Borrowed Crime: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery Page 2

  Aunt Frances had stuck it up with a thumbtack on the doorframe to the living room, where, in a few weeks, it would be surrounded by Christmas cards. She was amused by the whole thing and had been wondering if Kristen would keep it up all winter.

  Now I nodded toward my backpack, which was sitting on the end of the kitchen counter. “The new one’s in the outside pocket. Go ahead and take it out.”

  Postcard number two had been a picture of blue skies and sandy beaches. On the back she’d written Key West, eighty degrees and sunny. Chilson, snow coming soon. Eww.

  But Kristen knew that I didn’t mind winter. I actually liked it. Soft and white, it transformed the world into something completely different, something fresh and clean and unexpected.

  I stood there, my hands in the soapy water, daydreaming ahead to skiing and skating and snowshoeing. All sorts of activities that started with the letter S were done on a substance that also started with an S, namely snow, and—

  “Mrr!”

  I jumped. “Right,” I said, nodding. “We need to get going, don’t we?”

  From his perch on my chair, Eddie looked straight at me. I didn’t need a cat interpreter to know that he was saying, Well, duh.

  Aunt Frances returned the last bowl to the glass-front cabinets. “Do you think Eddie would like a half wall? About so high”—she held her hand at waist level—“and about three feet long. I’ve been thinking about taking out this door between the dining room and the kitchen for some time. It’ll open up the space nicely. Maybe this is the year to do it.”

  Smiling, I dried my hands on the blue-and-white hand towel. “You think?”

  She eyed the area of interest. “It’s not a load-bearing wall. A sledge and a flat bar will take it down in no time. Then a little framing, a little drywall work, and a little trim. Shouldn’t take long.”

  I snorted. “Have you ever heard that story about the shoemaker’s children—you know, the ones who didn’t have any shoes?”

  My loving aunt whirled her drying towel into a tight spiral and popped me lightly with the end of it. “Out, you horrible child,” she said, laughing. “Out right now, or you’ll be late for work.”

  “Mrr.”

  And since they were both right, I grabbed my backpack, which was full of appropriate provisions for cat and human, and headed out.

  * * *

  I paused at the front closet to pull on my coat, boots, and gloves, and went outside into the dark of the predawn morning. But as I stepped off the wide front porch, empty of the summer swing that had been stored away, I saw that the world wasn’t completely dark.

  The sky was gray and was forecast to stay that way for the foreseeable future, but the ground was covered with a light dusting of white.

  My heart sang with pure pleasure. Maybe by February I’d be tired of the cold, and maybe come March I’d be tired of brushing snow off my car, but at this moment I was enchanted with the sprinkling of fairy dust.

  Humming to myself, I started my car, set the defroster to high, and got the ice scraper from the floor of the backseat, where I’d put it at the end of September, because you just never knew.

  The ice scraper had a long handle and a brush, and it had been a gift from my father when I’d bought my first car. He’d wrapped it himself, the bright yellow and red paper tight against the plastic, revealing the object’s shape so obviously that a five-year-old could have guessed what it was, and had handed it to me with gravitas. “Don’t ever take it out of your car,” he’d said solemnly. “Keep it in your trunk during the summer, on the floor of the backseat all winter.”

  It wasn’t a bad idea—as a matter of fact, it was a pretty good one—and it had only taken me five years and one early snowstorm to start taking my dad’s advice.

  As I brushed the snow off the car’s hood, I heard the sound of a door shutting. Which was odd, because it wasn’t even seven thirty, and the only year-round people in the neighborhood were retirees who tended to stay inside until the morning got as bright as it was going to get. The vast majority of homes in this part of Chilson belonged to summer people. They might come up at Thanksgiving, a week at Christmas, and perhaps Presidents’ Day weekend, but mostly the houses sat quiet and dark, waiting for the warmth of May to bring them back to life.

  I turned and saw something completely unexpected.

