Лори Касс - Booking The Crook

He smiled, looking satisfied. “I know you’ll do your best, and that’s all anyone can ask. Thank you, Minnie.”

But I knew he was wrong. Doing your best wasn’t always enough. Sometimes it wasn’t anywhere near enough.

• • •

After Otto went home, I ate a dinner of leftovers—hardly any dishes to wash, how handy!—and carried Eddie downstairs to help me watch a couple episodes of Detectorists . It was a BBC show that amused me immensely, and now I had a mission, to see if anyone on the show ever said ‘guts for garters.’

Though I didn’t hear anything about garters, the show made me laugh and distracted me nicely, so it was a surprise when I spent the night tossing and turning so much that Eddie abandoned me. Come morning, I found him on the dining room buffet. “Really?” I asked. “That’s where you spent the night? Perched on a hard piece of wood? Sleeping there was better than snuggling with me?”

My cat looked at me and didn’t say a thing.

“Love you, too, pal,” I said, planting a kiss on the top of his head as I went past.

In the kitchen, Aunt Frances was a whirlwind of activity. Coffee was brewing, her lunch was on the counter only half made, and the microwave was counting down to zero.

“Morning.” I went to the silverware drawer for spoons. “How was the bird’s-eye?” I’d already been in bed when I’d heard the front door. “You were out late. What did you do, start a project with it already?”

“Good morning,” she said. “Could you get the oatmeal? Thanks. The wood is wonderful, but I need to move it right away. Death in the family, house is sold, and if I don’t get it out before the closing date, it’s the property of the new owners.”

“Would they even want it? Maybe they’d be fine giving you an extra week or two.” I was no woodworker, but even I knew that moving wood was a laborious process.

“Don’t know, and I don’t want to ask. It’s bird’s-eye.” She spoke almost reverently.

“Do you have any place to store it?”

She nodded. “There’s room in my storage unit. I just have to move a few things.”

My aunt’s storage unit was on the north side of town and contained nothing but wood. Rough-sawn wood, planed and milled wood, stumps, bits of specialty woods from faraway places, and even some pedestrian two-by-fours. I’d been there only a handful of times, and though the contents changed, the volume always seemed the same. Packed to the gills. I tried not to think about it because there was an inevitability about the fact that someday I would have to deal with the contents.

Trying to be a good niece, I asked, “Do you need any help?” Since I’d scheduled myself for the noon to close shift at the library that day, I could give her a hand. I had other plans, but if she needed me, of course I’d change them.

“You are a kind soul and thank you, but no. I have some students who volunteered to help if they could walk away with some bird’s-eye of their own.”

It sounded like an excellent plan and I told her so.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Or it will be as long as we can get the door to the storage unit open after that freezing rain.”

“Hot water,” I said promptly. “Take a thermos of hot water and pour it along the door’s seal.”

My aunt stared at me with frank admiration. “Brilliant. I am proud to be related to you.”

“Voice of experience is all. The bookmobile’s garage door sticks sometimes in winter and that works fast. Just make sure to dry off that rubber seal.”

Aunt Frances laughed. “You are a treasure trove of practical knowledge. Do your parents know this about you?” She got up from the kitchen table, having eaten her oatmeal so fast that pouring it might have been slower.

“No one is a prophet in her own home.”

“Is that a quote?”

I thought about it. “Not as far as I know, but then I read a lot.”

“Well, I’m off.” She bagged up her lunch and grabbed an empty thermos. “I’ll get this filled at the school when I’m picking up the kids. See you tonight!”

A few seconds later, the front door shut. “I hope she slowed down enough to put on her boots,” I said to Eddie, who had wandered into the kitchen. “A coat would be good, too, since it’s only twenty degrees out there.”

“Mrr,” he said, jumping onto his chair.

“I’m sure you’re right. She probably slid right into those nice wool-lined duck boots without breaking stride.” I scraped up the last of my oatmeal. “And if you see Otto, could you please tell him this morning wasn’t the right time to talk to her about the furniture?”

“Mrr!”

That hadn’t sounded like agreement, but I could have been wrong. “Cool. Thanks.”

I washed the dishes, patted Eddie on the head, and headed out for my first self-imposed chore of the morning.

• • •

The sign at the road was mostly covered with snow, but enough was visible for my brain to fill in the bottom part. Maple Staples. This was the company that sold the sugar packet I’d found at Rowan’s. Well, technically, Eddie had found it, but I wasn’t about to tell that to my friends in law enforcement. They barely tolerated my ideas; letting them know some of them came from a cat wasn’t going to get Hal or Ash to take the ideas more seriously.

The building was a typical Up North manufacturing facility; large pole barn with metal siding and an office tacked on the front. The parking lot, thankfully, was plowed reasonably well and held half a dozen vehicles. I parked between a four-wheel drive pickup and an all-wheel drive SUV and went in.

“Hello.” From behind a wooden desk worn at the corners, a twenty-something man with long hair and an even longer beard smiled at me. “Can I help you?”

Smiling back, I said, “I certainly hope so,” and went ahead with the truth-stretching story I’d concocted early that morning. With any luck it would sound just as solid now as it had at 3 a.m. “You’re the folks that make that maple-flavored sugar, right? Well, it turns out that stuff is basically addictive and I have this friend who would love me forever if I could track down a case of it. He can’t find it anywhere and . . .” I stopped, because his smile had turned rueful and he was shaking his head.

“Sorry. We sold the last box a month ago to a restaurant in Traverse City.”

“What restaurant?” I asked. “Maybe they still have some and—”

Again the head shake. “Nope. It’s all gone. They called last Friday and asked for more.”

Huh. Maybe the stuff really was addictive. “That’s too bad.” Sort of. I didn’t really care if I bought any; I just wanted to know more about the product and how it might have ended up in Rowan’s house. “It seems very popular. I’m surprised I haven’t seen it before now.”

“We’ve only been in business a couple of years,” the guy said. “My boss and her husband are really into beer, but Bob can’t stand the smell of wort—that’s beer before it ferments—so beer was out when they started thinking about a startup company. But you know how some craft breweries have lots of short runs?”

In a general sort of way. I nodded.

“That’s what we’re doing with our maple syrup. Lots of different products, smaller production quantities. We make things from that sugar to ice cream to a barbecue glaze.” He spread his arms. “And it’s all local.”

“Really?” I’d known Michigan was a big producer of maple syrup, but I’d never thought about added-value products. Yet another reason I was never going to be an entrepreneur.

“And like some craft breweries,” he said, “we’ve decided to relabel products every year. The contents don’t change, but the labeling does. That’s why you might not have seen that sugar packet before—last fall was the only time it was made.”