Borrowed Crime: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery

by Laurie Cass

  The heavyset woman behind the counter nodded. “Both. You want to talk to them?”

  I nodded, gave her my name, and I was soon admitted to the back, into the interview room.

  A short time later, the detective came in. “Ms. Hamilton, what brings you to see us on a Saturday morning?”

  I looked at him suspiciously. “You’re smiling.”

  “My wife tells me I should do it more often,” he said, sitting at the table.

  “She’s right.” His face transformed completely when he smiled. And in a good way. He didn’t look nearly the dour everyone-is-guilty-of-something cop when he did. “Why are you so happy about being at work on a Saturday morning?”

  His smile went even wider. “You’ll be glad to know that we have a solid lead on the person responsible for Roger Slade’s death.”

  “You . . . do?”

  “No arrest, but with the help of the area’s conservation officer, we have a very good idea about what happened out there.”

  “You do?”

  Detective Inwood’s smile slipped a bit. “Don’t look so surprised, Ms. Hamilton. We may not solve crimes in an hour, but we actually do know what we’re doing.”

  “It’s not that,” I said quickly. “It’s just that Denise, Roger’s wife, she had a car accident a few days ago, and her mechanic just told me that the radiator hose had been cut.”

  I waited for the light to dawn, but instead he simply nodded. “Yes, we know about that. The city police notified us.”

  “And?” I asked. “Does that fit with the guy you think killed Roger?”

  His smile took on a polite cast. “Ms. Hamilton, anyone truly trying to kill Denise Slade would have cut her brake lines. A slice in a radiator hose?” He shook his head. “She’s been known to call nine-one-one and report loud parties. Most likely she left her car in the drive, and one of the neighbor kids took the opportunity.”

  “What if it wasn’t?” I leaned forward. “What if Denise was the target all along? What if Roger was killed by accident, because he was wearing her hat? What if Denise is still in danger?”

  The detective stood. “Thanks for the information, Ms. Hamilton. We’ll consider what you said, but please let us do our jobs.”

  I started to protest, to try to convince him that he was wrong, but he was already gone.

  * * *

  When I left the sheriff’s office, it was past ten o’clock and the stores were opening. The Round Table, our local diner, had been serving food for hours, but now the signs on the retail stores were being flipped from CLOSED to OPEN, lights were being turned on, and there was an overall feeling that the town was stretching its arms, yawning, and waking up to another day of business.

  “Good morning, Minnie!”

  I looked around for the origin of the voice and saw a woman waving at me from the entry of an antiques store. It was Pam Fazio, the owner of Older Than Dirt, and I didn’t understand why she was there.

  “And a fine morning it is,” I said, smiling at her as I crossed the street. “But aren’t you going to be late for the Friends of the Library meeting?” For decades, Friends meetings had been held once a month on Saturday mornings.

  Pam scowled. “Funny, Minnie, really funny.”

  I blinked at her. “It was? I wasn’t trying to be.”

  She blinked back. “Oh. Sorry. You must not have heard.”

  No, I hadn’t, and whatever it was, I was getting a bad feeling about it.

  “It was at the last Friends meeting,” Pam said, wrapping her arms around herself. She’d stepped outside to talk to me, and the cascading purple cardigan she wore over black pants and ankle-high shiny black boots wasn’t keeping out the cold.

  “I guess you were out on the bookmobile that day,” she said. “By the time you got back it was all over.”

  Yep, I was getting a very bad feeling. “What happened?”

  “Denise Slade happened,” Pam practically spat. “I know I should feel sorry for her, with Roger being killed and her crash and everything, but that woman is impossible! Why Roger stayed married to her is a huge mystery.”

  “What happened at the meeting?” I asked.

  Pam rubbed her upper arms. “Typical Denise, really, but something about that day just sent me up the wall. Just because she’s the president doesn’t mean she has executive privilege to make decisions. She told us—told us!—that from now on the Friends were going to open the used bookstore on Wednesdays and Saturdays and not have it open any other time.” Pam’s face was a fierce scowl. “No vote, no nothing—just Denise changing the way we’ve done things for years because she thinks she knows the best way to do things.”

