Лори Касс - Gone With The Whisker

Nowhere.

I tried to enjoy the warm quiet of the evening and was hoping for a talk with my niece, but when I arrived at the houseboat, Kate was already tucked into her sleeping bag, earbuds in and tablet on, playing an episode of That ’70s Show .

“Hey,” I said softly.

She muttered something unintelligible, rolled over, and was lightly snoring half a second later. Smiling, I removed her earbuds, shut down the tablet, and went to snuggle with Eddie and a book.

“Mrr,” he said as I slid into bed, disturbing him not even a fraction of an inch.

“I love you, too, pal.” I kissed the top of his head and stared at the pages of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep while I thought about Rex Stuhler and creativity. The next morning, before I did the hard work of hauling out two bowls and two spoons for our breakfast, I asked Kate if she wanted cereal.

“Huh?” She popped her head out of the sleeping bag and blinked at me. “Do I what?”

“Breakfast. Cereal.” I hefted the bowl up. “You?” For weeks, in obedience to her mother’s wishes, I’d done my best to make sure Kate left the houseboat with a full stomach.

“Oh. No.” She yawned and stretched. “I have to be up to Benton’s early. I’d rather get a bagel from Tom’s.”

Yet not that long ago, I’d brought down a bag of bagels and she’d ignored them completely. “Sounds good,” I said. “See you tonight at the house. Rafe said he’d grill.”

My loving niece grunted a response that could have meant anything from “Can’t wait” to “Wild horses couldn’t drag me there.” I had a suspicion it was more the horse thing than the other, but decided not to pursue an interpretation. Some things you’re just better off leaving open.

The walk to downtown under a blue sky decorated with wisps of long clouds cleared my head of niece thoughts (mostly) and I found myself smiling. It was summer in northwest lower Michigan and I wasn’t going to spoil this fantastic time of year by wallowing in worry.

“Have to tell Aunt Frances,” I said out loud. My aunt was forever reminding me that worrying never helped a thing, that it mostly made things worse. Some days her advice was easy to take, other days not so much. But if I could push away the notion that Kate couldn’t stand living with me and that she was secretly plotting to get back to Florida as soon as possible, maybe I was making progress in the non-worrying department.

My phone rang. It was Ash. “Morning!” I said. “What’s up?”

“Make a right turn, please.”

I blinked and looked to my right. I was almost in front of the sheriff’s office, and Ash was standing at the door, waving at me. He thumbed off his phone and said, “Do you have a minute? Hal and I need to talk to you.”

Seconds later, I was sitting in the interview room across the table from Deputy Ash Wolverson and Detective Hal Inwood. “Before you say anything,” I said, “last night I was thinking about Rex Stuhler’s death, and maybe we need to get really creative about—”

Hal cut across my words. “This isn’t about Mr. Stuhler.”

“Oh.” I sat back a little. Please, I thought, don’t let it be about Kate again. “This, um, doesn’t have to do with my niece, does it?”

Ash half smiled. “After her talk with the sheriff, I don’t think that kid will so much as break the speed limit until she’s thirty.”

Though I didn’t agree, his opinion was good to hear. “What’s the matter, then?” Because from the looks on both of their faces, something was clearly not right. It wasn’t as easy to tell with Hal, because his long face had a permanently morose cast, but Ash’s default expression hadn’t yet hardened into cop mode and I could tell he wasn’t happy.

“We have received,” Hal said, “the preliminary autopsy on Nicole Price.”

Since I didn’t know how to respond to that, I kept quiet, because there was obviously more coming.

“Ms. Price was murdered.”

I stared at Hal. “No, she wasn’t. She drowned. It’s sad, but it happens. There are all sorts of reasons she could have drowned. Tell your medical examiner to look again.” I could hear my voice going high and shrill, so I took a short breath. “Look again,” I said calmly. “There has to be a mistake.”

But both Hal and Ash were shaking their heads. “She double and triple checked,” Ash said. “She said there’s no doubt whatsoever. I’m sorry, Minnie, but someone strangled Nicole.”

Hal droned on about the particulars of Nicole’s death, citing all sorts of medical evidence that I understood sort of, but not really. I made a mental note to brush up on my basic knowledge of human physiology, and after he finished talking about the cellular level of something I’d never heard of before, I asked the obvious question. “Do you know who killed her?”

Ash glanced at Hal, who remained impassive. “We’re looking at all possible suspects,” Hal said.

I knew the drill. All avenues of investigation will be pursued, blah blah blah. They’d leave no stone unturned as they went down the avenues of investigation, the roads of investigation, and the streets of—

Streets. I sighed. It was time to tell them about my own street-side experience. “There’s something I should tell you.”

The two men waited.

“It’s possible that . . . I mean it might be . . .” I took a breath and came out with it. “I think someone tried to kill me.”

Chapter 12

Staffing the reference desk was, right after the bookmobile, the best part of working at the library. Yes, people came to me with the everyday questions, starting with “What’s the library’s Wi-Fi password?” and the whispered “Where are the bathrooms?” But there were also the fun quests, like “Is there any book that could turn my nine-year-old son into a reader?” and “When did the first fudge shop in Chilson open?” and the search was on. I practically lived for moments like that, and seeing a patron’s face light up when we found the answer was worth every dollar of the student loans I still owed.

Today, however, the building seemed to be empty of everyone except staff and there was little to distract me from my final moments in the sheriff’s office.

“You what?” Ash had sat up straighter, something I wouldn’t have thought possible because he always had better posture than I’d ever been able to achieve with a book on my head.

“Um, fell into traffic. I wasn’t hurt,” I added hastily. Because scrapes couldn’t possibly count as a real injury to anyone except my mother, and since I hadn’t told her about the incident, and since the scrape on my shoulder had healed days ago, the memory of the whole thing was getting a bit fuzzy.

“But someone pushed you,” Hal said. And I knew I was in trouble because he took a notebook out of his shirt pocket.

I often walked along without paying too much attention to where I was and where I was going, but it was a stretch from that to falling into traffic. “I didn’t fall sideways into the street of my own volition,” I said. “Someone pushed me. But what I don’t know is whether or not it was intentional.”

“You’re telling us now? Almost two weeks later?” Ash asked, his voice a little too loud for the small room. “Minnie, why on earth didn’t you mention this earlier?”

I shrugged. “And you would have done what? It was the week of the Fourth, the sidewalks were packed with people, and I didn’t see who pushed me. All you or the city police would have done was file some sort of pointless report, and you had better things to do with your time.”

Hal and Ash exchanged a glance at my “pointless report” comment, and I knew I’d hit a nerve. “So instead of a long report that would have taken hours,” I said, “all you have to do now is make a note in Rex Stuhler’s murder file. Way easier. And . . .” I looked at them beseechingly . “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention my falling to anyone outside this office.”