Лори Касс - Tailing A Tabby

“A girl?” I sat up, too, only I was all the way straight.

“For an amateur,” he said gently. “The last thing I want is for you to get tangled up with a killer. This person murdered once. What makes you think he won’t do it again?”

“I have no intention of getting killed,” I said. “All I’m saying is that I poke around a little. Ask a few questions of a few people. We can make up a plausible story that I can go with. And I’m a librarian. I do great research. I might be able to dig up stuff the police would never be able to find.”

He rubbed his chin and studied me. “Just questions. No sneaking around in the dark of night, no tiptoeing into dank and dark basements?”

I crossed my heart. “And no climbing rickety stairs with only a single candle to light my way.”

“If you can do this, Minnie Hamilton, I will offer you anything you’d like.”

“If I actually do it, I’ll be happy with a thank-you letter.”

He held out his hand for me to shake, and I took it.

“Deal,” he said.

Chapter 7

I went straight from Lakeview to the library.

“Hey, Minnie.” Donna, one of our part-time clerks, smiled, then frowned. “What are you doing here? I thought it was your day off.”

I smiled but kept walking, barely even slowing as I passed the front desk. “Silly me, I left something in my office. Don’t tell anyone I’m here, okay?”

She laughed. “Mum’s the word.”

I shut my office door behind me and fired up the computer. Leaving the overhead lights off would mask my presence to most passersby, but if any curious eyes happened to look in through the door’s window, I was toast. Someone would see me, stop to talk, and then I’d get sucked into library tasks that needed doing.

So I got up to do something I’d never done before—pull down the window shade. I reached up as high as I could, but the shade’s edge was just out of my reach. I jumped. Missed. For the second jump I crouched a bit, tried a little harder, and was rewarded for my efforts with the sound of the roller shade descending.

“Gotcha,” I murmured. Snug in my office cave with a much faster Internet connection than I could get at the marina, I started researching the life of Carissa Radle.

First off, of course, was to take a look at the most accurate information at hand, that of the Chilson District Library. I typed in her name, typed in every possible spelling of her last name that I could come up with, and still came up with nothing.

“No library card,” I said, sighing and shaking my head. It never failed to amaze me how many people didn’t have a library card. They were free and they gave you access to thousands of books. Maybe someday I’d understand people who weren’t interested in reading, but probably not.

Next, I used the library’s access code to log in to the archives of the Chilson Gazette, the local newspaper. Carissa’s name came up fast, but there was only one entry. Her obituary.

I closed my eyes for a moment, wanting to reject the sight. She shouldn’t have died so young. She shouldn’t have died that way. I opened my eyes and found that my hands were balled up into fists.

I stretched out my fingers, releasing the tension, and looked at Carissa’s obituary picture. She had been blond and pretty with a happy, wide smile, one of those smiles that made you want to smile in return.

Sighing, I started reading. Carissa Marie Radle, age thirty-nine, had died unexpectedly at her home in Chilson. She’d graduated from Wayne State University and Dearborn High School and had been employed by Talcott Motors. She was survived by her parents and two sisters. A memorial service was being planned for Labor Day weekend.

Hang on. Had that really said… ? I looked back. Why, yes, indeedy, it had said Dearborn High School. The very same high school that had given me a diploma. Me and my brother, Matt, who was only two years older than Carissa. What were the odds that out of the eighteen hundred or so students who attended Dearborn High, my brother had known her?

Probably low, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

I unzipped my backpack, dug around for my cell, and scrolled down to my brother’s number. Matt, his wife, Jennifer, and their three children lived in Florida and I didn’t see nearly enough of them. Hardly a week passed all winter that I didn’t get a call or an e-mail or a text from one of the five telling me how nice the weather was down in the greater Orlando area, so why didn’t I abandon the snow and cold and come down for a visit?

Then again, hardly a week passed all summer that I didn’t call or send an e-mail or a text down to Florida telling them how nice the weather was up here and why didn’t they abandon the heat and humidity and come up for a visit?

Matt’s phone rang once, twice. “Can’t come this month,” he said. “Ben has soccer camp.”

“It’s too hot,” I said.

“They practice inside.”

“Oh.” I’m sure it made sense for the Florida heat, but playing an outdoor sport inside in the summer seemed weird to me. “That wasn’t why I called.”

“Yeah?”

From the way he spoke, I knew he wasn’t paying attention to me, which served me right for calling in the middle of the day. My brother was a work-hard, play-hard kind of guy and on weekends he was always busy doing something. If not soccer, then softball, and if not softball, then swimming.

During the week, Matt worked as an Imagineer at Disney World, designing all sorts of things he could never talk about until they became reality. It was an extremely cool job, and if I hadn’t been a bookmobile librarian, I might have been the teensiest bit jealous. “Can you talk for a second?”

“Mom and Dad okay?”

“They’re fine. So is Aunt Frances and every other relative, as far as I know.”

“So what’s up? No, let me guess. You’re finally getting married. Who’s the poor sucker? Let me call and warn him about what you’re really like.”

I made a rude gesture in the direction of Florida. “I have a question about your dim, dark past. Did you know a Carissa Radle in high school? She was two years younger than you.”

“Carissa Radle, Carissa Radle…” He made some humming noises that almost, but not quite, turned into an instrumental version of “Stairway to Heaven.” “Carissa. You mean Chrissy?”

“I guess.”

“Yeah, Chrissy Radle. One of my friends dated her for a while. Or was it a friend of a friend?” His voice drifted backward twenty-odd years. “Chrissy. Yeah, I remember. Blond, legs up to here, but not a lot of fun. One of those kids who took everything seriously. She had opinions on everything from pesticides to the World Trade Organization.”

I tipped back in my chair. That didn’t sound at all like the Carissa described by Barb and Cade and Kristen. Then again, people did change. Not that I could think of anyone who had done so right this second, but I was sure I could, given time.

“Chrissy Radle,” Matt was saying. “Huh. I hadn’t thought about her since high school. Why are you asking?”

“Ah. Well.” I cleared my throat. Somehow I hadn’t thought this conversation through to its inevitable conclusion. “Turns out she’d been living up here.”

He caught the past tense. “She’s moved?”

“Not moved, exactly,” I said. “Matt, I’m afraid she’s dead. Someone killed her.” He was silent, so I kept going. “The police don’t know who, but I’m sure they’ll find out soon.”

“Murdered?” Matt sounded far away again. “People I know don’t get murdered. Are you sure?”

I read him the obituary. “So you haven’t seen her since high school?”

“No,” he said. “And my friend Bruce—they broke up even before we graduated. He went to MIT, then to Silicon Valley right afterward. He’s hardly been back to Dearborn since.”