Gone with the Whisker

by Laurie Cass

  “What if . . .” My niece pleated her paper napkin. “What if this Dominic and Mr. Stuhler’s wife were having an affair? What if they killed their spouses so they could marry each other? It would be a lot cheaper to do that than to get divorced. That costs a lot and you lose half your stuff.”

  Soap opera drama at its finest. I did not look at Rafe. Did not even think about looking at him, because if I did, I might start laughing, and if that happened, Kate would retreat from me even further and—

  My thoughts came to an abrupt halt. I’d gone through that same murder-instead-of-divorce thought process not so very long ago. A different scenario altogether, but I shouldn’t laugh at her for having the same idea I’d had. Especially since, if I remembered correctly, when I’d presented my theory to law enforcement, they’d basically laughed at the notion.

  I didn’t want Kate to suffer that, so I thought a moment and said, “That possibility wasn’t mentioned this morning. It might be a little melodramatic, but I’ll pass it along to Ash.”

  Kate looked up. “You will? Really?”

  “Absolutely.” Maybe not right away, and maybe not as a serious theory, but I absolutely would. Someday.

  “Cool,” she said, and smiled at me.

  * * *

  * * *

  Early the next morning while crunching my cereal as quietly as possible because Kate was still in her sleeping bag, snoring gently, I spent a few minutes in a text exchange with Deputy Ash Wolverson. Early on, it became clear that he did not want to drag Detective Hal Inwood into another meeting with Ms. Minnie Hamilton, even if it did mean fresh baked goods from Cookie Tom’s.

  Ash: Anyway, Hal’s wife wants him to drop 20 pounds.

  Minnie: One doughnut isn’t going to make that much difference.

  Ash: Try telling Mrs. Inwood that.

  Minnie: Isn’t she downstate this week with grandkids?

  Ash: She has spies. Don’t do it.

  I smiled at that, but the spy thing was probably true, and I would have bet it was the sheriff herself who tattled on Hal. Women in an overly male environment tend to stick together, especially when the health of the men in their lives is involved.

  Minnie: OK, but I still want to stop by on the way to the library.

  Ash: Hal won’t like it.

  Minnie: Didn’t figure he would.

  Ash: Do you have something new for the investigation?

  Minnie (after a pause): A theory.

  But not Kate’s soap opera theory, although it was possible the wispy thoughts I’d woken up with had their roots in her ideas. Then again, it might have been Eddie’s cat food breath in my face half the night. One never knew.

  Ash (after an even longer pause): Fine.

  I could almost hear the sigh as he typed. Before I could thank him, the dots indicating that he was still typing popped up. Then: I can get you 10 minutes, right when he gets here.

  Minnie: When’s that?

  Ash: 8, straight up.

  Minnie: You’re . . .

  I glanced at the clock. It was all of five minutes to eight. I finished the text with: getting as bad as Hal, sent it off, slung a sleepy Eddie off the houseboat’s dashboard and into his carrier, and hurried to my car.

  Up at the sheriff’s office, I parked in the shade and jogged into the reception area. Ash was waiting for me, arms crossed. “As bad as Hal?” he asked.

  I colored a bit. He hadn’t deserved the comment. “What I meant to say was ‘getting as good as.’ Detective Inwood is a highly competent law enforcement officer, and if you’re like him, that means you’re also highly competent.”

  Ash, since he knew me well, ignored all that and led me into the interview room, where Hal Inwood was already seated and sipping a mug of coffee. “Ms. Hamilton, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  I sat in my chair. “Did you notice I asked for an appointment?”

  Hal eyed me over the top of his mug. “I’m not sure that texting Ash five minutes ago counts as asking.”

  Once again we would have to agree to disagree. But I didn’t want to start our conversation with more disagreeableness than necessary, so I gave him a tiny nod. “What I wanted to talk about was the relationship between the murder of Rex Stuhler”—I took a deep breath, because this was the tricky part—“and the murder of Nicole Price.”