  Across the street, a figure was standing on the front porch, zipping up his coat and pulling on gloves. It was Otto Bingham, the house’s new owner. At least I assumed it was him; Aunt Frances had heard that a gentleman by that name had purchased the house a few weeks ago, but she’d never met him. Though she’d gone over to the white clapboard house two or three times to introduce herself, he’d never been home.

  “Good morning!” I smiled and waved, thinking that I’d have to tell Aunt Frances that I’d had an Otto sighting. The light from the porch illuminated a man who looked, at this distance, like he was in his mid-sixties and on the bonus end of the Handsome bell curve.

  “The snow’s pretty, isn’t it?” I asked.

  He looked at me, squinting, then gave a curt nod and went back inside his house, shutting the door firmly behind him.

  I stared after him, then shrugged. Maybe the guy hated snow, which would be silly for someone who’d just moved to this part of Michigan, but you never knew what made people do things.

  Then I put thoughts of my aunt’s curmudgeonly neighbor out of my head, gave the car’s windshield one last brush, and headed back up the porch stairs for the cat carrier.

  Because it was a bookmobile day, and no bookmobile day could be complete without the bookmobile cat.

  * * *

  “What I don’t understand,” Denise Slade said, “is why you feel the need to keep Eddie such a secret.”

  I glanced over at my newest bookmobile volunteer, then went back to concentrating on my driving. When the road was wide and straight and dry, piloting the thirty-one-foot-long vehicle was a joy and a delight. However, most of the roads in Tonedagana County were narrow and curving, and today they were wet with slushy early snow. Then again, poor road conditions were part of life Up North, and I was mentally prepared to deal with whatever Mother Nature tossed my way. But I wasn’t so sure I was prepared to deal with Denise.

  Denise was one of those stocky, energetic women who volunteered for multiple worthy organizations. She’d helped out with area environmental groups, she’d spent time on the local PTA, she’d baked cookies for the Red Cross blood drives, and she was now president of the local Friends of the Library, a volunteer group that raised funds for library projects and donated innumerable hours to helping out at library events.

  Though she’d ruffled more than a few feathers with her take-charge attitude and her voice, which I’d heard described as the kind that goes straight into your teeth, I’d always gotten along fine with Denise.

  Then again, that could have been due to the simple fact that I hadn’t spent much time with her.

  “Eddie,” I said, “was a stowaway on the bookmobile’s maiden voyage. He followed me from the houseboat”—the marina where I moored the boat in summer was a ten-minute walk from the library— “and snuck on board when I was out doing the morning inspection.”

  “Well, I know all that.” Denise looked at the cat carrier strapped down next to her feet. “And I know that you didn’t take him out again until that poor little Brynn Wilbanks cried to see the bookmobile kitty.” She paused and slid a glance over to me. “How is she these days?”

  “Great,” I said, smiling. “She’s doing just great.” My smile filled me to overflowing, because five-year-old Brynn was still in remission from leukemia. She was doing so well that her mother had enrolled her in kindergarten, and the bookmobile would soon be making a stop at Brynn’s elementary school.

  “Good to hear.” Denise nodded. “So, I get why Eddie started coming on the bookmobile, what
with Brynn and so many other people liking him. What I don’t get is why you have to keep him a secret from your boss. Keeping secrets from Stephen is a bad idea, Minnie. Trust me on this one.”

  I stifled a sigh and yearned for what could not be. My summer volunteer, Thessie, had been a perfect match for the bookmobile, for Eddie, and for me. She was funny, intelligent, and tall enough to reach the bookmobile’s top shelves without having to get on her tiptoes. She was also a senior in high school and aiming for a college major in library science. Bookmobile life would be perfect if Thessie would only drop out of school. If only she would bury her ambitions, to ride on the bookmobile for no pay and no benefits and absolutely no future.

  “What’s so funny?” Denise asked.

  “Just trying to picture Stephen covered with Eddie hair.”

  She leaned forward and reached through the wire door to pet the feline under discussion. “You do have a lot of it, Mr. Edward.”

