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

Gone with the Whisker

BERKLEY PRIME CRIME

Published by Berkley

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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Copyright © 2020 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: 9780440001010

First Edition: March 2020

Cover art by Mary Ann Lasher

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.

pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

For Jon, whom I nominate annually for Best Husband of the Year, in spite of his unfortunate music preferences.

CONTENTS

Praise for the 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

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

About the Author

Chapter 1

Every summer when I was a kid, my mom and dad and older brother and I piled into the family car and headed north to visit my aunt Frances. It was a long drive from Dearborn up to Chilson, and it was even longer if road crews were working on I-75, shutting down lanes of traffic and creating backups that ran for miles. This was when my dad would mutter, “There are four seasons in Michigan. Fall, winter, spring, and construction.”

At five years old, I hadn’t grasped what he was talking about, but at nearly thirty-five, I had a much better understanding of the concept.

“This project wasn’t supposed to start until after the Fourth,” Julia said, glaring at the brake lights lined up ahead of us.

I glared along with her. “When I called the road commission last week, that’s what they told me.” I rolled my shoulders in an attempt to loosen my neck. As a six-year resident of northwest lower Michigan, I’d lost my tolerance for sitting in traffic five and a half years ago.

This wasn’t anything close to the gridlock of southeast Michigan, but time spent waiting for the oncoming lane of cars to get through and our side to get waved forward was time the bookmobile wouldn’t be able to spend with its patrons. The Chilson District Library Bookmobile carried me, aka Minnie Hamilton, Julia Beaton, my part-time bookmobile clerk, roughly three thousand books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, puzzles, board games, and video games and—

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

And the bookmobile also carried Eddie, the black-and-white cat who had followed me home from a walk through the local cemetery a little over two years ago. At the time, I had not been a cat person, but it hadn’t taken me long to become attached to the furry little guy. I’d dutifully placed ads in the paper for a lost cat, I’d talked to cemetery neighbors, and I’d called area veterinarians and the local animal shelter. No one, thankfully, had come forward to claim my new buddy, and we’d been fast friends ever since.

But like any relationship, we’d had our ups and downs. A definite down had been the day Eddie had managed to sneak aboard the bookmobile’s maiden voyage. That had not boded well for my relationship with my then-boss, Stephen, who had been a stickler for any and all rules, one being no pets in the library, of which the bookmobile was an extension.

Eventually it had worked out, and now Eddie was a permanent fixture on the bookmobile, to the point that he got Christmas cards from elementary school classrooms, adult foster care homes, and other librarians. I tended not to tell him about his fame—he already had such a good opinion of himself that I hesitated to inflate his ego any further—but I had a sneaking suspicion he knew.

Julia put her feet on top of Eddie’s carrier, which was strapped to the floor on the passenger’s side, and toyed with the end of her thick strawberry blond braid. “If this keeps up, we’re going to miss the next stop altogether.”

She spoke with a slight drawl that hadn’t been there last time she’d talked. Julia, now in her early sixties, had grown up in Chilson and left for the bright New York City lights right after high school graduation. A few decades and a suitcase full of Tony Awards later, she and her husband had come home, and she’d been bored to tears within weeks. She’d taught an acting class at the local community college, but teaching wasn’t her strong suit, and when my aunt Frances had mentioned a job on the bookmobile, Julia had marched on over to the library and essentially begged me to hire her.

We’d hit it off straightaway, and the deal sealer had been when she’d met Eddie and instantly started talking to him as if he could understand her, which was exactly how I talked to him.

The newfound drawl indicated that she was playing a role. It could have been one she’d played, one she hadn’t, or one that had never existed. Some days I tried to guess; other times I gave it up as a lost cause. This time around was a mystery, but I’d known her long enough to guess what she was thinking. “Do you know a way around?”

A wide, slow, Grinch-like smile curled onto her face. “Why, yes, I do.” She pointed left, to a northbound road that quickly disappeared around a curve and up a hill.

I studied it. “I’m not driving the bookmobile on some narrow asphalt road that turns into a gravel two-track that peters out into loose sand where we’ll get stuck and need a huge tow truck to yank us out.”

Julia looked at me with puppy dog eyes. “You wound me, Minnie, truly you do. But that’s Dozier Road. Isn’t that the route you laid out?”

I had, indeed, planned to take Dozier around the construction zone, but hadn’t found the time to make sure the road was bookmobile friendly. My last two months, and especially the last two weeks, had been so full I’d kept shifting reroute scouting to the next day. And the next. And the next. And now here we were. The location of today’s stop was a one-time deal because the parking lot of the regular stop, a church, was being repaved. I’d scouted out our temporary location ages ago—it was little more than a wide spot on a dead end road—but checking the reroute hadn’t popped to the top of my priority list.

