Lending a Paw

Chapter 7

The next morning, Eddie did his best to accompany me throughout my showering, dressing, and breakfasting. He blinked at me all the way through the assemblage of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the bagging of a handful of potato chips, the shoving of food and a jug of water into my backpack, and the writing of a note on the whiteboard.

When I zipped the backpack closed, he bounced into action. Off the bench, across the floor, and up against the door before I’d taken more than a step in that direction.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” I picked him up, gave him a small noogie, and put him back on the bench. “It may be Bookmobile Day, but you’re not coming with me. That was a onetime deal. I’ll see you tonight. Have a good day.” Not that Eddie could understand what I said, of course. Still, it was kind of like wearing your favorite underwear to a job interview. You knew it didn’t make any difference, but why take the risk?

I opened the door. A fraction of a second later I heard Eddie’s front and back feet double-thump the floor. The sound of elephant feet raced toward me and I slammed the door shut before either of us got out. “Not a chance, pal.”

He slid to a stop. Stood on his hind legs. Pawed at the door.

I blew out a breath. “Listen, buddy. Remember that long talk we had? Cats don’t belong on a bookmobile. And no bringing up Dewey. He was in a library. Different situation altogether.”

Still scratching, he looked over his shoulder. “Mrr?”

“You are pathetic. Adorable, but pathetic. And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to work.” I picked him up again, put him on the bench again, gave him the gentlest of shoves to send him off-balance, and raced to the door. By dint of sliding out sideways like one of those skinny fish, I got safely outside before Eddie could get a paw in the doorway.

I heard his yowls as I walked off the dock and across the marina’s dewy grass. Even halfway to downtown I thought I could hear poor Eddie calling to me. My steps slowed . . . but, no. It wouldn’t work.

I put my fingers in my ears and walked on.

• • •

“Where is she?” A portly, gray-haired man looked around the bookmobile.

“I’m sorry?” Thessie, my seventeen-year-old volunteer, looked puzzled. “Minnie is the bookmobile librarian.” She pointed to where I was standing, maybe ten feet away from the man, working with a six-year-old boy to find a book about butterflies.

“No, no.” The man brushed away her gesture. “The cat. I heard there’s a cat on the bookmobile. I like cats. Where are you hiding her?”

“A cat?” Thessie’s eyes went big. My stomach instantly clumped together in a tight mass. “There’s no cat here,” she said.

“Sure, toe the party line, I get it.” He winked broadly. “So where is she?”

I handed the kid a book on snakes—“Try this”—and moved to intervene. “Sorry,” I said, putting on my most gracious and helpful smile. “There’s no cat here today.”

“Why not?” He frowned. “It’s a great idea.”

“Thanks, but . . .” I tipped my head to the side and we adjourned to the back of the bus. “It was a onetime deal,” I told him quietly. “Eddie was a stowaway last Friday. He wasn’t supposed to be here, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t spread the word.”

“Stowaway Eddie?” His lips twitched.

I looked at Thessie. She was engrossed in explaining rattlesnakes to the six-year-old. In a low voice I asked the man, “Who told you the bookmobile had a cat?” Forget the consequences, full cover-up ahead!

“Well, now.” He rubbed his chin. “Seems like I heard it Sunday morning at church.” More rubbing. “Or was it yesterday at the Rotary meeting? Sorry.” He shrugged. “Can’t say for sure.”

Yes, life as I knew it was over. But Stephen couldn’t fire me; only the library board could and they wouldn’t meet for another three weeks. Timing is everything. I could polish up my résumé and send it out . . . where? There wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to be.

The man read my expression of woe. “Ah, don’t worry about Stevie.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “He’s so stuck in that ivory tower he built for himself that he’ll never hear a word about Eddie.”

“You know Stephen?” A small hope beat in my heart.

“He’s the same now as when he was a kid. Smart, but not really seeing anything.”

I blinked and tried to imagine a young Stephen. Somehow he looked just like he did now, only shorter, buttoned-down shirts and all.

