Laurie Cass - Bookmobile Cat 02 - Tailing a Tabby (3 page)

“Ma’am?” Rita asked. “The name?”

“Russell McCade,” I said.

“Sorry?” she asked. “You’re breaking up out there. Can you repeat that?”

I spoke louder. “Russell. McCade.” And that’s when the name suddenly made sense to me.

Rita’s voice started cutting out. “Okay, his first—Russell. What—name?”

“McCade,” I said forcefully. “McCade! And tell Tucker that it’s Minnie bringing him in.”

The line went dead and I had no idea if she’d heard me or not. Mechanically, I put the phone back in my backpack as my mind ran around in tiny, panicked circles. Russell McCade. Russell McCade was in the bookmobile, suffering from a stroke. Russell McCade, who went by the name Cade, who was one of the country’s best-known and most successful artists.

It was all making sense. The paintings in the hallway
were early works, created before he’d established his trademark style that I’d heard described as impressionism meets postmodernism. While I had no idea what that meant, I knew that I’d loved his paintings for years, and even more so since I’d seen an original hanging in a local art gallery.

Cade had a magical ability to appeal to consumers and critics alike. Sure, some critics dismissed his work as sentimental schlock, but most agreed that it was quality schlock, and the prices on his works had long ago reached the point where owning one was considered an investment.

Though I’d heard he had a place up here, I’d had no idea where it was. Easy enough to shield ownership of property by setting up a limited liability company that would purchase your home for you. And easy enough to avoid talking to neighbors if you didn’t have any close by.

I flicked another glance back. Easy enough to do all that if you wanted to avoid gawkers and stalkers and unwanted intrusions, but it sounded like a lonely existence.

“How much farther?” Cade’s wife asked, her voice cracking.

“Not far,” I said. Maybe this guy was internationally famous and fabulously wealthy, but right now he was a suffering man with a wife who was worried sick about him. I pressed a little harder on the gas pedal and we rocketed down the road.

•   •   •

We sped down the highway, over the Charlevoix drawbridge, through the side streets of town, and, accompanied by the massive bulk of Lake Michigan that lay
west of the hospital, we pulled into the emergency entrance.

Half the ER staff was waiting for us. As soon as we stopped, two ER workers were up the bookmobile steps and inside with a gurney. They hefted Cade with a calm competence that was reassuring.

Dr. Tucker Kleinow, the good-looking blond, and tall, but not too tall, ER doctor who was scheduled to work that day, waited outside. “Minnie. Are you all right?” He grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

“Sure. Did…” I didn’t want to ask, but I had to. “Did I do the right thing? Bringing him here myself instead of waiting for an ambulance?”

“Absolutely.” My love interest of less than a month squeezed my hand again. “Time is a crucial element for stroke victims.” The gurney came down the steps and Tucker left my side. “All right, guys,” he said. “Let’s get him in.”

Cade’s wife was clutching the side of the gurney. “I’m going with him. I’m his wife.”

Tucker made a come-along gesture and the small group started to move away fast toward the white lights of the ER.

I trotted after them. From my back pocket I pulled out a small rectangular piece of cardstock. “Here,” I said, sliding my business card into the woman’s hand. “Let me know how he is, okay? And I won’t… I won’t tell anyone anything.”

She flashed me a short smile and glanced at the card. “Thank you, Minnie. Thank you so much for everything.”

I fell back. Everyone else went through the hospital doors and was gone.

For a long moment I stood there, watching the doors and seeing nothing, hearing nothing except my own heart beating too fast. I’d done what I could, and now… what? Tucker and the rest of the ER staff would take it from here. There was nothing left for me to do.

“Mrr.” Eddie bonked the back of my leg with his head, purring loud enough for me to feel it in my knees.

“What’s that?” I asked, scooping him up. “You’re saying of course there’s something to do, because there’s always an Eddie to pet?”

He bonked my forehead. “Mrr.”

I smiled into his fur and suddenly wanted to cry. “Yeah, ‘Mrr’ to you, too,
pal.”

I
whiled away the evening by attending the annual Post–Fourth of July Party my left-hand neighbors had been throwing ever since they bought their boat and found a summer berth at Uncle Chip’s Marina in Chilson.

