Laurie Cass - Bookmobile Cat 02 - Tailing a Tabby

Chapter 7

I went straight from Lakeview to the library.

“Hey, Minnie.” Donna, one of our part-time clerks, smiled, then frowned. “What are you doing here? I thought it was your day off.”

I smiled but kept walking, barely even slowing as I passed the front desk. “Silly me, I left something in my office. Don’t tell anyone I’m here, okay?”

She laughed. “Mum’s the word.”

I shut my office door behind me and fired up the computer. Leaving the overhead lights off would mask my presence to most passersby, but if any curious eyes happened to look in through the door’s window, I was toast. Someone would see me, stop to talk, and then I’d get sucked into library tasks that needed doing.

So I got up to do something I’d never done before—pull down the window shade. I reached up as high as I could, but the shade’s edge was just out of my reach. I jumped. Missed. For the second jump I crouched a bit, tried a little harder, and was rewarded for my efforts with the sound of the roller shade descending.

“Gotcha,” I murmured. Snug in my office cave with a much faster Internet connection than I could get at the marina, I started researching the life of Carissa Radle.

First off, of course, was to take a look at the most accurate information at hand, that of the Chilson District Library. I typed in her name, typed in every possible spelling of her last name that I could come up with, and still came up with nothing.

“No library card,” I said, sighing and shaking my head. It never failed to amaze me how many people didn’t have a library card. They were free and they gave you access to thousands of books. Maybe someday I’d understand people who weren’t interested in reading, but probably not.

Next, I used the library’s access code to log in to the archives of the Chilson Gazette, the local newspaper. Carissa’s name came up fast, but there was only one entry. Her obituary.

I closed my eyes for a moment, wanting to reject the sight. She shouldn’t have died so young. She shouldn’t have died that way. I opened my eyes and found that my hands were balled up into fists.

I stretched out my fingers, releasing the tension, and looked at Carissa’s obituary picture. She had been blond and pretty with a happy, wide smile, one of those smiles that made you want to smile in return.

Sighing, I started reading. Carissa Marie Radle, age thirty-nine, had died unexpectedly at her home in Chilson. She’d graduated from Wayne State University and Dearborn High School and had been employed by Talcott Motors. She was survived by her parents and two sisters. A memorial service was being planned for Labor Day weekend.

Hang on. Had that really said… ? I looked back. Why, yes, indeedy, it had said Dearborn High School. The very same high school that had given me a diploma. Me and my brother, Matt, who was only two years older than Carissa. What were the odds that out of the eighteen hundred or so students who attended Dearborn High, my brother had known her?

Probably low, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

I unzipped my backpack, dug around for my cell, and scrolled down to my brother’s number. Matt, his wife, Jennifer, and their three children lived in Florida and I didn’t see nearly enough of them. Hardly a week passed all winter that I didn’t get a call or an e-mail or a text from one of the five telling me how nice the weather was down in the greater Orlando area, so why didn’t I abandon the snow and cold and come down for a visit?

Then again, hardly a week passed all summer that I didn’t call or send an e-mail or a text down to Florida telling them how nice the weather was up here and why didn’t they abandon the heat and humidity and come up for a visit?

Matt’s phone rang once, twice. “Can’t come this month,” he said. “Ben has soccer camp.”

“It’s too hot,” I said.

“They practice inside.”

“Oh.” I’m sure it made sense for the Florida heat, but playing an outdoor sport inside in the summer seemed weird to me. “That wasn’t why I called.”

“Yeah?”

From the way he spoke, I knew he wasn’t paying attention to me, which served me right for calling in the middle of the day. My brother was a work-hard, play-hard kind of guy and on weekends he was always busy doing something. If not soccer, then softball, and if not softball, then swimming.

During the week, Matt worked as an Imagineer at Disney World, designing all sorts of things he could never talk about until they became reality. It was an extremely cool job, and if I hadn’t been a bookmobile librarian, I might have been the teensiest bit jealous. “Can you talk for a second?”

“Mom and Dad okay?”

“They’re fine. So is Aunt Frances and every other relative, as far as I know.”

“So what’s up? No, let me guess. You’re finally getting married. Who’s the poor sucker? Let me call and warn him about what you’re really like.”

I made a rude gesture in the direction of Florida. “I have a question about your dim, dark past. Did you know a Carissa Radle in high school? She was two years younger than you.”

“Carissa Radle, Carissa Radle…” He made some humming noises that almost, but not quite, turned into an instrumental version of “Stairway to Heaven.” “Carissa. You mean Chrissy?”

