Borrowed Crime: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery (21 page)

He sat down and started cleaning his back paw.

“Okay, I can see you don’t want to talk about it. But you could at least give me a hint.”

He glanced at me, then switched to cleaning the other back paw.

I sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the need to talk to someone. About the bookmobile, about the library board, about Roger and Jeremy and Pam and Don and all the things I’d learned in the last two and a half weeks. And about how none of it was adding up to a motive for murder.

“Mrr.”

“Thanks,” I said, “and I’m sure you’re right, but your advice would be more helpful if I could understand cat speech.”

Eddie had nothing else to say, so I reached into my backpack for my cell phone. “Now or never,” I muttered, and tapped in the name. “Hey, Denise,” I said when she answered. “Do you have a couple of minutes?”

“Not really.” Her voice was hard to hear over what sounded like a large crowd. “I’m down in Traverse City, eating at Red Ginger with some friends.”

My mouth watered. Red Ginger was an Asian restaurant with a hefty list of sushi offerings. I didn’t get there often, because of the distance and the prices, but it was still one of my favorite places to eat in Traverse. “This won’t take long,” I said.

Even over the background noise, I could hear her sigh. “Fine. Hang on.” She made excuses to whomever she was with. “There. I’m headed downstairs, but our food is coming soon, so I can’t talk long. What do you want?”

Condensed conversation was ideal. I skipped what I’d planned as an introduction and, talking fast, went straight to the heart of it. “Remember when I saw you right before Thanksgiving, outside the grocery store, and you mentioned some people who might be your enemies?”

“Yeah. What of it?”

Sometimes it was really hard to be nice to people. At least certain people. “Can you think of anyone else?”

“You mean, is there anyone else running around who might want to kill me?” She laughed. “The police are about to arrest the guy who killed Roger—they’ve told me so. And that slice in my radiator hose probably came from some mechanic who cut it accidentally. Really, Minnie, is your life so boring that you have to manufacture drama?”

Boring might be nice for a change. “Can you think of anyone else?”

“Minnie, you’re being—”

“Can you,” I cut in forcefully, “think of anyone else?”

“I already gave the police all the names I could think of,” she said. “I’m sure they’ve followed up on everyone.”

Or not, because they were sure they knew who the guy was.

“Just think a minute,” I told her. “Assume there’s someone else. Assume someone does want to kill you. Assume you’re still in danger.”

“That’s a lot of assuming,” she said, chuckling. “You know what assuming does, don’t you? It makes an—”

“What about Allison Korthase?”

She huffed in a breath, but didn’t say thing for a moment. Then . . . “What about her?”

“Would Allison want to kill you?”

“Well, she might if she knew. But she doesn’t.”

“Denise,” I said warningly.

“Oh, keep your shirt on. All I meant was, there’s no way Allison could know it was me.”

“Know what was you?”

She sighed. “When Allison was running for city council, she came to a Friends meeting. She talked about literacy and the importance of libraries, and how if she was elected she’d support the library any and every way she could.”

“That was a problem?” I asked.

“It wasn’t that she showed up,” Denise said. “It was what she said.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Her speech,” Denise said impatiently. “Part of it sounded weird. Different from the rest of what she was saying. Right off the bat, I thought she’d copied it from someone, so I started writing it down. When I got home, I typed it into the Internet and I was right.” She chuckled. “Allison had pulled from one of Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats. She didn’t think anyone would notice, but I did, so I sent her an anonymous note.”

The insides of my palms were tingling. “Then what?” I asked.

“Nothing.” Denise puffed a breath of air into the phone. “In the note I told her that people knew what she’d done and she needed to clear her conscience if she was ever going to amount to anything. I said she needed to write a letter to the editor and admit she’d stolen that speech. She didn’t, of course, because there’s no way that woman would apologize for anything, but I did my duty. Still. There’s absolutely no way she could have known it was me who wrote the note.”

It all made an icky sort of sense. Denise was seeing her anonymous request as a way of righting a wrong, but Allison would have seen the completion of that request as grounds for public vilification.

