Praise for the National Bestselling Bookmobile Cat Mysteries

“Charming. . . . Librarian Minnie Hamilton is kindhearted, loyal, and resourceful. And her furry sidekick, Eddie, is equal parts charm and cat-titude. Fans of cozy mysteries—and cats—will want to add this series to their must-read lists.”

—New York Times bestselling author Sofie Kelly

“With humor and panache, Cass delivers an intriguing mystery and interesting characters.”

—Bristol Herald Courier (VA)

“A pleasurable, funny read. Minnie is a delight as a heroine, and Eddie could make even a staunch dog lover more of a cat fan.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Charms with a likable heroine, [a] feisty and opinionated cat, and multidimensional small-town characters.”

—Kings River Life Magazine

“Almost impossible to put down . . . the story is filled with humor and warmth.”

—MyShelf.com

“[With] Eddie’s adorableness, penchant to try to get more snacks, and Minnie’s determination to solve the crime, this duo will win over even those that don’t like cats.”

—Cozy Mystery Book Reviews

Also by Laurie Cass

Lending a Paw

Tailing a Tabby

Borrowed Crime

Pouncing on Murder

OBSIDIAN

Published by New American Library,

an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

This book is an original publication of New American Library.

Copyright © Janet Koch, 2016

Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

Obsidian and the Obsidian colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

For more information about Penguin Random House, visit penguin.com.

eBook ISBN 9780698405509

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Dedicated to the memory of Eddie, a cat for the ages,

April 1999–March 18, 2016.

We miss you, little buddy. We always will.

CONTENTS

Praise for the Bookmobile Cat Mysteries

Also by Laurie Cass

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Excerpt

About the Author

Chapter 1

After almost thirty-four years of living, my most important discovery was that there are remarkably few things I absolutely had to do.

Yes, I had to feed and clothe and house myself, but besides those basics, there wasn’t much that couldn’t be put off for the sake of sitting for a few minutes in the morning sunshine, especially when said sunshine was smiling down on your very own houseboat, which was resting comfortably on the sparkling waters of a lovely blue lake that sat alongside Chilson, a picturesque town in northwest lower Michigan, which happened to be my favorite place in the whole world.

I lay flopped in my lounge chair, eyes closed and soaking up the sun, content with pretty much everything and everyone. Life was good, and there wasn’t much that could make it better, other than making this particular moment last longer. Peace and quiet reigned throughout my little land. Nothing I had to do that day was so important that a minor delay would matter much and—

“Mrr!”

Of course, my idea of what defined important didn’t always match my cat’s.

I opened my eyes and looked at Eddie, my black-and-white tabby, who was approximately three years old and who had placed his nose two inches from my face.

“You know,” I told him, “if you’d gone running with us, you wouldn’t have so much energy.”

For the past few weeks, I’d actually been exercising. Sweating, even. I’d been meaning to start something like this for a long time, but it had taken a number of gentle suggestions from Ash Wolverson, my new boyfriend, to get me to invest in some decent running shoes. A few more suggestions, and I’d started hauling myself out of bed early three times a week to run with him. Luckily, he swung by the marina four miles into his own run, so he’d already had a good workout by the time we got together.

“Think about it,” I said to Eddie. “You’ll sleep even better during the day.”

He blinked.

“Right.” I patted him on the head. “You never have trouble sleeping during the day. It’s the nights that are a problem. What do you think about going for a run in late afternoon?”

“Mrr.” Eddie pawed at yesterday’s newspaper, which was sitting on my lap. I’d stayed at the library late the night before and had been too tired to do anything except reread a chapter of 84, Charing Cross Road when I got home. Since my boss, Stephen Rangel, had left his job as director of the Chilson District Library, I was interim director until the library board hired someone. This was stretching me a little thin, because in addition to my normal duties as assistant director, I also drove the library’s bookmobile and was out of the building almost as much as I was in it.

“Which section do you want to hear first?” I asked, picking up the two-section paper.

“Sports, please,” said a male voice.

I looked over toward my right-hand marina neighbor. Eric Apney, a fortyish male with perpetually mussed brown hair and undeniable good looks, was sitting on the deck of his boat, eating a bowl of cereal while a mug of coffee steamed next to him.

My left-hand neighbors, Louisa and Ted Axford, had spent summers in the slip next to mine for years and would usually be in residence by now, but a new grandchild had captured their hearts, and Louisa had e-mailed me that they wouldn’t be up until mid-July.

Eric, who lived downstate but spent as much time in Chilson as he could, was new to Uncle Chip’s Marina. I’d met him a few weeks before and had turned down his invitation to dinner when I’d learned he was a doctor, and, worse, a surgeon. I’d recently dated an emergency-room doctor and had learned that with doctors, dates were things that were made to be broken. Maybe I was being prejudiced, but my reaction had been instant and instinctive.

