Лори Касс - Gone With The Whisker

“And that’s Eddie,” I said, nodding at my cat, who had squished himself into the angle between the windshield and the dashboard. From the outside, it must have been an interesting sight.

“Mommy,” one whispered, “can I pet the kitty cat?”

Mom smoothed her child’s hair, smiling. “You’d have to ask Miss Minnie.”

Big blue eyes looked up at me. “Miss Minnie, can I pretty please pet the kitty?”

“Of course you can. Wait right there.” By this time, I’d managed to sort out the relationships of our new patrons: The two older children belonged to the woman and the youngest child was with her grandfather. Not one group as I’d assumed, but two. Silly Minnie, getting things wrong again.

I went forward, rotated a purring Eddie around to picking-up position, and took him back to the children’s section, where his newest fan was sitting on the carpeted step. “Grace, this is Eddie. Eddie, this is Grace.”

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

Grace sucked in a deep breath, her eyes wide open. “He said hello!”

Sure he did. Just like he actually replied to the open-ended questions I routinely asked him. But before I could come up with a comment that was both true and free of sarcasm, there was a sudden tumbling noise from the back of the bus. It was a noise that was sadly familiar, that of books cascading to the floor, and was followed immediately by a child’s frightened wail.

Julia was closest, and she hurried over. “Oh, honey, that scared you, didn’t it?” She crouched down and started soothing the youngster with a smile and a calm voice, and the incident was over within seconds.

My life seemed to be filled with things falling to the floor. Books, those pills that Courtney dropped, my backpack, and . . .

Hmm, I thought. Courtney. I’d tucked away what I’d learned about Rex’s mom into a back corner of my brain and hadn’t taken the time to think about it. But now thoughts were ticking away. Could there be a tie between Courtney and Rex? If so, how could I find out what it was? And could it possibly have led to murder?

The rest of the bookmobile stop passed quietly, and when we were tidying up, I said to Julia, “I need to make a phone call. Is this the parking lot where you can get three bars?”

She pointed at the store. “Stand between the ice machine and the Dumpster.”

As soon as my feet touched gravel, I was scrolling through my contacts, looking for Ann Marie and Rupert Wiley. By the time I found the sweet spot Julia had described, I was pushing the Call button. “Hey, Ann Marie. This is Minnie Hamilton, from the bookmobile.”

“It’s so nice to hear a voice that isn’t Rupert’s!” She laughed. “What can I do for you this morning?”

“First I wanted to make sure Rupert had enough reading material to last until our next scheduled stop. If he’s running low, I could drop by with some reserves.”

“Oh, aren’t you the sweetest,” Ann Marie said. “But the old bugger is fine. He’s getting out and about a little more and isn’t even half through that pile.”

“That’s great!” The getting-better thing, not the not-reading thing, but I wasn’t going to say that out loud. “My second question is about the first seven days of July. Some of my records are incomplete and I’m trying to get everything straight.” Which was true. Sort of. “What might help my memory was if you could tell me what days your home health aide, Courtney, was at your house that week. I didn’t meet her until the other day, so if I knew what days she was there . . .” I heard myself starting to babble, so I stopped talking.

“Easy enough,” Ann Marie said. “All I have to do is turn around and look at the calendar. Let’s see . . . that week Courtney was here Thursday, Saturday, and Monday. And Saturday she was here until dark, because Rupert was having some difficulties and she was kind enough to stay late. Does that help?”

It certainly did. I thanked her, asked her to say hello to Rupert for me, and ended the call.

So Courtney had worked until dark on the night of the Fourth. No way could she have driven to Chilson and killed Rex; there just wasn’t time.

I looked up at the bookmobile and saw that Eddie was again on the dashboard, only this time he was staring straight at me and yelling his furry head off. At least I assumed he was yelling, because although his mouth was opening and closing, I couldn’t hear him through the windshield.

“What’s with him?” I asked Julia as I settled into the driver’s seat.

“He was worried about you,” she said, shutting the cat carrier door as Eddie slinked inside. “He watched you the whole time and started howling right there at the end.”

I started the engine and looked at Eddie, who was glaring up at me with the intensity of ten thousand suns. If his problem was separation anxiety, you’d have thought there’d be a happier expression on his fuzzy face. “What’s the matter, my little friend?” I asked. “Talk to me. I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Mrr!”

Julia leaned forward against her seat belt and patted the carrier’s top. “Now, now, Mr. Edward. She didn’t mean to sound condescending. It’s just that she doesn’t always understand what you’re saying. It’s her fault, not yours.”

I laughed. “Let me guess. You’re fluent in Eddie speech and you’re going to tell me exactly what he was trying to get across to dumb old me.”

“Moi?” Julia arranged her face into an expression of shock. “While I occasionally grasp a fleeting thought out of our feline friend, I do not have the gift for translating ninety-nine percent of what he’s trying to communicate. Only you, dear Minnie, could do that. You’re his chosen life partner, after all.”

“Such an honor,” I murmured. Most of the time I had an excellent idea of what was going on in Eddie’s head, and his thoughts fell into one of three categories: sleep, food, or entertainment. If it was sleep, he’d be thinking about where next to curl up and spread his Eddie hairs around. If it was food, he’d be wondering when I’d offer him another treat, or maybe when I’d rearrange his dry cat food into the rounded pile he preferred. If it was entertainment, he’d be testing whatever object was closest to him to see if it could be a suitable cat toy. Curtains could do the trick, as did paper towels, toilet paper, newspapers, pencils, and shoelaces.

There was also a fourth category, one I hesitated to use under any circumstances—the dreaded miscellaneous. This was a dangerous thing, because I’d learned that if a miscellaneous folder existed, half the world could get stuffed in there. Far better to have many accurately labeled folders than a massive pile of—

“Mrr!”

I flinched. In the half mile of roadway we’d just driven, I’d gone deep into my thoughts, and Eddie’s sharp cry startled me. “What’s the matter, pal?”

He didn’t reply. I glanced over and couldn’t see anything inside the carrier except the pink of his blanket smashed up against the wire door. He’d never done that before, and I didn’t like not being able to see him.

“Julia, he’s managed to cover the door with his blanket. Can you fix that? Who knows what he’ll get into when he’s hidden from view.”

“Eddie, my good sir,” Julia said in an upper-crust English accent. “Will you give me permission to rearrange your bedchamber?” She opened the wire door. “While your renovations with the blanket, sir, are attractive, they pose a—hey!”

My cat bolted out of his carrier, scrambled over the console, and galloped to the back of the bookmobile, howling all the way. “Mrrr! MrrrRRR!”

“Egad,” Julia said, still English. She turned around to watch him. “The cat is something possessed.”