Gone With The Whisker

Chapter 10

I rushed down to the sheriff’s office, and on the way called Aunt Frances, then Rafe. I started to call my brother, but stopped just before I pushed the button. No. I’d call after I knew more. Maybe this wasn’t as bad as it sounded. Maybe there was just a misunderstanding.

I burst in the front door as Aunt Frances and Otto pulled into the parking lot. A deputy ushered us back to the interview room, where three people were already sitting; Kate, Ash, and Sheriff Kit Richardson.

The two law enforcement officers sat across the table from Kate, who was slouched in her chair, arms crossed and chin on her chest.

“Kate, are you okay?” I asked. She muttered something that could have been “I’m fine,” and Aunt Frances and Otto and I pulled chairs up to the table. It was a tight fit for six, but we made it work.

“Sheriff,” I said, nodding at Kit Richardson. Straight-backed and serious, she was an imposing figure, but I’d once seen her in an ancient bathrobe while cuddling Eddie, so I knew she had a human side.

“Ms. Hamilton,” the sheriff said. “Good to see you, Ms. Pixley, or I suppose it’s Ms. Bingham now?”

Aunt Frances smiled. “And it’s always Frances. Have you met my husband?”

The sheriff shook hands with Otto. “Haven’t had the pleasure. Good to have you in Chilson, sir.”

Kate sighed, but not heavily. Which was good, because if she had she would’ve gotten a jab in the ribs from my elbow. The sheriff’s interview room was not the place to display an attitude. I knew this from personal experience.

“What’s going on, Kit?” my aunt asked. “Why is my great-niece here?”

The sheriff turned to Ash. “Do you want to explain, or shall we pull in Deputy Gardner?”

Ash looked at the sheriff, at the rest of us, then back at the sheriff. “If it’s all right with you, ma’am, I can describe the incident.”

She nodded. “Go ahead, Deputy.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He took a breath, and stared at the wall as he spoke. “We have learned that Ms. Katrina Hamilton, known as Kate, had taken cell phone photos of the Fourth of July crowd on her cell phone before her discovery of the body of Mr. Rex Stuhler.”

Kate’s relatives swiveled to gaze at her. Kate herself started sliding down in her chair.

Ash went on. “Since that day, Ms. Kate Hamilton has been taking the pictures into downtown businesses and asking staff and customers if they could name the people in the photos. An hour ago, she walked into the Wood Shed bar. Deputy Gardner was inside the establishment, off-duty, and recognized Ms. Hamilton. Knowing that she was under age, the deputy approached and overheard her conversation with the bartender. He called Detective Inwood regarding the matter. Detective Inwood requested that Deputy Gardner bring Ms. Hamilton into the sheriff’s office.”

There was so much wrong here that I didn’t know where to start being angry. But . . . the Wood Shed? Really? The dive-iest bar in Chilson? How did she have the courage to walk into a place like that at her age?

Sheriff Richardson stirred. “Ms. Hamilton,” she said flatly. “Please explain two things. One. What on God’s great earth did you think you were doing? Number two.” The sheriff leaned forward, focusing her laser-like stare on my niece. “Get us those photos or I’ll charge you with obstruction.”

Kate looked up. “But—”

“Now!” the sheriff roared.

My niece flinched, then hurriedly pulled out her phone.

Sheriff Richardson glanced at Ash. “Give her your e-mail,” she said, then pulled Aunt Frances and Otto and myself into her office, where she assured us Kate wasn’t in any real trouble. “The girl has guts, I’ll give her that,” the sheriff said. “But she has to be safe and smart.”

I liked that phrase: “safe and smart.” So I used it when, half an hour later, Aunt Frances, Otto, Kate, and I sat in their kitchen with my cell phone on speaker, talking to my brother and sister-in-law.

“You did what?” Jennifer asked, her normally calm voice going shrill.

“It was no big deal, Mom,” Kate said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Really? Then why were you hauled down to the sheriff’s office?”

“I’m more concerned,” Matt said, “that you didn’t show those pictures to anyone. How could you not know that the police would want to see them?”

Jennifer sighed. “Katrina, I thought we could trust you, but this isn’t working. You need to come home.”

