Booking the Crook

by Laurie Cass

  “You must have been at the back of the line when the gift of grace was handed out.” I went over to, once again, clean up after my cat. “Or maybe you’re just getting older. You’re four now, if Dr. Joe was right about your age. That’s what, college age for a cat? Not that you would have studied enough to get into any college. And if you’d managed to get admitted, I can see you flunking out after . . . huh.”

  I was down on my hands and knees now, and had seen a small flat rectangle on the floor, way behind the boots and underneath the bench. Since I was an unexpected guest, it was my duty to do some chores, so I reached out for the whatever-it-was.

  My fingers recognized the shape and texture of an empty sugar packet before my brain caught up.

  A sugar packet? But that made no sense at all.

  I brought the object into the light and put it on the kitchen table.

  Sugar. Rowan hated extra sugar in anything. She’d considered it responsible for death, disease, and general disorder in the world. She’d been a bit of a fanatic about it.

  I poked at the thing, reading its print. This particular packet was maple flavored, something put out by a local company. Even still, there was no way Rowan would have bought it and no way she would have allowed it in her house. There was absolutely no reason for it to be there.

  Except one.

  I backed away from the sugar packet, not wanting to touch it, not wanting to even see it any longer.

  My fingers fumbled for my phone. “Hey, Ash? There’s something you need to see.”

  Chapter 5

  At breakfast the next morning, I held my aunt spellbound while I told the tale. Or at least partially spellbound, because some of her focus was on keeping Eddie off the table.

  “But Hal and Ash didn’t think the sugar packet was important?” she asked.

  “They’re reserving judgment until it can be analyzed.” My instinctive leap had been to the conclusion that the sugar packet had contained whatever it was that had killed Rowan. There, in her kitchen, I’d seen the scene unfolding. Someone at the front door. Rowan inviting her or him inside. An offer of coffee. Two coffee mugs brought to the kitchen table. Then a request for something not handy. Rowan would have turned away and the killer would surreptitiously have added the poison, with the cover of an innocuous sugar packet if Rowan had happened to see the movement.

  I’d envisioned it so clearly that I’d been shocked when Ash and Hal hadn’t seen it along with me. Looking back, I realized that I might have been a little sharper with them than I’d needed to be. I’d been tired, hungry, and worried about getting the bookmobile back home, and during the three hours I’d waited before they showed up—the time it took for the road commission’s salt trucks to get to Rowan’s road—my confidence that the packet had contained poison had grown to one hundred percent.

  Eddie, who had abandoned his efforts to get on top of the table, jumped onto his chair. He sat upright with his chin just level with the tabletop.

  I spooned up the last of my oatmeal. “And it’s possible I told Detective Inwood and Deputy Wolverson that waiting a week for the lab analysis would be a waste of a week and wasn’t time of the essence in a murder investigation?”

  Aunt Frances half smiled. “More like you said they were nuts to ignore what was right in front of their faces.”

  “Well.” I grinned. “That sounds more like me, doesn’t it?”

  My aunt nodded. “Yup.”

  “Mrr.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The previous day’s freezing rain had been covered with a fresh two inches of snow overnight. While the main roads were clear, most of the side roads were still exceedingly slippery. Schools were closed and events were being canceled all over the county, but the library had never closed for weather in the history of the library, so I slipped a set of handy-dandy ice grips over my boots and headed out.

  My normal morning walking route took me through the tree-lined residential streets of Chilson, zigged to hit the core downtown blocks, and zagged back up to the library. Today, however, I took the route of safety and made a beeline for the main road.

  The city’s sidewalk plow had made a pass and dropped a mix of sand and salt, but the footing was still variable, so like a responsible adult, I kept my head down and my attention on my boots. Which was why, when my name was called out, I jumped and almost lost my balance.

  “Sorry about that. You okay?” Mitchell Koyne looked down at me. Way down. I understood that my own compact and efficient height was not the norm, and every time I met up with Mitchell, it was very clear that he was on the opposite end of the human height bell curve.

  “Fine. And nice work on your sidewalk.” I nodded at the stretch in front of the toy store, shoveled and scraped down to the concrete, even though it was almost two hours until the store opened.

  Until last year, Mitchell had been one of those guys who bounced from seasonal construction job to seasonal ski resort job, making ends meet in the shoulder seasons of spring and fall by selling firewood and not eating much. He’d worn untucked and raggy flannel shirts over T-shirts of questionable condition, jeans worn to white at the knees, and shoes held together with goo and sometimes duct tape.

  He was also very intelligent and insatiably curious, but only in a sporadic sort of way. That, paired with his complete lack of ambition, had created his life of unparalleled laid-back Up North–ness. But everything had changed for Mitchell when he’d started dating Bianca Sims, one of the most successful real estate agents in the region.

  The high-powered and energetic Bianca pairing with Mitchell was not a combination anyone ever would have expected, but it was working so well for them that Mitchell was essentially living with her. Which was a relief to Mitchell’s sister and brother-in-law, in whose attic bedroom he’d been living.

