Lending a Paw: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery (Bookmobile Cat Mysteries)

by Cass, Laurie

  I ducked away. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks for coming over, Chris. I’ll talk to Rafe about the wiring, if you don’t mind.”

  “Hey, why should I care? I like taking care of your boat, but your paycheck ain’t exactly like that one’s.” He tipped his head in the direction of Olson’s boat. “Or their pension.” He nodded at Ted and Louisa’s boat. “You’re okay, even if you’re not from here.” He grinned again, got one pat on my head before I could dodge it, and headed off.

  I sat there, elbows on my knees and chin in my hands. I had seen lights on Gunnar Olson’s boat. I’d been studying the angles and there was no way I could have confused the beams from his looming boat with anything else.

  But, really, who cared? It wasn’t any of my business if Gunnar or his wife had snuck up north for a quiet weekend. I yawned and pushed myself to my feet, then stopped cold.

  The lights. I’d seen the lights on Gunnar’s boat the night Stan was killed.

  • • •

  Sunday was a quiet day at the library. We had afternoon hours only, from one until five. During the school year, most of the patrons were middle and high school students ostensibly working on homework. During the summer, the patrons were either parents looking to entertain their children, summer folks stocking up on a week’s reading, or tourists who wanted a tour of the library. Sundays in the library felt like a Sunday, somehow, and working hardly felt like working at all.

  There was one consistency, however, winter, spring, summer, or fall, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, or any other day of the week.

  Mitchell Koyne.

  He’d started an inane conversation on Sunday, put it on hold when I shooed him out at closing, and continued it Monday afternoon when he walked into the lobby, dripping rain off his baseball hat, shirtsleeves, pant legs, and fingertips.

  I spotted him as I was walking from the reference desk to my office, a stack of books and papers under each arm.

  “Hey, Minnie,” he said. “I think I figured out what we should do if we get a hurricane. It all depends on the direction of the wind, of course, and since the only way we’d get a hurricane is if it came up the St. Lawrence Seaway—hurricanes die out over land, you know, so it’d have to—”

  “Paper towels,” I told him.

  “For a hurricane?”

  “Go into the men’s room and dry yourself off with paper towels.”

  “Nah, I’m good.” He shook himself like a dog and sprayed water all over the floor, a freestanding sign announcing the summer reading club, and me. “See?” He grinned, not seeing or not caring about the water droplets on my face, arms, hair, and, far, far worse, the books I was holding. “Now,” he said, “if you look at a map, you’ll see that . . . Hey, Minnie, where are you going? I got this all figured out. Minnie?”

  I retreated in the direction of my office, ignoring Mitchell’s calls. There were days when Mitchell was interesting and a treat to talk to. Other days, it was front desk scramble to see who got stuck with him.

  As I passed the open doorway to the break room, there was a reverberating crash of splintering china and splashing liquid. I peeked in the room and saw Holly standing with her hands to her mouth. Her wide gaze flashed to me, darted behind me, then dipped back to the monstrous mess on the floor.

  “What did she do this time?” Josh shouldered past me. “Oh, great. Coffee. Nice. All sugared up, I bet. That’ll be nice to clean up. Who’s going to do it for you this time?”

  “Josh,” I said sharply. “It’s just a cup of coffee.”

  He snorted. “Cup of coffee today. The other day it was a whole pot. Bam! Coffee over the counters, over the floor, it even got in the refrigerator. Princess over there was too upset to clean it up, so guess who got volunteered?” He thumped his chest.

  Holly started to say something, but stopped and crouched down to pick up the biggest shards of her former mug. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “It was an accident,” I said, trying to smile at them both. Not an easy task since they were on opposite sides of the room and neither one was looking at me, but I did my best. “These things happen.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Josh smirked. “Last week Reva Shomin brought in a plate of cookies for everybody. Guess who let the full plate slip out of her hands? We didn’t get a single cookie, thanks to butterfingers over there. If we had a three-strike rule for breaking things, she’d be on her way out of here.”

