Booking the Crook

by Laurie Cass

  * * *

  • • •

  The following week I was in my office, staring bleary-eyed at an article I was writing for the library’s newsletter. Or, more accurately, trying to write. Every sentence I wrote looked stupid, boring, or both. Mostly both.

  Frustrated, I banged my computer’s mouse on the desk.

  “Problems?” asked a male voice.

  “Only with my brain,” I said, looking up in surprise. “To what do I owe the honor?”

  The tall man standing in the doorway was none other than Detective Hal Inwood of the Tonedagana County Sheriff’s Office. He was the only fully certified detective the sheriff had at the moment, and the number of hours he worked was showing. He’d retired from a job downstate for a large metropolitan police force and moved north, only to find himself with too much time on his hands. Now he had the opposite problem and the sheriff was doing all she could to keep him happy. Deputy Ash Wolverson, my former boyfriend, was training to become the county’s second detective, but he had almost a year to go. I hoped Hal made it that long.

  “Do you have a few minutes?” Hal asked.

  “Um, sure.” I stood, picked a towering stack of books and papers up off the guest chair, and dropped them on the floor, where they’d probably stay until spring. “All yours.”

  Inwood sat, his long arms and legs folding themselves tidily. “What are you working on?” He nodded at my computer.

  I stared at him. In my experience, Hal Inwood was not a small talk kind of guy. It was possible that he had a bet with his coworkers regarding who could talk the least during an investigation, but it was also possible he believed that people were allotted only so many words in a lifetime and he was conserving his for the important things, like ordering pizza and yelling at the television when plotlines went stupid.

  “It’s an article for the library newsletter,” I said.

  “About what?”

  “Why the board made changes to the public computer use policy.” I glanced at the two sentences I’d written. Yup. Still boring. “They want to make sure people know the library is considered a limited public forum.”

  He made a hmph-ing sort of noise. “No wonder you’re having trouble. Why aren’t you writing about what’s-his-name, the new director?”

  Inwood knew about our new boss? Wonders never ceased. “Graydon’s doing that himself.”

  “And you get stuck with the boring article.” Without his face actually smiling, he gave the impression of having smiled. “Guess that’s what happens when you’re assistant director and not top dog.”

  My chin went up. Our relationship, which had started with me accusing him of not doing his job and him telling me to stick to the library, had improved over time, but it could also regress.

  Besides, if I’d wanted to be director, I most likely could have been. The sticking point had been if I’d moved up to the director’s office on the second floor, there was no way for me to stay on the bookmobile. Though my coworkers had questioned my choice to keep my far lower salary with its heap of routine tasks, I hadn’t regretted the decision for a moment. There was no way for Hal Inwood to know that, but it was also none of his business.

  I folded my hands on top of my desk. “What can I do for you, Detective?” I asked politely.

  His shoulders slumped a bit, and just for a moment, he reminded me of Aunt Frances. About the same age, both tall with long arms and legs, and both, within a twenty-four-hour period, acting out of character. “This morning I got the final report on Rowan Bennethum’s autopsy, and considering your involvement with the incident, the sheriff thought I should give you this news in person.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly.

  He sighed. “The results were accompanied by a toxicology report. A targeted report. The full report will be another week or two, depending on the labs.”

  I was starting to get a bad feeling about this. “Just tell me,” I said.

  “Ms. Bennethum’s death wasn’t the result of heart issues.”

  “It . . . wasn’t?” The inside of my mouth was dry and the words came out raw and scratchy.

  Detective Inwood shook his head. “Her system was full of stimulants, medications that weren’t prescribed to her and weren’t found in her home. Rowan Bennethum was poisoned.”

  Poisoned? The word rolled around in the air, waiting for me to catch it and understand, but before my brain got itself under control, Inwood said it flat out.

  “She was murdered.”

  Chapter 3

  After Detective Inwood left, I stood and went to my office window. Outside, it was one of those thick cloud cover days, when it felt like the sun had never gotten completely out of bed. Though it was almost noon, the daylight was so meager that the parking lot lights had turned on, which made the dim light seem even worse.

  I leaned my forehead against the cool glass. “She was murdered,” I whispered.

  Someone had intentionally killed the mother of two wonderful young adults. Someone had taken the life of a loving wife. Had destroyed a family, and done who knew what damage to a neighborhood, friends, extended family, and coworkers. The ripple effects could go far. I could almost see them in the falling snow. If one flake was blown north, it would knock into an adjacent flake, which would knock into its adjacent flake. The pattern could be endless.

  Well, almost. I hadn’t retained much from high school physics, but I did remember that friction played a factor in pretty much everything. Ripple effects, even on a completely flat lake, eventually phased back to a flat surface, as if nothing had ever happened.

  But that was physics, and I could easily imagine the ripples of murder going on forever. One or both of the twins could spiral down into—

  No.

  I stepped back from the window and stood up straight. No good came out of that line of thinking, so I needed to stop. What I needed was a little bit of caffeine and a hefty dose of camaraderie from my fellow staff members.

  With my favorite mug in hand, one I’d picked up at an Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services conference, I made my way to the break room. I’d hoped to talk to either Holly or Donna, but Josh was the only one there.