Tapping my fingers on the steering wheel, I considered possibilities. The bookmobile was thirty-one feet long and weighed twenty-three thousand pounds. Which was big, but smaller than a lot of recreational vehicles, especially ones hauling a vehicle behind. As we sat there, listening to the twin dulcet tones of the bookmobile’s motor and Eddie’s snores, we watched a semi rig laden with rough-cut lumber trundle down the Dozier Road hill, around the curve, and air brake to a stop sign.

“That had to come from the sawmill,” Julia said.

I leaned forward to look, and sure enough, the door of the truck’s cab was labeled Palmer’s Wood Products. Their sawmill was on the other side of the hills to our left, so there was a 99.9 percent chance the truck had come all the way down Dozier Road. The big vehicle roared past us and I would have sworn the driver was whistling a happy tune as he passed the long line of stuck-in-place cars.

Julia watched it go by. “If he did it, we can,” she said confidently.

“Mrr!”

“Thinking,” I murmured. The vote of a cat didn’t count for driving route decisions, let alone the vote of a cat who couldn’t possibly see what was going on because he was in a carrier on the floor. And technically Julia’s vote didn’t count either, because the bookmobile was my program, funded through my unexpectedly successful fund-raising efforts, and its operation was the responsibility of one Minnie Hamilton, all five foot and zero inches of me, along with my unmanageable curly black hair and total lack of fashion sense.

But Julia was right—if that lumber truck could make it, the bookmobile could. Though taking Dozier wouldn’t help anyone reach the east side of Tonedagana County, which was the end point of our current road, it would get us to today’s temporary stop.

And time was ticking away.

“We’re doing it,” I said, flicking the left blinker.

Julia whooped with delight. “An adventure! I’ll tell Graydon you should get danger pay!”

“Please don’t.”

Graydon Cain had only been our library director since January. To date he was an excellent boss, but we would likely all be better off if he remained unaware of certain things. Julia and I had an unofficial rule that what happened on the bookmobile stayed on the bookmobile, and I fervently hoped the rule would be followed forever.

We bumped off the relatively smooth asphalt of the main road and onto the far narrower cracked asphalt of Dozier. I took a deep breath, loosened my grip on the steering wheel—because worrying about how this would play out wouldn’t help anything now that the decision had been made—and asked, “What are you doing for the Fourth?”

Julia and her husband were without children of their own, but between them they had what seemed like zillions of sisters, brothers, and nieces and nephews, some by blood, others by tight bonds of friendship. Their circle was now expanding to include great-nieces and great-nephews, which meant I’d recently surrendered any hope of keeping track of names and exact relationships.

“Grilling in the backyard for twenty,” Julia said. “No fireworks this year. Too many dogs and infants. How about you?”

“Not sure yet.” Since I’d moved to Chilson, I’d spent the Fourth of July with my best friend, Kristen Jurek.

Kristen, who I’d met the summer I was twelve, was a force of nature. She owned Three Seasons, an outstanding restaurant that had been featured on more than one television show. The restaurant opened April-ish and closed October-ish, and then she took herself off to Key West, resting and tending bar until the snow melted. Complicating her life even more, she’d married Scruffy (not his real first name) Gronkowski a few weeks earlier, and since Scruffy was still working in New York with his famous television chef father, Trock Farrand (not his real name first or last), their living arrangements involved lots of plane rides.

Not that I could throw any housing stones. My own living arrangements were far from simple, especially this summer. For six years I’d moved every time the weather had turned. October through April I’d stayed with my aunt Frances in her elderly rambling house, but come springtime she cheerfully kicked me out to make room for her boarders and I happily went to Uncle Chip’s Marina to live on the most adorable houseboat ever. Sure, it was tiny, but I had a relatively inexpensive lakefront abode, my summer neighbors were great, and the guys who hung out at the marina’s office, the marina rats, were amusing almost all the time, even if their conversation did center on sports.

But now everything was different. This April, Aunt Frances had married her across-the-street neighbor, Otto Bingham, and moved into Otto’s house. In May, our cousin Celeste had taken over the boardinghouse, and though Eddie and I were now on the houseboat, I wouldn’t be moving back to the boardinghouse in October. Instead I’d be moving in with the funny and smart (and occasionally irritating) Rafe Niswander.

Though I’d met Rafe on Chilson’s city beach ten minutes after I’d met Kristen, it had taken me more than twenty years to realize he was the love of my life. When he reminded me of what a slow learner I could be, I told him that things might have been different if he didn’t have the regrettable habit of acting far stupider than he actually was. Rafe had multiple college degrees and was a fantastically good middle school principal, but from the way he sometimes acted, you’d think he’d have a hard time chewing gum while breathing.

But the real reason I hadn’t understood how I felt about Rafe was I hadn’t been ready. Now I was, and any day we got to spend together was a day worth remembering.

Julia cleared her throat in a way that sent a clear message she was about to ask something I wouldn’t want to answer. “How’s Katrina?”

My Rafe-induced smile dropped away. I tried to stifle a sigh, but was pretty sure I wasn’t successful, because I heard Julia snort. “Katrina,” I said, “is . . .” Then I stopped, since I didn’t want to get too deep into family issues. “Did I tell you about her summer job search?” I asked.