  I saw a tear trickle down Holly’s cheek. Enough.

  “Josh!” My voice whipped his head around. “It was an accident. There’s no need to make her feel worse than she already does.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “What you think doesn’t matter right now. If you’re not going to help clean, why don’t you go do something more productive than mocking your coworkers?”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. Though my assigned tasks in the library included personnel issues, I’d only once before had to cross over into being the disciplinarian. The experience had left me shaking, yet oddly elated. From that experience, I’d learned that it made no sense to put off tasks that you knew were going to make you uncomfortable. The delay only gave you time to worry, and what was the point of that?

  “The printer in the bookmobile room is creasing the paper,” I said. “It would be great if you have time to take a look at it.”

  He gave me a curt nod and stomped off.

  I dropped my armloads of books onto a table. “Holly, sit down. If you don’t, you’re going to fall over into that sticky mess, then you’ll have to go home to shower and change, I won’t be able to send Mitchell over to you, and I don’t have time today to answer his questions about hurricanes.”

  Her hands shook as she pulled out a coffee-free chair. “We don’t get hurricanes here, so why does he care?”

  I grinned as I took the chair next to Holly. “Ask him. I dare you.”

  Her smile was shaky. “No, thanks. I’ll leave him to you today, if you don’t mind. And I will clean this up, no matter what Josh says.” She cast a mournful eye at the mess. “And I would have cleaned up the other messes. I just need a minute, that’s all.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” I said, hesitated, then asked, “Is something wrong with Josh? He seems a little on edge.”

  Holly nodded. “We all are, I think. The police are still asking questions, and now that thing with the will. Stephen’s hardly come out of his office in days. The rest of the clerks keep asking me what’s going on with him and I have to keep telling them I don’t know. Do you?”

  “Going on?” Stephen himself came into the room. “Why should there be anything going on?”

  I put on a smile. “Hello, Stephen. How are you today?”

  He put his hands on his hips. “You never reported back to me about your talk with Caroline Grice. I’m now forced to come fetch information from you. Is she or is she not going to donate money to the library?”

  My face froze. During Caroline’s revelations the other night, I’d decided that soliciting for a donation wasn’t that important. I still felt my decision was the right one, but coming up with a cover story would have been an excellent idea. “Our meeting was interrupted,” I said. “We didn’t have time to discuss anything except the—”

  “Do you have another appointment with her?” he said, enunciating each consonant very, very clearly.

  “Not yet, but—”

  “See that you call her today,” he snapped. “More donations are imperative if we’re going to keep this library functioning at its present level.” He spun around and marched out.

  “Well,” I said, turning to Holly. “That was—”

  But she was gone, having slipped out the side door. I looked at the shards of former coffee mug. At the spatters of coffee.

  Shards and splatters and splinters and sarcasm, and it was only Monday.

  I sighed and got up to hunt down the mop and vacuum cleaner. My happy library world was falling apart and I had no idea
what to do about it.

  • • •

  When I left work at six, light rain was still coming down. I stood in the front doorway, backpack in hand, staring out at the sodden world.

  “Want a ride?” Mitchell appeared at my side, jingling a set of keys. “I’m parked right over there.” He pointed to a maroon pickup that had a beige driver’s door and a yellow hood.

  “No, thanks.” I smiled. “I have a couple of errands to do on the way home.” In my youth, I’d owned cars that had looked worse than Mitchell’s, but mine had never had stacks of empty pizza boxes piled so high on the passenger’s seat that you could read “Fat Boys Pizza” from fifty feet away.

  “You sure?” Mitchell squinted out into the rain. “It’s coming down pretty good.”

  “Thanks, anyway.” I pushed the door open and went out into the wet.

  To make good on my statement of having errands to run, I stopped at the grocery store for cheese and fresh lettuce and at the fudge store for a slab of chocolate with walnuts. Both got shoved unceremoniously into my backpack at the point of purchase, and both were slightly dented when I got home and put them on the kitchen counter. Sugar and salad. The ideal dinner to soften the edges of a cranky day.

