Praise for the National Bestselling Bookmobile Cat Mysteries

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

—Bristol Herald Courier (VA)

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

—MyShelf.com

“[With] Eddie’s adorableness [and] 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

“A pleasant read. . . . [Minnie is] a spunky investigator.”

—Gumshoe

“A fast-paced page-turner that had me guessing until the last dramatic scenes.”

—Melissa’s Mochas, Mysteries & Meows

“Reading Laura Cass’s cozies feels like sharing a bottle of wine with an adventurous friend as she regales you with the story of her latest escapade.”

—The Cuddlywumps Cat Chronicles

Titles by Laurie Cass

Lending a Paw

Tailing a Tabby

Borrowed Crime

Pouncing on Murder

Cat with a Clue

Wrong Side of the Paw

Booking the Crook

BERKLEY PRIME CRIME

Published by Berkley

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019

Copyright © 2019 by Janet Koch

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.

BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks and BERKLEY PRIME CRIME is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Ebook ISBN: 9780440000990

First Edition: July 2019

Cover art by Mary Ann Lasher

Cover design by Emily Osborne

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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For all the restaurants everywhere that cheerfully allow writers to sit in their back corners for hours at a stretch. With a special nod to Touch of Class in Central Lake, Michigan. Thank you!

Contents

Praise for the National Bestselling Bookmobile Cat Mysteries

Titles 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

About the Author

Chapter 1

I stood at the kitchen window, staring out into the backyard as January’s chill seeped through the glass and into my bones. The cold was making my skin prickle and my teeth chatter, yet I didn’t move. If I stayed, maybe time would stand still. Maybe the morning wouldn’t happen. Maybe if I went back to bed and pulled the covers over my head, it would all go away.

“Minnie?” my aunt Frances asked. “What, pray tell, do you see? It’s pitch dark out there.”

She was right. Even though I knew the backyard contained snow-covered maple and beech trees, the only thing I could see was my own self. Whoever had installed the double-hung windows had placed them at a height that forced any five-foot-tall human—in this case, me—to either stand on tiptoes or crouch slightly to see over the top of the lower window. This morning I was standing on my toes and seeing little more than the reflection of a pair of slightly bloodshot brown eyes and too-curly black hair.

“Mrr.”

I looked over at my cat. Eddie was sitting in the kitchen chair he’d claimed as his own and licking his right front paw.

Aunt Frances laughed. “Your fuzzy friend said to sit down and eat your oatmeal.” She put two bowls on the round oak table and slid into the chair across from Eddie.

“More likely he’s asking about his breakfast.” I gave the top of my head one last glance—still a curly mess and likely to stay that way—and sat. “You didn’t have to make me breakfast.”

“Don’t get used to it. However, I thought it only right to commemorate this day.” She dipped her spoon into the bowl and held it up in a toast. “To the new director of the Chilson District Library, whatever his name is. May his reign bring joy to all, but especially to the library’s assistant director, since she’s sitting across the table from me.”

“Graydon,” I said. “His name is Graydon Cain.”

“The poor man. What were his parents thinking? I wonder what his friends call him? Gray?” She raised one eyebrow. “Don?”

“Maybe it’s a family name and they call him Junior.”

Aunt Frances snorted. “Surely your nimble mind has a better suggestion than that. You’re not getting sick, are you?”

“If only,” I muttered, but not loud enough for her to hear. When Graydon had interviewed with the library board a few months back, I’d made the event memorable by walking backward into the then-president of the board, falling to the floor, and strewing the contents of my backpack all across the lobby.

Bad as that had been, it had been far worse to have Eddie hack up a hair ball on the Italian shoes of the woman the board chose as the library’s director. An early—and heavy—October snowfall had sent Jennifer scuttling back south and the board had gone to Graydon, metaphorical hat in hand, and asked him to consider making northwest lower Michigan his new home.

“Well,” my aunt said reasonably, “Graydon can’t be any worse than that frightful woman.”

I sighed. “You’d think so, but I wouldn’t have thought anyone could be worse than Stephen.” My former boss, who’d had the personality of a doorstop and a deep reluctance to agree to any change in anything whatsoever, hadn’t inspired deep loyalty in his staff.

“It’ll be fine,” Aunt Frances said comfortably. Of course, she could be comfortable about the whole thing; she hadn’t had a new boss in ages. Her fall-to-spring job was as a woodworking instructor at the local community college, and the college president was in fine fettle and likely to stay that way. In summer, she opened up the big house she’d inherited from her long-passed-away husband to eight hand-picked boarders. Or rather, that’s what she’d done for years and years. This summer it was all going to be different.

Most of me was thrilled about the upcoming events, but part of me had a kinship with Stephen and his dislike of change. I’d loved the boardinghouse since, starting at age twelve, my busy parents had sent me north from June to August. Every group of boarders was unique and every summer had brought new adventures. I didn’t want the evening tradition of cooking marshmallows in the living room’s fieldstone fireplace to end. I didn’t want the bookshelf full of board games and jigsaw puzzles to be moved. I didn’t want the screened porch off the dining room to sprout new furniture, and I certainly didn’t want anyone to decide the wide pine-paneled walls needed to be covered with drywall and papered over with some floral print.