I remembered the high-quality signs she’d posted far outside the city limits. Remembered the biographies of female heads of state she’d checked out of the library. Remembered her comment about Washington, DC.

This was a woman with lots of ambition. A woman who wouldn’t let anything get in her way.

I was pretty sure my mother wouldn’t approve of anonymous notes that were almost poison-pen letters, but I was glad Denise hadn’t signed her name. It meant Allison didn’t have any reason to do anything to Denise. “Her plans go far beyond Chilson,” I murmured.

“What’s that?” Denise asked. “Never mind. I have to go. I’m missing dinner.” She hung up, Stephen style, and I was left with a silent phone in my hand.

Eddie bumped his head against my shin. I looked down. “I don’t suppose you have an opinion on what really happened the afternoon Roger died. You were there, after all. Do you remember anything?”

He stopped cleaning and sat very, very, still, looking at me intently.

“Go ahead,” I encouraged. “You can tell me.”

“Mrr.” He shifted forward a little and said it again, a little louder. “Mrr!”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.” I sighed and patted him on the head. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours, okay?”

“Mrr.”

I gave him one more pat and started down the stairs. “Of course I’ll drive carefully.”

“Mrr!”

“Yes, I promise to be home before midnight.”

“MRR!”

I grabbed my coat, pulled my wallet and keys out of my backpack, and opened the front door. “Yes, I promise not to do what the cool kids do just so I can try to be cool, too.” And I slipped out the door and shut it before he could finish one more “Mrr.”

*   *   *

Half an hour later, I was checking the time on my cell phone and walking into Charlevoix’s hospital. Five minutes ago, assuming there were no emergencies that needed tending to, Tucker would have gone on his dinner break.

He didn’t know I was coming, but we’d had such a nice time last night at Grey Gables that I figured he wouldn’t mind a surprise visit. If he wasn’t there, then no harm, no foul. I’d go home and call Kristen.

I trotted down the stairs, one hand on the cool metal railing, thinking about our good-night kiss. It has started out as polite, had gone into the tender mode, then had suddenly taken a hard turn into passionate. Where this was going I wasn’t sure, but I was liking where we were right now. A lot.

The cafeteria wasn’t crowded, and I spotted Tucker almost immediately. He was sitting with his back to me, a tray of food in front of him. He was leaning forward, obviously talking to someone, but there was a half wall blocking my view of his dining partner.

I slowed, not wanting to interrupt what might be a private medical conversation. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Some people didn’t like surprises, and maybe Tucker was one of them.

A woman’s laugh rang out, and Tucker laughed, too.

My slow walk became an even slower shuffle.

Fingers reached out toward Tucker. Female-shaped fingers. He took the woman’s hand and squeezed it.

I stopped dead. My mouth opened to say something, anything, but although my face muscles moved, no words came out. For an eternal moment I stood there, locked in place, sure that there was no world outside of my bubble of shock.

Then a nearby clatter of silverware broke me free. I could breathe again, and I could move.

So I did. Out the door; up the stairs; and into a cold, rainy night.

*   *   *

An hour later, I was sitting in the living room with Eddie at my side, watching a DVD of
Raiders of the Lost Ark,
when my phone bleeped.

“Incoming text,” I murmured to Eddie. “Think it’s important enough to interrupt the movie?”

Eddie yawned and rolled over. Since I had no idea if that was a negative or positive response, I leaned forward to pick the phone up off the coffee table. It was time for Aunt Frances to leave the college—it was possible she was having car trouble. Or maybe it was Kristen, responding to my earlier message. Or my mom, although we usually talked on Sunday nights. Or any number of library employees, calling in sick for the next day.

“Or not,” I said out loud. It was Tucker. I thumbed open the message.

Sorry, can’t make the movie tomorrow night. Call you later.

I tossed the phone, sending it skittering across the table. My toss had been a little too hard, and it fell off the other side, dropping onto the carpet with a small
thud
.

“It’s over,” I said quietly.

