Cat With a Clue (24 page)

I lifted my chin and met her gaze straight on. And, after a moment, she smiled.

“It's time for me to apologize,” she said. “I should have realized what had happened and I am truly sorry I let this go on for so long.”

At some point this conversation would start making sense. “Let what go on?”

“When Ash introduced us at the Round Table, I could tell you were nervous about meeting me. I should have been more understanding. Instead, I went all proper and uptight and made you even more anxious.”

“Well,” I said, “I have to confess that I didn't expect Ash's mom to look like she stepped out of a Nordstrom catalog.”

Lindsey laughed. “It's a hard thing, being a woman, isn't it? We want to look good, but when we succeed, we can end up intimidating more than impressing.”

“You were trying to impress me?” My eyes went wide.

“Good heavens, of course I was. Ash has talked about you for weeks. I couldn't possibly meet you wearing old jeans and a T-shirt.”

“Wow. I had no idea.”

“How could you? And then Ash was called away and we were left with each other, and I still felt the need to make a good impression. Which was when you started tripping over your words.”

I thought back. “I did, didn't I? It's something I do when I'm . . .” I grinned. “When I'm nervous.”

She nodded. “You weren't making fun of Ash; you were simply nervous.”

“Making fun?” I stared at her, aghast. “No! Of course not!” No wonder she'd frozen me out—she'd thought I was mocking her son, who had had a severe stutter as a kid. “I'd never do a thing like that.”

“I know that now,” she said. “And that's why I'm apologizing.” She stuck out her hand. “Friends?”

Smiling, I shook. “Friends.” After the ritual was complete, I asked, “What are you doing in Chilson this fine evening?”

“Working.” She made a face. “You'd have thought financial consultants wouldn't need to make house calls.”

“Someone win the lottery?”

Lindsey started to say something, then changed it to, “Everyone's financial situation is different.”

Which was a lot like what Tolstoy had written in
Anna Karenina
. “‘All happy families are alike,'” I quoted. “‘Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'”

Lindsey's eyebrows went up. “That's what Monica said, not ten minutes ago.”

“Monica?” My brain twitched. It was a Monica Utley who'd switched her stint in the book-sale room with Andrea right before she'd been killed. “Is this the same Monica who volunteers at the library?”

“I couldn't say.” Lindsey looked at her watch. “And I'm sorry to interrupt our chat, but there's a roast in the slow cooker at home that's going to be overdone if I don't get there soon. Have a good night, Minnie.”

She turned away and I reached into my backpack for my phone. “Aunt Frances? Quick question: Do you know Monica Utley?”

“Not very well,” my aunt said. “She grew up downstate. Met her husband in college—he's from Chilson—and they moved up here after they got married.”

“What's her husband's name?” I was gripping the phone so tight that my hand hurt. “Do you know?”

“Paul. He's a lawyer.”

“Do you happen to know where they live?”

“In that big pale yellow house a block or so from downtown. At least they do for now,” she said wryly. “I hear they're having troubles of some sort. Why?”

“Thanks,” I said, and thumbed off the phone as a car with tinted windows drove past.

Slowly.

The skin at the back of my neck prickled unpleasantly. Was someone following me?

“Don't be stupid,” I told myself, but all the way home, I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure I was alone.

A
s far as I was concerned, the answer to the why of Andrea Vennard's death had been answered days ago; she and someone else had been looking for
Wildflowers
, only that someone else had been willing to kill for the sake of an expensive book.

Now I knew who that someone was.

Well, maybe.

Angry Guy Shane Pratley was still a possibility, as was Jared Moyle, the guy who owned the used-book store, and Kim and Bob Parmalee, but things were lining up that Paul Utley was the guy. Or Monica Utley. Or both of them. Because if they were in financial trouble, wouldn't they both be scrambling to find an answer to their problem? And why else would someone be talking to a financial consultant on a Friday night?

I waited until I got back to the dubious privacy of the houseboat to call Ash. No sense in people on the street overhearing what I suspected. Because all I had were suspicions. I had no real evidence and no real proof. Ash and Detective Inwood would have to come
up with those. Unfortunately, I'd recently received a text from Ash that they'd both just left for a long weekend of law-enforcement training. But, hey, what were cell phones for if not to interrupt people?

“Hi, this is Ash.”

“Hey,” I said, “I know you're at that training—”

“I can't talk right now,” his recorded voice said, “but I'll call you back when I can. Thanks.”

I growled into the phone. When the beep came, I gave him my information about Paul and Monica Utley, that Paul had learned about
Wildflowers
through his role as attorney for the DeKeysers' estate, that Paul and Andrea had known each other from high school, and that Paul could have learned about the value of the book through Andrea, so it might be a good idea to check to see if any of her phone calls had been to him. Or if they'd had any other contact. Or something.

When I was done rambling, I said, “Okay, um, that's about it. Give me a call when you have a minute, okay?”

“Mrr.”

I looked down at Eddie. “What do you think? Should I call the sheriff, too?”