“Don’t,” my aunt said.

I looked up. “Don’t what?”

“Think whatever it is you’re thinking.” Before I could disagree, she added, “And don’t bother denying that you’re thinking things you shouldn’t be thinking about. If it’s about that Graydon, quit worrying. If it’s about this summer, quit worrying. It’ll all work out, one way or another, and worrying doesn’t help one bit.”

“I know, but—”

“Stop,” she said firmly.

Since Aunt Frances was the sanest person I knew, and since she’d been right the other zillion times in my life when she told me to quit worrying, I said, “You’re right. Again.” I’d stop. Or at least try to.

“There’s a reason you’re my favorite niece,” she said.

“I’m your only niece.”

“Then isn’t it wonderful that we found each other?” She grinned. And since my aunt’s grins were hard to resist, I grinned back.

“Mrr!”

“Yes, Eddie,” I said, patting the top of his head. “It’s wonderful that I found you, too.”

He glanced up at me, and I got the impression that he was mentally switching the pronouns in that sentence. Almost two years ago, on an unseasonably warm April morning, I’d skipped out on cleaning chores and instead wandered through the local cemetery, enjoying the view of the twenty-mile-long Janay Lake and the horizontal blue line of Lake Michigan just over the hills to the west. My quiet walk had been interrupted by a black-and-gray tabby cat who had materialized next to the gravesite of Alonzo Tillotson, born 1847, died 1926.

I’d assumed the cat had a home and tried to shoo him away, but he’d followed me back to town, much to the amusement of passersby. Since I’d known nothing about cats due to my father’s allergies, I’d taken him to the local veterinarian, who said my new friend (a black-and-white tabby once he’d been cleaned up) was about two years old. The “Found Cat” notice I’d run in the newspaper had gone unanswered, and Eddie and I were now pals for life.

“It’s going to be different, that’s all,” I said, letting my hand rest on Eddie’s warm back.

“Different isn’t necessarily bad.” Aunt Frances scraped her spoon against the bottom of her bowl.

“I know. It’s just . . .” I sighed.

“Going to be different.” My aunt nodded. “I understand, my sweet. I really do. You’re getting a new boss. Cousin Celeste is buying the boardinghouse. Otto and I are getting married in Bermuda, I’m moving across the street, and you’re—” She stopped. “What are you doing? Have you made a decision about the houseboat?”

I shook my head. A few years ago I’d been lucky enough to have been offered the assistant director job at the Chilson District Library. The job paid what you might expect, and since housing in the summer resort town of Chilson was not what you’d call affordable, my living arrangements were, by necessity, creative.

October through April, I lived with my aunt in the rambling boardinghouse, but come May, I moved to a boat slip in Uncle Chip’s Marina to spend the summer in the cutest little houseboat imaginable. But this May, someone else other than Aunt Frances was going to open the boardinghouse, and I wouldn’t be moving back here in the fall, or ever again.

“I hear,” my aunt said, “that Rafe is looking for wide walnut planks to do the entry floor.”

“Hmm.” A smile spread across my face. A few weeks earlier, I’d come to the shocking realization that Rafe Niswander—who I’d known since I was twelve years old, who infuriated me on a regular basis, who often displayed the sense of humor of a nine-year-old, and who took every opportunity to display stupidity in spite of his multiple college degrees and successful position as a middle school principal—was, in fact, the love of my life. Happily, this realization almost completely coincided with Rafe’s confession that he’d been in love with me for years, and that he’d just been waiting for the right time to own up.

Which, as it turned out, was during a critical time. Rafe had spent years fixing up an old shingle-style house and his confession had occurred when he’d said he’d been renovating it for me all along, but that it was time for kitchen design decisions and he’d needed my input.

“I haven’t decided,” I told Aunt Frances.

“About the walnut?”

I ignored the question, which had to be rhetorical. She knew perfectly well that I had as much interest in the types of wood Rafe bought as I did in kitchen design, which was to say none.

“About selling the houseboat,” I said. “If I sell it, I could pay off my last student loan, but once it’s gone, it’s gone, like oatmeal on a snowy January morning.” I reached across the table for her empty bowl. “Thank you for making breakfast. I appreciate the celebration and hope the day deserves it.”

Aunt Frances watched as I carried the dishes to the sink. “Celeste sent me an e-mail last night. Shall I read it to you?”

“Yes, please.” The e-mails from Celeste Glendennie, the cousin in Nevada buying the boardinghouse, were terse, choppy, informative, and often very funny. My parents claimed I’d met her at a family reunion, but I couldn’t summon up a single memory.

My aunt reached out for her cell phone, which was sitting on the kitchen counter. After a few screen taps, she said, “Quoting: Is boardinghouse one word or two? Inquiring minds want to know. Mine does, too.” Aunt Frances put down the phone. “She’s going to be here the last week of April to get started. Are you planning on being gone by then?”

“Yep.”

“If I recall correctly, your houseboat doesn’t have central heating. Did you ask Eddie how he feels about living in below-freezing temperatures?”

I glanced at my furry friend, who was now standing with his back feet on the seat of his chair and his front feet on the windowsill, staring at an outside that would be dark for another hour. “Rafe says the house will be done by mid-April.”