“Downstate,” the man said, “he and his folks lived on the next block. And here I end up retiring practically down the street from him. Funny old world, eh?”

Life up north was full of odd coincidences like this. On a ferry ride to Mackinac Island last summer I’d sat in front of my high school biology teacher. And two winters ago I’d been skiing at the nearby Nub’s Nob, and ridden up the ski lift next to a guy I’d had a class with in graduate school. Things like that happened when the region’s major industry was tourism on a grand scale. Up here, the odds of running into your grade school crush were about the same as running into the latest American Idol idol.

Stephen’s old neighbor asked, “So, you going to bring Eddie around next time, right?”

I smiled. “Not a chance.”

• • •

During the drive to the next stop, I kept the conversation tight on the complexity of tasks involved in being a librarian. Thessie was a high school senior and considering library science as a major. Ergo, her volunteering on the bookmobile. “There’s a lot more to being a librarian than most people realize,” I said.

“Yes, I know. Um, that man? What did—”

“Dealing with odd questions is one of those things they don’t tell you about in college.” I tossed off a careless laugh. “Another thing they don’t tell you about is working with library boards. Chilson’s board is wonderful, but I could tell you stories.” And I did, on and on without a break until we came to the next stop. “Well, here we are,” I sang out. “And we have people waiting for us already. Isn’t that great?”

Thessie may have been only seventeen, but she was no slouch in the brains department.

“So if anyone asks about the cat, what do I say?”

“There is no cat,” I said firmly.

“Yeah, but maybe there could be.” She gave me a sidelong look. “I mean, if there was a cat, it might be fun having it around.”

I rotated the driver’s seat and brought the laptop to life. “Will you pop the roof vents? Thanks.” Thessie, at least eight inches taller than me, could reach the ceiling easily. “No cat. There’s no way Stephen would allow a fuzzy, furry feline on the bookmobile.”

“Not a cat guy, is he?” Thessie asked.

“He’s not an animal person.” Neither cat nor dog nor feathered friend was held in esteem by the library director. “Says all pets do is eat and make messes that other people have to clean up.”

It was easy to see the gears whirling around in Thessie’s pretty dark-haired head. I shook mine. “There’s no use bringing it up. Even if we get around his dislike of pets, he’ll say that people are allergic and we can’t possibly run the risk of exposing anyone.”

“Okay, but the bookstore downtown has a cat and they don’t have any problems. And wasn’t there a library in Iowa or somewhere that had a cat living there?” She glanced around. “A bookmobile’s smaller, I guess, but if we vacuumed every time to get the hair and dander out—”

I was shaking my head. “Not going to happen.” I unlocked the back door and pushed it open. “Good morning! Come up and into the bookmobile.”

Up the stairs first was a young man of about twelve. Red springing curls, bright blue eyes, and braces on his teeth. “Do you have anything about fishing? There’s this bass in the lake I want to catch and my grandpop said you might have something.”

Thessie took him under her wing and escorted him to the high shelves at the rear end of the bus.

Next up the stairs was an elderly couple, hand in hand, looking for books on gardening. After I got them settled, I noticed a young woman coming aboard. Twentyish, long sun-washed blond hair, tan, wearing flip-flops, shorts, and a tank top covered by a flowered-print short-sleeved shirt, she looked the image of a California surfer girl.

I watched as she ran a finger over the books, scanning the titles, her head tilted to one side. She went through half a dozen shelves like that. Hunting for something, but not asking for help. Hmm. “Are you looking for something special?”

She jumped. “Oh! Um, no, thanks. I’m just looking. Is . . . that okay?”

A shy surfer girl? I didn’t know that was possible. Then again, I’d only been to California once, and that was when I was six and we took a family trip to San Francisco, so what did I know?

“Absolutely it’s okay,” I said. “If you have any questions, just ask.” I turned away, then had a thought. “If you’re looking for something in particular, I can get it from the main library and bring it out on the next trip.”

