Borrowed Crime: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery (18 page)

I wasn’t so sure about that, but maybe he was right. “I know you can’t talk about an active investigation, but can you tell me if there’s been any progress?”
Please let there be progress. Please be close to figuring out what happened. And pretty please figure it out before the court hearing.

“Some,” he said. “We’re working with a local conservation officer, putting together a case.”

Which wasn’t really an answer at all, or at least not a useful one. If anyone asked me, Ash was following far too closely in Detective Inwood’s footsteps. No one was, but I was ready if the question came up.

Still, if they were working with a CO, a type of officer who had full arrest powers and was responsible for enforcing the hunting and fishing laws, that probably meant they were still thinking a hunter with remarkably poor shooting ability had killed Roger by accident. And if they thought that, I was sure they were wrong. Denise was the one who—

“Can I ask you a question?”

I blinked away from my thoughts. Ash was studying the table. “Sure,” I said.

“Would you . . .” He blew out a breath, looked up at me through eyelashes far too long to belong to a grown man, and asked, “Would you go out with me?”

I blinked at him. Blinked again. “Go out with you?”

Now the blush was evident. “Maybe have dinner and a movie? We could go anywhere you’d like. And see any movie you want. What kind of food do you like? I’ll eat anything, and I like almost everything. There’s a new place in Petoskey people are talking about and it sounds good.”

The poor man was starting to babble. I had to stop him, and fast. “Thanks very much,” I said. “I appreciate the offer—really I do—but I’m seeing someone right now.”

“Oh.”

He deflated, and I felt horribly sorry for him. “I’ve been seeing Tucker Kleinow for a few months. Do you know him?” Ash shook his head slowly. “He’s a doctor,” I said, “an emergency-room doctor, at the hospital in Charlevoix. He hasn’t been up here very long; this will be his first winter Up North.” I suddenly realized I was talking too much, so I picked up my water and took a long drink.

“A doctor,” Ash said dully. “That figures.” He slid out of the booth and stood. “Sorry to bother you.”

“You didn’t.” I smiled at him, but he didn’t see it because he was studying his shoes. “Honest. And I’m sorry you didn’t know I was seeing someone.”

“A doctor,” he muttered under his breath, and trudged back to his dinner.

I wanted to call him back, wanted to make him smile and laugh, but I knew he needed time to get over what he would undoubtedly be considering a rejection. How hard it must be, sometimes, to be a man.

Sighing, I thought about the specific hardships of being a man. Then I thought how hard it was to be a woman. Really, it could be a hardship just plain being human.

I shook my head, trying to jolt free the sadness and the worry. Worrying didn’t help anything and it didn’t make tomorrow any better. Plus, worrying had the definite minus of making the present worse.

Worrying, I realized with a sudden shock, was what I did when I didn’t have anyone to talk to or anything to read. In theory, I could read on my cell phone’s e-book app, but that gave me a headache.

So I got up and grabbed a real-estate guide from the rack next to the cash register.

After all, anything to read was better than nothing.

*   *   *

I ate my meal while perusing advertisements for lakeshore homes I could never hope to afford, and tried not to notice when Ash left. The poor guy. I wondered again at his odd lack of self-confidence in a social setting, then stuck a fork into my salad and concentrated on criticizing the multimillion-dollar houses that were for sale.

When dinner was eaten and paid for, I zipped my coat and headed home. One step outside, and I came to a sudden stop. The snow that had been coming down gently when I’d arrived at the Round Table must have been falling heavily ever since. A three-inch coating of white lay over everything in sight—buildings, streets, sidewalks, trees. Even in the winter darkness, the town almost glowed with snow-white brightness.

I stuck out my tongue to catch a few flakes and smiled, because this would be the perfect night to take the long way home and check out the holiday decorations.

On one street there were two armies of wire-framed snowmen on a front lawn, set up in a snowball-fight formation. On another street there was a spectacular display that included a pair of five-foot-high nutcrackers and a slightly creepy ten-foot-tall Santa Claus. Another family had put up a tall pole and strung lights down from the top, creating a massive treelike structure that changed color every few minutes.

