by Laurie Cass
“That’s great!” The getting-better thing, not the not-reading thing, but I wasn’t going to say that out loud. “My second question is about the first seven days of July. Some of my records are incomplete and I’m trying to get everything straight.” Which was true. Sort of. “What might help my memory was if you could tell me what days your home health aide, Courtney, was at your house that week. I didn’t meet her until the other day, so if I knew what days she was there . . .” I heard myself starting to babble, so I stopped talking.
“Easy enough,” Ann Marie said. “All I have to do is turn around and look at the calendar. Let’s see . . . that week Courtney was here Thursday, Saturday, and Monday. And Saturday she was here until dark, because Rupert was having some difficulties and she was kind enough to stay late. Does that help?”
It certainly did. I thanked her, asked her to say hello to Rupert for me, and ended the call.
So Courtney had worked until dark on the night of the Fourth. No way could she have driven to Chilson and killed Rex; there just wasn’t time.
I looked up at the bookmobile and saw that Eddie was again on the dashboard, only this time he was staring straight at me and yelling his furry head off. At least I assumed he was yelling, because although his mouth was opening and closing, I couldn’t hear him through the windshield.
“What’s with him?” I asked Julia as I settled into the driver’s seat.
“He was worried about you,” she said, shutting the cat carrier door as Eddie slinked inside. “He watched you the whole time and started howling right there at the end.”
I started the engine and looked at Eddie, who was glaring up at me with the intensity of ten thousand suns. If his problem was separation anxiety, you’d have thought there’d be a happier expression on his fuzzy face. “What’s the matter, my little friend?” I asked. “Talk to me. I’m sure we can work something out.”
“Mrr!”
Julia leaned forward against her seat belt and patted the carrier’s top. “Now, now, Mr. Edward. She didn’t mean to sound condescending. It’s just that she doesn’t always understand what you’re saying. It’s her fault, not yours.”
I laughed. “Let me guess. You’re fluent in Eddie speech and you’re going to tell me exactly what he was trying to get across to dumb old me.”
“Moi?” Julia arranged her face into an expression of shock. “While I occasionally grasp a fleeting thought out of our feline friend, I do not have the gift for translating ninety-nine percent of what he’s trying to communicate. Only you, dear Minnie, could do that. You’re his chosen life partner, after all.”
“Such an honor,” I murmured. Most of the time I had an excellent idea of what was going on in Eddie’s head, and his thoughts fell into one of three categories: sleep, food, or entertainment. If it was sleep, he’d be thinking about where next to curl up and spread his Eddie hairs around. If it was food, he’d be wondering when I’d offer him another treat, or maybe when I’d rearrange his dry cat food into the rounded pile he preferred. If it was entertainment, he’d be testing whatever object was closest to him to see if it could be a suitable cat toy. Curtains could do the trick, as did paper towels, toilet paper, newspapers, pencils, and shoelaces.
There was also a fourth category, one I hesitated to use under any circumstances—the dreaded miscellaneous. This was a dangerous thing, because I’d learned that if a miscellaneous folder existed, half the world could get stuffed in there. Far better to have many accurately labeled folders than a massive pile of—
“Mrr!”
I flinched. In the half mile of roadway we’d just driven, I’d gone deep into my thoughts, and Eddie’s sharp cry startled me. “What’s the matter, pal?”
He didn’t reply. I glanced over and couldn’t see anything inside the carrier except the pink of his blanket smashed up against the wire door. He’d never done that before, and I didn’t like not being able to see him.
“Julia, he’s managed to cover the door with his blanket. Can you fix that? Who knows what he’ll get into when he’s hidden from view.”
“Eddie, my good sir,” Julia said in an upper-crust English accent. “Will you give me permission to rearrange your bedchamber?” She opened the wire door. “While your renovations with the blanket, sir, are attractive, they pose a—hey!”
My cat bolted out of his carrier, scrambled over the console, and galloped to the back of the bookmobile, howling all the way. “Mrrr! MrrrRRR!”
