Лори Касс - Pouncing On Murder

I flopped my arms on my desk and laid my head down. Clearly there was a lot more to the art of delegation than I’d realized. What was I going to do? I had to e-mail the flyer to area newspapers soon or they wouldn’t get printed in time to get inserted. And if they didn’t get inserted in time . . .

I grabbed my already empty ABOS coffee mug and headed back to the break room. Maybe Holly or Josh would still be in there. And no matter what, caffeine would help. Plus, if there was a cookie or two left, how could that be bad?

The break room was empty, which was technically good, because Holly and Josh and everyone else all had jobs to do, but bad for me because I’d hoped for a temporary distraction . . . and there it was.

Mitchell Koyne, whom I’d recently seen dozens of miles away, was standing at the front desk. I could detect no outward sign that a woman was involved in his life; he looked the way he always did. Hands in his pockets, his baseball hat on backward, and stubble on his face. How he managed to have a constant eighth-inch of beard I didn’t know and would never ask.

“Hi, Mitchell,” I said.

“Hey, Min.” He grinned. “What’s cooking?”

I turned my empty coffee mug upside down. “Not a thing.”

Mitchell’s laugh was loud and deep. It was hard not to smile when Mitchell laughed, and I glanced around. Yep, every single person I could see was smiling, from Donna, a part-time desk clerk, to the ancient Mr. Goodwin, down to Reva Shomin’s youngest, who was just learning to walk.

“So, what,” I asked, “were you doing out at Bub’s Gas this morning?”

His laughter ended and his smile faded. It was as if his face had stopped. “I . . . uh . . .”

“Come on.” I winked. “I know it was you. That hat? That height? I was coming back from Alpena and stopped for something to eat.” And there were still popcorn kernels stuck between my teeth. “What were you doing way out there?”

“Um.” He stared at me blankly, then glanced at the clock on the wall. “Look at the time. I gotta go. Talk to you later, Minnie, okay?” He slouched off and was out the front door before my mouth could open.

“Wow.” Donna was leaning on the counter, watching Mitchell. “I didn’t know he could move that fast.”

Not once, in all the years I’d known Mitchell, had I ever seen him pay attention to the time. I wasn’t even sure his watch actually worked.

“You saw him out at Bub’s?” Donna asked. “What the heck was he doing out there? I wouldn’t have thought Mitchell even knew how to get out of Tonedagana County.” She laughed.

I smiled vaguely and wandered back to the break room. I still needed coffee and I still needed a book fair flyer. But now I was also wondering why Mitchell was being so weird.

Mitchell was a constant in our library life, a fixture almost as permanent as the fireplace in the reading room. I didn’t like it that he was acting so differently. I didn’t like it at all.

Chapter 5

The next day was a bookmobile day, and because of some social arrangements of Julia’s that were too complicated for me to I understand, near the end of the day I dropped her off in the retail area of a small town. She gave Eddie an air kiss good-bye and waved at me, and after I closed the door behind her, we headed off to make a few drop-offs to the homebound folks.

The afternoon had grown thick with fog and I drove slowly along the narrow, hilly, twisting roads, watching carefully for deer, cars, and any pedestrians silly enough to go for a walk late on a dank, thick April day.

Mrs. Koski was all smiles when I handed her a bag of history books about late nineteenth-century Asia, and Mr. Blake gave me a nod of approval when I gave him a hefty pile of Nicholas Sparks and Janet Evanovich.

“You’re not judging, are you?” I asked Eddie when I slid back into the driver’s seat. “Because you have that look on your face.”

The look he had was more of sleep than judgment, but it amused me to pretend that he had opinions about these things. “Reading across gender lines is a good thing,” I told him. “Species lines, too. Tell you what, next book I check out for you will be The Poky Little Puppy. ”

I glanced over and saw that his eyes had opened.

“Okay, you’re right,” I acknowledged. “You’re past that reading level. How about Old Yeller ? Because watching the movie doesn’t count.”

He didn’t seem any more interested in that offering.

“Yeah, too depressing,” I said. “How about . . . hey, I got it. The Chet and Bernie books. You know, by Spencer Quinn? Chet’s a dog and Bernie’s a private investigator. You’ll love Chet. He failed K-9 school and—”

“MrrrOOO!”

Eddie’s howl hurt my ears, and wincing, I glanced at the clock. When Eddie started howling like that, it meant one of two things. Either he felt like howling or he was about to urp up his lunch. “Are you okay, pal? Because if you’re just being Eddie-like and not feeling sick to your stomach, I have a new bag of books for Adam I’d like to deliver.”

Eddie didn’t say anything, and when I sneaked a quick look over, his face was mushed up against the carrier’s wire door. Half his whiskers were sticking out and he was staring at me with unblinking yellow eyes.

Truly he was the weirdest cat in the universe. But since he didn’t look as if he was in distress, I stopped at a wide spot in the road and put on the four-way flashers. I pulled out my cell—Half strength! Hooray!—and called the Deerings’ house.

“Hey, Adam, it’s Minnie. I have a bag of books for you, if you want them.”

“Does a drowning man want a rope?” he asked. “Does a starving man want bacon? No, that’s a poor metaphor. A man wants bacon three times a day. Four if his wife would let him.”

I laughed. “I’m about ten minutes away, but it’ll take me about that long to walk up the hill.”

“Timing is everything,” Adam said. “I’ll meet you at the mailbox. I was headed out there anyway. Someone from FedEx just called, saying they were dropping off a package. I didn’t know they called ahead. Must be an Up North thing.” He laughed.

I’d never heard of FedEx calling anyone, either, but then I always had things delivered to the library, so what did I know? Frowning, I said, “You’re not walking, are you? I know you want to recover as quickly as possible, but—”

“Relax,” he said. “I’m taking the car. The one with the automatic transmission.”

“You’re a smart man.”

“Make sure you tell Irene, okay? She thinks I’m an idiot.”

Since I knew for a fact that his wife thought he was handsome, brilliant, and the best husband in the world, I just said, “See you in a few.”

But ten minutes later, I was still a quarter mile from his house. The fog had thickened to the point of opacity and I was driving at a rate that didn’t even register on the speedometer.

I’d heard some explanations for the spring fogs. Some made sense, that the thawing of the winter-frozen earth chilled the adjacent air, causing a deep ground fog, and some didn’t, case in point being Rafe’s straight-faced story that spring fogs indicated how deep the snow would be the next winter.

“Who knew that fog could get so thick?” I muttered. “If the fog in London is thicker than this, I don’t want to have to ever walk through it.”

Eddie didn’t comment, and I didn’t dare look away from the road to see what he was doing. Slowly and carefully I found the barnyard entrance next to Deering’s driveway without going past even once, turned in, and parked.

I unbuckled my seat belt. “I won’t be gone long, so—”

“Mrr!”

“Eddie—”

“Mrrrw!”