Лори Касс - Cat With A Clue

The detective sat back. “The break-ins are the jurisdiction of the city police. If you have information, you should speak to them directly.”

Which he would prefer, I was sure. “It all ties in with the murder,” I said quickly. Though the city police were well trained and experienced, they weren’t the ones investigating Andrea’s death.

“How, exactly?” Inwood asked.

“It’s all about the books,” I repeated. He made a rolling motion with his hand, so I kept going. “As far as anyone can tell, nothing was taken from the sale room. And we know that nothing was stolen from the bookmobile or from Pam’s store. But it was the books in her store that were examined most closely.”

“What,” the detective said, hunching forward the tiniest bit, “makes you think it isn’t simple vandalism?”

“Two things,” I said. “One is that there’s been no real damage. Nothing has been taken, nothing maliciously destroyed. Sure, there were things broken at Pam’s store, but we did an inventory, and, considering the number of breakable items that could have been shattered into teensy-tiny bits, the number of things broken was surprisingly small.”

Thirteen, to be exact, and most of the broken bits had been from one large mirror. I’d swept up the pieces, hoping, for the first time ever, that the tale about the seven years’ bad luck for whomever had broken the mirror was true.

“And number two?” Detective Inwood asked.

“It was too much work,” I said.

His bushy eyebrows went up. “How’s that?”

The librarian was about to explain vandalism to the law-enforcement officers. It was a good day. “Straight vandalism,” I told them, “wouldn’t have been so thorough. Vandals go in, destroy everything in sight, and leave. Whoever broke into the bookmobile garage, Pam’s place, and the Friends’ room was very methodical. There are three thousand books on the bookmobile,” I said. “And each and every one was taken from its shelf and tossed onto the floor. Every one,” I repeated, tapping the scratched table with my forefinger. “Would any vandal be so thorough?”

Inwood and Ash looked at each other, and I knew I’d scored a point. “They were looking for something,” Ash said.

I nodded. “Had to be.”

Detective Inwood made a noise of dissent. “There are no ‘have to’s when you’re talking about crime,” he said. “You never know what people will do. But”—he put up a hand to stave off my knee-jerk protest—“you have a valid point.”

It took me a moment to realize that the detective had given me a compliment. Or, if not a compliment, at least it wasn’t a brush-off, and with Detective Inwood, that was pretty much the same thing.

“So, what I’m thinking,” I said, “is the person who killed Andrea is looking for a book. Andrea must have been, too, because why else would she have been in the library when it was closed? And since none of this happened until after Talia DeKeyser died, maybe the two things are linked. Maybe it was a book Talia owned, maybe it was valuable, and maybe both Andrea and her killer were trying to steal it.”

The detective frowned. “That’s a lot of maybes, Ms. Hamilton. And what book,” he asked, tapping the tip of his pen onto his notepad, which was still as pristine as snow on a winter’s morning, “could possibly be worth killing for?”

“Not that long ago,” I said, “one of Audubon’s first editions went up for auction and sold for almost twelve million dollars.”

The two men across the table from me blinked, but then Ash thinned his eyes to slits. “That book is, what, three feet tall? There’s no way one of those could be in the library without everyone knowing about it.”

I grinned. Having a well-educated boyfriend was kind of fun. “Just an example, gentlemen. There are other rare first editions that sell for a lot of money.”

“How much?” Inwood asked.

“There was a first folio of Shakespeare’s that sold for over six million,” I said. “And a Canterbury Tales that went for seven and a half.”

“Okay,” Inwood said, putting his pen to paper, “other than old first editions, what book could be worth killing over?”

“A signed copy of a rare first edition would send it to another price range, if the signature was authenticated.” I thought a little bit. “Or it could have been some sort of tell-all journal that was given away by accident.” I didn’t see how something like that could have gotten into circulation at the library, but the breaker-inner/killer wouldn’t necessarily know how the library put books into the system. Besides, the donations box for the Friends of the Library book sale had a sign that the library had first dibs on donations.

Inwood, who had been writing furiously, glanced up at me. “But why would something that rare be in the library or Ms. Fazio’s store?”

“Haven’t you ever watched Antiques Roadshow ? Rare things are found all the time in weird places.”

He thought, then nodded. “Anything else?”

“No, it’s just . . .” I put my hands in my lap, not wanting Ash or the detective to see how they’d turned into hard fists. Pam’s phone call was still fresh in my mind. Could you do me a favor? that strong and capable woman had asked hesitantly, as if she wasn’t sure I’d help her. As if she’d had been dealt a blow almost too hard to bear.

I looked at my hands, then directly at Inwood, staring him flat in the face. “Just find out who did this to Pam.”

Chapter 8

That evening, I intentionally immersed myself in lake water so cold that it made me feel as if the top of my head was going to blow off.

“It’ll get better,” Ash said. He was leaning off the back of a powerboat, ready and willing to give coaching advice.

“When?” I asked, teeth chattering.

“Soon as you’re up!” He grinned, and large parts of my insides went a little mushy at the idea that this incredibly good-looking man was dating me. Then again, I was in sixty-two-degree water with a wide board attached to my feet. Sure, I had a life jacket and was being watched over by a professional law-enforcement officer who also had EMT certification, but he wasn’t the one in the water, now, was he?

“It’s the getting-up part I’m worried about,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the noise of the motor. The boat behind which I was about to water-ski belonged to, and was being driven by, a friend of Ash’s, whom I was pretty sure he’d introduced as Tank. There was undoubtedly a story there, but to me, a thin guy with long sun-streaked hair and an easy smile could have had a more appropriate nickname.

“Hang tight to the towrope,” Ash said, “and remember the drills we went through on land.”

“Arms straight,” I said to myself. “Knees to my chin. Let the boat do the work.”

“Got it?” Ash called.

I nodded. Excitement and anxiety were knotting up together in my chest. I’d water-skied before, but never had I tried to slalom ski, to get up on one ski. Ash and I had gone out boating a couple of weeks ago with a different friend of his, and I’d looked on enviously as they had cut left and right behind the boat, sending up large rooster tails of spray.

“Next time we ski,” Ash had said, “if you want, I’ll show you how.”

I’d said sure, and now here I was, about to fail miserably. On the plus side, I had a ready-made excuse: Since I didn’t have quality goggles, I’d taken out my contacts, and the world was blurry around all its edges. On the minus side, my vision wasn’t that bad, so it wasn’t that great an excuse.

“No,” I said out loud.

“What’s that?” Ash called, cupping a hand to his ear. “Did you say roll?”