  “Mrr.”

  Hmm. Denise was a little pushy and a little too sure of herself when the circumstances didn’t warrant it, but she was a cat person, and Eddie seemed to like her. Maybe he knew something I didn’t.

  Denise sighed. “Well, I hope you know what you’re doing with Stephen and all. I mean, I won’t say anything to anyone, but I have to say it’s no wonder you’re having trouble getting people to volunteer. What are you going to do on the days I can’t come out? Because I can’t promise I’ll be able to come with you every time.”

  My half smile faded. I stopped thinking about my stick-to-the-rules boss, a man who wore a tie to work every day even though there was no reason to do so, a man who seemed to delight in giving me unachievable goals, a man who wouldn’t blink at firing me if he found I’d been giving bookmobile rides to a creature full of hair and dander. I stopped thinking about all of that and concentrated on keeping my voice calm when I really wanted to shout. Loudly.

  “Denise,” I said, “you told me you could help out until next spring. You said you had nothing else going on and that you’d be glad to help keep the bookmobile running.”

  “I did?”

  She sounded puzzled, and I glanced over. She was pushing her short, smooth brown hair back behind her ears and frowning slightly, deepening the lines that were starting to form in her face.

  “Yes, you did,” I said. “Please tell me you haven’t made any other commitments. I just finished the new schedule and I don’t want to have to cancel any stops.”

  Making the winter bookmobile schedule had driven me to chocolate more than once. I’d made up the summer schedule with no problems whatsoever, and had blithely assumed that fall would be the same way. My blithe spirit was no longer. Despite my best intentions, the new schedule wasn’t anywhere close to what it had been in summer. But at least I now knew to contact schools and day-care centers in May about their fall programming.

  And I also knew that I really needed to find money to hire a part-time bookmobile clerk instead of relying on volunteers.

  Back in the days when I’d put together the bookmobile funding and worked though operation issues, the library board had laid down one cast-in-stone rule: no driving alone. I’d agreed readily, and had been happy enough to comply with their policy. Well, I’d once had to count Eddie as my bookmobile companion, but that had been a onetime thing.

  Denise laughed. “Don’t be such a worrywart. I’m going to volunteer a few hours a week at the nursing home, is all. Most of the time I’ll be able to work around the bookmobile schedule.”

  Most of the time? “And what happens if you can’t?” My voice was going all Librarian. “Denise, if there aren’t two people on the bookmobile, we can’t go out. I need to know in advance if you can’t make a trip. A week, at least.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll be fine.”

  I wasn’t worrying; I was thinking.

  It was easy to convince folks that the bookmobile was a worthwhile cause for volunteering; all I had to do was give them a quick tour of our three thousand books, CDs, DVDs, and magazines, and tell them about the happy smiles on every face that came aboard. Selling people on how important the bookmobile was to the hundreds of people in the county who couldn’t get to Chilson, home to the only brick-and-mortar library in the county, was the easy part.

  The problem was, since Thessie had gone back to school, I’d had a number of people excited about riding along. Unfortunately, almost all had canceled for various reasons, and I’d had to cleverly winnow out a few who I felt might not keep the Eddie secret. Denise was the sole survivor.

  What I needed was to hire someone. Or, more accurately, what I needed was to find the funds to hire someone. Until then, I had to rely on volunteers. And if Denise wasn’t going to be reliable, I’d have to find someone else. Only who?

  Thinking hard, I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel. Thought some more. Tapped. Thought.

  Then the sun broke through the clouds, skidding bright light across the countryside, and I stopped thinking so hard. It was turning into a beautiful day. Why ruin it with thinking too much?

  “Wow. Did you see that?” Denise stretched forward, looking up. “That was one huge woodpecker!”

  “Pileated,” I said confidently. It was a newly formed confidence, because I hadn’t known diddly about birds until I started driving the bookmobile. But now that I was out and about so much, I was using the bookmobile’s copy of Birds of Michigan on a regular basis. The two weeks when someone had checked it out had been two very long weeks.

