Лори Касс - Gone With The Whisker

“Not sure I can make it that long,” he wheezed.

“That’s too bad. Is there anything I can do to help you in your last moments on this earth?”

“I might . . .” He coughed. “I might make it a little longer if you brought me a large print copy of The Runaway Jury . You know, that John Grisham book? It might be the only thing that gets me through this week.”

Which was why, an hour and a half later, when I should have been going over to the house to start sanding the study’s baseboard, I was instead walking into Lakeview Medical Care Facility with Max’s book in my hand. He was waiting for me, rolling his wheelchair forward three inches, back three inches, forward, back.

“You made it!” he almost shouted, beaming.

I handed over the book. “And you seem to have made a miraculous recovery.”

“Eh?” He peered up at me and gave a fake cough. “Oh, yes. Much better.”

“Why are you coughing? I thought it was your heart this time.”

“All connected,” Max said vaguely, turning to the first chapter, and I lost any chance at conversation with him.

“You do realize that the next bookmobile librarian won’t be nearly as accommodating when it comes to personal deliveries, don’t you?”

“The next one?” He sat up straight. “Minerva Hamilton, what are you saying? You’re not leaving Chilson, are you?”

“Just wanted to make sure you were paying attention.”

He let out a huge breath. “Don’t do that to an old man. I’m not sure my heart can take it.”

“You told me last winter that your heart was as healthy as a fit seventy-year-old.”

“Things can change,” he said, going back to the book. “You never know.”

Which was true enough, but I didn’t want to think of Lakeview without Max, so I shoved the reminder of his advanced age into the back of my brain, murmured a good-bye, and turned to leave. But before I took a single step toward the entrance, I pivoted and headed down an interior hallway. A few rooms down I saw the CNA I knew best.

“Hey, Minnie,” Heather said. “What are you doing here on a Saturday?”

I inched closer. “Don’t tell anyone, but Max has me wrapped around his pinkie. I made a delivery just for him.”

Heather laughed. “Sounds like Max.”

“Say, would Lowell Kokotovich happen to be working today? I met him at the reading hour the other day and wanted to talk to him about something.”

“Um, I think so.” Heather glanced down the hallway at a white light just outside a resident’s room that was blinking. “I have to go,” she said, hurrying off. “Lowell’s probably in Otter Lane.”

I called a thank-you and made my way around Lakeview’s big square. Eventually, I found Otter Lane and Lowell Kokotovich, who was standing at a cart outside a resident’s room, poking at a computer screen with a stylus.

“Hi,” I said, approaching. “I don’t know if you remember me, but—”

“Sure. From the library.” He nodded, then frowned. “It’s Saturday, isn’t it? There’s not a reading hour today, right?”

I refrained from saying that every hour was reading hour as far as I was concerned. He didn’t seem the type to appreciate the joke. “No. I wanted to talk to you about something else. You said you’d lived in the same town as Nicole Price. She was a regular bookmobile patron. Some of us were thinking about putting together a donation in her name, and I wondered if you’d be interested.”

“Oh. Uh.” He looked at me, looked at his computer, looked at me, then back at the computer. “I, um . . . oh, look, there’s a call light I have to answer. Sorry.”

And he hurried off, just like Heather. But the white light above the room he entered wasn’t blinking.

Hmm, I thought as he closed the door.

Very, very hmmm.

* * *

Late that night, I was dead to the world when a scratch- ing noise woke me from a dreamless sleep. Kate had abandoned me for the attractions of Aunt Frances and Uncle Otto, and Rafe was helping a buddy move, so I’d had no one to tell me that spending four hours on my hands and knees sanding, sanding, and sanding some more was Too Much for someone who normally spent her time either behind a desk or behind a steering wheel.

Around nine, Rafe had hauled me to my feet, fed me pizza, walked me home, and helped me tumble into bed. “Sleep tight,” he’d said, kissing my forehead. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Even if they had, I probably wouldn’t have woken unless they’d bit me down to the bone. However, my ears had become sensitive to noises related to Eddie getting into things he shouldn’t and I was wide awake in an instant.

I sat bolt upright. “What are you doing?” I called.

Scritch-scritch-scritch.

Throwing back the sheet, which was my only cover on such a muggy night, I put my feet on the floor and stood up. “Where are you?”

“Mrr.”

His response had come from the kitchen, but the noise had stopped. I padded back to bed, flopped down, and was almost asleep when the noise started all over again.

Scritch-scritch.

“Eddie!” I yelled. “Cut it out!”

Scritch-scritch-scritch.

I flung back the sheet, stomped up the stairs to the main cabin, and fumbled for the light switch. Brightness exploded into the room, and like the proverbial deer in the headlights, Eddie stopped what he was doing and stared up at me. But defiantly, which wasn’t at all deerlike.

“For crying out loud,” I muttered.

Because my furry little friend had managed to extract a Tonedagana County map from my backpack and unfold it. His right front paw was poised over the northeast part of the county, and his claws were extended and about to rip right into Bowyer Township.

“Nice try,” I said. “But no way am I letting you plot the next bookmobile route.”

“Mrr!”

“Because I said so.” I took the map away from him, folded it in a way no mapmaker would ever recommend, and shoved it into the backpack, which I zipped shut and shoved under Kate’s sleeping bag.

“Mrr,” he said in a manner that could only be called a sulk.

I rolled my eyes and went back to bed.

Cats.

Chapter 15

Julia folded her hands and laid them across the computer keyboard. “No one is coming,” she pronounced.

She was probably right. It was one of those triple H days: hot, hazy, and humid. Days like this did not lend themselves to high bookmobile usage. You never knew, of course, because it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that half a dozen cars would suddenly converge on our shady parking spot, all packed with occupants intent on checking out an armload of books for use on screened porches. But it seemed unlikely.

“Too hot.” The door was open and I was sitting on the steps, fanning myself with the February copy of Traverse Magazine , hoping for a breeze to flutter by.

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

“How goes it with the niece?” Julia asked.

“Eh.” I shrugged. Or I would have, but the movement might have caused me to overheat, so I mostly just moved my eyebrows. “She spent most of the weekend up at Aunt Frances and Otto’s place, hanging out in their air-conditioning.”

“Is she still on about her love quadrangle theory?”

“Far as I know.” And I still hadn’t talked to Ash about it, so perhaps it was just as well she was up the hill with a superior role model.

Julia languidly tapped at the keyboard. “Who else checked out books that last day Rex and Nicole were here? Other than Violet Mullaly.”

“There weren’t any others at that stop, remember? And . . .” I sighed. “I haven’t done anything about looking into Violet.” Which was something I really needed to do.