Cat With a Clue

by Laurie Cass

  “Hey!”

  Julia frowned. “I’m on a rant, Minnie. Please don’t interrupt me when I’m in full flow.”

  But it wasn’t Julia who I was scolding. I shifted on the desk and called to my cat, “Where are you going?”

  We’d felt free to open the bookmobile door because for the last year, Eddie had completely ignored it. When we were en route, my furry friend traveled in a cat carrier strapped to the floor on the passenger’s side, but once I set the parking brake, Julia unlatched the wire door, allowing him to roam free about the interior. Though he’d run outside a couple of times the first year of the bookmobile’s service, since then he’d shown little interest in leaving the bus before we did.

  Eddie, being a cat, paid no attention to my question, but continued to sniff at the open doorway.

  “Is he going to make a run for it?” Leese asked, amused.

  “Not a chance,” I said. “He wouldn’t want to get too far from his cat treats.”

  Eddie’s ears flattened and Julia laughed. “I think you hurt his feelings. You should apologize before he does something drastic.”

  “I shouldn’t have to apologize for telling the truth.”

  But she did have a point. A miffed Eddie was not a good situation. He had claws and knew how to use them, especially on paper products. Paper towels, toilet paper, facial tissues, newspapers, and even books weren’t necessarily safe when Eddie was in the mood for destruction.

  “I am sorry,” I told my cat, “that you take offense to a fact-based statement.”

  “Huh,” said Leese. “Not much of an apology, if you ask me. And from the looks of him, he doesn’t think much of it either.”

  Eddie was standing at the top of the stairs, intent on ignoring everything in the bookmobile, twitching his ears and nose.

  “Hey, pal,” I said, sliding off the desk. “Inside only. You promised, remember?”

  “That was before you insulted him,” Julia said. “All previous deals have now been canceled.”

  “Come here, Eddie.” But just as I leaned down to grab my fuzzy friend, he hopped out of my reach, jumping down to the bottom step.

  “That’ll teach you to make fun of a cat,” Leese said, laughing.

  “Especially an Eddie cat,” Julia added.

  We were parked in a large church parking lot, at least a hundred feet from the closest road, which hadn’t had a car pass in the last ten minutes, so I wasn’t overly worried about Eddie getting dangerously close to traffic, but there was a long line of shrubs at the far side of the lot and I could just see Eddie crawling into that prickly mess and not wanting to come out until long after we should have been at the next stop.

  “How about a treat?” I crouched at the top of the stairs. “Come back right now and I’ll give you a whole pile of treats.” Not a big pile, but still. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

  Eddie, catlike, was bent on his new mission, whatever that might be, and launched himself off the bottom step and into the bright late-September sunshine.

  I groaned and went after him. Over my shoulder, I called, “Can someone bring me the treats? He might come if I shake the can.”

  Once outside, however, I realized that Eddie wasn’t headed for the shrubbery. Or the roadway. Instead he was trotting straight for the only vehicle in the parking lot, a battered pickup truck. Dents and scrapes of all shapes and sizes were scattered all along the doors and sides, some serious enough to have scoured the paint down to the metal.

  I leapt to the stunningly obvious conclusion that the vehicle was Leese’s and wondered what a former corporate attorney was doing with an open-bed truck, since at previous bookmobile visits, I was pretty sure she’d been driving a midsized SUV.

  Mentally shrugging—I paid about as much attention to cars as I did to the daily temperatures in Hawaii—I trotted across the parking lot, ten yards behind my cat in a very short parade of two. “Eddie, come back here, will you? I thought I only had to run on workout mornings with Ash. I’m not sure I’m ready for more. Think of me, will you? I’m sure you’ve done that once or twice.”

  Most days, my inane conversation caught Eddie’s attention, slowing him enough for me to catch up to him. This time, if anything, he sped up. Then he sniffed the air and trotted ever closer to the truck.

  “Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” Leese called as she climbed down the bookmobile’s steps. “Come get a kitty treat.” She rattled the cardboard can of annoyingly expensive moist morsels, but Eddie trotted onward.

  “Is that your truck?” I asked, pointing.

  “For now,” she said, still rattling the can. “It’s a long story.”

  Eddie, still ignoring the siren call of cat treats, jumped onto the truck’s rear bumper, then up onto the edge of the tailgate. I slowed from my half-run and started planning how best to snatch him up into my arms. Cornering Eddie was a lot easier than capturing him. “I think he wants to go for a ride.”

  “Ha.” Leese, with her long-legged strides, reached my side. “I’ll give it to him with my blessing as soon as my SUV is fixed.”

  Eddie’s ears swiveled. Laughing, I edged a few feet closer to the truck. “I think he’s rejecting your generous offer.”

  “He’s a cat of good taste.” Leese gave the treat can an extra-hard shake. “That thing’s a piece of junk.”

  “Mrrr,” Eddie said, then slid off the tailgate and into the truck’s bed.

  Reaching the side of the truck, I stood on my tiptoes and peered in. All there was to see was a large tarp and a black-and-white cat walking over the top of it in an ungainly fashion.

  “Fred Astaire, you are not,” I told him. “And please don’t make me come in there after you.”

  “Mrrr,” he said, but his tone was different from the usual communicative chirp he gave. It was low and long and almost a growl. He started pawing at the edge of the heavy canvas and trying to poke his little kitty nose under the edge. Of course, he was standing on the edge, which made things difficult, but Eddie didn’t always like to do things the easy way.

  I turned to look at Leese, who was now standing next to me. “What’s under your tarp?”

  “No idea,” she said shortly. “It’s not mine. Tarp or truck.”

  Two minutes earlier, she’d been ready to give away a truck she didn’t own? “I don’t—”

  “Mrrroooo!”

  I winced as Eddie’s howls penetrated my skull and sank deep into my brain.

  Enough was enough. I walked around to the back end of the truck, put one foot on the trailer hitch and pushed myself high enough to grab the tailgate’s edge with both hands.

  I swung one foot over into the pickup’s bed, then the other. Eddie was now howling for all he was worth and had managed to burrow his top half under the tarp. I crouched down and took a gentle hold of his back half. “Come on, pal. Let go of whatever it is you’re after, okay?”

  But when I stood, cat in hand, his claws were still extended, and they snagged the tarp’s edge, yanking the canvas to one side and revealing what Eddie had been after.

  “Oh . . . !” I stumbled backward. “Oh . . .”

  Because Eddie had uncovered a body. A dead body. Of a man. A man about sixty years old. With staring eyes of blue.

  I scrambled over the tailgate, holding a squirming Eddie close to my chest, and dropped to the ground, panting, and not wanting to see any more.

  Leese was standing quiet and tall, her hands gripping the edge of the truck, her mouth working as if she was trying to say something. For a long moment, nothing came out, but when it did, her voice was a raw whisper.

  “It’s my dad.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Laurie Cass is the national bestselling author of the Bookmobile Cat Mysteries, including Pouncing on Murder, Borrowed Crime, and Tailing a Tabby. She lives on a lake in northern Michigan with her husband and tw
o cats. Visit her online at catmystery.com

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