Laurie Cass - Bookmobile Cat 02 - Tailing a Tabby

Chapter 11

I’d been wanting to check on Aunt Frances, so I headed over to the boardinghouse after work on Wednesday.

As I was trotting up the porch’s wide steps, I spotted young Harris and the approaching-elderly Zofia sitting side by side on the porch swing, Zofia with her legs tucked up underneath her, Harris using his long legs to push them gently to and fro.

“Hey, you two,” I said. “Do anything fun today?”

Zofia patted the strong shoulder next to her, the colored glass of her costume jewelry rings flashing bright in the sunshine. “This gentleman spent the day updating the statistics for his fantasy baseball team. A nice task for a summer day, don’t you think?”

All I knew about fantasy sports leagues was that they could occupy an inordinate amount of time, even more so at the beginning of your sport’s season. I knew this because the upcoming professional football season was all that Josh wanted to talk about, in spite of the facts that it was barely August and that no one else on the library staff cared about football.

Once, Holly had told Josh to talk about football to someone who cared, like maybe Mitchell Koyne. Poor Josh had looked so hurt that I’d felt obliged to ask a couple of questions about his picks. Two years later, I was still paying the price. So instead of asking Harris about his fantasy baseball team, I gave him a smiling nod and headed into the house.

Inside, young Deena was practically sitting on the lap of the balding Quincy. They were paging through an old scrapbook of vintage postcards, their heads almost touching. While their gazes were ostensibly on the book, it was clear from the lingering touches and sidelong glances that they were only interested in each other.

My genial wave in their direction went unnoticed. I passed through to the empty kitchen, poured two glasses of lemonade, checked the cookie jar, put four oatmeal cookies on a plate, got out an old Coca-Cola tray, and carried the lot onto the screened-in porch that overlooked the forested backyard.

Aunt Frances smiled up at me from the rocking love seat. “Just what I needed. How did you know?”

“Years of experience.” I put the tray on a low table and sat next to her. “It’s what you always brought me whenever I was upset.”

As soon as I was old enough to be put on a Greyhound bus, I’d begged to be sent north to stay with Aunt Frances for the summer. She’d nursed me after I’d fallen out of a tree and broken my arm, hugged me when the boy I’d liked had called me a Mini-Munchkin, and wiped away my tears when I’d been rejected by my top college choice. Every occasion had been eased with lemonade and cookies.

She reached forward, broke a cookie in half, and handed me the larger share. “And it’s what my grandmother always brought me.”

It was a cozy thought. We rocked back and forth, eating cookies and sipping lemonade, enjoying each other’s company in companionable silence.

Finally she said, “I’m worried, Minnie. Nothing is working out like it’s supposed to.”

Never before had I seen my aunt look so anxious. It didn’t suit her at all. “Things will work out,” I said.

“Do you really think so, Minnie?” Her light blue eyes gazed at mine with intensity. “Do you really?”

I had no clue if it would or not, but at that moment I would have done almost anything to wipe that look of desperation from her face. “Absolutely.” I hesitated, then said, “And I’ll do everything I can to make it happen.”

“Oh, Minnie!” She reached out and hugged the stuffing out of me. “You’re the best niece ever!”

“And you’re the best aunt,” I said into her shoulder. I gave her a squeeze. “Thessie had an idea. What do you think about hosting a party?”

My aunt looked dubious. “What good would that do?”

“Invite dozens of people, including the boarders. Then we’ll prime people to say how nice Deena and Harris look together, how Paulette and Quincy seem like the perfect couple, and how Zofia and Leo already seem as if they’re married. If we can get those thoughts into their heads…”

But Aunt Frances was shaking her head. “It’s not a bad idea, but either one or another of them has day-trip plans the next three weekends. After that it’ll be too late.”

“Okay. Let me think a minute,” I said, deciding not to mention any of Thessie’s more outlandish theories, especially the one about love potions. I was almost sure she’d been joking, but not completely.

My thoughts brushed up against the ideas of love and companionship and friendship, and how it can be found in the most unexpected places. Look at me; who would have thought I’d find a boyfriend while taking Rafe to the emergency room? And then there were people who looked too hard for a companion.