Eddie stood and climbed into my lap. I gave him a few pats and felt his purr start to rumble. But even the strength of an Eddie purr wasn’t going to do the trick—not tonight, not now.

I kissed the top of his head. “I’m headed out for a walk, okay? I’ll be back in a little while.”

*   *   *

The night’s chill air bit into me as I went down the porch steps. I zipped my coat to the top, where it brushed the bottom of my chin in a slightly uncomfortable way. Staying warm was always a trade-off in winter, since it so often involved being uncomfortable, whether through too many layers of clothes, just the time involved to put on proper boots, or the squishing of your hair with a warm hat.

I stopped halfway down the front walk and looked up. While rain clouds still covered most of the sky, there were spots where stars were spangling through, twinkling down from so many unimaginable miles away. Many people found perspective while looking at the stars; I usually found myself wishing I’d brought out a luminous star chart. I was okay with identifying the simplest constellations, the dippers and Orion, but I wouldn’t have been able to find Cassiopeia on a double bet with Rafe.

The stars twinkled, the Milky Way glowed, and since it was too early to expect to see any northern lights and my toes were getting cold, I headed for the sidewalk. A jaunt of a few blocks would help set my mind straight. If Tucker had found someone else, well, I’d learn how to move on. I’d done it before; I could do it again.

With my mind made up to be cheerful, I headed out,
head high. If Tucker didn’t want me, then I didn’t want him, either. It was his loss. It was—

The light slam of a door turned me around. Otto Bingham was standing on his front porch, looking across to the boardinghouse.

“Hi,” I said.

Otto jumped at the sound of my voice.

“Nice night,” I went on, “if you’re a polar bear.”

He nodded in my general direction, then turned back around and put his hand on the door handle.

With an internal flash of light and heat, I’d suddenly had enough. Enough of Tucker, enough of Stephen, the library board, and definitely enough of this man, who had spoken to me only once in all the times I’d been friendly to him, and even then it had been a short and strange conversation.

“Mr. Bingham,” I said firmly, using my librarian voice as I marched up to him. “Why do you walk away from me almost every time I talk to you? If I’ve done something to offend or anger you, please tell me so I can make amends. It seems as if you’re avoiding me, and I hate being on bad terms with my neighbors.”

Otto Bingham stood quietly, his hand still on the oval doorknob. “I’m . . . I’m not avoiding you. It’s just . . .” He stopped talking and shook his head.

“Just what?” I practically shouted. “It’s my hair? You can’t stand curly hair—is that it? Or maybe you don’t like short people? Which is a silly prejudice, but that’s pretty much an oxymoron. Or, wait, you hate librarians. You were scolded by one as a small child and still haven’t recovered. Or it is that you have an innate hatred of cat hair, and, since I have a cat, you have to hate me, too?”

Suddenly, I realized that I was waving my arms and
shouting at the top of my lungs. Mom would not have approved, and actually, I didn’t approve of myself, either.

I dropped my arms and took a deep breath before starting my apology about having a bad day, about being tired, about having no excuse for that kind of behavior. But before I got out the first “I’m sorry,” I heard an unexpected sound. Otto Bingham was laughing.

“It’s the curly hair,” he said. “No doubt about it.”

I peered up at him. “You’re joking, right?”

“Of course I am.” He pushed open the door to his house and stood back, inviting me in. “If you have a few minutes, I have a story to tell you.”

Who could resist a story? I sent a quick text to my aunt
(At Otto’s—be home soon)
and followed him inside.

I
n short order, Otto settled me into a small room that was closer to being a parlor than any room I’d ever set foot in. A pint-sized fireplace sent out a cozy glow over the two wingback chairs that faced it. Occasional tables, small bookcases, and scenic paintings decorated the space in a way that was elegant without being uptight, and I was still admiring it all when Otto came back into the room with two glasses of wine.

He’d shed his coat and was wearing crisp jeans and a smooth buttoned shirt. “I hope you like this,” he said, and cited the year and varietal.