Aunt Frances hooted with laughter. “And you believed him? Don’t look like that, dear heart. I’m sure he thinks he’s being realistic, but my money’s on October.”

“Can’t be October,” I said. “I ran into Chris the other day and Uncle Chip himself has decided it’s time to update the marina. They’re going to pull out all the piers and put in new ones right after Labor Day.” Though Chris was part owner and manager of the marina, his great uncle was the marina’s patriarch, and his wish was Chris’s command.

My aunt put a hand on my shoulder. “Poor Minnie. What are you going to do with all this change being foisted upon you? How will you endure?”

“With luck and grace,” I told her. “And if that can’t happen, with fortitude and a smile. But even without any of that, I’ll endure with—”

“Mrr.”

As per usual, he was right on cue. “With Eddie.”

•   •   •

An hour later, the outgoing library board president, octogenarian Otis Rahn, looked at me over the top of his glasses. “Now, Minnie, I have every confidence in you, but I want you to promise that this year will be a rousing success.”

It wasn’t easy for me to keep from doing a fidgety squirm, and I tried to forget how much I disliked making promises regarding things that were primarily out of my control and instead focused on how much I loved my job.

“Of course, Otis,” I said, smiling and nodding at the two new faces.

Graydon, our new director. Trent, our new board president. Two names out of an East Coast prep school alumni directory and they had the looks to match. Both had thin faces and smooth hair cut to a professional length. Both wore slacks, jacket, and no tie—clothing completely appropriate for a formal Up North meeting in January. Both had greeted me with firm handshakes and friendly smiles.

There was no reason for me to dislike them. None whatsoever. But I would have preferred a hint of awe in their demeanor. Not at me, of course, but at our surroundings. For decades, the Chilson District Library had been stuffed into a concrete block structure that had the aesthetics of a bunker. With the magic of an easily passed millage vote, a historic—and empty—elementary school had been lovingly renovated into a building that was a point of pride for the entire community.

The architects had taken advantage of the building’s Arts and Crafts style and had revitalized its miles of interior wood trim. They’d added large square tile flooring to the lobby and wide hallways. The reading room had a fireplace and window seats. Colored metallic tiles highlighted everything from drinking fountains to directional signs. What had been the school gymnasium now housed the bulk of the library’s books, with custom-made oak tables and lamps that invited people to sit and stay. Every time I walked into the building, its beauty almost took my breath away.

Even now, the view from the second-floor boardroom of picturesque downtown Chilson and Janay Lake was gorgeous. Sure, everything was covered with a fresh layer of snow and the lake was frozen, but if you lived in northwest lower Michigan year-round, your mental health depended on finding beauty in winter.

“Looking forward to working with you,” Trent Ross said politely.

“Likewise,” Graydon said. The only person I’d ever heard use that word in conversation was a long-ago college professor who had tried to teach me statistics, and hearing it from my new boss did not summon happy memories. “And I’m looking forward to having more meetings,” he said, nodding.

Otis gazed at him. “My boy, don’t make the board regret hiring you.”

Graydon laughed. “I was being a bit facetious. It’s this room.” He nodded at the wood-paneled walls, the long corporate-looking table, and the blotters placed in front of every chair. “It makes me feel that important things are being discussed. It makes me feel dignified.”

I smiled, because I felt the same way about the boardroom. Rather, I’d come to feel that way once I’d recovered from being intimidated by its atmosphere. Now that I was a mature thirty-four years old, I was over being intimidated by pretty much anyone or anything. My knee-jerk reaction regarding Graydon started to ease.

“So. Tell me about the bookmobile,” Trent said, sitting back and steepling his fingers.

“Do I have a time limit?” I asked, smiling.

Otis laughed. “Minnie Hamilton can talk about the bookmobile for hours. I’ve heard her.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Trent glanced at a band of electronics strapped to his wrist. “Ten minutes should be plenty.”

The man was delusional. That wasn’t anywhere near enough to tell the story of the bookmobile. How it got started, why it got started, its many successes, its few failures, and how we were using it to bring more outreach into the county’s many rural communities, none of which had a bricks-and-mortar library.

And what was his hurry, exactly? We’d been told Mr. Trent Ross was a retired attorney, recently moved up from the Chicago area. What could possibly be more important to him than learning about the bookmobile?

I tried to hitch my thoughts together into a cohesive heap. “Well, the bookmobile came about because—”

“Sorry,” Trent interrupted, looking again at his wrist. “My ten o’clock appointment is early.” He stood. “Minnie, it was nice meeting you. Graydon, Otis.” He nodded at the men and left.

As Otis drifted into regaling Graydon with tales about past library boards and off-color stories about past board members, my thoughts drifted into worry, in spite of my recent commitment to stop doing so. The bookmobile was my pride and joy, and keeping it funded was a constant preoccupation. If the new board president was anti-bookmobile, how long would it take for the full board to start thinking like that? How long would it take them to vote it away?

•   •   •

I wasn’t all the way into the break room when my coworkers pounced.

“What’s he like?”

“Is he going to be a jerk?”