  “Hey,” he said. Or at least that’s what I assumed he said, because his face was buried in a sandwich and his mouth was full. Holly, if she’d been there, would have pointed out that it was rude to talk with his mouth full, but I just said, “Hey,” back, and made a direct line for the coffeepot. “What’s lunch today?”

  After Josh had bought his first house last year, many of his habits had changed. Formerly a vending machine soda and take-out lunch guy, he’d shifted to using the library’s coffee for his caffeine intake and bringing a brown bag lunch. And he’d started spending time with the library’s generous selection of cookbooks. It was all very unexpected for a computer guy, and Holly was still wondering who had flipped what switch inside him.

  Josh eyed his sandwich. “Not much. Chicken I heated up in the microwave and put on that bread. You know, the one that starts with an F? Plus some baby spinach, a little bit of pesto, and Swiss cheese.”

  “Did you happen to make an extra one? That sounds really good.”

  He took another bite. “Bring your own lunch.”

  I had, but my peanut butter and jelly suddenly didn’t sound very appealing. The news about Rowan might have had something to do with my loss of appetite, but usually the will of my stomach was stronger than that of my emotions. Or my brain.

  With a longing look at Josh’s meal, I took my sad little sandwich out of the refrigerator and sat across from him. I had no desire to discuss Hal Inwood’s visit, so just in case Josh had seen him in my office, I preempted the conversation. “What do you think about Graydon?”

  Josh shrugged. “Seems okay.”

  “Really?”

  He swallowed. “You sound surprised.” />
  “Well, your disapproval rate of the last two directors was roughly one hundred percent.”

  “You make it sound like I was the only one,” Josh said. “Everybody hated Jennifer, and she doesn’t count since she was barely here long enough to do laundry. And Stephen was such a tool. Maybe he kept the library in decent financial shape, but that was the only good thing about him.”

  “Sure, but two weeks ago you were all doom and gloom about having to break in a new director.”

  “Yeah, well.” He shrugged again. “Graydon could be okay. It seemed like he was really listening when I explained the reasons we needed a new server. It’s the new board president, Trent What’s-his-name, that’s making me wonder.”

  “Ross,” I said. “His last name is Ross. Makes you wonder about what?”

  “Oh. Well.” He shoved the last of his sandwich in his mouth, then held up a finger.

  His sudden concern about etiquette tweaked my radar. “Wonder about what?” I asked again, putting my sandwich down on the table and staring him down.

  He got up to rip a sheet of paper towel off the roll and wipe his mouth. “Holly told me not to tell you, but I think you should know.”

  “Know what?” This time my question came out a little loud. “If you don’t tell me now, I’ll keep bugging you until you do, so you might as well save us both some serious time and energy and talk.”

  “Don’t tell Holly I told, okay?”

  I kept my eye roll internal. Sometimes those two acted more like sister and brother than coworkers. “Promise.”

  “When you’ve been out on bookmobile runs, Trent has been in here asking questions. He’s been talking to staff, members of the Friends of the Library, people in the reading room. Everybody.”

  It was a little weird, but maybe he was just trying to learn about the library, about the community, about the wants, needs, and desires of the staff. If you looked at it that way, Trent’s actions were commendable, and I told Josh so.

  “Yeah? Would you say that if almost all his questions were about the bookmobile?”

  “About . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t, really.

  “You heard me. Our bookmobile.” He sounded angry, but I knew he wasn’t mad at me. “It doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’ll be fine,” I said. “Trent’s new. He’s asking questions to understand, that’s all.”

  But Josh wasn’t reassured, and neither was I.

  * * *

  • • •

  “He said what?”

  On the computer screen, Kristen’s eyes went wide. My best friend spent April through October in Chilson, as owner and manager of Three Seasons, one of the best restaurants in the region, but in November she lit out for Key West, where she divided her time between lying in a hammock and tending bar. Well, that used to be her schedule. This winter she’d flown up to New York City a few times for the same reason her Key West days had been occasionally interrupted, a reason otherwise known as Scruffy Gronkowski.

  The ironic label of Scruffy had been bestowed upon him in his clean-cut childhood by his father, the well-known Manhattan-based television chef Trock Farrand (not his real name). The expansive and larger-than-life Trock owned a summer place near Chilson, and due to an odd set of circumstances, we’d become good friends. A spin-off of this was the engagement of his son and my best friend, and every time Trock and I got together, we congratulated ourselves on the match. Not that we’d really done anything, but that didn’t seem to matter when Trock got on a roll.

  “Rafe said,” I repeated, “that I need to make a decision about kitchen cabinet hardware.”

  Kristen shook her head in disgust, flipping her long blond ponytail from side to side. “The unmitigated gall! He knows not what he asks. He cannot.”

  He did actually, and Kristen knew that he knew one of my secrets, which was that I had an abject fear of hardware stores. There were many things in them that I didn’t understand, and I always felt small, uncertain, and inadequate when hardware store guys—who always seemed to be judging me—asked if I had everything I needed. Rafe said my parents had woefully neglected to provide me with a basic life skill, and my counterargument that I’d often shopped at home improvement centers carried no weight with him whatsoever. “Apples and oranges, Minnie,” he’d said. “Maybe even apples and car tires.”