  There was no movement from Hal. Or from Ash, either, which could only mean he was getting very close to being an official certified detective. A year ago, there was no way he would have kept a blank face after I’d said something like that.

  Finally, Hal slid his small notebook from his shirt pocket. His shoulders rose and fell just once as he flipped pages. “You have reason to believe there is a relationship.”

  He didn’t exactly phrase it as a question, but I decided it was close enough and nodded again, more decisively this time. “I’m glad you asked,” I said brightly. Which was pretty much a flat-out lie and I was pretty sure that a lie inside the sheriff’s office was worse than most lies. “No,” I said, sighing. “I’m not glad. I kind of wish you hadn’t. How about if we pretend—”

  “Five minutes,” Ash said. I shot him a glance, but he just shrugged. “We have a Region 7 meeting in Gaylord at ten and reports to finish first.”

  “I’m not trying to waste your time,” I said, a bit tensely. “But I want to make sure you’re considering the possibility that the two murders are linked.”

  “In what way?” Hal asked.

  This was the next tricky part, because I had no idea how the murder of a local pest control guy by handgun had anything to do with the strangulation of a downstate teacher. So I gave them what I had: my gut feeling. “One unsolved murder is rare in a county this size. That there could be two unsolved and unrelated murders seems beyond the scope of possibility.”

  “Yet here we are,” Hal said, tapping his notebook with the tip of his unopened pen.

  Ash glanced at his supervisor, then at me. “Coincidences happen all the time, Minnie. You know they do. This is probably just a really sad one.”

  The more they disagreed with me, the more I became convinced I was right and they were wrong. “And what if it’s not a coincidence?” I put my fists on the table. “What if these murders are connected? What if there’s someone running around out there that has already killed twice?”

  Finally, Hal clicked his pen on and made a mark in his notebook. “Ms. Hamilton, if you’re concerned that you might be in danger, you should file a report.”

  “Me?” I blinked. What was he talking about?

  “Yesterday,” Hal said patiently, “you told us you’d been pushed into the path of an oncoming car.”

  “Oh.” Right. I’d forgotten already. “That’s not what—”

  “Then we’re done here, yes?” Hal stood without waiting for an answer. “Deputy Wolverson, better get on that paperwork if we’re going to leave on time. You know how I feel about being late.”

  Ash nodded. “I’ll get right on it. See you later, Minnie.”

  “Ms. Hamilton?” Hal ushered me out of the room and in seconds I was outside, staring at the closing door with my mouth opening and closing like a gasping fish.

  * * *

  * * *

  The bookmobile day passed quickly, but it was overshadowed by the knowledge of what I needed to tell Julia. More than once I started to, but every time I opened my mouth to say something, the words disappeared, or someone came into the bookmobile, or Eddie needed attention. All of which would be summed up into one explanation: I chickened out.

  But it had to be done, so as I closed the cat carrier’s wire door on a snoring Eddie, and as Julia finished tidying after the day’s last stop, I told her we needed to talk.

  She eyed me over the top of the reading glasses she’d recently taken to wearing. Since she’d never once squinted at the text of a book o
r held it out at arm’s length, I was pretty sure the glasses were a new prop she was trying on to see how they fit her Bookmobile Lady persona.

  “What’s up?” she asked. “You’re not firing me, are you?”

  I shook my head, took a deep breath, and started. “A couple of weeks ago . . .” Once I got going, the story of my near-death fall into traffic didn’t take long to tell. Julia showed dismay and concern, and when I got to the end, she gave me a hug.

  “That’s horrible, but you’re fine and all’s well that ends well, yes?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  She frowned. “But what?”

  I sat on the bookmobile’s carpeted step and motioned for her to do the same. “It’s Nicole Price. She didn’t drown.”

  Julia’s frown deepened. “Of course she did. She was in the water. What else . . . oh, no.” Her eyes closed. “You’re saying—”

  “Yes. She was murdered. The sheriff’s office says there’s no doubt.”