“Did he say anything about the IT budget? We really need a new server.”

“How did it go?”

Ignoring the questions, I pushed through the group to get to the coffeepot. Once I had a mug full of caffeine, I started answering their questions. To Holly Terpening, a full-time clerk a few years older than myself, I said, “Graydon likes the building, so that’s a good sign.” To Kelsey, a part-time clerk a couple of years younger than me, I said, “He doesn’t come across as a jerk,” then buried my face in coffee.

Josh, our full-time IT guy, shifted from foot to foot until I came up for air. He looked so anxious that I felt a little guilty that I was about to give him the facts of life. Which at thirty-something he should have known, especially since he was now a homeowner, but perhaps he wasn’t raised properly. “We didn’t talk about budgets or major purchases. They weren’t even mentioned.”

I shut my ears to his moan of pain and turned to Donna. I still couldn’t decide who I wanted to be most like when I grew up; right now it was a tie between Aunt Frances and Donna, who at seventy-two was working part-time at the library to support her habits of running marathons all over the country and snowshoeing in faraway mountain lands after being dropped off by a helicopter. “You asked how it went. Well . . .” I took a sip of coffee. Then another one.

The previous library director, Jennifer Walker, had been universally disliked. Though I’d tried valiantly to refrain from criticizing her during her short stay, I hadn’t always been successful. I wasn’t proud of that behavior, and since I was always trying to learn from my mistakes, I framed my response to Donna carefully.

I wasn’t about to lie—not only did I think lying was unethical, immoral, and just plain wrong, but quality fibbing required a prodigious memory, a trait that had not yet emerged in my character—so the truth was my only option. However, there was no reason to tell the whole truth.

“Graydon,” I said, “seems to be an all-around decent guy. He’s from Grand Rapids, and he’s spent a lot of time Up North over the years. Not just in the summer,” I said, forestalling a typical comment from locals regarding downstaters, “because he and his family like to ski.”

Chilson was one of those small towns that was full to bursting from Memorial Day to Labor Day with tourists and summer people up to their lakefront cottages. Old money had come up the Lake Michigan shore on steamers to escape the Chicago heat, and new money was still building houses everywhere else. Tourists included everyone imaginable, and in summer you could see just about anyone on the street, from your third grade teacher to the owner of the biggest tech company in the world.

In winter, though, things were different. Winter was when some restaurants and retail stores closed down completely, because there was no reason to stay open for the two people who might wander in.

On the plus side, winter in Chilson was when you never had to wait in line anywhere for anything. It was when there was never any problem finding a parking space. And when, if your car happened to slide in a ditch, the next car going past would stop and help you get out. Yes, winter was snowy and cold, but it was also full of friends. It was almost a pity that Jennifer hadn’t stayed long enough to understand that.

“Good,” Donna said. “So Graydon has potential to not be a total disaster. How about Trent?”

I’d felt the question coming, so I’d buried my face in my coffee mug to give me more time. Two swallows later, I was ready. “It seemed like Trent and Graydon have a lot in common.” Their commonality might be surficial, but if I kept talking, odds were good that no one would ask for details. “Trent is an Up North newbie, and it seems like he wants to get involved and help make us even better.”

Holly and Josh grinned and bumped knuckles, but Donna gave me a searching look, and I remembered that she had years of experience working with boards of various shapes and sizes.

“Good morning!” Lloyd Goodwin shuffled in the door. Mr. Goodwin was in his late seventies, and if we’d been allowed to have favorite patrons, he would have been in everyone’s top five. Full of good humor and friendlier than a puppy, Mr. Goodwin had a self-professed medical need for morning coffee, and because of this, we’d opened up the staff break room to library patrons. The only bad thing was that Mr. Goodwin and Kelsey both liked coffee brewed strong enough to burn your stomach lining—some mornings it was a race to the coffee grounds.

Mr. Goodwin received a chorus of return “good mornings.” He nodded at everyone and asked, “Do you folks know how to keep Canadian bacon from curling? No?” He smiled. “It’s easy. Take their little brooms away.”

A half second of silence was followed by multiple laughing groans, and I took the opportunity to sketch a smiling wave and head out. It was bookmobile time.

•   •   •

Fresh-fallen snow blanketed the world. In Chilson there’d been barely an inch of fresh white stuff, but in this part of Tonedagana County at least six inches had come down overnight. I smiled at the sight. New snow transformed the world. Yesterday’s line of dark green cedar trees was now a bumpy white row. The dirty rawness of a local gravel pit had been magicked into a soft hole. And that little five-acre lake was now a field of white. If you didn’t know there was a lake under there, would you know there was a lake under there?

“Don’t tell me you’re smiling at the snow,” Julia said.

“Mrr,” Eddie said in a way that sounded like a Julia echo.

I glanced at the passenger’s side of the bookmobile. My part-time bookmobile clerk was, as per usual, resting her feet on Eddie’s strapped-down cat carrier. Eddie was flopped against the carrier’s door, his black-and-white fur sticking out through the wire in square sections. “The snow likes it when we smile.” I’d texted basically the same thing to Rafe when I was working through the bookmobile’s preflight checklist, and he’d sent back a tiny, one-second cartoon of a stick figure’s head exploding into falling snow. I didn’t know exactly what message he’d been trying to send, but I’d decided to assume kindly humor.