“I guess.”

“Yeah, Chrissy Radle. One of my friends dated her for a while. Or was it a friend of a friend?” His voice drifted backward twenty-odd years. “Chrissy. Yeah, I remember. Blond, legs up to here, but not a lot of fun. One of those kids who took everything seriously. She had opinions on everything from pesticides to the World Trade Organization.”

I tipped back in my chair. That didn’t sound at all like the Carissa described by Barb and Cade and Kristen. Then again, people did change. Not that I could think of anyone who had done so right this second, but I was sure I could, given time.

“Chrissy Radle,” Matt was saying. “Huh. I hadn’t thought about her since high school. Why are you asking?”

“Ah. Well.” I cleared my throat. Somehow I hadn’t thought this conversation through to its inevitable conclusion. “Turns out she’d been living up here.”

He caught the past tense. “She’s moved?”

“Not moved, exactly,” I said. “Matt, I’m afraid she’s dead. Someone killed her.” He was silent, so I kept going. “The police don’t know who, but I’m sure they’ll find out soon.”

“Murdered?” Matt sounded far away again. “People I know don’t get murdered. Are you sure?”

I read him the obituary. “So you haven’t seen her since high school?”

“No,” he said. “And my friend Bruce—they broke up even before we graduated. He went to MIT, then to Silicon Valley right afterward. He’s hardly been back to Dearborn since.”

I remembered Bruce. Far too good-looking to be an engineer, if anyone asked me, but no one ever had. “Sorry to be giving you bad news, but when I saw she was from Dearborn, I had to call.”

“Chrissy Radle,” he mused. “It’s weird to know someone who’s been murdered. It’s not… right.”

We were quiet for a moment. Since I agreed with him completely, there wasn’t much else to say.

“Hey,” my big brother said. “There’s not a serial killer running around Chilson, is there? You’re not in any danger, right? You’d be the perfect target, out on that bookmobile half the week. You even publish your route online. It’d be easy to…” He cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose you’d consider carrying a handgun.”

“Firearms are against every library rule ever,” I said. “And do you know how unlikely serial killer deaths are? Statistically, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning twice than be killed by a nutso wack job like that.”

“Did you make up that statistic?” he asked.

“Absolutely.”

“That’s my girl,” he said.

After we hung up, I poked around the computer for a while longer. Since I didn’t find anything else about Carissa, I popped my head outside the office door to check for a clear exit and tiptoed out.

• • •

Monday was rainy and cool and windy, which made it an excellent library day. From opening to close, we were busy providing all the things that libraries do, from finding the perfect book for an eleven-year-old boy to tracking down a copy of a decade-old magazine to recommending materials on how to start your own worm farm.

Tuesday was a bookmobile day. “Which makes it a good day,” I told Eddie as I gave him a cuddle before putting him into the cat carrier. “And since we’re headed southwest instead of southeast, Thessie is meeting us at the library this morning. What do you think of that?”

If he thought anything of it, he didn’t say. He was too busy rearranging the towel on the bottom of the carrier to his satisfaction.

Thessie arrived just as I was backing the bookmobile out of the detached garage. I stopped and opened the door for her. “Good morning, sunshine.”

“Morning!” She bounded up the stairs and into her seat. “Hey there, Eddie.”

“Speaking of Eddie,” I said, “we need to make a quick stop on the way out of town. Aunt Frances called this morning. One of her boarders has knitted a blanket for him.”

“You hear that, Mr. Ed?” Thessie looked down. “You’re going to get an upgrade from that ratty old towel.”

It hadn’t been ratty a few weeks ago. Back in my pre-Eddie days it had been my second-best bath towel. Now it had threads pulled out of it, and the corners were chewed to shreds. Eddie was almost as hard on towels as he was on paper products. What he was going to do to Paulette’s handmade blanket I didn’t want to think.

We drove through the back streets of Chilson and stopped at the curb in front of the boardinghouse. My aunt was waiting on the porch. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

Aunt Frances met me on the sidewalk. “Here it is. Sorry about the color, but Paulette wanted that particular type of yarn for Eddie’s blanket and the yarn store didn’t have enough of anything else.”

I took the small, cat-sized blanket from her. It was soft and cuddly and warm… and so pink that every other color in the world would look washed out next to it. “Aren’t cats color-blind?” I asked. “Tell Paulette thanks very much. Is she here? I have a couple of minutes. I can tell her myself.”