  We sat there for a moment. The door was open and sounds of summer drifted in. A breeze, stirring the leaves of a nearby tree. A distant lawnmower. A chirping bird.

  “‘O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!’” Julia murmured, quoting what I was pretty sure was Hamlet.

  “And there’s more,” I said. “I think all of these things are connected. Rex Stuhler’s murder. Me being pushed into the street. Nicole’s murder. It just seems too unlikely that all these things could happen without some link between them.”

  Julia smiled. “Unlikely things happen all the time. Just ask any lottery winner.”

  “Listen to me,” I said, pounding my fists on my knees. “I need you to take this seriously.”

  She looked at me blankly. “Why?”

  “Because you were here, too. You found Nicole, just like I did. I was pushed into traffic. And so . . . you might be in danger, too.”

  A beat of silence tapped past, then Julia asked seriously and deliberately, “Have you have been watching too much television?”

  She knew perfectly well that was an impossibility, since my television watching was limited to what I could watch at the boardinghouse due to the marina’s very slow Internet connection. I felt my spine straighten and my chin go up. “I wanted to warn you.”

  “Sorry, Minnie. I just think it’s pretty far-fetched.”

  I stood. “We need to get going,” I said stiffly.

  “Don’t be angry,” Julia said, springing up and pulling me into a hug. “And it’s kind of you to be concerned. Thank you.”

  I returned the hug, murmuring that I wasn’t mad. Because I wasn’t, not really.

  But I was worried.

  Chapter 13

  Julia’s disbelief had been a bit wounding, so on the way home I vowed to be kinder and more patient with my niece.

  “Have I forgotten what it’s like to be a teenager?” I asked Eddie as we made the short drive from the library to the marina. “Can’t be. It wasn’t that long ago.”

  “Mrr?” he asked.

  “Well . . .” I did the subtraction and came to the stunning realization that it had been sixteen years since I’d been a teenager. How could that be? I did the math backward, adding instead of subtracting, and came up with the same number. “Okay, it was a while ago,” I said lamely, “but it doesn’t feel like it.”

  In fact, some days it took very little to summon the self-consciousness that had plagued me all through middle school and most of high school. And if I was going to be completely honest, hadn’t yet faded away to memory.

  “Mrr.”

  “Thanks, pal,” I said. “I love you just the way you are, too. Although I wouldn’t mind if you kept your hairs to yourself a little more, and—”

  “Mrr!”

  Smiling, I parked in my reserved spot and carried Eddie inside, all set to have a nice long sympathetic chat with my niece. “Kate, what do you think about . . .”

  But I was talking to an empty room. I glanced up at the whiteboard, and lo and behold, she’d written something up there.

  Closing at Benton’s tonight. Back by ten.

  “Well, there you go,” I told Eddie as I let him out of his carrier. He leapt up to the dashboard and ignored me in favor of watching a flock of seagulls.

  He remained on the dashboard while I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, was there when I left to go up to the house to work with Rafe on painting stairway risers, was there when I got back as the sun was setting, was there when Kate got home, and was still there when I left in the morning.

  I patted him on the head as I left. “Are you stuck?” I asked softly, because Kate was still sleeping.

  “Mrr,” he said quietly, which I took to mean, “Don’t be ridiculous. I just happen to like it here for the time being.”

  “You are so weird,” I told him, and headed up to the library with Eddie’s heavy gaze tracking me up the dock. “Well, he is,” I said to the world in general, in case it happened to be listening. Eddie’s weirdness was a solid fact, but maybe broadcasting it wasn’t the way a loyal cat companion should behave. A quality cat caretaker would probably also provide better treats. And brush him twice a day. And never trim his claws.

  “Fat chance,” I said, drawing a curious look from Cookie Tom, because by this time I was halfway through downtown.

  He was, as always this time of morning, out sweeping the sidewalk in front of his bakery. He cocked his head at my comment and stopped, mid-sweep. “Anything I want to know about?”

