Pouncing on Murder Read online

  “Yeah?” Josh smirked. “I don’t remember you going out with him when he asked.”

  “She’s made it a personal rule not to ever date anyone who’s more than eighteen inches taller than she is,” Holly said.

  Josh squinted one eye in my direction. “I can see how that could be a problem.”

  “You know what else is a problem?” Holly asked. “You.” She pushed a stack of books across the break room table. The pile shoved aside the plate of cookies she’d brought in and came to stop directly in front of Josh. “These are some great books on decorating,” she said. “If you’re buying a house, you need to think about some of this stuff. It’s a lot easier to paint and whatever else before you move in. And I know what you’re like, once you’re moved in, you’ll never go to the trouble of doing anything.” She stopped, but he didn’t say anything. “Well,” she asked. “Are you buying a house or not?”

  Josh reached around the books for a cookie. “Closed on it yesterday.”

  “You what?” Holly shrieked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Laughing, I said, “I’ll see you two later.”

  By the time I reached the doorway, Holly was opening books and pointing at pictures. I walked down the hallway to my office, grinning, because I knew that, at the end of the day, when the library lights were shut down, the books would still be on the table.

  Five minutes later, my smile was gone. Vanished. Obliterated completely, and it was all due to a single e-mail.

  “Hey, Minnie,” it said. “I’m so sorry, but I won’t be able to design a flyer for your book fair after all. A couple of big rush jobs came in and I just don’t have the time. I’m really sorry.”

  I rubbed my eyes and tried to think.

  “Delegate,” Stephen had said every time we talked about the book fair. Delegation is a fine art, he’d said, and I needed to learn how to do it well if I was ever going to succeed him as director of the library.

  So I’d delegated, and one of the first things I’d given away was the creation of the book fair flyer. Amanda Bell was a regular library patron, and from the conversations we’d had, I’d judged her as cheerful, competent, and willing to help. She’d recently started a Web site and graphic design business, and I’d asked her if she’d be interested in designing an extremely cool and attractive book fair flyer as a donation to the library. She’d jumped at the opportunity, and now . . .

  I flopped my arms on my desk and laid my head down. Clearly there was a lot more to the art of delegation than I’d realized. What was I going to do? I had to e-mail the flyer to area newspapers soon or they wouldn’t get printed in time to get inserted. And if they didn’t get inserted in time . . .

  I grabbed my already empty ABOS coffee mug and headed back to the break room. Maybe Holly or Josh would still be in there. And no matter what, caffeine would help. Plus, if there was a cookie or two left, how could that be bad?

  The break room was empty, which was technically good, because Holly and Josh and everyone else all had jobs to do, but bad for me because I’d hoped for a temporary distraction . . . and there it was.

  Mitchell Koyne, whom I’d recently seen dozens of miles away, was standing at the front desk. I could detect no outward sign that a woman was involved in his life; he looked the way he always did. Hands in his pockets, his baseball hat on backward, and stubble on his face. How he managed to have a constant eighth-inch of beard I didn’t know and would never ask.

  “Hi, Mitchell,” I said.

  “Hey, Min.” He grinned. “What’s cooking?”

  I turned my empty coffee mug upside down. “Not a thing.”

  Mitchell’s laugh was loud and deep. It was hard not to smile when Mitchell laughed, and I glanced around. Yep, every single person I could see was smiling, from Donna, a part-time desk clerk, to the ancient Mr. Goodwin, down to Reva Shomin’s youngest, who was just learning to walk.

  “So, what,” I asked, “were you doing out at Bub’s Gas this morning?”

  His laughter ended and his smile faded. It was as if his face had stopped. “I . . . uh . . .”

  “Come on.” I winked. “I know it was you. That hat? That height? I was coming back from Alpena and stopped for something to eat.” And there were still popcorn kernels stuck between my teeth. “What were you doing way out there?”

  “Um.” He stared at me blankly, then glanced at the clock on the wall. “Look at the time. I gotta go. Talk to you later, Minnie, okay?” He slouched off and was out the front door before my mouth could open.