  That sounded like Denise, all right.

  She clutched at her arms, her fingernails digging deep into her sleeves. “No one else said a thing. Denise has them beat down to nothing. I said something like we should have a vote, or at least a general consensus. Denise gave a smirk—you know the one, right?”

  I did, and my expression must have shown how much it annoyed me.

  Pam nodded. “Yeah, well she gave that smirk and said there already was consensus, and if I didn’t like it, that I knew where the door was.” She stopped. Smiled a little. “So you know what I did?”

  An uneasy feeling crinkled around in my stomach. “Do I really need to know?”

  She grinned. “I lit into her the way I’ve been wanting to do for months. And you know what? It felt great.”

  “Minnie? Minnie!” A woman was waving from the passenger’s window of a dark sedan.

  “Surprised to see us?” she asked, laughing. “We’re headed to the gallery, if you have a few minutes.”

  I stared at the mid-fiftyish couple in the car, who were both smiling broadly.

  They weren’t supposed to be here. They should have been long gone. Why were they still in Michigan?

  “Please say you can stop by,” the woman said. “We have a lot to tell you.”

  I bet, I thought grimly. And I have a thing or two to tell you.

  I turned back to Pam. “Sorry, but I have to go.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, smiling. “All I was going to do was complain about Denise, and I’m sure you get enough of that without me.”

  “Even the most tolerant of people have their breaking points,” I said. “And though I understand how you feel about Denise, I hope you’ll consider rejoining the Friends someday.”

  Pam laughed. “Not as long as she’s there, but you’re a sweetie for trying. Anytime you want morning coffee, just let me know and I’ll bring an extra mug onto the porch.”

  She ducked back inside to the warmth of her store, and I hurried the three blocks to my new destination.

  By the time I burst in the front door of the Lakeview Art Gallery, I’d built up a nice head of steaming outrage. I shut the door firmly behind me and faced my good friends Barb and Russell McCade with my hands on my hips and my chin up. Behind them was a middle-aged woman I assumed was the new gallery manager, but introductions would have to wait.

  “Why are you still here?” I asked, glaring at the smiling McCades. They were standing next to a large canvas, the back of which was to me. Though I was excited to see the painting, I didn’t move. There were things that needed to be said.

  I kept glaring. “You promised you’d be gone before the first snowfall. You took solemn vows that you’d be in Arizona before there was any danger of driving on snowy roads. You promised me—”

  Russell McCade, known to most as Cade, an internationally famous artist, grinned and turned the painting around. His left hand lost its grip, but Barb caught the painting before it hit the floor. “What do you think?” Cade asked. “Not bad for an old man still recovering from a stroke, yes?”

  Oh, yes. I drank in the glorious colors, the uneven brushstrokes, the shapes and images and impressions taki
ng me straight back to the end of summer, to dark blue evenings on the lake, to cool air and the knowledge that winter was coming. It was powerful and beautiful and haunting, and I didn’t want to look away.

  “Sentimental schlock,” Cade said, quoting one of his few critics.

  “But well-done sentimental schlock,” Barb added, quoting one of his thousands of supporters.

  “I couldn’t finish this painting in Arizona,” Cade said. “I had to work on it here, and I couldn’t leave until it was done.”

  He had a point, and a good one at that. It wouldn’t have been easy for him to visualize the greens and blues of summer in northern lower Michigan in the middle of the reds and browns of southern Arizona. Still, there had been a promise made, and I wasn’t letting them off the hook that easily.

  “You promised,” I said, trying not to sound like an eight-year-old. “You said—both of you said—that you’d leave before snow, and if you didn’t, you’d call me instead of driving yourselves anywhere. It snowed ten inches barely a week ago, and did I get a phone call? No.”

  I crossed my arms and waited for their answer. It wasn’t long in coming, and it was about what I’d expected.

