Лори Касс - Pouncing On Murder

“Move,” I muttered to myself. Whenever I was stuck on a problem, it always helped me to get up and move around, and this was a problem of serious magnitude.

I’d found a new venue for the fair, I’d started a phone tree to notify all the vendors about the new location, and I’d even convinced a local printer to slap together some temporary signs. When he’d said he didn’t have any electricity to print anything, I pushed away my panic and asked him to summon his creative abilities and see what he could do by hand.

“You mean with real paint?” he’d asked. “And brushes?”

Wildly I’d wondered if anyone still made poster paint. “Absolutely with real paint,” I’d said. “In any color you want, as long as people can read it.”

He’d made an interested noise and said he’d come up with something. “I’m not going to promise it’ll be pretty,” he cautioned.

I’d reassured him that communication was the only thing that mattered, thanked him profusely, and had gone on to the next call, which was to the current president of the Friends of the Library. I’d told Denise where to take the food and beverages they’d planned to sell for a nominal fee at the event. “There’s no electricity,” I’d told her, “so you might need to track down coolers and ice and whatever else you need to keep things cold or warm. It’s a mess down here, a huge mess, and—”

“Minnie,” she’d said calmly, “don’t worry about a thing. We’ll be there.”

I’d gulped down a grateful sob. Denise and I didn’t see eye to eye on . . . well, almost everything, and it was reassuring to know that she would rise to the occasion. I’d thanked her, then ended the call. Which was when I’d started staring at the untidy world, trying to think what needed doing next, and told myself I needed to start moving.

So I leaned over and started picking up sticks and branches and leaves from the sidewalk. It was a pointless task, since the crew that did our regular lawn and landscaping maintenance would do the job properly in a day or three, but it felt good to do something.

“Minnie?”

I looked up. Ash Wolverson was standing not ten feet away. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and shorts and I was suddenly quite sure that I’d never seen him wearing shorts before, because I would have remembered that his legs, on a one-to-ten scale, were at least a nine-point-five.

“Are you going to cancel?” he asked. “The fair, I mean?”

“Not a chance,” I said. “New location, but the show will go on.” The sticks in my hand suddenly felt heavy and I decided not to explain what I was doing. It would take too long and there was no way I would look good at the end of the story. New subject, then.

“Have you talked to Detective Inwood?” I asked. “I called him yesterday with some information and he said he’d be talking to you.”

But Ash was shaking his head. “I had a couple of days off. I’ll be in the office tomorrow, though.”

“Oh.” I tore my gaze away from his muscular legs. “Well, that’s good,” I said vaguely.

“Do you need some help?” Ash gestured at the vast mess surrounding us.

“Thanks, but we have a grounds crew. I’m sure they’ll get to us as soon as they can.”

Ash glanced at the sticks in my hands. My face grew warm and I knew I was about to start babbling. “It’s just—”

“See you later, Minnie,” he said, turning away.

“Wait!”

He stopped, then came halfway back, but he didn’t say anything.

“So,” I said, “the other day, when you . . . well, back then, things were different.”

“Things?” he asked.

In a perfect world, I would have thought about what I’d say before blurting out everything that was in my head. “I’m not seeing that doctor anymore,” I said. “In reality, I haven’t for weeks. Months, even. It just took this long to make it official.”

“Oh.” Ash put his hands in the front pocket of his sweatshirt. “Sorry to hear that.”

“No, no,” I said. “It’s good. Things weren’t working out and—” And there was no way Ash wanted to hear any of those details. “So I was wondering if . . .”

“If what?” Ash asked.

I wanted to stamp my foot. Why was he making this so hard? Then I detected a small smile twitching up one side of his face. “You know,” I said.

“Nope.” He grinned. “I’m just a dumb cop. You’re going to have to spell it for me.”

Of all the things Ash was not, dumb was at the top of the list. But I’d already turned him down twice when he asked me out, so it was only fair that I make the move.

“Would you like to go to dinner?” I asked, my heart suddenly beating loud, my breaths coming fast. “With me? Sometime?”

His grin eased into a kind and exceedingly attractive smile. “Anytime,” he said.

Just then, Gordon’s truck came to a screeching halt in the parking lot. He leaped out and rushed to his tents. “Oh, man,” he said, looking at the damage. “Minnie, I am so sorry. I can get some of my guys here. We can maybe get some of these back up, but . . .” He shook his head. “I am so sorry.”

Later we would hear that the storm had pushed one-hundred-mile-an-hour winds through a narrow swath of the county. Straight-line winds, they called them, that could create damage on par with a minor tornado. In some ways we’d been lucky, because the worst of the winds had hit outside town on state forestry land.

I smiled at him. “Not your fault. I’ve found a new place to hold the fair. Not ideal, but it’ll work.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Gordon asked. “Anyone you want me to call?”

And suddenly I remembered the one person I should have talked to long ago. “Stephen,” I said, and started laughing. “I really should tell my boss about this.”

• • •

A few fast hours later, I took a long look at all the activity going on about me and sucked in a huge sigh of relief. In spite of everything that Mother Nature had tossed at us, the book fair had not been canceled. It was actually turning out to be what you might call a success.

“Hey, Minnie.” Josh was walking toward me, carrying a box of books. “Where do you want these?”

I stood on my tiptoes to peek at the contents. More cookbooks. I pointed toward the long line of people who were waiting for their chance to get a signed copy of Trock’s first-ever publication. “Over there. Thanks.”

“Miss Librarian?” A small child stood in front of me, looking up with big unblinking eyes. “Is there anywhere I can get a book about horsies?”

“You bet,” I said. “See that table over there, the one with a red tablecloth? They have some wonderful books about horses and barns and . . .” I’d never gone through a horse phase, and the appropriate terms weren’t coming to mind. “. . . And saddles and boots.”

The child ran off, followed by a smiling father, who thanked me.

It seemed that the entire huge room was filled with smiling people, a fact that was stunning, yet somehow not surprising, given how things were turning out.

My first frantic phone call that morning had been to Rafe. Most Saturday mornings he’d have still been in bed at eight o’clock, but since I’d seen him outside his house already, I knew he was awake.

“I need a favor,” I’d asked.

“Okay.”

“A really big one.”

“Can it wait? Because I don’t know if you remember, but I have a tree on my house.”

“It’s only part of a tree and it’s your porch and I need to borrow the middle school’s gym.”

There’d been a pause.

“I’ll help with your tree later,” I’d said quickly. “But the tents are smashed and I need a new place to hold the fair. There’s not enough room in the library.”