Лори Касс - Tailing A Tabby

• • •

The next day was a library day. I spent the morning working on a new policy for the display of artwork, a policy I’d thought about writing only after I’d helped put together a display of local artwork earlier that summer. I’d suffered pointed comments from two library board members about the inappropriateness of displaying seminude sketches in a public library and it was time to formalize things. My lunch hour was spent speed-reading reviews for books to add to the purchasing list, and then it was back to drafting the artwork policy.

By early afternoon, my eyes felt as if they were permanently focused at computer-screen distance. I pushed myself back from the desk and stood up, stretching, then winced at the tightness in my muscles. Maybe all those articles about getting up to move every half hour were right. I made a mental note to start doing that. Starting tomorrow. Next week at the latest.

The break room was empty, but considering that it was only an hour past lunchtime, that was only fitting. I poured myself a cup of coffee and stood there for a moment, feeling somewhat bereft. Not that I had to have someone around to talk to every minute of the day, but a certain amount of companionship was expected in a library. So, where were my companions?

I moseyed down the hall. At the front desk, Donna was helping a young mother and her two children check out teetering stacks of picture books. In the main library, Holly was showing a middle schooler the secrets of the Dewey decimal system. In the back room, Josh was elbow-deep in cables and electronics parts, muttering words that sounded suspiciously like curses.

Well.

I was walking idly down the hall when I noticed an extremely tall and baseball-capped figure leaning against the wall outside the doorway to the reading room. “Mitchell, what on earth are you doing?” I asked.

Mitchell Koyne looked down at me and put his finger to his lips. “I’m helping,” he whispered.

I eyed the leaning Mitchell, who had recently begun sporting a scraggly beard. Whether the facial hair was intentional, was a result of sheer forgetfulness, or was due to the lack of a razor, we hadn’t yet decided. “Thanks,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure that the wall is going to keep on standing, even without your help.”

The building itself had kept its upright position for almost a hundred years in its various incarnations as K-12 school, elementary school, vacant building, and, starting just a few years ago, the Chilson District Library. I would have laid down money, and lots of it, that Mitchell’s efforts weren’t going to make any difference.

“Well, duh.” He peered over his shoulder into the reading room. It was a large space filled with current newspapers and magazines, upholstered furniture, a fireplace, and a long window seat. “Ah, there’s no one in there. Dang.”

“Are you looking for someone?”

Mitchell nodded, the bill of his tattered baseball hat moving a fraction of a beat behind. “Yeah, I’m trying to help the cops catch whoever killed that woman the other night.”

Right. “Do the police know that you’re helping them?”

“Nah. Not yet, I mean. What I’m going to do is watch.” He gestured at his eyes with the first two fingers of his hand. “Watch and learn, just like you did last month with who killed Stan Larabee.”

My friend Stan. My mouth crumpled a little, but I straightened it out fast. “What makes you think the killer spends time in the reading room?”

He shrugged. “It’s a good place to read the paper. Lots of people come here, you know? It just makes sense that whoever killed that lady will, too.”

Maybe in Mitchell’s world it made sense, but I wasn’t sure it would to anyone else. The amount of time he spent in the reading room was directly related to the amount in fines he’d managed to accumulate for overdue books. Since Mitchell had no apparent intention of paying off the near-four-figure number, Stephen had cut him off from borrowing privileges. Any other patron would have found the money. Not Mitchell; he just spent more time in the library, reading in-house the books and magazines he would have borrowed otherwise to Stephen’s displeasure—which I had been conveniently ignoring.

“Say,” Mitchell said. “How about you and me team up together to find this killer? With your brains and my local know-how, I bet we’d figure it out in no time.”

The thought of conducting an investigation with Mitchell curdled everything in my stomach, from the morning’s cold cereal to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I’d had for lunch to the coffee I was currently sipping. “That’s nice of you to offer, Mitchell, but I’m pretty busy.”

“You sure? Because I have these ideas all sketched out and—”

I patted him on the arm. “Thanks, anyway.”

He took off his hat and scratched his head. “Well, if you’re sure.”

“Absolutely. But thanks again.”

I headed back to my office and tried not to think about the conversation. Because though I was absolutely sure that I’d done my best to persuade Mitchell to leave off investigating, I was equally sure that he wouldn’t pay attention to a word that I’d said.

“Minnie.”

I stopped dead at the sound of Stephen’s voice, then turned around to face him.

“It would appear,” he said, “that you haven’t made any progress regarding the situation I presented to you.”

I sipped my coffee and tried to think of something to say. “I’ve… been busy this week.”

“It’s been more than two weeks since I tasked you with this issue. At the least I expected an outline of possibilities. A progress report would have been even better. Visible results better yet. What I’ve received from you, however, is nothing.”

His face was getting a little red. “Nothing,” he said, “and it’s getting worse. Every afternoon, Koyne lurks there”—Stephen nodded down the length of the hall— “distracting the staff and annoying other patrons. As assistant director of this library, you need to learn to get to the heart of the matter. Do something about this, Minnie. And do it fast.” He spun on his heel and marched up the stairs.

I sighed and took a sip of my coffee. Cold.

“Wow,” Holly said, opening the door to the supply closet and stepping out, her arms laden with reams of paper. “Was Stephen saying what I think he was saying?”

I looked at her. “Did you jump in there when you saw him coming?”

“Anybody with the sense of a stick would have.” She grinned. “Plus, we need more paper in the copy machine.” She looked in the direction of Stephen’s departure. “Was he really saying to kick Mitchell out of the library?”

“More like lure him away.”

She snorted. “With what? This place is like his second home.”

I had no idea and said so.

“Hmm.” Holly twisted her mouth into a sideways shape and hummed a few bars of “The Wheels on the Bus.” “Got it,” she said, brightening. “Watch this. Come on.”

We headed down the hall. She plopped the paper at the front desk and kept steaming ahead toward the reading room.

“Hey, Mitchell,” she said. “Do you know what my husband told me?”

Mitchell twisted his baseball hat around. “Isn’t he out west somewhere?”

She nodded. “He’s in Wyoming, working at that big mine. He just got a promotion. He’s making good money, really good, and he says there are jobs out there for pretty much everyone.”

“Huh,” Mitchell said. “He got a promotion? That’s cool.”

Holly’s lips firmed, but she smoothed them out into a smile. “So, what I was wondering was, have you ever thought of going out there yourself? All those blue skies and open spaces, a big guy like you would get hired right away. I’m sure of it.”