Лори Касс - Borrowed Crime

She caught my glance and waggled her eyebrows. “It’s what all the best-dressed bookmobile volunteers are wearing, don’t you know?”

I laughed. Donna, from her many years as an athlete, had a closet full of nylon running pants, jackets, shirts, shorts, and, for all I knew, nylon hats and underwear. Today’s clothing of choice included a bright pink jacket over bright pink pants. Her socks were a shocking color of yellowish green, and her shoes had so many fluorescent colors that I couldn’t count them.

“Watch this.” She leaned down, reached through the wire door of Eddie’s carrier, and rubbed her fingers over the blanket that lay on the carrier’s floor. The blanket also happened to be pink, but that had nothing to do with Donna. A boarder of Aunt Frances’s had knit it from an especially soft yarn, and Eddie had instantly bonded with the soft fuzziness. I suspected it was because he shed so much hair on it that it felt like a long-lost sibling, but maybe he just liked pink.

“See?” Donna held a small cluster of cat hair over her pink-clad thigh and let it drop.

Any fabric, from cotton to polyester, would have sucked Eddie hairs tight into its weave, making them near to impossible to extract. With Donna’s running attire, however, the former bits of Eddie fell away, to settle who knew where.

“That’s amazing,” I said, wide-eyed. “I wish I could wear an outfit like that.”

“Why can’t you?” she asked. “Seems like reasonable attire for a bookmobile.”

“Stephen,” I said succinctly. My boss had made it clear that since the bookmobile and I were representing the Chilson District Library, I must always present myself in a professional manner. To Stephen that meant dressing two steps more formally than necessary. It had taken me a month and a PowerPoint presentation to convince him that my typical library wear of dress pants, a jacket, knee-high nylons, and low heels wouldn’t make sense on the bookmobile. Dress pants, a tidy sweater, and loafers were eventually deemed acceptable bookmobile clothes for Minnie.

Donna snorted. “That man needs a serious dose of lightening up.”

I didn’t disagree, but I also wasn’t going to enter into a let’s-beat-up-on-Stephen discussion. Stephen might not be the easiest person in the world to work for, but he was our boss and so deserved our respect.

Most of the time, anyway.

The bookmobile rolled happily over the hills and dales of the glacier-carved terrain. November could be a drab month of rain and unrelentingly gloomy skies, but today the sun was popping through puffy white clouds, sending down slanting light onto bare tree branches.

Donna groused a little. “Perfect day for a nice, long run. What am I doing here, anyway?”

“Participating in the outreach activities of your favorite library,” I told her.

“Really?” She sounded puzzled. “I didn’t know the Grand Haven library had a bookmobile.”

My chin went up. “Hey, that’s—”

Her laugh stopped my outrage. “Joke, Miss Minnie. Joke.”

My chin went down. “Not funny,” I muttered, although it actually was, and Donna knew it.

“I wouldn’t have moved up here from Grand Haven,” she said, “if the Chilson library weren’t the best in the world.”

“That’s laying it on a little thick.” I considered the point. “Although if we had a better collection of local history books and had the staff to hold a few more evening events, we might come close.”

Donna laughed again, and then we were driving into the parking lot of a white-steepled fieldstone church, our first stop of the day.

The first bookmobile stop since Roger died, I thought, and experienced a quick clutch of fear. The feeling took me by surprise. I hadn’t realized I was nervous about going out again.

I braked gently and parked the bookmobile on the far side of the gravel parking lot, leaving plenty of room for the vehicles that would soon be arriving. That were already coming, since I saw two cars slowing, with their blinkers on.

Donna, unbuckled and out of her seat, laid a hand on my shoulder. “You okay, Minnie?”

I reached up to pat her hand. In spite of the pink running gear and the hardcore hobbies and the determinedly black hair, she had the soul of the most comforting grandmother ever. “I’m fine, thanks.”

And, as it turned out, I was. By the time I recommended My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett to a gentleman who was trying to find a book that would give a young boy a lifelong interest in reading, I was feeling much better. And by the time Donna and I had worked through the morning stops, spreading entertainment, knowledge, and Eddie hair (though not necessarily in that order) across the land, my small attack of whatever it had been was gone.

I ushered Eddie back into his carrier at the end of a stop. “Do you think cats have any concept of time?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” Donna said. “When I bought my first house, I adopted a gray tabby. If I went anywhere for more than a day, he’d break something. When I was gone for a week on vacation, he pushed a Native American pot I’d purchased on my last trip onto the floor, shattering it into tiny bits.” She sounded more entertained than angry.

I got into the driver’s seat and buckled up. “Do you think . . . ?” Nah. No way could a cat have connected her new vacation to the pot.

Donna slid, in a whispery nylon way, into the passenger’s seat. “I think it wouldn’t be a good idea to underestimate what a cat might know. Maybe they’re not as smart as we might think they are, but, then again, maybe they’re smart enough to hide their conclusions. Why take the chance?”

I put the transmission into gear and we rolled out toward the county road. We had to wait for a car to go past, and I looked over at Eddie. He’d put the side of his head up against the wire door, which meant half of his whiskers, one of his ears, and most of the fur on that side of his face was sticking out.

Shaking my head, I pulled out onto the asphalt. If that cat was supersmart, he was doing an excellent job of hiding it.

The next few stops were deliveries to homebound patrons. The day before, I’d pulled the requested books, checked them out with a specialty one-month due date, and popped them into plastic bags, all set to go for fast delivery.

In my push to set up this system, one thing I hadn’t happened to mention to Stephen was how road conditions might interfere with the deliveries. Not just snow, but the driveways themselves. Our bookmobile was thirty-one feet long and it wasn’t exactly easy to turn around in tight quarters. I’d become quite good at backing up, but if a driveway was snowy, slippery, hilly, and curvy, I might have a problem.

On the plus side, there was a thing called Google Earth, and I’d been able to take an aerial look at the driveways in advance. So far they’d been easy enough, and I dearly hoped the trend would continue.

Donna had handed out the bags at the drop-off locations while I’d carefully turned the bookmobile around. The last delivery, however, was at a farmhouse with a wonderful circular driveway. “Go ahead,” Donna said, putting her feet up on Eddie’s carrier. “Your cat and I will commune silently with each other in your absence.”

“You think so?” Laughing, I picked up the last plastic bag. “That noise you hear isn’t the engine; it’s Eddie’s snores.”

She gave me a startled look, then leaned around to stare at my furry friend. He’d turned himself around and was doing a face-plant into the pink blanket. His snores had been a quiet, resonating drone for the last fifteen minutes.

Still laughing, I went out into the fresh air, across the yard, and up onto the wooden porch. I knocked on the back door and poked my head in. “Mr. Hadlee? It’s Minnie Hamilton, from the library. I have your books.”