When he started to talk about the vintner, I put up my hand. “Sorry, but I wouldn’t know a smooth finish from sandpaper. My best friend, Kristen, owns a restaurant here in town, and she’s picked all my wines for me since the day she caught me drinking white zinfandel.” Which I still liked, every once in a while, but I would unhesitatingly say I never touched the stuff if she ever asked.

Otto gave me a pained look but said, “You have a cat, so I hope you don’t mind a little cat hair. Though I try to keep this room free of the stuff, it’s a difficult task.”

I laughed and picked an errant Eddie hair from my pant leg. “Here,” I said, handing it over to him. “We’ll call it a draw.”

We exchanged cat names and cat antics for a bit, and when that conversation started to lag, he said with a sigh, “But I lured you in with the promise of a story.”

“You did,” I agreed. “I recommend starting at the beginning.”

“Always a good idea.” Otto sipped his wine. “And I suppose the beginning of this particular story starts last summer with Leo.”

I sat up straight and almost spilled my glass. Which would have been a shame, because the wine was extremely good. Maybe Kristen’s lessons were finally rubbing off. “Leo Kinsler?”

“The very one. Leo and I have been friends since high school.”

Leo had also been one of my aunt’s boarders last summer. He’d driven off into the metaphorical sunset with another of her boarders and, every so often, we’d get e-mails or Facebook posts from the pair.

“Late last spring,” Otto was saying, “Leo told me he was coming up here for the summer, to stay in a boardinghouse, of all places. Now, don’t look at me like that. My images of a boardinghouse were based on my great-uncle’s Depression-era stories. I tried to convince Leo to stay home where he belonged, where we could golf all summer like always, but he was intent on coming north.”

I blinked. “Leo golfs?”

“He’s a seven handicap.”

“Is that good?”

Otto looked at me over the rim of his wineglass. “I take it you’re not a golfer.”

While I was excellent at miniature golf, I suspected that wasn’t what he was talking about. “So, Leo came up here in June, against your advice?”

“Stubborn bugger,” Otto said, nodding. “But he loved it up here. Every time we talked or e-mailed, he’d paint this picture of a northern Michigan Shangri-la. He talked about Chilson, about how it sits on the edge of Janay Lake and next to Lake Michigan, about how the people are open and welcoming. He described the countryside, with its hills and lakes and winding roads. He told me about the boardinghouse, about the maps thumbtacked to the knotty pine walls, about the bell someone always rings before meals. He talked about the other boarders.” Otto studied his glass. “He talked about you, about Eddie, about the bookmobile. And . . . and he talked about Frances.”

With a blinding flash of the obvious, I saw all. Leo had spun Otto a fantasy so vivid that he’d fallen in love with my aunt without ever meeting her.
Good job, Leo,
I thought sourly.

“I drove up in early September,” Otto said, “and Chilson was everything Leo said it was.”

“Really?” I found that hard to believe. I loved my adopted town dearly, but it was in no way a fairy-tale place. Real people—with real problems and real personalities—lived in it, and real life was often messy.

Otto smiled. “I gave up wearing rose-colored glasses decades ago, Minnie. Too many of my clients were elected officials. I knew Leo’s description glossed over some bumps. But overall, I’ve found that he was right. The second week I was here, this house went up for sale. I told Leo, and he said it was fate.”

I made a rude noise in the back of my throat, and Otto laughed. “That’s more or less what I told Leo, but
I bought the house anyway. I’ve been enjoying myself immensely, settling in and getting to know people around town.”

“But not my aunt Frances.”

He slid down in his chair a little, diminishing himself. “No,” he said quietly. “Not her. I’d been working up the courage to knock on her door and I was almost there, but then the other night you told me about her woodworking skills, about her teaching. What does a woman that interesting and accomplished need with a man like me? What can I offer her? I’m a retired accountant. It’s hard to get more boring than that.” His shoulders sagged, and his wineglass came dangerously close to tipping over.

I eyed him. He seemed sincere, but I barely knew the man. What guarantee did I have that he wasn’t some crazed stalker who would make my aunt’s life miserable?