Luckily, Eric hadn’t taken the rejection to heart. He’d laughed and said I was smart to stay away, and we were becoming good friends.

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

“What was that?” Eric’s spoon paused halfway up.

I looked at Eddie. “He’s tired of hearing about the lack of depth in the Tigers bullpen and would rather hear the law-enforcement report.”

In a lot of ways, marina life was like being in a campground. Your neighbors were mere feet away, and if the wind was calm, you practically heard them breathing. Politeness dictated that you didn’t mention how their snoring kept you awake, but it was hard to maintain the fiction that you didn’t know what the person on the boat next to you was saying while on his—or her—cell phone. From unintentional eavesdropping, I knew Eric was a huge baseball fan, just as he knew that I ordered take-out dinners more often than I cooked.

“Really?” Eric asked. Soon after we’d met, he’d heard me talking to my cat as if Eddie could really understand what I was saying. He’d laughed with only the slightest condescension, but when Eddie had responded with a conversational “Mrr,” he’d stopped laughing and hadn’t laughed since.

“No idea,” I said, flipping newspaper pages. “But I know I’m tired of hearing about pitching problems. Okay, here we go. Ready for the good stuff?”

It hadn’t been until I’d started dating Ash, a deputy with the Tonedagana County Sheriff’s Office, that I’d become interested in the law-enforcement tidbits that Sheriff Kit Richardson released to the newspaper. Ash said what made print wasn’t the half of it, but the farcical half was certainly there.

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

Eric shoveled in a spoonful of cereal. “Fire away.”

I scanned the short paragraphs. “Here’s a happy one: ‘Lost six-year-old boy in the woods. Six-year-old boy was located and returned home safely.’”

Eric swallowed and toasted the newspaper with his coffee mug. “Score one for the good guys. What’s next?”

“‘Daughter called from out of state to have her elderly father checked on. Officer spoke with father, who said he turned off his phone because his daughter calls too late at night and wakes him up.’”

Eric choked on his coffee. “Seriously?” he asked, coughing.

“I don’t make this stuff up, you know. Next is about a guy who called 911 to tell the sheriff’s office that he’d been driving with his window down. A bee flew in, and when he was trying to get the bee out, he drove into a parked car.”

“Good story,” Eric said. “Wonder if it’s true.”

Smiling, I went back to the paper. “Here’s a call that someone had broken into a garage the night before a garage sale. Nothing was reported missing.”

“Mrr.” Eddie thumped his head against my leg.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Not that good a story, but they can’t all be winners. How about this one? ‘Caller wanted to see an officer because her cat was being mean to her.’”

“Mrr!”

“Okay,” I said. “It was one sister being mean to another sister, and Mom took care of things before the officer arrived.” I gave Eddie a pat. “Just wanted to see if you were paying attention.”

“Some kid really called 911 because she was fighting with her sister?” Eric held up his cereal bowl and drained the last of the milk into his mouth.

I averted my eyes, swung my short legs off the lounge, and stood. “Last week some kid called 911 because his mom wouldn’t let him play all night with his new video game.”

“Well,” Eric said, “now, that I can see.”

“Mrr.”

I turned around. Eddie was settling onto the newspaper, tucking himself into a meat-loaf shape. “Oh no, you don’t.” I rolled him gently onto his side and slid the paper out from underneath him, like a sleight-of-hand artist pulling a tablecloth out from under a table full of china. Unlike the china, however, Eddie yawned and stretched out with his front feet, catching the paper with one of his claws and yanking it out of my hand so it fluttered to the deck.

“Nice job.” I crouched down to pick up the now-scattered newsprint. “You have a gift for making a . . .”

“A what?” Eric asked.

“Mess,” I said vaguely, now standing with the newspaper in hand, looking at the page Eddie had opened. The obituaries. Talia DeKeyser, I read to myself, died peacefully in her sleep on Memorial Day. Born on May 24, 1933 to Robert and Mary Wiley, Talia married Calvin DeKeyser in 1955—

“Minnie, are you okay?”

I folded the newspaper and put it under my arm. “Fine, thanks.” I picked up a purring Eddie and tucked him under my other arm. “See you later, Eric. I have to get to work.”

*   *   *

My shower was fast and, since my annoyingly curly shoulder-length black hair didn’t take well to blow-drying without turning into a mess of frizz, I toweled it dry and hoped for the best. And even though I knew from my mother’s years of scolding that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, I didn’t feel like stopping even for a quick bowl of cereal. There were granola bars in the vending machine at the library; one of those could count for breakfast.

I blew a kiss to Eddie, who somehow knew it wasn’t a bookmobile day and was already curled up in the middle of my bed, and headed out into the brightness.

