Cat With a Clue (3 page)

“Thanks so much,” I said, but I wasn't sure my sarcasm showed enough, because Inwood said, “You're welcome,” and then, “Deputy Wolverson will notify you when the victim's family has been contacted. At that
point you can give out Ms. Vennard's name. I'll call if I have any questions.”

He strode off. Ash, who'd been standing nearby, sent me a smile that made me go a little mushy inside, then followed him.

When they were gone, I was the only one left in the library. This wasn't unusual either early in the morning or late at night, but I couldn't think of a circumstance in which I'd ever been the only person in the library at one in the afternoon.

It was just too weird for words.

I wandered out to the reference desk, picked up the phone to call our maintenance guy, then put the receiver down. Gareth didn't start work for a few hours. If I asked him to come in now, he would, but it would result in overtime pay, and that particular part of the budget was tight after the recent repairs and cleanup expenses from a big storm.

Happily married and older than me by well over a decade, Gareth was a solidly good guy. We'd become friends soon after I'd moved to Chilson when, during a summer festival, we'd looked up from the opposite ends of a picnic table to see the other eating an identical, horribly delicious junk-food dinner of corn dogs, elephant ears, and cotton candy.

We'd made a pact not to tell a soul—especially Gareth's nutritionally minded wife and my budding restaurateur of a best friend—and ever since, we'd traded recommendations for restaurants with the best fried food.

So, budget in mind, instead of Gareth, I called Holly Terpening, one of the library's clerks and my good friend. As I waited for her to pick up, I couldn't help myself; I glanced over to where I'd found poor Andrea.

“Oh no,” I breathed.

“Minnie?” Holly asked. “Is that you? Are you okay?”

“Fine. Sorry. It's just . . . I've been given the all clear to open the building, so come on in. And, Holly?” I tried not to wince at the vast amounts of fine black powder that covered the bookshelves. “If you have a couple of spare spray bottles, please bring them.”

I made three similar phone calls, then, before anyone else arrived, I jogged upstairs to Stephen's former office for the mat he'd used for his winter boots. Its black rubber didn't exactly match the medium gray tweediness of the downstairs carpeting, but it would cover that stomach-lurching dark red stain until I could get some carpet guys in.

Half an hour later, Holly, Donna, Kelsey, and I had managed to clean up the worst of the powdery mess. Josh, our IT guy, another good friend of mine, had volunteered to work the front desk while the women did the dirty work.

“I'm not very good at cleaning,” he said, sidling away.

“Just like a man,” Kelsey called after him.

“Just trying to get to the coffeemaker before you do,” he said, and he slid out of sight.

“He has a point,” Holly said, and Donna and I agreed. Kelsey had a tendency to make coffee strong enough to rule the world and, though I always made the first pot of the morning, every one after that was a race of sorts.

“Someday,” the thirtyish Kelsey said airily, “you young things will grow to appreciate the virtues of real coffee.”

Donna, a seventy-year-old marathoner and snowshoer, said, “Real coffee? The only good coffee is coffee that's laden with cream and sugar.” Kelsey gave what didn't appear to be a mock shudder, and we all laughed.

The chatter went on as the cleaning continued, and I knew we were trying not to think about what had happened in that spot a few hours earlier. Maybe we were being shallow and callous, and almost certainly we were being inappropriate, but I was starting to understand why law-enforcement officers joked at crime scenes. There was only so much sorrow you could let yourself feel before it consumed you; humor was a method of keeping the pain at bay.

“I think we've got it, ladies,” I said, stepping back and looking over our work. Though, if I looked hard, I could see minute traces of fine black powder in some crevices, we'd cleaned every surface that anyone would touch and we'd made sure the books were spick-and-span. We wouldn't pass the white-glove test, but, then, a library rarely did. “Thanks so much for helping.”

Donna and Kelsey murmured that it was no problem, and Holly rolled her eyes. “Don't be such a twinkle toes. Of course we'd help.”

I squinted at her as the other women went to put away the cleaning supplies. “Twinkle toes?”

She grinned. “It's Wilson's new phrase.”