But I saved the best until last. Two streets away from the boardinghouse, I stopped in front of a two-story Victorian-era home and smiled.

The front yard had been transformed into a winter fantasy scene. There was a waist-high small village, complete with a train station, church, blacksmith’s shop, horse-drawn sleighs, and even a pint-sized ice rink. Adults walked, children ran, and a pair of dogs tussled over a gift-wrapped box. A restrained hand had lit the miniature town with tiny lights that illuminated the scene in a golden tone. I was completely entranced, just as I was every year, and I didn’t hear the footsteps until they were closing in on me.

I turned and exchanged nods with my aunt’s neighbor Otto Bingham.

“Nice,” he said, gesturing at the display. “All in wood, isn’t it? Professionally done, it looks like.”

The man can speak? It’s a Christmas miracle!
I smiled. “I’ll tell my Aunt Frances.”

“Oh?” He tilted his head slightly to one side. “Did she help put it up?”

Laughing, I said, “No, she made it. Plywood, most of it, with some hard maple for the blocky bits, like the church steeple.”

His mouth dropped slightly open. “She made this?”

I pointed. “If you squint a little, you can see the date above the front door of that city hall.”

“Nineteen eighty-two?”

“Yup.” I put my hands in my pockets. “She grew up helping her dad—my grandpa—in his woodshop, and when she married a guy who lived up here, she made sure to have space for a shop herself.” It was in the basement, which wasn’t an ideal location, but the addition of an exterior stairway had made it a lot better.

I loved to brag about my aunt. Since everyone in the county knew about her talents, I didn’t get to do it very often, yet here was someone right in front of me.
Perfect!

“She made little projects for years,” I said, “but when my uncle died, she got into it more seriously. Before long she was teaching wood shop at the high school.” Which was where Rafe had first learned his woodworking skills, something about which I reminded him every so often.

“Teaching?”

“Yep.” I grinned, enjoying myself. “These days she’s teaching woodworking classes at the community college in Petoskey and kind of tutoring some advanced students for the wooden boat–building school up in Cedarville.”

“Tutoring?” Otto asked faintly.

“She loves it—says it keeps her young, even though she spends a lot of hours doing it. And now she’s getting into wood turning. You should see some of her work—it’s just gorgeous. I keep telling her she should sell some pieces at the art shows in the summer, maybe even the art galleries, but she just keeps giving them away.”

“A professional craftswoman,” Otto muttered. “That figures.”

I glanced over at him. For a second, he’d sounded exactly like Ash had an hour earlier. “What do you mean?”

But he just sighed, said good night, and walked away.

*   *   *

“You know what would be great?” my newest bookmobile volunteer asked.

I glanced over at Lina Swinney. I’d met the young woman at the Lakeview Art Gallery a few months ago. We’d gotten along well, so when I’d heard over the Thanksgiving dinner table that she was taking a semester off from college to help her mom recover from a bout with pneumonia, I’d given her a call. She was glad to help out when she could, but it was another temporary solution to the volunteer problem, and I still needed a real answer.

“You’ve already had lots of ideas,” I told her. “My favorite is spinning Eddie’s loose hair into yarn and making a blanket of his own hair for him to shed on.”

Lina giggled and patted her own long honey-brown hair. “Do you think it would work?”

I had no idea. I liked reading about characters who knitted and weaved and sewed, but I’d never tried to do any of it myself. One of these days. Right after I finished reading
Gravity’s Rainbow.

“What’s your new idea?” I asked. “If it has anything to do with finding a revenue source for the bookmobile operations, I’d be your willing servant for a year, minimum.”

I could feel her looking at me with a puzzled
expression. Lina was bright and full of energy, but she and I did not share a sense of humor. Not that I was joking about the servant thing—not exactly.

We were headed into the next stop, the parking lot of a mom-and-pop grocery store. Three cars waited for us, even though we were a few minutes early.

Lina flung her arms out, gesturing at the bookmobile’s interior. “Look at all this! It’s a blank canvas waiting to be filled. It’s an undeveloped artistic endeavor. Just think what we could do with the ceiling and walls and even the bookshelves. And it’s the holidays, so it’s the perfect time to decorate this thing to the max.”

