Лори Касс - Booking The Crook

“Mrr.”

“I’m glad you’ve recovered from whatever was making you make those horrible noises.”

“Mrr.”

“Really? Well, how about I keep an eye on you. Any more of that and I make an appointment with Dr. Joe.” I pulled out my phone, scrolled through the contacts, and sent a group text to Neil, Anya, and Collier: Caught out by your house in freezing rain with the bookmobile. OK if I use the code to go inside and wait it out?

Ten seconds later, I got texts from the twins. Anya: All yours. Heat’s down, though. Collier: Stay overnight if u need 2—don’t use Anya’s room it’s a mess. Anya’s next text was an image of a sticking-out tongue, which I assumed was to her brother. I decided not to wait for Neil’s permission, texted a thank-you, and picked up the cat carrier.

Eddie retreated to silence as I tried to open the bookmobile’s door. It didn’t open and didn’t open and I finally put the carrier on the floor and put all my weight into the effort. With a tinkling crash of ice breaking, the door flew open wide and a blast of wind whooshed in. I climbed down the stairs carefully and reached back in for Eddie’s carrier.

“Hold on tight.” I closed the bookmobile door and, head down against the wind, shuffled toward the house, knees bent and my free hand out for balance. Every step was a risk, but at least the freezing rain was falling on an inch of fresh snow. Once each footstep broke through the crust of ice, there was something for my boot to grab on to. Even still, twenty feet had never seemed so far.

What felt like an eternity later, I touched the corner of the house and then we were in front of the door that entered into the garage. I tucked my right hand under my left elbow, pulled off my mitten, and entered the five-digit code. Blessedly, the battery was still working. The deadbolt slid open and we were inside, out of the wind and rain.

“Safe,” I said, gasping a bit because for a while there I hadn’t been completely sure things would work out.

“Mrr.”

“It’s good to know you weren’t worried at all. Nice to know that you have that kind of confidence in me.” I opened the door into the house and set Eddie’s carrier on the floor. “Promise to be good?”

My cat blinked up at me, but didn’t say a thing. Which was just as well because, even if he’d promised, I wouldn’t have believed him.

“Here you go.” I opened the wire door. Eddie, who had been lying on his pink blanket, leapt to his feet and pranced into Rowan’s kitchen.

Oak cabinets with brushed nickel drawer pulls and cabinet knobs. Off-white tile countertops with a comfortable clutter of coffeepot, dry goods canisters, and cookbooks. Rowan had been close to fanatic about keeping things clean, but she hadn’t minded a little clutter, especially if the clutter was family heirlooms. She’d told me she had a number of them because she was the oldest grandchild. “None of it is worth a penny,” she’d said, “so the term ‘heirloom’ is a bit of a misnomer, but calling the kids to dinner with the cowbell from the last cow my grandparents owned makes me smile every time.”

In a sudden rush, the full impact of her death wrapped around me. She was gone forever. No more of her dry humor, a type of humor that many people interpreted not as humor at all, but as being cold and distant. My father had a similar tendency, so I’d found it easy to laugh at her comments. The absence of her wry observations was a hole in my life, and it would never be filled, not completely.

I sat on a handy bench and, after I’d finished crying and wiping my eyes, pulled off my boots and put them on the mat next to boots left behind by other Bennethums. I unzipped my coat, but didn’t take it off. When Neil and the twins had left the house, they’d turned the heat down to a level that would have been chilly without an outer layer, even over my bookmobile sweaters, which were long and warm and pocketed, the better for carrying cat treats.

“Eddie?” I called. “Where are you?”

“Mrr!”

Though I didn’t see him, I heard the pitter-patter of Eddie paws as they thumped up the stairs.

“Nothing up there for you to see,” I called. There was nothing upstairs but bathrooms and bedrooms, including the very empty master bedroom. At some point, Neil would open the closet and have to make decisions about Rowan’s shirts, pants, dresses, and shoes. Or would he ask Anya to do the sad task?

I tried to remember Rowan’s sibling situation, but couldn’t quite. Though she’d talked about brothers and sisters and cousins, she’d also had a tendency to drop the term “in-law” and talk about Neil’s blood relatives as if they were hers.

Eddie thundered down the stairs and cantered into the kitchen.

“Why would anyone kill her?” I asked, standing to look at the collection of magnets on the refrigerator. Hal and Ash’s theory about a revenge murder because of a denied loan seemed like a stretch, but I didn’t have any better ideas.

My fuzzy friend galloped around the kitchen table and back into the living room.

Of course, why anyone would kill was a mystery to me, unless your life or the life of someone you loved was in danger. And the idea of Rowan being a dangerous threat to anyone seemed beyond unlikely.

“Then again,” I said, “what defines a threat might be a relative concept.”

“Mrr!” Eddie said as he ran back into the kitchen. He started to take another lap around the table, but he miscalculated his speed. Centrifugal force tipped him over and he slid into the row of boots, knocking footwear everywhere.

Before I could get to my feet, he was up on his, trotting around as if he was proud of his stunt.

“You must have been at the back of the line when the gift of grace was handed out.” I went over to, once again, clean up after my cat. “Or maybe you’re just getting older. You’re four now, if Dr. Joe was right about your age. That’s what, college age for a cat? Not that you would have studied enough to get into any college. And if you’d managed to get admitted, I can see you flunking out after . . . huh.”

I was down on my hands and knees now, and had seen a small flat rectangle on the floor, way behind the boots and underneath the bench. Since I was an unexpected guest, it was my duty to do some chores, so I reached out for the whatever-it-was.

My fingers recognized the shape and texture of an empty sugar packet before my brain caught up.

A sugar packet? But that made no sense at all.

I brought the object into the light and put it on the kitchen table.

Sugar. Rowan hated extra sugar in anything. She’d considered it responsible for death, disease, and general disorder in the world. She’d been a bit of a fanatic about it.

I poked at the thing, reading its print. This particular packet was maple flavored, something put out by a local company. Even still, there was no way Rowan would have bought it and no way she would have allowed it in her house. There was absolutely no reason for it to be there.

Except one.

I backed away from the sugar packet, not wanting to touch it, not wanting to even see it any longer.

My fingers fumbled for my phone. “Hey, Ash? There’s something you need to see.”

Chapter 5

At breakfast the next morning, I held my aunt spellbound while I told the tale. Or at least partially spellbound, because some of her focus was on keeping Eddie off the table.

“But Hal and Ash didn’t think the sugar packet was important?” she asked.

“They’re reserving judgment until it can be analyzed.” My instinctive leap had been to the conclusion that the sugar packet had contained whatever it was that had killed Rowan. There, in her kitchen, I’d seen the scene unfolding. Someone at the front door. Rowan inviting her or him inside. An offer of coffee. Two coffee mugs brought to the kitchen table. Then a request for something not handy. Rowan would have turned away and the killer would surreptitiously have added the poison, with the cover of an innocuous sugar packet if Rowan had happened to see the movement.