“Egad,” Julia said, still English. She turned around to watch him. “The cat is something possessed.”
In the rearview mirror, I caught glimpses of his black-and-white self running from front to back, running from side to side, then jumping from floor to desktop and down again. “He’s something, that’s for sure.” The noises and antics went on and on and showed no sign of stopping.
I was torn between concern for my furry little friend and annoyance that he was being so weird. Surely if he was sick, he’d be lying in a pathetic heap inside the carrier and whining, not bouncing off the walls. But with cats—or at least with Eddies—it was hard to tell illness from normal.
“We’re going to make a quick stop,” I said to Julia. “To make sure he’s all right and get him back in his carrier.” I thought I heard her mutter, “Better you than me,” but she said much louder, “Good idea.”
Up ahead was a small lakeside park where we occasionally pulled in to eat lunch if the parking lot was empty of trucks and boat trailers. Happily, the only vehicle in the gravel parking area today was a small sedan in a back corner and we were able to slide into the shady side of the lot.
I turned off the engine and stood up. “Okay, Eddie, it’s time to . . . hang on. Where did he go?”
“What do you mean?” Julia stood and looked over my shoulder. “Did he get up behind the paperbacks again?”
Eddie had done that numerous times, but I’d finally come up with the bright idea of placing empty cardboard boxes behind the books. This kept Eddie away and kept the books from sliding around during travel. “He can’t anymore, remember?”
But we peered behind the paperbacks anyway. No Eddie. “He has to be somewhere,” Julia said. “Cats don’t just disappear.”
I opened a cabinet door and retrieved the canister of cat treats. “This will get him. Here, Eddie Eddie Eddie,” I called, shaking the canister up and down, making a soft maraca type of noise, which was Eddie’s favorite noise in the whole wide world.
But he didn’t come running. Fear clutched at my heart and a thousand scenarios ran through my head. I pushed them all away as impossible, but . . . where was he?
“Mrr,” came a soft noise.
My tight throat released itself. Worry vanished and was immediately replaced by irritation. “What are you doing down there?” I asked, because the noise had come from the doorway. Steps led from the door up into the bookmobile, and as I drew near, I saw that Eddie had compressed himself into the corner of the bottom step, leaving only his dark fur visible to the naked eye, which was why we hadn’t noticed him down there.
“Come on up, buddy,” I said encouragingly, but he didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t even look up at me. “Are you okay?” Still nothing. I moved down a step. “Say something. Anything would be fine.” He didn’t say a word. Concern wormed its way into my heart, but I summoned my inner Aunt Frances—she of “why worry?”—and banished my fear. Or most of it.
“Eddie,” I murmured, moving down another step. “Talk to me. Do I need to take you to Doctor Joe? If you’re sick, I’ll take care of you, you know I will. I’ll hold your kitty head if you need to . . . you know. I’ll figure out a way to give you pills”—something that had been problematic in the past, but Rafe would help—“and I’ll buy whatever expensive cat food you need. Just talk to me.”
“Mrr,” he said, but it was the weakest “Mrr” I’d ever heard from him.
“Maybe he needs some fresh air,” Julia said. “Maybe in the carrier he was breathing exhaust fumes and they got to him.”
The bookmobile had a far more stringent maintenance schedule than my personal vehicle did, so Julia’s suggestion was unlikely. But it was also possible, and since I didn’t have any better ideas, I unlatched the outside door, and pushed it outward.
Before the door was open three inches, Eddie had hurled himself outside, zooming like a black-and-white arrow.
“Eddie!” I yelled, but he paid absolutely no attention to me and continued straight ahead, toward the lake.
“He’ll be fine,” Julia said, laughing. “See? He did just need some fresh air.”
I sighed and we both jogged after my cat. There had been one or two occasions in the past when Eddie had escaped, but lately he’d been content to stay in the bookmobile. “Stupid cat,” I muttered.