Wilson was her eight-year-old son. Her daughter, Anna, was six, and though Holly's husband, Brian, was currently working out West, all seemed well with the Terpening household. “Where did that come from?”

“Twinkle toes?” Holly shrugged as we walked toward the main desk. “Your guess is as good as mine.” She lightly elbowed me. “Would you look at that?” She nodded toward the stocky thirtyish Josh. “Who knew he was such an excellent desk clerk?”

Josh slid her a look that could kill. The two had recently been at odds over what he saw as interference on her part regarding the decorating of his first house
purchase. Josh had ostentatiously ignored each and every one of her suggestions; then, at his housewarming, she'd discovered that the small home was decorated precisely as she'd recommended.

He'd found the whole episode tremendously funny. Though Holly had been thrilled at how well her ideas had turned out, she'd also been annoyed at Josh's game playing. That had been a few weeks ago, and their respective feathers were only now smoothing down. Now, instead of listening to them go at it like brother and sister, I sent up a very shiny distraction.

“They're talking about setting up the interviews,” I said.

Both their heads whipped around.

“They?” Josh asked. “You mean the library board?”

“For Stephen's job?” Holly inched toward me and looked around. No one was close by, but she lowered her voice to ask, “When's your interview?”

“Yeah,” Josh said, nodding. “You need to tell us so we can help you prepare. I'll be the board chair.” He dropped his voice an octave. “Ms. Hamilton, please tell us what you think qualifies you for this position.”

Holly crouched down about five inches to mimic my height. She twirled her straight brown hair and said in a voice startlingly like mine, “Mr. Chairman, I worked under Stephen Rangel for four years, and I'm quite sure that anyone smarter than a box fan would be more qualified than he was.”

“Yes, I see what you mean,” Josh said in his chairman's voice. “Still, we would like to hear specifics about your credentials.”

Holly, still crouching, said, “As you can see from my resume—”

“No, they can't.”

My friends stopped their playacting. “What do you mean?” Holly asked, standing up and narrowing her eyes.

“Well,” I said, inching away, “I haven't actually applied for the job.”

“What?”

“Shhh,” I told them, making shushing gestures with my hands. “This is a library. No loud exclamations of surprise allowed.”

“Don't care,” Josh said. “Why haven't you applied? What have you been doing the past month?”

“Minnie, you have to apply,” Holly almost wailed. “Who knows what we'll get if you don't. Didn't Stephen practically promise you the job?”

What Stephen had told me was that he was grooming me to be his eventual successor. But that had been before his departure had been accelerated by multiple years. “The library board,” I said, “hires the director, not Stephen. Besides, I'm not sure I want the job.”

Holly pointed her index finger straight at me. “You're the obvious choice. Don't mess this up, Minnie.”

“Yeah,” Josh said. “Get to work on your application, or we'll fill it out for you.”

Holly's face brightened. “That's a great idea! I bet we could write up a better one for Minnie than Minnie would.”

“And we'd do a lot better job on her resume, too.” Josh started laughing. “She'd be all accurate about every single freaking thing. No one does that.”

“When you're done,” I said, “let me know. I'll have it bound and shelved in the fiction section.” I gave them a bright smile and headed to my office.

*   *   *

Instead of going home to the marina after work, I walked to the boardinghouse of my aunt Frances. She
was sitting on the front porch's swing and spied me as I turned the last corner.

“Minnie!” She jumped off the white-slatted swing, letting it bounce up and down in its chains. Down the creaky wooden steps she hurtled, then ran the last yards toward me with arms flung open wide.

I braced myself for a jarring thud, but she gently enfolded me in her embrace and, once again, I knew how lucky I was that my father had such a wonderful older sister. Not only had she invited a young Minnie to spend her summers in Chilson, where I'd met Kristen and Rafe and many others, but she still welcomed me back to her home every fall when it got too cold on the houseboat. Come spring, of course, she kicked me out, but I was happy enough to move.

Not that I disliked the people who replaced me; I always liked them very much. No, it was more that I would have been a fifth wheel to the summer boarders and might have messed up my aunt's careful calculations. This was because, though my aunt's summer guests didn't know it, they'd been selected based on compatibility with another guest.