Katrina was my slender seventeen-year-old niece, currently between her junior and senior years of high school, and the first of three children created by my brother and his wife. She was smart, funny, had lovely brown hair, and four Christmases ago had been thrilled to find herself taller than her aunt Minnie.

My brother and his family lived in Florida, and apparently they’d actually listened to my annual moaning about the lack of summer workers in Chilson, because a few weeks earlier they’d called about having Katrina come stay with me for the season.

I’d been delighted. How fun to have Katrina for the summer! I’d get to know her so much better! We’d develop a solid relationship that would endure to our old age, and who knew, maybe someday she’d want to move up here to the land of lakes and hills and life in the slow lane!

After numerous text messages, phone calls, and sending of photos showing the tight quarters in which she’d be living on the houseboat, the arrangements had been solidified and I’d fetched Katrina from the Traverse City airport two weeks ago.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Julia shake her head in answer to my job search question. “All you’ve said was that she was looking.”

And looking was all she’d done for more than a week. First off, I’d encouraged her to apply at restaurants. “I’ve never worked in a restaurant before,” she’d said. “No one will hire me.”

“Just go in and apply,” I said. “Every restaurant in Chilson has a Help Wanted sign in the window.” Except for Kristen’s restaurant. She paid her staff well and treated them like family, which was to say horribly, but she must have been doing something right, because they came back year after year. I said to Katrina, “Any restaurant will be happy to train you.”

But she’d hesitated and delayed and balked and three days ago she’d announced that the smell of cooking food—any kind of food—gave her a headache.

Exasperation had blossomed in every cell of my body and my question of “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” was answered by a shrug and a sullen silence. Now, as I told Julia all of this, I was beginning to catch a glimmer of humor.

“The mysteries of the teenage mind are many,” Julia said, smiling. “Kind of makes you understand why your brother and his wife were willing to part with their darling daughter for the summer, yes?”

I laughed. “Could be. But there are lots of retail jobs downtown.” Though without tips, the pay wouldn’t be nearly as lucrative. “She’s applying at the toy store, Older Than Dirt, and Benton’s. If none of those work out . . .” I shook my head. “There are other places. She’s bound to find something.”

Julia nodded and, wisely, said nothing.

We came to a stop sign, made a left turn, then soon another left onto the dead end gravel road where our one-time spot awaited us.

“Look at that,” Julia said. “We have people waiting for us!” As I parked the bookmobile, Julia waved at the two bookmobilers waiting by their cars; Nicole Price and Violet Mullaly, and a third, Rex Stuhler, who was leaning his bicycle against a tree.

I worked through the opening routines as Julia opened the door. “Sorry we’re late,” she said. “Construction.”

The one-word explanation seemed to suffice. All three nodded and I let out a tiny sigh of relief. Though Rex was a decent guy, Nicole and Violet were among the more critical of our patrons. I could handle criticism, of course, but I didn’t like inviting it onto the bookmobile.

Nicole came aboard. “Morning,” she said shortly, her stern face set in firm lines. She headed for the new fiction, her red hair bouncing as she went. Violet muttered something that might have been a greeting as she came up the steps, gave Nicole a hard glare, then wandered over to the video games. Rex bounded inside and greeted Julia and me with a smile. “Had a great bike ride this morning.” He nodded to the south, to the end of the road. “Went down that way for a bit. It’s pretty down there, if you like trees, which I do, so I’ll probably go that way again.” He looked around. “Is my little buddy riding along today?”

I gestured toward the front, where Eddie was flopped on the console. “Waiting for you.”

Rex went up and patted him on the head. “The bookmobile is here, and so is the bookmobile cat. All’s right with the world.”

“Mrr!”

It was hard to disagree with that, so no one did.

*   *   *

On the Fourth of July, I woke to find Eddie nestled into the crook of my elbow. With my eyes still shut, I used my free hand to feel around for the exact location of his head. More than once I’d opened my eyes to the sight of big yellow ones staring me down at a point-blank range. It was not an ideal way to start a morning, so I’d learned to scout out the exact arrangement of his body parts first thing.

“Mrr,” he said sleepily. The distance of his voice indicated it was safe to raise my eyelids, so I did, which was when I saw, through the white lacy curtains at the window, that the sky was that gorgeous blue color you dream of all winter long.

“Not a cloud in sight,” I said with satisfaction, doing my best to slide out of the bed without disturbing its feline inhabitant. After a quick shower and a toweling of my stupidly curly hair, I slid into appropriate layers: shorts, T-shirt, and a fleece sweatshirt that would come off as soon as the temperature bumped to the seventy-degree range. I made the bed around Eddie and bounced up the few steps into the houseboat’s main room.

“Happy Fourth of July!” I said cheerfully.

“Go away.”