A pang of disappointment made me swallow, but I understood. “Sorry,” I murmured. “This is my fault. I should have kept a better eye on her.”

“She’s old enough to know better,” Jennifer said firmly. “Thanks for taking the blame, Minnie, but it’s on her. When we talked about her going north this summer, she promised she was old enough to be trusted. It’s not your fault.”

Though it was nice my sister-in-law was letting me off the hook, I knew I shared in the responsibility for Kate’s actions. I sighed. “I’ll look up flights first thing tomorrow and let you know what time to pick her up.”

My niece sat up straight, glared at me, then glared at the phone. “What about my jobs? I have three. You want me to leave without telling them? Or give them what, an hour notice?” She snorted. “Isn’t that what you’re always complaining about, that kids today aren’t being held accountable, that we don’t have common courtesy, that we don’t understand how our actions impact others?”

Matt sighed. “Honey, you can’t pull out the responsibility card when it suits you.”

“No, but she has a point,” Aunt Frances said. “Summer help is hard for retailers to find, let alone good summer help.”

I nodded at the phone. “And two of her employers have, without prompting, told me how happy they are to have her.”

“Yes, but . . .” Jennifer’s voice trailed off. She was clearly wavering.

“Mom, Dad, they need me.” Kate’s hands turned into fists. “No one has ever . . .” She stopped, then started again. “They really need me,” she said quietly. “Please let me stay?”

And eventually, they did.

* * *

The next morning, my boss was in the break room ahead of me. “The sunset was gorgeous last night,” Graydon said, as he poured coffee into his mug, and then into the travel mug I was clutching. “So many colors. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I stared at him through bleary eyes. The bookmobile was ready to roll, parked temporarily just outside the door, with Julia and Eddie aboard, but I’d popped in to pull a book that had just been requested online and was making double use of the time by maximizing my caffeine possibilities.

“Didn’t see it.” I screwed down the mug’s top. “I was . . . busy.”

Which was almost certainly the understatement of the year. Graydon was stirring creamer into his coffee and eyeing me.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You look a little tired.”

Again with the understatement. I put on a smile. “Some family problems. Nothing I can’t handle.” I hoped.

Graydon smiled as he edged toward the doorway. “More niece issues?” Then, before I could say anything, he added, “Just remember that everything gets better eventually.” He nodded, and was gone.

“Yeah,” I muttered to myself, “but what kind of time frame are we talking about?” What did “eventually” mean? A week? A month? A year? Lots of years?

Sighing, I headed out to start the day, and immediately felt my spirits rise, because no matter what else was going on, everything was better on the bookmobile.

* * *

Julia squirmed around in her seat, rearranging herself and her seat belt so she could reach into the pocket of her shorts. “Hah!” she crowed. “Got one!”

I was about to ask “Got what?” when I saw that she was pulling back her long, loose strawberry blond hair and tying it up with a hair elastic. It was times like this—when Julia was so completely human—that I had a hard time reconciling the woman seated next to me with the pictures Aunt Frances had shown me of a younger Julia in the days of her Broadway success, cavorting with the rich and famous, and dazzling everyone with her smile.

“Do you miss it?” I asked. “Being an actor?”

She snorted. “Hardly. The backstage arguments, the hotels, the crappy food, the sheer hard work, the wondering if I’d ever get another role after the way I yelled at that bean counter for how he was messing with director’s vision . . .” She paused. “Which was a lot of fun. Did I ever tell you about it?”

I grinned as I braked, because the pending story sounded excellent. And I’d ask for it specifically after the bookmobile stop. I turned into the parking lot of a convenience store and came to a halt in the shade of an even more convenient maple tree, because it was now afternoon and the temperature was very July-like.

We ran through the pre-stop routine of turning the driver’s seat around to face a small desk, unlatching Eddie’s carrier, releasing the rolling chair in the back, firing up the computers, and popping the roof vents. Julia did the vent thing, because she could do it through the simple act of reaching, while I would have had to use some kind of step, which we would have had to find, purchase, and then store somewhere, so it was handy to have a ride-along clerk who was tall.

“Come one, come all,” Julia sang out as she opened the door.

