Лори Касс - Borrowed Crime

“And anyway,” Josh said, “no matter how cool this building is, the bookmobile is way cooler.”

“It is?” I asked.

“Well, sure.” Holly swallowed the last of her cookie. “You’ve shown us the figures. The number of books borrowed is a lot higher for bookmobile patrons than for the people who come here. That’s got to be boosting the overall circulation numbers for the library, right?”

It was, but not as much as she might think.

“Plus,” Josh added, “it’s famous.”

I shook my head to bring my thoughts out of the spreadsheet daze they’d fallen into. “What is?”

My friends exchanged a puzzled glance. “The bookmobile,” Josh said patiently. “Everybody knows about it.”

“They . . . do?”

“Well, yeah,” Holly said. “It’s famous all over the place.”

“You’re like a mobile billboard.” Josh held up an imaginary sign and chugged around the room with it. “No other library in this part of the state has a bookmobile at all, let alone one as cool as ours.”

Ours , he’d said. And Holly had nodded. A warm happiness flooded through me. For months, the bookmobile had been, in Stephen’s words, “Minnie’s little project,” but it had already become part of the greater library family.

“The bookmobile,” I said, “isn’t exactly what I’m worried about.” I looked around. Saw no one but the three of us, but motioned them to move in, just in case. “I think he knows about”—I lowered my voice to a whisper—“Eddie.”

Josh and Holly both sat up straight.

“How could he?” Holly asked.

Josh shook his head. “No way. What makes you think that?”

“Nothing for certain,” I said, “but you’ve heard that little laugh he makes sometimes?”

“Yeah.” Josh grinned crookedly. “He sounds just like a cat would if it laughed right before it jumped on a mouse.”

It was an apt description, but I could have done without the feline reference. “When I said it’ll work out and he said he hoped so, he looked right at me. I mean right at me.” Using my index and middle fingers, I pointed at my own eyes.

“Whoa.” Josh sat back. “Stephen never looks straight at you. Through you, maybe, but never at you.”

Holly laughed. “I think maybe I’d turn to stone if he did. Stephen as Medusa.”

“So, something’s up, right?” I asked. “I’m not imagining things?”

“Not a chance,” Holly said. “The fact that he laughed and looked you straight in the eye? Two signs that something weird is going on.”

Josh smirked. “Or the end of the world is coming.”

“There’s not much we can do about that,” Holly said briskly, “but we can help Minnie find out if Stephen knows about Eddie.”

I’d kept Eddie’s presence a secret even from Holly and Josh for months. Back in August, though, when it had become crystal clear that Eddie was a part of the bookmobile whether or not I wanted him to be, I’d made them raise their right hands, put their left hands on an ancient green Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature that I’d hauled out of the library basement, and swear to keep the Eddie Secret.

“Okay,” Josh said, popping open his second soda can. “I’m in. But how are we going to figure this out? I mean, anyone could have said something on Facebook.”

Holly laughed. “There’s no way Stephen does Facebook. He says social media is a waste of time.”

Which was true. We’d all heard Stephen pontificate on the time-wasting properties of the Internet in general and social media in particular. It had gotten to the point where we could recognize the signs of a pending lecture and slide away with some excuse before he really got going.

Josh shrugged. “Doesn’t mean he wouldn’t use it, not if he could see some advantage.”

Which was also true.

“Well, I don’t think Stephen has any idea about Eddie,” Holly said.

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Josh tipped his head back and studied her through narrowed eyes. “How sure are you?”

“Sure enough to bet a double batch of my peanut butter fudge.”

“You’re on.” Josh held out his hand.

“Not so fast, buster,” she said, pulling back. “What do I get if I’m right? You’re about the worst cook in the world, next to Minnie.”

“Hey!” I protested, but neither one of them paid any attention to me.

“Gift certificate to Cookie Tom’s?” Josh asked.

Holly rolled her eyes. “Like I need more baked goods.”

“Gift certificate to Shomin’s, then.”

Shomin’s was a new deli in town, and the library staff members were enthusiastic supporters.

Holly put out her hand, then jerked it back. “Gift certificate big enough to buy two lunches.”

Josh pursed his lips, but we all knew it was a done deal. Holly’s peanut butter fudge was arguably better than her cookies. “Two lunches,” he agreed.

This was all well and good, but I had a question. “So, how are you going to do this without making Stephen suspicious?”

“Easy,” Josh said. “I was going to update some software on his computer on a Saturday, but I’ll come up with some reason to do it on a weekday. I can just rattle off some IT words, and he won’t know the difference. I mean, it’s not like he’s going to leave his office when I do the updates. I could kind of ask him about the bookmobile, maybe act like I think it’s a bad idea, and see what he says.”

“Now you’re talking.” Holly raised her hand for a high five, and we slapped all the way around. “First off, I’ll see if I can find him on Facebook. Then I can check LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter. I’ll even look at Google Plus, Tumblr, and Instagram. If he’s not on any of those, he probably isn’t doing social media at all. And where else would he hear about Eddie? It’s not like he goes anywhere but here.”

“You two are awesome,” I said.

“Ah, it’s nothing.” Josh upended his soda can and slugged down half the contents. “We’d do this for any assistant library director who got the library a bookmobile and had her cat stow away on it.”

“It’ll be fun,” Holly said. “Sleuthing around, trying to find out what’s really going on with Stephen—it’ll be a kick. We should have started doing this years ago.” She grinned.

I looked at them. My coworkers, my companions, my friends. I didn’t know what I’d do without them. “There’s one thing, though.”

“What’s that?” Josh asked.

I hesitated. They’d think I was silly and a worrywart, but it had to be said. “Be careful, okay? Just . . . be careful.”

Chapter 3

Thursday and Friday passed without any major incidents, assuming you didn’t call the Thursday delivery of six boxes for the Cheboygan Area Public Library to our library and the delivery of our books to Cheboygan a major incident.

Stephen had summoned me after taking one look at the stack of boxes. “Minnie. Take care of this.” He’d spun around and left me standing there.

I’d squinted at his retreating figure, shrugged, and called Cheboygan’s library director. That noon, we’d met at a restaurant near the halfway point between our two fair cities, had a nice lunch, shared some library stories, and left with the appropriate boxes.

Aunt Frances had enjoyed the story immensely, and even Eddie had seemed amused.

Friday morning arrived with a forecast that could excite only small children and die-hard skiers.

“Snow,” Kelsey said, frowning at the front-desk computer screen and shaking her head so hard that her short blond hair flew around her head. “It’s only the middle of November. They should not be predicting eight inches of snow for tonight. That’s just wrong.”

Kelsey was a part-time clerk and my most recent hire. Well, sort of. She’d worked at the library years before, but had left when she’d had her first child. The kids were older now, and Kelsey didn’t mind leaving them with her mother a couple of times a week. One of our part-timers had relocated to Arizona in July, so it had all worked out.