Лори Касс - Borrowed Crime

I’d also learned that the youngest Engstrom girl’s favorite color was orange, that her twin brother’s was red, that the middle girl was learning to play chess, that her twin brother didn’t like peas, that the oldest girl wanted to get a pony, and that her twin brother had already decided he was going to be an archaeologist when he grew up. It was amazing what you could learn about people on the bookmobile.

“Nice day out there,” Chad said, stomping his feet and blowing on his fingers. “Can’t wait for winter.”

“Do I detect a note of sarcasm?” I asked.

“A note?” He snorted. “More like an entire symphony. One of these days I’ll convince my wife to move to a climate that doesn’t hate people.”

I laughed, knowing he didn’t mean it, but his children heard his comment and clustered around.

“Dad, we can’t move!” pleaded nine-year-old Cara.

“But, Dad, I just planted daffodils,” said twelve-year-old Rose. “If we move now, I’ll never see them come up. And I really, really want to.”

Her twin brother, Trevor, frowned at his father. “If we move out of state, what colleges am I going to apply to? In-state tuition is a lot cheaper, but I don’t want to go to a school that doesn’t have a good archaeology program.”

“Well, I’m not going.” Six-year-old Ethan kicked at the carpet. “I’ll run away. I’ll come back here and I’ll stay with Granny Engstrom.”

“Me, too,” said his twin, Emma. “She loves us. She won’t make us move.”

The last child to be heard from, nine-year-old Patrick, spread his arms wide. “We can’t leave the bookmobile. We just can’t!” He looked at my cat. “Right, Eddie?”

“Mrr,” said Eddie, right on cue.

Chad laughed, a great, loud, uproarious sound that turned his children’s worried expressions to smiles. “All right, Eddie, you’ve convinced me. We’ll stay. But only because you asked so nicely.”

I shook my head. Eddie as a chamber of commerce representative. The world was truly a strange, strange place.

* * *

When we got back to the library, I asked Donna to help me haul the returned books into the building, then said she could go.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “I can help with the rest.”

I grinned. “Careful. If you keep showing this much interest in the bookmobile, I might ask you to volunteer again.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?” She cast a last look at the vehicle, hesitating. “See you tomorrow,” she said, still looking at the bookmobile, and shuffled off across the parking lot to her car.

I climbed back aboard, and the second I started doing all the closing-down chores, Eddie started pawing at his wire door.

“Mrr,” he said. “Mrr.”

“Oh, you want out, do you?” I sat on the console and looked down at him. “Well, you have been stuck in there for a while. Tell you what. I’ll let you out if you promise to go back in easy-peasy when it’s time to leave.”

He blinked. “Mrr,” he said quietly.

It was clearly a promise. Of course, what a cat’s promise was worth, I didn’t know, but there was only one way to find out. I opened the door. Eddie jumped up next to me and bumped his head against my shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah. Save it for your adoring fans.” I kissed the top of his head and stood. “I have a few chores, pal. Why don’t you do something productive while I take care of business?”

But instead of straightening the bookshelves or doing a little dusting or even working through the intellectual exercise of figuring out where to squeeze in a few more books, Eddie jumped to the small front desk, stretched out one paw, and snagged his new hat from where I’d stashed it behind the computer.

He pushed it off the edge of the desk, watched it drop to the floor, and promptly jumped down to flop on it.

“Fine,” I told him. “Just don’t think it’s yours forever.” Eddie ignored me, which was typical when I was telling him something he didn’t want to hear. It was the cat equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying “La, la, la.”

“It’s not big enough for a cat mattress, for one thing,” I said, eyeing him. “Your back feet aren’t even on—”

The door to the bookmobile opened. Donna, no doubt, coming back to sign up for a lifetime of bookmobile volunteering. I turned, a big smile on my face.

Only it wasn’t Donna. Not even close.

“You,” Denise Slade said, pointing a shaking finger at me. “It’s your fault.”

My arms dropped to my sides. I swallowed. “Denise, I am so sorry about your husband. If there’s anything I can do—”

“Do?” she asked shrilly. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

Gray sorrow raked at the inside of my chest. I wanted to protest, to say that I’d done all I could, to say that I’d done all anyone could, but how could I when I wasn’t sure that I had?

Denise’s hair was unkempt. She wore a perky spring coat of lime green over cropped pants, with short white socks and plastic clogs that looked like something she’d gardened in for decades. Never once had I seen Denise look anything but tidy and ready to take on the world’s to-do list.

“More than anything,” I said quietly, “I wish that your husband was still alive. I am so very sorry for your loss.”

“Sorry?” she shrieked. “What good does ‘sorry’ do me now? ‘Sorry’ isn’t going to shovel the driveway this winter. ‘Sorry’ isn’t going to fix that leak under the kitchen sink. ‘Sorry’ isn’t going to finish the landscaping that never got done last summer.”

She was right, but what else could I say? Nothing that would make any difference, so I stood there and took the abuse.

“Sorry!” She tossed her hair back out of her face. “‘Sorry’ isn’t going to keep me warm at night. ‘Sorry’ isn’t going to fix my Sunday breakfast. ‘Sorry’ isn’t going to help me rake the leaves next fall, and ‘sorry’ isn’t going to help me one little bit when the car breaks down.”

I wanted to ease her pain, to make her feel even a tiny bit better, but I had no idea how. Maybe there wasn’t a way. “Denise . . .”

“Don’t ‘Denise’ me!” She took a step forward, her face mottled red with fury. “All you had to do was drive the bookmobile around and bring my husband back home. Instead you got him killed. This is all your fault!”

I gasped, feeling as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I tried to talk, but nothing came out.

“Rrrrr,” Eddie said from the floor—not exactly a growl, but not the friendly sound he usually made, either.

“And that cat!” Denise transferred her focus to Eddie. “How can—” She made a soft mewling sound and fell to her knees, her hands reaching out toward Eddie’s new mattress. “The hat,” she whimpered. “This is where he left it.”

“This is Roger’s hat?” I stared at one of the tasseled ends, the one Eddie had been chewing on.

“It was mine,” she whispered. “My sister made it for me, but I wanted him to take a hat on Saturday. All that snow—I thought he might need something, he just had surgery, and it was the first one I found. He laughed and said he’d wear it. He said . . .”

I crouched down, rolled Eddie off the hat, and handed it to Denise.

Slowly she stood, holding it to her cheek, stroking it. She stared at nothing, her lips moving, and though no sound came out, I knew what she was saying.

“Roger. Roger. Roger . . .”

Without another word to me, she turned and left the bookmobile, her footsteps on the gravel parking lot slowly fading away to nothing.

I sat down on the console. Eddie jumped up beside me.

“Mrr.”

“Yeah, pal,” I said absently, “I hear you.”