A flurry of feet scurried up the stairs. When everyone was inside, I counted three children in the three-to-seven-year-old range, one female adult about my age, and one elderly male. I’d never seen any of them before, and neither had Julia, so introductions came first.

“And that’s Eddie,” I said, nodding at my cat, who had squished himself into the angle between the windshield and the dashboard. From the outside, it must have been an interesting sight.

“Mommy,” one whispered, “can I pet the kitty cat?”

Mom smoothed her child’s hair, smiling. “You’d have to ask Miss Minnie.”

Big blue eyes looked up at me. “Miss Minnie, can I pretty please pet the kitty?”

“Of course you can. Wait right there.” By this time, I’d managed to sort out the relationships of our new patrons: The two older children belonged to the woman and the youngest child was with her grandfather. Not one group as I’d assumed, but two. Silly Minnie, getting things wrong again.

I went forward, rotated a purring Eddie around to picking-up position, and took him back to the children’s section, where his newest fan was sitting on the carpeted step. “Grace, this is Eddie. Eddie, this is Grace.”

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

Grace sucked in a deep breath, her eyes wide open. “He said hello!”

Sure he did. Just like he actually replied to the open-ended questions I routinely asked him. But before I could come up with a comment that was both true and free of sarcasm, there was a sudden tumbling noise from the back of the bus. It was a noise that was sadly familiar, that of books cascading to the floor, and was followed immediately by a child’s frightened wail.

Julia was closest, and she hurried over. “Oh, honey, that scared you, didn’t it?” She crouched down and started soothing the youngster with a smile and a calm voice, and the incident was over within seconds.

My life seemed to be filled with things falling to the floor. Books, those pills that Courtney dropped, my backpack, and . . .

Hmm, I thought. Courtney. I’d tucked away what I’d learned about Rex’s mom into a back corner of my brain and hadn’t taken the time to think about it. But now thoughts were ticking away. Could there be a tie between Courtney and Rex? If so, how could I find out what it was? And could it possibly have led to murder?

The rest of the bookmobile stop passed quietly, and when we were tidying up, I said to Julia, “I need to make a phone call. Is this the parking lot where you can get three bars?”

She pointed at the store. “Stand between the ice machine and the Dumpster.”

As soon as my feet touched gravel, I was scrolling through my contacts, looking for Ann Marie and Rupert Wiley. By the time I found the sweet spot Julia had described, I was pushing the Call button. “Hey, Ann Marie. This is Minnie Hamilton, from the bookmobile.”

“It’s so nice to hear a voice that isn’t Rupert’s!” She laughed. “What can I do for you this morning?”

“First I wanted to make sure Rupert had enough reading material to last until our next scheduled stop. If he’s running low, I could drop by with some reserves.”

“Oh, aren’t you the sweetest,” Ann Marie said. “But the old bugger is fine. He’s getting out and about a little more and isn’t even half through that pile.”

“That’s great!” The getting-better thing, not the not-reading thing, but I wasn’t going to say that out loud. “My second question is about the first seven days of July. Some of my records are incomplete and I’m trying to get everything straight.” Which was true. Sort of. “What might help my memory was if you could tell me what days your home health aide, Courtney, was at your house that week. I didn’t meet her until the other day, so if I knew what days she was there . . .” I heard myself starting to babble, so I stopped talking.

“Easy enough,” Ann Marie said. “All I have to do is turn around and look at the calendar. Let’s see . . . that week Courtney was here Thursday, Saturday, and Monday. And Saturday she was here until dark, because Rupert was having some difficulties and she was kind enough to stay late. Does that help?”

It certainly did. I thanked her, asked her to say hello to Rupert for me, and ended the call.

So Courtney had worked until dark on the night of the Fourth. No way could she have driven to Chilson and killed Rex; there just wasn’t time.

I looked up at the bookmobile and saw that Eddie was again on the dashboard, only this time he was staring straight at me and yelling his furry head off. At least I assumed he was yelling, because although his mouth was opening and closing, I couldn’t hear him through the windshield.

“What’s with him?” I asked Julia as I settled into the driver’s seat.