“Au contraire,” Julia said. “It’s a beautiful day. Look at that sky, those clouds, and this adorable little lake, whose name escapes me. Mr. Ed has given us this moment, so let’s give ourselves permission to enjoy the opportunity.”
I glanced at the sky. It was pretty, a gorgeous blue, with fluffy white clouds so perfect they could have been painted on the set of a theater’s stage.
“Mrr!” Eddie yelled, and I ran ahead of Julia.
“Where are you, buddy?” The park had a small boat launch and a beach area, but Eddie wasn’t on either the dock or the sand. He was off to the left, rustling around in the shrubbery.
If he’d been about to hack up a hairball, I was just as glad he’d chosen the great outdoors, but his behavior wasn’t of the about-to-get-sick variety.
“Mrr!”
With Julia right behind, I elbowed my way through a jungle of shrubbery, following the direction of his voice, which had advanced to an insistent “Mrr! Mrr! Mrr!”
“We’re coming, Eddie,” I called. “Hang on, bud, we’re almost there, okay?” Where “there” was, I had no idea, but we were getting closer. “Just a few more ‘mrrs’ and we’ll be with you, and—”
I stopped so fast that Julia bumped into me.
“What?” she asked. “Why did you stop?”
But I couldn’t answer her. Instead, I pointed to what Eddie had found, half in and half out of the water. Or more accurately, who he’d found. Because Eddie was sitting next to the unmoving body of a woman in a one-piece bathing suit, a redheaded woman about forty years old, a woman we knew.
Julia gasped a huge breath. “Oh, no . . . oh, no. It’s Nicole. What should we do?”
I was already fumbling for my phone to call 911, but there was nothing anyone could do, because she was dead.
Chapter 11
A few hours later, Rafe held me tight, murmuring soft words of love, support, and calm. When I thought I would be able to stand up on my own, I took a deep breath and pulled away from his warmth. This should have been okay, because the weather had taken a hard turn toward the hot and humid, but even though my skin was pleased to be a teensy bit cooler, the rest of me missed him very much.
As Julia and I had waited for the EMT and law enforcement to show up, I’d texted Rafe that I’d be late for dinner because there’d been a horrible accident, that a woman had died, and that I knew her.
Now I sighed. “It was Nicole Price,” I said.
“How did you know her?” Rafe took my hand and led me to a nearby chair, a wicker one on the porch, since the front porch was as far as I’d made it before I’d started crying into his shoulder. “The name isn’t familiar,” he said.
“No, it wouldn’t be.” I sat, making the wicker creak. “She was summer only, a high school teacher from downstate. Her family owns a hunting cabin near that little lake”—whose name neither Julia nor I could remember but had been told by an EMT it was Stump Lake—“and Nicole spent her summers up here. I only knew her from the bookmobile.”
Rafe pulled a chair up close to mine. “Was she married? Kids?”
“Married,” I said. “Her husband’s name is . . .” I looked at the ceiling, which was painted a slightly greenish blue, and tried to remember. “Dominic. Dom, she called him. He comes up most weekends.”
“Kids?”
I shook my head. “No.” At least I didn’t think so, because never once in any of her trips to the bookmobile had Nicole ever mentioned any offspring.
Rafe hitched his chair closer and held my hand. “What was she like?”
“She was . . .” I let the sentence wander off as I thought about the question. Nicole hadn’t been chatty. She hadn’t talked much about anything, and hardly at all about herself. Even still, a few things had leaked out. “She loved it up here. One of her favorite things was to swim in the lake.”
I closed my eyes against the memory of Nicole’s long hair spread over her shoulders like a dark red fan, but the image didn’t go away. Then I remembered Eddie bumping up against my shin as I called 911, and remembered his purring, and the sharp pain eased to a dull ache.
“Nicole,” I said, thinking back to the few conversations we’d shared, “liked coffee and ice cream. She was left-handed. She loved a good thunderstorm. She liked quirky novels. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was her favorite, but she was a big fan of A Gentleman in Moscow and anything by Alexander McCall Smith. And I introduced her to Jodi Taylor’s books.” I smiled, remembering. She’d loved the Chronicles of St. Mary’s so much that she’d sent me a Christmas card last year.