Yes, Aunt Frances was a secret matchmaker, and in all the years she'd been setting people up, she'd never had a flat-out failure. Sometimes the people intended for each other rearranged themselves, but everyone had always ended up happy.

This year, however, was turning out a little different. For the first time since my uncle Everett had died, decades ago, Aunt Frances had a love interest of her own. She and her new across-the-street neighbor, Otto Bingham, had been smiling into each others' eyes for months now, and I was wondering how that would affect the summer matchmaking.

She gave one last squeeze and released me. “I'm so glad you called this morning. Right after we talked, the phone calls started rolling in, asking if I'd heard the horrible news, if you'd been hurt badly, if I'd heard that you captured a killer.”

Which was why I'd called her. The speed of light had nothing on the speed of gossip, and I'd wanted to give my aunt a heads-up before it hit her full force.

“I'm fine,” I said. “It's awful that someone was killed, but I'm sure the sheriff's office will make an arrest soon.”

“I hope so,” she said, turning and linking her arm with mine. Though this was a little awkward for both of us, since I was half a foot shorter than my angular aunt, it wasn't far to the front porch and the side-by-side companionship was welcome.

We climbed the wide front steps and went inside, the screen door banging gently behind us, and plonked ourselves down in the large living room, a space that oozed relaxation.

The massive fieldstone fireplace hinted that comfy fires and marshmallow toasting were in the near future. Regional maps tacked onto the pine-paneled walls whispered tales of upcoming adventures. A bookshelf stacked with decks of cards and board games ensured that boredom was never possible, and the couches and chairs were populated with cushy pillows and cozy blankets, all promising the ease of a long nap.

Through an open doorway, the dining room was laid with dishes for the upcoming dinner, and beyond that, a screened porch looked out into a backyard so filled with trees, you could imagine that you were in a treehouse.

Something tapped me lightly on the shin. I jerked
out of my reverie and looked around. Aunt Frances was sitting diagonal to me, her foot still extended from the kick.

“Sorry,” I said. “Did you ask me something?”

“How you were doing,” she said, her eyebrows raised. “Preoccupied, clearly.”

“Oh, it wasn't . . .” I stopped. Yes, I'd been thinking about how much I loved this house, but that had undoubtedly been avoidance behavior. I didn't want to think about the murder. Didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to speculate about it, and certainly didn't want to relive the morning. “I'll be okay,” I said eventually. “It'll take a while, but I'll be fine.”

My aunt scrutinized me, then nodded. “You'll tell me if you're having problems.”

“Promise,” I said. “And I'll tell my mom about it, too. Just as soon as the police put the killer in jail.”

Aunt Frances grinned. She'd known my mom longer than I had and knew how over-the-top her reaction would be. “Sounds like a plan.”

“So.” I slid down on the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table. “How are the summer romances going?” I looked around. “And where is everybody?” I settled down for a long chat, but there was no response from the only blood relative I had within three hundred miles. I asked the question a second time.

“Hmm?” was the response.

“Boarders,” I said a little louder. “Where are they?”

“Oh.” My aunt blinked out of her trance. I'd noted the direction of her gaze, which was fastened upon a book sitting on the corner of the coffee table. Titled
Ice Caves of Leelanau County
, it was filled with fascinating photos of Lake Michigan ice formations. It had been a Christmas gift to her from Otto. “The boarders
are fine,” she said. “Victoria and Welles are on a day trip to Mackinac Island.”

The first time Victoria—widowed, almost seventy, a grandmother of five, and a retired registered nurse—had met Welles, divorced and recently retired from dentistry, romantic sparks had flown high into the sky. Their match was almost guaranteed. I moved on.

“Eva and Forrest?” I asked. They were the young ones, at forty-five and forty-two, respectively. Both were long divorced, both were teachers, neither had children, and both were huge fans of mountain biking. They'd vowed to bike every single mile of trail in the region before they left in August. In the three days they'd been north, they'd already biked a hundred of those miles, so I had full belief that they'd reach their goal.