Was that what Carissa had been doing with Hugo Edel? He said no, but Faye had said they looked cozy, and that was a hard thing to mistake.

Edel had to be at least fifteen years older than Carissa, but age didn’t matter. I glanced over at Aunt Frances. I knew her well enough to be sure that she wasn’t concerned about the age differences between her mismatched boarders; it was just that they weren’t setting up to be the matches she’d so carefully constructed.

“Maybe it’s time for a more direct approach,” I said, getting to my feet.

In the living room, Deena and Quincy were still pseudostudying the scrapbook. I plopped down on the couch across from them. “Hi,” I said. “Where’s Paulette?”

They looked up at me. “Uh…” Quincy blinked. “Paulette?”

“You know,” I said. “Nice lady, early fifties, likes to wear flip-flops, could make a fortune selling her needlework projects online. Her.”

Deena laughed. “She reminds me of this neighbor of my parents, only Paulette doesn’t have eight cats.”

“How do you know?” Quincy asked. “Have you ever asked Paulette if she has cats?”

For some reason, the two found this hilarious.

They were still laughing when Harris came in through the front door. I called to him. “Come on over,” I said. “Have you seen this scrapbook?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m going kayaking and I need to get changed.” He waved and headed up the stairs.

“Kayaking,” I said brightly. “Doesn’t that sound like fun, Deena?”

She squinched a face. “Sounds wet and probably cold. I hate being cold.” She gave a fake shiver.

“We can’t have our Deena cold,” Quincy said. He put his arms around her. “Is that better?”

The stars in her eyes told me the answer to that question, and more. I murmured a good-bye that they didn’t hear and went to report my failure to Aunt Frances.

• • •

On Tuesday, I’d sent Rafe a first draft of his after-school reading program, so that night he was finishing up the electrical work on my boat. Or what I hoped was the finishing up of the work. School was starting in less than a month and soon he’d be too busy doing middle school principal–type tasks to think about much else for weeks. Not that you could tell. Maybe someday, somewhere, Rafe would look harried and frantically busy, but right now he looked as if he had all the time in the world.

“You know,” I said, “this would get done a lot faster if you didn’t stop to look at every good-looking female who walks past.”

“Not every one.” He glanced up from the spaghettilike tangle of wires that surrounded him. “I skip right over any female who looks younger than twenty.”

Which was probably true. Rafe was many things, but he would never dream of being age-inappropriate. On the low end, anyway. “Do you have an upper age limit?” I asked.

“Nope.” He pulled out a long wire and eyed it critically. “I mean, someday I’m going to be old. Wouldn’t make sense if I couldn’t appreciate the female form in its later years. Plus, have you taken a close look at your neighbor?” He tipped his head in the direction of Louisa and Ted’s boat. “I don’t care how old she is, she’s downright hot.”

“I’m sure her husband would appreciate the sentiment,” I said.

Rafe was impervious to the sarcasm. “Yeah, he probably would. I mean, who wouldn’t like to have a hot wife?”

He went on about the happiness of hotness, but I’d gone backward a little, to thinking about neighbors. “Hey, Rafe?”

“What’s that?”

One nice thing about Rafe was that he didn’t mind switching topics in the blink of an eye. Did that come of working with middle school kids? Or was it his innate ability to do so that made him good with the kids? I pushed the questions away. “Do you know a Rob Pew? He lives in a duplex up the hill, in the unit next door to where that woman was killed a few weeks back.”

“Pewey Lewey?” Rafe grinned, his teeth showing white against his skin, which, since it was late summer, was a deep burnished red. “Sure. He’s one of my hunting buddies, come November.”

Ha. I knew what “hunting” meant for any group of guys that included Rafe. It meant a week of staying up late, playing cards, imbibing copious amounts of adult canned beverages, sleeping late, then waking up and doing it all over again. “When was the last time you actually got a deer?”

Rafe’s grin went even wider. “Need-to-know basis, Miss Minnie. Anyway, what about Pewey?”