My cat put his head down and whacked my shin. It didn't help my decision-making process, but it did encourage me pick him up for a snuggle. “How about if I e-mail the sheriff?” I asked. “She might not check her e-mail until Monday, but this can wait that long.” Eddie didn't disagree with me, so I set him onto the dining bench while I did some tapping on my phone.

It didn't take long to find Sheriff Richardson's e-mail address—it was on the county's Web site—and I sent her a note that replicated the voice mail I'd left for Ash. “There,” I told Eddie as I hit the Send button. “I've done what I can, and the rest will be up to the
law-enforcement professionals. Want to go to the Friday marina party with me?”

“Mrr?” He jumped on my backpack and scratched at the opening until he'd managed to get himself inside.

“A backpack is not a cat toy,” I said, pulling him away. This was a little mean of me, because I'd watched him strain with the effort to get in and not done a thing to either help or hinder him, but I tamped down my guilt with the knowledge that he'd be sleeping on my head later that night.

“Mrrrr.”

I could hear Eddie latching on to something inside the backpack. I reached out and detached his front claws from whatever it was that he was sinking them into. “Don't ruin my stuff, okay? Some of those things aren't even mine, you know, and it wouldn't look good for me to return books to the library with cat-claw marks in them.”

Eddie wriggled out of my grasp, gave me a dirty look, and jumped down. He stalked across the kitchen floor, thumped down the steps, stamped across the bedroom, and launched himself up onto the bed.

“Whatever,” I muttered. There were, in fact, two library books inside the pack, and I pulled them out. One looked intact and, after wiping off what might have been a small amount of Eddie spit, I started to slide the other book back inside. This one was nonfiction, with the cover a painting of a single pink rose. Though I'd never admit it to anyone, I'd checked out the book solely for the beauty of its cover art. You should never judge a book by its cover, of course, but it sure could give a hint about—

“Oh,” I said out loud. “I am so stupid. I forgot all about calling Amelia.”

“Mrr,” Eddie called from the bedroom.

I dug out my phone and scrolled down toward the end of the alphabet. “Ha,” I said. “Thought she was in there.” I stabbed at the button and waited for the phone to ring on the other end.

Amelia Singer had grown up in Chilson, moved downstate to attend college, worked as a teacher, married, had two children, worked as a school principal, divorced, worked as a school superintendent, and had recently retired and moved back to the town of her youth. She'd cast around for something to do and, when the museum director said he'd had enough after eleven years, which was one year too many by most accounts, she'd stepped in with both feet.

“Hi,” I said, when she answered. “Minnie Hamilton. How are you?”

“Minnie!” Amelia boomed. She did a lot of that, and I had yet to figure out if she'd always talked that way or if it was a natural result of her career choices. “Couldn't be better if I were twins,” she said. “How are you?”

One of the first things Amelia had committed to doing was a faster processing of the multitude of donations that poured in. Not once had she said she'd bitten off more than she could chew, but I'd caught her looking at the vast pile of boxes with more than a small amount of loathing. Still, if anyone could turn the Chilson Historical Museum from a dusty, slightly musty, and ill-lit warehouse of castoffs from the town's attics into a showpiece, it was Amelia.

I pictured her, my height but about twice my weight, her long reddish brown hair rolled up into a bun, her active mind whirring along at a hundred miles an hour. “Got a question,” I said. “How caught up are you with the donations?”

“Humor is the last refuge of the scoundrel,” she misquoted darkly. “And if you ever remind me that I'd vowed to organize this place by the end of my first year as director, I will never speak to you again.”

Laughing, I said, “I would never do that. I value your advice too much.”

“Advice?” She sighed audibly. “If I'd listened to my friends, I would never have become director of the museum. Why is it that we refuse to accept the experience of others?”

“Because we think we're going to be different.”

“Why are we so often so wrong?”

“It's a survival mechanism. If we were completely honest about our chances at completing any given task, we'd never get out of bed in the morning.”

Her laugh was deep and contagious. “How did you get to be so smart at such a young age?”

“It's not me. It's Alexandre Dumas, Elizabeth Goudge, and Charles Dickens.”

“Elizabeth Goudge,” Amelia mused. “Sad that so few people have heard of her these days.”

I was doing my best to take care of that, but I didn't want to get too far off topic. Amelia and I could talk books for hours—we'd met at the library when she'd come in to get a library card—but I had a question for her. “Have you had many books donated lately?”

“You are a cruel, cruel woman,” Amelia said.

I smiled. “Not intentionally, honest. I take it you've had a few?”

“Tens of boxes. Hundreds of boxes. Thousands of boxes. Millions of boxes. And none of them are going to St. Ives or anywhere, because they're all in the museum basement.” She sighed again. “I would love to look through them. I crave to look through them, but
all I have time right now to do is open the flaps every so often and gaze at the contents longingly.”

The decision about what to do with my knowledge of the likely whereabouts of
Wildflowers
gelled into action. If anyone from the sheriff's office called back soon, I'd pass the information on to them, but I couldn't tell the family, not when parts of the family were suspects. Which left me, a librarian to the core, with only one possible course of action.