My cheeriness dimmed a bit, but I determinedly pushed it back up. It had become clear to me over the last two weeks that Katrina was not a morning person. Of course, my oldest niece didn’t seem to be a night person, either. What she mostly seemed to do was sleep, something I’d heard teenagers did, but since I’d never done so, I hadn’t expected my own flesh and blood to have the habit.

I studied the top of her head, her hair waving smoothly across the pillow, and tried to judge her actual level of sleepiness. When Katrina had arrived, I’d assumed she would sleep in the other berth in my tiny bedroom, but instead she’d wanted to bunk down in a sleeping bag on what used to be my dining table. The table lowered to the level of the bench seats and, with the addition of some pillows, was apparently a comfortable sleeping area.

Though the loss of dining space was awkward at times, I was making do, and was even making progress in learning to avert my eyes from the piles of Katrina-related clothing and other miscellaneous belongings. If the piles started to expand and/or migrate, there would have to be a conversation, but so far, things were staying put.

“We’re due at Aunt Frances and Otto’s house in less than an hour,” I said.

Katrina groaned and yanked the sleeping bag over her head. “Do I have to go?”

Until this summer, my aunt role had been giver of cool presents and teller of stories that made their father look bad. As aunt in loco parentis, however, things were different.

“Yes,” I said firmly. “I told your parents you’d get the full Up North summer experience, and that includes morning-to-midnight Fourth of July activities. Up and at ’em, there’s fun to be had!”

Grumbling about the unfairness of her life, Katrina oozed out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom.

“Mrr.” At some point, Eddie had migrated to the boat’s dashboard, his current favorite spot. Usually he faced out to watch seagulls swoop up and around, but now he was facing down-boat, looking toward the bathroom door.

“Yeah, I know.” I folded up the sleeping bag. “She didn’t say good morning to you, did she? Give her time. There are no pets at her house and she doesn’t understand the rules.”

Eddie blinked, then rotated and flopped down.

Katrina showered, I waited patiently, and by a small miracle we arrived at our intended destination only five minutes late.

“You’re here!” Aunt Frances wrapped her arms around me in a huge hug, and once again I cogitated the fact that my aunt and I shared no physical traits whatsoever. She was tall and long-limbed and had short straight hair, once light brown, now mostly gray. For years she’d run the boardinghouse in the summer and taught woodworking at a nearby community college during the school year. But now that Aunt Frances was married, the boardinghouse was under Celeste’s management, and it was unclear whether or not she would return to teaching.

“Of course we’re here,” I said, returning the slightly unusual hug. “Did you think we wouldn’t?”

My aunt transferred her hug to Katrina, who, for the first time that morning, was smiling. Then again, it was hard not to smile in the presence of the powerfully optimistic Aunt Frances.

“Breakfast is almost ready,” she said, leading us to the kitchen, which had been renovated while she and Otto were on their honeymoon. The new version was light and airy and spacious, with a new bump-out window seat that looked out over a backyard lush with blooming flowers of whose identity I was completely ignorant.

Otto, at the cooktop, smiled as we walked in. “Good morning, ladies. And a very Happy Birthday to you, Minnie.”

“Seriously?” Katrina stared. “Your birthday is the Fourth of July?”

“Yep.” I bounced a little on the balls of my feet. “Best birthday possible. National holiday, parades, cooking out on the grill, fireworks. When I was little, I thought it was all for me.”

From behind me, a male voice said, “What, you mean it’s not?”

I turned and grinned at Rafe, who also enveloped me in a hug, but one with a slightly different flavor. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“That’s because I was here already. On time, you see?” He tapped the top of my head gently with the point of his chin.

“Five minutes hardly counts as late,” I said, tipping my head up for a kiss.

“Says the woman who is nose deep in a book if I’m more than ten seconds late to meet her for anything,” Rafe said to the room in general before leaning down.

Post-kiss, I watched Otto stirring something in a small saucepan, a something I deeply hoped was buttered maple syrup with pecans that would soon be spread over fluffy pancakes. Aunt Frances had cooked my birthday breakfast all the summers I stayed with her as a kid, and she’d continued doing it when I moved here as an adult. The menu had shifted from the Mickey waffles of my youth, and we weren’t in the boardinghouse, but Aunt Frances was here, I was here, and having Otto and Rafe and Katrina here made the morning even better.

When breakfast was over and the dishes washed, we’d shifted to the fun topic of what to do with the rest of the day.

“Minnie gets to pick,” Rafe said, drying his hands on a kitchen towel. “You only get to turn thirty-five once.”

I beamed at my beloved, who really should have known better. If the world had been a perfect place, we would have piled into a huge semitruck and visited bookstores across northern lower Michigan, filling the trailer as we went. But as much as I loved books, there were two small problems with that dream day. One, I lacked the financial resources to fund that kind of a trip, and two, I didn’t have any place to put that many books.

But even if the world wasn’t perfect, it was still a pretty nice place, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

*   *   *

An hour later, the five of us were walking down a narrow dirt trail, each of us carrying backpacks laden with a picnic lunch, water, and in my case, emergency reading material. I suspected that Katrina had stuffed a copy of People magazine into hers, but since she didn’t seem to be talking to me on a voluntary basis, I decided not to ask.

