Wrong Side of the Paw

by Laurie Cass

  “Minnie? Is that you?”

  Of course, no life was perfect.

  Strong-mindedly, I resisted the urge to turn and flee and, instead, pasted a smile on my face. “Good morning, Jennifer,” I said, advancing into the lobby. “How are you on this gorgeous morning?”

  The new library director, standing tall behind the main counter, didn’t return my smile. “Well enough, I suppose.”

  My former boss, Stephen Rangel, had given me a lot of latitude to do my job, for which I was still grateful. He’d also been humorless and mired in the necessity to follow rules, however arbitrary they might be. Plus, he hadn’t been a fan of the bookmobile and had provided only a grudging support throughout the early stages. (“Minerva, are you certain you’re up to this?” “Minerva, the library board only approved this project because you’d found a generous donor. How, exactly, do you plan to fund the operations?” And so on.)

  We’d all expected Stephen to stay in Chilson until his retirement and he’d even confided he’d been grooming me to be his replacement. That shock had barely faded when he’d stunned everyone by announcing that he’d accepted a library director position in another state.

  My coworkers had pleaded with me to apply. I’d seriously considered it, but in the end decided to pass on the opportunity. If I moved up to director, there was no way I’d have time to drive the bookmobile and I wasn’t ready to give that up.

  On the other hand, if I was now the library director, I wouldn’t be facing the sleek and citified Jennifer Walker, who was sending waves of disapproval at me for no reason that I was aware of. Back before she’d started, I’d patted myself on the back for having been responsible for the library becoming the temporary home of a very rare and valuable book, thinking that the new director would be impressed at my connections and abilities. If she had, the feeling hadn’t lasted.

  “What can I do for you?” I slipped my backpack off my shoulder. Into the returns bin went the books I’d finished reading, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, and I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, a comfort book published in 1948 that I’d reread for the umpteenth time.

  “I asked you to reduce the bookmobile’s budget,” Jennifer said. “I expected a draft this week, yet here it is Friday and I haven’t seen anything from you.”

  After Stephen’s departure, the staff had breathed a collective sigh of relief. No more didactic pronouncements, no more unfunded mandates, no more unrealistic expectations. Though I’d respected Stephen, I’d never managed to like him, and I’d looked forward to a deeper relationship with the new director.

  This hadn’t happened yet.

  The last of my books thunked into the return slot. Jennifer had, in fact, asked me to reduce the bookmobile’s budget. She’d also asked for it to be done by the middle of October, and this morning my phone said it was September. Just barely, but still.

  Why she wanted the bookmobile’s budget reduced was a question she hadn’t yet answered. Thanks to a generous donation last winter, we had over two years of operations money in addition to a healthy budget for vehicle maintenance. There was also a small, but growing, fund for the future purchase of a replacement bookmobile.

  To my way of thinking, clearly the sensible way, there was absolutely no reason to touch the bookmobile’s budget. But Jennifer had been hired by a beaming library board and it was my job to do as she asked.

  “I’ve been working on some ideas,” I said, turning to face her, “and I’ll have a budget completed by your deadline, which was the middle of October.”

  “When I said the middle of October,” she said to the air above my head, “that was the latest I want to see it. I fully expect to get a completed budget ahead of that time.”

  “Oh.” I stared at her. How on earth I was supposed to have known that, I wasn’t sure. “I didn’t realize.”

  “No? Everyone says how on the ball you are, Minnie. I assumed that would include early delivery dates of things I request.”

  If I’d been a mind reader, sure.

  I looked up at the bottom of her chin. “I’ll have it to you next week,” I said. “If I’d known you wanted it earlier, I would have sent it to you earlier.”

  “It’s not a matter of wanting.” She smoothed the front of her jacket. “It’s a matter of your performance. As soon as you finish, please e-mail it to me.” With that, she and her high heels clicked down the tiled hallway.

