by Laurie Cass
“If you paid more attention to where you’re going,” she said, “you might get a lot further in life.”
“And where would I want to go?” I asked cheerfully. “I’m pretty happy right here.” I flung out my arms, narrowly missing a light pole.
Denise rolled her eyes. “It was a metaphor.”
I wasn’t sure it had been, but whatever. I’d learned not to take Denise’s comments personally; she was caustic by nature, and there was no reason to think she treated me any differently from anyone else. Denise, if she’d been face-to-face with Bill Gates, would demand to know why Microsoft products locked up so often. If the most famous author in the world moved to Chilson and wanted to volunteer with the Friends, Denise would have asked for qualifications. If the most—
Something jogged in my head and I mentally snapped my fingers.
“Say, Denise. I could do with a favor.”
She sniffed. “Maybe. Maybe not. What is it?”
Of all the Friends of the Library presidents in all the world, Denise had to be president of Chilson’s. “Do you keep track of who volunteers in the book-sale room?”
Denise tossed her hair. “Of course I do. What kind of operation do you think I run?”
With great restraint, I didn’t say what I really thought. “Could you please e-mail me a list of everyone who was working that week the books were thrown off the shelves?”
Denise’s eyes came together into narrow slits. “You can’t think that one of my volunteers did that. That’s just stupid.”
“I don’t think anything of the sort. But I would like to talk to each of them, ask if they noticed anything different.”
“Hmph. It’s about time you did something about that.” Denise gave me a quick look up and down. “It’s because you’re getting a new library director, I bet. You’re afraid the new guy is going to fire you for letting a murder and two break-ins happen on your watch.”
How she’d come to that bizarre conclusion, I had no idea. But since I also didn’t care to learn how Denise’s thought process worked, I just said, “If you could send me the list, I’d appreciate it.”
“Well.” Denise sighed. “I suppose. But that stuff is at home, and I’m doing the flowers at church this morning, then I have a volunteer shift at Lake View this afternoon, and tonight my friend Bobbi is hosting a euchre tournament, and she always says she can’t play cards without me, so I can’t promise when.”
“Whenever you have a minute is fine,” I said, edging away. “Thanks.” And I fled before she could start talking about her Monday schedule. During my hurried walk, I went past Benton’s, stopped, turned around, and stepped up to the front door. The store wouldn’t be open for almost another hour, but maybe Rianne was in. I knocked loudly and, sure enough, Rianne’s head poked out of the back doorway.
She saw my frantic gestures and came forward to unlock the door. “Minnie, what’s up?”
“Do you have a few minutes?”
“Sure,” she said, glancing outside at the big clock. “Would you like some coffee? I was just going over some inventory numbers. Come on back.”
As we settled ourselves in her office, coffee in hand, I trailed my fingers across a few spokes of the ship’s wheel. “Do you remember a book about wildflowers at your grandparents’ house? It was on the sideboard.”
“Flowers?” She blew steam off her coffee. “I guess so, but I was more of a Boxcar Children fan. Why do you ask?”
“Because I think that book is why Andrea was killed.”
Rianne stopped midsip. “I don’t understand.”
“This is going to sound impossible, but the book Wildflowers, by Robert Chastain, is potentially worth a lot of money.”
“How much is a lot?” Rianne went back to sipping.
“If it’s in mint condition, half a million dollars.”
Rianne’s mouthful of coffee blew out in a spray all over her desk. “Half a million? That can’t be right. No way did Deke and Granny have anything worth that much. No way.”
I told her that Cade himself had seen the book. “Plus, I think that’s why Andrea was in the library that night. Somehow she knew the value of the book and was trying to find it. And I think someone is still trying to.”
“Why didn’t they put it in a safety-deposit box?” She looked around a little wildly. “Get it insured? Something. Anything.”
“I’m not sure they believed Cade about its value. To them it was just a book that had been sitting on the sideboard.”
“Now, that I can believe.” Rianne pulled a tissue out of a box and dabbed at the coffee-colored spray on her papers. “But why would anyone think the book ended up in the library?”
“Because in her later years, your grandmother gave away a lot of things. Because I’m guessing it isn’t on the sideboard anymore.”
“Let’s find out.” Rianne put down her coffee mug and reached for the phone. “Honey? Can you go into the dining room? You know that pile of kids’ books on the sideboard? Is there a book about wildflowers in there?”
“Wildflowers of Northern America,” I said.
She nodded, passed on the title, and, after a few moments, said, “Thanks. I’ll tell you about it tonight.” She hung up the phone and looked at me. “It’s not there. And there’s nowhere else in the house it would be. It’s gone.”
Though that was what I’d expected, it was still a punch in the stomach.
The skin around Rianne’s mouth was tight. “Did Granny give it away, or did someone steal it?”
“If someone had stolen it from the house, Andrea wouldn’t have been in the library, looking for it.” At least that was my assumption. “I think your grandmother gave it away.”
Rianne relaxed a fraction, but only a fraction. “So, someone out there is willing to murder for the sake of this book?”
“For half a million dollars,” I said.