We were headed down to the Jordan River Valley, to a section of trail I’d long wanted to hike. Otto was walking ahead with Katrina, and I was next to Aunt Frances, with Rafe close behind. The current trail was a fairly steep downhill that wound through a second growth forest of maple and beech trees, and I was mostly making sure I kept my footing and didn’t slide to the bottom in an untidy heap.

“Did I tell you about Celeste?” Aunt Frances asked.

I picked my way over a miniature crevasse, probably the result of a recent thunderstorm. “What about her?”

“After all those promises, she’s not doing it. Not at all.”

To the inexperienced ear, this would have made no sense. I, however, understood the meaning behind the ambiguous words.

“Not doing what?” Rafe asked.

I hadn’t realized he was close enough to overhear. Hmm. I looked over my shoulder. “Not doing the Saturday breakfast. You know, when the boarders cook for each other?”

“Ah.” He lost interest and dropped behind us, and I focused on my aunt’s dilemma, which wasn’t so much a dilemma as an acceptance of change. My aunt’s summer boardinghouse had been more than a boardinghouse; it had also been, unbeknownst to most, a matchmaking enterprise.

The applications for summer spots had always far exceeded the places available, and one year, on a whim, Aunt Frances had chosen her visitors based on how she thought they might pair up for long-term relationships. Every year it had worked like a charm—although it hadn’t always appeared so at first—and now she’d started getting applications from offspring of some of the first pairings.

One activity that eased people together was the Saturday morning breakfast. This was the one day of the week my aunt hadn’t cooked breakfast for her boarders, instead requiring the boarders themselves to cook for the group. Everyone knew that going in, but what they didn’t know was that they would be paired up with the potential mate my aunt had selected. “Nothing like cooking a large meal,” she’d said often, “to show compatibility.”

Now, I asked, “Celeste isn’t doing it at all?”

“Not so far as I can tell,” my aunt said. “I know I should let her run things her own way, but she’s going to ruin the boardinghouse. She’s going to make it something else entirely. I would never have handed it over to her if I’d known she was going to pull this kind of stunt!”

The voice of my normally calm, cool, and collected aunt had risen. Otto looked back and I met his gaze, arranging my face in a gesture that I hoped said, “Help!”

He slowed and said, “Minnie, I haven’t asked how the library finances are moving along. Have there been any developments?”

I sent him a grateful glance. I’d talk to Aunt Frances about Celeste, but that conversation should take place in private. Otto, a retired accountant, had taken an interest in the large bequest bestowed on the library by the late Stan Larabee. Though Stan’s estranged family had contested the will, the case had recently been settled.

“The library board is still considering options,” I said.

Otto nodded. “Understandable. With that amount of money, you don’t want to rush into decisions.”

“Everyone else,” I said glumly, “is ready to go on a spending spree.”

Otto laughed, and his Paul Newman–like appearance became even more pronounced. “Let me guess,” he said. “The staff and the Friends of the Library disagree on how the money should be spent.”

“You are one of the smartest people I know.”

“Smart enough to marry your aunt.” He looked at her, love writ so clearly in his expression that I looked away. Not because I was embarrassed at the display of emotion; more because the look she sent back mirrored his own and I felt like an intruder.

I hung back, letting the two of them go ahead with Katrina, who chattered to them with no evident inhibitions. Since dwelling on the fact that the relationship with my niece was far from ideal wasn’t a happy way to spend my birthday, I thought instead about the recent weddings with which I’d been involved.

Aunt Frances and Otto had married in April here in Chilson and spent a long honeymoon in Bermuda. The wedding itself had been small and the party afterward large, with half the town attending. I’d stood up as maid of honor, and Leo Kinsler, the former boarder whose stories of Aunt Frances had instigated Otto’s move north, stood up as best man. My dad had given the bride away, and there hadn’t been a dry eye when they’d exchanged vows.

Kristen and Scruffy’s mid-May wedding had been large, the reception even larger, and the food so spectacular that the local guests were still talking about it. It was harder to tell about the out-of-town guests, but the parking lot of Three Seasons seemed to have more New York license plates than in previous years.

I sighed happily at the memories. Kristen, gorgeous in flowing white. Scruffy, even more impeccably clad than normal in a summer tux. The wedding cake decorated with lifelike fondant roses. The appetizers of crab cakes, rumaki, teeny tiny waffles topped with real maple syrup and bits of real whipped cream, shrimp on top of tiny tortillas with a slice of avocado between, something I’d been told was spanakopita, half strawberries with the cutest little ice cream cones imaginable stuck into them and filled with custard, and—

“Are you mad at me?”

I started at Rafe’s question and almost tripped over a tree root. “Why do you think I’m mad?”

“You’re not talking.”

“That’s evidence of anger?”

