Borrowed Crime: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery (16 page)

Curious, I squinted at the tiny lettering engraved into the brass plate of a trophy so tall, it was scratching the underside of the shelf above. When I saw what the award was for, I stood bolt upright and stared at her. “Are these all . . . ?” I gestured at the rest of the shelf.

She shrugged. “I don’t really care about them anymore, but they make you take them. I started winning when I was just out of high school. The bug caught me and I’m still shooting.”

And, apparently, still winning. I glanced at the date on the plaque in front of me. Just this summer, Shannon had won first place for a shooting award in Fort Gratiot, Michigan. The trophy to its right proclaimed that last year she’d won third place in a national competition in Colorado.

She tapped a tall trophy. “So, you can see, when I say it’s not your fault, I know what I’m talking about. No hunter worthy of the name would ever shoot someone accidentally, not like poor Roger was shot.”

I disagreed about the fault thing, but she was entitled to her opinion, even if it was wrong.

“Roger was far too nice a guy for Denise,” Shannon said, sitting on the edge of her desk, next to the framed pictures of people I assumed were her husband and children. “No idea what he ever saw in her—she’s been
a pain in the you-know-what since she was born—but it’s a shame what happened.” She sighed. “No one deserves that, not even Denise. And certainly not Roger.”

“Someone told me,” I said, “that you and Denise were big rivals in high school.”

She smiled. “A more accurate assessment would be that Denise hated me. If I said it was because I beat her out for first-chair flute in sixth grade, would you believe me?”

“Yes,” I said promptly.

Shannon laughed. “So you know Denise. You’d have thought she’d have been satisfied after she made the basketball’s cheerleading squad and I didn’t, but no, she’s kept up this silly rivalry for years. The only reason she went after Roger in the first place was because he took me to prom.”

I blinked. No one had told me that.

“All these years later,” Shannon was saying, “and Denise still wants to one-up me any chance she gets. You’d think she’d have let that high-school attitude go by now, but she hasn’t grown out of it.”

It seemed odd to me, but then, I found lots of things odd. The duck-billed platypus, for one. Blue cheese for another. And then there was the oddity of a black-and-white tabby cat who liked to tell me exactly what he thought.

“Of course,” Shannon said, laughing, “the feeling is mutual. I never miss an opportunity to one-up her, either. Not that I get many chances these days, but if I see them, I take them.” Her grin faded. “Well, maybe I’d pass if I saw one right now. Poor Roger,” she said, sighing, and I wasn’t sure whether she was talking about his death or his life of being married to Denise.

I took a stab in the dark. “Do you know of any history between Denise and Allison Korthase?”

Shannon’s eyebrows drew together. “My guess would be something about downtown. Allison’s on the Chamber of Commerce board and Denise always has suggestions,” she said, smiling tightly. “Now.” She slipped down into her office chair. “Let’s talk about your will.”

I sat in one of her upholstered chairs, because it would be a good idea to get my affairs in order. Adults did that kind of thing, and I was trying to be adultlike, at least most of the time.

But it was hard to concentrate on my short list of assets when I was thinking about so many other things. About rivalries, about marksmanship, and about what my attorney uncle had once told me—that good trial attorneys were also good actors.

*   *   *

The next morning, Eddie, the bookmobile, and I ventured forth under a sky streaked with clouds of red and gray and a slightly creepy shade of dark blue, and pulled up to a tidy ranch house just outside of Chilson. Eddie looked up at me.

“Sorry,” I said, “this isn’t a stop. We’re waiting for today’s volunteer.”

At least I hoped we were. If she didn’t show up, Eddie and I would be forced to turn around, and I’d have to make the dreaded phone calls canceling the day’s stops.

I watched the house, wondering if I should go to the door and knock, was tempted to honk the ultraloud horn but knew I shouldn’t, when the side door opened and Kelsey came rushing out, her hands and arms filled with packages. I opened the bookmobile’s door, and she came up the stairs, breathing hard.

“Thanks. Sorry I’m late, but my mom didn’t show up until a couple of minutes ago, and I had to get her settled with the kids.”

I showed her where to stow her belongings, which seemed to be primarily food items, and we were under way before Eddie got in more than three complaints.

“This is going to be so much fun,” Kelsey said, reaching forward to scratch Eddie’s head through his carrier’s wire door. “I’m glad you let me ride along.”