She blew out a long sigh. “My grandparents had a lot of people in that house over the years. It could be almost anyone. I just . . . I just hope it isn’t anyone I know.”
For her sake, I hoped so, too.
* * *
“Keep your elbows in.”
I nodded at Ash’s instruction, trying not to think that he sounded like my father had, years back when I was being taught table manners. I still didn’t honestly see why it was such a horrible thing to put your elbows on the table when you were eating a hamburger, especially if you were like me and had elbows that ended closer to the tabletop than most people’s, but I still couldn’t do it without feeling guilty.
Speaking of parents . . . “How did it go at your mom’s?” I asked.
Though Ash was about twenty feet away, over the flat water that was between us, there was no need to speak any louder than if he’d been right next to me. We were in kayaks, sitting low, and the world looked different from the way it did from a standing position. Though I’d canoed many times, this was my first-ever kayak outing, and I was already a convert. The only thing I had to unlearn from my earlier canoeing efforts was the elbow thing.
“All set,” he said.
He’d gone to his mom’s house to help her plant trees that a landscaping company had delivered the day before. Maples, to replace the ash trees that had been killed by the emerald ash borer. Since Ash’s name had come from how much his mother had loved those trees, it had only made sense that the human Ash work on the replacements.
“I would have been glad to help.” Digging hard into the water with the paddle’s blades, I sent the kayak scooting forward fast.
“Hey there, Speedster!” Ash laughed and caught up to me in seconds. “I told Mom you’d be happy to help, but she said she didn’t want to bother you.”
There was a small kernel of worry tucked away in a corner of my tummy. It was a stone kernel that had the name Lindsey Wolverson etched into its surface, a
nd I had no idea what to do about it. Maybe it was a personality thing and we would never get along. Or maybe it was something I’d done, but I had no idea what. Then again, it was possible that she just didn’t like short people.
“What’s so funny?” Ash asked.
I glanced over. In the year that I’d known him and the few weeks we’d been dating, the thing I liked most about him was that he kept an open mind. There was no possible way that he had been raised by a mother who was prejudiced.
“Lots of things are funny,” I said. “Take the duck-billed platypus, for—”
The low growling sound of a big boat’s motor came up fast behind us. “Boat coming up,” Ash called. “Turn to face it diagonally, okay?”
Without too much flailing around, I did as he said, and was in proper position to take the boat’s wake when it passed underneath us.
The boat itself was a charter fishing boat headed for the channel and the open waters of Lake Michigan. On board were the typical passengers: men in their forties to early fifties, wearing jeans, fleece jackets, and baseball caps with downstate team names. A grizzled man was behind the boat’s wheel, his skin crinkled from too many years without enough sunblock. The boat’s single crew member was a tall man who was busying himself by stowing coolers and checking fishing gear, joking with the passengers, and constantly adjusting his hat.
Mitchell Koyne.
I watched the boat slide past and stared at Mitchell the entire time. When it had gone by and we’d ridden out the bobbing wake, I turned to Ash. “Did you see that?”
“Yeah,” he said, watching the boat’s stern grow ever more distant. “A bunch of guys out having a lot of expensive fun.”
His tone was a little envious, and I hoped that the next activity he taught me wasn’t going to include rods and reels and sharp hooks, because I didn’t see the attraction to sitting in a boat for hours on end, hoping you were clever enough to outsmart a fish. “Mitchell Koyne was crewing.”
“Heard he was working hard this summer.” Ash turned his kayak to run parallel with the lake’s shore, and I did the same. “Maybe he’s trying to save enough money to buy a house. He’s lived with his sister for how long? I bet her husband’s ready to see him go.”
Though that last part was undoubtedly true, I was fairly sure Mitchell’s new work ethic wasn’t a product of his brother-in-law’s urgings.
“I’ve been thinking about what you told Hal this morning,” Ash said.
For a moment, I had no idea what he was talking about. Hal who? I almost asked, then, at the last second, I remembered that Detective Inwood, unlike Lieutenant Columbo, did indeed have a first name, and that it was Hal.
When Ash had arrived at the marina with two kayaks, I’d given him the same spiel I’d given the detective as we wrestled the boats off the top of his SUV and into the water.
“And?” I asked now. “Please tell me you had a magical leap of insight. A brilliant flash. Any kind of flash.”
“Sorry.” Ash leaned back and rested his paddle across the kayak’s cockpit. “What I was thinking was that almost everybody in town worked for Benton’s at one point in their life. I grew up in Petoskey, so I don’t know for sure, but from what I heard, the DeKeysers treated all of their staff like family.”
“A dysfunctional family?”
Ash laughed. “What other kind is there? No, what I meant was that I’ve heard people who worked at Benton’s say it wasn’t unusual for staff to be invited to the DeKeyser’s house for lunch or dinner.”
Outstanding. “So anyone who ever worked at Benton’s could have noticed that copy of Wildflowers.”
“Yup.” Ash glanced over. “Which means the people who might know about the book’s value could be anyone from all the DeKeysers to Shane Pratley to Rafe to the mayor.”
“Shane worked at Benton’s?”