“Here.” Otto pulled a cell phone from his shirt pocket. “Let me call Leo. You can ask him anything you like about me.” He quirked up a smile. “Well, anything except what we did to Mr. Lane’s physics room after school that day.”

He pushed a few buttons and handed me the phone. “Otto!” Leo said. “It’s warm and sunny in southern Texas. How’s northern Michigan?”

“Cold and rainy,” I said, smiling. “And it turns out that Eddie isn’t fond of snow.”

There was a pause. “Minnie.” Leo laughed. “You have got to be kidding me. Otto actually introduced himself?”

Sort of.
“To me. Should I introduce him to Aunt Frances?”

“Ah.” Leo chuckled. “He hasn’t worked up to that,
has he? Otto is a great guy, and I can say that because I’ve known him for more than fifty years. He’s the best CPA I’ve ever met, but he’s as horrible with women as he is good with numbers. He managed to get married once, but she died years ago and they didn’t have any children. He’s been alone ever since.”

I stood, walked to the fireplace, and kept my voice low. “If my aunt was your sister, would you introduce them?”

Leo snorted. “I did introduce him to my sister, years ago, but she went and married a guy who owns a masonry business. Minnie, all Otto needs is a break. He gets stage fright something horrible when he meets women. I bet you’ve seen him a dozen times, coming out of his house but then going back in.”

Clearly, Leo knew Otto very well.

“All he needs is a break,” Leo repeated. “Do me a favor and introduce them. If things don’t work out, it wasn’t meant to be. But if they do, well, we’ll have two less lonely people in the world.”

I wanted to object, to say that my aunt wasn’t lonely—how could she be with me in the winter and a houseful of boarders in the summer? But I knew better. Every so often, I saw her sadness, saw how solitude scraped at her.

After thanking Leo, I handed the phone back to Otto and asked, “Do you know Denise Slade?”

His blank look instantly convinced me that he didn’t. If he had known her, he would have shown some sort of reaction. Not that a newcomer to Chilson was likely to have killed Roger in an attempt on Denise’s life, but you never knew—
anyone can commit murder
—and I had to protect Aunt Frances. As much as she would let me, anyway.

“Come over Monday night,” I said. “After dinner. I’ll make the introductions. Now stop looking so scared.” I put my hands on my hips and gave him a mild version of the Librarian Look until he smiled. “That’s better. I’m a very good introducer, and the two of you will be friends in no time.”

Otto got up to fetch my coat. “Maybe this can wait,” he said tentatively.

“Monday night,” I said.

On my way back across the street, I started laughing out loud. I was about to matchmake the matchmaker. If there weren’t the specter of the bookmobile’s demise hanging over my head, and the very real possibility that someone out there was still trying to kill Denise, I would have thought that life was very good.

*   *   *

The next morning, the rain was falling down so heavily that I drove to the library. I arrived early and scampered through a number of tasks that would look at me sorrowfully and shake their heads in despair if I didn’t get them done. But as soon as I finished the last have-to job, I shut my office door and went back to my desk with one thing on my mind.

Save the bookmobile.

Which meant figuring out who killed Roger. Which, I was sure, meant figuring out who wanted to kill Denise.

There was the tiniest twinge of Mom-induced guilt that hovered in a back corner of my brain, but I told it to go away. Yes, I was at work and could have been expected to be, well, working, but keeping the bookmobile on the road was my job, too.

I grabbed my purse and, for the first time ever, left the building without telling anyone.

Forty-five minutes later, I was standing at the edge of the Jurco River, looking at the Jurco Dam. I was also shivering, because I wasn’t dressed properly. Jeremy had said he’d been here the day Roger was killed, and I’d seen his car about ten miles away from the gas station. If he was here at the time he’d said he been, there wasn’t enough time for him to get in place to shoot Roger, not with the condition of the gravel road I’d just traveled.

I glanced back at my poor little sedan, which was now coated with thick spatterings of mud, courtesy of the rutted road.

