Laurie Cass - Bookmobile Cat 02 - Tailing a Tabby

Chapter 6

By the time I got home it was practically time to get up, but I crawled into bed anyway. Eddie, who’d been sleeping in the exact center of the bed, murmured an objection, then rearranged himself at the small of my back. I was sound asleep in seconds.

Too soon, the alarm clock went off. I smacked the snooze button and went back to sleep. The fourth time the alarm rang, I realized it was going to keep waking me up every six minutes until I either got up or turned the thing off altogether.

Yawning, I slid out of bed and headed for the shower. Halfway there, my brain woke up and panic set in. It was Saturday. A bookmobile day.

“Eddie!” I shrieked. “We’re going to be late!”

My startled cat scrambled off the bed and leapt to the floor. Side by side, we raced up the short hallway, me on the way to the shower, Eddie on the way to the door, where he sat, voicing criticisms, until we were ready to go.

• • •

In an amazingly short period of time, we were in the bookmobile and driving down the road. “I know I forgot something,” I said.

Thessie reached through the wires of the cat carrier door to scratch Eddie’s face. “You? Forget something? Doubt it.”

“D word,” I murmured.

“Sorry?”

“Did you ever think how many fun words there are that start with the letter D?” I asked.

“You mean like death, destruction, and dystopia?” She said the last word with relish, rolling it around in her mouth and enunciating the consonants cleanly and clearly.

There couldn’t be many seventeen-year-old girls who knew what that meant. “Dystopia?”

“You know what it means, right?” Thessie asked. “It’s, like, a world where everything is horrible, so bad that it can’t get any worse.”

“A world without books,” I said.

Thessie grinned. “Or a world with only e-books that your reader won’t open.”

I laughed. What was I going to do when Thessie went back to school in September? She was the perfect bookmobile companion. Smart, funny, and, as a volunteer, not on the library’s payroll. The odds of finding anyone close to her caliber were nil to none. But since I didn’t have to worry about that for a few weeks, I decided not to. Why ruin the present with worry about the future?

“This contest is going to be so much fun,” Thessie said. “That was so nice of your friend Kristen to donate the candies.”

In reflex, I almost looked back at our latest acquisition, which was safely bungee-corded on a bookshelf. The road, however, was winding and narrow and I kept my gaze forward.

“It’s really too bad I can’t enter the contest,” Thessie was saying.

“Sure is,” I said cheerfully. “Anyone connected to the library is out of luck. Besides, you know how many candies are in there. You helped me count.”

I didn’t remember the number, but then I didn’t have to because I had that information in the spreadsheet I was using to track the names of the entrants and their guesses. We had blank slips to write down guesses for the number of candies in the jar, and the guess that was closest would win the candies, the jar, and the ultimate prize of the bookmobile coming to her or his house. Everyone would get one slip per visit and may the best guess win. The local paper had agreed to write up the contest-winning personal bookmobile stop and I was already planning to have the bookmobile’s carpet steam-cleaned of all Eddie hair before any reporter set foot inside.

“Maybe I forgot?”

Unlikely. Thessie’s sharp brain wouldn’t forget anything it didn’t want to, let alone the number of Kristen-made maple-flavored hard candies, individually wrapped and placed in a large, clear, thick plastic jar I’d found in my aunt’s attic.

“You know,” I said, “even if nobody’s close to guessing right, you still won’t get it.”

“Not even if everyone’s really far off?” she asked hopefully.

“If everyone is that far off, I’ll suspect someone was priming them with wrong numbers.”

“Hey!” she protested. “I wouldn’t do that!” But she turned back to look at the jar with a contemplative look on her face.

Shaking my head, I flicked on the blinker and made a wide-sweeping right turn into the parking lot of a former gas station, now a gardening supply store. By the time we were set up, half a dozen people were milling about, waiting for someone to open the door.

“Good morning,” I said, smiling wide. “Welcome to the Chilson District Library Bookmobile. Come on—”

But they were already up the stairs and in, no further invitation necessary. And there, kicking up dust as she walked across the gravel parking lot, was the exact person I’d hoped to see at this stop.

