Borrowed Crime: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery (23 page)

E
arly the next morning, soon after I’d finished dressing and just as I was toweling off my hair, my cell rang. Since I was busy watching raindrops pelt against the window, I decided it was time to get some help from my roommate.

“Hey, Eddie, would you get that, please?”

My cat, who was lying in the exact middle of my bed, which was the same place he’d spent the entire night, no matter how many times I’d tried to gently shove him to one side, didn’t even lift his head.

“Some help you are,” I said, picking up the phone. “And after all I do for . . . uh-oh.” The incoming call was from Donna, my volunteer for the day.

“Minnie?” a voice croaked. “It’s Donna.” There was a pause, and I heard a distant, racking cough. “I’m so sorry,” she said when she came back, “but I woke up sick. I really don’t think I should come out on the bookmobile today.”

“Absolutely not,” I told her. “The last thing you need to do is go out in this weather. Read some of Jan Karon’s Mitford books, and I’ll see you when you’re
better.” I ended the call and immediately started another one. “Kelsey? It’s Minnie.”

Two short sentences of explanation later, Kelsey said, “Let me think. My mom’s in Chicago for her annual Christmas shopping trip, and my husband’s working today. I’ll call around and see if I can find a sitter for the kids.”

Which she might or might not be able to find, and, even if she did, there was no way the sitter would be in place in half an hour, which was our appointed departure time.

“Thanks anyway, Kelsey,” I said. “I’m sure I can find someone else.”

But who? I scrolled through the numbers in my phone and called Holly.

“Oh, wow, Minnie. I’m sorry, but I promised the kids I’d take them to the indoor water park at Boyne today. They’ve been excited about this all week.”

I told her not to worry about it, and called Josh.

“You want me to do what?” He laughed. “Let me guess: I’m not going to get paid, either.”

“I’ll pay you myself,” I said, “if that’s what it takes.”

He must have heard the near desperation in my voice. “Hey, I was just joking. I’d help if I could, especially if Eddie’s coming along, but remember? My buddies and I are going to the Michigan State game this afternoon and the Lions game tomorrow.”

The voices and the road noise in the background suddenly made sense. In my half panic, I’d forgotten about the weekend he’d been talking about since August. “Sorry,” I said. “I forgot. Have a good time, okay?”

I stared at my phone.
Now what?
I’d exhausted all the library staff I felt able to call at this hour on a
Saturday morning, Lina was out of town, and there was no way I was going to call Stephen and beg for his help. I’d go back to school, get a PhD in biochemistry, and clone myself before I did that.

I looked at my phone list again. “Hah,” I said. “Got it.” I stabbed at the
DIAL
button and was surprised when it was picked up half a ring later.

“Morning, sunshine,” Rafe said cheerfully.

I squinted in the direction of the marina. “You sound wide awake.”

“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you’re never awake before ten on Saturdays during the school year.”

“Au contraire,” he said. “I am always awake by seven thirty on the mornings that my kitchen appliances are to be delivered.”

My last hope circled the drain and dropped down. “Oh. That’s nice.”

“Liar,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

I debated lying some more, but knew he’d call me on it. One of these days, I really had to work on increasing my obfuscation skills. “I just needed some help this morning.”

“Sorry about that. I would if I could.”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks anyway.”

I stared at the phone. Sighed. Sighed again, this time so heavily that Eddie went to the trouble of picking up his head to look at me. I dialed one more time.

“Denise? It’s Minnie. I have a big favor to ask . . .”

*   *   *

Nine hours and eight stops later, I was regretting that I hadn’t given up and simply canceled the day’s bookmobile trip. I was also starting to regret the dark clothes I’d chosen to wear, as they were a perfect magnet for
Eddie hair, but I’d been regretting Denise’s presence far longer. I was reaching the end of my patience and I hoped that I could keep my temper in check, at least while there were bookmobile patrons on board.

For eight hours and fifty-five minutes, Denise had been on her smart phone whenever she’d found coverage, texting, creating Facebook posts and tweets—and reading them out loud to me as she typed—about how brave she was to go out on the bookmobile so soon after her husband was killed on it, how important she was to the bookmobile’s outreach, and generally patting herself on the back so hard I was surprised she didn’t have a repetitive-stress injury.