  Cade laughed, and Barb made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a giggle.

  “My dear Minnie,” Cade said. “I know you’ve taken a proprietary interest in my health since you and your bookmobile rushed me to the hospital, and there is no question that your rapid response is what helped me recover from the stroke so quickly, but Barb and I aren’t exactly elderly. Neither one of us is even sixty.”

  Barb took her husband’s hand. “Besides, we didn’t drive anywhere while there was snow on the roads. We just stayed home. I read some of those wonderful books you’ve recommended, and Cade finished his painting.” She nodded at the canvas.

  “Plus,” Cade said, “our bags are packed and we’re headed for the airport the moment we leave here.”

  I gave a mock sigh. “So you’re on the way out of town?”

  “Decidedly,” Cade said, smiling a little.

  I couldn’t help it; I started laughing. Last summer the McCades and I had become acquainted over Cade’s hospital bed, and it had solidified into a permanent friendship over the use of words that started with the letter D. To have him pull one out now was a top-notch use.

  “You’re incorrigible,” I said.

  “Are we doing I words?” Barb asked. “Because I’ve always wanted to use the word ‘irrefragable’ in a sentence.”

  “You just did,” Cade said. He smartly stepped out of the way of her elbow and smiled at me. “How is that fuzzy feline of yours?” Cade and Eddie had become good friends over the past few months, but I finally had to forbid Cade from bringing him any more treats or cat toys until next spring. Even Eddie could only eat and play so much.

  “Fuzzier than ever,” I assured him.

  “You can expect the portrait by Valentine’s Day,” Cade said. “I’ll have it crated and freighted direct to you.”

  “Oh, wow, you don’t have to do that. Really, you don’t have to—”

  Barb cut into my babbling. “Minnie, dear, hush. We’ve been through this before, and you’re accepting Eddie’s portrait. If you don’t, Cade will paint you.”

  The threat had been made before and it still sent a shiver of unease down my back.

  “Ha,” Cade said. “Look at her face. You’d think I did abstract art with a nasty twist, the way she’s looking.”

  “Distraction is in order,” Barb said. “Give her the other news.”

  Grinning, Cade rubbed his hands together. “It’s all set, Minnie. The painting the Radles have chosen to donate is scheduled for auction the week after Thanksgiving.”

  “It . . . is?” After Cade had been involved in a murder case last summer, he’d told the parents of the murder victim that he’d donate a painting to a charity of their choice. And even though the victim hadn’t been a patron of the Chilson library, her parents had said her favorite times as a child had been spent in their local library. I hadn’t expected the grieving parents to choose a painting until next year, though. “They’re still willing to donate the money to the library?”

  Cade nodded. “Every cent.”

  I wanted to thank him, to thank Barb, to thank everyone and everything in the whole wide world, but all I could manage to do was nod.

  “Look at her.” Cade nudged his wife. “Now, that’s a face worth painting.”

  I tried to smile. Couldn’t quite, thanks to the emotions clogging my throat. “You’re irredeemable,” I managed to say.

  “Incurable,” he agreed.

  “But not irrefragable,” Barb said.

  We all laughed, and if I wiped away a tear or two, the McCades were polite enough to allow the fiction that it was from the laughter.

  Chapter 10

  The rest of the weekend flew past with a number of Aunt Frances–directed trips to the grocery store for Thanksgiving preparations, which included a trip to Mary’s Kitchen Port in Traverse City for whole nutmeg (“You want me to go where? For what?” “You heard me. Get going.”) and an attic search for a box of extra pie plates. There were numerous text exchanges with Tucker, ranging from stilted to friendly to warm, and a Sunday-afternoon phone conversation with Kristen during which I listened to her enthuse about the beach conditions and she listened to me talk about grant possibilities.

  Monday was such a busy library day that it wasn’t until Tuesday, a bookmobile day, that I had time to wonder whether I really was spending too much time on the bookmobile. Which was high irony, but I wasn’t sure Eddie saw any humor in it. Donna didn’t, either.