“He was worried about you,” she said, shutting the cat carrier door as Eddie slinked inside. “He watched you the whole time and started howling right there at the end.”

I started the engine and looked at Eddie, who was glaring up at me with the intensity of ten thousand suns. If his problem was separation anxiety, you’d have thought there’d be a happier expression on his fuzzy face. “What’s the matter, my little friend?” I asked. “Talk to me. I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Mrr!”

Julia leaned forward against her seat belt and patted the carrier’s top. “Now, now, Mr. Edward. She didn’t mean to sound condescending. It’s just that she doesn’t always understand what you’re saying. It’s her fault, not yours.”

I laughed. “Let me guess. You’re fluent in Eddie speech and you’re going to tell me exactly what he was trying to get across to dumb old me.”

“Moi?” Julia arranged her face into an expression of shock. “While I occasionally grasp a fleeting thought out of our feline friend, I do not have the gift for translating ninety-nine percent of what he’s trying to communicate. Only you, dear Minnie, could do that. You’re his chosen life partner, after all.”

“Such an honor,” I murmured. Most of the time I had an excellent idea of what was going on in Eddie’s head, and his thoughts fell into one of three categories: sleep, food, or entertainment. If it was sleep, he’d be thinking about where next to curl up and spread his Eddie hairs around. If it was food, he’d be wondering when I’d offer him another treat, or maybe when I’d rearrange his dry cat food into the rounded pile he preferred. If it was entertainment, he’d be testing whatever object was closest to him to see if it could be a suitable cat toy. Curtains could do the trick, as did paper towels, toilet paper, newspapers, pencils, and shoelaces.

There was also a fourth category, one I hesitated to use under any circumstances—the dreaded miscellaneous. This was a dangerous thing, because I’d learned that if a miscellaneous folder existed, half the world could get stuffed in there. Far better to have many accurately labeled folders than a massive pile of—

“Mrr!”

I flinched. In the half mile of roadway we’d just driven, I’d gone deep into my thoughts, and Eddie’s sharp cry startled me. “What’s the matter, pal?”

He didn’t reply. I glanced over and couldn’t see anything inside the carrier except the pink of his blanket smashed up against the wire door. He’d never done that before, and I didn’t like not being able to see him.

“Julia, he’s managed to cover the door with his blanket. Can you fix that? Who knows what he’ll get into when he’s hidden from view.”

“Eddie, my good sir,” Julia said in an upper-crust English accent. “Will you give me permission to rearrange your bedchamber?” She opened the wire door. “While your renovations with the blanket, sir, are attractive, they pose a—hey!”

My cat bolted out of his carrier, scrambled over the console, and galloped to the back of the bookmobile, howling all the way. “Mrrr! MrrrRRR!”

“Egad,” Julia said, still English. She turned around to watch him. “The cat is something possessed.”

In the rearview mirror, I caught glimpses of his black-and-white self running from front to back, running from side to side, then jumping from floor to desktop and down again. “He’s something, that’s for sure.” The noises and antics went on and on and showed no sign of stopping.

I was torn between concern for my furry little friend and annoyance that he was being so weird. Surely if he was sick, he’d be lying in a pathetic heap inside the carrier and whining, not bouncing off the walls. But with cats—or at least with Eddies—it was hard to tell illness from normal.

“We’re going to make a quick stop,” I said to Julia. “To make sure he’s all right and get him back in his carrier.” I thought I heard her mutter, “Better you than me,” but she said much louder, “Good idea.”

Up ahead was a small lakeside park where we occasionally pulled in to eat lunch if the parking lot was empty of trucks and boat trailers. Happily, the only vehicle in the gravel parking area today was a small sedan in a back corner and we were able to slide into the shady side of the lot.

I turned off the engine and stood up. “Okay, Eddie, it’s time to . . . hang on. Where did he go?”

“What do you mean?” Julia stood and looked over my shoulder. “Did he get up behind the paperbacks again?”

Eddie had done that numerous times, but I’d finally come up with the bright idea of placing empty cardboard boxes behind the books. This kept Eddie away and kept the books from sliding around during travel. “He can’t anymore, remember?”