Aunt Frances sighed. “Gone up to Mackinac Island with Leo.” She rubbed at her eyes, and that’s when I noticed how red they were.

“You’re not getting sick, are you?” I asked. Which was unthinkable, because my aunt never got sick.

“Not sleeping for beans,” she said. “It’s all… that.” She tipped her head at the boardinghouse. “I need help.”

I heard Thessie come down the steps. “Aunt Frances, have you met Thessie Dyer? Thessie, this is Frances Pixley, my aunt.”

They exchanged nice-to-meet-yous; then Thessie asked, “What do you need help with? We’re great at helping people find what they need on the bookmobile.”

Aunt Frances smiled. “You’re a sweet girl, but I’m afraid the solution to my problem isn’t on the bookmobile. Unless…” She looked at me. “Unless, my dearest niece, my smart niece, my perceptive niece can find an answer.”

My aunt was one of the most capable people I knew. She changed her own oil, was comfortable with power tools, and dealt with noisy neighbors herself instead of calling the police. To see her doubting herself was like the ground falling away from underneath my feet. “With Deena and Quincy?”

She nodded. “And Paulette and Leo.” Her voice strung out the words tight. “This is all wrong and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Who’s Deena?” Thessie asked. “And those other people?”

Aunt Frances and I looked at her, then at each other. The matchmaking efforts were all done undercover; no one except the two of us had ever known about them. I lowered my voice. “She can keep a secret.”

“So young?” Aunt Frances murmured.

“I’m not that young,” Thessie protested. “I’m seventeen. I’ll be a senior in high school.”

Aunt Frances nodded. “And I’m going to guess that not only are you smart, but you have all sorts of ideas about how to fix the world.”

“Well…” Thessie scuffed her toe on the sidewalk.

“She does,” I told Aunt Frances. “Maybe she can help.” Which would be a good thing, because I didn’t have any advice regarding other people’s love lives. Managing my own was often more than I could handle.

So Aunt Frances told Thessie about the summer boarders, about the secret matchmaking, about her years of success, and about this year’s impending doom. Thessie started to grin a little when she heard the ages of some of the players, but when Aunt Frances said, “We all need love, no matter how old we are,” the girl stopped smiling and started nodding.

“I just don’t know what to do.” Aunt Frances gripped and ungripped her hands. “It’s a ghastly mess and I’m afraid it’s going to end badly for everyone.”

Thessie looked concerned. “So Deena should have been with Harris, but instead she’s with Quincy. And Quincy’s match was Paulette, but instead she’s with Leo. This leaves Zofia, who was Leo’s match, with Harris, who is young enough to be her grandson.”

“In a nutshell,” Aunt Frances said sadly. “Nothing I’ve tried has worked. Do you have any ideas? Anything at all?”

“Hmmm.”

Thessie was going into think mode. I could tell from the small vertical crease between her eyebrows that the problem was getting the full force of her concentration. “I’ll let you know,” I said, “if she gets any ideas. Sorry, Aunt Frances, but we have to leave right now if we’re going to keep to the schedule.”

I gave her a quick hug, tugged on Thessie’s elbow, and escorted her back to the bookmobile. Through the window I gave my pensive-looking aunt Frances a cheery wave and we were off.

Thessie was silent for a few miles. Then she smiled and said, “I know. What she needs to do is have a party. We’ll invite all the boarders and anyone who has met them. Then we’ll get people to say how good Deena and Harris look together, how Paulette and Quincy look like they’d make the perfect couple, and how Zofia and Leo already seem as if they’re married. If we can get those ideas into their heads, maybe that will help.” She rattled on with idea after idea, each one more bizarre than the last.

I sighed. It had been accidental and with the best of intentions, but I’d created a monster.

• • •

The next day was a library day. I spent the morning working on a new policy for the display of artwork, a policy I’d thought about writing only after I’d helped put together a display of local artwork earlier that summer. I’d suffered pointed comments from two library board members about the inappropriateness of displaying seminude sketches in a public library and it was time to formalize things. My lunch hour was spent speed-reading reviews for books to add to the purchasing list, and then it was back to drafting the artwork policy.

By early afternoon, my eyes felt as if they were permanently focused at computer-screen distance. I pushed myself back from the desk and stood up, stretching, then winced at the tightness in my muscles. Maybe all those articles about getting up to move every half hour were right. I made a mental note to start doing that. Starting tomorrow. Next week at the latest.

