Pouncing on Murder (29 page)

I trotted up the stairs to the kitchen and steeled myself to look outside and face fear number two.

“Oh, wow . . . ,” I whispered.

The world was a mess. Branches had been ripped from trees and tossed headlong. Leaves were strewn
everywhere. Garbage cans, lawn furniture, bright plastic children’s toys, and tarps had been blown hither and yon, reminding me somehow of a game I’d played as a kid when everyone took off their shoes and put them in a pile.

I tossed down a bowl of cereal, grabbed my backpack, and hurried outside.

Eric was on his boat’s deck, sweeping it free of rain and leaf debris. “Made it through the night, I see.” He paused in his sweeping to smile at me. No hard feelings for turning him down, apparently, which was nice. “Did you get much sleep?” he asked.

“Not much,” I said, stepping onto the dock. “And there’s a book fair at the library today. Trock Farrand’s signing his new book.”

“If I buy a copy, do I have to learn how to cook?” Eric asked.

I grinned and waved as I started a fast walk toward downtown. But there was one quick stop I had to make before heading to the library.

Rafe was standing in front of his house, hands on his hips, surveying the damage.

I walked up and stood next to him. “Well,” I said. “It could have been worse.” Because while a massive branch had ripped off the maple tree in front of his house, the branch had mostly missed the porch, and most of the tree was still standing.

Rafe nodded. “Yeah, and I was just thinking the other day that I should have done that trim a different way.”

“Well, there you go.” I almost asked him if he was going to come to the book fair, but I doubted he’d be
able to tear himself away from his new project. I said good-bye, he grunted a reply, and I hurried off.

The closer I got to downtown, however, the more worried I got. Each block I walked showed increasing amounts of destruction, and by the time I reached the heart of the retail district, I realized there was no electricity. No signs were lit, no shop windows glowed, no welcoming anything anywhere.

This wasn’t good. At all.

Without thinking about it, my fast walk turned into a slow jog. My brain’s worrying cells, the ones I tried to keep quiet and inactive, flared bright and strong and, try as I might, I couldn’t force them back into hibernation.

So I ran.

I ran through the far end of downtown, up the short hill, and left two blocks, feet flying, arms pumping, backpack thumping, breathing hard and fast, my lungs burning with the unaccustomed exercise.

There were no signs of electricity two blocks away from the library . . . no electricity one block away . . . leaves and tree branches everywhere, loose shingles in front yards, lawn furniture a tangled mess . . . and then I reached the library.

Panting and wheezing, I came to a dead stop. I stared at fear number three and it stared straight back.

The book fair tents, Gordon’s tents, were a flattened mess. Not a single one remained standing. A tree had fallen across the largest, and its two peaks, formerly graceful and sweeping and reminiscent of castles and fairy tales, were on the ground, their magic gone.

I took one step toward the disaster, then stopped.
There was nothing I could do. Nothing anyone could do. Tent poles were snapped, stakes were yanked out of the ground, canvas was ripped. Even if all the equipment had been intact, it had taken a full day to set everything up, and we didn’t have that kind of time. What we had—what I had—was two and a half hours.

My knees went a little jellylike. I wanted desperately to sit down or, even better, to go find a quiet dark corner and some chocolate chip cookie dough, and not come out until it was gone.

Instead I took a deep breath, pulled out my phone, and starting making calls.

•   •   •

Half an hour and a lot of fast talking later, I took my cell phone away from my ear and hoped that none of those urban legends about heavy cell phone use causing cancer had any truth to them.

I put my phone in my backpack and stood there for a moment, thinking and not thinking at the same time, which should have been impossible but clearly wasn’t, since it was happening to me. For every thought I had, there was an equal and opposite reaction of blankness in my brain. If I thought about the vast number of people who needed to be contacted in the next two hours, the next thing that went into my head was a large bubble of nothingness. Self-defense, probably, but it wasn’t helping me get things done.

“Move,” I muttered to myself. Whenever I was stuck on a problem, it always helped me to get up and move around, and this was a problem of serious magnitude.