  I cut open the cheese and nicked off a small corner. “Hey, Eddie, I have a treat for you.”

  No padding of cat feet, no sleepy mrrs.

  “Hey. Ed.”

  Silence.

  I picked up the cheese and started the Eddie hunt. “Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”

  No Eddie under the kitchen table, no Eddie behind the bench seat’s two small throw pillows. No Eddie under the kitchen sink, no Eddie under the bathroom sink.

  I trod down the three steps to the bedroom . . . and found pieces of paper strewn everywhere. White bits on the floor, white bits on the bunks, white bits magically stuck to the walls.

  “Eddie!” I shrieked. “What have you done?”

  I crouched down to pick up two crumpled sheets of paper that looked largely intact. Underneath was Eddie, sleeping in a meat loaf shape. When the light hit his face, he blinked, yawned, and rolled over onto his side, purring.

  “You are a horrible cat,” I said, scratching him behind the ears. “And as soon as I think up a suitable punishment, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Mrr,” he said, opening his eyes and looking at me intently.

  “Oh. Right.” I placed the piece of cheese directly under his chin. “This is for you.”

  He didn’t even sniff at it. Instead, he continued to look at me with an unpleasantly direct gaze.

  “Cut that out.” I put my hand over his eyes. “You know I can’t think when you do that.”

  “Mrr.” He jerked his head away.

  “Yeah, to you, too.” I knelt and started gathering up his mess. “What did you destroy, anyway?” Since the boat didn’t have a second cabin, I used the second bunk as office space. Laptop in the middle, printer on a bed tray behind the laptop, papers for filing on the right, bills to pay on the left. But what Eddie had shredded was neither.

  “Huh. I thought I’d thrown these away.” It was the papers I’d printed when I was trying to find a genealogical link between me and Caroline Grice. “Wasted effort,” I told a recumbent Eddie. “I found a better way to talk to her.”

  Of course, that way had ended up with her accusing Aunt Frances of Stan’s murder.

  He flopped down onto the two intact sheets of paper. “Mrrrrowww!”

  “Chill a little, will you? No need to scare the neighbors.” I reached to gather in the biggest bits of Eddified paper. Mr. Ed scrambled to his feet, stalked to a small pile of clawed-up paper, turned to face me, and sat in the middle of it.

  “Fine,” I said. “Your work, your toy. But just until bedtime.”

  “Mrroww.”

  “Back at you.” I snatched the unwanted cheese offering from the floor and went to make dinner.

  Cats.

  Chapter 12

  After I left the library the next day, I strolled down the sidewalks outside the gallery and loitered long enough to see Caroline walk out the door. I’d called the gallery earlier and Lina had told me she was there and when she’d likely be leaving.

  “Caroline,” I called, hurrying up to her while trying to look as if I weren’t hurrying. Short people have this down to a science. It’s all in the arms.

  “Minnie.” She smiled politely. “How are you this evening?”

  “I feel as if we have a little unfinished business,” I said. “So I was wondering if you’d be my guest to dinner tonight.”

  “How kind of you.” Caroline glanced at her watch and I knew the battle was half lost. Charge!

  Before she could open her mouth to ever-so-kindly reject my invitation, I plunged forward into the cannon’s maw. “My friend Kristen owns the Three Seasons, have you been there? Tonight she wants to try out a new recipe on me and anyone I bring. Since we have a few things to discuss, I thought this would be a great opportunity. Please say you’ll come.”

  I smiled at her as winsomely as I could. When I’d talked to Lina, I’d also asked if she knew anything about Caroline’s eating habits. One call to Kristen and the plan was laid. “Do you think you’d like fresh linguine and asparagus with a light butter cream sauce?”

  Caroline blinked. “Fresh asparagus? This time of year?”

  I nodded. “Kristen found a woman in the Upper Peninsula who drives it down twice a week as long as it lasts.” I inched closer and lowered my voice. “And I happen to know the truck came in today.”