Julia snorted, connoting in that one short noise disbelief and a bit of derision that was covered up with humor. It was a lot to convey with a snort, but if needed, she could have troweled on three additional messages.

Though Julia had been born and raised in Chilson, she’d moved to the big lights of New York City before the ink dried on her high school diploma. She’d intended to find fame and fortune as a model, which hadn’t worked out, so she’d tried her hand at theater. This had worked out far better—as it turned out, she oozed acting talent and had more than one Tony Award to show for it.

At a certain age, however, offers for leading roles tend to slow to a trickle, even for the best of actors. Just before that happened, Julia and her husband moved back to her hometown, where she had too much time on her hands until the bookmobile came along. Now she and her storytelling abilities were woven into the fabric of the bookmobile as much as Eddie’s hairs were.

“Everyone needs a smile now and then,” I said. “Even the snow.”

“Snow is not a sentient being.”

“Maybe. But what if it was? What if it had feelings? Thoughts and dreams for a better future?”

“Mrr.”

Julia tucked her long strawberry blond hair behind her ears and gently tapped the top of Eddie’s carrier with one heel. “I’m pretty sure he said you’re loony tunes and shouldn’t be allowed out in public.”

“I’m pretty sure he said you should stop pounding on his roof.”

When I’d hired Julia, Eddie’s presence on the bookmobile had been a deep, dark secret I’d been trying to keep from Stephen, my then-boss. Eddie had been a stowaway on the vehicle’s maiden voyage, and I’d intended it to be a one-time deal until Eddie’s absence on the following trip had caused the lower lip of Brynn, a young girl with leukemia, to tremble.

There was no way I could deal with her tears, so Eddie had been installed as a permanent passenger. Soon after, the doctors had declared that Brynn’s cancer was in remission, something that Brynn’s mother tended to give Eddie credit for. Now everyone knew the bookmobile cat, and I was pretty sure more people knew his name than mine.

Julia leaned forward against her seat belt’s shoulder strap. “Which of us is right, Mr. Edward? Please indicate with a point of your elegant white-tipped paw.”

Eddie yawned and rolled into an Eddie-size ball, tucking all four of his paws underneath him.

I laughed. That Julia played along with my game of talking to Eddie as if he were fluent in the English language was one of the reasons I hoped she’d work with me forever. “Last stop of the day,” I said, and took a right turn into a convenience store parking lot, which I was glad to see had been plowed clean of snow.

The day hadn’t been a stellar one, as far as the number of patrons went. Though the main roads had all been plowed by the time we were traveling them, many of the side roads were not, and people didn’t tend to make optional trips on unplowed roads, even with four-wheel drive. The few people who had come aboard, though, stayed long and borrowed much, which pleased my librarian’s soul to the core.

I parked and we quickly went through the preparations. Unlatch Eddie’s cage, rotate the driver’s seat to face a small desk, turn on the two laptop computers, release the bungee cord that kept the office chair in the back in place, and ensure that no books, DVDs, jigsaw puzzles, or our most recent loan item of ice fishing poles had jostled out of place.

Eddie took part by jumping onto the dashboard, his current favorite spot. This meant I would later be cleaning paw prints off the dash and nose prints off the inside of the windshield and my arms weren’t long enough to do it easily, but doing the cleaning was far easier than getting Eddie to change his mind.

“Think we’ll have anyone show up?” Julia asked.

“Rowan,” I said. “Thanks to her son, she recently discovered that she likes fantasy. I have a stack of Tad Williams and Ursula K. Le Guin books waiting.”

Julia made a face at Rowan’s name but didn’t say anything.

I knew many people found Rowan Bennethum unfriendly and abrasive, but I tended to find her dryly dark comments funny. Rowan had become a dependable bookmobile patron since last summer when she’d started working from home three days a week. She was a loan officer for the local bank and, thanks to computer magic, had convinced the higher-ups that not only would she get more done at home, but it would be even more secure.

Julia, in her early sixties, was about fifteen years older than Rowan, so her animosity couldn’t be due to high school rivalries. And as far as I knew, they weren’t related. I looked up from the daily chore of picking Eddie hair off the long carpeted riser that served as both sitting area and a step to reach the top shelves. Vertically inflated people, such as Julia, didn’t need the step, but vertically efficient people such as myself found it very helpful.

“Why don’t you like her?” I asked.

After a moment, Julia said, “Personality conflict.”

I was about to drill down and get a real answer out of her when I realized the dashboard was feline-free. “Have you seen Eddie?”

Julia glanced around. “He was here a second ago.”

Cats had an amazing ability to compact themselves into half the volume they should reasonably occupy. I’d found Eddie in places a small squirrel shouldn’t have been able to fit into, including the thin space underneath my dresser and out a window when the window was open maybe two inches.

There weren’t many places he could hide on the bookmobile, but even still, it took us a few minutes to find him tucked behind the 200–400 shelf of nonfiction books.

“What are you doing back there?” I peered at him. His yellow eyes blinked back. “Do you have any intention of ever coming out?” I fully expected to get a “Mrr” in reply, but he was silent. “Are you feeling okay, little buddy?”

