Лори Касс - Cat With A Clue

“I’m not sure they believed Cade about its value. To them it was just a book that had been sitting on the sideboard.”

“Now, that I can believe.” Rianne pulled a tissue out of a box and dabbed at the coffee-colored spray on her papers. “But why would anyone think the book ended up in the library?”

“Because in her later years, your grandmother gave away a lot of things. Because I’m guessing it isn’t on the sideboard anymore.”

“Let’s find out.” Rianne put down her coffee mug and reached for the phone. “Honey? Can you go into the dining room? You know that pile of kids’ books on the sideboard? Is there a book about wildflowers in there?”

“ Wildflowers of Northern America ,” I said.

She nodded, passed on the title, and, after a few moments, said, “Thanks. I’ll tell you about it tonight.” She hung up the phone and looked at me. “It’s not there. And there’s nowhere else in the house it would be. It’s gone.”

Though that was what I’d expected, it was still a punch in the stomach.

The skin around Rianne’s mouth was tight. “Did Granny give it away, or did someone steal it?”

“If someone had stolen it from the house, Andrea wouldn’t have been in the library, looking for it.” At least that was my assumption. “I think your grandmother gave it away.”

Rianne relaxed a fraction, but only a fraction. “So, someone out there is willing to murder for the sake of this book?”

“For half a million dollars,” I said.

She blew out a long sigh. “My grandparents had a lot of people in that house over the years. It could be almost anyone. I just . . . I just hope it isn’t anyone I know.”

For her sake, I hoped so, too.

* * *

“Keep your elbows in.”

I nodded at Ash’s instruction, trying not to think that he sounded like my father had, years back when I was being taught table manners. I still didn’t honestly see why it was such a horrible thing to put your elbows on the table when you were eating a hamburger, especially if you were like me and had elbows that ended closer to the tabletop than most people’s, but I still couldn’t do it without feeling guilty.

Speaking of parents . . . “How did it go at your mom’s?” I asked.

Though Ash was about twenty feet away, over the flat water that was between us, there was no need to speak any louder than if he’d been right next to me. We were in kayaks, sitting low, and the world looked different from the way it did from a standing position. Though I’d canoed many times, this was my first-ever kayak outing, and I was already a convert. The only thing I had to unlearn from my earlier canoeing efforts was the elbow thing.

“All set,” he said.

He’d gone to his mom’s house to help her plant trees that a landscaping company had delivered the day before. Maples, to replace the ash trees that had been killed by the emerald ash borer. Since Ash’s name had come from how much his mother had loved those trees, it had only made sense that the human Ash work on the replacements.

“I would have been glad to help.” Digging hard into the water with the paddle’s blades, I sent the kayak scooting forward fast.

“Hey there, Speedster!” Ash laughed and caught up to me in seconds. “I told Mom you’d be happy to help, but she said she didn’t want to bother you.”

There was a small kernel of worry tucked away in a corner of my tummy. It was a stone kernel that had the name Lindsey Wolverson etched into its surface, and I had no idea what to do about it. Maybe it was a personality thing and we would never get along. Or maybe it was something I’d done, but I had no idea what. Then again, it was possible that she just didn’t like short people.

“What’s so funny?” Ash asked.

I glanced over. In the year that I’d known him and the few weeks we’d been dating, the thing I liked most about him was that he kept an open mind. There was no possible way that he had been raised by a mother who was prejudiced.

“Lots of things are funny,” I said. “Take the duck-billed platypus, for—”

The low growling sound of a big boat’s motor came up fast behind us. “Boat coming up,” Ash called. “Turn to face it diagonally, okay?”

Without too much flailing around, I did as he said, and was in proper position to take the boat’s wake when it passed underneath us.

The boat itself was a charter fishing boat headed for the channel and the open waters of Lake Michigan. On board were the typical passengers: men in their forties to early fifties, wearing jeans, fleece jackets, and baseball caps with downstate team names. A grizzled man was behind the boat’s wheel, his skin crinkled from too many years without enough sunblock. The boat’s single crew member was a tall man who was busying himself by stowing coolers and checking fishing gear, joking with the passengers, and constantly adjusting his hat.

Mitchell Koyne.

I watched the boat slide past and stared at Mitchell the entire time. When it had gone by and we’d ridden out the bobbing wake, I turned to Ash. “Did you see that?”

“Yeah,” he said, watching the boat’s stern grow ever more distant. “A bunch of guys out having a lot of expensive fun.”

His tone was a little envious, and I hoped that the next activity he taught me wasn’t going to include rods and reels and sharp hooks, because I didn’t see the attraction to sitting in a boat for hours on end, hoping you were clever enough to outsmart a fish. “Mitchell Koyne was crewing.”

“Heard he was working hard this summer.” Ash turned his kayak to run parallel with the lake’s shore, and I did the same. “Maybe he’s trying to save enough money to buy a house. He’s lived with his sister for how long? I bet her husband’s ready to see him go.”

Though that last part was undoubtedly true, I was fairly sure Mitchell’s new work ethic wasn’t a product of his brother-in-law’s urgings.

“I’ve been thinking about what you told Hal this morning,” Ash said.

For a moment, I had no idea what he was talking about. Hal who? I almost asked, then, at the last second, I remembered that Detective Inwood, unlike Lieutenant Columbo, did indeed have a first name, and that it was Hal.

When Ash had arrived at the marina with two kayaks, I’d given him the same spiel I’d given the detective as we wrestled the boats off the top of his SUV and into the water.

“And?” I asked now. “Please tell me you had a magical leap of insight. A brilliant flash. Any kind of flash.”

“Sorry.” Ash leaned back and rested his paddle across the kayak’s cockpit. “What I was thinking was that almost everybody in town worked for Benton’s at one point in their life. I grew up in Petoskey, so I don’t know for sure, but from what I heard, the DeKeysers treated all of their staff like family.”

“A dysfunctional family?”

Ash laughed. “What other kind is there? No, what I meant was that I’ve heard people who worked at Benton’s say it wasn’t unusual for staff to be invited to the DeKeyser’s house for lunch or dinner.”

Outstanding. “So anyone who ever worked at Benton’s could have noticed that copy of Wildflowers .”

“Yup.” Ash glanced over. “Which means the people who might know about the book’s value could be anyone from all the DeKeysers to Shane Pratley to Rafe to the mayor.”

“Shane worked at Benton’s?”

“Well, sure.” Ash frowned. “I thought you knew. He was more or less in charge at Benton’s when Deke and Talia handed over the management to Rianne. Shane was fine with that until Rianne moved back to run the store hands-on. He quit cold and went to work at the grocery store.”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t know.” But suddenly Shane’s anger made . . . well, not sense, but at least now I knew there was a reason behind it. But was he angry enough to kill? I looked up at the big blue sky. Though it sent no answers, it was clear that Ash needed to know about Shane’s temper. I sighed. “There’s something I have to tell you.”