He shrugged. “You haven’t said a word to me since Frances mentioned Celeste, so it only follows that talking about Celeste made you think about the boardinghouse, which made you think about the houseboat, which made you think about how you’re jammed in there all summer with Katrina when it would have been a lot better if I’d been able to finish the house and we could all be staying there instead of the two of you being in such close quarters, which can’t be easy.”

The trail was now relatively flat, and Rafe was walking next to me, his long legs taking one step to every step and a half of mine. His straight black hair glinted in the sun, and his slightly reddish skin, an inheritance from native ancestors, seemed to almost glow. I felt a burst of love for him and wondered if my face looked anything like my aunt’s had. “That was a very long sentence,” I said.

“Yes.”

He didn’t say anything else, which made me laugh. “Did you know,” I asked, “there’s a betting pool going for when you get the house done?”

Rafe stopped. “That can’t be. I’m the one who sets up pools, not the subject of them.”

“Yeah, well, not this time.” He would eventually find out I was the one who started the pool, but with any luck, it wouldn’t be soon. “Absolutely no one had you down for finishing in April.” I’d been collecting money for months and the kitty had grown to the point that I was keeping it at the library in a locked drawer. And every week someone handed me more cash and whispered a date.

“Huh.” He started walking again. “Don’t suppose you’d tell me the day you have down.”

I smiled at him fondly. “Nope.”

“Don’t suppose you’d let me put some money in.”

“Not a chance.”

“How about the average date? The last date? How many people entered?”

Grinning, I shook my head to all of his questions. It was a rare thing for me to have so much information he didn’t have, and I was finding the sensation enjoyable. Which should have been disturbing, but wasn’t.

He heaved a tremendous sigh and took my hand. “Then I guess we’ll just have to go on with enjoying your birthday.”

“Guess so,” I said, and felt my heart swell with love.

*   *   *

The sun had slid down over the line of hills that separated Janay Lake from the majestic Lake Michigan. A small channel connected the two lakes, and Chilson was strung along the northwest end of twenty-mile-long Janay Lake. The waterside location had allowed the city council to, over the years, construct a public marina, an adjacent park complete with gazebo, and a performance shell that hosted everything from chamber of commerce awards to traveling professional shows. Tonight the stage would be crowded with a local community band who’d be playing music to accompany the fireworks, and I’d been looking forward to the evening for weeks.

Up at my aunt’s house, we’d stuffed ourselves with hamburgers, corn on the cob, and potato salad, and we’d walked the long way to the park to work off some of our intake.

“I haven’t gone to fireworks since I was little,” Katrina said, watching as Rafe and I spread blankets on the grass. “Fireworks are for kids and old people. They’re all the same. Boring.”

I glanced at Aunt Frances, but she was hand in hand with Otto, chatting away with our right-hand neighbors, a quartet of downstaters in their fifties. Though I assumed Katrina meant fireworks were boring, not little kids and the elderly, I wanted clarification. “You don’t think fireworks are fun?”

“Booooring,” she said, drawing out the word.

Rafe looked at her, looked at me, and smiled, since he knew what was coming.

“Only boring people find life boring,” I said.

Katrina rolled her eyes and flopped down onto the middle of the blanket. “You sound like Grandma,” she muttered.

For a moment I was horrified. Then I took a deep breath and calmly said, “Grandma has been around the block a time or two. You might want to listen.”

“Whatever.” She rolled onto her stomach. “And from now on, my name is Kate, okay? I’m tired of stupid jokes about the hurricane.” My niece pulled out her phone and was mentally gone from the here and now.

Kate? Did her parents know about this? I was thinking seriously about ripping the phone from her hands and pitching it into the lake when my aunt tapped my shoulder.

“Enjoy the night,” she said. “Things will work out.”

I wanted to object, to say that life could be cruel and painful, to tell her that horrible things happened to people for no good reason, but since I’d just told Kate-not-Katrina that grandmas knew what they were talking about, I should probably listen to someone of the same age. Besides, my aunt knew all about life’s hard knocks. And she also knew how wonderful life could be.

So I took her advice and went back to enjoying myself. Dusk was falling slowly and softly, as it did in the north so close to the summer solstice, and it was a sweet pleasure to sit and watch the sky darken, listen to the murmur of passersby, and smell the drifting scents of charcoal fluid and cotton candy.

As soon as it grew dark, the band started playing and the fireworks started exploding. It wasn’t the exquisitely timed production that big cities could put on, but knowing half the band members more than made up for the timing issues.

I leaned against Rafe, and side by side, eating the popcorn Otto had bought for me as a final birthday present, we watched the sky. From a barge moored out in Janay Lake, small canisters zipped high and burst into explosions of white, red, blue, green, pink, and even purple. Huge bangs made toddlers squeal and adults wince. Sparkles snapped-crackled-and-popped into fireworks that blossomed into more fireworks that blossomed into even more.

