Laurie Cass - Bookmobile Cat 02 - Tailing a Tabby (8 page)

“You got to work on your aim,” Skeeter said. “Next time see if you can get him right between the eyes.”

For some reason, the men found that hilarious. When the laughter faded, I turned to Greg. “Did you go to the hospital?” I asked. “Head injuries aren’t anything to mess around with.”

“Being hit with one more ball isn’t going to do me any damage.” Greg smiled. “I’m fine.”

I wasn’t sure how he could be so sure, but it was hard enough to get my male friends to take care of
themselves, let alone practical strangers, so I let it go. I looked at Chris. “You wanted to talk about something?”

“Oh, yeah.” He reached into the carrier to scratch Eddie’s chin. “You know our other marina, the one at the east end of Janay Lake? It’s full up this year and I’m looking to keep them happy enough to come back. So I was wondering if you could talk your boss into getting the bookmobile to make a stop out there.”

My boss? Maybe someday I’d get used to being underestimated. But I doubted it. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said dryly.

“Yeah?” Chris smiled, his teeth showing white against the leathered skin. “Cool. Thanks, Min-Tin-Tin. You’re all right, for a girl.”

If I’d been more awake, I’d have come back with a snappy rejoinder, but fatigue was turning my brain into mush. “And you’re… not so horrible for a boy.” Lame, so very lame. I nodded at the other boys, slid the cat carrier off the counter, and headed home for a long afternoon’s nap.

“Hang on, Min, I’ll walk out with you.” Rafe got up and took the carrier from me. “I’d like to stay, guys, but there’s a house that needs working on.”

Rafe owned what you would call, if you were being kind, a fixer-upper. When he was done redoing the siding, wiring, HVAC, and plumbing of the century-old house, it would be a showpiece, but for now it was more a blot on the landscape.

“How’s your cut healing?” I’d taken him to the Charlevoix Hospital after an accident with a reciprocating saw.

“Never better,” he said promptly. “You should quit
worrying so much. If you’re not careful, you’re going to grow up into a regular old girl.”

“I can think of worse things to grow into,” I said mildly.

“Five bucks says you can’t come up with ten by the time we get to your dock.”

I immediately started counting on my fingers. “A person who doesn’t read. A narrow-minded person. Someone who doesn’t understand the necessity of an occasional day off. Someone who doesn’t know how to laugh at herself. Someone who doesn’t like chocolate. That’s five. Someone with no sense of humor. With no appreciation for architecture. With no appreciation for art. Or with no love of beauty. Or someone who cares so much about a single issue that they forget about everything else in their life. Ten.”

Rafe handed me the five-dollar bill he’d so recently won from Chris, but I wasn’t done. “I’d rather be a girl than someone who doesn’t like girls, or someone who thinks girls are useless. And I’d rather be a girl than—”

“You won, already,” Rafe said. “See you later, Minnie.” He handed me Eddie’s carrier and headed off, shaking his head.

“And,” I told Eddie, “I’d much rather be a regular old girl than someone who doesn’t like cats.”

Eddie didn’t say anything, but I’m sure he was pleased.

•   •   •

On Saturday evening I walked up to Kristen’s restaurant. Kristen Jurek and I had met on Chilson’s city beach at the age of twelve. Though Kristen was a born and bred local, she’d committed the unusual act of taking a summer kid under her wing. I’d never forgotten
her kindness, and every time I said so, she rolled her eyes and said I’d paid her back a zillion times over and to forget about it, okay?

I would reply that offhand suggestions I’d made three years ago about what to name her restaurant hardly counted in the grand scheme of things, and she’d say that karma was karma, no matter who did what, and to shut up about it or she’d stop making crème brûlée for me every Sunday night.

That was a threat I didn’t want to risk, so I kept quiet. At least for a little while.

I said, “Hey, guys,” through the kitchen’s screen door and went on in. Even late on a Saturday night, the staff was hard at work. Cutting, chopping, cooking, baking, all those things I rarely did and made a mess of when I tried. The one time Kristen had tried to explain the importance of presentation was two hours of my life I could have spent reading. I still regretted the time lost.

A fortyish woman in a tall white hat and a white jacket glanced up at me, her face sharpening at the sight of a stranger in her midst. But the sous-chef, his assistant, and one of the summer interns all nodded to me and/or said, “Hey, Minnie,” and the woman’s face relaxed.

