Лори Касс - Cat With A Clue

“Mrr!”

“Yeah, whatever.” Grinning, I squinted through the rain. “You’re out of practice, pal. As I recall, the last time you talked to a female feline, there was a lot of fur flying and you weren’t the clear victor.” Last winter, my aunt Frances’s new love interest, Otto, had brought over his adorable little gray cat, hoping the two would become friends, but all had not gone well.

I flicked on the turn signal and made a right into the library’s back parking lot, which was the only place Stephen had allowed me to site a garage for the bookmobile. It was a very small garage, not much bigger than the bookmobile itself. This made hefting books back and forth to the library more than a small chore, but at the time I’d accepted his conditions willingly, because it was either accept or not have a bookmobile at all.

“If that estate ever gets settled,” I told Eddie, “what do you think the chances are that I’ll get to use some of that money for a real garage?”

“Mrr.”

“You think so?” Because he’d sounded optimistic. “That would be wonderful. And maybe the new Stephen will let me . . .” I trailed off. Holly and Josh and Donna and Kelsey and everyone else on the staff were still after me to turn in my application. “I could be the new Stephen. What do you think of that?”

“Mrr!”

I frowned. “It’s not that unlikely. I’m doing an okay job so far. It’s not that much of a stretch to—”

“MRR!” Eddie howled, banging his whole self against the carrier’s wall, thumping so hard that I winced.

“Will you stop that? What’s wrong with—”

It was then that I noticed the people door to the bookmobile garage wasn’t closed up tight. In fact, it wasn’t closed at all. I braked to a sudden stop.

There wasn’t a single, solitary chance I’d left that door unlocked, let alone standing wide-open. There were things I routinely forgot, such as going to the dentist every six months and making sure I dusted the top of the kitchen cabinets, but I would never, ever forget to shut and lock the bookmobile’s garage door.

So there were two possibilities. One, last night’s wind had broken the door open. But since the door had remained firmly shut throughout the massive storm of a few weeks ago, when hundred-mile-an-hour, straight-line winds had rushed through town, that didn’t seem likely. Unfortunately, the other possibility was far more troubling.

My heart beat fast as I put the car in park and opened the driver’s door. I had to find out what had happened, I had to see what was—

“Mrr!”

I looked at my cat.

“Mrr!” he said again, glaring at me.

“You’re right,” I muttered, sitting down. “It would be stupid to go barging in there.”

I reached down, pulled my phone out of my backpack’s outer pocket, and dialed three numbers. Then I took a deep breath and unclenched my jaw so that I’d be able to respond when the dispatcher asked about my emergency.

“I’d like to report a break-in,” I said.

Chapter 5

“You seem to be making a habit of this,” Officer Joel Stowkowski said, eyeing the mess that had once been a tidy bookmobile.

“Well,” I said, still doing my best not to sit down on the carpeted step and bawl like a toddler, “you know what they say: Bad habits are six and a half times easier to create than good ones.”

Joel quirked up a smile. He was probably fifty years old, and was known throughout town as a good guy. Ash, who had first worked at the Chilson Police Department before moving to the sheriff’s office, said he had a nasty tendency to think puns were the highest form of humor, but so far that hadn’t bothered me. “Six and a half times?” he asked. “You’re making that up.”

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

Joel peered into the cat carrier, which I’d set onto the bookmobile’s console. “Was he asking the same thing or coming to your defense?”

“He was wondering where his treats went.” I nodded at the empty shelf near Joel’s left shoulder. “They used to be up there. Now . . .” I looked at the thousands of books, CDs, DVDs, and magazines strewn all across the floor and, once again, felt tears prick at my eyes. Buck up, Minnie, I told myself. You can’t fall apart now; there’s too much to do. “He’ll probably,” I said, “turn up his nose at treats that have been handled by a burglar, and demand new ones.”

“Yeah,” Joel said. “Cats are like that.” He reached out and patted the top of the carrier absently. “Well, Minnie, I’ll do what I did yesterday upstairs—take pictures, take a close look at the doors and windows, and take fingerprints in the appropriate places.”

I nodded. If I ever got tired of working at the library, maybe I’d start a forensic-cleaning business. After all, I now had more experience getting rid of fingerprint dust than most people would get in two lifetimes.

“This is probably a stupid question at this point,” he went on, “but do you see anything missing?”

I just looked at him.

He grinned. “Told you it was a stupid question.”

“The computers are still here.” I gestured at the two laptops—one up front, the other at the back. “Of course, they’re bolted in.”

“I’ll take prints on those, too. We already have yours for elimination. Is there anyone else who uses the computers regularly?” After I told him I’d have Julia stop by the police station to get fingerprinted, he said, “Okay, then. Let me get the camera from the car and I’ll get going.”

He turned to go, then stopped and swung back around. His face, normally creased with a smile, was serious. “I have no idea what’s going on here, Minnie, but we will find out. Between us and the sheriff’s department, we’ll figure out who did this and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”

I swallowed away another round of pending tears. “Thanks, Joel,” I said quietly. “That means a lot.”

“Maybe it was just kids messing around, maybe it was someone else. But no one is going to get away with breaking into our library and our bookmobile.”

“Our library,” he’d said. “Our bookmobile.” Was any librarian ever so lucky as I was? In the guise of scratching my face, I rubbed away my tears. “I believe you.”

He gave me a sharp nod and trod down the steps. I sat heavily onto the passenger’s seat, giving myself three minutes to cry.

When that was done, I started thinking. First, I had to call Julia. Then there were the calls to make to the day’s bookmobile stops, giving them the bad news that the bookmobile wasn’t coming. I hated to do that, but there was little choice. If Joel’s work yesterday at the Friends’ sale room was any indication, he’d be here for a couple of hours. And then all the books needed to be shelved and checked against the computer to make sure nothing was missing.

I looked over at Eddie, who was staring at me. “What do you think?”

“Mrr,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s way past time to install security cameras, isn’t it.”

“Mrr.”

* * *

By lunchtime, I was almost ready to cry again, but this time from the wonderfulness of human beings. I’d called Julia to give her the news, and, without a word of suggestion from me, she, in turn, had called Denise, who had immediately harnessed the tremendous power of the Friends of the Library.

When Joel declared himself done with the documentation of the scene, half a dozen strong-minded men and women wielding vacuum cleaners, spray bottles, and rags went to work. Behind them came another equally strong-minded group who sorted and shelved and called out book titles to the people behind the computers.

“It’s amazing,” I murmured as I peered out my office window. Denise and her crew had banished me to the library, and I’d reluctantly done as they’d asked.