Лори Касс - Borrowed Crime

“I bet you did nothing today except pine for my return.” I patted the top of his head. “Yep, I bet all you did was—”

Suddenly I noticed that something in the living room was different. Something was missing . . . wasn’t it?

Eddie squirmed out of my embrace and his feet double-thumped to the floor.

I turned in a small circle, trying to figure it out. The furniture was the same, the drapes were the same, the picture frames on the mantel were the same . . .

“Eddie!” I shrieked. “What have you done?”

“Mrr,” he said calmly.

“Don’t mrr at me!” I stomped over to the low bookcases that stood against the far wall. They held games and puzzles and scrapbooks and other things that the summer boarders used to while away rainy afternoons. For as long as I could remember, there had been local maps hung above two of the three bookcases, and snowshoes above the third.

Now, thanks to what must have been Eddie Interference, the snowshoes were on the floor.

I tried to hang them up the same way they’d hung for decades. “Nice work, Mr. Ed. Did you not get enough exercise yesterday, running around the bookmobile, getting pats from everyone on board? Don’t look at me like that—I saw you sucking up to that guy who always gives you cat treats.”

“Mrr.”

“I did, too.”

“Mrr.”

“Did, too.”

“Mrr.”

“Did—” I stopped and looked at my cat, who had reduced our conversation to that of two seven-year-olds. “Just leave the snowshoes alone, okay? They’re antiques and are definitely not cat toys.”

Eddie stalked off toward the kitchen, his tail straight up in the air, obviously sure he’d won the battle.

I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or to roll my eyes, so I did both. And somehow the act of doing so reminded me that I’d promised Aunt Frances I’d pick up some groceries on the way home.

“Hey, Eddie,” I called. “If Aunt Frances gets back before I do, tell her I’m getting provisions for the weekend.”

There was a pause; then I heard a faint “Mrr.”

“Thanks, pal,” I said, and headed out for the short walk to the grocery store.

* * *

The unseasonably mild weather of the past few days was on its way out, and I kept my head down against the rising wind and chill air.

Yes, winter was coming, no doubt about it. I took one mittened hand out of my pocket and zipped my coat up all the way to the top. Technically winter wouldn’t arrive for another month, but I judged the presence of winter more by the clothing I wore than by what the calendar said.

Thoughts of the upcoming season occupied me as I stepped into the sudden moist warmth of the grocery store and picked up a small basket. As I debated between red and green peppers, I wondered how well the bookmobile’s heater would combat the deep cold spells we’d get in January and February. Below-zero temperatures were not uncommon, and thirty below wasn’t out of the question.

While I looked at the rice choices, I wondered how the bookmobile would handle in the snowy road conditions. The icy road conditions. And, worst of all, the slushy road conditions. The commercial driver’s course I’d taken had taught me techniques to handle every possible condition, but driver’s-course knowledge was different from true road experience.

I stood in front of the freezer section—ice cream wasn’t on the list, but it never hurt to look—and told myself to stop being such a worrywart. There were numerous bookmobiles all across the country that drove through harsh winters, probably worse winters than this part of Michigan ever got. Everything would be fine. I just needed to relax and—

“Did you hear what happened to Denise?”

Though I couldn’t see the woman, her voice was loud and piercing enough to carry from the adjacent aisle. I gave a last, longing look at the quart of Cherry Garcia and started toward the registers.

“You mean Denise Slade?” another woman asked.

I stopped cold. Retreated a few steps. Kept listening.

“She left early this morning,” the loud-voiced woman said. “Headed downstate to visit her— Oh, I’m not sure. Her mother or aunt or some sort of relative.” There was a pause. “Or was it a relative of Roger’s? I don’t remember. Anyway, she’d gone over to the interstate since she was going to the Detroit area, when her engine just stopped.”

“You mean it turned off?” The other woman sounded puzzled, which was the same way I would have sounded if I’d asked the same question. And I almost had.

The loud woman said, “That’s what my husband said, and he’s a car guy, right? He said that the engine seized up.”

Sadly, I knew exactly what that meant. It had happened to the car owned by my best friend from high school. She’d started the engine, heard some horrible noises, smelled some terrible smells, and then the thing had simply stopped running. The fix had been horrendously expensive.

“Anyway,” the loud woman said, “this happened when Denise was on the expressway, going seventy miles per hour. When the engine seized, it made so much noise and scared her so much that she kind of ran off the road.”

The woman’s friend gasped. “Is she okay?”

“She didn’t hit anything, is what I heard, but when she went off the road . . . You know how much rain we’ve been having? She drove right into this deep ditch that was filled with water.” The loud woman’s voice dropped, and I had to strain to hear. “She almost drowned, is what they said.”

The woman talked on, but I made my way to the front of the store, head down and thinking hard about things I really didn’t want to think about.

About circumstances, about cases of mistaken identity, about crimes of planning and patience.

About murder.

Chapter 9

The next morning I did my best to sleep late, but the combination of my aunt’s jovial singing and Eddie’s ongoing efforts to find a comfortable sleeping position on my head woke me long before I’d hoped.

“It’s mostly your fault,” I told my furry friend as I toweled my hair dry, post shower. “I’ve heard Aunt Frances sing the theme song to Gilligan’s Island so many times that it’s something I’ve learned to sleep through. But I don’t see how I’m going to ever learn to sleep through you flopping yourself across my face. You might suffocate me, you know.”

Eddie, however, was playing Cat Statue. In this mode, his ears didn’t work, which was often very convenient for him.

“Then again,” I said, “if Aunt Frances ever sang anything other than theme songs to old television shows, who knows what it might do to my sleep habits?”

The thought humored me, mostly because there was little chance she’d ever sing anything different. Her brain, she’d said seriously, didn’t maintain a hold on any other song lyrics. I was very grateful her brain didn’t stick on Christmas songs, because the idea of hearing “Frosty the Snowman” every Saturday morning October through April made me want to scratch out the insides of my ears. Hearing “Frosty” in December was fine, of course, but, in my opinion, a little went a long way.

“You know,” I told Eddie, “I almost feel like singing myself.” Because it was a beautiful day for the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Clear skies and no wind, and what more could you really hope for at this time of year?

“Any requests?” I pulled an almost-cat-hair-free sweatshirt over my head. “‘Cat’s in the Cradle’? ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’? No, wait, I have it: ‘Stray Cat Strut.’”

Laughing, I looked around for Eddie, but all I saw was the end of his tail as it whisked out the bedroom door.

“How about ‘Cat Scratch Fever’?” I called. “‘Honky Cat’? And don’t forget ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’” I waited for a positive response to at least one of my suggestions, but all I heard was the thumping of his feet on the stairs.