“Oh . . .” She opened her mouth, shut it, glanced around. “Um, no, thanks.” She scurried down the stairs.

I stared after her. What had that been all about?

“What did you say to her?” Thessie asked. “She looked . . . well, scared.”

Frightened as a rabbit had been my thought. “All I said was we could pull a book from the main library and bring it out to her.”

“Well, there you go,” Thessie said comfortably. “That’s pretty scary, for sure.”

I stared at her, then started laughing. Which is a good way to end a bookmobile stop.

• • •

The last stop of the morning was the rutted gravel parking lot of a middle-of-nowhere gas station and what you might have called a convenience store except that it didn’t stock anything that travelers might have found it convenient to purchase. Bottled water? Soda? “Nah, we don’t carry that crap.” Snacks? “Got some beef jerky the wife made last fall.” Map of the area? The grizzled proprietor would nod at a map stuck on the wall in 1949, long before paved roads reached this part of Tonedagana County.

The points in the location’s favor were a tolerably clean bathroom, the large amount of shade cast by a huge oak tree, and that it was a nexus point for a number of homeschooling families. As soon as the bookmobile’s purchase had been publicly announced, a representative mother had called me and begged for a stop.

We drove into the shaded parking lot, which had more cars in it than I’d ever seen.

“Are all these people here for the bookmobile?” Thessie’s gaze was stuck on the group of adults and children milling about.

I studied the adults, trying to see if anyone looked familiar. One mother, two . . . “All of them,” I said. “There are six families around here who homeschool.”

“Lots more than six kids.” She sounded apprehensive.

“It’ll be fun,” I said, stopping the bookmobile in front of a knot of cheering children. “What’s the matter?”

“Kids I like just fine. It’s tight spaces I’m not good with.”

I stared at her, then stared at the aisle that would soon be filled with youngsters and moms and a dad or two. Houston, we have a problem. “Tell you what,” I said, flipping the driver’s seat around. “You sit here and run the computer. I’ll take care of all the questions and send them your way to do checkout. It’ll be fine.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said in a small voice. “I just never thought . . .”

“It’ll be fine,” I repeated, patting her on the shoulder.

When I pushed open the back door and let the kids run up and inside, the noise level instantly went from calm to ear-damaging. I shot a glance at Thessie. She’d wedged herself into the gap between the seat and the bookmobile’s outer wall, a feat I wouldn’t have thought possible for any creature larger than Eddie. But though she was pale, she’d put on a bright smile and was chatting with a round-cheeked youngster.

I felt a tug on the hem of my crop pants.

“Miss Minnie? Miss Minnie?”

I looked down into eyes so brown they looked almost black. “Well, hello there, Brynn.” Brynn and her mother and brothers came to the library as often as they could, which wasn’t as often as any of them would have liked because of their ancient and undependable station wagon. The children’s father had a high-level position with a boat-building manufacturer, but he had to travel on a regular basis.

While no one in the family liked his absences, he had to keep the job for the sake of top-quality health insurance. For Brynn’s sake, for the sake of treating the leukemia she’d been diagnosed with two years ago, for the sake of this cheerful, clever little girl. Though I would have gone to the stake rather than publicly name a favorite library patron, Brynn was high up on the list. And if there was a Kids Only list, she’d be—

“Where’s the kitty cat?” she asked.

She’d be sliding down toward the bottom.

I crouched down and spoke in a quiet, low voice, the kind of voice no one would overhear. “What cat?”

“You know.” Brynn’s gaze darted around the bookmobile. “Eddie the bookmobile cat.”

Not only did she know there’d been a cat on board, but she knew his name. “What makes you think there’s a cat?”

She stomped one small foot. “Rosie Engstrom told me so. She said his name is Eddie and he’s black and white and real fuzzy and that I’d be able to pet him and he’d purr.”