“Hi,” I said to her. “I’m Minnie Hamilton. Is Kristen in her office?”

“Misty Overbaugh,” she said in a gravelly voice. “And I’d be careful if I were you. She’s wrestling with the menu for next week.”

My eyebrows went up. Kristen never waited until the last minute to work up a menu. Never.

“Somebody called with a special deal on chicken
breasts,” Misty explained. “She said she couldn’t pass it up.”

I grinned. That was Kristen. “Nice meeting you,” I said, and headed back to the office. I navigated the maze of short hallways and storage rooms that were a direct result of Kristen’s insistence during the remodeling phase that the kitchen be the best possible kitchen, forget the expense, full speed ahead.

What had once been a massive summer cottage was now one of the finest restaurants in Tonedagana County. Diners ate food grown and produced in the region while seated in the rooms where wealthy summer people had formerly spent their leisure hours. Nothing served in the restaurant was frozen, and nothing edible was shipped in from outside the state of Michigan. Well, she did make an exception for spices, but there wasn’t much she could do about that and it was noted on the menu.

I stood in the doorway, looking fondly at my fair friend. Kristen, at nearly six feet tall and Scandinavian blond, was the reverse image of five-foot, curly-black-haired me. “I hear chicken nuggets are popular,” I said.

She looked up at me with bleary eyes. “Why didn’t you stop me from ordering all that chicken?”

“Because I like to see you suffer.” I dropped into the rickety wooden contraption that served as the guest chair. “That, and even if I’d been here you wouldn’t have listened to me.”

“I would, too, have.”

“You think?”

She pushed herself away from the computer and stretched. “No. I would have said what makes you think you know anything about running a restaurant
when you can’t even pop microwave popcorn without burning it.”

“My skills are more in the peanut butter and jelly range.”

“It’s good to know your strengths.” She picked up her phone. “Harvey, can you…” She gave me a thumbs-up and grinned. “You’re the best, kid,” she said, then hung up. “Two crème brûlée desserts being prepped right now.”

“Have I ever told you how much I like having a restaurant owner for a best friend?”

“Only almost every Sunday evening, May through November.”

Kristen’s restaurant was named the Three Seasons because it was only open for three seasons. Come winter she closed everything down and hied herself to Key West, where she tended bar on the weekends and did absolutely nothing during the week.

“Sure, but tonight is Saturday.”

She flicked her index finger at me. “Only because I have to drive down to Cadillac tomorrow for my grandmother’s birthday party. For you and me, this is Sunday.”

“How’s the new chef coming along?” I asked. “Misty, right?”

“So far, so good.”

Harvey knocked and bustled in with a tray of dessert, decaf coffee, cream, and silverware. He unloaded it all on the small table in the corner, asked if we needed anything else, and bustled away.

“Have you heard if the restaurant is going to make it onto
Trock’s Troubles
?” I asked.

“No, and every time I think about it I start to
hyperventilate, so let’s change the subject, yes? Yes.” Kristen pushed the latest newspaper over to me. “Did you hear about this?” Since I’d already read the article she was pointing at, I didn’t reach to pick it up. But even from five feet away, I could easily read the main headline, blaring its bad news in big black type: L
OCAL
W
OMAN
M
URDERED
.

“The weird thing?” Kristen asked. “I knew her.”

“You… did?” While our circles of friends didn’t completely overlap, I’d thought I was familiar with all their names.

“Sort of. She came in to apply for a waitressing job when I first opened.” Kristen pulled the newspaper back toward her and stared at the article. “It’s weird knowing someone who was murdered.”

“Yes,” I said quietly, “it is.” We sat for a moment, thinking our own thoughts. Then I asked, “What was she like? Do you remember?”

She smiled a little. “Most of the time I don’t remember the ones I don’t hire, but she was different. It was too bad she didn’t have a lick of waitressing experience. If she had, I’d have hired her in a flash, but I had to have people who knew what they were doing. I didn’t have time to train a complete newbie.” A strand of hair had escaped Kristen’s ponytail, and she brushed at it impatiently. “Makes me wonder. If I’d hired her, would things have turned out differently for her? Would she have been killed?”

Kristen was starting down a path that shouldn’t be taken. Diversionary tactics were required, stat. “Why did you want to hire her if she didn’t have any experience?” I asked.