“Well, sure.” Ash frowned. “I thought you knew. He was more or less in charge at Benton’s when Deke and Talia handed over the management to Rianne. Shane was fine with that until Rianne moved back to run the store hands-on. He quit cold and went to work at the grocery store.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t know.” But suddenly Shane’s anger made . . . well, not sense, but at least now I knew there was a reason behind it. But was he angry enough to kill? I looked up at the big blue sky. Though it sent no answers, it was clear that Ash needed to know about Shane’s temper. I sighed. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
When I described the encounter I’d had with Shane at the grocery store, Ash went still. “And you didn’t mention this at the time because?”
I shrugged, because I wasn’t sure why. “He was just letting off steam.”
“You don’t know that.”
He was right. “Sorry,” I said. “I should have told you.”
“Okay.” Ash nodded. “I’ll tell Hal and see what he wants to do with it.” He twirled his paddle in his hands, started to dig the blades into the water, then stopped and looked at me. “Just so you know, we are looking at Steve Guilder.”
“Andrea’s high school boyfriend?”
“That’s the one.” Ash nodded. “We’re looking, so leave that alone, okay? He moved back to Michigan about a year ago. We’re trying to track him down.”
“Is he in Chilson?” For some reason I glanced around. “Do you know where he’s working?”
“We’re trying to track him down,” Ash repeated. “We’ll find him. Don’t worry.”
It was a beautiful summer day with hardly a cloud in the sky, and worrying had been the furthest thing from my mind.
Until then.
Chapter 13
The next morning, I woke to the sound of rain pattering on the houseboat’s roof. I lay quietly for a moment, trying to decide which was noisier, the rain or Eddie’s snores, then reached for my clock to check the time. “It’s not even eight,” I said, yawning. “What do you think, bud? Option one is get up, get going, and be productive in the four hours before I have to be at the library. Option two is roll over and see what happens.”
“Mrr,” Eddie said sleepily.
I murmured agreement, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
Two hours later, I blinked and found that I was wide-awake. Eddie tried to convince me to stay in bed, but it wasn’t any good. I was awake and going to stay that way.
“You, of course, get to remain in bed if you wish,” I told him as I towel-dried my hair, postshower. “That’s one of the benefits of being a cat.”
Eddie’s eyes opened slightly.
“You want me to name all of them?” I pulled on clothes suitable for an afternoon in the library; dress pants, a dressy T-shirt, and a light jacket. “There’s no time for the complete list, but I can hit the highlights. A cat’s sense of self-confidence, for one. The absolute nonnecessity of having to change your clothes. Plus there’s the ability you have to purr. What’s that all about, anyway? And then there’s—”
I stopped, because my audience of one had gone back to sleep. I could tell, because he was snoring again, this time most certainly louder than the rain.
“Have a good day,” I whispered. Then I kissed him and headed out to hunt down some food.
* * *
The folks at the Round Table were happy enough to stuff me full of cinnamon apple pancakes, link sausage, and some healthy wedges of watermelon. I put up my rain jacket’s hood and scooted from restaurant to car, telling myself that driving to the library when I normally walked on nonbookmobile days was okay on a day like this. Far better to use the gas to drive the mile than to walk and end up with wet shoes and socks and pants from which I might never get the mud spatters out.
I arrived at the library long before the noon opening and used the time to catch up on e-mails and to open the snail mail that had been accumulating on my desk. At straight-up twelve, I unlocked the doors and headed acro
ss the quiet lobby to the reference desk.
Donna, who was a deacon in her church, wouldn’t arrive until half past. She’d worried over me being the only staff member in the entire library, saying that maybe someone else should work on Sunday afternoon. I’d said if I couldn’t manage half an hour by myself, that my librarianship should be irrevocably revoked.
And, for the first fifteen minutes, absolutely nothing happened. Not a single soul walked in the door, and I was left free to research a new educational software program for the children’s computers. Then, just as I was thinking that I must not have unlocked the doors, I heard one swing open and a troop of children scampered in. A motherly type cast a worried glance in my direction and shushed her charges.
I got up, smiling, and walked toward them. “Hi, I’m Minnie. If you need anything, just let me know.”
The woman pushed back her rain-damp hair. “How about something for three siblings and four cousins to do for an hour or two? We’re staying with friends and we were all supposed to go out on the boat, but . . .” She sighed.
“I have just the thing,” I said with confidence. The brick-and-mortar library might not have a cat, but in addition to books, we had a puppet theater, a tree-shaped resin structure designed to be climbed upon, and jigsaw puzzles galore. I herded the entourage to the children’s section, and the kids instantly scattered to various parts of the room.
“Thank you,” the woman said. Deep feeling rang in every vowel and consonant. “I promise to remember you in my will.”
“No need,” I assured her. “All in a day’s work for a librarian.”
I left them to their devices and headed back to the reference desk, exquisitely satisfied with my profession, glad I hadn’t given in to a brief temptation in my sophomore year to switch majors. Though the archaeology class I’d taken had been fascinating, it wouldn’t have suited me nearly as much as being a librarian did.