Rose. The Princess Girl. Naturally, she’d be the one to rat me out. Just like high school, the princesses always win. “Brynn, I’m sorry, but Eddie can’t come on the bookmobile. He—”

“But I want to see the kitty,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “I want the kitty!”

“Brynn—”

“I want to pet Eddie.” Tears gushed out of her eyes and down her face. “I want to make him purr. Why can’t I see Eddie? Rosie wasn’t making things up, was she? There is really an Eddie, isn’t there? She said he was so nice.”

What had I done to this poor, sick little girl? Unintentionally, sure, but that didn’t matter. Not to her and not to me. This lovely child had already dealt with more pain in her life than most people would ever endure and I was not going to add to her burden. “There is most definitely an Eddie.” I leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “He’ll be on the very next bookmobile trip. I promise.”

• • •

Thessie looked at me sideways the rest of the afternoon. Her comments, dropped every ten miles or so, ranged from “You have a cat named Eddie?” to “In the cabinet?” to “I can’t believe you have a cat named Eddie,” to a sad look and a slow headshake that said, Gee, it was nice knowing you and I hope you find a new job soon.

When we reached the Chilson city limits, I swore her to secrecy.

“But Mr. Rangel’s going to find out,” she said. “You know he will.”

I shook my head. Not in disagreement, but in denial. “I told Brynn I’d bring Eddie to her.” Michelle, Brynn’s mom, had the schedule and we’d figured out the next stop closest to their house. “I said I would and I will.”

Thessie sighed as she unbuckled her seat belt. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

I did, too.

• • •

After putting the bookmobile away for the night, I hauled a milk crate full of books to the bookmobile room. The light switch, like most light switches in the world, was too high for me to turn on with my elbow, so I turned toward the wall and pushed it up with my shoulder. Which is why I didn’t see the person huddled at my desk until I turned back around.

“Holly! What are you doing?” I put the milk crate down and leaned backward, stretching. “Hiding from Stephen?” I chuckled, but she didn’t say anything. “Are you okay?”

She gave a muted sniff. “Kind of.”

“‘Kind of’ means no, not really.” I walked to the desk and saw her face. Her puffy, red-eyed face. “Hey,” I said softly. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s . . . it’s . . .” She buried her face in her hands. “The police. I couldn’t go back to the front desk, I just couldn’t.”

“The police talked to you again?”

She nodded and swallowed a sob. “Just now. They asked all these questions and . . . and they think I killed Stan Larabee, I just know it. What am I going to do?”

I wanted to give her comforting platitudes, tell her that since she didn’t have anything to do with the murder, there was no way she’d ever be arrested. That everything would be fine. But the police had talked to her twice. They hadn’t talked to anyone else at the library twice. Or . . . had they? I didn’t know, so I asked her.

“Only me.” She sniffed. Sniffed again. Hung her head. “Minnie, I’m in so much trouble,” she whispered.

“No, you’re not,” I said. “The police are talking to lots of other people.” They had to be. “They’ll find the killer and—”

“But what if they don’t!” she wailed. “I look like a good suspect—I asked Stan Larabee for that loan and sent him a nasty note when he wouldn’t do it and what if the police decide I’m the killer and don’t find the real one? What will happen to my kids?”

“Holly—”

She seized my hands. “Minnie. Will you help me? Please say yes. The real killer is out there somewhere and the police are going to arrest me instead and I need your help. You notice things. You know you do. You were the only one to notice old Mr. Wednesday—I can never remember his real name—that he didn’t come that one Wednesday and you went to his house and found him lying on the floor with a broken hip. And you were the only one to smell how hot that printer was and saved the library from burning down. You’ll find something that’ll prove I’m innocent. Please say you’ll help me. Please.”

The naked need in her eyes was too painful to see. I drew her to me in a hug. “Of course I’ll help.” And then, for the second time that day, I said, “I promise.”

• • •

Kristen sighed. “I can’t believe your mother lets you go out alone.”

Though part of me wanted to roll my eyes at her statement, part of me agreed with it.