  “Wow.” Donna was leaning on the counter, watching Mitchell. “I didn’t know he could move that fast.”

  Not once, in all the years I’d known Mitchell, had I ever seen him pay attention to the time. I wasn’t even sure his watch actually worked.

  “You saw him out at Bub’s?” Donna asked. “What the heck was he doing out there? I wouldn’t have thought Mitchell even knew how to get out of Tonedagana County.” She laughed.

  I smiled vaguely and wandered back to the break room. I still needed coffee and I still needed a book fair flyer. But now I was also wondering why Mitchell was being so weird.

  Mitchell was a constant in our library life, a fixture almost as permanent as the fireplace in the reading room. I didn’t like it that he was acting so differently. I didn’t like it at all.

  Chapter 5

  The next day was a bookmobile day, and because of some social arrangements of Julia’s that were too complicated for me to I understand, near the end of the day I dropped her off in the retail area of a small town. She gave Eddie an air kiss good-bye and waved at me, and after I closed the door behind her, we headed off to make a few drop-offs to the homebound folks.

  The afternoon had grown thick with fog and I drove slowly along the narrow, hilly, twisting roads, watching carefully for deer, cars, and any pedestrians silly enough to go for a walk late on a dank, thick April day.

  Mrs. Koski was all smiles when I handed her a bag of history books about late nineteenth-century Asia, and Mr. Blake gave me a nod of approval when I gave him a hefty pile of Nicholas Sparks and Janet Evanovich.

  “You’re not judging, are you?” I asked Eddie when I slid back into the driver’s seat. “Because you have that look on your face.”

  The look he had was more of sleep than judgment, but it amused me to pretend that he had opinions about these things. “Reading across gender lines is a good thing,” I told him. “Species lines, too. Tell you what, next book I check out for you will be The Poky Little Puppy.”

  I glanced over and saw that his eyes had opened.

  “Okay, you’re right,” I acknowledged. “You’re past that reading level. How about Old Yeller? Because watching the movie doesn’t count.”

  He didn’t seem any more interested in that offering.

  “Yeah, too depressing,” I said. “How about . . . hey, I got it. The Chet and Bernie books. You know, by Spencer Quinn? Chet’s a dog and Bernie’s a private investigator. You’ll love Chet. He failed K-9 school and—”

  “MrrrOOO!”

  Eddie’s howl hurt my ears, and wincing, I glanced at the clock. When Eddie started howling like that, it meant one of two things. Either he felt like howling or he was about to urp up his lunch. “Are you okay, pal? Because if you’re just being Eddie-like and not feeling sick to your stomach, I have a new bag of books for Adam I’d like to deliver.”

  Eddie didn’t say anything, and when I sneaked a quick look over, his face was mushed up against the carrier’s wire door. Half his whiskers were sticking out and he was staring at me with unblinking yellow eyes.

  Truly he was the weirdest cat in the universe. But since he didn’t look as if he was in distress, I stopped at a wide spot in the road and put on the four-way flashers. I pulled out my cell—Half strength! Hooray!—and called the Deerings’ house.

  “Hey, Adam, it’s Minnie. I have a bag of books for you, if you want them.”

  “Does a drowning man want a rope?” he asked
. “Does a starving man want bacon? No, that’s a poor metaphor. A man wants bacon three times a day. Four if his wife would let him.”

  I laughed. “I’m about ten minutes away, but it’ll take me about that long to walk up the hill.”

  “Timing is everything,” Adam said. “I’ll meet you at the mailbox. I was headed out there anyway. Someone from FedEx just called, saying they were dropping off a package. I didn’t know they called ahead. Must be an Up North thing.” He laughed.

  I’d never heard of FedEx calling anyone, either, but then I always had things delivered to the library, so what did I know? Frowning, I said, “You’re not walking, are you? I know you want to recover as quickly as possible, but—”

  “Relax,” he said. “I’m taking the car. The one with the automatic transmission.”

  “You’re a smart man.”

  “Make sure you tell Irene, okay? She thinks I’m an idiot.”

  Since I knew for a fact that his wife thought he was handsome, brilliant, and the best husband in the world, I just said, “See you in a few.”

