Cat With a Clue (17 page)

Barb coughed into her fist, but it was a multisyllabic cough that sounded a lot like the word “Plagiarism.”

Once again, her loving husband ignored her. “So, of course I looked at the books. And there, at the bottom of that small stack, underneath the mass-produced
copies of children's books that are in half the houses in the country, was a first edition of . . .”

He stopped for a moment, shook his head, then said, “Right there on the sideboard, well within the reach of grubby-fingered five-year-olds, was a first-edition copy of Chastain's
Native Wildflowers of North America
.”

*   *   *

Eddie, who was doing his best to sprawl across the full length of the dining booth's seat back, and doing a very good job, didn't look impressed at my story.

Clearly, he hadn't been listening.

“You must not have been listening,” I said. “Chastain's
Wildflowers
is, well, it doesn't have anything close to the value of Audubon's book, but a complete copy in good condition is worth upward of half a million dollars.” And possibly much more. Cade, a fan of Chastain's work, had said no first-edition copy had gone up for public auction in years.

That night at the DeKeyser's, Cade had told Deke about the worth of the book that was casually lying underneath a copy of the
Cat in the Hat
. Cade had also advised Talia and Deke to move the book to a climate-controlled environment, but, he'd told me wryly, “It's hard to communicate the value of a book that's been sitting on the same piece of furniture for close to a hundred years.”

Over dinner, Deke had told the McCades that the book had been given by Robert Chastain himself to the then-matriarch of the family for her kindness in showing him a variety of wildflower he'd never seen. The family story was that Robert Chastain had been a nice gentleman who was a little nuts about flowers. The DeKeysers smiled at Cade's story of the book's value, and Cade had said it was obvious they didn't believe him.

“Thus, the sideboard,” I said.

Eddie, unblinking, looked at me and flicked the tip of his tail up and down, up and down.

“Cade,” I told my uncaring cat, “had even confessed that he was a hugely successful artist himself, and that he knew what he was talking about when it came to a first edition of Chastain's, but Deke and Talia just smiled and said they were fine with things the way they were.”

And, I realized, maybe they were right. What did a happy elderly couple need with the headache of a valuable volume like
Wildflowers
? Let the next generation worry about it.

Which was exactly what was happening.

I'd driven home from Petoskey, thinking about it, and to me there was no doubt that Chastain's
Wildflowers
was why the book-sale room, the bookmobile, and Pam's store had all been broken into and tossed around into a huge mess. Someone out there knew about
Wildflowers
and was looking for it in all the places that Talia might have been expected to gift a book.

That someone had also killed Andrea.

“You know what else?” I asked the question of Eddie, but I was looking at the last two flowers from Ash's bouquet that hadn't dropped all their petals or been turned into cat toys. “I bet I know why that X-Acto knife was at the murder scene.”

Either Andrea or her killer had expected to find the book in the library, and one of them had planned to slice out individual pages of the stunningly gorgeous flower paintings and sell them one by one.

The thought of that beautiful book being ripped into bits stirred up outrage in every cell of my librarian's body. “No,” I said out loud. “I won't let that happen.”

Of course, I had no idea how to stop it from happening, but there had to be a way.

And if there wasn't, I'd make one.

*   *   *

The next morning, I woke up late. Eddie did, too, but, then, he almost always did.

“You know,” I told him as I stood, yawning, “if you didn't try to turn my head into your pillow, I'd sleep a lot better.”

He opened one eye a fraction of an inch, then closed it again.

I tried again. “Experts recommend that you don't allow pets into your bedroom at all. They say pets on your bed disrupt sleep patterns and bring dust and hair and dander and who knows what into a space where you don't want any of that stuff.”

Eddie wriggled himself deeper into the bedcovers. Half a second later, I heard the dulcet tones of his snores. Smiling, I patted him on the head and headed to the shower. What did experts know, anyway?