But, in general, the stops went smoothly enough while Eddie, from his seat on the console, surveyed his small kingdom with a judicious eye and made the occasional comment.

At the last stop, a busy mother of three small children, who was checking out a pile of picture books, turned to him. “Eddie, what do you think? Is it time for my oldest to start chapter books?”

He studied her for a moment, then said, “Mrr.”

“Thought so,” she said, and added another book to the stack. “Thanks.”

I shook my head. My cat was a better librarian than I was. Of all the things Stephen didn’t need to know, this had to be in the top two.

A few minutes later, I shooed everyone out. Thanks to the heavy rain, we’d arrived at this last stop of the day a little late and, thanks to my disinclination to cut a stop short, it was now past the time we should have closed up shop and headed home.

“Thanks for coming out in this weather,” I said to
the last exiting person. “See you soon.” By the time I slid into the driver’s seat, Denise had already encouraged Eddie into his strapped-down carrier and was fussing with her phone.

I started the engine and turned on the headlights. It had been one of those days of rain and low, heavy cloud cover, one of those dark gray days that made you want to stay inside with a book and a never-ending bowl of popcorn. It had never truly gotten light outside, and what little there had been was fading fast.

After peering left and right into the gloom, I pulled out of the parking lot and accelerated slowly.

“Can you believe that Shannon Hirsch?” Denise said, thumbing at her phone and making a gagging noise. “She puts the weirdest stuff on Facebook. Want to hear her latest?”

Short of slapping duct tape over Denise’s mouth or shoving plugs into my ears, there wasn’t any way I’d be able not to. I did briefly wonder why two sworn enemies would be Facebook friends, but there were lots of things I wondered about. The future of space exploration, for one. Why Eddie drank out of the far side of his water bowl, for another.

“She’s talking about the books she’s given away and wishes she hadn’t. Can you believe that?”

I murmured something vague.

“I know, right?” Denise nodded as if I’d agreed with her. “Who cares if she gave away her grandmother’s copy of
Little Women
by accident? I mean, am I asking for sympathy because my husband put my boxed set of
A Song of Ice and Fire
in the sale
?
Can you believe he didn’t know it’s the same thing as
A Game of Thrones
? I mean . . . What’s the matter?”

She asked this because I was braking hard. When we came to a stop, I turned on the four-way flashers, put the bookmobile into park, and turned to her.

“You gave away a boxed set of George Martin’s books?”

“Weren’t you listening? I didn’t give them away—Roger did.”

“To the book sale upstairs?” I asked. “The Friends’ sale?”

“You’d rather I take them to the Petoskey library? What’s wrong with you?”

“When we were on the bookmobile before,” I persisted, “you said you sometimes write in books. Did you write anything in those?”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” she huffed. “Is that what this is about—you’re worried that the Friends are selling defaced books? Well, gosh, Miss Librarian, I’m so sorry, but, yes, I did write in those books. Anyone who wanted to keep track of all those names would do the same thing. I didn’t know I was going to be graded on—”

“That note you sent to Allison Korthase.” Denise glared at my interruption, but right now I didn’t care about politeness. “That anonymous note. Did you write that by hand or did you print it out on the computer?”

“By hand,” she said sulkily. “So what?”

“The Wednesday before Roger died,” I said, remembering. Mitchell had handed me the key to the mystery without even knowing it. “Allison Korthase bought that boxed set. Did it have your name in it?”

Denise frowned, not understanding, but then her face went flat and white. “Yes. It did. Allison knows
what my handwriting looks like,” she whispered. “She’s known for a month.”

The police needed to know, and they needed to know as soon as possible. “Do you have reception?” I pointed at Denise’s phone.

She glanced at the screen. “Not much.”

I turned off the flashers, checked for traffic, and pulled back onto the road. Spotty cell reception was one of the few annoying things about living Up North. I’d have to wait until we got back to Chilson to call the sheriff’s office.

