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

by Cass, Laurie

  “Yeah, but jeez . . .” Rafe was scanning the instructions.

  “Just think of the story you’ll have for the kids in September.”

  Dr. Kleinow gathered up the empty gauze packets and dropped them into a wastebasket. “You’re a teacher?”

  “Nah. Worse.”

  I snorted. “He’s principal of the middle school, if you can believe it.”

  Rafe flipped a sheet. “Lucky for me they didn’t have any other applicants.”

  An outright lie. There had been dozens, and Rafe had been the school board’s unanimous choice for the job.

  “We done here?” Rafe kicked his feet over the side of the bed and slid to the floor. “There’s a little boys’ room that’s calling my name.”

  Dr. Kleinow watched him go. “I’d guess he’s an excellent principal.”

  “He is, actually.” I picked up the papers Rafe had left behind. “And will be for a long time, assuming I don’t kill him first.”

  “What are friends for?”

  I smiled at him. He smiled back and the moment became something that made my heart beat a little faster.

  “So you two are just friends?” Dr. Tucker Kleinow asked.

  I nodded. “All we’ll ever be.” Or want to be. Rafe was a wonderful friend, but it was a brother-sister kind of friendship. The thought of a life spent with him made the inside of my mouth pucker.

  “And is there anyone who would be angry if I asked you out to dinner?”

  “Not a soul.”

  He moved a half step closer. “I find that hard to believe.”

  My smile went wider and I moved half a step toward him.

  “Hey, Min!” Rafe stuck his head inside the doorway. “Are you ready to go, or what? Back home I got slow glue setting up something fierce.”

  “See why we’re just friends?” I asked Tucker.

  He nodded. “Of course, it’s good to have friends.”

  “And even better to make new—”

  Rafe slung his arm around my shoulders and marched me away, yelling my phone number to Tucker.

  • • •

  Later that evening I thumbed off my cell phone. “Looks like I have a date,” I told Eddie. “What do you think about that?”

  He yawned and gave the impression of settling even deeper into the scraps of paper he’d decided were his new home. I wasn’t sure he’d moved at all in the last twenty-four hours. Well, there was litter-box evidence that he’d engaged in some physical activity, but that could have been a trick.

  My intention had been to clean up the mess he’d made, but every time I touched the papers, he’d started such a horrendous howling that I was afraid the neighbors would call the police. Not Louisa, since she and Eddie were good friends and she understood how odd he could be, but some of the newer arrivals were blithely ignorant of Eddie’s presence and could easily interpret certain events erroneously.

  In the end I’d shoved the shredded papers into an Eddie-sized pile and let him nest on it. He was a truly strange creature.

  Now I sat on the floor and ran my hand over him from head to tail-tip. “The last time I went out with anyone was with Kristen and her old boyfriend and a friend of his.” The friend had driven north to ski and the four of us had gone out for dinner at Red Mesa in Boyne City. It had been a fun evening, but we’d parted with a handshake and a quick hug. Though we were good Facebook friends now, even via the Internet it was obvious that no love was going to bloom.

  Tucker, though. There’d been a little flame right at the start.

  “And a doctor,” I told Eddie. “Go figure.” My one and only serious romance had been with a medical student. We’d met when I was a grad student at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and he was halfway through med school. We’d dated, then lived together while we finished school. Stayed together while he did his residency and I found my first job at a nearby library. Then, when he was done, we discovered we had nothing to talk about. We’d fallen out of love years earlier, but had been too busy to realize it.

  “Should I tell Mom?” I asked.

  “Mrr.” Eddie rolled on his back, scrunching more papers and offering up his stomach for rubbing.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Wait a while and see how it goes. No sense in getting her all excited about grandchildren at this point. I could tell Kristen, though. And Aunt . . .”

  I sighed. And Aunt Frances. I wanted to talk to her. Needed to talk to her.

  But would she talk to me?