  “Really?” Denise twisted in her seat, tracking the bird. “That’s neat. I bet you see a lot of nature stuff. Have you ever come close to hitting a deer?”

  “No, and I hope I never do.”

  She laughed. “You mean ‘not yet.’ It’s just the way things are. And deer season starts on Saturday. When those rifle hunters get out in the woods, the deer will start moving around.”

  I wasn’t going to worry about that, either.

  Denise was looking around, checking out the wooded roadside. “I wish I had my book with me, that one listing where all the town and county names of Michigan came from.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “We’re in Peck Township, right? If I had my book with me, I could look it up and see if I have any notes on it.”

  “A note?” I asked.

  “Well, yeah. I make notes in a lot of my books. Reminders, mostly.”

  “You write in your books?”

  Denise snorted. “Don’t go all Miss Librarian on me. What, I can’t do what I want with my own property? It’s not like I’m not marking up a library book.”

  No, but it seemed . . . wrong, somehow.

  “It helps me remember things,” Denise was saying. “Especially the long historicals. Authors just load up on the characters in those. If I didn’t make notes about who was who, I’d forever be flipping around to figure things out.”

  Knowing that she was marking up works of fiction was somehow even worse than knowing what she was doing to nonfiction. Yes, they were her own books and, yes, she had the right to do what she wanted to them, but it still made me squeamish. I mean, if a person could write in a book, what else might she be capable of doing?

  A road sign flashed past. “Our first stop is coming up,” I said. “Ready?”

  “You bet!” Denise grinned.

  Well, at least she was enthusiastic. I glanced over at Eddie. He’d shoved himself up against the side of the carrier that was the farthest possible distance from Denise and pointed his hind end in her direction.

  No. I was not going to use a cat’s sleeping position as any kind of omen, good or bad.

  Eddie opened one eye, used it to look up toward Denise, then closed it again. His sides heaved as he sighed.

  Cats, I told myself, cannot foretell the future. This is going to be fine.

  “You know,”
Denise said, “what this bookmobile needs is a decent stereo system. It’s almost Thanksgiving; we should be playing Christmas songs. I just can’t get enough of ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,’ right?” She sang the chorus and tried to start the first verse, but got stuck on the words and went back to the chorus.

  I gave Eddie a quick look, but he’d already turned himself around so that his hind end was facing me.

  * * *

  At the end of the day, I couldn’t decide what I’d wanted to do more: hug Denise or put her out by the side of the road.

  She’d been both amazingly helpful and incredibly annoying. Once she’d been both at the same time, a feat I hadn’t known was possible.

  “This was fun,” she said.

  “I’m glad you thought so.” For a moment, I considered launching into the story of the bookmobile’s origin, how Stephen, my boss and the director of the Chilson District Library, had closed the smaller satellite libraries around the county in the name of financial savings, because now that the library offered e-books, he’d said there was no need for the branches’ existence.

  I’d felt differently, and had floated the idea of a bookmobile to the library board. They’d smiled at me indulgently, said it was a fine idea, and if I could come up with the money, they’d be glad to approve the program.

  A few months later, I had a hefty check in hand from an extremely generous donor, and the surprised board approved the program. Stephen wasn’t so thrilled. And though it was clear he thought that the bookmobile was a waste of my time and the library’s resources, he had little choice but to go along with the board’s decision.

  At the time I thought I’d won a great victory. Now reality was setting in. Stephen was continually giving me more to do at the library, a strategy I suspected was designed to take me away from the bookmobile. If I didn’t have time to drive the bookmobile, no one would drive it anywhere, because we had no funds to hire a driver, and then Stephen could sell it and pocket the check in the library’s bank account.

  I sighed and decided to keep it all to myself. If Denise was excited about the bookmobile, let her keep that emotion. Maybe she’d spread it across the land, where it would seep into Chilson’s community psyche, and money would fall from the sky. Stranger things had happened, hadn’t they?