Лори Касс - Booking The Crook

I’d envisioned it so clearly that I’d been shocked when Ash and Hal hadn’t seen it along with me. Looking back, I realized that I might have been a little sharper with them than I’d needed to be. I’d been tired, hungry, and worried about getting the bookmobile back home, and during the three hours I’d waited before they showed up—the time it took for the road commission’s salt trucks to get to Rowan’s road—my confidence that the packet had contained poison had grown to one hundred percent.

Eddie, who had abandoned his efforts to get on top of the table, jumped onto his chair. He sat upright with his chin just level with the tabletop.

I spooned up the last of my oatmeal. “And it’s possible I told Detective Inwood and Deputy Wolverson that waiting a week for the lab analysis would be a waste of a week and wasn’t time of the essence in a murder investigation?”

Aunt Frances half smiled. “More like you said they were nuts to ignore what was right in front of their faces.”

“Well.” I grinned. “That sounds more like me, doesn’t it?”

My aunt nodded. “Yup.”

“Mrr.”

• • •

The previous day’s freezing rain had been covered with a fresh two inches of snow overnight. While the main roads were clear, most of the side roads were still exceedingly slippery. Schools were closed and events were being canceled all over the county, but the library had never closed for weather in the history of the library, so I slipped a set of handy-dandy ice grips over my boots and headed out.

My normal morning walking route took me through the tree-lined residential streets of Chilson, zigged to hit the core downtown blocks, and zagged back up to the library. Today, however, I took the route of safety and made a beeline for the main road.

The city’s sidewalk plow had made a pass and dropped a mix of sand and salt, but the footing was still variable, so like a responsible adult, I kept my head down and my attention on my boots. Which was why, when my name was called out, I jumped and almost lost my balance.

“Sorry about that. You okay?” Mitchell Koyne looked down at me. Way down. I understood that my own compact and efficient height was not the norm, and every time I met up with Mitchell, it was very clear that he was on the opposite end of the human height bell curve.

“Fine. And nice work on your sidewalk.” I nodded at the stretch in front of the toy store, shoveled and scraped down to the concrete, even though it was almost two hours until the store opened.

Until last year, Mitchell had been one of those guys who bounced from seasonal construction job to seasonal ski resort job, making ends meet in the shoulder seasons of spring and fall by selling firewood and not eating much. He’d worn untucked and raggy flannel shirts over T-shirts of questionable condition, jeans worn to white at the knees, and shoes held together with goo and sometimes duct tape.

He was also very intelligent and insatiably curious, but only in a sporadic sort of way. That, paired with his complete lack of ambition, had created his life of unparalleled laid-back Up North–ness. But everything had changed for Mitchell when he’d started dating Bianca Sims, one of the most successful real estate agents in the region.

The high-powered and energetic Bianca pairing with Mitchell was not a combination anyone ever would have expected, but it was working so well for them that Mitchell was essentially living with her. Which was a relief to Mitchell’s sister and brother-in-law, in whose attic bedroom he’d been living.

I’d often wondered what Mitchell might have done with his life if he’d been born into a family that valued education. Looking at him now, though, it was hard to imagine him anywhere else or doing anything else other than managing Chilson’s toy store. A more natural fit was hard to imagine, and it was all due to Mitchell wanting to improve himself in order to win Bianca’s love.

“Doubt you’ll get much business today,” I said.

“There’s always something to do.” Mitchell set down the bag of salt he’d been holding and shoved his bare hands into his coat pockets. “Say, Minnie, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure. Fire away.”

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well, it’s a personal question.”

Silence reigned. I waited, waited some more, and finally said, “Okay. I can deal with personal.” At no point had any of my college professors warned me that librarians could become surrogate therapists, but as a librarian, and especially as a bookmobile librarian, I’d been asked to give career recommendations, about the right time to have children, and what I’d do if I’d been offered a big promotion a thousand miles away. “Go ahead.”

“Well.” He shifted again. “It’s Bianca.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Is there a problem?” Every time I saw the two of them together, they looked happy. Laughing, holding hands, all that.

“Well, it’s just . . .” He hung his head. “I want to, you know, take things to the next level, and I’m not sure how to do that.”

Alarmed, I started backing away. No way was I going to give Mitchell Koyne advice on the physical aspect of his relationship with his girlfriend. “Um, Mitchell, this isn’t something—”

“I mean, how do I know if she wants to make us a permanent thing? What if I’m reading things wrong? Because the last few weeks things have been a little weird. It’s like she’s impatient with me. And at Christmas she seemed really disappointed with her present.” He sighed. “I thought about it a lot and figured she’d really like what I gave her, a set of framed pictures for her office, of historic houses from all around here.”

It sounded like a great present, and I said so.

“Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “She acted happy and everything, but things haven’t been right since then.”

I relaxed. This was familiar territory. Every few months Mitchell went through a “What does she see in me?” phase. Oddly, Bianca seemed to occasionally suffer the same internal debate. “You’re not reading things wrong,” I assured him. “If you want a forever future with Bianca, why don’t you talk to her about it?”

He hesitated. “There’s this friend of mine. He took his girlfriend downstate to a baseball game last summer, the Tigers, and had them put his proposal on that big screen. Everyone was watching, and she . . .”

“She said no,” I said quietly. The video had been all over the Internet for days. I’d felt awful for the poor guy; I just hadn’t realized Mitchell knew him.

“Yeah. After, he told me he’d been so sure she’d say yes. So even if everything seems good between me and Bianca, how can I know for sure?”

I wanted to reassure him, but he had a point. How did anyone ever know for sure how someone else felt? About anything, really?

“Can you help me?” he asked. “Figure out how she feels? About me, I mean?”

What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t help? Not that Mitchell and I were friends exactly. But we were more than acquaintances, and if I could help out, I should.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Thanks, Minnie!” He grinned a wide Mitchell smile, and I was suddenly very glad I’d agreed to help. He slapped me on the shoulder and I staggered. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I forget sometimes how little you are. One more thing, don’t let Bianca know I talked to you about this, okay?”

I smiled a bit grimly. “I’ll do what I can,” I said again and, all the way to the library, wondered what on earth that might possibly be.

• • •

I spent the morning doing the post-bookmobile chores I should have done the day before but hadn’t because we hadn’t made it back to the library until long after closing time. At the time, my priority had been to get Eddie and me back to the boardinghouse safe and sound. After all, I was the only one who would care if I didn’t lug all the returned bookmobile books back into the library and process them, and I was willing to give myself a pass from having to do it on nights we didn’t get back until ten o’clock.