by Laurie Cass
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 t
he 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.”