It was a stupendous show. Once I glanced over at Katrina-now-Kate and smiled to see her staring up at the sky with a look of delight. I nudged Aunt Frances, who was sitting on my other side, and tipped my head in Katrina-Kate’s direction.

My aunt nodded, mouthed, “Told you,” and then came the grand finale with its torrent of booms and bangs and enough exploding fireworks to light the entire sky.

The last one hadn’t finished fading when the crowd started applauding, and as always, I got a lump in my throat at the sound.

“Are you ready?” Katrina asked through the applause. “Because I have to be at work Monday morning and I don’t want to mess up my sleep schedule.”

“You got a job?” I blinked. “Where?”

“Oh, you know. Around.” She stood, brushing off her shorts.

I got to my feet and motioned at Rafe, Otto, and Aunt Frances, who were in a conversation with our left-hand neighbors about local farmer’s markets, to move aside so I could pick up the blankets. “Around where?” I asked. “And when?”

“Part time, is all. That toy store, the antique place with the weird name, and the old store that belongs in a movie from a hundred years ago.”

I interpreted these to be the toy store managed by Mitchell Koyne; Older Than Dirt, which was owned and run by my friend Pam Fazio; and Benton’s, a family-owned general store now under the competent hands of Rianne Howe.

“Did you tell your parents?” I asked.

Even in the dim light, I could see Katrina’s scowl. “Why do they need to know?”

“Because they’re your parents, and—”

“I don’t care,” Katrina said as she started walking backward through the crowd.

This worried me a bit, because she wasn’t looking where she was going, but she was backing away from the water, not toward it, so I tried to stop worrying.

“I’m stuck here for the summer with no friends and nothing to do,” my niece said, “so if I want to take ten jobs, I’m going to do it,” she called as she continued backing into the dark. “I have to do something to keep from going nuts and—oohh!” She tumbled down.

“Katrina, are you okay?”

“My name is Kate,” she said angrily from the ground. “And I’m fine. I just tripped over something.” She sat up, looked at what she’d fallen over, and screamed. “He’s dead! He’s dead!”

Aunt Frances, Rafe, Otto, and I raced toward her, and I reached her first. “It’s okay, sweetie, it’s okay. Come on, stand up, let’s see what’s . . .”

Katrina sobbed into my shoulder. But it wasn’t going to be okay, because she was right. She’d stumbled over a person, not a thing, and the man was indeed dead. Even in the dim light I could see that. The bullet hole in the back of his head was proof, and . . . and . . .

Around me, I heard Otto calling 911 and talking to dispatch, I heard Aunt Frances comforting Katrina, and I heard Rafe asking me if I was all right.

I stared at the man lying at my feet, his eyes glazed open, a man I’d seen only a couple of days earlier. “I know him,” I whispered.

Chapter 2

The next morning I was bleary-eyed and feeling raw from turbulent dreams and disturbing thoughts. I couldn’t fathom that Rex Stuhler, a bookmobile patron, was dead. At some point during the Chilson fireworks, someone had taken advantage of the show’s bangs and explosions and shot him.

I’d seen Rex just two days ago, at the temporary stop. He’d been waiting for us when we’d arrived late, and he’d patted Eddie on the head. Rex was maybe fifty, and a voracious reader. His profession as a pest exterminator out of his home office meant he worked irregular hours, and the combination of those facts made him a bookmobile regular.

He was also one of those guys who loved gadgets, especially electronic gadgets, and when we’d teased him about preferring paper books over e-books, he’d whispered it was a secret he was trying to keep from his buddies, and what did he have to do to buy our silence?

At the time we’d laughed, but now I was having a hard time swallowing my tears. Rex didn’t have to worry about anything any longer.

But life went on for those still living, and last night Rafe had asked me to pick up a box of drywall screws at the hardware store first thing. “Sorry,” he’d said after we’d been questioned and dismissed by a sheriff’s deputy and he’d walked us back to the houseboat, “but if you get those, I can keep working.”

“No problem,” I’d told him, putting my arm around a shivering Katrina. Her life in Florida had not prepared her for cool summer evenings in northern Michigan, but she continued to shrug off recommendations for always having a sweatshirt at hand. “I’ll take care of it.”

So now, though I deeply wanted to roll over and sleep for twelve hours, I yawned, yawned again, slithered out of bed to avoid waking Eddie, and got showered and dressed as quietly as possible.

Not that Katrina moved a muscle, other than those involuntary ones that kept her heart and brain going. As I wrote my whereabouts on the kitchen’s whiteboard—Hardware store, house, back by noon—I listened to her soft, regular breathing. Last night, she hadn’t taken well to my command to call her parents and tell them what had happened, but when I’d asked if she was going to text any friends about it and did those friends have parents who knew hers, she grudgingly saw the need.

My brother and his wife had been understandably shocked and concerned, and after Katrina curled up in her sleeping bag and went into coma mode, we talked into the wee hours of the morning. We eventually agreed there was no immediate need for her to go home or for them to fly up, but that I’d keep a close eye on her and let them know immediately if she was exhibiting signs of emotional trauma.