  She sat with her feet on either side of Eddie’s carrier and pooh-poohed my angst.

  “The reason you didn’t hear about Pam’s hissy fit is because you weren’t in the building. You could have been gone for any reason. It didn’t have to be the bookmobile.”

  True, but still. “I should have known.”

  Donna yawned, stretching. “You really want to know all the goings-on of the Friends? Maybe get a personal monthly update from Denise?”

  I blanched at the thought, and Donna laughed. Then we were at our first stop of the day, Moulson Elementary, and things got busy fast.

  Moulson was a new stop for us. The school was on the east side of the county, out in the flatter land where potatoes were grown. There were no other bookmobile stops for miles, but it had taken only a single request for me to justify the mileage.

  As soon as Donna lowered the steps, a parade of five-year-olds marched out of the building. At the head of the line was Brynn Wilbanks, the little girl who had called with the stop request.

  She bounced up the stairs, smiling widely, energy practically oozing out of her skin. “Where’s the bookmobile kitty?” she asked. “I said they’d get to meet Eddie.”

  Recognizing that my place in Brynn’s life was secondary to my cat’s by far, I bowed and made a grand wave toward the front, where Eddie was sitting like an Egyptian statue on the console.

  It had been for the sake of Brynn, whose leukemia was now in remission, that I’d brought Eddie onto the bookmobile after his first stowaway episode. And it had been for Brynn that I’d just rearranged the bookmobile’s every-other-Tuesday route to make sure she got her fill of Eddie during the school year.

  A young man came up the steps, herding the last of the kids aboard. “Hi. I’m Andrew Burrows. Brynn’s teacher.” He had a stocky build and such a complicated arrangement of facial hair that it made me wonder if he was trying to hide something. He also looked barely looked old enough to have graduated from high school, let alone college.

  I introduced myself and Donna. Andrew kept a close watch on his small charges as we talked. I knew there were supposed to be fourteen of them, but it was hard to be sure, since they moved around so much. “You’ll do a quick introd
uction?” Andrew asked. “About the bookmobile?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll show them—”

  I stopped, because Andrew’s polite smile had suddenly turned into an expression of horror. He started to lunge past me. “Brynn! Put him down!”

  Before I even turned, I sensed what was happening. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Brynn and Eddie—”

  “See, everybody?” Brynn called. She was grasping Eddie around his middle, his front legs draping stage right, his back legs draping stage left. His head was dangling loosely, and the tip of his tail beat the air lightly. “This is my friend, the bookmobile kitty cat. You can come and pet him if you want, but you have to do it one at a time,” she cautioned.

  “Brynn,” Andrew said in an anguished voice. “Please put the cat down.”

  The little girl looked up at him with her big brown eyes. “Why?”

  I grinned. Eddie, who would send me a if-looks-could-kill expression if I so much as gave him one pat more than he wanted, had always allowed Brynn to toss him around like a stuffed animal. But I also didn’t want Mr. Kindergarten Teacher to have a heart attack, so I edged forward around the line of small children that was forming to Brynn’s command.

  “Sit up here,” I told her, patting the console, “and Eddie can sit right next to you. That way you can keep petting him.”

  She frowned, obviously considering my statement as a suggestion, then nodded. I took Eddie from her, she jumped up, and I nestled Eddie appropriately.

  “This is a good idea.” She patted Eddie between the ears, making his head bounce a little. “Okay,” she said, pointing to the youngster at the head of the line. “You can pet him first.”

  I backed away, but not too far away. Eddie had always been beyond tolerant of children, but you never knew, so I made sure I was close by, just in case.

  “So that’s Eddie,” Andrew said.

  I laughed. “You’ve heard stories?”

  “Looks like some of them may even be true,” he said, making me revise my previous judgment of his humor level. “Once we got this date scheduled, Brynn has talked nonstop about Eddie and the bookmobile and all the fun books and games and music, and did I mention Eddie?”