“Good morning, Faye,” I said as she came up the steps. “Did you remember to bring those cookbooks?”

Her face, which had been smiling, instantly transformed into a horrified—and very guilty—look. She tucked her short graying hair behind her ears with hands that held no books, not even the overdue cookbooks that I’d found for her through the interlibrary loan system. “Oh, wow, Minnie. I forgot all about them. They’re at home, but…” She glanced over her shoulder. “But you’d be gone by the time I got back. Um…”

I crossed my arms, put on my firm librarian face, and looked her in the eye. Which was only possible because she was standing one step down. “You know the library’s policy is to refuse lending privileges until any and all overdue books are returned.”

She hung her head and sighed. “I know. It’s my own fault.” With drooping shoulders, she retreated down the stairs.

Uh-oh. I must have carried the Firm Librarian Face a little too far. “Faye!” I called. “Come on back. I know how much you were looking forward to reading the new Nicholas Sparks. It’d be unusual punishment to make you wait.”

“You mean… ?”

“We’ll bend the rules just this once.” I put my finger to my lips and looked left and right. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

She nodded toward the front of the bookmobile where a black-and-white feline was perched on the headrest of the passenger’s seat. “Not even Eddie?”

“Especially Eddie.” I rolled my eyes. “Cats are horrible gossips, didn’t you know?”

Laughing, she headed straight for the Special Orders shelf.

“Um, Minnie?” Thessie stood at my elbow. “We have a little problem. You know how the guessing game was supposed to be for kids? Well…” She held out six slips of folded paper.

At this particular moment, the youngest human on the bookmobile was Thessie. I glanced at our patrons, all of whom had their noses deep in books, just as it should be. “Didn’t you tell them it was for kids only?”

“By the time I noticed, it was too late. They’d made their guesses.”

Yet another thing no one had taught me while I was getting my library science degree. Clearly, there should have been at least one lecture on how to run contests.

A white-haired gentleman approached. “Here you go, Minnie. May the best guess win, eh?” Smiling, he held out a slip of paper. “Winning a jar of candy from the Three Seasons would be a nice treat, but I can’t pass up a chance to have the bookmobile come to my very own house. Brilliant marketing, by the way.”

What choice did I have? I took his guess. “Thanks,” I said faintly. Thessie, a smirk on her face, started to say something. “Not a word, Thess,” I told her. “Not one word.”

“Dystopia,” she said, grinning.

I crossed my eyes at her and went to help a patron find the perfect beach read.

• • •

My early-morning activities eventually took their toll. At lunchtime, I made an unplanned stop at a convenience store and bought a large bottle of caffeinated soda. Near the end of the day, I wished I’d bought two.

“See you on Tuesday,” I said when I dropped Thessie off at her car.

“What’s that?” she asked. “I couldn’t hear you through that yawn.”

I snapped my jaw shut and gave her a mock glare. “When did the youth of today get so smart-alecky?”

She put on an air of deep thought. “I’d guess it was when the first teenagers were born.” She looked at me. “Um, are you okay? To drive, I mean? You look really tired.”

I smiled. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”

“Mrr!”

Thessie laughed. “I guess Eddie will keep you awake.”

She left and I looked at my feline companion. “Please don’t listen to her,” I told him. “The last thing I need is you howling all the way home.”

“Mrr,” he said quietly.

“Thank you.” I pointed the bookmobile in the direction of Chilson. “She’s right, though. I am tired. But I’m not going to think about it. If I do, I’ll just get more tired and that’s no good, not on such a beautiful day.”

And a beautiful day it was, one of those perfect summer days that northern Michigan seemed to specialize in. Temperatures in the high seventies, a light breeze, low humidity, and a few fluffy clouds dotting the sky. No wonder this area was such a tourist draw.

“Speaking of drawing,” I said, “I wonder how Cade’s doing. Last night couldn’t have been good for him.”

Actually there were a lot of things I was wondering. Having a murder in my happy little town was hard enough to wrap my head around, and I was bothered by the fact that I knew nothing about the victim.

I didn’t know if Carissa Radle had been blond or brunette or redheaded. Didn’t know if she’d been short or tall or pretty or athletic or funny. Didn’t know who was left behind to mourn her. Didn’t know anything about this woman whose life had so unexpectedly intersected Cade’s and now, in a diagonal sideways sort of way, mine.