  “I can’t put him off much longer,” I told Kristen now.

  “You might enjoy it,” she said.

  “Not the point.” I sighed, and she peered at me through the miles of electronic connectivity.

  “What’s wrong? And don’t say it’s the idea of walking into hardware land. You don’t really care about that. What’s up? Is it your new library director, what’s-his-name? Talk, Minnie Hamilton.”

  Sometimes having a best friend you’d known since childhood and who understood the motivations behind every twitch in your face had its drawbacks. “Can I say I don’t want to talk about it?”

  “You can, but it won’t get you anywhere. Spill.”

  I made one last effort. “We’re supposed to be talking about your wedding. Making plans and . . . stuff. We need to figure out what weekend you’re going to come up here, because some decisions need to be made sooner rather than later and—”

  Kristen leaned forward, her face filling my screen in an alarming manner. “Talk!” she ordered.

  Since I was left with little choice, I talked.

  I told her about finding Rowan in the snow, about doing CPR and calling 911, about the ambulance showing up, about the shared glances of the EMTs who took over from Julia and me, and about watching the ambulance’s taillights fading from view as they took Rowan away.

  “There’s something else.” Kristen’s voice was gentle, but I knew if I didn’t tell her everything, she would keep at me until I did. “Yeah.” I sighed. “Rowan was murdered.”

  “She . . . what?”

  “Murdered,” I repeated. “Hal Inwood told me. She was poisoned. Given something that triggered her heart condition, a medication she hadn’t been prescribed and wasn’t in her house.”

  Instead of murmuring a familiar platitude, Kristen said nothing. I was grateful for her noncomfort, which from her was more soothing than an “I’m so sorry, but there was nothing you could have done.” I had Aunt Frances for that; what I needed from Kristen was something exceedingly different.

  “That stinks,” she said.

  I almost smiled at the immensity of her understatement, but I knew she was doing her best. There were no appropriate responses to this kind of situation. “Yeah. Big time.”

  “Do they know who killed her?”

  “No.” I replayed the conversation with the detective in my head. “They’re just starting the investigation.”

  “What are you doing to help?”

  “I told Hal everything I could remember,” I said. “Other than that, there’s not much I can do.”

  Kristen scoffed. “Says the woman who’s helped the cops more than once. I assume they’re still understaffed? I assume they’re overworked, even in January when only insane people live in Chilson?”

  “Hard as it is for you to believe, some people like winter.”

  She passed over that comment. “No matter what your aunt Frances or I or anyone else says, you’re going to feel guilty about Rowan’s death. That if you’d shown up earlier, she might have recovered. Which, from what you’ve said, is ridiculous, but I know how your brain works. To keep yourself from drowning in guilt and self-loathing, you need to help find the killer. So, like I said, what are you doing?”

  “Hal and Ash are professional law enforcement officers,” I said. “The last thing they need is for me to butt into an official police investigation.” Before she could launch into a recitation of the times I had, in fact, helped with a police investigation, I firmly turned the conver
sation to wedding planning.

  After a few attempts to circle the conversation back to murder, Kristen rolled her eyes, sighed heavily, and let me talk about photographers. When the last item on my list of wedding plans had been crossed off, I said, “Sorry, I really have to get going. Things to do and places to go,” and before she could point out how little there was to do in Chilson during winter, I gave her a cheery wave and closed down the call.

  I felt a little bad about cutting her off, but not that bad. Resisting Kristen’s will was exhausting even when she was almost two thousand miles away. If I got exhausted, I’d be far more likely to get sick, and getting sick was nowhere in my future plans since I had no alternative driver for the bookmobile.

  Every so often I tried to talk Julia into taking a course to get a commercial driver’s license, but to date, she’d resisted. Though the state didn’t require a CDL to drive a vehicle the size of the bookmobile, the library’s policy did require one. I’d added it myself, partly to placate my then-boss, and partly because I thought it was a good idea. Which it was, but the difficulty of finding a backup driver hadn’t been one of my considerations, and it probably should have been.

  “Soon,” I said out loud, then replaced my shoes with boots, put myself into my coat, hauled on my hat, and pulled on my mittens. My technical quitting time had slipped past almost two hours ago—my talk with Kristen had lasted roughly half an hour, so the library had once again made money on me. Not that I kept track, but I also wasn’t about to feel any guilt for using the library’s computer and high-speed Internet connection for a bit of personal use.

  I padded out to the lobby, waved to Donna, who was working until the library’s eight o’clock closing, and was about to head into the cold when someone said, “Minnie? Do you have a minute?”

  Turning, I saw a young woman toying with her long lovely auburn braid. A young man, with his hand on her shoulder, looked at me with question marks in his eyes.

  Stepping forward, I gave first Collier Bennethum, then his sister, Anya, long hugs. “I’m so sorry about your mom.” I wanted to apologize for not being able to do anything to help Rowan, but at the last second I held back from blurting out my own guilt. A confession from me wouldn’t help the twins deal with their mother’s death; I needed to deal with my feelings on my own.