“So that was where she used to swim?” Rafe asked. “At that little park? You don’t have to answer,” he added quickly, “if you don’t want to talk about it.”
“No, it’s okay.” And, I discovered a second later, it actually was. “Yes, that was her usual swimming spot. Although I thought her normal time was first thing in the morning. And I do mean first thing. She said she liked being out alone, before anyone else messed up the water.”
I frowned, thinking about that. Nicole always went for morning swims. Always. So why had she been out there in the afternoon? And . . . I suddenly felt a shiver at the back of my brain. Both Rex and Nicole had been on the bookmobile that Thursday before the Fourth of July, and now they were both dead. Tragic coincidence? Or could Nicole’s death be related to Rex’s murder?
Rafe reached around and opened a small cooler. He poured me a glass of wine, then popped a can of beer and held it up in toasting position, waiting.
“To Nicole,” I said, then stopped, because I had no idea what else to say.
Rafe tapped his beer can to my glass. “To Nicole. To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”
And so we drank to her memory.
* * *
* * *
The next day, Saturday, I spent the morning with my niece. Well, to be more specific, we were both on the same houseboat at the same time, and while I spent our quality together time cleaning the bathroom, kitchen, and outside deck, Kate whiled away the morning either poking at her tablet, checking her phone, or commenting on the spots I’d missed.
When I replied back that she could, you know, help, she’d heaved a heavy teenage sigh and flounced off. Since the houseboat was small, her flouncing only lasted as long as it took for her to get out to the deck, but I gave her points for quality.
At half past eleven, she bolted up from one of the deck’s two chaises and ran past me into the bathroom, wailing, “I’m going to be late to work! Why didn’t you tell me how late it was?”
She was showered, dressed, and out the door in ten minutes, which gave her more than enough time to walk up to Benton’s, but from the glare I got as I handed her a brown bag of peanut butter and jelly, chips, and an apple for her dinner, you’d have thought I was responsible for the air’s high humidity, unrest in the Middle East, and the declining population of honeybees.
The next day wasn’t much better, and I breathed an invisible sigh
of relief when she declined my invitation to go up to Three Seasons for Sunday night dessert.
“You know what your problem is?” Kristen pointed her custard-laden spoon at me.
“Friends who think they have the answers to my problems?”
Leese Lacombe started to laugh, but changed it into a very fake cough when Kristen pointed the spoon in her direction.
“I’ll get to you later,” she said, then closed her eyes as she ate the custard. “A bit more vanilla,” she murmured. As per always, I thought the creme brûlée was perfect, but I also knew better than to disagree with Kristen on food, especially when we were in her own restaurant eating food she’d prepared herself.
“Right.” Kristen opened her eyes. “So what’s new?” She sent me a meaningful glance.
I focused on getting the perfect ratios of strawberry, custard, and sugar on my spoon. It was a difficult job, but worth doing. “I was hoping to hear when you and Scruffy were scheduling some quality married time.”
“Next week,” she said, “and no changing the subject.”
Leese looked from Kristen to me and back again. “What’s up? Because there’s unspoken subtext going on between you two so loud I can almost hear it.”
Kristen smacked the back of her spoon against the dessert’s thin hard layer of sugar, making a loud cracking noise. “She’s not talking to me,” she said to Leese, tipping her head in my direction. “Is it because I got married? He’s not even in the state, for crying out loud. Why is she holding back?”
“Holding back what?” Leese asked, frowning.
“She’s gotten involved with another death!” Kristen waved her arms about. “Every time somebody in this county dies who isn’t old as the hills, it’s on her doorstep.”
“Well,” I said, “doorstep is a little strong.”
My best friend seared me with an Eddie-quality glare. “You know perfectly well I was using a metaphor and it was a darn good one, if you ask me.”