Those thoughts kept me awake all the way to Chilson. They kept me mostly awake while I tucked the bookmobile in for the night, and they sort of kept me awake as I kept an eye out for Stephen while I moved Eddie into my car and then drove home.

“Yo, Miniver!”

I was halfway between the marina’s parking lot and my houseboat. I had Eddie in his carrier in one hand and my backpack in the other. My longed-for nap was less than a hundred feet away. I slowed but didn’t come to a complete stop. “Hey, Chris. Nice day.”

Chris Ballou, the marina’s manager, squinted at the sky, his weathered skin crinkling. “Yeah. Should stay this way for a while.”

Back before I knew better, I would have thought he was using his years of experience of living next to the water to make such a prediction. “Is that the Weather Channel’s forecast or NOAA’s?”

He took a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth. “Got something I want to talk about. Come on down to the office a second, will ya?”

I hefted Eddie’s carrier. “I’m kind of busy.” And sleep-deprived. Really, really sleep-deprived.

“Ah, it’ll just take a minute.”

Two sentences ago, it had been a second. Then again, Chris rarely asked me for anything, and he was giving me a discount for renting the slip next to Gunnar Olson. “Let me put Eddie in the houseboat and I’ll be right down.”

Chris grinned around the toothpick. “Nah. Let’s bring him with. Bet he fits right in with the guys.” He took the carrier out of my hand and sauntered off, his long and skinny legs covering ground fast. I had to half trot to keep up and I was very glad when the short walk was over.

“Look what we got here, boys.” Chris carefully placed Eddie’s carrier on the shop counter. The four men lounging on ancient canvas director’s chairs and drinking beer turned to look.

Skeeter, a summer boater about my age, went to the effort of lifting two fingers off his beer can in a sort of salute. “Minnie.”

Rafe Niswander grinned. “Hey, it’s an Eddie.” Rafe was my nearest on-land neighbor and a good friend. September through mid-June, Rafe was the principal of the local middle school. Mid-June through August, however, he did as little as possible and played the bumbling Up North hick role to the hilt. “What do you say, Eddie, my man?”

Thanks to Rafe’s tendency of being accident-prone, he was the reason I’d met Tucker, so I could forgive him much, but it was thanks to his propensity for procrastination that the electrical repairs on my boat were behind schedule.

“Mrr.”

The third and fourth guys laughed. Number three had a shaved head and looked to be in his mid-fifties; number four had light brown hair and was in his mid-forties. I’d never seen either one of them before.

“I think he said quit asking such stupid questions,” the older one said. “How you doing?” He stood, and turned into a very tall man. He held out his hand, and I realized he was a very tall man with very large hands.

We shook and, since no one else was doing the honors, I introduced myself. “Minnie Hamilton. Are you renting a boat slip?”

“Greg Plassey,” he said. “Need to buy a boat first. And this is my bud Brett Karringer. He does something with computers that I don’t understand and plays some really bad golf.”

I nodded at Brett. There was a beat of silence. Rafe held his hand out, palm up, to Chris. “Hand it over.”

“Come on, Min,” Chris pleaded. “Tell me you know who Greg Plassey is. I got five bucks on this.”

“Sorry.” I smiled at Plassey. “No offense, but I’ve never heard of you. Should I have?”

Chris groaned and dug out his wallet.

Rafe laughed. “Told you. This girl don’t know jack about baseball.”

Or pretty much any other professional sport; I was more the toss-around-a-Frisbee-on-the-beach type of person. In short order, I learned that I’d just dissed a Major League Baseball pitching star. Sure, he’d been retired for more than fifteen years, but the human males in the room were still astounded that I didn’t recognize the name of the guy who’d helped pitch the Detroit Tigers to two American League championships.

I shrugged. “How can you gentlemen not know who won the Newbery Award last year?”

Skeeter lowered his beer. “That a new hockey trophy? No, wait. Golf.”

“Golf?” Chris slapped Greg on the shoulder. “Too bad you’re not as good a golfer as a pitcher.”