“What did he say?” Julia asked.

“Nothing.” I reached in and petted him, expecting to feel a purr, and got nothing.

“He’s not sick, is he?”

“Probably he’s just tired. He only got twelve hours of sleep last night.”

Julia laughed. “The poor thing.”

“Yes, he needs his beauty rest.” I gave him one last pet. “I’m sure he’ll be fine with some sleep.”

But at the end of the stop, he still hadn’t moved. The few bookmobilers who’d shown up couldn’t entice him out to say hello, not even the five-year-old boy who jangled Eddie’s treat can. “He won’t come out,” the kid said. “Can you get him for me, Miss Minnie?”

Since Eddie still had his claws, I had no intention of doing anything remotely like that. “Our Eddie is feeling a little sick.” I took the can of treats away from the child. “When you’re sick, you stay home and sleep, right? Eddie likes to sleep behind books when he’s not feeling well.”

“He’s going to get better, isn’t he?”

“You bet.” I smiled at the boy. “He has a little kitty cold, that’s all.”

But I was concerned. This was not Eddie-like behavior. I’d never known him to have anything other than the occasional sneeze. As we closed up the computers, a low guttural whine issued from behind the nonfiction section.

“Something isn’t right,” I said to myself. But more than one thing wasn’t right, I realized. I looked at the stack of fantasy novels I’d specially selected for today. “Rowan never showed up.”

“She probably got busy and forgot,” Julia said.

Could be. But that wasn’t like Rowan. The only time she hadn’t shown up for her bookmobile stop was last fall, when she’d been downstate for a conference. She’d told me well in advance, and when she’d mentioned that she needed someone to water her plants, I’d volunteered, and now a tiny part of my brain was permanently stuck with the knowledge of the keyless entry code to her house.

It wasn’t like Rowan to order books and then ignore them. Not like her at all.

I looked at Eddie’s shelf, looked at Rowan’s books, and came to a decision. “Let’s go,” I said abruptly.

Julia, who’d been securing the rear chair, looked up. “That didn’t sound like the normal homeward-bound announcement.”

I pulled a suddenly willing Eddie out from behind the books. “We’re going to Rowan’s house.”

“Minnie—”

“It’ll only take a few minutes,” I said, cutting into her objection before it could get started. “And don’t tell her I told you, but Rowan has some sort of heart issue. She takes medication, but still.” I’d discovered this by accident, when I’d run into Rowan at the pharmacy a month or two ago, and she’d been discussing side effects of the medication with the pharmacist.

Julia’s chin took on an obstinate stance as we buckled up. “Isn’t this taking outreach a little far?”

Since I was captain of the ship, I could have ignored the question, but since I liked to have the support of my troops, I said, “Just a quick stop. It’s barely out of our way.”

This was true and Julia knew it, so she refrained from further comment on the subject. Actually, she refrained from any comment at all, something almost as unusual as Eddie refraining from snoring in the middle of the night. I glanced over a few times on the short drive, but each time Julia was studying the scenery out the passenger window with a concentration that telegraphed a clear message that she didn’t want to talk.

I sighed. Julia’s dislike of Rowan was deeper than I’d realized. And after dropping off Rowan’s books, I’d have to find out why. I did not want to have a mysterious issue hovering in the air between us.

By the time we were approaching Rowan’s house, I’d come to the conclusion that Julia was right, that I was going overboard. But with snow piled up on the sides of the road, there was no good spot on this stretch of road to turn the thirty-one-foot bookmobile around, so we were committed.

I was rehearsing both my delivery speech to Rowan (“Ding dong, bookmobile calling”) and my apology speech to Julia (“You were right, I was wrong, and I’m sorry”) when Julia sucked in a sharp breath.

My mouth opened to ask if she was okay, but what came out instead of a question was my own gasp.

“No, no, no . . .” I stammered, staring wide-eyed at the shape lying in Rowan’s driveway. The long, person-size shape.

I’d already started braking, but Julia was flying out the door and into the snow before the wheels stopped turning. Eddie’s howls rose as I set the parking brake and took off after my coworker.

We’d both taken multiple first aid courses and the training kicked into gear. Julia turned Rowan onto her back and checked for a pulse. She shook her head, unzipped Rowan’s winter coat, and started chest compressions. By the time I was on my knees next to Rowan, I’d already pulled out my phone and dialed 911.

“Emergency dispatch,” came the welcome voice. “Where is your emergency?”

I gave the location, then said, “We need an ambulance right away. She fell in the snow. We don’t know how long she was here. She doesn’t have a pulse. She doesn’t have a pulse, she doesn’t—” I heard the panic in my voice, stopped, then started again. “She’s in her driveway, she has a history of heart problems, and I’m afraid that . . . please . . .” I was holding the phone so hard it hurt, but I didn’t want to loosen my grip. If anything, I wanted to grip even harder, so help would arrive faster.

“We’re sending an ambulance right now, ma’am,” said the dispatcher calmly. “They should be there in less than ten minutes.”

“Stay. Alive,” Julia gasped out, the words coming out in time with the compressions. “Stay. Alive.”