I started to frame my question, but Rafe was still talking. “Wonder if Pewey’s going to make it up to deer camp this year. He works nights for what’s their names, that company making interior panels for cars. They got a big new contract and Lewey’s been signed up for double shifts, afternoon and midnights for over a month now.” Rafe squinted at a green wire. “Nuts, if you ask me, but he’s trying to save money for a log cabin up near Newberry. Why do you want to know?”

So there was no way Rob Pew could have killed Carissa. And so much for that gut feeling of imminent danger that I’d had when he answered the door in such a surly fashion. All I’d been reacting to was the man’s response to extreme sleep-deprivation, just as Abby had said. Still, I was glad I’d corroborated with a second knowledgeable source. “Does anyone call him Rob?”

Whistling, Rafe picked up his wire cutters and stripped off the end of a yellow-coated wire. “Not even his mother.”

• • •

At noon the next day, I pushed back from my desk and looked at what I’d accomplished so far.

I’d moved Stephen’s notes on employee handbook revisions from one side of my desk to the other. I’d tidied up the books sent to the library for donation purposes and for which thank-you letters should be sent. I’d scrawled out a short list of possible Thessie Replacements, made a few phone calls, and subsequently had to draw a line through each of the names.

So, how much had I accomplished that morning? Basically nothing. Clearly, what I needed was a hefty dose of caffeine.

My empty Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services mug and I made our way to the break room, which was also empty. Odd, for noon, but I reminded myself that I wasn’t there to socialize. No, indeedy, I was there for fluid replenishment and to stretch my legs.

Still, I took my time, sipping at my coffee until it was half-gone, then filling the mug again slowly. I watched the dark liquid stream down, watching its smooth texture, thinking about the long history of coffee, wondering how far these particular beans had traveled, guessing that they’d come much farther than I’d ever gone and—

“Hey.”

My arm jerked, coffee spilled, and a small brown puddle spread itself across the counter. “Hey, Josh.” I put the carafe back on the burner and yanked a paper towel out of the holder. “How was your weekend?”

I heard a male grunt followed by the whir of a dollar bill being sucked into the soda machine followed by the thunk of a can dropping out of the machine. I tossed the sodden paper towel into the garbage and got out a fresh one.

“That good, huh?” I asked Josh. “I thought it was the big second date with Megan. Weren’t you going up to the Side Door?” The Side Door Saloon in Petoskey, with its multiple televisions, was a hot spot for the sports-minded. It had excellent food, too, but I wasn’t sure Josh cared much about that.

Megan was a neighbor of Holly’s, and ever since Megan had stopped by to talk to Holly about babysitting Holly’s children, Josh was smitten. He’d been casting goo-goo eyes at her for months, and we’d all cheered when he finally found the gumption to ask her out.

Josh shoved the can of diet soda into an outside pocket of his baggy pants and whirred another dollar into the machine.

I finished cleaning the counter and turned to face Josh. “Are you okay?”

The second soda can dropped down. He picked it up, popped the seal, and slugged down half the contents. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We got talking about baseball.”

Josh was a big football fan, but he was a huge baseball fan. Huge with a capital H, U, G, and E. He cared about things like spring training and openly pitied anyone who didn’t understand the infield fly rule. He could recite baseball statistics from before he was born and was too much of a purist to consider putting together a baseball fantasy league.

“You know,” I said, “it’s okay if she doesn’t like baseball. Some really smart, funny, and good-looking people don’t know much about the sport.” I tossed my hair back, but he wasn’t catching on. “Maybe you could teach her. Maybe—”

“She likes baseball just fine.” Josh upended the soda can, tapped its rim against his lower teeth, then tossed the empty can into the box of returnables.

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” I tried to imagine a scenario in which having a baseball-fan girlfriend would upset Josh. Remembered one of his rants and dredged up a comment. “She’s not a fan of the designated hitter rule, is she?”

“She’s a White Sox fan,” he snapped.

I almost choked on the coffee I’d been swallowing. Josh was a true-blue die-hard Detroit Tigers fan. Listening to him talk about his team often brought to mind the reality that the term “fan” was short for “fanatic.”