I’d found a new venue for the fair, I’d started a phone
tree to notify all the vendors about the new location, and I’d even convinced a local printer to slap together some temporary signs. When he’d said he didn’t have any electricity to print anything, I pushed away my panic and asked him to summon his creative abilities and see what he could do by hand.

“You mean with real paint?” he’d asked. “And brushes?”

Wildly I’d wondered if anyone still made poster paint. “Absolutely with real paint,” I’d said. “In any color you want, as long as people can read it.”

He’d made an interested noise and said he’d come up with something. “I’m not going to promise it’ll be pretty,” he cautioned.

I’d reassured him that communication was the only thing that mattered, thanked him profusely, and had gone on to the next call, which was to the current president of the Friends of the Library. I’d told Denise where to take the food and beverages they’d planned to sell for a nominal fee at the event. “There’s no electricity,” I’d told her, “so you might need to track down coolers and ice and whatever else you need to keep things cold or warm. It’s a mess down here, a huge mess, and—”

“Minnie,” she’d said calmly, “don’t worry about a thing. We’ll be there.”

I’d gulped down a grateful sob. Denise and I didn’t see eye to eye on . . . well, almost everything, and it was reassuring to know that she would rise to the occasion. I’d thanked her, then ended the call. Which was when I’d started staring at the untidy world, trying to think what
needed doing next, and told myself I needed to start moving.

So I leaned over and started picking up sticks and branches and leaves from the sidewalk. It was a pointless task, since the crew that did our regular lawn and landscaping maintenance would do the job properly in a day or three, but it felt good to do something.

“Minnie?”

I looked up. Ash Wolverson was standing not ten feet away. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and shorts and I was suddenly quite sure that I’d never seen him wearing shorts before, because I would have remembered that his legs, on a one-to-ten scale, were at least a nine-point-five.

“Are you going to cancel?” he asked. “The fair, I mean?”

“Not a chance,” I said. “New location, but the show will go on.” The sticks in my hand suddenly felt heavy and I decided not to explain what I was doing. It would take too long and there was no way I would look good at the end of the story. New subject, then.

“Have you talked to Detective Inwood?” I asked. “I called him yesterday with some information and he said he’d be talking to you.”

But Ash was shaking his head. “I had a couple of days off. I’ll be in the office tomorrow, though.”

“Oh.” I tore my gaze away from his muscular legs. “Well, that’s good,” I said vaguely.

“Do you need some help?” Ash gestured at the vast mess surrounding us.

“Thanks, but we have a grounds crew. I’m sure they’ll get to us as soon as they can.”

Ash glanced at the sticks in my hands. My face grew warm and I knew I was about to start babbling. “It’s just—”

“See you later, Minnie,” he said, turning away.

“Wait!”

He stopped, then came halfway back, but he didn’t say anything.

“So,” I said, “the other day, when you . . . well, back then, things were different.”

“Things?” he asked.

In a perfect world, I would have thought about what I’d say before blurting out everything that was in my head. “I’m not seeing that doctor anymore,” I said. “In reality, I haven’t for weeks. Months, even. It just took this long to make it official.”

“Oh.” Ash put his hands in the front pocket of his sweatshirt. “Sorry to hear that.”

“No, no,” I said. “It’s good. Things weren’t working out and—” And there was no way Ash wanted to hear any of those details. “So I was wondering if . . .”

“If what?” Ash asked.

I wanted to stamp my foot. Why was he making this so hard? Then I detected a small smile twitching up one side of his face. “You know,” I said.

“Nope.” He grinned. “I’m just a dumb cop. You’re going to have to spell it for me.”

Of all the things Ash was not, dumb was at the top of the list. But I’d already turned him down twice when he asked me out, so it was only fair that I make the move.

“Would you like to go to dinner?” I asked, my heart suddenly beating loud, my breaths coming fast. “With me? Sometime?”

His grin eased into a kind and exceedingly attractive smile. “Anytime,” he said.

Just then, Gordon’s truck came to a screeching halt in the parking lot. He leaped out and rushed to his tents. “Oh, man,” he said, looking at the damage. “Minnie, I am so sorry. I can get some of my guys here. We can maybe get some of these back up, but . . .” He shook his head. “I am so sorry.”