The break room was empty, but considering that it was only an hour past lunchtime, that was only fitting. I poured myself a cup of coffee and stood there for a moment, feeling somewhat bereft. Not that I had to have someone around to talk to every minute of the day, but a certain amount of companionship was expected in a library. So, where were my companions?

I moseyed down the hall. At the front desk, Donna was helping a young mother and her two children check out teetering stacks of picture books. In the main library, Holly was showing a middle schooler the secrets of the Dewey decimal system. In the back room, Josh was elbow-deep in cables and electronics parts, muttering words that sounded suspiciously like curses.

Well.

I was walking idly down the hall when I noticed an extremely tall and baseball-capped figure leaning against the wall outside the doorway to the reading room. “Mitchell, what on earth are you doing?” I asked.

Mitchell Koyne looked down at me and put his finger to his lips. “I’m helping,” he whispered.

I eyed the leaning Mitchell, who had recently begun sporting a scraggly beard. Whether the facial hair was intentional, was a result of sheer forgetfulness, or was due to the lack of a razor, we hadn’t yet decided. “Thanks,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure that the wall is going to keep on standing, even without your help.”

The building itself had kept its upright position for almost a hundred years in its various incarnations as K-12 school, elementary school, vacant building, and, starting just a few years ago, the Chilson District Library. I would have laid down money, and lots of it, that Mitchell’s efforts weren’t going to make any difference.

“Well, duh.” He peered over his shoulder into the reading room. It was a large space filled with current newspapers and magazines, upholstered furniture, a fireplace, and a long window seat. “Ah, there’s no one in there. Dang.”

“Are you looking for someone?”

Mitchell nodded, the bill of his tattered baseball hat moving a fraction of a beat behind. “Yeah, I’m trying to help the cops catch whoever killed that woman the other night.”

Right. “Do the police know that you’re helping them?”

“Nah. Not yet, I mean. What I’m going to do is watch.” He gestured at his eyes with the first two fingers of his hand. “Watch and learn, just like you did last month with who killed Stan Larabee.”

My friend Stan. My mouth crumpled a little, but I straightened it out fast. “What makes you think the killer spends time in the reading room?”

He shrugged. “It’s a good place to read the paper. Lots of people come here, you know? It just makes sense that whoever killed that lady will, too.”

Maybe in Mitchell’s world it made sense, but I wasn’t sure it would to anyone else. The amount of time he spent in the reading room was directly related to the amount in fines he’d managed to accumulate for overdue books. Since Mitchell had no apparent intention of paying off the near-four-figure number, Stephen had cut him off from borrowing privileges. Any other patron would have found the money. Not Mitchell; he just spent more time in the library, reading in-house the books and magazines he would have borrowed otherwise to Stephen’s displeasure—which I had been conveniently ignoring.

“Say,” Mitchell said. “How about you and me team up together to find this killer? With your brains and my local know-how, I bet we’d figure it out in no time.”

The thought of conducting an investigation with Mitchell curdled everything in my stomach, from the morning’s cold cereal to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I’d had for lunch to the coffee I was currently sipping. “That’s nice of you to offer, Mitchell, but I’m pretty busy.”

“You sure? Because I have these ideas all sketched out and—”

I patted him on the arm. “Thanks, anyway.”

He took off his hat and scratched his head. “Well, if you’re sure.”

“Absolutely. But thanks again.”

I headed back to my office and tried not to think about the conversation. Because though I was absolutely sure that I’d done my best to persuade Mitchell to leave off investigating, I was equally sure that he wouldn’t pay attention to a word that I’d said.

“Minnie.”

I stopped dead at the sound of Stephen’s voice, then turned around to face him.

“It would appear,” he said, “that you haven’t made any progress regarding the situation I presented to you.”

I sipped my coffee and tried to think of something to say. “I’ve… been busy this week.”

“It’s been more than two weeks since I tasked you with this issue. At the least I expected an outline of possibilities. A progress report would have been even better. Visible results better yet. What I’ve received from you, however, is nothing.”

His face was getting a little red. “Nothing,” he said, “and it’s getting worse. Every afternoon, Koyne lurks there”—Stephen nodded down the length of the hall— “distracting the staff and annoying other patrons. As assistant director of this library, you need to learn to get to the heart of the matter. Do something about this, Minnie. And do it fast.” He spun on his heel and marched up the stairs.

I sighed and took a sip of my coffee. Cold.