“Amelia,” I said, “I have a favor to ask . . .”

*   *   *

The next day dawned hot and humid. I debated leaving Eddie at home to nap the day away in the comfort of the cooler lakeside air, but he parked himself on the top of cat carrier and stared at me, unblinking, and it was easier to bring him along than to argue with him.

“Good thing I don't have children,” I said, lugging the Eddie-filled carrier out to my car. “I'm a pushover. They'd be spoiled rotten kids with no manners and a huge sense of entitlement.”

“Mrr.”

“You're right.” I opened the car door, set the carrier inside, and buckled it in. “Cats are different from kids. There'd be no teaching you table manners.”

Eddie opened his mouth to object, but I shut the door, for once getting in the last word.

*   *   *

Julia and Eddie and I spent the day trying to find the deepest shade in every parking lot where we were scheduled to stop. Worst was the asphalt lot of a newly constructed township hall whose only shade came from a spindly sapling that looked as if it could use a good watering. Best was the gravel lot of a rural church whose maple trees cast enough shade to cover the entire bookmobile.

Even still, it was a long, hot, sweaty day, and the three of us were glad to return to Chilson, where the ice-cream cones we'd been talking about all afternoon awaited.

I started my car and cranked the air-conditioning while Julia and I lugged crates of books into the library. By the time we were done, my car was cool enough to move Eddie from the bookmobile.

“See you on Tuesday,” Julia said, and, for the first time since I'd met her, she looked limp and exhausted and every one of her sixty-some years.

“Double scoop,” I recommended. “Mint chip.”

She shook her head. “Waffle cone of Mackinac Island fudge.” Then she grinned. “With a vodka martini chaser.”

The thought of drinking a martini made the inside of my throat go dry as overcooked toast. “I'd rather—” But before I could note my preference for a glass of chilled white wine, my cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket. Amelia Singer, the museum director.

“See you Tuesday,” Julia said, waving, and off she went.

I thumbed on the phone. “Hey, Amelia.”

“Minnie, I'm so glad you answered.”

Amelia's usually expansive voice was tight.

“What's the matter?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

“Me?” She forced a chuckle. “Fine as cotton candy. It's my granddaughter that's the trouble. The thirteen-year-old. She was out skateboarding with friends, tried a fancy somersault, and didn't quite make it all the way around.”

My breath caught as I imagined the scene. “How badly was she hurt? Is she okay?”

“No, no she's not.” The words were spoken through
sniffles. “Long-term she should be fine—her mother won't let her go to the skate park unless she wears protective equipment—but she broke her femur.”

“Oh no.” I touched my thigh. “Does she need surgery?”

Amelia sniffed again. “They're waiting for some fancy-pants orthopedic surgeon to get off the golf course and into the hospital.”

“Are you on your way downstate?” I asked.

“No, my daughter just called.”
Sniff.
“I had to talk to you first. We'd set up tonight for you to stop by the museum to look for your books.”

She was worried about me? “Amelia,” I said, “go home and pack. This can wait.”

“But you said—”

I'd told her the book that might have been donated to the museum might be related to the murder of Andrea Vennard, but none of that mattered when a granddaughter was in the hospital. “It can wait,” I repeated.

“Can you come down right now?” Amelia asked. “I'm still at the museum. I'm locking up, but I can wait until you get here.”

I glanced at my car. “We'll be there in two minutes.”

*   *   *

Five minutes later, I was walking down the creaky stairs to the museum's basement. Amelia had asked if I was familiar with the museum's layout—I was, thanks to time spent volunteering the summer after my high school graduation—and she'd asked me to cross my heart and hope to die if I didn't make sure everything was locked up tight when I left.

When I'd done the crossing and the hoping, she'd given me a long look, full of fear and anxiety. I'd set the cat carrier on the floor and given her a hug. “It'll be
okay,” I'd said. “They'll take great care of her, and she'll be up and around in no time.”

Amelia had returned the hug, muttering, “That's what I'm afraid of.”

I couldn't help it; I'd laughed, and, after a moment, Amelia had actually smiled.

Now it was just me and Eddie in the museum, a building that had originally housed a dry goods store. When the owner had moved to Traverse City, about seventy years ago, a hardware store had taken its place. That had gone out of business when the owner had passed away, and a pharmacy had come in next. The pharmacy had lasted until its history-buff owner had retired, and he'd sold it to the museum for far less than it could have brought on the open market.

It was a lovely building. Upstairs were wooden floorboards, hand-plastered walls, and oak trim, but downstairs was a cavernous basement that, for reasons now lost in the mists of time, had a nine-foot ceiling.

“There could be lots of reasons,” I told Eddie, hefting the carrier onto a handy chair. “Some people say this building is where the first-ever city council meetings were held. And while that might be true, that doesn't explain why the basement was built so big in the first place.”

“Mrr.”

“Well, sure, it's possible that the first owner wanted a massive basement for his cats to play around in, but how likely is that, really?”