  Chapter 13

  The next day was a Bookmobile Day. Thessie, Eddie, and I headed to the southern part of Tonedagana County and today was our first run to an adult foster care facility, a small facility where residents need some care, but not the high-level care of a traditional nursing home. If the visit went even marginally well, I had a long list of similar facilities that were excited about the possibility of having the bookmobile make a regular stop.

  Actually, the term “excited” wasn’t even close to the reactions I’d received when making the invitational phone calls. After two, I’d learned to hold the receiver away from my ear to prevent permanent damage to my eardrum.

  I parked the bookmobile in the shade cast by the tall maple tree outside Maple View Adult Foster Care. As soon as I’d set the brakes, Thessie jumped out of her seat and headed to the back to start wrestling with the heavily laden book carts.

  Thessie started down the steps, then paused. “What about Eddie?”

  The cat in question was sitting in the middle of the floor, licking his paw and swiping the backs of his ears with it. Lick. Swipe. Lick. Swipe.

  “Why can’t he come with us?” she asked. “He follows you like there’s a leash on him.”

  There’d been no reason to tell Thessie about Eddie and Stan’s farmhouse, so I hadn’t. “I don’t want to take any chances,” I said. “If he saw a . . . a chipmunk or a bird, he could take off. We’d spend an hour hunting him down and we’d be late for the next stop.”

  While we were opening the back door and pushing the buttons to lower the wheelchair lift that could also carry the book carts, Gayle came out to the parking lot. Gayle, the manager of Maple View, had volunteered to be the guinea pig for the first AFC bookmobile stop.

  “Hi, Minnie,” she said, smiling. “Hope you brought lots of books. The residents are more excited than I would have guessed.”

  I was introducing her to Thessie when a large voice trumpeted forth. “I spy a cat,” she said. “Right there in the window of the bookmobile.” The size of the voice matched the size of the woman who filled the wheelchair from one side to the other. Her white hair was short and curly and she wore a matching knit shirt and pants of lavender. “Gayle? Gayle, do you see?” she called, pointing to my little buddy. “It’s a cat come to see us.”

  “Yes, Polly, I see.” Gayle glanced at Eddie, then at me. “Unfortunately, I’m not sure the cat is here to visit Maple View.”

  Polly wheeled herself down the short concrete walk and across the parking lot. “We haven’t had a cat here in ages and I miss hearing a nice purr. He’s got that nice white chest, just like a tuxedo. What’s his name?”

  I made a note to myself to go back in time ten minutes, shut Eddie up in his cabinet, and avoid this entire scene. “Eddie. He’s friendly, but . . .”

  Gayle smiled. “The residents are used to cats. I have one of my own that I bring in once in a while.”

  “Please?” Polly looked up at me beseechingly. “I miss my own cats so very much.”

  My heart panged with sympathy. Now that I had a cat, I couldn’t imagine life without one. At least one particular one. I looked at Gayle. “He’s friendly, but he isn’t declawed.”

  She smiled. “Mine isn’t, either. The residents know what to do.”

  “And we can’t stay long. We have to be at the next stop in a little over an hour.”

  “I’ll kick you out in plenty of time.”

  “Well, then . . .” I got an image of a headshaking Stephen
, then banished it from my brain. “If you’re sure, let’s give it a try.”

  “Great!” Gayle clapped her hands. “Polly, let’s get you back into your room so you can greet Eddie properly. Minnie, I’ll send Audry out to show you things, okay?”

  “Who’s Audry?” Thessie asked. She’d rolled the book carts off the ramp and was ready to take them inside.

  “No idea. But I’d guess that’s her.”

  Walking toward us purposefully was a woman who looked to be about ten years older than Gayle’s sixtyish, though while Gayle was short and round, this woman was short and slender, moving with a comfortable ease that put me in mind of a cat trotting on its way to do cat things.

  An odd noise came from inside the bookmobile, but I ignored it in favor of holding out my hand in greeting. “Hi, I’m Minnie and this is Thessie. You’re Audry?”

  “Audry Brant. I help Gayle a couple days a week.” She smiled. “Helping out until I have to move in here myself. Thessie, could you be a big help and take those into the dining room? In through the double doors, then straight on until morning. The readers are ready and waiting. Well, those who aren’t waiting for your cat.”