Normally there wasn’t much I liked better than my morning walk through the streets of downtown Chilson, but in spite of the cheeriness of the day, I couldn’t help thinking of that famous line from the John Donne poem, “Any man’s death diminishes me.”

And any woman’s, too, because though I’d barely known Talia DeKeyser, she’d seemed to be one of those people who could light up a room with a smile. Aged, widowed, and suffering from Alzheimer’s, Talia had nonetheless brightened the day of everyone at Chilson’s Lake View Medical Care Facility with her unfailing cheerfulness and horrible riddles. Her family had moved her to Lake View soon after Christmas, and I’d met her when I’d stopped by with a pile of large-print books from the bookmobile.

I remembered her grinning up at me from her wheelchair, all ready to share a knock-knock joke, and had the sudden and certain conviction that she’d gone on to a better place. “Sweet dreams, Talia,” I said softly, and felt my sadness curl up into a tiny spot in my heart. And though I wasn’t quite thirty-four, I knew my sadness would eventually fade and be overgrown by memories of bad jokes and happy laughter.

“Morning, Minnie,” Cookie Tom said. Tom Abinaw, the tall and amazingly skinny owner of the best bakery in the area, had always been a nice guy, but he’d elevated himself to saint status in my eyes when he’d volunteered to let me purchase cookies for the bookmobile at a special rate and, even better, from the back door, so I didn’t have to stand in the long lines that snaked out his front door all summer.

“Hey.” I stopped. “Beautiful out, isn’t it?”

“Sure is.” Tom looked up from his sweeping of the clean sidewalk. “Yet another day I’m glad I don’t work in a big city.”

I laughed. “Better to work seventy hours a week in a small town?”

“Far better.” He smiled and returned to his unnecessary sweeping.

I went back to walking through the few blocks that constituted Chilson’s downtown. The mishmash of old and new, single-storied and multistoried, brick and clapboard, brightly colored and faded melded together into a cohesive whole that worked so well that it couldn’t possibly have been planned. Organic growth, urban planners said. Whatever it was, I liked every inch of it, from the far reaches of the slightly shabby east end, where my houseboat was moored, to the moneyed west end, where my best friend, Kristen, had her restaurant.

Of course, the east end soon wouldn’t be as shabby as it had been for years, thanks to the efforts of my friend Rafe Niswander. By day, Rafe was the best middle-school principal Chilson had had in years. By night, he was the renovator of what had been a run-down wreck of a house within shouting distance of the marina, and he was taking his own sweet time about it.

Whenever I told him that he could have finished two years ago if he hadn’t spent so much of his summer in the marina’s office, hanging out with the manager and the manager’s marina buddies, he would loftily say that perfection couldn’t be achieved in a day, and walk away, whistling.

“Morning, Minnie!” Pam Fazio fingered a wave at me. She was sitting in a small slice of sunshine that was hitting the front steps of her store, Older Than Dirt, and cupping her hands around what was most certainly not her first cup of coffee that morning.

I gestured at her drink. “Number three or number four?”

Pam had moved north from Ohio a year earlier, fleeing the clutches of corporate life, and had vowed that she’d spend every morning the rest of her life sitting on her front porch and drinking coffee. She’d done so through last winter’s abnormal cold spell without missing a single day and, though I suspected that the contractor I’d noticed parked at her house would soon be glassing in her front porch, her vow was still intact.

She held the coffee close to her face and breathed deep. “Two. I’m trying to cut down. And I’m waiting for a delivery.”

“Is it container day?”

Pam went abroad two or three times a year, searching the nooks and crannies of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Antarctica, for all I knew, for items old and new to sell in her store. She had an uncanny knack for choosing things that would sell like hotcakes, and the arrival of the shipping container piqued interest across town.

She nodded and drank deep. When she surfaced, she said, “Should be here any minute.”

I needed to get to the library, but I couldn’t leave, not just yet. “Um, are there books?”

“Now, Minnie, you know I don’t tell.”

“You used to,” I muttered.

“Sure, but that was before I figured out what a draw container day could be. Off with you. Come back when everything’s unpacked, just like everyone else.”

“But—”

“Go!” She pointed toward the library with an imperious index finger, but she was smiling.

“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.

Chapter 2

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.”

“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.

“Eva?” My aunt’s gaze wandered back to the book. “Forrest. They went down to Bellaire, if I remember correctly. Glacial Hills—is that right?”

It was. “How about Liz and Morris?” I prompted.

They were my favorite intended couple. At fifty-seven years old, Liz was taking a “summer sabbatical” from her life. An extremely successful sales representative for a clothing manufacturer, she’d woken up one morning and been too exhausted to drag herself out of bed. She needed a rest, her doctor had told her, so here she was, not resting all that much, but having a wonderful time. ...