Лори Касс - Borrowed Crime

Puzzled, I went on. “I work at the library here in town and”—I paused for my coup de grâce—“two or three times a week I drive the bookmobile.” I waited for his reaction. If this guy didn’t respond to the mention of a bookmobile, he was a lost cause.

He wasn’t. His lips started to curl up at the corners, curving into what ended up as a very attractive smile.

“Minnie?”

I turned. Aunt Frances stood on the porch, waving a cordless phone at me. “Phone call for you, dear!”

“Be right there,” I called, turning back to Mr. Bingham.

But his front door was already closing with a soft click .

I squinted at it, then shrugged and trotted across the street.

“Who is it?” I asked, taking the phone from my aunt’s hand.

She started doing what generous people might have called a hula, so I knew it was Kristen on the other end of the line. Not that anyone did the hula in Key West, but, then again, I’d never been to Key West, so what did I know?

“Do people do the hula down there?” I nodded a thanks to my aunt, who had opened the front door for me.

“Da dah dah daaaa,” Kristen sang.

“Seriously?”

She snorted. “No idea. Us locals don’t pay attention to that touristy stuff. We’re too busy enjoying the sunshine and warm air.”

“It was warm here today,” I protested.

“I can Google your weather reports, you know. Plus, that webcam the city has downtown showed all sorts of snow on Saturday. And now rain.”

That darn Internet. “I like snow.”

“Yeah, and I like beating my head with a hammer because it feels so good when I stop.”

With our standard opening greetings done, there was a pause. “So, what’s going on down there?” I asked. “Anything fun?”

“Not really,” she said, but instead of launching into her usual litany of snorkeling, sunset watching, bike riding, and hammock napping, she hesitated, then said, “Just wanted to make sure you’re okay. After Saturday and, all that.”

That was Kristen, crusty on the outside, tender on the inside, just like the sourdough bread she loved to make. I couldn’t imagine a better best friend. I started to tell her so, but stopped just in time. She’d be embarrassed, I’d feel bad for making her feel embarrassed, and why clutter up our conversation with that kind of thing?

“Yeah,” I said, slipping off my coat. “I’m okay.”

“More or less?” she asked.

Less, really, but I’d been doing well at faking it since Saturday night. “More?” I suggested.

“Bzzz!” Kristen said. “Wrong answer. Try again.”

So I hung up my coat, headed to the bright lights of the kitchen, and told her everything.

It’s good to have friends, and it’s really good to have a best friend.

Chapter 6

The next day ended up busy with meetings, an evaluation of the staff’s holiday-decoration plans, and a workshop directed toward senior citizens on how to order gifts online. All of these tasks were made more complicated by my efforts to avoid Stephen while trying not to look as if I were avoiding Stephen.

I knew the longtime library employees had perfected the skill years before, and once or twice I was tempted to ask for tips when Stephen came down for his twice-a-day walkabouts, but I stopped myself just in time.

Bad enough that I was trying to stay out of Stephen’s way in the first place; the possibility that my friends would learn about my lapse in fortitude was one step past what I was willing to endure.

So I kept busy keeping my head down. The overcast Tuesday (during which I’d received another postcard from Kristen: Key West, warm and sunny. Chilson, cold and cloudy. Silly you .) eventually turned into a sunny Wednesday, and as the sky cleared, so did my head.

Research. What I needed to do was research, and lots of it.

I worked nose to the grindstone all morning and finished off the things that had to be done. After a quick lunch of leftovers (Aunt Frances–made lasagna from the night before), I settled into an afternoon stint at the reference desk, hoping for once that there wouldn’t be many questions to answer.

“Hey, Minnie. I got a question for you.”

I looked up, then up some more. Looming in front of the desk was Mitchell Koyne, one of the tallest men I’d ever met in my life. He was also one of the oddest men I’d ever met.

Though he was clearly intelligent, he’d never seen any need to get more than a high-school diploma, and I wasn’t absolutely sure he’d bothered to do that. And even though he was about my age, he seemed to have no desire to move out of his sister’s attic. And, judging from the amount of pizza boxes piled in the bed of his beater pickup truck, his diet was that of a teenager’s.

Plus, he was what my coworkers called a library fixture. Mitchell, in his baseball cap, jeans, and flannel shirts, spent more afternoon and evening hours in the library than most of the staff did. Never mornings, though. As far as I knew, he’d never once set foot inside the library in the a.m. hours. Josh’s current theory was that Mitchell spent his nights poaching deer; Holly and I believed he stayed up late playing video games.

But despite his lack of education or even a permanent job, Mitchell’s mind had been cast in an inquisitive mold, and hardly a day went by when he didn’t come in with a question for whoever was staffing the reference desk.

Hardly a day until a couple of months ago, rather, because that was when Stephen had come down with a new edict for me: Get rid of Mitchell. Or at least make sure he didn’t spend so much time in the library, asking pointless questions of the library staff, who had much better things to do.

Though I’d tactfully pointed out that answering questions was one of our main functions as a public library, Stephen hadn’t cared. He wanted fewer Mitchell hours in the library, and that was what he was going to get—or it would be my fault, forever and ever.

For a while I’d hoped Stephen would forget the issue, but I should have known better. Instead of the edict fading away to nothing, my procrastination only fanned the flames of Stephen’s determination.

Happily, a little more procrastination on my part had solved the problem. Well, actually, Mitchell solved the problem himself. He’d hovered on the edges of two recent murder investigations and had managed to convince himself that he’d been a critical part of the solution. Ergo, his latest career move was to set himself up as a private detective.

At the end of the summer, he’d spent a lot of time handing out business cards fresh from his sister’s laser printer. NORTHERN DETECTIVE AGENCY. MYSTERIES SOLVED BY MITCHELL KOYNE.

His pride had been so self-evident and he’d been working so hard telling people about his new business—it was a lightning-striking-twice rarity to see Mitchell work hard at anything—that I’d waited a couple of weeks to burst his bubble. I’d pulled him into my office, shut the door, and said, “Mitchell, did you know that the State of Michigan has licensing requirements for private investigators?”

I’d rarely felt so sorry for anyone as I did for Mitchell at that moment. If I hadn’t been sitting behind my desk, I would have . . . well, probably not hugged him, but I definitely would have patted his shoulder. Librarians need to have boundaries, especially with people like Mitchell.

He’d pulled his business cards out of his shirt pocket and stared at them. “Licensing?” he asked dully. “Like a fee or something?”

Classic Mitchell. So very smart in so many ways, yet completely clueless in so many others.

I’d shown him the list of requirements.

“Huh,” he said. “I’ve got everything except this.”