The Axfords played big band music, hauled in tubs of fresh oysters, and handed out plastic champagne flutes to hold the freely flowing beverage. They were wizards at making sure their guests had a good time, and I wasn’t surprised when I felt Louisa Axford’s firm hand on my shoulder as I stood at their boat’s bow, looking out over the dark waters of Janay Lake. The sun had gone down half an hour earlier and the last remnants of daylight still glowed on the horizon.

“Minnie, is anything wrong?” she asked. “Don’t tell me that Chris finally managed to offend you.”

I could hear the smile in her voice, but I knew she was studying me closely. I made a laugh. “The day he offends me is the day I go online and order up a new sense of humor.”

Chris Ballou was the manager of Uncle Chip’s
Marina, and was the most politically incorrect human on the planet. Taking him seriously would be as sensible as thinking Eddie could actually understand what I said to him.

Louisa patted my shoulder. “Good. I heard him call you Minner Dinner the other day. That seemed a little over-the-top.”

Chris found my name a great source of amusement, and within minutes of our first meeting, he’d started playing rhyming games with it. Min-Tin-Tin was one of his favorites, but he also favored Min-Bin and, of course, Minnie-Ha-Ha.

I reached around to give her a quick hug. “I don’t get mad,” I said. “I get even.”

Louisa threw back her head and laughed, the ends of her white hair curling onto her shoulders. “You are my role model,” she said. “Let’s go on back to the party. Now, I know you’re dating that nice Dr. Kleinow, but I’d appreciate it if you could spend a few minutes with that startlingly handsome young man over there. He’s new to town and could use some advice on Chilson’s social scene.”

Though I let her take me back to the festivities, my thoughts remained where they’d been, back at the hospital with Russell McCade and his wife.

•   •   •

Sunday I dawdled away by sleeping late, exchanging text messages with Tucker that reassured him I was fine after being a temporary ambulance driver, reading the newspaper, hauling dirty clothes to the marina’s coin laundry, doing all the other household chores that had piled up on my little houseboat during the week,
hanging out with my best friend, Kristen, at her restaurant and telling her about Saturday’s events.

I wanted to ask Tucker about Cade but knew I couldn’t. I wouldn’t want him to violate the privacy laws and I certainly didn’t want to put him in the position of having to tell me he couldn’t tell me anything.

“Maybe Cade’s wife will call,” I told Eddie, who was on the dining table, basking in a square of sunshine. “By the way, you know you’re not supposed to be up there. At least not when I’m home.”

His eyes, which had been open to small slits, closed completely. It was too much work, apparently, for him to say, “Mrr.”

•   •   •

On Monday morning, the air was thick with fog. My walk through the streets of downtown Chilson, normally a journey I enjoyed for the sheer pleasure of looking at the oddly cohesive blend of old and new architecture, was instead a damp passage through a gray world. The fog was so thick it was impossible to make out the wording on the store’s signs.

If I hadn’t known better, the Round Table, a diner extraordinaire, might have been Bound Town, Thorington Jewelry could have been Tonedagana Jodhpurs, and if you squinted a little, Tom’s Bakery turned into Tim’s Eatery.

The exercise of renaming the downtown businesses amused me, and I was in a fine mood as I settled myself in my office and got to work. After all, the fog would clear off soon, the sky would turn blue, and surely Cade would make a full recovery. No doubt about it. I
nodded to myself, turned on the computer, and lost myself in spreadsheets.

“Minnie.”

A chill froze my perkiness. “Hey, Stephen.” I looked up from the half-completed fall activities schedule. “How are you this fine morning?”

He frowned. “There’s a thick fog.”

That was Stephen, always one to find the dark lining in a silver cloud. I gave him a quick scan, trying to find a clue to his mood. Dour countenance, snugged-up tie, buttoned shirt cuffs. Though I couldn’t see, his pants were most likely ironed to sharp creases and it was certain that his shoes were shined. All normal. At least for Stephen.

Here in the land we called Up North, the only men who wore neckties on a regular basis were attorneys, and even then their ties only came out on court days. Most men were glad to foreswear the nooselike encumbrances, but Stephen wasn’t most men.