  The odd noise grew odder. I started to turn to look, but Audry laid a hand on my arm.

  “Minnie, can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.” I prepared myself for the standard bookmobile inquiries. What kind of gas mileage does it get? (Awful.) Did you have to get a commercial driver’s license to drive it? (No, but I did take a truck driver’s course.) How do you plan the route? (With difficulty.)

  “I hear,” she said, “that you’re—”

  She stopped because this time the odd noise was too loud to ignore. Eddie was making enough noise scratching at the window and yowling that people in the next county could have heard.

  “Excuse me,” I said to Audry, and hurried into the bookmobile. By the time I’d climbed up the steps, Eddie was perched on the headrest of the passenger’s seat, moving his head around to peer out the side window at who knew what.

  “What is the matter with you?”

  All cats are masters of the evil eye, but the frozen glare Eddie sent me was in a class by itself. I shook off the foot-thick ice with which he’d tried to cover me. “Will you cut it out? There are a bunch of nice elderly people inside. For some bizarre reason they want to see you, but I can’t take you in if you don’t stop acting like you have ants in your pants.”

  He jumped down to the seat and banged his head against the console.

  Bonk! Bonk!

  “Eddie!” I picked him up. “What is with you?”

  He pulled back to look me in the eye. “Mrr!”

  “Well, yeah, but I don’t know what that means. I don’t talk cat.”

  “MRR!!”

  I sighed and stroked his fur. “You know, sometimes I really think you’re trying to tell me something and I’m just too stupid to . . . Oh, sure, now you start purring, you silly cat.” I kissed the top of his head. “Are you ready to make some new friends?”

  He snuggled into my arms. “Mrr,” he said.

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “Mrr.”

  • • •

  The rest of the day went smoothly enough. Polly and a number of the other residents got to pet the kitty, Thessie picked cat hair off her clothes and wondered out loud if it could be spun and knitted, and Brynn—who’d bounded aboard the bookmobile at the next stop wearing a headband with fuzzy cat ears attached—got her Eddie fix while her mother watched with moist eyes. The little girl’s blood count numbers were all where they should be, I was told, and having a regular visit from Eddie was doing wonders for keeping her cheerful.

  I drove us back to Chilson. “Eddie’s getting to be more of a draw than the books.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” Thessie put another collection of Eddie hair into the plastic bag that had formerly housed her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “Did you see the stacks of books those kids checked out?”

  I was thinking about that when I took an evening walk. Could we manage to secretly market Eddie as an attraction for the bookmobile? Eddie as an inducement to reading. The mind boggled. My brain was whirring away as I walked through downtown, which was probably why I didn’t see that I was on track for a collision until I ran smack into someone.

  “Oh! Sorry about—” I shook myself out of boggle mode and looked up at the woman I’d almost run over. “Aunt Frances! I didn’t see you.” I started to laugh at myself, but then remembered her abrupt departure on Saturday morning. The phone messages I’d left that she hadn’t returned.

  The pause hanging between us grew bigger and fatter and wider. “How are you?” I finally asked.

  “Fine,” she said.

  The pause, which had shrunk slightly, started ballooning again. I felt it grow larger and larger, wondered if it would pop or just keep expanding forever.

  A cane tap-tapped along the sidewalk. “Miz Pixley,” Lloyd Goodwin said, nodding. “Miz Minnie. How are you two lovely ladies this lovely summer evening?”

  “Fine,” we chorused. And for some reason, that made us both start laughing. The balloon shrank to nothing and suddenly everything was okay.

  “Come on,” Aunt Frances said, taking my arm. “I need to visit someone.”

  I resisted her light tug. “You sure you want me with you? Do I know her? Him?”

  “It’ll be fine,” she said. Which, of course, made us both laugh again.

  • • •

  She was right—it was fine. The bag she carried held hand clippers, a dandelion puller, a hand cultivator, and a pair of gloves. She took us straight to the oldest part of the cemetery and held out the clippers.