“Her parents are from Chicago.” He shoved his hand into his pants pocket and extracted another dollar bill. “She said going to the old Comiskey Park is one of her earliest memories.”

I watched him jab the dollar into the machine and made a mental note to call the vending guy for an early refill. “Well,” I said lamely, “at least she’s a baseball fan.”

He pounded the machine’s plastic button with his fist. “The White Sox,” he muttered. “I can’t believe it.”

I couldn’t believe he was so upset over what was essentially just a game, but I also knew better than to say so. Of course, I’d once broken up with a boyfriend after a heated debate about the usefulness of a public library system in the age of the Internet, but that was much different.

Since Josh was obviously determined to wallow in his bad mood, and I wasn’t quite ready to go back to work, I wandered out of the break room with the intention of chatting with Donna, this morning’s front desk clerk.

I was barely halfway there when Stephen barked out my name. “Minnie!”

Through a combination of sheer luck and exquisite hand-eye coordination that no one except me would ever appreciate, I did not spill the contents of my coffee mug. I pasted on a polite smile and turned to face my boss. “Good morning, Stephen. How’s the report progressing?”

One of Stephen’s pet projects was a multipage saga presented to the library board on a quarterly basis. He would have loved to present one at every monthly board meeting, but they’d kindly told him that his time was valuable and could be better spent directing the library, and that a quarterly report was fine. Annual might be even better.

“The report is exactly why I’m down here.” Stephen adjusted his tie, today a knit version. “I’ve come to the section regarding any difficulties in the library and I need to know that you have the situation in hand.”

I looked at the mug I was holding. No, that couldn’t be what he was talking about. Or was it? Though he hadn’t laid down a forbidding law, Stephen did frown on liquids anywhere except in the break room. The transportation of a spillable item from coffeepot to an individual office was tolerated, but only because no tragedy had yet occurred. If anyone, especially anyone whose name started with the letters Minnie, ever had an accidental spill on library-owned material, a new policy would be instituted at eighty words per minute and posted on walls everywhere. “Um…”

“Minnie,” he said sharply. “Please tell me that you remember our conversation regarding a particular library patron.”

“Of course I do.” I just wasn’t sure what to do about it.

My thoughts must have leaked onto my face, because Stephen held up his index finger. “Two weeks, Minnie.” The words came out almost as a growl. “I want to see progress within two weeks. If there is none, the library board will be apprised of the situation.”

I watched him stride down the hallway, his pant legs swooshing lightly against each other. Only when he started up the stairs and left my field of vision did I let out the sigh that had been building inside me.

Bleah. Where on earth was I going to find the time to solve the Mitchell Koyne Conundrum? “Almost sounds like a Nancy Drew title,” I murmured, which amused me immensely. All I needed was a roadster, a housekeeper, an attorney father, and a couple of good friends and I’d be all set.

What color was that roadster? I frowned, trying to remember. Blue? No, it was red. Or was it—

There was a thump on my shoulder. “Ah!” My shriek filled the echoing hallway and my backward leap flung coffee all over the tile floor.

“Good jump,” Mitchell said, nodding approvingly. “Your vertical must have been six inches.”

I made an ineffectual attempt to brush coffee drips off my jacket sleeve. “You could have said something instead of scaring me like that.” How such a big man could have moved so silently was another mystery for Ms. Drew.

“I did,” he said in a hurt voice. “Honest, I did, Minnie.”

Which was undoubtedly the truth as he knew it, because Mitchell had a complete inability to see the world from anyone else’s point of view. Of course, in many ways this made his life far simpler than mine, which didn’t sound bad right now. “Sorry,” I said. “What can I do for you, Mitchell?”

He twisted around to look over one of his shoulders, then the other. “I heard what your boss said. You got two weeks to fix something or he’s going to fire you.”

Only the library board could terminate me, but Stephen could definitely make my life uncomfortable. And if he truly wanted me gone, he could turn the situation into a case of insubordination, tell the board I was impossible to work with, and convince them to give me the boot.

The muscles at the back of my neck tightened into taut cords. No matter how much I disagreed with Stephen’s point of view regarding Mitchell, Stephen wanted it dealt with and I was his assistant. I should be doing what he asked me to do. Only… how?

