Cat With a Clue (2 page)

“Greedy, manipulative retailer,” I said as seriously as I could.

“Naive and sentimental public servant,” she shot back.

Laughing, I told her to have a good day and moved on.

Moving faster now, I walked past the shoe store, past the local diner known as the Round Table, and past the women's clothing stores whose super-duper sidewalk-sale offerings were still beyond my budget. I admired the new fifteen-foot-high freestanding clock, a gift to the city from the chamber of commerce, and moved swiftly past the side streets, where I caught glimpses of the local museum and the Lakeview Art Gallery. Past the toy store, past the post office and the deli and the T-shirt shop and the multitude of gift stores, and then up the hill to the library.

I supposed there might be a day when I wouldn't smile with pure pleasure when I approached my place of work, but since it hadn't happened in the four years I'd been assistant library director, I wasn't sure it ever would.

Once upon a time, the two-story L-shaped building had been Chilson's only school. When the growing population had packed the classrooms to panting capacity, new buildings had been constructed to house the older students. Decades passed, computers came into their own, and the town eventually realized that a modern elementary school was needed. The old school, built to last and filled with Craftsman-style details, locked its doors.

And there it sat. For years. Then, just before it crumbled away into dust, the library board looked around and noticed that the existing library was packed to the rafters, with no room to expand.
Hmm,
they collectively thought.
You know, if we could pass a millage to renovate that old school . . .

Smiling, I hopped up the steps to the library's side entrance. Even though I'd started working at the library
only a few weeks before the library moved into its new home, and in spite of the fact that I hadn't been involved in a single renovation decision, I felt as proprietary toward the building as if I'd refinished every piece of trim myself.

It was beautiful. Gorgeous, even. One of the most comfortable public spaces I'd ever stepped into, and I was grateful beyond words that Stephen, my boss, and the library board had chosen me out of the dozens of applicants.

I inserted my key into the lock of the wooden door and amended my thoughts. Stephen, my former boss. Because even though, just the previous winter, he'd said he was grooming me to take over when he retired in a few years, Stephen had jumped ship when he'd been offered the directorship of a large library that just happened to be in a climate where snow was seen maybe once every two years.

We'd been directorless for going on two months, but the library board would soon be interviewing candidates. I was sure the board would choose wisely, but I was also wondering what the future would hold for the impetuous five-foot-tall, cat hair–covered Minnie Hamilton.

“Quit worrying,” I said out loud, and pushed open the door. The library didn't officially open until ten, but there were things to do, so here I was, walking into the building two hours early, happy that my best friend, Kristen Jurek, couldn't see me.

“You're salaried,” she'd say flatly. “You make the same money if you work forty hours a week or sixty, so why are you working seventy?”

A huge exaggeration. I'd never once worked seventy hours in a week. Sixty-eight was my absolute tops, and that was only because one of the part-time clerks had
called in sick. And if Kristen ever said that to me again in person, I'd point out that, as the owner of a top-notch restaurant, she routinely worked more than I did.

Then, if the past was any guide to the present, she would retort that at least she made lots of money, slide a bowl of crème brûlée over to me, and I'd agree with whatever she said.

The library's door shut quietly behind me and I breathed deep, drawing my favorite smell into my lungs: books. Flowers were all well and good, but what could compare to the scent of stories, of knowledge, of learning, of history?

My soft-soled shoes made little sound as I crossed the lobby on the way to my office. I flicked on the light, dropped my backpack on the floor, and, just as I started to sit down, saw the stack of reference books I'd meant to put away last night.

To shelve or not to shelve, that was the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to—

“Oh, just do it,” I told myself. Though I could put the pile onto a cart for a clerk to file, I enjoyed putting books in their proper homes. I snatched up the books and made my way back through the lobby.

I didn't bother to turn on the pendant lights as I entered the main hall; enough sunshine was streaming through the high windows of what had once been a gymnasium that the extra illumination wasn't necessary. I also didn't bother to look at the call numbers on the ends of the bookshelves; I knew the library so well that I could practically have put books away blindfolded.