  Caroline looked at her watch once again. “We do have things to discuss. Let me call my housekeeper. I’ll meet you at the restaurant in ten minutes.”

  Score!

  • • •

  As per my request relayed via Kristen, the hostess settled us at a small table in a quiet corner. She laid down menus and a wine list—“The wine steward will be with you in a moment”—and disappeared into the labyrinth that was the main eating area of the Three Seasons.

  Many restaurateurs would have made major changes to this former residence and bed-and-breakfast. Eliminated the walls between the front parlor, rear parlor, morning room, and breakfast room. Combined the formal dining room, sunroom, and library. The only major renovations Kristen had contracted were in the kitchen. Otherwise, she’d let it revert to the posh summer residence from days of old, white wainscoting here, pine paneling there, coffered ceiling over there.

  Caroline and I were seated in the library, its shelves still heavy with a century of family books from Robert Louis Stevenson to Dickens to Ayn Rand. Kristen had vowed she’d let people borrow books if they asked, but so far no one had.

  Caroline looked around. “I’ve never been seated in this room. What a delight to see so many old friends.”

  I beamed. A woman after my own heart. But though I deeply wanted to talk books, I stuck with the topic of her first sentence. “You’ve been here before?”

  “A handful of times, yes. Stan and . . .”

  She paused as the wine guy approached. Since Kristen had already told me what would go best with dinner, I ordered a bottle as if I actually knew what I was doing. I passed the tasting honors on to my companion and was satisfied with her smiling nod.

  Wining and dining. This trolling-for-donations thing wasn’t so bad. I decided to let the comment about Stan go for now. Give the wine and Kristen’s magic a little time to take effect.

  Over the bread we discussed the wide variety of artists, mediums, and subjects we wanted to bring to the library show. During salad, we firmed up the mundane details of dates and hours. Then, with the pouring of our second glasses of wine and the arrival of our entrées, I broached the big subject.

  “I suppose you know that Stan was one of the library’s major donors.”

  “He was a generous man.” Caroline cut a small piece of asparagus even smaller.

  “Very,” I agreed. “His will mentions a large bequest to the library, but the family is ch
allenging. It may be a long time before the library sees any of that money.”

  I twirled a piece of pasta onto my fork, wondering about the six sisters, wondering if any of them had thought they’d inherit. Though I had no idea what it took to successfully challenge a will, I was sure Stan would have made sure his will was locked up watertight.

  “But,” I said, “the library board hadn’t made any firm plans for the money, so there’s no direct loss.”

  Though Caroline’s face showed only courteous interest, I felt the click-click-click of conclusions being reached. “An indirect loss remains a loss,” she said.

  “My boss is afraid that our regular donors are going to get cold feet because of the situation.” I smiled at her crookedly. “When I told Stephen I was going to try to have dinner with you tonight, he wanted me to ask you for a check.”

  “But you haven’t.” Caroline tilted her head. “Or . . . have you?”

  “I’m no good at this kind of stuff. Never have been. When I was a kid, I hated selling Girl Scout cookies.”

  Caroline laughed. “Tell Stephen I’ll consider a donation.”

  My eyes bugged out. “You . . . will?”

  “But there is no way on this green earth that I’m going to join the Friends of the Library.”

  Since I was very familiar with the give-me-an-inch-and-I’ll-take-ten-miles personality of the current Friends president, I understood her feelings exactly. I couldn’t say that out loud, but I nodded. “Understood. Thank you, Caroline. Very, very much.”

  She held a forkful of pasta over her plate. “No promises, mind you. I’ll need to talk to my accountant first.”

  “You’re considering a donation,” I said. “If I can pass on that quote to Stephen, he’ll be a happy camper. But he’ll spread it all over town,” I said in a warning tone. “Are you okay with that?”

  “Stan would have liked it,” she said quietly, concentrating on her plate. “He was always trying to get me to donate more money.”

  “And how is your dinner, ladies?” a male voice boomed.

  I flinched. Caroline did not. Clearly, she was the better woman.