  I watched her open the door to the stairwell and, as she clicked up the stairs to her second-floor office, shook my head and headed to the staff break room. Normally, at this time I was the only one in the building; the only time I’d ever seen Stephen in his office before nine o’clock was the Monday after a time change when he’d been out of town and neglected to turn back the clocks in his house.

  But at least Jennifer was headed upstairs. If the last few weeks were any indication, she wouldn’t be back down until after the library opened to the public at ten.

  After a quick stop in the break room to start a pot of coffee, I went to my office, dropped off my backpack, grabbed my favorite coffee mug, the one emblazoned with the logo of the American Bookmobile and Outreach Services, and returned to fill up with the fuel by which the Chilson District Library operated: caffeine.

  A few sips of the steaming hot nectar of the gods later, I began my morning the way I’d been doing ever since Jennifer had moved into Stephen’s office, by walking through the library and seeing what was what. Our new director had a habit of zeroing in on the slightest negative, and if I could head off those comments, maybe she’d eventually realize that the library wasn’t a total disaster or a complete mess in need of a huge overall.

  “Not a mess at all,” I murmured, looking around and marveling, once again, at the gorgeous setting. We’d been in this building, which everyone still called the new library, for almost exactly four years. And even then it hadn’t been new. The residents of Chilson, when faced with the question of whether or not to fund the expensive renovations of a vacant and century-old school for the purpose of giving their jammed-packed library more space, had overwhelmingly voted to fund the project and the result was a place of pride for everyone.

  The designers had opted to expand on the Craftsman style of the original building, giving us oak- paneled walls, oak ends on the shelving units, metallic tiles around the drinking fountains, and a working gas fireplace in the reading room. We had a computer lab, a Young Adult lounge area, and meeting rooms with projectors and a catering kitchen.

  It was flat-out gorgeous, but Jennifer continued to find faults, so I cruised the entire place, adjusting picture frames with the precision of an art gallery manager, making note of which shelves needed books to be soldiered to the front, and making sure Gareth, the maintenance guy, hadn’t missed a single speck of dirt when vacuuming.

  Satisfied that I’d done everything I could to avert Jennifer’s wrath, I returned to my office and fired up the computer. Though I hadn’t exactly lied to Jennifer about the bookmobile budget—I did have some ideas—they remained just that and I needed to move the ideas into the practical realm if I was going to make my new boss happy.

  I stifled a thought that popped into my head (Nothing I do is going to make her happy), tossed down some more caffeine, and started working.

  A couple of hours later, the sound of voices and footsteps penetrated my consciousness. I leaned back, stretching, and got up, mug in hand.

  “Oh, no,” I said, entering the break room, dismay clear in my voice.

  “Hah!” Kelsey Lyons, one of our part-time clerks, grinned at me and pushed the coffeemaker’s start button. “I was here first. Timing is everything and you don’t have it this morning.”

  Though our library ran on coffee, the strength of the stuff varied widely. Donna, our seventy-one-year-old marathoner and snowshoer, preferred it weak enough t
hat you could see through it. Holly, one of my best library friends and about my age, liked it in the middle. Josh, the IT guy, also a good friend and within a year or two of Holly and myself, preferred it the way I did, strong, but not so strong that it could pass for espresso.

  Kelsey, on the other hand, would probably eat the grounds raw, but it was an unwritten rule that whoever emptied the pot could make the next one whatever strength they wished.

  “Rats,” I muttered.

  “You snooze, you lose,” she said, her face all sunshine and roses. Clearly, this was not going to be her first cup of the morning.

  “Oh, man.” Josh, mug in hand, came to a halt in the doorway. “Please tell me you made this pot, Minnie.”

  “Sorry. I was two minutes late.”

  He sighed heavily. “Knew I should have waited to install that program.”

  “Cut it with water,” Kelsey said.

  “That’s what you always say,” Josh said, shoving his free hand into a pocket of his cargo pants. “And it always tastes like crap.”

  Up until a few months ago, the stocky Josh had been a diet soda guy, shoving dollar bills into the soda machine like there was no tomorrow. Since he’d purchased his first house, however, that habit was a thing of the past.

