Лори Касс - Gone With The Whisker

“What’s up?” she asked. “You’re not firing me, are you?”

I shook my head, took a deep breath, and started. “A couple of weeks ago . . .” Once I got going, the story of my near-death fall into traffic didn’t take long to tell. Julia showed dismay and concern, and when I got to the end, she gave me a hug.

“That’s horrible, but you’re fine and all’s well that ends well, yes?”

“Yes, but . . .”

She frowned. “But what?”

I sat on the bookmobile’s carpeted step and motioned for her to do the same. “It’s Nicole Price. She didn’t drown.”

Julia’s frown deepened. “Of course she did. She was in the water. What else . . . oh, no.” Her eyes closed. “You’re saying—”

“Yes. She was murdered. The sheriff’s office says there’s no doubt.”

We sat there for a moment. The door was open and sounds of summer drifted in. A breeze, stirring the leaves of a nearby tree. A distant lawnmower. A chirping bird.

“‘O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!’” Julia murmured, quoting what I was pretty sure was Hamlet .

“And there’s more,” I said. “I think all of these things are connected. Rex Stuhler’s murder. Me being pushed into the street. Nicole’s murder. It just seems too unlikely that all these things could happen without some link between them.”

Julia smiled. “Unlikely things happen all the time. Just ask any lottery winner.”

“Listen to me,” I said, pounding my fists on my knees. “I need you to take this seriously.”

She looked at me blankly. “Why?”

“Because you were here, too. You found Nicole, just like I did. I was pushed into traffic. And so . . . you might be in danger, too.”

A beat of silence tapped past, then Julia asked seriously and deliberately, “Have you have been watching too much television?”

She knew perfectly well that was an impossibility, since my television watching was limited to what I could watch at the boardinghouse due to the marina’s very slow Internet connection. I felt my spine straighten and my chin go up. “I wanted to warn you.”

“Sorry, Minnie. I just think it’s pretty far-fetched.”

I stood. “We need to get going,” I said stiffly.

“Don’t be angry,” Julia said, springing up and pulling me into a hug. “And it’s kind of you to be concerned. Thank you.”

I returned the hug, murmuring that I wasn’t mad. Because I wasn’t, not really.

But I was worried.

Chapter 13

Julia’s disbelief had been a bit wounding, so on the way home I vowed to be kinder and more patient with my niece.

“Have I forgotten what it’s like to be a teenager?” I asked Eddie as we made the short drive from the library to the marina. “Can’t be. It wasn’t that long ago.”

“Mrr?” he asked.

“Well . . .” I did the subtraction and came to the stunning realization that it had been sixteen years since I’d been a teenager. How could that be? I did the math backward, adding instead of subtracting, and came up with the same number. “Okay, it was a while ago,” I said lamely, “but it doesn’t feel like it.”

In fact, some days it took very little to summon the self-consciousness that had plagued me all through middle school and most of high school. And if I was going to be completely honest, hadn’t yet faded away to memory.

“Mrr.”

“Thanks, pal,” I said. “I love you just the way you are, too. Although I wouldn’t mind if you kept your hairs to yourself a little more, and—”

“Mrr!”

Smiling, I parked in my reserved spot and carried Eddie inside, all set to have a nice long sympathetic chat with my niece. “Kate, what do you think about . . .”

But I was talking to an empty room. I glanced up at the whiteboard, and lo and behold, she’d written something up there.

Closing at Benton’s tonight. Back by ten .

“Well, there you go,” I told Eddie as I let him out of his carrier. He leapt up to the dashboard and ignored me in favor of watching a flock of seagulls.

He remained on the dashboard while I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, was there when I left to go up to the house to work with Rafe on painting stairway risers, was there when I got back as the sun was setting, was there when Kate got home, and was still there when I left in the morning.

I patted him on the head as I left. “Are you stuck?” I asked softly, because Kate was still sleeping.

“Mrr,” he said quietly, which I took to mean, “Don’t be ridiculous. I just happen to like it here for the time being.”

“You are so weird,” I told him, and headed up to the library with Eddie’s heavy gaze tracking me up the dock. “Well, he is,” I said to the world in general, in case it happened to be listening. Eddie’s weirdness was a solid fact, but maybe broadcasting it wasn’t the way a loyal cat companion should behave. A quality cat caretaker would probably also provide better treats. And brush him twice a day. And never trim his claws.

“Fat chance,” I said, drawing a curious look from Cookie Tom, because by this time I was halfway through downtown.

He was, as always this time of morning, out sweeping the sidewalk in front of his bakery. He cocked his head at my comment and stopped, mid-sweep. “Anything I want to know about?”

I slowed, but didn’t stop. “It’s our new phone system. There’s a glitch with the connection between the VOIP messaging and the ISP—”

“Have a nice day, Minnie,” Tom said, and went back to his sweeping.

Grinning, I walked on. At some point Tom would catch on that I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about when I babbled tech-speak, but for now it was kind of fun.

But what wasn’t much fun was that I also didn’t have a clue how to find a connection between the deaths of Rex and Nicole. I sat at my desk and woke up my computer, wishing I could wake up my brain.

While I was waiting for the computer, I spun around in my chair and looked at the wall calendar I’d purchased from a local nonprofit. Each month had a different photograph of the region, and this month’s was of Chilson’s fireworks from the previous year.

I sighed, remembering what had happened this Fourth of July, then sat up straight. Maybe if I studied the books Nicole and Rex had checked out that last time they’d both been on the bookmobile, I’d see something . . .

But that didn’t make any sense. I slumped back. How could the book checkouts possibly mean a thing? Still, I didn’t have any other ideas, so I launched the software and, elbow on the desk and chin in hand, started looking backward in time to see if the two had any books in common.

They didn’t, of course. Rex had read nonfiction almost exclusively, while Nicole read a wide variety of fiction, including a smattering of legal thrillers.

I sorted their choices by date, Dewey decimal, copyright, and everything else I could think of, but saw nothing that meant anything, at least not to me. Though I hadn’t expected to find anything, I was still disappointed that nothing had turned up, and—

“Hang on,” I murmured. Because there was more to review than book choices. I could also look at who else had checked out books the last time Rex and Nicole had been on the bookmobile together. Maybe there was another bookmobile patron who had crossed paths with both Rex and Nicole. Yes, I tended to think all bookmobilers were fine and upstanding citizens, but maybe there was an outlier, an anomaly, someone who wasn’t honorable, and maybe there was . . . something.

Knowing it was a long shot, I pulled up the day and stop. And sat back in my chair, staring at the screen.

I’d forgotten all about Violet Mullaly.

The first time I’d met the indomitable and irrepressible Violet had been early spring, and I’d just driven the bookmobile through ten miles of sloggy mess of rain and snow and slush. Which was no excuse for anything, but might explain why, when Violet completely rejected every single one of the books I suggested she might like, I formed an opinion of her personality and character I had yet to revise.