Greg grinned. “Doesn’t hurt any worse than a line drive.”

I stared at him. “You were hit by a golf ball?”

“By a ball his buddy there smacked,” Rafe said.

Brett Karringer nodded sheepishly. “Hit it off a tree and it caromed into the back of his head.”

“You got to work on your aim,” Skeeter said. “Next time see if you can get him right between the eyes.”

For some reason, the men found that hilarious. When the laughter faded, I turned to Greg. “Did you go to the hospital?” I asked. “Head injuries aren’t anything to mess around with.”

“Being hit with one more ball isn’t going to do me any damage.” Greg smiled. “I’m fine.”

I wasn’t sure how he could be so sure, but it was hard enough to get my male friends to take care of themselves, let alone practical strangers, so I let it go. I looked at Chris. “You wanted to talk about something?”

“Oh, yeah.” He reached into the carrier to scratch Eddie’s chin. “You know our other marina, the one at the east end of Janay Lake? It’s full up this year and I’m looking to keep them happy enough to come back. So I was wondering if you could talk your boss into getting the bookmobile to make a stop out there.”

My boss? Maybe someday I’d get used to being underestimated. But I doubted it. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said dryly.

“Yeah?” Chris smiled, his teeth showing white against the leathered skin. “Cool. Thanks, Min-Tin-Tin. You’re all right, for a girl.”

If I’d been more awake, I’d have come back with a snappy rejoinder, but fatigue was turning my brain into mush. “And you’re… not so horrible for a boy.” Lame, so very lame. I nodded at the other boys, slid the cat carrier off the counter, and headed home for a long afternoon’s nap.

“Hang on, Min, I’ll walk out with you.” Rafe got up and took the carrier from me. “I’d like to stay, guys, but there’s a house that needs working on.”

Rafe owned what you would call, if you were being kind, a fixer-upper. When he was done redoing the siding, wiring, HVAC, and plumbing of the century-old house, it would be a showpiece, but for now it was more a blot on the landscape.

“How’s your cut healing?” I’d taken him to the Charlevoix Hospital after an accident with a reciprocating saw.

“Never better,” he said promptly. “You should quit worrying so much. If you’re not careful, you’re going to grow up into a regular old girl.”

“I can think of worse things to grow into,” I said mildly.

“Five bucks says you can’t come up with ten by the time we get to your dock.”

I immediately started counting on my fingers. “A person who doesn’t read. A narrow-minded person. Someone who doesn’t understand the necessity of an occasional day off. Someone who doesn’t know how to laugh at herself. Someone who doesn’t like chocolate. That’s five. Someone with no sense of humor. With no appreciation for architecture. With no appreciation for art. Or with no love of beauty. Or someone who cares so much about a single issue that they forget about everything else in their life. Ten.”

Rafe handed me the five-dollar bill he’d so recently won from Chris, but I wasn’t done. “I’d rather be a girl than someone who doesn’t like girls, or someone who thinks girls are useless. And I’d rather be a girl than—”

“You won, already,” Rafe said. “See you later, Minnie.” He handed me Eddie’s carrier and headed off, shaking his head.

“And,” I told Eddie, “I’d much rather be a regular old girl than someone who doesn’t like cats.”

Eddie didn’t say anything, but I’m sure he was pleased.

• • •

On Saturday evening I walked up to Kristen’s restaurant. Kristen Jurek and I had met on Chilson’s city beach at the age of twelve. Though Kristen was a born and bred local, she’d committed the unusual act of taking a summer kid under her wing. I’d never forgotten her kindness, and every time I said so, she rolled her eyes and said I’d paid her back a zillion times over and to forget about it, okay?

I would reply that offhand suggestions I’d made three years ago about what to name her restaurant hardly counted in the grand scheme of things, and she’d say that karma was karma, no matter who did what, and to shut up about it or she’d stop making crème brûlée for me every Sunday night.

That was a threat I didn’t want to risk, so I kept quiet. At least for a little while.

I said, “Hey, guys,” through the kitchen’s screen door and went on in. Even late on a Saturday night, the staff was hard at work. Cutting, chopping, cooking, baking, all those things I rarely did and made a mess of when I tried. The one time Kristen had tried to explain the importance of presentation was two hours of my life I could have spent reading. I still regretted the time lost.

