’s the nights that are a problem. What do you think about going for a run in late afternoon?”

“Mrr.” Eddie pawed at yesterday’s newspaper, which was sitting on my lap. I’d stayed at the library late the night before and had been too tired to do anything except reread a chapter of 84, Charing Cross Road when I got home. Since my boss, Stephen Rangel, had left his job as director of the Chilson District Library, I was interim director until the library board hired someone. This was stretching me a little thin, because in addition to my normal duties as assistant director, I also drove the library’s bookmobile and was out of the building almost as much as I was in it.

“Which section do you want to hear first?” I asked, picking up the two-section paper.

“Sports, please,” said a male voice.

I looked over toward my right-hand marina neighbor. Eric Apney, a fortyish male with perpetually mussed brown hair and undeniable good looks, was sitting on the deck of his boat, eating a bowl of cereal while a mug of coffee steamed next to him.

My left-hand neighbors, Louisa and Ted Axford, had spent summers in the slip next to mine for years and would usually be in residence by now, but a new grandchild had captured their hearts, and Louisa had e-mailed me that they wouldn’t be up until mid-July.

Eric, who lived downstate but spent as much time in Chilson as he could, was new to Uncle Chip’s Marina. I’d met him a few weeks before and had turned down his invitation to dinner when I’d learned he was a doctor, and, worse, a surgeon. I’d recently dated an emergency-room doctor and had learned that with doctors, dates were things that were made to be broken. Maybe I was being prejudiced, but my reaction had been instant and instinctive.

Luckily, Eric hadn’t taken the rejection to heart. He’d laughed and said I was smart to stay away, and we were becoming good friends.

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

“What was that?” Eric’s spoon paused halfway up.

I looked at Eddie. “He’s tired of hearing about the lack of depth in the Tigers bullpen and would rather hear the law-enforcement report.”

In a lot of ways, marina life was like being in a campground. Your neighbors were mere feet away, and if the wind was calm, you practically heard them breathing. Politeness dictated that you didn’t mention how their snoring kept you awake, but it was hard to maintain the fiction that you didn’t know what the person on the boat next to you was saying while on his—or her—cell phone. From unintentional eavesdropping, I knew Eric was a huge baseball fan, just as he knew that I ordered take-out dinners more often than I cooked.

“Really?” Eric asked. Soon after we’d met, he’d heard me talking to my cat as if Eddie could really understand what I was saying. He’d laughed with only the slightest condescension, but when Eddie had responded with a conversational “Mrr,” he’d stopped laughing and hadn’t laughed since.

“No idea,” I said, flipping newspaper pages. “But I know I’m tired of hearing about pitching problems. Okay, here we go. Ready for the good stuff?”

It hadn’t been until I’d started dating Ash, a deputy with the Tonedagana County Sheriff’s Office, that I’d become interested in the law-enforcement tidbits that Sheriff Kit Richardson released to the newspaper. Ash said what made print wasn’t the half of it, but the farcical half was certainly there.

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

Eric shoveled in a spoonful of cereal. “Fire away.”

I scanned the short paragraphs. “Here’s a happy one: ‘Lost six-year-old boy in the woods. Six-year-old boy was located and returned home safely.’”

Eric swallowed and toasted the newspaper with his coffee mug. “Score one for the good guys. What’s next?”

“‘Daughter called from out of state to have her elderly father checked on. Officer spoke with father, who said he turned off his phone because his daughter calls too late at night and wakes him up.’”

Eric choked on his coffee. “Seriously?” he asked, coughing.

“I don’t make this stuff up, you know. Next is about a guy who called 911 to tell the sheriff’s office that he’d been driving with his window down. A bee flew in, and when he was trying to get the bee out, he drove into a parked car.”

“Good story,” Eric said. “Wonder if it’s true.”

Smiling, I went back to the paper. “Here’s a call that someone had broken into a garage the night before a garage sale. Nothing was reported missing.”

“Mrr.” Eddie thumped his head against my leg.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Not that good a story, but they can’t all be winners. How about this one? ‘Caller wanted to see an officer because her cat was being mean to her.’”

“Mrr!”

“Okay,” I said. “It was one sister being mean to another sister, and Mom took care of things before the officer arrived.” I gave Eddie a pat. “Just wanted to see if you were paying attention.”

“Some kid really called 911 because she was fighting with her sister?” Eric held up his cereal bowl and drained the last of the milk into his mouth.

I averted my eyes, swung my short legs off the lounge, and stood. “Last week some kid called 911 because his mom wouldn’t let him play all night with his new video game.”

“Well,” Eric said, “now, that I can see.”

“Mrr.”

I turned around. Eddie was settling onto the newspaper, tucking himself into a meat-loaf shape. “Oh no, you don’t.” I rolled him gently onto his side and slid the paper out from underneath him, like a sleight-of-hand artist pulling a tablecloth out from under a table full of china. Unlike the china, however, Eddie yawned and stretched out with his front feet, catching the paper with one of his claws and yanking it out of my hand so it fluttered to the deck.