Mitchell shuffled close enough that I could see how badly his beard needed trimming. “I can help,” he whispered loudly enough for anyone within fifty feet to hear.

“You can?”

“Sure,” he said. “I know Stephen can be a pain to work with. Just tell me what the problem is and I’ll be glad to help. What are friends for, right? And hey, I’m pretty good at figuring things out. Like that Carissa Radle? I’m real sure she was killed by her boss. You ever met him? Anyway, he’s a real jerk and it’s got to be him. I’ve told the sheriff’s office, so I’m sure an arrest is coming soon.”

Though it was almost out-loud laughable that Mitchell was volunteering to help me get rid of Mitchell, I was touched that he wanted to help me. However, the last thing I wanted was Mitchell’s help for almost anything. “Um… ,” I said.

“Hey, sports fans,” Josh said, walking up to us. He turned his head and gave me a wink. “Well, not you, Minnie. I’m talking to Mitchell here.”

“What’s up?” Mitchell asked. “Did you see the game last night?”

Two Tigers fans and me standing in a group. There was no way I was going to get in a word edgewise. I started to slip away, but Josh winked at me again.

“Great game,” he said. “But I wanted to tell you about this really great Web site. They have tickets to minor league ball games for next to nothing. If you can get a little bit of cash together, you could spend the rest of the summer driving around the country, going from ballpark to ballpark. Sounds pretty cool, don’t you think?”

Mitchell rubbed his chin. “Sounds okay. But it might be good to have someone to share the driving, you know? What are you doing the rest of the summer?”

Josh’s mouth flopped open, but nothing came out.

I walked away, quietly snorting with laughter.

• • •

After work, I walked to the marina office to pay Chris Ballou my monthly slip rental. Typical for this time of day, Chris was comfortably seated. “Just leave your check on the counter,” he said. The other three men in the office, Skeeter and Rafe and Greg Plassey, looked just as comfortable and just as unwilling to move.

I looked at Rafe. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing that last work on my boat?”

“The day’s young,” he said lazily, tipping back in an ancient director’s chair, wood and canvas creaking underneath him. “Say, how you coming along with the next draft of the after-school reading program?”

“I’d be coming along a lot faster if I knew my boat was going to get fixed before school started.”

“And that, gentlemen,” Skeeter said, “is why any permanent relationship between a woman and a man is doomed.”

The four men clinked their beer cans. I rolled my eyes.

“So, what’s the story with your doctor boyfriend?” Chris asked.

“Yeah,” Skeeter said. “Hardly ever see him around. You sure you two are dating?”

“Now, boys.” Rafe smirked up a smile. “I saw him just the other day. Course, he didn’t stay long, and come to think of it, he left in kind of a hurry.”

While that hadn’t been Rafe’s fault, I didn’t see any harm in saying so. “It was you he was trying to get away from,” I said.

The other three hooted and tinked beer cans. The tightness that had snaked up my back when they mentioned the Tuckerlessness of my life eased a little. It was our schedules that was the problem: both of us working some evenings and some weekends and the twain was hardly ever meeting. Except for the day after tomorrow. We had plans and they were etched in stone this time.

And these men weren’t trying to hurt my feelings; they were just being guys, and in spite of their extreme guyness, I liked them very much.

“Speaking of not around,” I asked Greg, “where’s your friend Brett? I thought he was a part of this motley crew.”

“Downstate,” Greg said.

“Sucker.” Chris grinned. “What could be better than this?”

I squinted at him. “You could be outside in the fresh air and sunshine instead of sitting in this dingy, poorly lit office that hasn’t been cleaned properly in decades.”

“Hey, now,” Rafe said. “I saw Chris here wiping down the countertop just last month.”

Skeeter smirked. “Only because he spilled his coffee all over it.”

“Chris drinks coffee?” I asked. “When does he do that?”

“After the Fourth of July,” Chris said, wincing. “Man, I’m getting too old to stay up all night.”