A fortyish woman in a tall white hat and a white jacket glanced up at me, her face sharpening at the sight of a stranger in her midst. But the sous-chef, his assistant, and one of the summer interns all nodded to me and/or said, “Hey, Minnie,” and the woman’s face relaxed.

“Hi,” I said to her. “I’m Minnie Hamilton. Is Kristen in her office?”

“Misty Overbaugh,” she said in a gravelly voice. “And I’d be careful if I were you. She’s wrestling with the menu for next week.”

My eyebrows went up. Kristen never waited until the last minute to work up a menu. Never.

“Somebody called with a special deal on chicken breasts,” Misty explained. “She said she couldn’t pass it up.”

I grinned. That was Kristen. “Nice meeting you,” I said, and headed back to the office. I navigated the maze of short hallways and storage rooms that were a direct result of Kristen’s insistence during the remodeling phase that the kitchen be the best possible kitchen, forget the expense, full speed ahead.

What had once been a massive summer cottage was now one of the finest restaurants in Tonedagana County. Diners ate food grown and produced in the region while seated in the rooms where wealthy summer people had formerly spent their leisure hours. Nothing served in the restaurant was frozen, and nothing edible was shipped in from outside the state of Michigan. Well, she did make an exception for spices, but there wasn’t much she could do about that and it was noted on the menu.

I stood in the doorway, looking fondly at my fair friend. Kristen, at nearly six feet tall and Scandinavian blond, was the reverse image of five-foot, curly-black-haired me. “I hear chicken nuggets are popular,” I said.

She looked up at me with bleary eyes. “Why didn’t you stop me from ordering all that chicken?”

“Because I like to see you suffer.” I dropped into the rickety wooden contraption that served as the guest chair. “That, and even if I’d been here you wouldn’t have listened to me.”

“I would, too, have.”

“You think?”

She pushed herself away from the computer and stretched. “No. I would have said what makes you think you know anything about running a restaurant when you can’t even pop microwave popcorn without burning it.”

“My skills are more in the peanut butter and jelly range.”

“It’s good to know your strengths.” She picked up her phone. “Harvey, can you…” She gave me a thumbs-up and grinned. “You’re the best, kid,” she said, then hung up. “Two crème brûlée desserts being prepped right now.”

“Have I ever told you how much I like having a restaurant owner for a best friend?”

“Only almost every Sunday evening, May through November.”

Kristen’s restaurant was named the Three Seasons because it was only open for three seasons. Come winter she closed everything down and hied herself to Key West, where she tended bar on the weekends and did absolutely nothing during the week.

“Sure, but tonight is Saturday.”

She flicked her index finger at me. “Only because I have to drive down to Cadillac tomorrow for my grandmother’s birthday party. For you and me, this is Sunday.”

“How’s the new chef coming along?” I asked. “Misty, right?”

“So far, so good.”

Harvey knocked and bustled in with a tray of dessert, decaf coffee, cream, and silverware. He unloaded it all on the small table in the corner, asked if we needed anything else, and bustled away.

“Have you heard if the restaurant is going to make it onto Trock’s Troubles?” I asked.

“No, and every time I think about it I start to hyperventilate, so let’s change the subject, yes? Yes.” Kristen pushed the latest newspaper over to me. “Did you hear about this?” Since I’d already read the article she was pointing at, I didn’t reach to pick it up. But even from five feet away, I could easily read the main headline, blaring its bad news in big black type: LOCAL WOMAN MURDERED.

“The weird thing?” Kristen asked. “I knew her.”

“You… did?” While our circles of friends didn’t completely overlap, I’d thought I was familiar with all their names.

“Sort of. She came in to apply for a waitressing job when I first opened.” Kristen pulled the newspaper back toward her and stared at the article. “It’s weird knowing someone who was murdered.”

“Yes,” I said quietly, “it is.” We sat for a moment, thinking our own thoughts. Then I asked, “What was she like? Do you remember?”