Which was why, instead of looking where I was going, I was paging through the top book in the stack, a foreign-language dictionary, seeing if I could stuff a few words of Spanish into my brain before I shelved it,
and which was why I didn't understand what had happened when my foot hit . . . something.

This made no sense at all, because I was walking through nonfiction, call numbers 407 through 629. There shouldn't have been anything on the floor here except, well, nothing.

Frowning, I stopped reading and looked down.

My sharp gasp was loud in the quiet space. The books fell with soft thumps to the carpeted floor, and I dropped to my knees, reaching forward, hoping that the woman lying on the floor was simply sleeping in a very strange place and in a very strange position.

But her skin was cold.

I swallowed, pushing myself to my feet.

And noticed the knife sticking out of the woman's back.

I
called 911 straightaway, and the first police officer on the scene was from the Chilson Police Department. He took one look and called the police chief. When the police chief arrived, he took a slightly longer look, then called for the next level up, the Tonedagana County Sheriff's Department.

“We don't have the staff or the training for a full-out murder investigation,” the city's police chief said as we were waiting outside. “To tell you the truth, I'm happy to hand something like this over. Make one mistake and you can get a case tossed out of court. And the paperwork?” He shook his gray-haired head. “Inwood's free to take this one, with my blessing.”

“Thanks so much.” Detective Inwood said.

How long he'd been standing behind us, I didn't know. A gift for invisible lurking was probably an asset in his profession, but it creeped me out.

“Ms. Hamilton,” Inwood said, nodding. “You called this in, I hear?”

The detective and I had met a number of times, and while our working relationship had occasionally been
strained, we were reaching a point where we could converse without me wanting to yell at him for being narrow-minded. Likewise, he hadn't called me interfering in weeks. This was all very nice, because Ash, my new boyfriend, was standing next to and slightly behind Detective Inwood at what appeared to be the regulation distance for a deputy who was training to be a detective.

“That's right,” I said.

Inwood looked at the police chief. “Have you identified the body?”

“Andrea Vennard,” he said. “Found her purse. Driver's license says she lives downstate. Brighton.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “You want me to notify the relatives, Hal?”

“I'll take care of it.” Inwood tipped his head in the direction of the library. “Ms. Hamilton, we're going to have to—”

“I know,” I said hurriedly, not wanting to hear any details. “The whole library is a crime scene, and we won't be able to open to the public until it's been . . . cleared out.”

He nodded. “We'll let you know when you can open.” He shook hands with the chief, opened the library's front door, and stepped inside.

The police chief glanced my way. “Let me know if I can help, Ms. Hamilton,” he said, and returned to his vehicle.

For a moment, all was quiet. Birds chirped, leaves stirred in a slight breeze, and the sun shone down. It was June in northern lower Michigan, and it was a beautiful day.

“You okay?” Ash stepped close, his handsome square-jawed face frowning with concern.

Of course I wasn't. I'd just seen a murdered woman
on the floor of my library. And, once I'd called 911, it hadn't felt right to leave her alone, so I'd had time to think about things far more than I'd wanted to, which included wondering how she'd gotten into the locked library. Then I'd wondered how the killer had managed to enter the locked library. This had been followed by the stark realization that the killer might possibly still be in the building, and I'd done the remainder of my waiting outside. On the sidewalk. Next to the street.

“I'm fine,” I said, summoning a smile. “Only, can I use my office? Now, I mean.”

He glanced at the door. “Let me check. I'll be right back.”

My hand itched for my cell phone, but I'd left it in my office that morning, years ago, before I'd found Andrea. I'd called 911 from the reference desk.

For the moment, there was absolutely nothing I could do, so I sat on a nearby bench and did exactly that. Of course, now that I was sitting, all I could think about was that knife sticking out of that poor woman's back and the puddle of red that—

“Minnie?” Ash was standing in front of me. “You sure you're okay?”

“Fine,” I said as I jerked open my eyes. Far better to see the good-looking male specimen in front of me than recall the morning's earlier sight. “Did you ask about getting into my office? I need to make phone calls.”

“You're good to go.” He held out his hand and helped me to my feet. “But you'll have to stay in there until we're done.”