“Personality,” my personality-loaded friend said.
“Beyond the basic waitstaff skills, personality is what makes a waiter memorable. Carissa was loaded with it. Funny, smart, charming.” Kristen sighed. “And gorgeous, too. I should have hated her, but I couldn’t find a way.”

Someone had, but the fact was too obvious, and too painful, to say out loud.

“What other jobs were on her résumé?” I asked, but Kristen didn’t remember.

I wanted to talk about Cade, about my run to the police station, about Detective Inwood and Daniel Markakis and Barb and the letter
D.
But I didn’t want to share that information without Cade’s permission. Though I didn’t like keeping secrets from Kristen, this wasn’t my secret to tell.

“Let’s eat,” I said. “Our crème brûlée’s going to go stale.”

Kristen frowned. “Are you trying to distract me from dark and depressing thoughts?”

I grinned. She was getting in some good
D
words and I hadn’t even told her about the game. Maybe it was time to set up rules. “Is it working?”

She picked up her spoon and cracked the sugar. “Getting there.”

“Maybe it’ll help if I tell you how the bookmobile’s candy guessing game is turning into a debacle.”

“Now you’re talking.”

So I did, and soon the sadness that had been filling the room flowed out and away.

•   •   •

“You got quite a mess down here, Minnie.” It was Sunday morning and Rafe’s head and upper body were deep into the houseboat’s engine compartment.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said gloomily. It would have been nice if I could have afforded the fees the marina charged for boat repairs, but without going into serious credit card debt, something I sincerely hoped to avoid, paying Rafe the peanuts he’d charge me was my best option. “Please tell me you’ll have it finished before you go back to school.”

“Oh, sure, not a problem.”

Hope sang in my heart. “You mean it won’t take very long?”

His habitual humming wafted up into the clear morning air. “I bet it’ll take almost exactly as long as it’ll take you to develop a new after-school reading program.”

“A what?”

“Of course, it might take me longer to fix this mess, but we’ll call it even up.”

“Call what even?” I asked.

He lifted his head and peered at me over his shoulder through black hair that he wouldn’t get cut until the day before classes started. “After. School. Reading. Program. You got a problem with English?”

Rafe often spoke in badly constructed sentences just to annoy me. From my perch on the end of the chaise longue, I laughed and kicked him lightly in his backside. “Stop that.” As my foot touched the seat of Rafe’s jeans, I heard footsteps on the dock. I turned to see Tucker staring at me with an odd expression.

“Tucker!” I stood up and brushed my hands for no good reason. “What are you doing here?”

Rafe looked around. “Hey, Doc. What’s happening? Don’t tell me you’re making boat calls. Besides, I’m healing great.” Rafe held out a very dirty arm. He glanced at it. “Well, maybe you can’t see it through the grease and
all, but it’s fine.” He sat up, frowning at the small gadget he held. “Say, Minnie, my voltmeter is running out of juice. You got any spare triple A’s?”

“Sure,” I said absently. “In the same place. Remember where?”

“Bedroom, top shelf in the back corner. Gotcha.” Rafe clambered to his feet. “Be right back.”

Tucker’s odd expression went a little odder.

I frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Well,” he said, “I’m just wondering why—” The phone in his pants pocket rang loud and long. “Hang on, it’s the hospital.” He answered it and I watched his face go still. “I’ll be right there.” As he slipped the phone back into his pocket, he said, “Sorry, but I have to go.”

“Sure. I understand.” What I didn’t understand was why he was looking at me like that. “Is everything okay?”

“Just another hospital emergency. I’ll call you later.” He waved and headed off.

I watched him go, thinking that I hadn’t been asking if the hospital was okay; I’d been asking if
we
were okay.

“The doc gone already?” Rafe asked, letting the houseboat’s screen door slam behind him. “He just got here.”

“Hospital called,” I said shortly. Tucker hadn’t kissed me good-bye. Or even hugged me. Maybe I wasn’t looking my best this morning, but I wasn’t so ugly that the neighbor’s dog would bark at me. Was I?

“Yeah, suppose that happens.” Rafe got down on his hands and knees. “That’s the beauty of being a school principal. No emergency calls in the summer.”

I sat down on the chaise longue again. I’d talk to Tucker later and find out what was going on. No need to worry about that right now. Now, in fact, was the time to continue the conversation Rafe had started. “Let’s get back to that reading program you were talking about. What, who, when, and where?”