Лори Касс: Gone With The Whisker

“Katrina, are you okay?”

“My name is Kate,” she said angrily from the ground. “And I’m fine. I just tripped over something.” She sat up, looked at what she’d fallen over, and screamed. “He’s dead! He’s dead!”

Aunt Frances, Rafe, Otto, and I raced toward her, and I reached her first. “It’s okay, sweetie, it’s okay. Come on, stand up, let’s see what’s . . .”

Katrina sobbed into my shoulder. But it wasn’t going to be okay, because she was right. She’d stumbled over a person, not a thing, and the man was indeed dead. Even in the dim light I could see that. The bullet hole in the back of his head was proof, and . . . and . . .

Around me, I heard Otto calling 911 and talking to dispatch, I heard Aunt Frances comforting Katrina, and I heard Rafe asking me if I was all right.

I stared at the man lying at my feet, his eyes glazed open, a man I’d seen only a couple of days earlier. “I know him,” I whispered.

Chapter 2

The next morning I was bleary-eyed and feeling raw from turbulent dreams and disturbing thoughts. I couldn’t fathom that Rex Stuhler, a bookmobile patron, was dead. At some point during the Chilson fireworks, someone had taken advantage of the show’s bangs and explosions and shot him.

I’d seen Rex just two days ago, at the temporary stop. He’d been waiting for us when we’d arrived late, and he’d patted Eddie on the head. Rex was maybe fifty, and a voracious reader. His profession as a pest exterminator out of his home office meant he worked irregular hours, and the combination of those facts made him a bookmobile regular.

He was also one of those guys who loved gadgets, especially electronic gadgets, and when we’d teased him about preferring paper books over e-books, he’d whispered it was a secret he was trying to keep from his buddies, and what did he have to do to buy our silence?

At the time we’d laughed, but now I was having a hard time swallowing my tears. Rex didn’t have to worry about anything any longer.

But life went on for those still living, and last night Rafe had asked me to pick up a box of drywall screws at the hardware store first thing. “Sorry,” he’d said after we’d been questioned and dismissed by a sheriff’s deputy and he’d walked us back to the houseboat, “but if you get those, I can keep working.”

“No problem,” I’d told him, putting my arm around a shivering Katrina. Her life in Florida had not prepared her for cool summer evenings in northern Michigan, but she continued to shrug off recommendations for always having a sweatshirt at hand. “I’ll take care of it.”

So now, though I deeply wanted to roll over and sleep for twelve hours, I yawned, yawned again, slithered out of bed to avoid waking Eddie, and got showered and dressed as quietly as possible.

Not that Katrina moved a muscle, other than those involuntary ones that kept her heart and brain going. As I wrote my whereabouts on the kitchen’s whiteboard— Hardware store, house, back by noon —I listened to her soft, regular breathing. Last night, she hadn’t taken well to my command to call her parents and tell them what had happened, but when I’d asked if she was going to text any friends about it and did those friends have parents who knew hers, she grudgingly saw the need.

My brother and his wife had been understandably shocked and concerned, and after Katrina curled up in her sleeping bag and went into coma mode, we talked into the wee hours of the morning. We eventually agreed there was no immediate need for her to go home or for them to fly up, but that I’d keep a close eye on her and let them know immediately if she was exhibiting signs of emotional trauma.

And now it was morning. Gently, I tucked the sleeping bag around her shoulders and hoped what I’d told Matt and Jennifer had been right.

“Kids are resilient,” I told the blue sky as I stepped outside. At least that’s what people said. But I wasn’t so sure. Maybe kids were just resilient on the outside, same as adults. Who knew what was going on inside?

I made a solemn vow to watch over my niece, to take careful note of any changes in her behavior, and to deepen our relationship so that she’d feel free to talk to me about anything. In the long run, this would all work out, I was sure of it.

Well, almost.

But the future would work itself out in due time, so I tucked my worry about Katrina into a back corner and made up my mind to enjoy the morning. Which was easy to do, because the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and so many things in the world were amazing and wonderful.

A hop, skip, and a jump from the marina was the old, large, 1900s Shingle style house that was rising up from the metaphorical ashes of having been divided into apartments decades earlier. It had a deep front porch, lake views, and my vote for being the most beautiful house in Chilson. Plus, in a few short months it would be my own home. Rafe was already living there, because he didn’t mind living in a state of perpetual renovation. And I might have been living there with him this very moment if it hadn’t been for my recently discovered inability to tolerate the fumes of paint primer.

I walked on tiptoes as I went past the house, looking for signs of Rafe. There was no visual clue, but then I heard the drywall saw start up. I blew a kiss in his general direction and headed up the hill.

The hardware store was on the outskirts of downtown, a short walk from the marina, and by the time I arrived, my spirits had risen and I was darn close to one hundred percent awake.

In many places, hardware stores were closed on Sundays or opened late. In Chilson, as in many other northern resort towns, businesses had one hundred days to make money, more or less Memorial Day through Labor Day. Being closed on any one of those days was close to unthinkable. And here it was, barely eight o’clock on the fifth of July, and the hardware store was so crowded and noisy that I barely heard the door’s bells jingle as I went inside.

I picked up a big box of number seven by two-inch drywall screws, walked away, went back for another box, then headed up to the counter, where a small group of men I didn’t recognize clustered together. Not long ago I’d been intimidated by hardware stores, but thanks to Rafe’s constant need for fasteners—a catch-all term I’d formerly made fun of, but now accepted as part of the construction vocabulary—I was on a first-name basis with the hardware store owner and his staff.

“Hey, Minnie.” Jared, the owner, took the boxes and put them into the bag. “Sure you got enough?”

“I got double what he asked, so maybe.”

“On the account?”

When I nodded, he started typing into the keyboard. Rafe and I needed to have a serious chat about money and construction costs and mortgages, but every time I brought up the subject, he diverted the conversation. It had to be soon, though, because I wasn’t moving in until we were both happy with the financial situation.

“Probably one of those random killings. Bet it wasn’t anyone from around here,” a man to the left of me said, and I realized the male cluster was talking about last night’s murder.

I shook my head, trying to wish away the image of Rex Stuhler’s unseeing eyes.

“Downstater. Had to be.” Luke Cagan, one of Jared’s part-time employees, leaned against the counter, crossing his arms, which were covered with thick blond hairs.

The rest of the men nodded agreement and their cluster dispersed.

But I stood there, staring at the space where they’d been, because up until that moment my brain had been more occupied with the shock and aftermath of Katrina literally tripping over a murder victim. Up until now, I hadn’t thought about the obvious implications.