I held on to his hand for a moment, welcoming the warmth of his skin. He reached out and gave me a half hug with his other arm. My cheek mushed uncomfortably
against his badge, but I didn't mind. “Thanks,” I said, smiling a little as he released me. “I needed that.”

He gave the top of my head a quick kiss. “I did, too,” he said. “Just don't tell the boss.”

“Detective Inwood or Sheriff Richardson?”

Though he'd half smiled when I said the detective's name, he blanched when I mentioned the sheriff. “Not her,” he said. “Anyone but her.”

I almost laughed. Kit Richardson was fiftyish and formidable, and everyone except me seemed to be scared of her. Which wasn't a bad attribute for a sheriff to have, I supposed, but somehow the fear hadn't made its way to me. “She's not as scary as you think she is,” I said.

Ash made a fast move and opened the front door for me. “Don't see how that's possible,” he said. When we were inside, he turned the dead bolt. “The techs will be here soon. I'll let you know when we're done.”

I started to ask how long that might be, but stopped myself. They'd get done when they were finished, and that was all I truly needed to know. “Thanks.” I kept my gaze away from what I knew still lay in the library, and walked purposefully to my office.

Stephen was gone. There was no library director. It was up to me to do what needed to be done.

So I went to do it.

*   *   *

Three hours later, I'd talked to the library's board of directors and the entire library staff, touched base with a couple of the major donors, and told the newspaper and both the local television news programs that we were “deeply saddened, and have complete confidence that the sheriff's office will bring the murderer to justice soon.”

I leaned back in my chair, thinking. Just as I was coming to the internal conclusion that there was no one else I needed to talk to, the phone rang.

For a moment, I debated letting it go into voice mail. For another moment, I wished the library's budget stretched to caller identification. Then, since I could almost see my mother frowning at me, arms crossed and foot tapping, I reached for the receiver and picked it up. “Chilson District Library. This is Minnie speaking.”

“And you were going to call me when?” a severe female voice asked.

I flopped back into my chair, pulled out a low desk drawer, and put my feet up. “Why didn't you call my cell if you were so eager to talk?”

“Did,” Kristen said. “A zillion times.”

“It's so refreshing to talk to someone who never exaggerates.”

“And it's so nice to know that I'm last on the list of people you'll call in an emergency.”

“Not last,” I corrected. “That would be my mom.” Because as much as I loved my mother, she wasn't much help in a crisis. She was great at hugs and sympathetic tears and cooking up comfort food, but for straight-out practical help, not so much.

“True enough.”

I heard a muted thumping noise and knew Kristen was in her restaurant's kitchen, chopping up who knew what for lunch. Kristen had a PhD in biochemistry and had once worked for a major pharmaceutical company, but she'd chucked it all to come home to Chilson and run a restaurant that specialized in serving locally grown foods.

During the restaurant's conception stages, she'd been pulling out her long—and straight—blond hair over the lack of local fresh foods available in winter. I'd
suggested that since she hated snow anyway, to just close the place in winter. This had given the place its name, Three Seasons, and given Kristen an opportunity to spend the cold, snowy months in Key West, where she did some bartending on the weekends and as little as possible during the week.

“So,” she said now, “are you okay? I heard you fainted dead away when you found the body.”

Frowning, I sat up a little. “Who told you that?”

More thumping noises. “Can't say. Promised Rafe I wouldn't tell.”

I slid back down. “Rafe's making it up.”

“Well, duh. So. Are you okay?”

“Haven't had time to think about it, really, but—” The library's other phone line started beeping. “Hang on. There's another call coming in.” I put Kristen on hold. “Good morning. Chilson District Library.”

“Is it true?” a familiar male voice asked.

“Hang on,” I said, and punched out a sequence of buttons. “Conference call,” I told them. “And Rafe Niswander, I have never fainted in my life.”

“You told her,” he said to Kristen.

“Of course I did. You knew I would.”

“Well, yeah, but you promised.”

I didn't have to see the six-foot-tall Kristen to know she was rolling her eyes.

“Promises from a girl to a boy don't have any power over confidences between girls,” she said. “You should know that by now.”