She smiled a little. “Most of the time I don’t remember the ones I don’t hire, but she was different. It was too bad she didn’t have a lick of waitressing experience. If she had, I’d have hired her in a flash, but I had to have people who knew what they were doing. I didn’t have time to train a complete newbie.” A strand of hair had escaped Kristen’s ponytail, and she brushed at it impatiently. “Makes me wonder. If I’d hired her, would things have turned out differently for her? Would she have been killed?”

Kristen was starting down a path that shouldn’t be taken. Diversionary tactics were required, stat. “Why did you want to hire her if she didn’t have any experience?” I asked.

“Personality,” my personality-loaded friend said. “Beyond the basic waitstaff skills, personality is what makes a waiter memorable. Carissa was loaded with it. Funny, smart, charming.” Kristen sighed. “And gorgeous, too. I should have hated her, but I couldn’t find a way.”

Someone had, but the fact was too obvious, and too painful, to say out loud.

“What other jobs were on her résumé?” I asked, but Kristen didn’t remember.

I wanted to talk about Cade, about my run to the police station, about Detective Inwood and Daniel Markakis and Barb and the letter D. But I didn’t want to share that information without Cade’s permission. Though I didn’t like keeping secrets from Kristen, this wasn’t my secret to tell.

“Let’s eat,” I said. “Our crème brûlée’s going to go stale.”

Kristen frowned. “Are you trying to distract me from dark and depressing thoughts?”

I grinned. She was getting in some good D words and I hadn’t even told her about the game. Maybe it was time to set up rules. “Is it working?”

She picked up her spoon and cracked the sugar. “Getting there.”

“Maybe it’ll help if I tell you how the bookmobile’s candy guessing game is turning into a debacle.”

“Now you’re talking.”

So I did, and soon the sadness that had been filling the room flowed out and away.

• • •

“You got quite a mess down here, Minnie.” It was Sunday morning and Rafe’s head and upper body were deep into the houseboat’s engine compartment.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said gloomily. It would have been nice if I could have afforded the fees the marina charged for boat repairs, but without going into serious credit card debt, something I sincerely hoped to avoid, paying Rafe the peanuts he’d charge me was my best option. “Please tell me you’ll have it finished before you go back to school.”

“Oh, sure, not a problem.”

Hope sang in my heart. “You mean it won’t take very long?”

His habitual humming wafted up into the clear morning air. “I bet it’ll take almost exactly as long as it’ll take you to develop a new after-school reading program.”

“A what?”

“Of course, it might take me longer to fix this mess, but we’ll call it even up.”

“Call what even?” I asked.

He lifted his head and peered at me over his shoulder through black hair that he wouldn’t get cut until the day before classes started. “After. School. Reading. Program. You got a problem with English?”

Rafe often spoke in badly constructed sentences just to annoy me. From my perch on the end of the chaise longue, I laughed and kicked him lightly in his backside. “Stop that.” As my foot touched the seat of Rafe’s jeans, I heard footsteps on the dock. I turned to see Tucker staring at me with an odd expression.

“Tucker!” I stood up and brushed my hands for no good reason. “What are you doing here?”

Rafe looked around. “Hey, Doc. What’s happening? Don’t tell me you’re making boat calls. Besides, I’m healing great.” Rafe held out a very dirty arm. He glanced at it. “Well, maybe you can’t see it through the grease and all, but it’s fine.” He sat up, frowning at the small gadget he held. “Say, Minnie, my voltmeter is running out of juice. You got any spare triple A’s?”

“Sure,” I said absently. “In the same place. Remember where?”

“Bedroom, top shelf in the back corner. Gotcha.” Rafe clambered to his feet. “Be right back.”

Tucker’s odd expression went a little odder.

I frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Well,” he said, “I’m just wondering why—” The phone in his pants pocket rang loud and long. “Hang on, it’s the hospital.” He answered it and I watched his face go still. “I’ll be right there.” As he slipped the phone back into his pocket, he said, “Sorry, but I have to go.”

“Sure. I understand.” What I didn’t understand was why he was looking at me like that. “Is everything okay?”

“Just another hospital emergency. I’ll call you later.” He waved and headed off.

I watched him go, thinking that I hadn’t been asking if the hospital was okay; I’d been asking if we were okay.

