Лори Касс - Tailing A Tabby

I nodded, knowing that the stones were fossilized coral. I also knew it was great fun to find them on the lakeshore. I’d picked up a couple myself. “How expensive are the big ones?” I nodded at the softball-sized behemoths.

When she named the price, my eyes bugged out. She laughed. “Petoskeys that large are hard to find. You typically don’t find them any bigger than small paperweight size.”

Tucker admired the shined-up surface. “I didn’t know you were interested in Petoskey stones, Minnie.”

I gave the price tag one last disbelieving glance, then edged out of the booth. “I’m not, not really. It’s just…”

Tucker put his hand in mine as we walked. “It’s just what?”

Could there be anything nicer than walking hand in hand with your boyfriend? I sighed happily. “Well,” I said, “it’s just that a Petoskey stone was what killed that woman a while back. Remember when that happened?” Tucker nodded and I went on. “The police think that a friend of mine killed her. But there’s no way he did it, none at all.”

Tucker didn’t say anything for a moment. “How long have you known this guy?” he finally asked.

I glanced up at him. “Long enough to know that he’s not a killer.” My voice had a little edge to it. “You don’t have to know someone very long to know that.”

He stopped, and since my hand was still in his, I stopped, too. The park was full of people, but they walked around us like the water in a stream breaking around a rock. “Minnie,” he said, “I know you’re a smart person, but I also know you like to think the best of people. If the police think your friend killed someone, have you considered the possibility that they may be right?”

“No,” I said shortly. The afternoon was taking a sudden turn for the worse.

Tucker sighed and shook his head. “Minnie—”

“Hey, Kleinow, you slumming it today?” A tall, broad man was walking toward us.

Tucker squeezed my hand, then let go. “Minnie, this is Dr. Miller Alvord. He’s an orthopedic surgeon. Miller, this is my friend Minnie.”

Friend? Not girlfriend? My stomach clenched and I was pretty sure it wasn’t because of the corn dogs.

“Charmed, I’m sure.” Miller gave my hand a perfunctory shake and turned his attention to Tucker. “Say, I’ve been wanting to talk to you. What do you think about helping me convince the higher-ups to buy a new X-ray machine?”

I stood first on one foot, then the other, waiting for Tucker to finish his conversation. When they segued smoothly into a discussion of treatments for dislocated hips, I told Tucker I was heading back to the bookmobile.

“What’s that?” He looked over at me with a distracted look. “Right. Okay. See you later.”

My thoughts were black as I wandered through the fair. If he wasn’t calling me his girlfriend, what was I doing calling him my boyfriend? And if he wasn’t my boyfriend, why did I already know his birthday, birthplace, and shoe size?

I was so mired in my own miserable thoughts that I was halfway up the bookmobile steps when I realized that I hadn’t unlocked the door.

The bookmobile had been unlocked. Unlocked and unattended for hours.

I pounded up the rest of the steps, freaking out a little, scared that there’d been vandalism or theft or…

Or nothing. I looked around and saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Books, magazines, and CDs all tidy. Computers in place. All was well.

Except for me. I sat down hard into the driver’s seat and tried not to think dreary thoughts. I sighed. What I wanted was Eddie and the comfort of his purrs. Maybe even some of his cat hair.

I looked down and picked an Eddie hair off my sleeve and sat there, just holding it.

• • •

The art fair was over, the bookmobile was tucked away, and with the heavy cloud cover, darkness was coming on fast. I typically loved this time of night, just before it got truly dark, when the lights in people’s houses were glowing cozily through their windows and children were being called inside by moms and dads. Evening walks were my second-favorite kind, right after early morning walks, but that which I usually found calm and soothing was lost to me tonight, thanks to the things whirring around in my brain.

I was wandering along, my hands in my pockets, thinking about Carissa and my aunt’s boarders and how Tucker had ditched me to have dinner with Miller and one of the hospital’s biggest benefactors. I was thinking hard and not completely present in the world when a movement caught my attention.

A man was walking out of the shadows and into the light from the downtown streetlights that were shaped like old gas lamps. A man, shortish and rounded on his belly side but with a straight back, a man shaped like the letter D . Detective Devereaux.

Now what should I do? The detective and his partner and I were being mutually agreeable to each other at this point, but if Detective Devereaux and I started talking, he was bound to know something was up. He was a detective, after all. They were trained to sense these kinds of things, and I wasn’t ready to share what I knew about Hugo or Trock or Greg without proof. A feeling of ickiness probably wouldn’t count for much to them.

Besides, I didn’t want the detective to tell me to stay out of police business, and what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt me.

I slid sideways into the dark cast by the bank building, then eased even deeper into the darkness by edging toward the narrow walkway that led to a rear parking lot. Silently, holding my breath, I moved behind a tall container plant and waited until Devereaux walked past.

When he was gone, I waited. Waited a little longer. Then, just after I started to feel like an idiot for hiding behind a plant for no good reason, I slipped out of the alley and walked away.

Chapter 13

After dinner at a local sandwich shop, I wandered on home, trying hard not to think about Tucker. It was a pleasant walk punctuated by short stops to chat with numerous library patrons from the cane-carrying Mr. Goodwin to the cookie-baking Reva Shomin to the thriller-reading Jim Kittle.

“Must be the cool weather,” I told Eddie, tossing my backpack onto the dining table’s bench, sliding in next to it, and putting my feet up on the opposite bench. “It’s fooling people into thinking that it’s after Labor Day and the summer people are gone.”

Eddie was again on the houseboat’s small dashboard. In spite of the precariousness of his perch, it was now his favorite place for seagull spying.

At this particular moment, however, the only wildlife Eddie could possibly see was himself, since it was dark outside.

“I can’t believe you’re paying more attention to your reflection than to me.” I slid into a comfortable slouch. “Why is it people have cats, anyway? I feed you, water you, clean up your messes, wear your hair everywhere I go, and what do I get out of it?”

Eddie turned to look at me. Blinked, as if my appearance were a sudden surprise. Then he oozed off the dashboard, hit the floor, sauntered over to me, jumped up on my lap, and immediately started purring.

“Okay.” I patted his head. “You win. Purrs trump all that other stuff, hands down.” I gently picked up one of his front legs and we exchanged a paw-to-palm high five.

He purred a little louder.

There couldn’t be many cats who would let you handle them like that. Eddie didn’t care, however. I could stuff one of his back paws into his ear and he wouldn’t twitch.

I was starting to do just that when my cell phone came to life with a plain old electronic beeping noise, which meant it was a number to which I hadn’t assigned a ring tone. I dug through my backpack and turned it on. “Hello?”