  But ten minutes later, I was still a quarter mile from his house. The fog had thickened to the point of opacity and I was driving at a rate that didn’t even register on the speedometer.

  I’d heard some explanations for the spring fogs. Some made sense, that the thawing of the winter-frozen earth chilled the adjacent air, causing a deep ground fog, and some didn’t, case in point being Rafe’s straight-faced story that spring fogs indicated how deep the snow would be the next winter.

  “Who knew that fog could get so thick?” I muttered. “If the fog in London is thicker than this, I don’t want to have to ever walk through it.”

  Eddie didn’t comment, and I didn’t dare look away from the road to see what he was doing. Slowly and carefully I found the barnyard entrance next to Deering’s driveway without going past even once, turned in, and parked.

  I unbuckled my seat belt. “I won’t be gone long, so—”

  “Mrr!”

  “Eddie—”

  “Mrrrw!”

  “Okay, fine.” I leaned over to unlatch the carrier door. “But if I find even one hairball on one book, you’re banned from the bookmobile for a week.”

  Eddie bolted out of the carrier and, in long feline-fluid motion, jumped to the dashboard.

  “Sure, you look innocent now,” I said, “but I know that feline innocence is an oxymoron. There’s no such thing.”

  My cat ignored me and began licking his hind leg.

  “Well, back at you,” I said, barely aware that I was losing an argument with a creature who couldn’t talk. “And I’m taking the keys.”

  “Mrr.”

  I patted his head, which made him squint, picked up the bulging bag of books, and headed out into the mist. It swirled thick about my legs and I suddenly realized that my recent rereading of Stephen King was not a good preparation the present moment. Not that The Stand was horror, exactly, but I was familiar enough with Mr. King’s books to know what his imagination could do with fog.

  Creeping in on little cat feet, it was. Not Eddie feet, though, because Eddie’s feet were big enough for a cat twice his size and he was only occasionally capable of moving silently. Any other cat would be as soundless as this fog, insidious and sticky, clever and . . . and what was that?

  Had I heard a noise? What was . . . ?

  “Adam?” I called. “Is that you?”

  “Hey, Minnie,” he said. “A real pea-souper, isn’t it?”

  His voice was coming from a different direction than whatever it was I thought I’d heard, but fog did funny things to sound. At least that was what I’d gathered from all those scary books I’d read as a kid.

  “And I don’t even like pea soup,” I said. My toes hit the main road and I turned right, toward Adam and Irene’s mailbox, where I assumed Adam would be. “That was the only bad thing about my mom baking ham. You knew pea soup was coming along in a few days.”

  “Love the stuff,” Adam said. “Irene makes the best ever.”

  The disembodied noise of a car came toward us. I stepped off the asphalt onto the outside of the road’s shoulder, just to be safe, and kept walking. An Adam-sized shape materialized. He was facing me, standing in front of a mailbox-shaped object, his back to the approaching car.

  “Best pea soup ever?” I asked. “No such thing.”

  “Au contraire,” Adam said, and went on to extoll the virtues of what I considered the most unappetizing food in the world, next to all mushrooms. And it was because I wasn’t really paying attention to him that I saw the car coming out of the fog.

  Coming in our direction.

  Straight toward Adam, who didn’t see it, didn’t hear it, didn’t even know it was there.

  There was no time to warn him, no time to do anything except act.

  I dropped the books and sprang forward, head tucked, arms outstretched in my best imitation of the football player I’d never been or ever wanted to be. As I thumped into Adam with all my weight, I could have sworn I heard a faint feline howl.

  We fell to the ground hard. I twisted my shoulders, trying hard to rotate my momentum, wanting desperately to roll us over and away from the car.

  Over and over we went, off the road, off the shoulder, and half into the ditch. Was it far enough? Would the car swerve? Would it still get us? I pushed into the ground with my feet and sent us one roll farther.

  The car whooshed past and disappeared into the gloom.

  “Are you okay?” Adam’s voice was weak.

  “I’m fine. How about you?”