While I thought my typical summer library wear of unconstructed jacket, dress pants, and loafers was an excellent display of Up North professionalism, Stephen would, no doubt, have preferred that I wore low-heeled pumps, nylons, and skirt suits of navy blue and black. Wasn’t going to happen. Ever.

“A fog, yes,” I said, pointing at the ceiling, “but the sun is above, doing its best to shine through.” He looked puzzled, so I gave up my attempt to humanize him. “What can I do for you?”

The puzzlement retreated and was replaced by a much more familiar expression, that of displeasure. “We have a problem, Minnie, a serious problem.”

“We do?” To the best of my knowledge, the library
had been problem free for days, if not weeks. Well, if you didn’t count that minor episode in the children’s section with the three-year-old and the scissors, and that had ended easily enough with a time-out and a check to replace the damaged books. “What’s up?” I asked.

“Mitchell Koyne.” Stephen put his forefinger on the edge of my desk. “He’s been spending far too much time in this library. He’s keeping the staff from their duties with his endless questions and it must stop.”

“Ah.” Mitchell was indeed a fixture in the library. A large one. He was one of the tallest men I’d ever met, though he didn’t seem to know it, and it was hard to overlook his presence. From what I’d heard, Mitchell had various seasonal jobs—construction, snowplowing, ski lift operator—but he had more employment gaps than employment and none of us knew how he managed to feed and clothe himself. Not that his wardrobe of jeans, T-shirts, flannel shirts, and baseball caps could cost a tremendous amount, but still, you had to wonder.

Actually there were a lot of things about Mitchell that I wondered about, the first one of which was his true level of intelligence. At times he came across as one of the dumbest people you’d ever met, but at other times he’d say something that made you think he was one of the smartest people you’d ever met. Sometimes both would happen in the same conversation.

Plus, conversations with Mitchell tended to go on for five minutes longer than you wanted them to, and Mitchell seemed completely clueless that the library staff had job functions that didn’t include answering his questions, which could range from “What’s the longest suspension bridge in the world?” to “What’s mascarpone?”

On the plus side, I’d never seen Mitchell appear in the library before noon. Mornings were the most productive times for us, by far. The man had an odd charm, but a little bit of Mitchell went a long way.

I looked at Stephen’s finger, which was curving backward with the pressure he was exerting on it. “Well,” I said, “I’m not sure what we can do about it. This is a public institution. Mitchell has as much right to be here as anyone.”

“Of course he does,” Stephen said. “But he can’t be interfering with the duties of our staff.”

“He isn’t, not really.” I watched Stephen’s eyebrows go up. “I mean, maybe he talks a lot, but he’s not keeping anyone from doing their job.” Not for long, anyway. We’d all become experts at sliding out of the Mitchell zone.

Stephen stood up straight and folded his arms. “You think so? You’d know better if you paid more attention to the running of this library. You’re spending too much time on that bookmobile and not enough time doing what I hired you to do.”

I started to protest, but he ran right over me.

“And what did I hire you to do? To take care of the details. To take care of the day-to-day operations so I could be free to deal with the bigger issues. I did not expect to get mired down in the muck of daily minutiae at this point in my career and I resent being required to do so.”

He smoothed his tie. “Now, Minnie”—his voice dropped into that grating patronizing tone—“I know you’re trying to do your best. All I ask is that you exert a little more effort regarding your main function here. You are the assistant library director, remember?”

“Sure, but—”

“Mitchell Koyne,” Stephen said. “Take care of it.” He spun around, marched out the door, and soon I heard his leather-soled shoes go up the stairs to his office aerie on the second floor.

Most days it was easy enough to balance between placating Stephen and maintaining a sense of pride. “Not today,” I murmured. But if I was off my game, it could mean only one thing: time for more coffee.

I picked up my mug and aimed myself at the break room. Though I hadn’t checked the time, it must have been about ten o’clock. Josh, our IT guy, was at the vending machine shoving dollar bills in one end and taking diet sodas out of the other. Holly, a part-time clerk, was stirring creamer and sugar into her mug emblazoned with the logo of the American Library Association.

They both looked up when I came in, then exchanged a glance.

“What?” I grabbed the coffeepot and filled up.

“Um…” Holly continued to stir. “Nothing.”

Josh snorted and popped open one of his freshly delivered cans. “Stephen’s been talking to you, hasn’t he?”