“Nice job.” I crouched down to pick up the now-scattered newsprint. “You have a gift for making a . . .”

“A what?” Eric asked.

“Mess,” I said vaguely, now standing with the newspaper in hand, looking at the page Eddie had opened. The obituaries. Talia DeKeyser, I read to myself, died peacefully in her sleep on Memorial Day. Born on May 24, 1933 to Robert and Mary Wiley, Talia married Calvin DeKeyser in 1955—

“Minnie, are you okay?”

I folded the newspaper and put it under my arm. “Fine, thanks.” I picked up a purring Eddie and tucked him under my other arm. “See you later, Eric. I have to get to work.”

* * *

My shower was fast and, since my annoyingly curly shoulder-length black hair didn’t take well to blow-drying without turning into a mess of frizz, I toweled it dry and hoped for the best. And even though I knew from my mother’s years of scolding that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, I didn’t feel like stopping even for a quick bowl of cereal. There were granola bars in the vending machine at the library; one of those could count for breakfast.

I blew a kiss to Eddie, who somehow knew it wasn’t a bookmobile day and was already curled up in the middle of my bed, and headed out into the brightness.

Normally there wasn’t much I liked better than my morning walk through the streets of downtown Chilson, but in spite of the cheeriness of the day, I couldn’t help thinking of that famous line from the John Donne poem, “Any man’s death diminishes me.”

And any woman’s, too, because though I’d barely known Talia DeKeyser, she’d seemed to be one of those people who could light up a room with a smile. Aged, widowed, and suffering from Alzheimer’s, Talia had nonetheless brightened the day of everyone at Chilson’s Lake View Medical Care Facility with her unfailing cheerfulness and horrible riddles. Her family had moved her to Lake View soon after Christmas, and I’d met her when I’d stopped by with a pile of large-print books from the bookmobile.

I remembered her grinning up at me from her wheelchair, all ready to share a knock-knock joke, and had the sudden and certain conviction that she’d gone on to a better place. “Sweet dreams, Talia,” I said softly, and felt my sadness curl up into a tiny spot in my heart. And though I wasn’t quite thirty-four, I knew my sadness would eventually fade and be overgrown by memories of bad jokes and happy laughter.

“Morning, Minnie,” Cookie Tom said. Tom Abinaw, the tall and amazingly skinny owner of the best bakery in the area, had always been a nice guy, but he’d elevated himself to saint status in my eyes when he’d volunteered to let me purchase cookies for the bookmobile at a special rate and, even better, from the back door, so I didn’t have to stand in the long lines that snaked out his front door all summer.

“Hey.” I stopped. “Beautiful out, isn’t it?”

“Sure is.” Tom looked up from his sweeping of the clean sidewalk. “Yet another day I’m glad I don’t work in a big city.”

I laughed. “Better to work seventy hours a week in a small town?”

“Far better.” He smiled and returned to his unnecessary sweeping.

I went back to walking through the few blocks that constituted Chilson’s downtown. The mishmash of old and new, single-storied and multistoried, brick and clapboard, brightly colored and faded melded together into a cohesive whole that worked so well that it couldn’t possibly have been planned. Organic growth, urban planners said. Whatever it was, I liked every inch of it, from the far reaches of the slightly shabby east end, where my houseboat was moored, to the moneyed west end, where my best friend, Kristen, had her restaurant.

Of course, the east end soon wouldn’t be as shabby as it had been for years, thanks to the efforts of my friend Rafe Niswander. By day, Rafe was the best middle-school principal Chilson had had in years. By night, he was the renovator of what had been a run-down wreck of a house within shouting distance of the marina, and he was taking his own sweet time about it.

Whenever I told him that he could have finished two years ago if he hadn’t spent so much of his summer in the marina’s office, hanging out with the manager and the manager’s marina buddies, he would loftily say that perfection couldn’t be achieved in a day, and walk away, whistling.

“Morning, Minnie!” Pam Fazio fingered a wave at me. She was sitting in a small slice of sunshine that was hitting the front steps of her store, Older Than Dirt, and cupping her hands around what was most certainly not her first cup of coffee that morning.

I gestured at her drink. “Number three or number four?”

Pam had moved north from Ohio a year earlier, fleeing the clutches of corporate life, and had vowed that she’d spend every morning the rest of her life sitting on her front porch and drinking coffee. She’d done so through last winter’s abnormal cold spell without missing a single day and, though I suspected that the contractor I’d noticed parked at her house would soon be glassing in her front porch, her vow was still intact.

She held the coffee close to her face and breathed deep. “Two. I’m trying to cut down. And I’m waiting for a delivery.”

“Is it container day?”

Pam went abroad two or three times a year, searching the nooks and crannies of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Antarctica, for all I knew, for items old and new to sell in her store. She had an uncanny knack for choosing things that would sell like hotcakes, and the arrival of the shipping container piqued interest across town.

She nodded and drank deep. When she surfaced, she said, “Should be here any minute.”

I needed to get to the library, but I couldn’t leave, not just yet. “Um, are there books?”