Fifteen minutes later, I was clean and dressed, and we were both on the boat's front deck, me with a fortifying mug of coffee.

“It's Saturday,” I said to Eddie. “And I'm not working at all today.” For the summer, I'd scheduled the bookmobile three Saturdays a month, and this was the off day.

Though I was tempted to go to the library and get some work done, Holly and Donna and Kelsey had all vowed to make my life miserable if I didn't get some fun into me. When I'd protested, saying that working at the library was fun, they'd said that alone was proof that I needed to get out more. Since it was possible
they were the teensiest bit right, I'd agreed to stay away for an entire day and a half.

“Only what should I do with myself?” I scooped out the last bit of cereal, swallowed, and put the bowl onto the deck. Eddie slid off his chair and trotted over to get the last drops of milk out from the bottom of the bowl.

I listened, shaking my head at the
lap-lap-lap
. You'd think a creature as graceful as a cat would drink more quietly.

“Hey, Minster. Did you hear?”

I turned. Standing on the dock that ran between my boat and Eric's was Chris Ballou, the marina's manager. If I'd been forced to guess his age, I'd have said Chris was in his early forties, but he had a whippet-thin body that could be making him look fortyish even if he were pushing sixty. Then again, his speech patterns were those of a twenty-year-old. Since I hadn't taken enough advanced math to figure out how all that might shake out, I'd long ago decided not to think about it.

What I did need to think about was how to make a new deal on keeping my boat slip's reduced rental rate. Up until now, I'd been given a cut rate because no one else would take the slip next to the cranky guy who used to rent Eric's slip. Now that Eric was here, however, Chris should have upped my rate to normal. He kept dodging the issue, saying that what his uncle Chip didn't know wouldn't hurt him, but I knew that was wrong, and one of these days I'd get Chris to be serious about the situation.

“Hear about what?” I asked.

“Huh,” he said. “Looks like I get to break the news.”

My skin tightened. A hundred possibilities occurred to me. Something had happened to my parents. To my brother. My brother's family. To my aunt Frances. To
Ash. To Rafe or Kristen, or Holly or Josh or any of the library staff. Then, when I ran out of people, I wondered if something had happened to the bookmobile. Or the library. Or downtown. Or my hometown of Dearborn. Then I started wondering if something had happened to something bigger, like the Mackinac Bridge or the state capitol or the US Capitol or—

Eric's head popped out of the entry to his boat's lower regions. “What news?” he asked.

“Hey,” Chris said, nodding a good morning to Dr. Apney. “I just wondered if Min-Bin here knew what happened.”

Chris was a great mechanic, a solid marina manager, and a decent enough guy, but he had two bad habits. One, he enjoyed making new nicknames for me a little too much. Two, he couldn't relate simple facts without turning them into a long-winded story.

Eric squinted into the morning sunshine. “That's an extremely open question. I mean, it's a guarantee that lots of things have happened, after all. Tightening the time frame would be helpful.”

And my neighbor was not helping.

“Well,” Chris said, drawling out the word, “you got a good point there. I could narrow it down a little, make it easier for her to figure out.”

This could go on all morning. I stood and summoned my Librarian Voice. “Tell me,” I ordered.

Chris straightened imperceptibly. “Early this morning,” he said. “There was a fire in Petoskey. At their library. I heard the janitor was in the hospital—breathed in too much smoke, you know?—and he probably won't make it. There was a bunch of damage . . . hey, Min, what're you doing?”

Paying no attention to Chris, I unceremoniously
dumped Eddie inside the houseboat and grabbed my backpack. When I came outside three seconds later, Chris was still talking.

“Hey, my pal Ed was liking it out here in the sun,” he said, sounding aggrieved. “What's the matter with leaving him out here longer? Hey, where you going?”

But I was down the dock and gone.

D
etective Inwood stared at me over the top of a coffee mug. He blew off the steam, sending it my way, and lifted the mug toward his mouth. I looked away, hoping somehow that if I didn't look, I wouldn't be able to hear the slurping noises as clearly as I had a moment before, but, once again, the technique was a complete failure.