Making noncommittal noises, I parked the bookmobile. Lina released Eddie, and we started the stop’s setup routine. As we did the small amount of necessary business, Lina kept talking.

“Can’t you just see it?” She nodded at the shelves. “Wire garland, maybe, or at least crepe paper. We could put snowflakes up. Maybe get kids to make them.” Her face was getting a little flushed. “Or snowmen. Christmas stockings. Stars. We could turn this place into a traveling art show.”

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

I looked at him. He was sitting near Lina, on the foot-high carpet-covered shelf that ran along both sides of the bookmobile. It served both as seating and as a way for people like me to reach the highest shelf.

“What do you think he said?” Lina asked. “I think he’d like decorations.”

She was undoubtedly right, and what he’d like to do most would be to rip them to shreds. There was precedent for that kind of behavior.

“It’s a fun idea,” I said, “but I’m going to have to say
no. I don’t have time to put that together.” My heart panged. Not to mention the fact that the library board might be looking for a buyer for my single-bookmobile fleet in less than two weeks.

“Maybe next year, though, right?” Lina asked.

I made a sideways sort of nod (which, if she’d been reading my mind, she would have read as “Not a chance”), opened the door, and welcomed people aboard. They were all regulars, and they pushed past me on their way to greet Eddie, who was holding court from the passenger-seat headrest.

Phyllis Chambers, recently retired from a state government job in Lansing and relocated Up North, got her Eddie fix and drifted toward me. I was sitting at the back desk, trying to get the chair to adjust to my height.

“Minnie,” Phyllis said, “do you have that gluten-free cookbook we were looking through last time, the slow-cooker one? I don’t see it now.”

“Let me see if it’s been checked out.” I tapped at the computer and frowned. “That’s weird. It says the book’s still here. Well, let’s take a look.” The 641s were on the right side of the aisle, about halfway down, at Minnie eye-height. I knew the book’s cover was dark, but it wasn’t there.

“Huh.” I stood there, hands on hips, staring at the spot where the book should have been.

I spent a lot of time making sure all the bookmobile books were shelved properly. As in a
lot
of time. Of course, someone could have walked off with the book, but theft was so unusual for our library that even Stephen didn’t see the need for the shrieking alarm devices that big-city libraries had. It was far more likely that someone had unintentionally taken it home, so with any luck, it would come back in a week or two.

“Here it is!” Phyllis held the book aloft. “It was in with the biographies.”

“Next to Julia Child?” I asked.

Phyllis laughed. “Harry Truman.”

“Maybe he took up cooking after the left the White House.” I beeped the book through the system. “Glad you found it.”

“I wasn’t really looking,” she said. “I just opened my eyes, and it was there. Wrong place, but I was looking at the right time.”

She nodded and went to the stairs. She might have said good-bye, but if she did, I didn’t hear, because her words were too loud in my ears.

Wrong place, but I was looking at the right time.

It had the ring of profundity, somehow. Was it possible that I was looking in the wrong place for Roger’s killer? Looking in the wrong place for the person who wanted to hurt Denise? Looking in the—

There was a sharp pain in my shin. “Ow!”

Eddie head butted me in the leg one more time, then sat and looked up at me. “Mrr.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” I ruffled up his fur. “Without a doubt, I am indeed looking for both answers and profound statements in the wrong places. What I should really be doing is asking you.”

“Mrr,” he said, and whacked me in the shin again.

*   *   *

By the time we returned to Chilson, Lina was ready to give up college, her future career, and her boyfriend, and do nothing but work on the bookmobile.

“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done,” she said.

I glanced at her, but it’s hard to judge facial expressions when you’re carrying milk crates full of books into a library’s basement. Though she sounded sincere,
even Eddie could sound sincere when he really wanted something. “I’m glad you had a good time.” I said.

“It just seems so wrong that you can’t get the money to pay someone,” Lina said. “I mean, it would be part time—right?—so there wouldn’t be benefits or anything. How much could it really cost?”

Too much, according to Stephen. As we entered the room that held the bookmobile’s collection, I shied away from thinking about the odds of the bookmobile program ending altogether and said, “The library’s budget is tight.”