  I’d often wondered what Mitchell might have done with his life if he’d been born into a family that valued education. Looking at him now, though, it was hard to imagine him anywhere else or doing anything else other than managing Chilson’s toy store. A more natural fit was hard to imagine, and it was all due to Mitchell wanting to improve himself in order to win Bianca’s love.

  “Doubt you’ll get much business today,” I said.

  “There’s always something to do.” Mitchell set down the bag of salt he’d been holding and shoved his bare hands into his coat pockets. “Say, Minnie, can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure. Fire away.”

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well, it’s a personal question.”

  Silence reigned. I waited, waited some more, and finally said, “Okay. I can deal with personal.” At no point had any of my college professors warned me that librarians could become surrogate therapists, but as a librarian, and especially as a bookmobile librarian, I’d been asked to give career recommendations, about the right time to have children, and what I’d do if I’d been offered a big promotion a thousand miles away. “Go ahead.”

  “Well.” He shifted again. “It’s Bianca.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “Is there a problem?” Every time I saw the two of them together, they looked happy. Laughing, holding hands, all that.

  “Well, it’s just . . .” He hung his head. “I want to, you know, take things to the next level, and I’m not sure how to do that.”

  Alarmed, I started backing away. No way was I going to give Mitchell Koyne advice on the physical aspect of his relationship with his girlfriend. “Um, Mitchell, this isn’t something—”

  “I mean, how do I know if she wants to make us a permanent thing? What if I’m reading things wrong? Because the last few weeks things have been a little weird. It’s like she’s impatient with me. And at Christmas she seemed really disappointed with her present.” He sighed. “I thought about it a lot and figured she’d really like what I gave her, a set of framed pict
ures for her office, of historic houses from all around here.”

  It sounded like a great present, and I said so.

  “Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “She acted happy and everything, but things haven’t been right since then.”

  I relaxed. This was familiar territory. Every few months Mitchell went through a “What does she see in me?” phase. Oddly, Bianca seemed to occasionally suffer the same internal debate. “You’re not reading things wrong,” I assured him. “If you want a forever future with Bianca, why don’t you talk to her about it?”

  He hesitated. “There’s this friend of mine. He took his girlfriend downstate to a baseball game last summer, the Tigers, and had them put his proposal on that big screen. Everyone was watching, and she . . .”

  “She said no,” I said quietly. The video had been all over the Internet for days. I’d felt awful for the poor guy; I just hadn’t realized Mitchell knew him.

  “Yeah. After, he told me he’d been so sure she’d say yes. So even if everything seems good between me and Bianca, how can I know for sure?”

  I wanted to reassure him, but he had a point. How did anyone ever know for sure how someone else felt? About anything, really?

  “Can you help me?” he asked. “Figure out how she feels? About me, I mean?”

  What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t help? Not that Mitchell and I were friends exactly. But we were more than acquaintances, and if I could help out, I should.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Thanks, Minnie!” He grinned a wide Mitchell smile, and I was suddenly very glad I’d agreed to help. He slapped me on the shoulder and I staggered. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I forget sometimes how little you are. One more thing, don’t let Bianca know I talked to you about this, okay?”

  I smiled a bit grimly. “I’ll do what I can,” I said again and, all the way to the library, wondered what on earth that might possibly be.

  * * *

  • • •

  I spent the morning doing the post-bookmobile chores I should have done the day before but hadn’t because we hadn’t made it back to the library until long after closing time. At the time, my priority had been to get Eddie and me back to the boardinghouse safe and sound. After all, I was the only one who would care if I didn’t lug all the returned bookmobile books back into the library and process them, and I was willing to give myself a pass from having to do it on nights we didn’t get back until ten o’clock.

  Bringing books, DVDs, and CDs back home to the library always made me happy. The only thing better than checking them back in was checking them out, sending them on their temporary way to a new loving home. Truly, I had the best job in the world, because I got to help people find what they wanted every day.

  I ran all the returned materials through the computer, put them on a rolling rack, and, whistling, started to put them back into their proper places. Some would go straight back onto the bookmobile; others would stay here in the library until someone requested one of them, or until I decided to rotate them into bookmobile circulation. I was gaining more experience with what bookmobilers liked, but what I was mostly learning was that I really needed a magical crystal ball to predict what people wanted.

  For instance, just yesterday Mrs. Portz, who had in the past been interested only in reading cookbooks and biographies of U.S. presidents, had asked for “one of those steamy books my granddaughter goes on about,” and once I’d realized that she was talking about steampunk, I’d been happy to oblige.

  A light knock made me look up. Graydon stood in the doorway.

  “How are you this fine morning?” I asked cheerfully.

  “Very happy that I didn’t have to drive more than three miles to work. And I’m glad you made it back safely last night. That freezing rain must have been frightening, especially in the bookmobile.”

  My new boss was showing concern for the bookmobile? For me? What was the world coming to? “The weight makes it easier than you’d think,” I said. “The worst thing was trying to keep the windshield clear.”

