Лори Касс - Pouncing On Murder

I smiled. “You like raspberries?”

He nodded vigorously. “Lots and lots. With cream. And just a little sugar, not too much, Miss Neva says, or you won’t taste the berries.”

Mrs. Dugan make a tsk ing noise and glanced down the aisle to someone who I assumed was the child’s mother. “His mother,” Mrs. Dugan said, “is perhaps a trifle lackadaisical in her childrearing efforts.”

“What’s lack-a-daisy?” the child asked.

“Something you’ll learn when you grow up,” Mrs. Dugan said, patting him on the head.

The kid glared at her, then spun on his heel and went to his mother’s side.

“Miss Minnie?”

I turned to see a middle-aged man looking at me. “Excuse me,” I said to Mrs. Dugan, and went to help him.

He looked past me, then said in a soft voice, “I heard what Mrs. Nosy-Toes over there was saying and I wanted to make sure you got the whole story about Neva.”

“Okay,” I said, quietly and cautiously.

“No one,” he whispered, “but no one, has been inside the Chatham house in twenty years, not since her mother died.”

I blinked at him. “That can’t be right.”

“Ask around,” he said. “No one has been allowed past the porch since her mother’s coffin left the house. More than a little weird, don’t you think?” He tapped his temple, shook his head, and went back to perusing the bookmobile’s small selection of travel books.

So, according to the adults, Neva Chatham was an eccentric recluse who shouldn’t be allowed near children. According to the child, Neva was a friend. What I needed to do was talk to the boy’s mother and get another adult point of view.

But when I turned around, they were both gone.

• • •

“You have reached the Carters’ landline. Please leave a message at the tone.” Beep.

“Hi, Rachel,” I said. “This is Minnie Hamilton from the bookmobile.” I’d asked Mrs. Dugan the name of the young woman with the little boy and she’d told me all about Rachel and her husband and Rachel’s mother and father. She would have gone on, I’d been sure, to share decades-old gossip about Rachel’s grandparents, but I’d cut in as politely as I could and thanked her for the information.

But this was the second time I was leaving a message and I was starting to wonder if I was ever going to hear back. I left a brief message, gave my number, and asked her to call, then hung up.

“Well,” I said, “what do you think?”

Eddie, who was sitting on the houseboat’s dashboard, turned his head ever so slightly in my direction. He might have been responding to my question, but he also might have been watching the seagulls wheeling over the blue waters of Janay Lake.

It was late on Sunday morning, a beautiful day in early May, and I had yet to decide what to do with myself. Eddie and I had stayed in bed for a decadently long time, him snoring, me reading a lovely long mystery by Charles Todd and wishing for a restaurant that delivered breakfast.

But eventually I’d crawled out from under the covers into a bright blue day, showered, and walked up to the Round Table, where I’d indulged myself with their new offering of sour cream blueberry pancakes with a side of bacon brushed with maple syrup. The food was remarkably tasty, and the only problem was now I didn’t feel like doing anything.

“Vacation mode,” I told Eddie. “That’s the problem with going out to breakfast. It makes me feel as if I’m on vacation. Now I don’t want to do anything except play. Which is tempting, but there are things I should be doing.”

Eddie turned his head and, this time, looked directly at me.

“Not you,” I assured him quickly. “I’d never expect you to do anything. Honest. It’s me who should do something productive with my day. Since I have thumbs and all that.” I waggled said appendages at Eddie.

He stared at me with unblinking eyes. “Mrr!” he said sharply, and returned to his seagull contemplation.

Smiling, I slid into a comfortable slouch on the booth’s bench and peered at the stack of books I’d piled up during the week. Eventually I’d get up and do some laundry. Go for a walk. Go see Kristen. Something. But for now I was content to sit and read.

I was three chapters into All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr when my cell phone, which I’d put on the table, beeped with the incoming text tone. Since I was a happy little reading camper, I wasn’t sure I felt like responding to whoever was on the other end, but since you never knew when an emergency might turn up, I twisted my head around to look at the screen.

Tucker.

I pulled the phone toward me and tapped at the screen to view his text.

Hey, guess what? Been invited by boss to go to his condo on Lake Tahoe!

Multiple emotions flared at once. Pleasure, that Tucker got along so well with his boss that he’d be invited to a vacation home. Annoyance, that I obviously wasn’t part of the invitation. And puzzlement, because while I was sure Lake Tahoe was beautiful, why would you bother traveling so far to a lake when there were plenty in Michigan?

“Sitting on top of one right now,” I said to Eddie while I looked out at the wind riffling the tops of Janay Lake’s waves. And beyond the dunes, the mass of Lake Michigan lay just to the west. Clear water, clear skies, and not a single expressway within fifty miles. Maybe it wasn’t Lake Tahoe, but it was right here, right where my job and my life were.

I tapped out a message: Sounds like fun. When are you going?

I’d returned to my book and was half a dozen pages into the next chapter when Tucker’s next text came in.

Same week in July I was going north. Sorry, but I can’t pass up the opportunity. I’m sure U understand.

Oh, I understood all right.

I started thumbing a message full of fury and bitterness and scorn and hurt. Halfway through, my mother’s voice tapped me on my mental shoulder. Minnie, are you sure you want to do that?

“Absolutely,” I muttered, and kept tapping.

Minnie, she said, drawing out the vowels. How absolutely sure are you?

I cleared the text, tossed the phone to the table, and got up. I needed to move, to do something physical, and to not think for a few minutes.

Two hours later, every window on the houseboat was sparkling clean, inside and out. I stood outside on the front deck, hands on my hips, studying my efforts. “What do you think, Eddie?”

“Mrr,” he said.

“You’re right.” Cheerfully I patted his furry head. “I’m pretty sure they’ve never been so clean.” I went inside and picked up the phone, ready now to do what needed to be done, what couldn’t—or at least shouldn’t—be done via a text message.

I entered his cell number and, when he answered, started talking before he even got in a greeting. “Hey, Tucker. It’s Minnie. I think it’s time we call this relationship quits.”

Chapter 14

Kristen took one look at me across the crowded kitchen and grabbed the closest bottle of wine. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’m sure it will be better with a hefty dose of Merlot.”

I plopped myself on a tall stool and eyed the stemmed glass she was filling. “Alcohol does not cure problems.”

Without a word, she whisked away the glass and the wine bottle. “How about a big bowl of chocolate ice cream?”

“Can I have chocolate syrup?” My voice was plaintive.

“And whipped cream—the real stuff, not the kind you use—and chocolate sprinkles and a cherry on top.”

I sighed. “You are the best friend ever.”

“Of course I am.” Kristen nodded to Harvey, her sous-chef, and he went to work on what Kristen had ordered for me. For a couple of years, I’d thought that Harvey was in love with Kristen, but he seemed unfazed by her attachment to Scruffy.