Лори Касс - Tailing A Tabby

I eyed the plates and said nothing. I was not going to out this man to anyone, but he didn’t need to know that. Not yet, anyway.

“Minnie, Minnie, Minnie, please understand. I am a man with a deep need for fried food. There are only so many days I can go without. If I do not ingest items such as these lovelies on a weekly basis”—he cast a longing look at the cooling items—“there is a strong possibility that I will curl up and die.”

He caught my sardonic glance. “Well, perhaps I won’t die, but I will become irritable and annoying and even more difficult to work with than I already am.” His quirk of a smile gave me the distinct feeling that his on-set antics were intentionally staged. “If I get more irritable, the show will suffer, and in all honesty, my sweet, it’s in enough trouble as it is.”

My first instinct was to suspect him of straightforward Minnie Manipulation. My second was to think he was telling the truth. He didn’t even look at the food for seven straight seconds, but stared at his hands, a bleak expression on his face.

“Are those mushrooms?” I asked, pointing.

He brightened. “Nothing remotely that healthy. Cheese, my dear. Large chunks of sharp cheddar cheese.” He pushed the plate over. I picked up one piece and dipped it into a white goo that I assumed was ranch dressing.

“Let’s make a bargain,” I said, holding the delectable morsel in front of me. “I’ll keep quiet about your eating habits if you tell me everything you know about Carissa Radle and her boyfriend.”

He looked at me with brown basset hound eyes. “Can’t we make another type of bargain? Perhaps one of those Faustian varieties will do.”

“Carissa.” I popped the glorious hunk of cheese into my mouth.

“Even from our short acquaintance, I sense that you are a woman of your word. You swear upon your honor that you will not pass my current location to members of the press, any social media site, or worst of all, the suave and debonair Mr. Scruffy?”

I gave him a single nod, then firmly said, “Carissa.”

He sighed, added malt vinegar to the fries, and started talking. “We have many spectators at the local shoots as a matter of course. Carissa had been showing up on a regular basis. It was fine at first, but then I realized her presence was slowing down the filming. Slow filming means more time on the set means higher costs.”

“You sound like Scruffy,” I said.

“For good reason.” Trock waved a fry at me. “He’s my son. Don’t be fooled by the last name. You didn’t think I was christened with this name, did you?”

I hadn’t really thought about it, but now that he mentioned it, Trock Farrand did sound made up. “Carissa,” I said.

He smiled, his white teeth appearing Cheshire cat–like in the dim light. “I predict you will go far. It is focused minds like yours that get results. Carissa. Yes. I finally had to ask her to stay away. It wasn’t her, but the aftermath. Every time she watched a filming, that man would appear the next day, asking questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Odd ones. Who had Carissa talked to, had she talked to anyone in particular, what had she said?” He studied his plate and chose what I thought was a small piece of chicken. “It made everyone on the set uncomfortable because Carissa had told everyone she was seeing an athlete, and this young man was clearly not the athletic type.”

“Why didn’t you just ban him from the set?” I asked.

“We don’t have the budget for real security, and the network is already threatening to cancel the show. The contract is up for renewal in two months, and if I can’t deliver these last episodes on time…” He buried the last of his sentence in a huge bite of fried chicken.

“So Carissa was more or less a threat to the renewal of your contract?”

He chewed and nodded.

“You know,” I said, “that’s not a bad motive for murder.”

He swallowed, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a wad of receipts. “Perhaps. However, I have a lovely alibi. The night she died, I was down on Torch Lake, eating at the Dockside on the deck’s farthest corner. Their fried shrimp are delectable.” He sorted through the flimsy pieces of paper. “Here, love. There is no possible way I could have signed that credit card receipt and driven all the way up to Chilson to kill that poor woman.”

I brought the smudgy receipt close to my nose. Read the handwritten note: Thanks! Whitney with a smiley face. Read the time and date stamp. He was right; there was no way the timing could have worked.

Then again, he was a celebrity chef with resources I couldn’t even imagine. If anyone could have faked a credit card receipt, it was the friendly, charming, and extremely intelligent man in front of me.

• • •

I parked the bookmobile in its cozy garage and turned off the engine. “Home, sweet home.”

Eddie was too busy napping in Paulette’s nest of soft pink to pay attention, but Ivy had already unbuckled her seat belt and was piling up the returned books for hauling over to the library. How this was going to work during the snow-filled days of winter, I wasn’t quite sure, but I’d already decided not to worry about it. Things would work out.

Ivy nodded at the contest jar. “Don’t forget that we need to recount the candies, to make sure we know how many are left in there.”

I made a face. “Thanks. I forgot about that.”

“Here.” She put down the milk crate she’d picked up. “Let’s do it right now. It won’t take but a minute with the two of us.” Before I could get out a protest, she’d opened the jar and dumped the candies on the computer desk.

“This must be someone’s guess.” She picked up a slip of paper and handed it to me. “Someone else who couldn’t read the directions you so clearly taped to the jar. There’s always at least one, isn’t…” She realized that I wasn’t part of the conversation. “Minnie? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I slipped the paper into my pants pocket. “Let’s count those candies.”

Ivy gave me a measuring look, but she didn’t ask any questions. Which was good, because I wasn’t sure how to react to the message on the paper, printed in block letters and now burning hot against my skin. TO THE BOOKMOBILE LADY. STOP ASKING ABOUT CARISSA. OR ELSE.

• • •

The note in the candy jar rattled me. I tried to convince myself it wasn’t a threat, but I couldn’t. Ivy knew something was up, but she must have respected my privacy enough to leave me alone when I said I was fine.

That night I slept poorly. I kept rolling over, trying to find a position that would send me into slumber land, and I eventually rolled enough times that Eddie jumped down and left me alone to my troubled thoughts.

I knew I should take the note to the police. Of course I should. But if I did, they’d know that I was toeing the line between helping a friend and interfering with police business. I would get a lecture that would make me steaming mad, I’d say something to make them mad, and we’d end up with a bunch of angry people, which wouldn’t be productive at all.

Sunday dawned with a scattering of clouds and a breeze strong enough to make the edges at the houseboat’s aging windows whistle. I spent the morning doing chores; then after a quick lunch I dressed in library clothes and patted Eddie on the head.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, okay?”

He lifted his head, blinked, then put his head back down. He was snoring by the time I reached the door.

As was often the case on summer Sundays when the weather wasn’t nice enough for water sports, the library was busy. I spent the first two hours helping out at the front desk, then took a stint at the reference desk, answering questions and directing people to the books they wanted.