“The doc gone already?” Rafe asked, letting the houseboat’s screen door slam behind him. “He just got here.”

“Hospital called,” I said shortly. Tucker hadn’t kissed me good-bye. Or even hugged me. Maybe I wasn’t looking my best this morning, but I wasn’t so ugly that the neighbor’s dog would bark at me. Was I?

“Yeah, suppose that happens.” Rafe got down on his hands and knees. “That’s the beauty of being a school principal. No emergency calls in the summer.”

I sat down on the chaise longue again. I’d talk to Tucker later and find out what was going on. No need to worry about that right now. Now, in fact, was the time to continue the conversation Rafe had started. “Let’s get back to that reading program you were talking about. What, who, when, and where?”

He put his head deeper into the engine compartment. “We have too many kids who don’t have anything to do between the end of school and when their mom or dad gets home from work. I have a line on a volunteer and there’s a small grant available from the local foundation that’s the perfect target for buying some books. All I need is some direction.”

“Don’t you have English teachers who could do this?” I asked.

“It would have to go to a committee,” he said darkly. “And why mess with that if I can get you to do it?”

Why indeed? We instantly started a conversation about reading levels, the amount of fiction versus nonfiction, whether it made more sense to buy paperbacks or e-books, and what the plot of the next Diary of a Wimpy Kid book might be.

At some point I realized that Rafe hadn’t picked up a tool in fifteen minutes and that I hadn’t touched any of the windows I’d planned to wash. The windows could wait, but the repairs couldn’t. Maybe I’d take a walk up to Lakeview and see how Cade was doing.

I stood. “Okay, I’ll do it. And wipe that smirk off your face.” His grin was there because we both knew that I’d spend twice the time on the reading program that he would on my boat. “Let me know how much you spend on parts, but I’m not feeding you.”

“Not even pizza?”

“Well…” He was doing the boat just for me, and I’d be trying to encourage kids into a love of reading. “Maybe once.”

“Sweet! Any day I don’t have to cook is a good one.”

I eyed him. Every summer, away from easy access to the school’s cafeteria, he ended up skinnier than the skinniest rail. Even I wasn’t that bad about cooking. “What you really need is a wife,” I said.

He gave me a horrified look. “Bite your tongue, woman.” He grabbed a pair of pliers and dove back into the engine compartment. “A wife would try to take care of me,” his voice echoed up.

“Talk about thankless tasks.”

“What? Sorry—can’t hear you.”

He’d heard me; he just didn’t have a quick response. “I’ll see you later,” I said, and left him to his labors.

• • •

I stood in the open doorway of Cade’s room.

He sat in a chair facing the television, but he wasn’t watching the black-and-white movie on the screen. He also wasn’t reading the book flopped open on his lap. Instead he was staring out the window. What he was seeing, I had no idea, because I would have thought the pleasant view of an interior courtyard landscaped with flowers, bench, and a fountain would have been reason to smile, not to look as if the world was about to end.

I knocked on the doorframe. “Hey there.”

The bleak expression on his face disappeared instantly. “Minnie! What a treat. Sit down, young lady, sit down.”

As I dragged a chair over to him, the librarian in me sneaked a look at the book he wasn’t reading.

He caught my glance. “Can you believe I’ve never read the Harry Potter books? The day after I was moved here, my agent sent me the entire series. Told me it might be the perfect time to think about moving my work in a different direction.”

That made sense. Sort of. “How will reading fantasy books set in England do that?”

“No idea,” he said. “I think she just wants me to read them so I’ll stop saying I never have.”

I nodded at the book, whose bookmark was maybe fifty pages in. “Is that the first one?”

He sighed. “Did you know they get longer the further in the series you go?”

“Did you know you can get them in audio version?”

He blinked at me. “Genius. Sheer genius.” He used his weak hand to flip the book shut and used both hands to toss it onto the bed. “I’ve never been much of a reader,” he said in a stage whisper. “No offense to the librarians in the room.”

“And I’ve never had a broad appreciation for art,” I said in the same level of whisper. “No offense to any nearby artists. Though I do love your pictures.”