I left the Four Stooges to their stories of all-night parties and headed to my houseboat for a quick dinner of nacho chips and cheese. With salsa, which would count as a vegetable with anyone except my mother.

While I ate, I pondered the looming cloud on the horizon that was Thessie’s upcoming college trip. All the people I’d already called had pleaded houseguests or other commitments and I had no idea what I was going to do.

After dishes and a see-you-later hug for Eddie, I set out to visit Cade at Lakeview to let the volunteer problem bounce around in my head. There were a couple of people interested in taking over from Thessie once school started, but in summer it was difficult to get people to donate their time.

I yearned for the day that Stephen was going to recognize how much the bookmobile was doing for the library. Outreach, image, and presence were all improving in an anecdotal evidence sort of way, and circulation was up compared to this time last year.

“October board meeting,” I said out loud as I walked into Cade’s room.

“Why wait?” he asked. “Do it in September.”

“But you don’t want to rush things, either,” Barb said. “Maybe November would be better.”

I looked from one McCade to the other and laughed. There was no possible way they could have known what I’d been mumbling about, yet they’d joined into my narrative without a pause. “Can’t do September,” I said, “because I won’t have time to get the August circulation numbers into report form before the meeting. And by November everyone is concentrating on the holidays.”

“Sounds as if you have whatever it is well in hand.”

“Don’t I wish.” I sat down. “But my most immediate problem is that I’m losing my bookmobile volunteer for a week and the library board insists on having two on board.”

Sadly, it had to be two humans. There had been one time that I’d danced closely with prevarication and led Stephen to believe that there were two people on board when it had actually been just Eddie and me, but I didn’t want to push my luck.

“Does this volunteer actually drive the bookmobile?” Barb asked.

I grinned. Thessie kept trying to convince me that letting her drive made sense—“for backup, just in case you break both feet, or something”—but it wasn’t going to happen. “Library policy is employees only,” I said, “and any driver has to take a commercial driver’s license class.” Truck-driving school would have been better, but it was a long and expensive course. “The bookmobile volunteer checks materials in and out, helps patrons find books. Normal library stuff, only it’s on a bookmobile.”

Barb grabbed her purse and excused herself.

“Hey, watch this.” Cade lifted his weak arm, made a fist, then released it. “Not bad, eh?”

I clapped loudly. “That’s fantastic! You’ll be painting again in no time.”

He started to make another fist, but this one fell apart halfway through. “Time being a relative term,” he said, but there was humor at the back of his voice. “So, tell me.” He glanced up at the open door. “Have you made any progress with… with…”

“With you-know-what?” I supplied.

His face, still uneven from the stroke, twisted into a smile. “Exactly.”

“Sort of,” I said.

“As I recall,” Cade said, “our deal was that you ask a few questions of a few people. You’re sticking to that agreement, yes?”

I filled him in on what I’d found out so far, ending with the fact that Hugo Edel had mentioned Carissa hanging out on Trock’s set. He did some nodding and some frowning, then said, “Trock Farrand. I’ve met the man. A little flighty, I’d say. Be careful, Minnie. Someone killed Carissa, and I don’t want anything happening to you.”

“Careful as I’d be in a crystal shop.”

“One more thing,” Cade said. “Please don’t say anything about your efforts to Barb.”

I blinked. And here I’d thought they shared everything. “If that’s what you want, sure. But why?”

“For her own peace of mind. Please. The police have been silent for days and if she hears you’re looking into this, she’ll be worried and get upset all over again and I don’t want that for her.”

I swallowed. True love. That’s what these two had. I couldn’t speak, so I gave a weak nod instead.

It must not have been very convincing, because Cade leaned forward. “I’m sure you think it’s silly, but—”

“That man thinks everything is silly,” Barb said as she breezed in. “Don’t take it personally, Minnie. The only thing he’s ever taken seriously in his life is his painting, and I’m not always sure about that.”

She smiled at her husband fondly. “Now, what was it you two were arguing about?”

“Whether or not ‘de rigueur’ is a real D word,” I said. “What do you think?”

She considered the question, then made her pronouncement. “Doubtful.”

“Darn,” I said, sighing dramatically, and left them to their evening.