The detective's swallowing sounds filled the small room. I sat as patiently as I could. After all, it was a Saturday morning, and I'd expected to tell my concerns to the on-duty deputy up front. Once I'd started talking, however, he'd called the detective, and here we were, back in the interview room. Ash was off this weekend, helping his mom with some outside chores, and I hadn't wanted to bother him.

“My apologies, Ms. Hamilton,” the detective said, setting the mug onto the table. “My daughter and our new grandchild are staying with us for a few nights while her husband is out of town on business. It's wreaking havoc on my sleep patterns. What do you have for me
this morning? More mayhem, with dire complications for the future?”

He quirked up a smile. “And please tell me your cat isn't involved this time. The sheriff's been talking about getting an office cat ever since that night she spent with your Eddie.”

That had been months ago. If Sheriff Richardson was serious about an office cat, I was sure she would have brought one in by now, but I put on a thoughtful expression. “I know of a litter of kittens that's almost old enough to go out on their own. I'll have to remember to tell the sheriff.”

Inwood gave me a pained look, and I almost laughed out loud.

“What I wanted to tell you,” I said, “doesn't have anything to do with cats.” My imagination almost saw Eddie picking up his head at the flagrant heresy and sending me a loud “Mrr!” but I plowed ahead.

“You've heard what happened at the Petoskey library?” I asked.

The detective frowned. “I have not.” I started to tell him what little I knew, but he put up his hand to stop my flow of words, pulled his cell phone from his inside suit pocket, and pushed some buttons. “Morning, Scott,” he said. “What's with your library?”

As he listened to Scott, whoever he was, Inwood's gaze came my way but focused on something behind my head. The wall, maybe, or—I mentally summoned a map of the area—maybe he was seeing far past me, all the way to the library in Petoskey. It was a fairly new building, and I ached for the library director and staff and the hundreds of people who used it regularly. A fire had to be about the worst thing that could happen to a library. Even if the books hadn't actually
burned, there'd be smoke damage or water damage from the sprinklers or firefighters.

I cringed to think of what it would take to bring a library back from a large fire, and started thinking about what we could do to help. First, I'd find out what books they needed most; maybe we had extras, or could at least lend them some of ours. Then, if they needed hands to help clean, I'd make phone calls to the libraries all over northern lower Michigan. For something like this, people would turn out to help in a heartbeat. Then, if they needed—

“The fire,” Detective Inwood said, putting his phone away, “was limited to a meeting room. An exterior window to the room was broken, and an incendiary device of some sort was thrown inside. The smoke detectors went off at two a.m., and a night custodian entered the room. He used a nearby extinguisher to put out the fire, but inhaled enough smoke that he was taken to the hospital by ambulance. He was treated and released.”

Inwood picked up his coffee mug. “The meeting room suffered damage to the furniture, walls, carpet, and ceiling, but there was no damage to any other portion of the building. Or its contents.”

I slid forward on my chair. While I was beyond pleased that the library was essentially fine, that wasn't why I was here. “It was a diversion,” I said. “Someone who didn't want to be seen needed uninterrupted time to look at their books.”

The detective's eyebrows went up, but he didn't reply until after he'd upended the mug and drank down the last of its contents. “How so?” he asked.

So I told him. I told him about the kindness of a long-ago DeKeyser to an artist wanting to paint flowers. I
told him how the artist had sent a copy of the completed book to the DeKeysers. I told him where Cade had seen the book. And, finally, I told him the current value of Chastain's
Wildflowers
.

Then I sat back and waited.

Which wasn't much of a wait, because he immediately said, “The X-Acto knife. That's why it was in the library.
Wildflowers
may be worth a lot of money intact, but if you cut it apart and sell it page by page, you probably wouldn't have to prove your ownership, and it's possible you'd end up with a lot more money.”

