Лори Касс - Booking The Crook

Well, at least I now had a new restaurant to try. Oatmeal was great for a workday breakfast, but it didn’t really count as food.

I wandered to the nearest table, looked for a menu, and stopped short. Right there, in a wire rack right next to the salt and pepper shakers, was a stack of sugar packets. The same kind of sugar packet that Maple Staples had sold out of and that I’d recently added my name to a list to buy when available. The same kind that had been at Rowan’s house.

All my theories about limited access to this very special type of sugar vaporized in a second. Everyone had access to them. Everyone.

I was back to the beginning, and I had no idea what to do next.

Chapter 8

What do you think I should do next?” I asked.

Eddie, comfortable on my lap, which was covered with a fleece blanket, closed his eyes and purred.

“Give me a hint, please? Even a little one would help.”

“Help what?” My aunt plopped herself down at the end of the couch. The movement disturbed Eddie enough that he opened his eyes and picked his head up half an inch. “Now look what you did,” I said. “You disturbed his sleep for almost a second.”

Aunt Frances rubbed the fur on Eddie’s back leg. “Sorry, Mr. Ed. Next time you get up, I’ll treat you to a treat.” She turned her head, listening. “He’s purring. I think he forgives me.”

“Cats aren’t big on forgiveness,” I said, “but they can be bought. At least this one can.” I scratched Eddie alongside his chin and the purrs grew even louder.

My aunt smiled. “Tell you what. I’ll bring cat treats and make popcorn if you tell me why you’re asking the fuzzy one for advice instead of your wise old aunt.”

“That’s easy.” I kept scratching Eddie’s chin. “It’s because I don’t want to tell anyone what I’ve been doing.”

“And that is what exactly?”

I gave her a mock-exasperated look. “If I tell you, I’ll have told someone what I’m doing, and that’s what I’m trying to avoid, see?”

“Why?”

Another easy question. “Because I’ll get scolded for doing things I shouldn’t be doing.”

She laughed. “Dearest niece, I know full well that you’re trying to figure out who killed poor Rowan Bennethum.”

“You . . . do?”

“Please.” She snorted. “How long have we lived together? And how long have I known you? Wait, I remember. All your life.”

“Okay, so maybe I’m more transparent than I thought.” I rested my hand on Eddie’s back. “Do you think Rafe knows?”

“You haven’t told him, either?” Aunt Frances’s gaze zeroed in on my face. “Minnie, are you sure that’s wise?”

Right now I wasn’t sure about anything, and I said so.

“Part of being an adult,” my aunt said, nodding. “Which I recognize isn’t reassuring, but at least it’s honest.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “But I don’t see why not telling Rafe about this is a big deal. All I’m doing is a little extracurricular research, that’s all. Just an extension of being a librarian, is how I see it. Why does he need to know?”

“Mrr!”

“Sorry.” I released Eddie’s fur, which apparently I’d started to clutch a little too hard. “You get double treats for that.”

“He wasn’t objecting to your petting methods,” Aunt Frances said. “He was objecting to what could be pending doom for your relationship with Rafe.”

Stung, I said, “Just because I don’t tell him everything I do every second of the day? I don’t need to know that much about him, and he doesn’t need to know that much about me.”

“Not every daily detail, no. But don’t you think the man who is renovating that house with your every need, want, and desire in mind deserves to know, at least in general, what you’re doing, and why?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “How would you feel if he was keeping something like this from you?”

I tried the idea on for size and didn’t like how I was feeling. At all. For a long minute, I sat there and didn’t say anything. “You’re right. I need to talk to him about this.”

“Excellent.” My aunt smiled, and that alone made me feel a teensy bit better. “Time for popcorn and treats, not necessarily in that order.” She stood, and before I could get any further in my thoughts than a repeated, But how do I tell him I’m trying to figure out who killed Rowan? He’s not going to like it , she was back.

“Three treats for you, since you’re such a good cat.” Aunt Frances dropped the bits on the blanket just underneath Eddie’s chin. “And here’s yours.” She handed over a comfortable-size bowl of buttered and salted popcorn, keeping a twin bowl for herself.

“Now,” she said, settling back down. “Ask me what you should do next. I’ll tell you exactly what to do without even knowing what the topic is.” She stuffed a handful of popcorn into her mouth.

“One size fits all advice?” I laughed. “How about some insider information instead?”

She grinned. “Oh, goody. You have suspects and you need me to dish the dirt again, don’t you?”

“Exactly. First is Sunny Scoles. About my age, runs that new Red House Café I went to this morning.”

Aunt Frances shook her head. “Don’t know her.”

“How about Baxter Tousely? Bax, he goes by. He graduated from Chilson High School four years ago and works for the city.”

“Don’t know him, either.”

I scowled. “You’re not being much help. How about Stewart Funston?”

“Him I know.” She tossed a piece of popcorn into the air and caught it in her mouth. “How far back do you want? As far as I know, for the last thirty years he’s been a model citizen.”

“All information has the possibility to be useful.”

“That has the possibility of being true.” Another popcorn piece went in with a perfect arc. Sometimes it was hard to believe we were blood relations. “Back when Stewart was in high school—he was a string bean of a lad, if you can believe it—the principal suspended him from the football team because he got a ticket for Driving Under the Influence. The weekend after he was kicked off the team, someone broke into the principal’s office and destroyed everything in it. And by destroyed, I mean books ripped to shreds and furniture reduced to kindling.”

“That’s . . . awful. And Stewart did it?”

She shrugged. “They couldn’t prove it, but everyone in town assumed so.”

I shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. “Anger management issues, sounds like. But he grew out of that, right? I’ve never heard of him blowing up at anyone.”

Aunt Frances picked up another handful of popcorn. “It was a long time ago. But it was also a lot of damage.”

“Maybe it wasn’t him at all,” I said. “Besides, like you said, it was a long time ago.” And even though I’d seen Stewart with the Maple Staples sugar packet, that didn’t mean anything since they were apparently all over the place. “How about Hugh Novak?” I asked.

My aunt squished up her face. “He’s one of Those People.”

She’d clearly put capitals on Those People. “Which ones are those?”

“Every once in a while you run into someone you just can’t stand, can’t work with, don’t even want to be in the same room with because their personality is like fingernails on the chalkboard of your life. That’s what Hugh Novak is to me. He’s an arrogant jerk who thinks he’s the smartest person in the room, but half the time he’s dumber than a rock.”

I was laughing. “Don’t beat around the bush. Tell me what you really think.”

She held up a piece of popcorn and squeezed it flat. “Years ago, during a talk I was giving at a Rotary meeting about the benefits of vocational training, he said the only people who went into the trades were ones who couldn’t get into college.”