And now it was morning. Gently, I tucked the sleeping bag around her shoulders and hoped what I’d told Matt and Jennifer had been right.

“Kids are resilient,” I told the blue sky as I stepped outside. At least that’s what people said. But I wasn’t so sure. Maybe kids were just resilient on the outside, same as adults. Who knew what was going on inside?

I made a solemn vow to watch over my niece, to take careful note of any changes in her behavior, and to deepen our relationship so that she’d feel free to talk to me about anything. In the long run, this would all work out, I was sure of it.

Well, almost.

But the future would work itself out in due time, so I tucked my worry about Katrina into a back corner and made up my mind to enjoy the morning. Which was easy to do, because the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and so many things in the world were amazing and wonderful.

A hop, skip, and a jump from the marina was the old, large, 1900s Shingle style house that was rising up from the metaphorical ashes of having been divided into apartments decades earlier. It had a deep front porch, lake views, and my vote for being the most beautiful house in Chilson. Plus, in a few short months it would be my own home. Rafe was already living there, because he didn’t mind living in a state of perpetual renovation. And I might have been living there with him this very moment if it hadn’t been for my recently discovered inability to tolerate the fumes of paint primer.

I walked on tiptoes as I went past the house, looking for signs of Rafe. There was no visual clue, but then I heard the drywall saw start up. I blew a kiss in his general direction and headed up the hill.

The hardware store was on the outskirts of downtown, a short walk from the marina, and by the time I arrived, my spirits had risen and I was darn close to one hundred percent awake.

In many places, hardware stores were closed on Sundays or opened late. In Chilson, as in many other northern resort towns, businesses had one hundred days to make money, more or less Memorial Day through Labor Day. Being closed on any one of those days was close to unthinkable. And here it was, barely eight o’clock on the fifth of July, and the hardware store was so crowded and noisy that I barely heard the door’s bells jingle as I went inside.

I picked up a big box of number seven by two-inch drywall screws, walked away, went back for another box, then headed up to the counter, where a small group of men I didn’t recognize clustered together. Not long ago I’d been intimidated by hardware stores, but thanks to Rafe’s constant need for fasteners—a catch-all term I’d formerly made fun of, but now accepted as part of the construction vocabulary—I was on a first-name basis with the hardware store owner and his staff.

“Hey, Minnie.” Jared, the owner, took the boxes and put them into the bag. “Sure you got enough?”

“I got double what he asked, so maybe.”

“On the account?”

When I nodded, he started typing into the keyboard. Rafe and I needed to have a serious chat about money and construction costs and mortgages, but every time I brought up the subject, he diverted the conversation. It had to be soon, though, because I wasn’t moving in until we were both happy with the financial situation.

“Probably one of those random killings. Bet it wasn’t anyone from around here,” a man to the left of me said, and I realized the male cluster was talking about last night’s murder.

I shook my head, trying to wish away the image of Rex Stuhler’s unseeing eyes.

“Downstater. Had to be.” Luke Cagan, one of Jared’s part-time employees, leaned against the counter, crossing his arms, which were covered with thick blond hairs.

The rest of the men nodded agreement and their cluster dispersed.

But I stood there, staring at the space where they’d been, because up until that moment my brain had been more occupied with the shock and aftermath of Katrina literally tripping over a murder victim. Up until now, I hadn’t thought about the obvious implications.

Who, indeed, had killed Rex Stuhler?

Why had someone killed Rex?

And would that someone kill again?

*   *   *

I delivered the screws to Rafe, who accepted the double delivery without batting an eye, and looked around for an out-of-the-way place to sit. Rafe and a friend of his were installing drywall on the basement ceiling and there wasn’t a role for me, other than having my phone at the ready to call 911.

Yes, I could have tried to be useful, but the couple of times I had done so during drywall work, things hadn’t ended up well for me, Rafe, or the drywall. I could do other things, though, especially when it was a benefit to be efficiently sized. A five-foot-tall body fit far better into an attic space for placing insulation, for instance, and my compact-size fingers were much better than Rafe’s big ones for installing tiny pieces of trim.

I spotted an upside down plastic five-gallon bucket that had once held paint, carried it near the work area, and sat on my new stool.

Rafe glanced at me through his upraised arms. “How’s Katrina?”

“Asleep,” I said. “At least she was when I left.”

“She seemed pretty shaken up last night.”

“Who’s Katrina?” Bob asked. “Is she hot? And single?”

I wasn’t sure exactly how Rafe knew Bob, but if I asked, I’d get a long story that may or may not have provided a real answer, so I imagined a story about a late blizzard and a lost puppy, which was almost certainly a much better explanation than reality.

“She’s seventeen.” Rafe pulled his screw gun from his tool belt.

“And my niece,” I said over the noise of drywall screws being screwed in tightly.

Bob gave a heavy sigh, which fluttered his thick, dark blond beard. “So my bad luck is holding.” ...