I leaned against the counter. “What makes you say that?”

Holly cast her eyes heavenward. “Well, let’s see. You didn’t say good morning, you didn’t say what a beautiful day it is in northern lower Michigan, and you didn’t ask how our weekends went.”

Josh stuffed cans into the side pockets of his cargo pants and continued the list of clues. “You’re drinking coffee that Kelsey brewed without making a face and you haven’t said anything about Saturday’s
bookmobile run.” He took a slug of soda. “There’s only one thing that could do all that to you.”

“It’s that obvious?” I eyed the coffee in my mug. Kelsey was my most recent hire. Well, sort of. She’d been a library employee in the past but had left to have two children. Now that the children were older, she was pleased enough to drop them at her mother’s for a few hours while she skipped off to the library. She was excited to be a part of the library staff again, so excited that she’d taken over the task of making coffee. I’d told her that not everyone liked coffee strong enough to stand up and salute, but she’d just laughed at what she thought was a joke.

“Sweetie,” Holly said, “we all know what it feels like to have Stephen yell at us.”

“All of us who have worked here longer than three years, anyway.” Josh toasted me. “Now that you’re here, he just yells at you. Thanks, Min.” He grinned.

“Glad I could be of service.” As I took another sip of coffee, I considered telling Holly and Josh about the Mitchell Problem but decided not to. Stephen was right. I was the assistant director, and it wouldn’t be right to put any of the job’s weight on them. Maybe I’d ask for ideas, but the responsibility to find a solution was mine.

“You know what?” Holly asked, laughing. “Stephen reminds me of this algebra teacher I had in high school. He scared the crap out of everyone and whenever Stephen starts in on me, all I can think about is the Pythagorean theorem.”

And, just like that, my sour mood vanished. Because even though I was going to have to come up with a method of managing the previously unmanageable
Mitchell, and even though I needed to tread carefully if I was to keep the bookmobile on the road, I had friends, I could always brew my own coffee, and Stephen obviously didn’t know about the bookmobile’s trip to the hospital.

I quirked up a smile. Most important of all, he still didn’t know about Eddie. Life wasn’t so bad. Matter of fact, it was pretty darn good.

“So,” I said. “How were your weekends?”

•   •   •

The rest of the library day passed uneventfully. Minor issues were resolved with small dosages of tact and large helpings of humor. Both were needed to pacify Mrs. Tolliver, an elderly, straight-spined summer resident from Wisconsin. Mrs. Tolliver insisted that the Nancy Drew mysteries in the library were substandard and far below the writing quality of the originals and she didn’t want her granddaughter to read anything but the best. She’d been mollified when I said I tracked down as many originals as I could through interlibrary loan, and the exchange had silently been declared a draw.

I unlocked the door to my houseboat. “Hey, Eddie, do I have a story for you! Would you believe that Stephen—” I stopped midsentence, because I’d seen the evidence of what the cat Thessie insisted on calling adorable had been doing in my absence.

“Nice, Eddie.” What had been a pristine roll of paper towels on the kitchen counter the day before was now on the floor in the form of a shredded mass of pulp.

Mr. Adorable looked up from his current favorite napping spot—the dining table’s bench seat—and opened and closed his mouth without saying a word.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “The mess is my fault for leaving you alone for so long. My fault for not finding a friend for you to play with. My fault for not buying you the proper cat toys, whatever those might be.”

Since Eddie already knew that, he went back to nap mode. But since he’d likely been sleeping all day, I kept talking to him. If I didn’t keep him awake, he’d sleep all evening and then, at two in the morning, he’d want to play cat games with my hair.

“I suppose,” I said, “I should be grateful it’s only paper towels that you’re shredding and not furniture. Or the houseboat itself. This poor thing has enough problems as it is.”

My summer place of residence was the cutest little houseboat imaginable. Made of wood long ago in a Chilson backyard, it was smaller than my first apartment. It boasted one bedroom with two bunks, a tiny bathroom, and a small kitchen with dining area. The only generous thing about it was the view I got when I sat on the outside deck. It was the sheer pleasure of being able to see Janay Lake on my doorstep morning, noon, or night, in fair weather or foul, that more than made up for the cranky neighbors that lay to the right.