“I mean, honestly.” Kristen pushed aside the paperwork in front of her, parting it like the Red Sea, and thumped her elbows on her desk’s scratched surface. She put her chin in her hands. “Two career-killing moves in one day. I’d say it’s a new record.”

“At least I’ve never told my boss he was an addlepated nincompoop.”

She grinned. “We’re discussing you, not me. Why didn’t you tell Brynn you’d drive Eddie out to see her in your car?”

“She wants to see the bookmobile cat, and he wouldn’t be a bookmobile cat that way, would he?”

She squinted at me, then nodded. “True enough. But what on earth made you promise Holly Terpening you’d help find Stan’s killer? You know what’s going to happen. By ‘help,’ Holly means ‘You go do this while I sit here and feel sorry for myself. Pooooor me.’” Kristen clasped her hands to her chest and batted her eyelashes.

“She’s not the same person you knew in high school,” I said. “And what makes you think helping Holly has anything to do with my career?”

“Because I know how she works. She’ll whine and moan and be on you to help poor little her every second of every day, and you won’t get any work done and Stephen will fire your skinny little butt because it’ll take you more than ten minutes to reply to his e-mails since you’re spending too much time helping Holly.”

I’d never understood the raw antagonism that existed between Kristen and Holly and I probably never would. “Well, anyway. What I really wanted to talk to you about was Stan Larabee.”

She glanced at the wall clock. “I don’t have time.”

“Yes, you do. You said you’d talked to him a few times. Did he come in here?”

She sat back in her chair, her long arms dangling. “You’re serious about this.”

“Did he or didn’t he?”

The silence between us lengthened to a thin strand. “Okay,” she said, breaking it. “Okay. Most of what I know about him is rumor and gossip and innuendo and I’m guessing you don’t want to hear any of that.” At my nod, she went on. “So the only thing I know for honest-to-goodness sure is that he and Caroline Grice have been in here a couple of times looking very friendly.”

I blinked. “No kidding.”

“Yep.” Kristen smiled, obviously pleased at my nonplussed status. “Very cozy they were.”

“You think they were on a date?”

“Bottle of expensive wine, dinner, coffee and dessert. Not sure what else it could have been.”

Stan dining with the most elegant and cultured widow in town. Who would have thunk it?

There was a knock on Kristen’s door. A white-hatted male head poked in. “Hey, Kristen. The guy from that new organic farm is here. You want me to send him back here?”

Kristen stood. “No, I’ll see him in the kitchen. Minnie, if you want some dinner, we have some portabella mushrooms I’m trying to finish off. If you ask nice, this guy will whip up something interesting for you. He’s the new one I told you about.” And in three leggy strides, she was out the door and gone.

The chef looked at me. “Do you want mushrooms for dinner?”

“I’d rather eat road salt.”

He grinned. “I’m not a big fan, myself.” His white jacket was embroidered with the name “Larry.” He might have been thirty, but his round face had that cherubic look that aged slowly. He also had a thick elastic brace around his left hand and wrist.

I nodded at it. “Can’t be easy doing chef stuff with that on.”

“Fact.” He cradled it on the opposite hand. “Keep it elevated, they say. Like that’s going to happen.”

“What did you do?”

He looked over his shoulder, then at me. “I told the boss I sprained it playing softball.”

“But . . . ?”

“You promise not to tell?”

What was one more promise? “Don’t see why I would.” The words hung in the air and I made a fast amendment. “Unless it hurts Kristen. She’s my friend.”

“Yeah, I get that.” He made a slicing motion with his good hand. “The other night I stayed late, practicing with the knives. I’m saving up to buy my own Wüsthofs, but Kristen got a new set and I wanted to work with them a little.”

My eyes went wide. “You cut yourself?”

“Ah, just nicked the tendon a little. It was late, I was still nervous about starting this new job, you know how it goes. No big deal. I’ll be fine in a week.” He grinned and I grinned back, thinking that Kristen might have herself a winner this time.