  He nodded. “Well, I’m glad you texted me. Let’s make that standard operating procedure in bad weather.”

  “Sounds like a good plan.” One of these days I was going to finish revising the library policies regarding the bookmobile. Before my former boss had approved the purchase of the bookmobile, I’d been required to put a number of policies in place. There had to be two library staff members on board at all times. That the driver must have a commercial driver’s license. And on and on. I’d done the best I could, but now that we’d been on the road for a year and a half, it was time to adjust things. I also wanted to rewrite the job descriptions for the driver and the assistant, adding core competencies. And the pre-run and post-run checklists could stand an update. Now that winter had dug in, I was a little nervous about the rear door’s keypad access working in extreme cold. We didn’t use the rear door, which was the handicapped entrance, all that much, but when we did need it, there was no substitute. “I’ll run the revised policy past you when I get a draft done.”

  “This week?”

  “Um . . .”

  Graydon smiled. “Trent is reviewing all of the library’s policies. As the new board chair, it makes sense. But if we’re going to make changes to the bookmobile policy, it would be best to have it in front of him as soon as possible.”

  I did the best I could to hide my complete and utter dismay. Policy revision was not my favorite task. In fact, it was near the bottom of my Least Favorite library chores and was another reason I’d decided against applying for the director position. “In that case, I’ll move policy revision to the top of my list.”

  Graydon seemed satisfied and went away, but my happy mood had shifted and I realized that I was going to have to resort to serious measures to get it back. I was going to have to ignore the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I’d brought for lunch and go to Shomin’s Deli instead.

  * * *

  • • •

  No one else wanted to go back out into the weather, so I left the library solo. I carried a book with me wherever I went, just in case I had to spend more than ten seconds waiting for anything ever, but off season I preferred to eat my meals with someone. In winter, Chilson’s population dropped by ninety percent, and most of us year-rounders tended to huddle together, especially in January.

  “Well, hello there, Miss Librarian!” Pam Fazio, owner of Older Than Dirt, a retail establishment that was partly antiques, partly shoes, partly kitchen wares, and all fun, waved at me from a booth. “Come sit with me.”

  I didn’t even bother looking at the chalkboard menu. “Hey, Mike,” I said to the twenty-something behind the counter. “Swiss cheese and olives on sourdough, please, with root beer.” After paying, I slid into the booth across from Pam. “I almost didn’t recognize you,” I said.

  Pam looked down at herself. “Same clothes. Same haircut. What do you see as different?”

  This was true. Same short black hair, same top-notch fashion sense, even in January. However, there was one massive change. “Might be the only time I’ve seen you without coffee in your hand.”

  She glowered. “Stupid doctor. Just because I’m ‘of a certain age,’ I’m suddenly supposed to start thinking about my caffeine intake? Why now?”

  “Because you can only get away with abusing your body for so long before it catches up to you?”

  “Wait your turn,” she said darkly. “Hit fifty and you’re in a whole new demographic. It’s all different.”

  “Didn’t you turn fifty two years ago?”

  “Three, but who’s counting?” She grinned, but it slipped away as something across the room caught her attention. “That’s odd. I thought he was gone.”

  I turned and saw Neil Bennethum, Rowan’s husband, place an order with Mike. “Is it okay if he joins us?” I asked. At Pam’
s nod, I got up and invited Neil over. After a pause, he nodded. “Thanks.”

  The three of us settled down, Pam and myself on one side of the booth, Neil on the other. “I thought you’d gone downstate,” Pam said. “Back to work.”

  Neil picked at a hangnail. “I tried, but couldn’t concentrate. They gave me a leave of absence so I’m headed down to Chicago to visit my brother and his family. Then . . . we’ll see.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Pam said.

  “Yes. Well.” Neil seemed to shrink. “I can’t sleep at the house. I tried, but . . .” He shook his head. “The last couple of nights I stayed with my sister in town.” He gave a wan smile and tapped his rounded midsection. “You know what’s funny? For years my doctor was on my case to lose fifty pounds. Now I’ve dropped ten in the last week. Who knew there could be a benefit to something like this?”

  I inched forward. “Neil, did you see my text? I was at your house yesterday.”

  “You were?” He stared at me blankly. “My phone . . . so many people are texting me about Rowan.” He looked at the table and muttered, “I haven’t been looking at it much lately.”

  Pam and I exchanged a glance. The man was not doing well. “Your house,” I said brightly, “was a port in the storm,” and explained about the bookmobile and the freezing rain. Then, after a quick moment, I told him I’d found something odd and called the police.

  “What did you find?” he asked.

  Of course he asked. How could he not? But I hesitated. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to talk about it. Part of the investigation.”

  Neil made a rude noise. “What investigation? I told Hal Inwood exactly who killed Rowan, but does he do anything about it? No. All they have to do is arrest him. They tell me it’s all under investigation, but I don’t see anything happening. Another reason it’ll be good for me to leave town—if they don’t arrest him soon, I might do something to him myself.”

  Pam and I exchanged glances. “You know who killed her?” Pam asked.