Лори Касс: Booking The Crook

There weren’t many places he could hide on the bookmobile, but even still, it took us a few minutes to find him tucked behind the 200–400 shelf of nonfiction books.

“What are you doing back there?” I peered at him. His yellow eyes blinked back. “Do you have any intention of ever coming out?” I fully expected to get a “Mrr” in reply, but he was silent. “Are you feeling okay, little buddy?”

“What did he say?” Julia asked.

“Nothing.” I reached in and petted him, expecting to feel a purr, and got nothing.

“He’s not sick, is he?”

“Probably he’s just tired. He only got twelve hours of sleep last night.”

Julia laughed. “The poor thing.”

“Yes, he needs his beauty rest.” I gave him one last pet. “I’m sure he’ll be fine with some sleep.”

But at the end of the stop, he still hadn’t moved. The few bookmobilers who’d shown up couldn’t entice him out to say hello, not even the five-year-old boy who jangled Eddie’s treat can. “He won’t come out,” the kid said. “Can you get him for me, Miss Minnie?”

Since Eddie still had his claws, I had no intention of doing anything remotely like that. “Our Eddie is feeling a little sick.” I took the can of treats away from the child. “When you’re sick, you stay home and sleep, right? Eddie likes to sleep behind books when he’s not feeling well.”

“He’s going to get better, isn’t he?”

“You bet.” I smiled at the boy. “He has a little kitty cold, that’s all.”

But I was concerned. This was not Eddie-like behavior. I’d never known him to have anything other than the occasional sneeze. As we closed up the computers, a low guttural whine issued from behind the nonfiction section.

“Something isn’t right,” I said to myself. But more than one thing wasn’t right, I realized. I looked at the stack of fantasy novels I’d specially selected for today. “Rowan never showed up.”

“She probably got busy and forgot,” Julia said.

Could be. But that wasn’t like Rowan. The only time she hadn’t shown up for her bookmobile stop was last fall, when she’d been downstate for a conference. She’d told me well in advance, and when she’d mentioned that she needed someone to water her plants, I’d volunteered, and now a tiny part of my brain was permanently stuck with the knowledge of the keyless entry code to her house.

It wasn’t like Rowan to order books and then ignore them. Not like her at all.

I looked at Eddie’s shelf, looked at Rowan’s books, and came to a decision. “Let’s go,” I said abruptly.

Julia, who’d been securing the rear chair, looked up. “That didn’t sound like the normal homeward-bound announcement.”

I pulled a suddenly willing Eddie out from behind the books. “We’re going to Rowan’s house.”

“Minnie—”

“It’ll only take a few minutes,” I said, cutting into her objection before it could get started. “And don’t tell her I told you, but Rowan has some sort of heart issue. She takes medication, but still.” I’d discovered this by accident, when I’d run into Rowan at the pharmacy a month or two ago, and she’d been discussing side effects of the medication with the pharmacist.

Julia’s chin took on an obstinate stance as we buckled up. “Isn’t this taking outreach a little far?”

Since I was captain of the ship, I could have ignored the question, but since I liked to have the support of my troops, I said, “Just a quick stop. It’s barely out of our way.”

This was true and Julia knew it, so she refrained from further comment on the subject. Actually, she refrained from any comment at all, something almost as unusual as Eddie refraining from snoring in the middle of the night. I glanced over a few times on the short drive, but each time Julia was studying the scenery out the passenger window with a concentration that telegraphed a clear message that she didn’t want to talk.

I sighed. Julia’s dislike of Rowan was deeper than I’d realized. And after dropping off Rowan’s books, I’d have to find out why. I did not want to have a mysterious issue hovering in the air between us.

By the time we were approaching Rowan’s house, I’d come to the conclusion that Julia was right, that I was going overboard. But with snow piled up on the sides of the road, there was no good spot on this stretch of road to turn the thirty-one-foot bookmobile around, so we were committed.

I was rehearsing both my delivery speech to Rowan (“Ding dong, bookmobile calling”) and my apology speech to Julia (“You were right, I was wrong, and I’m sorry”) when Julia sucked in a sharp breath.

My mouth opened to ask if she was okay, but what came out instead of a question was my own gasp.

“No, no, no . . .” I stammered, staring wide-eyed at the shape lying in Rowan’s driveway. The long, person-size shape.

I’d already started braking, but Julia was flying out the door and into the snow before the wheels stopped turning. Eddie’s howls rose as I set the parking brake and took off after my coworker.

We’d both taken multiple first aid courses and the training kicked into gear. Julia turned Rowan onto her back and checked for a pulse. She shook her head, unzipped Rowan’s winter coat, and started chest compressions. By the time I was on my knees next to Rowan, I’d already pulled out my phone and dialed 911.

“Emergency dispatch,” came the welcome voice. “Where is your emergency?”

I gave the location, then said, “We need an ambulance right away. She fell in the snow. We don’t know how long she was here. She doesn’t have a pulse. She doesn’t have a pulse, she doesn’t—” I heard the panic in my voice, stopped, then started again. “She’s in her driveway, she has a history of heart problems, and I’m afraid that . . . please . . .” I was holding the phone so hard it hurt, but I didn’t want to loosen my grip. If anything, I wanted to grip even harder, so help would arrive faster.

“We’re sending an ambulance right now, ma’am,” said the dispatcher calmly. “They should be there in less than ten minutes.”

“Stay. Alive,” Julia gasped out, the words coming out in time with the compressions. “Stay. Alive.”

“Are you able to perform CPR?” the dispatcher asked.

“Doing it,” I said. “Is there anything else we can do to help?” I looked around wildly, not sure what I was looking for. “There’s a snow shovel,” I said. “She must have been shoveling her driveway.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the dispatcher said. She asked about visible cuts and bruises, and I’m sure I answered her, but my attention was on Rowan and Julia.

“Stay. Alive.” Julia was still talking. “You turned. Down my. Sister’s. Second. Mortgage. She lost. Her house. But don’t. Die. Don’t. Die.”

I stared at Julia. No wonder she didn’t like Rowan. But here she was, doing her best to make sure a woman she had good reason to hate survived a heart attack. My throat tightened and I leaned forward, hands flat and ready. “My turn,” I said, and started compressions as Julia pulled away and sat back on her heels.

We knelt there, switching back and forth, until the ambulance arrived. The EMTs hurried out and took over. In seconds, Rowan was in a gurney with a uniformed EMT walking alongside doing compressions. Then she was inside, the back door shut, and they were off with lights flashing and siren blaring.

“She’s not going to make it, is she?” Julia asked quietly.

I watched the taillights of the ambulance recede into the distance. “No. She’s not.”

Chapter 2

That night I sat on a stool in Rafe’s dining room. Or what would eventually be a dining room. Right now it was partly a room where he was installing crown and floor molding, but mostly it was a storage room for his boxes of stuff. The boxes migrated as he went through renovation phases, and I’d lost count of how many times he’d moved his belongings from one room to another. Why he hadn’t rented a storage unit, or at least moved them to a room he’d declared as renovation-free, I had no idea.