  At the end of the last roll, I’d ended on my back. I pushed myself to my knees and looked hard at the fog, making sure the vehicle was really gone. I saw no sign of the not-quite-a-killer car and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I’m fine,” Adam said.

  His voice, normally full of laughter and bonhomie, sounded thready and old. Guylike, he hadn’t worn a coat on his trip to the mailbox, even though the temperature was only in the mid-forties. He wore jeans, sneakers, and a plain maroon sweatshirt that showed evidence of more than one painting chore. There were spatters of white, brown, and even a color that was exactly three shades darker than the sweatshirt itself.

  It wasn’t until he touched that particular shade that I realized it was in a vertical line on his chest and that it wasn’t paint at all.

  “Adam,” I said as calmly as possible, “you’re bleeding.”

  He looked down and made a move to pull up his shirt and sweatshirt, but I yelped at him, “Stop!”

  “But I’m bleeding.” He reached for the bottom of his sweatshirt again and I grabbed at his hand.

  “Anything we do now won’t help and could make it worse,” I said firmly. “Your clothes might be sealing the wound, and if we pull it away, it’ll bleed even more.” I wasn’t sure how much of that might be true, but it sounded reasonable. Maybe I’d learned some medical stuff through sheer proximity to Tucker.

  Adam looked half convinced. At least he stopped trying to look at his incision.

  “Can you get up?” I asked.

  “Of course I can.” He put his hands on the ground and moved one foot forward to stand. Halfway up, he swayed.

  Adam was almost a foot taller than me and probably a hundred pounds heavier, and if I tried to hold him upright, we’d both fall to the ground again and injure who knew what, so I rushed to his side and leaned into his body, bracing him.

  “You are not fine,” I said, panting a little as I helped him stand upright, “so don’t try to tell me so. You’re going to go over to your car and sit in the passenger’s seat. Then you’re not going to move until I make a couple of phone calls.”

  “Don’t call 911.” He leaned on my shoulder as we shuffled off. “Our insurance hardly covers ambulance rides.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. Fifteen feet later, I opened his car door and waited until he eased himself down into the seat. The dark stain on his sweatshirt looked a little bigg
er, but not massively bigger. “My cell’s in the bookmobile. I’ll be right back.”

  He nodded and I raced off. Inside the bookmobile, Eddie was lying in a meat loaf shape on the console.

  “Mrr,” he said.

  “Adam’s fine,” I told him as I rustled in my backpack for the phone. “At least I’m pretty sure he is. You going to be okay in here by yourself? It might be a while before I get back.”

  My cat closed his eyes and purred.

  “For an Eddie, you are okay.” I kissed the top of his furry head and, locking the door behind me, scampered back to Adam, picking up the bag of books on the way. “What’s your wife’s work number?” I asked, stowing the books in the backseat.

  “What time is it?” Adam’s face was pale and his eyes were closed.

  “Um . . .” I glanced at the phone. “Half past five.”

  “Then she’s just starting her night job. She’s waiting tables at the Mitchell Street Pub.”

  I entered the popular Petoskey restaurant’s name into a search engine and within seconds a voice on the other end was asking what he could do for me.

  “Could I please speak to Irene Deering? There’s been an minor emergency at her home.”

  “Sure. Hang on.”

  A few moments later, Irene’s breathless voice came on the line. “Adam? Are you okay?”

  “This is Minnie, and Adam is fine.” I waited a beat for that message of comfort to sink in. “But there’s been a little accident.”

  “Accident?” The word came out shrill. “What’s wrong? I’ll be there right away. I can leave right now and—”

  “He’s fine. Really. Here, talk to him.” I handed over the phone.

  “Hey, babe,” Adam said casually. “No, I’m fine. I was down at the mailbox to pick up a FedEx delivery the same time Minnie dropped by with another bag of books. Some yahoo was driving down the road, not paying attention, and Minnie pushed me out of the way.” He glanced at me. I nodded and gave him a thumbs-up. “I fell down and my incision got knocked a little loose, is all. I told Minnie I’m fine, but—” He listened, rolled his eyes, and handed the phone back to me.