“Are you able to perform CPR?” the dispatcher asked.

“Doing it,” I said. “Is there anything else we can do to help?” I looked around wildly, not sure what I was looking for. “There’s a snow shovel,” I said. “She must have been shoveling her driveway.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the dispatcher said. She asked about visible cuts and bruises, and I’m sure I answered her, but my attention was on Rowan and Julia.

“Stay. Alive.” Julia was still talking. “You turned. Down my. Sister’s. Second. Mortgage. She lost. Her house. But don’t. Die. Don’t. Die.”

I stared at Julia. No wonder she didn’t like Rowan. But here she was, doing her best to make sure a woman she had good reason to hate survived a heart attack. My throat tightened and I leaned forward, hands flat and ready. “My turn,” I said, and started compressions as Julia pulled away and sat back on her heels.

We knelt there, switching back and forth, until the ambulance arrived. The EMTs hurried out and took over. In seconds, Rowan was in a gurney with a uniformed EMT walking alongside doing compressions. Then she was inside, the back door shut, and they were off with lights flashing and siren blaring.

“She’s not going to make it, is she?” Julia asked quietly.

I watched the taillights of the ambulance recede into the distance. “No. She’s not.”

Chapter 2

That night I sat on a stool in Rafe’s dining room. Or what would eventually be a dining room. Right now it was partly a room where he was installing crown and floor molding, but mostly it was a storage room for his boxes of stuff. The boxes migrated as he went through renovation phases, and I’d lost count of how many times he’d moved his belongings from one room to another. Why he hadn’t rented a storage unit, or at least moved them to a room he’d declared as renovation-free, I had no idea.

And what any of the boxes held, I was pretty sure he had no idea about that, either, because when he’d moved into the house last summer, there hadn’t been a concerted labeling effort when he’d packed his apartment. The box at which I was staring was a prime example. The only indication of its insides were two words written in Rafe’s distinctive scrawl: “Heavy Stuff.” A half hour earlier, when I’d walked in with dinner, I’d seen the box and asked him what might be inside. He’d said, “Not sure. Could be anything from books to free weights. When we open them it’s going to be like Christmas.” At that point, he’d grinned and slapped his flat stomach. “Hope there’s food inside some of them. Nothing like a two-year-old bag of potato chips to take the edge off.”

That had been when I’d started crying. His look of shock was quickly replaced with concern. He’d immediately taken me in his arms and hugged me tight. “Minnie. Sweetheart. Holder of my happiness. What’s the matter? Just give me the word and I’ll do whatever it takes to fix it. Climb mountains. Slay lions. I’ll even drive downstate and get you those doughnuts you like so much.”

His nonsense made me cry even harder, but my tears eventually dried up and I pulled away. “Sorry about your shirt,” I’d said, wiping my eyes with a napkin I’d brought from Fat Boys Pizza and blowing my nose with another one.

He didn’t even look at the vast wet splotches. “It’ll wash. What’s wrong?”

On some deep level, I recognized how much I loved this man, and how lucky I was that he loved me back. The rest of me was filled with sadness for what had happened that afternoon. I’d started texting him about Rowan half a dozen times, but I’d always put the phone away before hitting Send, not knowing what to say, figuring I’d tell him in person. And now that time was here.

By the time Rafe had finished eating, I’d finished the story, which ended with me stopping at the Charlevoix Hospital and getting confirmation that Rowan had indeed died. I’d tracked down an emergency room nurse that I knew and wheedled out a little more information, primarily that Rowan had most likely been dead long before Julia and I had arrived.

“But that doesn’t make you feel any better, does it?” Rafe had asked.

I’d shaken my head.

“Eat something,” he’d told me. “You probably don’t think you’re hungry, but just try eating, okay?”

Two pieces of pizza and three breadsticks later, I was feeling better. Part of which could be attributed to the massive amount of carbohydrates I’d just ingested, but a full stomach on top of the comfort Rafe had given me was edging me from shocked grief to a dull sadness that only time would ease.

Rafe was now up on a ladder with a putty knife and a can of wood filler. I spent a few minutes admiring the way his broad shoulders tapered to his waist, but since it wouldn’t do to inflate his ego, I asked the obvious question. “Why are you bothering to fill nail holes that are too small to see?”

“Minnie, Minnie, Minnie.” His sigh was dramatic and overwrought, nearly Julia quality. “Haven’t you learned the first rule of home improvement?”

Was he kidding? “I know all of those rules. Number one: It’ll take forever. Number two: Anything you do will cost half again as much as you think it will. Number three: Nothing is ever delivered on time. Number four is—”

Rafe’s voice cut through my recitation. Which was too bad because I could have continued for a long time. “Once again, you have not been paying attention to all that I have been teaching you.”

He was partly right, but not completely. “I know that measuring twice and cutting once is more than just an aphorism. And,” I said proudly, “I know the difference between flat, Phillips, and offset screwdrivers.”

“The first rule of home improvement,” Rafe said, ignoring me, “is to hide things.”

I frowned. “What exactly are you hiding? There’s no room up there to hide anything.”