So now my only problem was: How could I confirm or deny the time Jeremy had been here? If he hated Denise enough, he might have overcome his aversion to blood and guns.

I stood at the end of the small dam, watching the water rush through, down, and away.
Checking water levels
, he’d said. Water levels above the dam? Below the dam? Both? There were so many things I didn’t know; dam knowledge was just one more.

“Hang on,” I said out loud.

There, fastened to the end of the dam, about three feet off the ground, was a metal object that looked like a really boring mailbox. I stepped sideways down the shallow slope toward it. The gray metal box was about eighteen inches tall and a foot wide.

I slipped on the slushy ground and slid sideways against the box, grunting as my hip hit a sharp corner. Score one for being short. If I’d been taller, the box would have smacked me in the thigh instead of my softest part.

“Please don’t be locked,” I said on a breath, feeling around for a catch on the box. “Please . . .”

My fingers found a fastener. With a quiet
click
, it released, and I swung open the door. Inside was a clipboard with a pen attached. On the clipboard was a stack of papers warped from dampness. On the papers were a series of numbers and dates and times and abbreviations.

I pulled the whole thing out and started studying.

“Hello.”

I jumped and almost dropped the clipboard to the wet ground. Up above me was a woman about my own age, dressed in a warm-looking dark knit hat, heavy boots, dark green pants, and dark green winter jacket, to which a gold shield was pinned. “Hi,” I said. “I was just, um, looking at the data.”

The conservation officer nodded. “Jeremy Hull’s work, mostly, but I take the readings when I’m over here. So does the other CO for the county, Officer Wartella. I’m Officer Jenica Thomas.”

Wartella had been the CO I’d talked to what seemed like months ago. “Really?” I asked. “Taking readings is part of your job?”

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

“This is my first time out here. Can you explain this?” I pointed to the sheet. “The dates and times I get, but some of these others don’t make a lot of sense.”

“No problem.” She scrambled down to me, sure-footed on the wet, muddy surface. “Date and time, as you said. Those are the initials of the person recording the data.” She pointed. “Next is an abbreviation for the weather condition. Sunny, raining, and so on. Then temperature, then the elevation above and below the dam, which is plus or minus from a mark on the dam wall.”

Now that it was explained, it all made sense. “How accurate are these?” I asked. “I mean, what if someone writes down a wrong number or something?”

Officer Thomas pulled in a breath. “Incorrect elevations should show up as an anomaly.”

“What if it was the wrong time?” I persisted. “What if it was, say, the time-change weekend and someone wrote down the old time instead of the right one?”

The CO considered my question seriously. “It’s possible,” she finally said, “but unlikely. The people trained to take these elevations are competent and conscientious folks who take this effort seriously. None of us is likely to compromise the data by making an error.”

“Why a clipboard?” I asked. “Why isn’t it entered into a computer?”

“It is,” Officer Thomas said. “We have an extensive data set for this monitoring project. We just like to have the paper copy in case it needs to be used in a court of law.” She waited a beat. “Do you have any other questions?”

“No. All set.” I tucked the clipboard into its home and shut the door. Jeremy couldn’t be the killer. I knew it for sure now.

*   *   *

A few minutes after I snuck back into my office, there was a knock on the door. Holly poked her head inside. “Minnie, it’s break time. I made cupcakes yesterday for Wilson’s classroom, and there are a few extras.”

“Sounds good,” I said vaguely, not taking my eyes off the monitor or my fingers off the keyboard. “I’ll be there in a little bit.”

Holly said something, I made an ambiguous noise, and she retreated, shutting the door softly behind her.

*   *   *

There was another knock on the door.

“I’ll be there in a second,” I said, still typing.

“Don’t go yet.” Mitchell slipped into my office and
shut the door behind him. “Slipped” being a subjective word, of course, because it was hard for anyone that tall to be unobtrusive. “I got something to show you.”

“What are you doing here?” I squinched my eyes shut and opened them again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that you’re never at the library before noon.” I leaned back, rotating my shoulders and flexing my fingers, all of which I suddenly realized were very, very stiff.