I nodded.

“But why would anyone go to the trouble of doing that?” he asked. “Why wouldn't she or the killer simply steal the book?”

I'd thought about that. “They probably assumed the security at the library is a lot tighter than it really is. Most downstate libraries have a chip embedded in the book that sounds an alarm if it's not deactivated at checkout. And she probably figured we have security cameras that get reviewed for theft. Seeing someone walk out with a book in the middle of the night would be a huge red flag. Just seeing someone walking?” I shrugged. “If the cameras existed and we noticed it, we'd probably wonder, but if there wasn't anything missing, I doubt we'd do anything.”

“Well.” Inwood started to lift his mug, realized it was empty, and stood. “Now, that's worth brewing a new pot of coffee for.”

He smiled at me, but I couldn't manage to return it.

Because I couldn't stop thinking that, somewhere out there, a killer was on the loose. And if he'd killed once in search of this book, would he hesitate to kill again?

*   *   *

Ten minutes later, my knees were underneath the large dining table at my aunt's boardinghouse, and I was enjoying the ebb and flow of conversation while eating a breakfast frittata made by the cooking team of Liz and Morris. I'd deciphered enough healthy ingredients in the dish—asparagus, tomato, and broccoli—to count it as my recommended daily allowance of vegetables. Plus, there were fresh strawberries and cubes of melon that looked good enough to be served in Kristen's restaurant. Breakfast didn't get much more nutritious, and I felt virtuous about my adultlike meal.

On a Saturday morning like this, the talk inevitably centered around what everyone was going to do with such outstanding weather. The forecast was for sun, light winds, and a high of seventy-seven degrees, a Chamber of Commerce kind of day.

Eva and Forrest, the fortysomething mountain bikers, were planning to ride the Little Traverse Wheelway between Charlevoix and Petoskey. Liz and Morris, once the kitchen was cleaned up, were headed east, over to Lake Huron, to explore the beaches near Alpena. Victoria and Welles, the couple in their sixties, had announced their intention to tour the Music House Museum, just north of Traverse City.

Aunt Frances, who hadn't eaten much but had spent most of the meal looking out the windows to the screened porch and beyond to the trees of the backyard, blinked at the mention of the Music House. “If you're going there,” she said, “you should stop at Guntzviller's.”

“What's Guntzviller's?” Victoria asked.

I grinned. I'd stopped there once and had been entranced by the blend of retail, taxidermy, and museum featuring wildlife and Native American artifacts. “Don't
be scared by the howling,” I said, then wouldn't say any more.

Welles, the retired dentist, who with his fit frame and white blond hair, didn't look nearly old enough to be retired, glanced at my aunt. “What are your plans for the day, Frances?”

She started at the question. “Me? I'm afraid I have chores to do.”

“How annoying,” Eva said, grimacing. “I hope they're outside ones, at least.”

Aunt Frances smiled, but it didn't last long. “I'd best get going.” She rose, but when she started stacking her dishes, Liz put out a hand to stop her. “Forrest and I will take care of this. It's our day, right?”

Typically, everyone cleared their own place, but this time my aunt simply nodded at the violation of her own rules. The seven of us sat and listened to her footsteps cross the living room, climb the stairs, and enter her room. When there was a light
thud
, indicating that her bedroom door had shut, the six boarders all turned to face me.

“What's wrong with your aunt?” Victoria demanded.

I blinked. “Umm . . .”

“We're getting concerned,” Morris said. I'd almost grown accustomed to hearing a well-known voice at my aunt's dining table, but there were times when I had to force myself to stop looking around for the radio.

“Um . . .” I said again, not sure where this was going.

“The scrapbook,” Welles said.

And then everything became as clear as the summer day outside.

The first year my aunt took in boarders, she'd purchased a scrapbook and invited everyone to fill it up. It was the perfect activity for a rainy day, and past guests
had created pages of drawings, notes, postcards, ticket stubs, restaurant napkins, and cardboard coasters. Most of the pages had handwritten comments about the fun times, the weather, the lakes, the food, even the late-night card games and board games that often took place on the screened porch.