“Mistakes.” Rafe peered at his handiwork, added a microscopic amount of putty, and peered again. “You have to cover up your mistakes completely or you’ll be staring at them the rest of your life wishing you’d done a better job.”

“Better?” I asked in disbelief. “I’ve lost track of the things you’ve ripped out and reinstalled because they weren’t quite right. How could anything in this place be less than perfect?”

He gave the crown molding one last critical glance and came down the ladder.

That he hadn’t replied to my comment was an unusual occurrence, but there was also a suddenly odd feel to the silence in the room.

A silence that was weighted down with . . . something. The back of Rafe’s head wasn’t giving out any clues, so I started thinking about what I’d said. Started thinking about changes he’d made to the house while my best friend Kristen and I had rolled our eyes about his indecisiveness. Thought about the times he’d asked my opinion about paint colors. Thought about last October, when Rafe told me he’d been renovating the house for me all along. The conclusion was stunningly obvious.

“You kept making changes,” I said slowly, “because you wanted me to be part of the renovation.”

“For someone who’s really smart, you can be pretty stupid sometimes.” He grinned sideways at me, his teeth white against skin that was an attractive reddish brown color, thanks to some key Native American Anishinaabe ancestors, the same ancestors that had bestowed upon him thick black hair. “I should write up a change order invoice and send it to you.”

“I’d love to see that.”

He stopped moving the ladder and turned. “You would?”

“Absolutely. I’ll have it framed. We can hang it right over there.” I pointed to a blank spot. “It’ll look great next to the portrait of Eddie.”

“Nice to hear you getting into the spirit of decorating.” Rafe slathered more wood putty on the knife. “But I’d rather hear you make a decision about hardware for the kitchen cabinets.”

“I don’t like to rush these kinds of decisions. What we need is research.” I hopped off my stool and pulled a book out of my backpack. Hopping back up, I said, “What I have here, courtesy of your local library, is a history of kitchens that I will be happy to read to you. Shall we start with the preface, or the first chapter?”

“How about we start with the section on cabinet hardware?”

Smiling brightly, I said, “The preface it is and I completely agree with that opinion. The author wrote it for a reason and we need to find out what it is.” Disregarding what sounded like a bleat of despair from my beloved, I started to read.

•   •   •

When I got back to the boardinghouse, Aunt Frances was lying on a living room couch, looking very comfortable. The blanket over my aunt’s legs was covered with Eddie and Eddie fur. A fire was crackling merrily, and the book she was reading, Why We Run, by Bernd Heinrich, was opened at the halfway point. My aunt, who was active throughout the day, had never understood the point of formal exercise. She did, however, have an odd interest in ultraendurance, and had crowed with pleasure when I’d brought the book home from the library.

After my coat and boots were stowed away, I flopped on the opposite couch. “Want to know how he finishes the race?”

Still focused on her reading, she said, “Tell me and you die.”

I didn’t say anything, and she glanced up and immediately put the book aside. “What’s the matter, dear heart?”

The tears that had been absorbed into Rafe’s shirt must have been my allotment for the day, so I was able to tell the story of Rowan Bennethum’s death with only a couple of sniffles.

“It’s so sad,” I finished, blowing my nose with a tissue. The nose-blowing was hampered somewhat by Eddie, who’d heaved himself off my aunt’s lap and trundled over to mine. His purrs were so loud that I could feel them in my inner ear. “Neil’s going to be lost without his wife,” I said, “and the twins have lost their mother forever. Yes, they’re in college and don’t need her like little kids would, but it’s still going to be hard.”

Aunt Frances eyed me. “You’re not blaming yourself, are you?”

“No.” I laid my hand on Eddie’s back. “She was gone before we got there, so—” I stopped. “If we’d arrived earlier. If I hadn’t waited until the end of the bookmobile stop. If—”

“Stop.” My aunt got up and came over to sit next to me. “Don’t go there. Don’t you dare go there. Your overdeveloped sense of guilt may lead you in that direction, but you are not responsible.”

“Mrr,” Eddie said, twisting his head around to glare at me.

I smiled faintly. “It seems to be unanimous.”

“We can widen the sample if you’d like.” Aunt Frances gave me a quick hug. “I can call Rafe. Then I’ll call your parents. Your brother and sister-in-law. Kristen and your college roommates and everyone at the library. They’ll all say the same thing. It wasn’t your fault. And I’m willing to bet if the tables were turned, you’d say the same thing to me.”

“Probably,” I murmured. Then, after thinking about it for a moment, I said, “You’re right. I would tell you that.”

“Then it’s settled.” She gave me a quick hug, patted Eddie’s head, and went back to her couch. “No more guilt. Yes, Rowan’s death was a shock, but you did everything you could.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I saluted her.

“Quit that.” She tucked the blanket around her legs. “Now you can ask about my day.”

I blinked. It was a very un-Aunt-Frances-like statement. If she had something to tell me, she simply told me. “How was your day?”

“The classroom was fine. There’s nothing like the combination of power tools and nineteen-year-olds to get the blood flowing. It’s the other stuff that makes me want to pull my hair out.”

My aunt’s hair looked fine, so whatever it was couldn’t be too horrible. “What kind of things?”

She slumped down. “Wedding stuff,” she said darkly. ...