Let her? I’d almost wept with gratitude when she’d said she wanted to go. I absolutely had to find some real volunteers. Using the library staff on their days off wasn’t a good policy in many ways.

“I brought all sorts of stuff,” Kelsey was saying. “I wasn’t sure what you liked to eat for snacks, so I packed apples and crackers and cheese and grapes and yogurt.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And don’t tell my kids, but I brought potato chips and dip for this afternoon.”

There were definite advantages to having the mother of small children as your volunteer. I didn’t want to tell Kelsey that normally we didn’t bother to eat snacks on the bookmobile—it wouldn’t do to appear ungrateful—so I thanked her and started talking about the day’s events.

“Our first two stops are home deliveries. After that we have a school stop, a church stop, a stop for lunch, and two township hall stops.”

Ten minutes later, we were at Mrs. Salvator’s house, which had a nice, short driveway. I told Kelsey she could make the first delivery. “There’s just one thing,” I cautioned. “It’s easy to get chatting, and ten minutes is all we’ve scheduled for this stop.”

“Got it, Chief.” Kelsey saluted me, zipped up her coat, and picked up the plastic bag I’d stuffed with books the day before and labeled with the woman’s last name. “I’ll be back in plenty of time.”

As I watched her knock on the door, then go inside, as per Mrs. Salvator’s instructions, I eyed Eddie. “Think she’ll make it?”

He yawned, flattening his ears and showing sharp white teeth.

“I agree. That’s why the stop is really scheduled for twenty minutes.”

“Mrr,” Eddie said, which I took as cat applause for my outstanding management skills.

Sure enough, Kelsey came trotting out of the house a little more than fifteen minutes after she’d gone in. “Sorry,” she gasped. “But she was telling me all about this book she’d just finished, and I didn’t want to walk out on her, you know?”

I did. And that was why I’d made the home-delivery stops twice as long as I’d originally planned. It wasn’t as efficient, but we were providing something more than books.

The next home stop had a long, narrow, and hilly driveway. I eyed it, considered my bookmobile-backing skills, and decided to walk up. “I’ll take this one,” I said.

“Does Eddie get snack time?” Kelsey asked.

I pointed to the cabinet I’d recently stocked. “Top shelf. But don’t give him too many. He’s prone to carsickness if he eats too much.”

“This handsome cat?” Kelsey leaned down to look in the carrier. “Carsick?”

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

I ignored him and headed out.

Halfway up the gravel drive, the plastic bags had become heavy enough to make my fingers cramp. “More things they didn’t talk about in college,” I muttered as I tromped up the back steps of Barton Raftery’s
fieldstone house. Then again, in college they hadn’t told me how much fun it would be to run a bookmobile outreach program, so I decided to call it a draw.

I opened the back door and stuck my head inside. “Knock, knock,” I called.

“Come on in,” came Barton’s voice.

“Shoes off?” I asked.

“Only if they’re dirty,” he said.

I picked up one foot and eyed the sole of my light boot. Not visibly dirt encrusted, but better to be safe than sorry. I kicked them off and padded to the living room.

“Minnie,” Barton said from his recliner. “You are a sight for sore eyes.”

Barton, in his mid-seventies, with a shock of white hair and a broad build, was a regular at the library. Every week he checked out a stack of books—heavy on the thrillers, with a smattering of literary fiction and religious history—and only hip-replacement surgery had kept him away.

“It’s not me you want,” I said, emptying the bags onto the coffee table, “so much as these books.”

“Now, now,” he said, reaching for a Daniel Silva novel, “a pretty girl makes anything better.”

I handed him a copy of the latest release from Stuart Woods. “Brand-new. You’re the first one to read it.”

“Ahh, you know how to treat a man right. I tell you what, when I’m all healthy, I’ll come out with you on the bookmobile. See if my wife gets jealous.”

I smiled, but it must not have been very convincing, because Barton said, “Hey, now. What’s the matter?”

One glance at my watch told me I didn’t have time to tell the whole story of the library board’s intentions regarding the bookmobile, even if I wanted to, which I
didn’t, but Barton was a nice man and deserved a response, so I said, “I’m still a little upset over Roger Slade.”