“What do you think of Three Seasons?” I asked.

“This place is great.” He nodded eagerly. “It’s a lot like the place I’m going to have. Someday, I mean. I’d want to build a brand-new building, though. You never know what’s going on inside old walls, right?”

He was right, but building new wasn’t cheap. When I said so, he nodded. “Yeah, but you got to do like they say, dream your dream and live into it, so that’s what I’m doing. And it’s just money. They print more every day. I have a spot all picked out—”

“Thought so!” Kristen’s voice rang out, and I don’t know who jumped higher, me or Larry. “Here.” She slapped a full plate on her desk. “Yeah, yeah, I know you think you don’t like mushrooms. Just try it.”

I looked at the plate, looked at Kristen, looked at Larry. He grinned. “Nice meeting you,” he said. “Have a good dinner.”

• • •

“Mrr?”

“Of course I didn’t try them,” I told Eddie. “Fungus among us. Eww.” Ever since a childhood bout of stomach flu had coincided with my mother’s dinner offering of sautéed mushrooms on Swiss steak, I hadn’t been able to eat a mushroom nausea-free. I wasn’t fond of Swiss steak, either.

Eddie and I were sitting on the front end of the houseboat with a pizza from Fat Boys between us. Sausage, green peppers, and bacon. Pre-cat, I used to get anchovies, but Eddie liked them too much.

“So.” I wiped my face with a paper napkin. “Caroline Grice. Go figure.”

A white paw reached out for the pizza box.

“Hey, that’s tomorrow’s lunch.” I tossed my napkin in the box and flipped the top shut. “My lunch, not yours. You get cat food.”

He stared at the pizza box, then flopped down on the chaise lounge.

“I mean, Caroline Grice? Sure, she and Stan were about the same age, but other than that . . .” I shook my head.

Stan had been a farm boy who’d made his fortune through smarts, timing, savvy, and incredible chutzpah. Caroline had been born into wealth, had married wealth, and was now an extremely wealthy widow.

Caroline was an alumna of Smith College; Stan was a Chilson High School graduate. Caroline was a patron of the arts; Stan had been a NASCAR fan. Caroline wore clothes purchased from stores that didn’t advertise. I’d heard Stan say that a thousand dollars spent on a suit was a thousand dollars wasted. Caroline’s world was curved edges and calm voices; Stan’s had been full of hard knocks and braying laughter.

I looked at Eddie. “They say opposites attract. Do you think that’s true?”

He made a pointless swipe at the pizza box.

“Don’t waste your energy,” I told him. “Save it for tomorrow when you’ll need to sleep all day.”

He ignored me and I went back to thinking about Stan and Caroline Grice.

Though Stan had been stratospherically rich, he’d been accessible. If you’d wanted to run the risk of hearing him tell you his canoe joke for the forty-second time, all you had to do was find LARABEE, STAN in the phone book and dial.

The Grices were different. Grices had lived in splendid isolation out on the point, a couple of miles from town, since before Chilson was Chilson. Grice children attended private schools; Grice adults spent their leisure hours at the country club or tootling around in boats that cost more than the bookmobile. No Grice had ever checked a book out of the public library and no Grice (rumor said) had ever set foot in the Round Table.

I spent a moment wondering how they’d even met, then shook my head at myself. Of course they knew each other. Even if they didn’t have common interests, Chilson was still a small town, and people in their economic stratosphere would inevitably meet.

“You know,” I said to Eddie, “maybe Caroline had a reason to kill Stan. Jealous rage, maybe? They say murders are almost always committed by someone you know.” I could give Caroline’s name to the police, but I didn’t see that going anywhere. I could just imagine the response if I called and suggested that one of the detectives talk to Caroline Grice. “Thank you, Ms. Hamilton. We’re investigating all possibilities.” Click.

“I guess I’ll just have to find a way to talk to her myself.”

Eddie opened his mouth in a yawn so big and wide that I had time to count the ridges on the roof of his mouth.

Cats.