“In theory, yes. It's reality I have a hard time with.”

Rafe wasn't the only one having a hard time with reality. I blinked away the memory of what I'd seen that morning and tried to focus on the present. “Sorry—did someone ask a question?”

“For the billionth time, I asked if you're okay,” Kristen said. “I mean, now that you've had time to think about it and all.”

Yes, the last minute of my life had been very meditative. I half smiled, which I knew had been her intention. “I'll feel better when the police figure out who did this.”

But how had it been done? Detective Inwood had already been in my office, asking about the maintenance schedule (five p.m. to one a.m., five nights a week) and the library's security system (doors that were securely locked every night). I'd passed on the phone number of Gareth Dibona, our custodian and maintenance guy, and Inwood told me that Gareth had said he hadn't seen anyone in the building after closing time and that he'd locked up as usual. To Detective Inwood, I'd confirmed that I'd had to unlock when I'd arrived that morning.

The detective's eyebrows had gone up when I'd told him about the locked doors as security, and I'd felt compelled to explain that a full-fledged security system had been part of the renovation plan, but increased construction costs had made cuts necessary.

If the library ever received the large bequest we'd been promised in the will of the late Stan Larabee, a security system would be installed lickety-split, but the will was being contested by numerous family members and it was a toss-up if we'd ever receive anything.

“No fainting, then?” Rafe asked.

“You sound disappointed,” I said. “Did you bet anyone on it?” Rafe and I had a longstanding practice of making five-dollar bets on everything from which snowflake would make it to the ground first to what year Thomas Jefferson was born.

“Well, it would make a better story,” he said. “You fainting, your knight in shining armor rushing to the rescue, dampening your brow with love-struck kisses, you blinking to life and—”

Kristen made a rude noise. “Have you been watching the Hallmark channel again?”

“Hey, no making fun of Jane Seymour. She's hot.”

This was undeniably true. And now that I was being reassured that I had good friends who cared about me—even if they were moving on to a discussion of how all actors on the CW network looked alike—I was indeed feeling okay. Or at least a lot better than I had been.

“Thanks for calling, you two,” I said into the middle of a mild argument regarding a plot point of
Arrow
. “But I need to get going.”

“You sure you're okay?” Kristen asked.

“She's fine,” Rafe said, and somehow his saying so made me feel stronger. Of course, that could have been because I wanted to prove him so very wrong about the fainting thing. He could be such a putz.

“Do you think . . .” Kristen paused.

“Let the woman go,” Rafe said. “You heard her: She has things to do. Places to go. People to see. All sorts of—”

“Do I think what?” I interrupted. Rafe would go on like that for hours otherwise.

“That having the library be the place where someone was murdered will be a problem?”

“Not really. Ash figures they'll be done soon.”

“That's not what I meant,” Kristen said. “What if the murder hurts the library's reputation? What if people don't want to come to a place where someone was killed? I mean, this is safe little Chilson, where nothing bad ever happens, but now . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“It'll be fine,” Rafe said, but this time his assurance didn't instill me with confidence. Because Kristen was right, and I was suddenly frightened for my library.

There was a quiet cough. Detective Inwood was standing just outside my office doorway. “Ms. Hamilton? I have questions about library procedures.”

I nodded. “It'll be fine,” I told my friends, then hung up, hoping it was true.

*   *   *

It didn't take long to answer the detective's questions, and soon after that, he told me I was free to open the building.

“There's limited value,” he said, “to a deep crime-scene investigation in such a public space.”

I nodded. Evidence that Suspect A had been in the library wouldn't prove anything unless Suspect A tried to claim that he (or she) had never been in the place, and what was the point of saying you'd never been in a public building?

“You have a bit of a mess over there.” Inwood gestured toward the nonfiction section. “If your maintenance staff is like most, they won't have any idea how to clean it up.”

“Clean what up?”

“Fingerprint powder. It's extremely fine-grained,” he said. “I'd vacuum as much as you can, but that won't get all of it. Try putting a little liquid dishwashing soap into a spray bottle with warm water for what the vacuum doesn't pick up.”