  “Do you mind?”

  We stood facing the headstone of Mary Alvord, born 1815 in London, England, died 1877 in Chilson, Michigan.

  “It’s the oldest headstone in the cemetery,” Aunt Frances said. “There’s no one around any longer to tend her grave, so I take care of things for her.”

  Tears sparked in my eyes. “I had no idea you did this. It’s . . . really nice of you.”

  “I just hope that maybe somebody will do the same for me someday. Ready?”

  Fifteen minutes later the grass was trimmed, the weeds were gone, and the marigolds Aunt Frances said she’d planted on Memorial weekend were looking tidy again.

  “Now.” She took the clippers from me. “As a reward for your labor, I will treat you to a complete explanation of my odd reactions to comments about Stan Larabee. To be honest, I was being an idiot. I just didn’t . . . couldn’t . . .” She sighed. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “At the beginning.” I led her to Alonzo Tillotson’s bench, looking around with mild trepidation. One Eddie was wonderful, but if there were two, and if they met, the universe would surely explode. Or I would.

  We settled down and sat in comfortable silence watching the waters of Janay Lake. Boats went this way and that. The wind blew a light breeze. The sun was on our faces.

  My eyes were starting to close for a little nap when Aunt Frances started her story.

  “It was a family feud,” she said, sighing. “A very private, very old feud inside Stan’s family, and Stan had made me promise not to say anything to anyone about it.”

  “That’s not a beginning,” I said. “That’s more like an explanation.”

  “I suppose.” She watched a seagull soaring past, her eyes slits against the sharp sun. “Stan stayed with me the winter before you moved up north.”

  I made a squeak of surprise, but managed to keep my mouth shut.

  Aunt Frances was still focused on the seagull. “He hated hotels. Hated them with a serious kind of hate. He stayed with me while that house of his up on the hill was being renovated. He moved out of my place and into his just a few weeks before you moved up.” She shifted her gaze from sky to me. “He had the corner room near the stairway,” she said. “Just to be clear about things.”

  “Crystal,�
� I said.

  “Good.” She looked at me a moment longer, then returned to the lake view. “As far as I know, no one realized that Stan stayed with me that winter. He didn’t want his relatives knowing he was in town and I was willing to keep his confidence.”

  At that time of year it would have been easy enough to keep his presence a secret. The houses surrounding the boardinghouse were all summer cottages. The closest year-round residence was almost a quarter mile away, and that was occupied by a couple who worked in Traverse City and were willing to drive the hour-long commute, one way. As long as Stan had a vehicle no one recognized, he could have driven out to the old highway, headed up to U.S. 31, and blended with the traffic before anyone paid any attention.

  “The only thing,” Aunt Frances said, “is I’m good friends with one of Stan’s nieces. Gwen’s the daughter of his oldest sister and isn’t much younger than Stan.” She went quiet. Stayed quiet.

  “That’s not the end of the story, right?” I asked.

  She watched another seagull wing past. “No. It wasn’t until a few months ago that I connected Stan and Gwen. He never talked about his family and she didn’t mention that Stan was her uncle until he donated the money to the bookmobile. That’s when . . .”

  “When . . . ?”

  “I decided to play master of other people’s lives.” Her voice was harsh. “I talked to Stan, over and over, on the phone, at the Round Table, at his house, trying to convince him to call his sisters. Tried to convince Gwen to see Stan. All in the name of trying to make people happy.”

  She shoved at her hair, trying to push it into a place out of the wind. “It’s not enough that I think I can help people find their true loves. Oh, no. I have to try to end a family feud that has been going on for decades. And look what happened. So stupid.” Creases appeared around her lips.

  My mind made a small, frightened leap. “You think you’re responsible for Stan’s death?”

  “I don’t know what to think.” The creases went deeper. “The feud . . . I don’t even know what it was about.” She made an impatient gesture. “Something stupid. Feuds always are. But what if old hurts were opened up because I tried? What if my attempts at reconciliation brought it all back? What if . . . ?”