Later we would hear that the storm had pushed one-hundred-mile-an-hour winds through a narrow swath of the county. Straight-line winds, they called them, that could create damage on par with a minor tornado. In some ways we’d been lucky, because the worst of the winds had hit outside town on state forestry land.

I smiled at him. “Not your fault. I’ve found a new place to hold the fair. Not ideal, but it’ll work.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Gordon asked. “Anyone you want me to call?”

And suddenly I remembered the one person I should have talked to long ago. “Stephen,” I said, and started laughing. “I really should tell my boss about this.”

•   •   •

A few fast hours later, I took a long look at all the activity going on about me and sucked in a huge sigh of relief. In spite of everything that Mother Nature had tossed at us, the book fair had not been canceled. It was actually turning out to be what you might call a success.

“Hey, Minnie.” Josh was walking toward me, carrying a box of books. “Where do you want these?”

I stood on my tiptoes to peek at the contents. More cookbooks. I pointed toward the long line of people who were waiting for their chance to get a signed copy of Trock’s first-ever publication. “Over there. Thanks.”

“Miss Librarian?” A small child stood in front of me, looking up with big unblinking eyes. “Is there anywhere I can get a book about horsies?”

“You bet,” I said. “See that table over there, the one with a red tablecloth? They have some wonderful books about horses and barns and . . .” I’d never gone through a horse phase, and the appropriate terms weren’t coming to mind. “. . . And saddles and boots.”

The child ran off, followed by a smiling father, who thanked me.

It seemed that the entire huge room was filled with smiling people, a fact that was stunning, yet somehow not surprising, given how things were turning out.

My first frantic phone call that morning had been to Rafe. Most Saturday mornings he’d have still been in bed at eight o’clock, but since I’d seen him outside his house already, I knew he was awake.

“I need a favor,” I’d asked.

“Okay.”

“A really big one.”

“Can it wait? Because I don’t know if you remember, but I have a tree on my house.”

“It’s only part of a tree and it’s your porch and I need to borrow the middle school’s gym.”

There’d been a pause.

“I’ll help with your tree later,” I’d said quickly. “But the tents are smashed and I need a new place to hold the fair. There’s not enough room in the library.”

“And there’s no electricity at the school,” Rafe had said. “The maintenance guy already called me.”

I’d been ready for that teensy little problem. “I have a plan. All I need is permission and someone to unlock the door.”

“Minnie,” he’d said slowly, “I don’t—”

“I’ll get down on my knees,” I’d said, grunting a little as I’d done so. “I’m risking grass stains on my khakis to do this, because if you don’t let me use your gym, we’ll have to cancel the fair. There’s no other place in town.”

I’d known I was asking a lot. Rafe was the middle school’s principal, but he worked for the school board and they made the calls on the big decisions.

There’d been a longer pause, but this time I didn’t interrupt.

“I’ll call you back,” he’d finally said, and I’d walked around in small circles on the sidewalk until he did.

“Thank you,” I’d whispered when he gave me the thumbs-up. “You’re all right for a . . .” But I hadn’t come up with an appropriate insult, not that time.

“Yeah, yeah,” he’d said. “I know.”

Happily he’d hung up before I got too sentimental, and now that the fair was in full swing, I was ready to
trade verbal abuse with my friend. Of course, he didn’t deserve any abuse at all, since he not only secured permission from the school board’s president for me to use the gym, but also forwarded to the parents of the school’s students the text blast I’d sent to the Friends of the Library, asking everyone to bring battery-powered camping lanterns.

Emergencies can bring out the best in people, and I couldn’t begin to count the lanterns that were lighting the gym, giving it a cozy glow that was encouraging conversation. One father had even hauled over a small generator, and Trock’s table was so well lit it was like a beacon in the night. Plus, many of the folks who’d brought in lanterns had stayed to wander around the displays, and, wonder of wonders, they were purchasing books, too.

The signs my printer friend had pushed into the ground at the library had, I’d been told, been so amusing that even people who hadn’t planned on attending the fair had shown up, and Pam Fazio had called to tell me that the downtown merchants, far from being annoyed that the fair was pulling people away from their stores, were pleased at the influx of fair-bound tourists, and had been pleased for days.