Лори Касс: Lending А Paw

Black, White, and Red . . .

“Mrrorwr!”

Again with the scary howly noise. If I showed him that the place was empty, maybe he’d come to his kitty senses and we could be on our way. “Let’s go around the back, okay, Eddie?”

He bounded past me and streaked off.

Well. “Must be you want to check out the backyard,” I said, following him once again.

“Mrr!”

“Okay, okay.” I scanned the tall grass for signs of Eddie. “I can take a hint if I’m beaten over the head with it. I’m really pretty smart, you know. Did I ever tell you what I got on my SATs? Bet my score was a lot higher than yours, and— oh !”

For a brief, eternal second, I didn’t move. Didn’t think. Didn’t breathe. Because my black and white cat was standing next to something completely unexpected—the figure of a man. He was lying on his back, one arm flung across his chest, his face turned away from me, so all I got was the impression of age, frailty, and the absence of any life. But maybe . . . maybe there was breath. Maybe there was a chance.

I rushed forward. “Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Do you need help?” I was kneeling, checking for a pulse, feeling the cool skin, knowing I was far too late, but looking for life anyway. “Can you hear me? Can you—”

My hand, which had been on the man’s wrist, came away slightly red and wet. Blood. What on . . . ?

I swallowed. The blood had come from a small hole in his shirt, right where his heart was. A small, bullet-sized hole.

Lending a Paw

A BOOKMOBILE CAT MYSTERY

Laurie Cass

AN OBSIDIAN BOOK

OBSIDIAN

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014

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A Penguin Random House Company

First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

Copyright © Janet Koch, 2013

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

ISBN 978-1-101-63001-3

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

For Jessica Wade, who asked for a cat book

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is going to be a long set of acknowledgments, so please bear with me. Heartfelt thanks go to the following:

The bookmobile ladies of LaGrange County Public Library of Indiana. Not only did Kitty Helmkamp and her intrepid assistant let me tag along for a day of bookmobiling, but I got the insider’s tour of their gorgeous library. Thanks so much to the entire staff!

All the bookmobile manufacturers I contacted were helpful, but Barb Ferne of OBS went over the top. Thanks for all your help, Barb.

The Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services (ABOS). My membership with ABOS has been invaluable and I am constantly impressed by the dedication and commitment of bookmobile folks.

My fellow PlotHatchers, authors Janet Bolin, Peg Cochran (also writing as Meg London), Krista Davis, Kaye George (also writing as Janet Cantrell), Daryl Gerber (also writing as Avery Aames), and Marilyn Levinson. Having the support of people who understand the writing life is more precious than I have room to describe.

And Krista Davis deserves a special mention. Though she claims not to remember, it was during a conversation with her that I dreamed up the idea of a bookmobile cat series. Thanks, Krista!

Additional thanks go to:

Author Darlene Ryan, aka Sofie Kelly, aka Sofie Ryan, who has the magical ability to make me laugh at things that shouldn’t be the least bit funny.

Author Peg Herring, who is always there when I need Thai food and/or information about Michigan schools.

The staffs at my local hangouts, the Central Lake District Library and the Bellaire Public Library.

Thanks always, always, always to my husband, who kept me fed and watered throughout the writing and editing of this book. You’re the best, sweetie!

To my amazing agent, Jessica Faust, and the entire BookEnds staff.

A huge thank-you goes to my outstanding editor, Jessica Wade. Not only was she the impetus behind the book’s entire concept, but she also took the mess that was the original manuscript and (oh-so-gently) helped me shape it into what you now hold in your hands. If you hear people say that books aren’t edited these days, send them to me.

And last, but certainly not least, I’d like to thank the real-life Eddie for allowing me to write about him. While the fictional Eddie and the real version are not exactly the same, most days it’s hard to tell the difference. Thanks, pal. You’re the best Eddie ever.

Chapter 1

When I was a little girl, I dreamed of growing up to be the president. Failing that, an astronaut or a ballerina.

My presidential aspirations were quashed when I found out that the president did not, in fact, get to do whatever he (or she) wanted. The astronaut idea faded when my mother told me that even people in space suits could get motion sickness, and my ballerina phase lasted only until I actually took a class and discovered that I had no aptitude whatsoever. Even at six, I knew what the ballet teacher’s headshaking meant.

With those career paths closed off, I went to my alternative tier of professional choices, determined in large part because I’d had the great good fortune to grow up within walking distance of a public library. By the time I’d turned ten, I knew that I would be one of three things: a librarian in a big city, a librarian in a large town, or a librarian in a small town.

Big cities give me the heebie-jeebies, so that was out. A large town would have been okay, but a few short years after receiving my master’s degree in library and information science and a few short weeks after the end of a long-term relationship, I found a posting for an assistant director position at the district library in Chilson, Michigan.

Chilson! I stared at the listing so long that my eyes dried out. Chilson was a small tourist town in northwest lower Michigan. It was where I’d spent childhood summers with my aunt. It was my favorite place in the whole world. Could I really be this lucky?

When the library board voted to hire me, I was deliriously happy. I was young, footloose, fancy-free, and, since I’d given up any hope of my height reaching five feet and had become resigned to the fact that my curly black hair was never going to straighten, things were working out just the way I’d crossed my fingers that they would.