  I slowed, but didn’t stop. “It’s our new phone system. There’s a glitch with the connection between the VOIP messaging and the ISP—”

  “Have a nice day, Minnie,” Tom said, and went back to his sweeping.

  Grinning, I walked on. At some point Tom would catch on that I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about when I babbled tech-speak, but for now it was kind of fun.

  But what wasn’t much fun was that I also didn’t have a clue how to find a connection between the deaths of Rex and Nicole. I sat at my desk and woke up my computer, wishing I could wake up my brain.

  While I was waiting for the computer, I spun around in my chair and looked at the wall calendar I’d purchased from a local nonprofit. Each month had a different photograph of the region, and this month’s was of Chilson’s fireworks from the previous year.

  I sighed, remembering what had happened this Fourth of July, then sat up straight. Maybe if I studied the books Nicole and Rex had checked out that last time they’d both been on the bookmobile, I’d see something . . .

  But that didn’t make any sense. I slumped back. How could the book checkouts possibly mean a thing? Still, I didn’t have any other ideas, so I launched the software and, elbow on the desk and chin in hand, started looking backward in time to see if the two had any books in common.

  They didn’t, of course. Rex had read nonfiction almost exclusively, while Nicole read a wide variety of fiction, including a smattering of legal thrillers.

  I sorted their choices by date, Dewey decimal, copyright, and everything else I could think of, but saw nothing that meant anything, at least not to me. Though I hadn’t expected to find anything, I was still disappointed that nothing had turned up, and—

  “Hang on,” I murmured. Because there was more to review than book choices. I could also look at who else had checked out books the last time Rex and Nicole had been on the bookmobile together. Maybe there was another bookmobile patron who had crossed paths with both Rex and Nicole. Yes, I tended to think all bookmobilers were fine and upstanding citizens, but maybe there was an outlier, an anomaly, someone who wasn’t honorable, and maybe there was . . . something.

  Knowing it was a long shot, I pulled up the day and stop. And sat back in my chair, staring at the screen.

  I’d forgotten all about Violet Mullaly.

  The first time I’d met
the indomitable and irrepressible Violet had been early spring, and I’d just driven the bookmobile through ten miles of sloggy mess of rain and snow and slush. Which was no excuse for anything, but might explain why, when Violet completely rejected every single one of the books I suggested she might like, I formed an opinion of her personality and character I had yet to revise.

  It wasn’t fair, of course, and I was still trying to find a way to like the irascible forty-ish woman—we had many things in common, or at least we were the same height, which should have been a special bond—but every time I saw Violet striding down the road to the bookmobile stop, I made every attempt to be busy when she came aboard.

  Julia found the situation amusing, and had no problem saying so every time Violet left. “It’s nothing personal; she’s horrible to everyone. Think of her as a character in a play,” she said, turning her palms upward in a stage gesture of openness. “A minor character who wreaks havoc in the lives of everyone else. Or think of her as a foil to display the fine qualities of the other characters.”

  “I’d rather not think of her at all,” I said later that afternoon as I drove out of Chilson. Though the day had started out with blue sky, a thick bank of clouds had been creeping across from west to east, and now rain was starting to splatter on my windshield.

  When I’d remembered that Violet and Nicole and Rex had been on the bookmobile at the same time, I’d spent some time trying to think of reasons for Violet to commit murder. I hadn’t come up with anything I could take to Detective Inwood, or even Ash, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t be something.

  Maybe there was some long-running Hatfield and McCoy thing between the three families and Violet was carrying out her grandfather’s dying wish. Maybe she was a wannabe poet, and Rex and Nicole had seen her copying something out of a book that she was trying to get published as original work. Or maybe Kate had been on the right track with the hired killer idea, and Violet was the hiree.

  Because Violet as the killer had a certain appeal. And maybe she had a darker personality than I’d ever suspected. Maybe her angry nature rippled out to widespread anger against humanity, and maybe that day on the bookmobile had tipped her over the edge.