  He frowned at the coffeepot, then turned and frowned at me. “Hey, did I hear right about what happened on the bookmobile yesterday?”

  Kelsey, who was in the act of deftly pulling out the coffeepot and letting the brew drip straight into her mug, asked, “Something happened? Is the bookmobile okay?”

  It warmed my heart every time I realized that people were concerned about the bookmobile’s health. The library staff cared about the bookmobile. The library board cared. The downtown merchants cared. Complete strangers cared. Even people who didn’t have a library card cared, a concept that baffled me, but I’d stopped trying to understand that one.

  “The bookmobile is fine,” I said. “It’s just . . .” My eyes were suddenly filled with moisture. I looked down, took a quick breath, and smoothed out my face. “Remember I told you about Leese Lacombe, that attorney who moved back north last summer? Specializing in elder law?”

  Though I got two blank looks, I kept on going. “Anyway, yesterday was so warm we left the bookmobile door open. Eddie got out and, well, he found Leese’s father in the bed of the pickup truck she was driving.”

  “What do you mean, Eddie found him?” Kelsey pulled away her mug and plopped the pot back down. “If her dad was with her, he couldn’t have been lost.”

  “You’re not getting it,” Josh said. “He was dead.”

  “He was . . .” Kelsey blinked.

  I nodded. “The ambulance came, the police came, and eventually the medical examiner came.”

  Kelsey gave her head a little shake, rearranging her short blond hair. “I don’t understand. What was he doing there? Had he died and she was taking him to the hospital or . . . something?”

  “I don’t know.” I flashed on an image of Leese in the back of the police car, determinedly looking forward.

  “The guys downtown are saying she killed him.” Josh shrugged. “Not saying she did, but that’s the talk.”

  “Why is it that men talk,” Kelsey asked me, “but women gossip?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re still hoping that life is going to start being fair,” I said, smiling a little. “Do your kids know you’re so unrealistic?”

  She laughed. “It’s because of them that I keep on hoping.”

  “Speaking of hope,” Josh said, “I heard that Jennifer is trying to find money for more computers in the lab.”

  “Oh? She’s been asking me to cut the bookmobile’s budget.”

  Josh smirked. “Then I guess we know where that money is going. And who better to get it than the computer lab?”

  Though I’d been in the act of reaching out to fill his coffee mug, I abruptly yanked it away. “No way am I pouring you coffee after a remark like that.”

  He grinned. Josh, better than anyone other than my friends Rafe and Kristen and my brother Matt, knew exactly how to push my buttons. And he probably enjoyed it more than any of them. Well, except for Matt.

  “If you’d wanted to be Jennifer’s favorite,” Josh said, “you shouldn’t have let your cat puke all over her shoes.”

  I tried to keep a straight face, but ended up laughing. The day Jennifer had interviewed with the library board, we’d had to abort a bookmobile run and Eddie ended up in the library for the day. In spite of my efforts to keep him contained in my office, my fuzzy friend had wandered out, made a beeline for the candidate’s Italian shoes, and rid himself of some troublesome hair balls.

  “Eddie has excellent taste,” Kelsey said, giggling.

  I sensed the turn the conversation was about to take, and though I wouldn’t have minded joining a Jennifer-bashing session, I couldn’t. Assistant directors didn’t do that kind of thing. Or at least they shouldn’t. “She’s working a lot of hours.”

  “Check it out,” Josh said to Kelsey. “She’s sucking up to the boss when the boss isn’t even here.” He made a vacuum cleaner noise.

  “Nice,” I said. “That pretty new manager of the wine store is getting to be a regular patron. If she asks about you again, I know what I’ll tell her.”

  “Yeah?” he asked cautiously. “What’s that?”

  “Now Josh,” I said as patronizingly as I could, “you know I always tell the truth.” I bestowed a wide smile upon him. “And now I have to get back to the business of the library. Cheers.” I toasted my friends with the sludge in my mug and headed to my office.