But we peered behind the paperbacks anyway. No Eddie. “He has to be somewhere,” Julia said. “Cats don’t just disappear.”

I opened a cabinet door and retrieved the canister of cat treats. “This will get him. Here, Eddie Eddie Eddie,” I called, shaking the canister up and down, making a soft maraca type of noise, which was Eddie’s favorite noise in the whole wide world.

But he didn’t come running. Fear clutched at my heart and a thousand scenarios ran through my head. I pushed them all away as impossible, but . . . where was he?

“Mrr,” came a soft noise.

My tight throat released itself. Worry vanished and was immediately replaced by irritation. “What are you doing down there?” I asked, because the noise had come from the doorway. Steps led from the door up into the bookmobile, and as I drew near, I saw that Eddie had compressed himself into the corner of the bottom step, leaving only his dark fur visible to the naked eye, which was why we hadn’t noticed him down there.

“Come on up, buddy,” I said encouragingly, but he didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t even look up at me. “Are you okay?” Still nothing. I moved down a step. “Say something. Anything would be fine.” He didn’t say a word. Concern wormed its way into my heart, but I summoned my inner Aunt Frances—she of “why worry?”—and banished my fear. Or most of it.

“Eddie,” I murmured, moving down another step. “Talk to me. Do I need to take you to Doctor Joe? If you’re sick, I’ll take care of you, you know I will. I’ll hold your kitty head if you need to . . . you know. I’ll figure out a way to give you pills”—something that had been problematic in the past, but Rafe would help—“and I’ll buy whatever expensive cat food you need. Just talk to me.”

“Mrr,” he said, but it was the weakest “Mrr” I’d ever heard from him.

“Maybe he needs some fresh air,” Julia said. “Maybe in the carrier he was breathing exhaust fumes and they got to him.”

The bookmobile had a far more stringent maintenance schedule than my personal vehicle did, so Julia’s suggestion was unlikely. But it was also possible, and since I didn’t have any better ideas, I unlatched the outside door, and pushed it outward.

Before the door was open three inches, Eddie had hurled himself outside, zooming like a black-and-white arrow.

“Eddie!” I yelled, but he paid absolutely no attention to me and continued straight ahead, toward the lake.

“He’ll be fine,” Julia said, laughing. “See? He did just need some fresh air.”

I sighed and we both jogged after my cat. There had been one or two occasions in the past when Eddie had escaped, but lately he’d been content to stay in the bookmobile. “Stupid cat,” I muttered.

“Au contraire,” Julia said. “It’s a beautiful day. Look at that sky, those clouds, and this adorable little lake, whose name escapes me. Mr. Ed has given us this moment, so let’s give ourselves permission to enjoy the opportunity.”

I glanced at the sky. It was pretty, a gorgeous blue, with fluffy white clouds so perfect they could have been painted on the set of a theater’s stage.

“Mrr!” Eddie yelled, and I ran ahead of Julia.

“Where are you, buddy?” The park had a small boat launch and a beach area, but Eddie wasn’t on either the dock or the sand. He was off to the left, rustling around in the shrubbery.

If he’d been about to hack up a hairball, I was just as glad he’d chosen the great outdoors, but his behavior wasn’t of the about-to-get-sick variety.

“Mrr!”

With Julia right behind, I elbowed my way through a jungle of shrubbery, following the direction of his voice, which had advanced to an insistent “Mrr! Mrr! Mrr!”

“We’re coming, Eddie,” I called. “Hang on, bud, we’re almost there, okay?” Where “there” was, I had no idea, but we were getting closer. “Just a few more ‘mrrs’ and we’ll be with you, and—”

I stopped so fast that Julia bumped into me.

“What?” she asked. “Why did you stop?”

But I couldn’t answer her. Instead, I pointed to what Eddie had found, half in and half out of the water. Or more accurately, who he’d found. Because Eddie was sitting next to the unmoving body of a woman in a one-piece bathing suit, a redheaded woman about forty years old, a woman we knew.

Julia gasped a huge breath. “Oh, no . . . oh, no. It’s Nicole. What should we do?”

I was already fumbling for my phone to call 911, but there was nothing anyone could do, because she was dead.