There were also, I remembered, many entries about my aunt. My aunt, who, in previous boardinghouse summers, was a participant in the games. Who, in the past, had often sat on the front porch swing with a guest or two. Who, for as many summers as I could remember, spent many an evening crouched in front of the living room's fieldstone fireplace, convincing her boarders that s'mores were best with a mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

“She's not the same as in the scrapbooks,” Eva said.

I shook my head, not so much disagreeing as not wanting to talk about this.

“In the books,” Forrest persisted, a frown of concern on his face, “she was more active. Participating with guest activities almost every day.”

“But she's not doing that,” Liz said. “Not this year. So we're wondering . . .” She bit her lower lip.

“We hope she's not ill,” Welles said, sighing, and I had the sudden and frightening thought that, as a dentist, he must have seen dozens or hundreds of patients who'd been seriously sick. Was it possible that Welles had detected something about my aunt's health that I didn't know? Had she been diagnosed with something so life threatening that she didn't want to share it with anyone?

My throat constricted so tight that I had to cough it loose. And, in doing so, I rattled my brain enough that some thoughts fell out.

“If she was sick,” I said, “she would have told me.” She also would have made me promise not to tell my parents, which included her brother, until she was good and ready. “We made a pact about that very thing when I moved to Chilson.”

This was true. It had started as kind of a joke. Aunt Frances had been reading a novel about a man diagnosed with a fast-moving internal cancer, but he hadn't told anyone, even his wife, until the day he collapsed while walking up their basement stairs, carrying a wooden stool he'd just finished mending. He'd died two days later, and the bulk of the novel was about the wife trying to forgive him.

My aunt had looked at me over the top of the book and said, “I promise I'll tell you if you promise you'll tell me.”

“Deal,” I'd said, and we'd bumped knuckles to seal the pact.

It had been a lighthearted moment, but since then, we'd both made references to the promise. It was reassuring, in a way I wasn't sure I wanted to think about much, so I usually didn't.

Now I looked at the concerned faces. My heartstrings were well and truly tugged. These folks cared about my aunt. They wanted to know that she was all right, and they certainly looked ready to step in and roll up their sleeves if she needed any help.

But I knew what my aunt needed, and there wasn't any help they could provide.

*   *   *

Instead of taking a direct walk back to the marina, where I was going to meet Ash in a couple of hours, I wandered through downtown. It was still early; the only places open were Cookie Tom's and restaurants
that served breakfast. This meant the sidewalks were empty enough of tourists that I could walk without paying too much attention to where I was going.

So it shouldn't have been a surprise that, when I was staring up at the few clouds in the sky, wondering if the wind was going to stay low or if it was going to whip up into something that would put a damper on the afternoon's activities, I didn't hear Denise Slade calling until she planted herself smack in front of me.

“If you paid more attention to where you're going,” she said, “you might get a lot further in life.”

“And where would I want to go?” I asked cheerfully. “I'm pretty happy right here.” I flung out my arms, narrowly missing a light pole.

Denise rolled her eyes. “It was a metaphor.”

I wasn't sure it had been, but whatever. I'd learned not to take Denise's comments personally; she was caustic by nature, and there was no reason to think she treated me any differently from anyone else. Denise, if she'd been face-to-face with Bill Gates, would demand to know why Microsoft products locked up so often. If the most famous author in the world moved to Chilson and wanted to volunteer with the Friends, Denise would have asked for qualifications. If the most—

Something jogged in my head and I mentally snapped my fingers.

“Say, Denise. I could do with a favor.”

She sniffed. “Maybe. Maybe not. What is it?”

Of all the Friends of the Library presidents in all the world, Denise had to be president of Chilson's. “Do you keep track of who volunteers in the book-sale room?”