  But though I’d intended to sit down and get straight to work, I stood at the window for some time, trying not to worry about Leese.

  Chapter 3

  For the first time in I couldn’t think when, Rafe and Kristen and I had planned to get together for dinner.

  Back when I’d first moved to Chilson, the three of us visited every restaurant in Tonedagana County, most of the eateries in Antrim, Charlevoix, Cheboygan, and Emmet Counties, and a few down in Grand Traverse County.

  It had started as a casual resolve not to eat in the same place twice, quickly morphed into a Thursday night event, and had solidified Kristen’s resolve to open a restaurant of her own. Since then, however, the three of us, who’d become friends on a beach before we were teenagers, had become so busy with our own lives that coordinating our schedules took a monumental effort.

  When Kristen’s restaurant opened, the two of us established a Sunday evening habit of me arriving after the dinner rush for dessert in her office. Often we ate crème brûlé, but sometimes it was a new recipe she wanted to try out.

  Rafe and I, because his house so was close to Uncle Chip’s Marina, saw each other frequently. I’d stopped last week to check out his progress on the downstairs bathroom and caught him crouching on the floor and frowning at the beadboard he’d put in the previous week. The tallish and lanky Rafe stood, brushed sawdust out of his straight black hair, and asked what I, as an impartial observer, thought of the knots showing through the paint primer, and had appeared annoyed when I’d said I couldn’t see any knots, even when he was pointing directly at them.

  To distract him from an unnecessary scrutiny of his work, I’d suggested the three of us go out to dinner, just like in the old days.

  “What’s the matter?” he’d said. “Did my man Ash finally figure out that you were never going to learn the infield fly rule and he couldn’t take it any longer?” He’d grinned. “Or have you finally realized that you’re deeply in love with me and are only waiting for the right time to break it off with him and fall into my arms.” He spread his arms wide and made loud kissy noises.

  I rolled my eyes. “Eww. No, they’re down a couple of deputies and he pulled night shift this month.” My boyfriend was also taking classes at the local co
mmunity college; it was a minor miracle our paths ever crossed. Still, I saw him more than I’d seen my previous boyfriend, an emergency room doctor. If Ash’s shift hadn’t been too exhausting, we got together to run or bike a few mornings a week, but mornings were growing darker and darker and I wasn’t sure how much longer that would last.

  I tried to remember the last time Ash and I had done even a semiromantic thing together. Dinner? Movie? Snuggling in front of his fireplace? It had been weeks, but I couldn’t pin it down. Why wasn’t I making sure those things happened?

  Suddenly, I realized that Rafe was staring at me with an odd expression. I felt my face turn warm and quickly said, “Kristen’s flying solo now that Scruffy is back in New York, but we could add a fourth. Who are you seeing these days? Invite her along.”

  Rafe’s love life was a complicated thing. As far as Kristen and I could figure, three months was the maximum he’d dated anyone. We figured that’s how long it took a woman to realize that she was never going to change him. Of course, his versions of the multitude of breakups varied from “Too clingy” to “Couldn’t stand how she laughed” to “Didn’t like beer,” but Kristen and I knew too many of the women to believe any of his explanations.

  “Right now I’m footloose and fancy free.” He’d dropped to his hands and knees to peer at the woodwork, but looked up at me, flashing his smile, a bright white against the permanently tanned skin he’d inherited from his distant Native American ancestors. “Want to hear what happened with Stacey?”

  “No.” I had no idea who Stacey was, but I was already on her side. “Do you want to do dinner or not?”

  In the end, it turned out he did. For the next two days we had a three-person round of texting about dinner details and it was seven o’clock when Rafe parked his battered Jeep Cherokee at the Weathervane in Charlevoix. Originally a grist mill, its riverside location next to a drawbridge was a big attraction in summer, when the number of boats passing through from Lake Charlevoix to Lake Michigan seemed to rival the number of cars driving over the bridge itself.