He smiled. But then a big fat silence filled the room, broken only by the muted footsteps of people walking down the hallway and canned laughter from a television in the adjacent room.

This was, I realized, the first time I’d ever been alone with Cade. It was also the first time we’d been in the same room without an ongoing major life experience.

“How,” he asked, “did you manage to find me the most successful defense attorney in the state?”

“It was kind of an accident,” I said, passing on the opportunity to note that defense was an excellent D word.

He laughed. “Accidents happen.” He used his good hand to put his weak one in his lap. “There are accidents everywhere, every day. It was an accident that I started painting. A huge mysterious accident that I ever became successful. It was an accident that we bought a house up here. It was an accident that we ever met Carissa. And—” He stopped, then shook his head and went back to looking out the window.

I didn’t like it. Though I didn’t know Cade very well, when he’d been at the hospital, he seemed different. Cheerful, in spite of the stroke. Now he seemed to be sliding downward. No, I didn’t like it one bit. But I supposed that finding a dead body and then falling under suspicion for murder could do that to a person.

“How did you meet Carissa?” I asked.

“At the art gallery here in town. Barb and I were talking to the manager about displaying some of my paintings and Carissa walked in the door. We got to talking, and since it was close to lunchtime, we moved on to a nearby restaurant.”

“But you didn’t know her all that well.”

He shook his head. “I truly don’t understand why anyone would want to frame me for her murder.”

“Well, the police will figure it out, I’m sure.”

Cade’s left hand—the weak hand—started to twitch. He laced his fingers together and looked at me. “Has anyone ever told you that reputation is everything?”

“Yes.” My mother had, on and off for years when I was growing up, and a dear friend, not that long ago.

“It’s true. And it’s even more true when you’re talking about the creative world.” He edged forward in his chair. “My art, such as it is, isn’t just about the art. People buy it because of reputation. My artistic reputation is squeaky clean. Long-term marriage, three successful grown children, quiet life, no parties, no drugs, not much alcohol, just me and the canvas and the paint.”

I had no idea where he was going with this. “So…”

“So if I become a serious suspect in a murder investigation, the reputation I’ve enjoyed for thirty years will disappear instantly and never return. I’ll be given a new one, but it won’t be the same.”

Nope. I still didn’t get it. “Um…”

“Don’t you see?” He perched on the edge of the chair. “If my reputation as the cleanest-cut popular artist in a generation is destroyed, the value of my paintings will drop substantially.”

Now I got it.

“All the people who have scraped and saved to buy a painting, not just because they love it, but also and probably primarily for investment purposes, all those people will be out of luck. Their hard-earned dollars will vanish.”

I squinted at him. “Any chance you’re exaggerating?”

He rattled off three names I’d never heard before. “Look them up, Minnie. All were rising stars in the art world. None of them are painting now, and why? They lost their reputations. Plus, there’s one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

He half smiled. “I really, really don’t like the idea of ending up in prison. There’s not a chance of getting decent light in there.”

I thought a moment. “Then what we need is to find the real killer.”

Cade nodded. “The sooner the better. I’d call the sheriff’s office and ask how the investigation is going, but I doubt they’d tell me anything.”

“No,” I said, “I meant we need to find the real killer.”

He sat up, half straight. “Minnie, that’s a job for the police, not a job for… for…”

“A girl?” I sat up, too, only I was all the way straight.

“For an amateur,” he said gently. “The last thing I want is for you to get tangled up with a killer. This person murdered once. What makes you think he won’t do it again?”

“I have no intention of getting killed,” I said. “All I’m saying is that I poke around a little. Ask a few questions of a few people. We can make up a plausible story that I can go with. And I’m a librarian. I do great research. I might be able to dig up stuff the police would never be able to find.”

He rubbed his chin and studied me. “Just questions. No sneaking around in the dark of night, no tiptoeing into dank and dark basements?”

I crossed my heart. “And no climbing rickety stairs with only a single candle to light my way.”

“If you can do this, Minnie Hamilton, I will offer you anything you’d like.”

“If I actually do it, I’ll be happy with a thank-you letter.”

He held out his hand for me to shake, and I took it.

“Deal,” he said.