The rain suddenly started pounding down full force times two. I flicked the windshield wipers to high and slowed to a safe speed. Denise wasn’t talking about the elephant on the bus, so I did. “I think Allison killed Roger. And I think she sliced your radiator hose.”

Denise stared through the wet windshield. “Roger was killed by a hunter. Allison didn’t kill him instead of me. It’s not my fault, and you’re being horrible to say so. You’re wrong—just plain wrong.”

I glanced at Eddie. He was sleeping. So much for him coming to my defense. That bond I’d mentioned to Aunt Frances hadn’t exactly stood the test of time. It hadn’t even lasted twenty-four hours.

“Allison is smart,” I said. “And she’s ambitious.”

“Now, that I can agree with.” Denise nodded. “You should have heard her, that day at the Friends, going on and on about how she was going to change things. So I asked her, right in front of everyone, ‘You’re going to do all that here in Chilson?’ She went a little pink and rambled on about how anyone can be a catalyst, but I bet she runs for a state office in a few years.”

And a congressional seat after that,
I thought.
But only
if there’s nothing in her background to stain her. Only if she never writes that letter to the editor admitting that she plagiarized.

The rain slackened and I increased our speed the slightest bit. The sooner we got back, the sooner I could tell Detective Inwood about Allison.

Plus, the sooner I could get Denise’s voice out of my ears, the better. She had started talking louder to be heard over the rain, and even though the rain was slowing, her piercing voice was still penetrating my skin and going straight into my bones.

I shook my head, trying to get rid of the image, but it stuck, just like the last leaves of autumn were sticking to the road’s asphalt.

Denise rattled on about Allison’s shortcomings. “That husband of hers, he comes from money, but, then, so does she.” She managed to make it sound like a bad thing. “Her grandfather made a bundle down in Grand Rapids, I think it was, doing something with furniture.”

She made a gagging noise. “What could be so new about furniture that it makes someone enough money to live out at the point? There’s something seriously wrong with this world when people like that can— Minnie! What are you doing?”

What I was doing was pumping the brakes hard and fast, and there wasn’t anything else I could do to avoid what was surely going to happen.

In front of us, directly in front of us, far too close in front of us, was a huge washout. All the snowmelt and all the rain of the past few days had come down the hills and pounded into the side of the road. The runoff had found a weak spot, and the water had won. The
gaping ravine felt acres wide and miles across, and if I didn’t stop the bookmobile in time . . .

“C’mon,” I told the bookmobile. “Stop, already. You can do it.”

Denise shrieked. “Minnie! Turn! You have to turn!”

But I couldn’t. That would be the absolute worst thing I could do. My truck-driver training had taught me that if I swerved while braking this hard, the bookmobile’s high center of gravity would tip us over, flopping us onto the side, or, worse, rolling us over completely. Books would fly off the shelves, each one a dangerous projectile, and we’d tumble over and over. Above all, what I couldn’t do was turn.

“Turn!” Denise shouted.

The tires slipped on the wet asphalt, slipped on the wet leaves, and we kept moving inexorably toward the pit.

“Minnie!” Denise was sobbing. “We’re going to die and it’s all your fault!”

Seriously?
If I’d had even a fraction of a second to spare, I would have shot her one of Eddie’s Looks That Could Kill, but I didn’t have that much time. I had to steer us straight and I had to pump the brakes and I had to use all my will and strength and might to stop us. I had to stop us. I had to.

Denise’s shriek went up an octave and she covered her eyes.

Eddie started howling.

I kept braking. I kept steering.

Braking.

Steering.

Braking . . .

I was almost crying from the tension, my lower lip
sharp with pain from biting, my chest tight from holding my breath, my hands so tight on the wheel that they’d never come off.

Slower and slower we went, but we were still coming closer to the edge of the gaping maw. How many feet? Too many.

Then the pavement was gone from view and we were still moving forward.

Denise’s shriek escalated to the upper range of an operatic soprano.

Eddie’s howls came close to matching hers.

I breathed a silent prayer.

The bookmobile’s front tires bumped forward over the edge of the washout . . . and then we stopped.

I turned off the engine immediately. The only things I could hear was rain spackling the windshield and the
tick-tick-tick
of the cooling motor.