Barton gave me a look. “Couldn’t have been easy,” he said. “Finding him and all.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

We shared a short silence, while I thought about Roger and Denise and responsibility and blame and motivations and possibilities too wretched to think about.

“Want to hear a story?” Barton asked. “And it’s not about that witchy Denise, either.”

Of course I wanted to hear a story. Didn’t everyone? “Sure.”

He nodded at me to sit down, so I perched on the edge of the coffee table. “Let me tell you something about Roger,” Barton said. “A demon behind the wheel of a car, that one. Did you know that he totaled three cars one summer?”

My chin dropped. “Roger Slade?”

“A Ford Mustang, a Pontiac Lemans, and a beat up old Firebird.” He sighed. “Too bad about that Mustang. It was a beauty.”

Roger had been a speed demon? That didn’t sit right with anything I knew about him. Maybe he wasn’t the nice guy everyone thought he was. Maybe he had hidden depths that he would have gone to great lengths to hide. Maybe, in spite of the hat, Denise wasn’t the intended target. Maybe—

“Then again,” Barton said, “with some work, that LeMans could have been a show car. Can’t believe his dad let him drive it in the first place.”

His dad?
I squinted at Barton. “When did this happen?”

He furrowed his brow and stared at the ceiling. “Nineteen seventy-eight? Or was it ’seventy-nine? One of those.”

I’d been listening to a tale about Roger’s youthful indiscretions. “Nice story, Barton,” I said, standing, “but I don’t see what it has to do with Roger’s death.”

“Not a thing,” he said, frowning. “What made you think it might?”

“I’ll be back in three weeks for the books,” I said.

And I would be, whether it was by bookmobile or, if the worst happened, in my own little car, because even if I lost the bookmobile and my job, I would still make sure the books were returned to the library.

*   *   *

At the end of the day, I dropped Kelsey at her house with most of the snack packaging empty. “See you on Monday, Eddie,” she said, making kissy noises at him. “You, too, Minnie,” she said, and grinned, as I ducked away from any kiss she might send my way. “Any snack requests?”

“You don’t have to bring any,” I said halfheartedly. “Really, you don’t.”

“Do you like Rice Krispies treats?” she asked.

“Well . . .”

She laughed and waved good-bye. “Have a good weekend.”

When she was gone, I dropped the transmission back into drive and off we went.

“What do you think?” I asked Eddie. “Is Kelsey ready to quit working at the library so she can be a bookmobile volunteer?”

Eddie kept quiet.

“No opinion?” I asked. “Really? The world must be ending.”

Eddie rolled over, clearly not finding me amusing.

Cats.

But I kept quiet, too, on the way back to the library, and didn’t say a word as I finished the bookmobile cleanup and transferred Eddie back to my car. I was thinking dark, dreary, and depressing thoughts about the likelihood of finding Roger’s killer, about the end of the bookmobile, about the end of my job, and about the prospects of ever finding another job that I liked as much as this one.

So when I saw Denise Slade leave the library and walk toward the parking lot, I was more than ready to quit with the depressing stuff and find some answers.

“Denise?” I called. “Hang on a minute, will you?”

Her sigh was visible from fifty feet away, but she waited. “What do you want?” she asked when I got close enough to see the whites of her eyes.

“I heard a story today about Roger that I find hard to believe. About the summer he totaled three cars. Is that right?”

“Right after he learned to drive.” She rolled her eyes. “My dad almost didn’t let me go out with him because of it. The guys at school called him Triple for months. But from then on, he didn’t get a single ticket, not even for parking.”

“The other day,” I said, “when Allison Korthase was walking out, you didn’t have a good word to say about her. I just wondered why. She seems nice enough.”

Denise sighed. “Not that it’s any of your business, but we don’t see eye to eye on politics.” The sigh turned into a glare. “Why are you being so nosy, anyway? If you don’t have enough to do, you should help out with the Friends more. When was the last time you spent any time in the sale room? Or signed up to work any of our fund-raisers? From the amount of time you spend on the Friends, it seems like you want us to disappear.”

Recent widow or not, I needed to straighten things out with this woman. “That’s not true, and you, of all people, should know it. You’re the one who wanted the library staff to step back from the Friends operations, and you’re the one who requested that the Friends be independent from the official library functions. How can you possibly blame me for not involving myself?”