Лори Касс - Gone With The Whisker

Praise for the National Bestselling Bookmobile Cat Mysteries

“With humor and panache, Cass delivers an intriguing mystery and interesting characters.”

— Bristol Herald Courier (VA)

“Almost impossible to put down . . . the story is filled with humor and warmth.”

—MyShelf.com

“[With] Eddie’s adorableness [and] penchant to try to get more snacks, and Minnie’s determination to solve the crime, this duo will win over even those that don’t like cats.”

—Cozy Mystery Book Reviews

“A pleasant read. . . . [Minnie is] a spunky investigator.”

—Gumshoe

“A fast-paced page-turner that had me guessing until the last dramatic scenes.”

—Melissa’s Mochas, Mysteries & Meows

“Reading Laura Cass’s cozies feels like sharing a bottle of wine with an adventurous friend as she regales you with the story of her latest escapade.”

—The Cuddlywumps Cat Chronicles

Titles by Laurie Cass

Lending a Paw

Tailing a Tabby

Borrowed Crime

Pouncing on Murder

Cat with a Clue

Wrong Side of the Paw

Booking the Crook

Gone with the Whisker

BERKLEY PRIME CRIME

Published by Berkley

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright © 2020 by Janet Koch

Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks and BERKLEY PRIME CRIME is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Ebook ISBN: 9780440001010

First Edition: March 2020

Cover art by Mary Ann Lasher

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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For Jon, whom I nominate annually for Best Husband of the Year, in spite of his unfortunate music preferences.

CONTENTS

Praise for the Bookmobile Cat Mysteries

Titles by Laurie Cass

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

About the Author

Chapter 1

Every summer when I was a kid, my mom and dad and older brother and I piled into the family car and headed north to visit my aunt Frances. It was a long drive from Dearborn up to Chilson, and it was even longer if road crews were working on I-75, shutting down lanes of traffic and creating backups that ran for miles. This was when my dad would mutter, “There are four seasons in Michigan. Fall, winter, spring, and construction.”

At five years old, I hadn’t grasped what he was talking about, but at nearly thirty-five, I had a much better understanding of the concept.

“This project wasn’t supposed to start until after the Fourth,” Julia said, glaring at the brake lights lined up ahead of us.

I glared along with her. “When I called the road commission last week, that’s what they told me.” I rolled my shoulders in an attempt to loosen my neck. As a six-year resident of northwest lower Michigan, I’d lost my tolerance for sitting in traffic five and a half years ago.

This wasn’t anything close to the gridlock of southeast Michigan, but time spent waiting for the oncoming lane of cars to get through and our side to get waved forward was time the bookmobile wouldn’t be able to spend with its patrons. The Chilson District Library Bookmobile carried me, aka Minnie Hamilton, Julia Beaton, my part-time bookmobile clerk, roughly three thousand books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, puzzles, board games, and video games and—

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

And the bookmobile also carried Eddie, the black-and-white cat who had followed me home from a walk through the local cemetery a little over two years ago. At the time, I had not been a cat person, but it hadn’t taken me long to become attached to the furry little guy. I’d dutifully placed ads in the paper for a lost cat, I’d talked to cemetery neighbors, and I’d called area veterinarians and the local animal shelter. No one, thankfully, had come forward to claim my new buddy, and we’d been fast friends ever since.

But like any relationship, we’d had our ups and downs. A definite down had been the day Eddie had managed to sneak aboard the bookmobile’s maiden voyage. That had not boded well for my relationship with my then-boss, Stephen, who had been a stickler for any and all rules, one being no pets in the library, of which the bookmobile was an extension.

Eventually it had worked out, and now Eddie was a permanent fixture on the bookmobile, to the point that he got Christmas cards from elementary school classrooms, adult foster care homes, and other librarians. I tended not to tell him about his fame—he already had such a good opinion of himself that I hesitated to inflate his ego any further—but I had a sneaking suspicion he knew.

Julia put her feet on top of Eddie’s carrier, which was strapped to the floor on the passenger’s side, and toyed with the end of her thick strawberry blond braid. “If this keeps up, we’re going to miss the next stop altogether.”

She spoke with a slight drawl that hadn’t been there last time she’d talked. Julia, now in her early sixties, had grown up in Chilson and left for the bright New York City lights right after high school graduation. A few decades and a suitcase full of Tony Awards later, she and her husband had come home, and she’d been bored to tears within weeks. She’d taught an acting class at the local community college, but teaching wasn’t her strong suit, and when my aunt Frances had mentioned a job on the bookmobile, Julia had marched on over to the library and essentially begged me to hire her.

We’d hit it off straightaway, and the deal sealer had been when she’d met Eddie and instantly started talking to him as if he could understand her, which was exactly how I talked to him.

The newfound drawl indicated that she was playing a role. It could have been one she’d played, one she hadn’t, or one that had never existed. Some days I tried to guess; other times I gave it up as a lost cause. This time around was a mystery, but I’d known her long enough to guess what she was thinking. “Do you know a way around?”

A wide, slow, Grinch-like smile curled onto her face. “Why, yes, I do.” She pointed left, to a northbound road that quickly disappeared around a curve and up a hill.

I studied it. “I’m not driving the bookmobile on some narrow asphalt road that turns into a gravel two-track that peters out into loose sand where we’ll get stuck and need a huge tow truck to yank us out.”

Julia looked at me with puppy dog eyes. “You wound me, Minnie, truly you do. But that’s Dozier Road. Isn’t that the route you laid out?”

I had, indeed, planned to take Dozier around the construction zone, but hadn’t found the time to make sure the road was bookmobile friendly. My last two months, and especially the last two weeks, had been so full I’d kept shifting reroute scouting to the next day. And the next. And the next. And now here we were. The location of today’s stop was a one-time deal because the parking lot of the regular stop, a church, was being repaved. I’d scouted out our temporary location ages ago—it was little more than a wide spot on a dead end road—but checking the reroute hadn’t popped to the top of my priority list.