“Wow,” Holly said, opening the door to the supply closet and stepping out, her arms laden with reams of paper. “Was Stephen saying what I think he was saying?”

I looked at her. “Did you jump in there when you saw him coming?”

“Anybody with the sense of a stick would have.” She grinned. “Plus, we need more paper in the copy machine.” She looked in the direction of Stephen’s departure. “Was he really saying to kick Mitchell out of the library?”

“More like lure him away.”

She snorted. “With what? This place is like his second home.”

I had no idea and said so.

“Hmm.” Holly twisted her mouth into a sideways shape and hummed a few bars of “The Wheels on the Bus.” “Got it,” she said, brightening. “Watch this. Come on.”

We headed down the hall. She plopped the paper at the front desk and kept steaming ahead toward the reading room.

“Hey, Mitchell,” she said. “Do you know what my husband told me?”

Mitchell twisted his baseball hat around. “Isn’t he out west somewhere?”

She nodded. “He’s in Wyoming, working at that big mine. He just got a promotion. He’s making good money, really good, and he says there are jobs out there for pretty much everyone.”

“Huh,” Mitchell said. “He got a promotion? That’s cool.”

Holly’s lips firmed, but she smoothed them out into a smile. “So, what I was wondering was, have you ever thought of going out there yourself? All those blue skies and open spaces, a big guy like you would get hired right away. I’m sure of it.”

It was a good sell, so good that I almost wanted to go out there myself, but Mitchell was shaking his head.

“Leave Michigan?” he asked. “Leave God’s country? Leave all of you? Not a chance.” He reached out with both of his long arms and enveloped Holly and me in a big hug. My face was mushed up against the top of Holly’s shoulder, and her chin was digging into the side of my head.

“It wouldn’t be the same without you,” I said, and escaped down the hall with as much grace as I could muster. Holly came along with me, whispering in my ear, “I’ll see if I can get Josh to help. Sometimes he has really good ideas.”

And sometimes his ideas were horrible, but right now I was willing to listen to anything.

• • •

“What I really need,” I said to Eddie that evening, “is a magic wand. Wave it, say some really long words, and we’ll find out who really killed Carissa. Wave it again and the boarders at Aunt Frances would get straightened around. One more wave and Mitchell would find something productive to do with his life. What do you think?”

Eddie didn’t say anything.

“Yeah.” I patted the top of his head. He squinched his eyes at every pat, but he didn’t move. “I kind of figured that’s what you’d say.”

We were sitting on the roof of the houseboat, watching the sunset. At least I was watching the sunset; Eddie was still looking for the sparrow that had lured him onto the roof in the first place. Fifteen minutes ago, we’d been sitting on the chaise longues, me reading, him gently purring. Then the bird had zipped past.

Eddie exploded into action. He tore after the low-flying bird, jumped up onto the railing in hot pursuit, then launched himself onto the roof.

I’d put my book down and watched the activity with bemusement. When the bird flew into the wild blue yonder, Eddie had looked down at me.

“Mrrwr.”

“You got yourself up there,” I’d told him. “You can get yourself back down.”

“Mrrwwrr!”

I could have left him there to figure out his own way, but I didn’t want the entire marina and half of Chilson to suffer the yowls of an unhappy Eddie. Muttering about the uselessness of cats, I’d borrowed a ladder from the marina office and climbed up onto the roof.

“You know what?” I asked Eddie now. “If I don’t figure out a solution to the Mitchell problem, Stephen might fire me. We’ll be out on the street with no job in sight. Aunt Frances doesn’t have room for us in the summer, and Kristen’s living above the restaurant, so I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t want a cat in there. We’d be homeless. What do you think of that?”

“Mrr.” He butted his head against my cell phone. I’d brought it up onto the roof with me, just in case.

“And ‘mrr’ back at you.” I ran my hand along his long tail. “For a cat who might be out on the street soon, you don’t seem… Hey!”

He was still butting his head against the phone, and the furry action had turned on the calendar function.

“Cut it out.” I dragged the phone out from underneath him. He gave it a swipe with his paw as I pulled it away, and the calendar rolled to last week. “Stop that, will you?” His white paw snaked out again, but I held the phone out of his reach.

“Leave it alone.” I turned the phone off. “This is way too expensive for a cat toy.”

He gave me a but, Minnie, those are the best kinds of cat toys look.

“Not this time.”

“Mrr.”

“Or ever.”

“Mrr.”

I gave up. It’s hard to get the last word when you’re having a conversation with a cat.