“Now, Minnie, you know I don’t tell.”

“You used to,” I muttered.

“Sure, but that was before I figured out what a draw container day could be. Off with you. Come back when everything’s unpacked, just like everyone else.”

“But—”

“Go!” She pointed toward the library with an imperious index finger, but she was smiling.

“Greedy, manipulative retailer,” I said as seriously as I could.

“Naive and sentimental public servant,” she shot back.

Laughing, I told her to have a good day and moved on.

Moving faster now, I walked past the shoe store, past the local diner known as the Round Table, and past the women’s clothing stores whose super-duper sidewalk-sale offerings were still beyond my budget. I admired the new fifteen-foot-high freestanding clock, a gift to the city from the chamber of commerce, and moved swiftly past the side streets, where I caught glimpses of the local museum and the Lakeview Art Gallery. Past the toy store, past the post office and the deli and the T-shirt shop and the multitude of gift stores, and then up the hill to the library.

I supposed there might be a day when I wouldn’t smile with pure pleasure when I approached my place of work, but since it hadn’t happened in the four years I’d been assistant library director, I wasn’t sure it ever would.

Once upon a time, the two-story L-shaped building had been Chilson’s only school. When the growing population had packed the classrooms to panting capacity, new buildings had been constructed to house the older students. Decades passed, computers came into their own, and the town eventually realized that a modern elementary school was needed. The old school, built to last and filled with Craftsman-style details, locked its doors.

And there it sat. For years. Then, just before it crumbled away into dust, the library board looked around and noticed that the existing library was packed to the rafters, with no room to expand. Hmm, they collectively thought. You know, if we could pass a millage to renovate that old school . . .

Smiling, I hopped up the steps to the library’s side entrance. Even though I’d started working at the library only a few weeks before the library moved into its new home, and in spite of the fact that I hadn’t been involved in a single renovation decision, I felt as proprietary toward the building as if I’d refinished every piece of trim myself.

It was beautiful. Gorgeous, even. One of the most comfortable public spaces I’d ever stepped into, and I was grateful beyond words that Stephen, my boss, and the library board had chosen me out of the dozens of applicants.

I inserted my key into the lock of the wooden door and amended my thoughts. Stephen, my former boss. Because even though, just the previous winter, he’d said he was grooming me to take over when he retired in a few years, Stephen had jumped ship when he’d been offered the directorship of a large library that just happened to be in a climate where snow was seen maybe once every two years.

We’d been directorless for going on two months, but the library board would soon be interviewing candidates. I was sure the board would choose wisely, but I was also wondering what the future would hold for the impetuous five-foot-tall, cat hair–covered Minnie Hamilton.

“Quit worrying,” I said out loud, and pushed open the door. The library didn’t officially open until ten, but there were things to do, so here I was, walking into the building two hours early, happy that my best friend, Kristen Jurek, couldn’t see me.

“You’re salaried,” she’d say flatly. “You make the same money if you work forty hours a week or sixty, so why are you working seventy?”

A huge exaggeration. I’d never once worked seventy hours in a week. Sixty-eight was my absolute tops, and that was only because one of the part-time clerks had called in sick. And if Kristen ever said that to me again in person, I’d point out that, as the owner of a top-notch restaurant, she routinely worked more than I did.

Then, if the past was any guide to the present, she would retort that at least she made lots of money, slide a bowl of crème brûlée over to me, and I’d agree with whatever she said.

The library’s door shut quietly behind me and I breathed deep, drawing my favorite smell into my lungs: books. Flowers were all well and good, but what could compare to the scent of stories, of knowledge, of learning, of history?

My soft-soled shoes made little sound as I crossed the lobby on the way to my office. I flicked on the light, dropped my backpack on the floor, and, just as I started to sit down, saw the stack of reference books I’d meant to put away last night.

To shelve or not to shelve, that was the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to—

“Oh, just do it,” I told myself. Though I could put the pile onto a cart for a clerk to file, I enjoyed putting books in their proper homes. I snatched up the books and made my way back through the lobby.

I didn’t bother to turn on the pendant lights as I entered the main hall; enough sunshine was streaming through the high windows of what had once been a gymnasium that the extra illumination wasn’t necessary. I also didn’t bother to look at the call numbers on the ends of the bookshelves; I knew the library so well that I could practically have put books away blindfolded.

Which was why, instead of looking where I was going, I was paging through the top book in the stack, a foreign-language dictionary, seeing if I could stuff a few words of Spanish into my brain before I shelved it, and which was why I didn’t understand what had happened when my foot hit . . . something.

This made no sense at all, because I was walking through nonfiction, call numbers 407 through 629. There shouldn’t have been anything on the floor here except, well, nothing.

Frowning, I stopped reading and looked down.

My sharp gasp was loud in the quiet space. The books fell with soft thumps to the carpeted floor, and I dropped to my knees, reaching forward, hoping that the woman lying on the floor was simply sleeping in a very strange place and in a very strange position.

But her skin was cold.

I swallowed, pushing myself to my feet.

And noticed the knife sticking out of the woman’s back.