I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or to roll my eyes, so I did both. And somehow the act of doing so reminded me that I’d promised Aunt Frances I’d pick up some groceries on the way home.
“Hey, Eddie,” I called. “If Aunt Frances gets back before I do, tell her I’m getting provisions for the weekend.”
There was a pause; then I heard a faint “Mrr.”
“Thanks, pal,” I said, and headed out for the short walk to the grocery store.
* * *
The unseasonably mild weather of the past few days was on its way out, and I kept my head down against the rising wind and chill air.
Yes, winter was coming, no doubt about it. I took one mittened hand out of my pocket and zipped my coat up all the way to the top. Technically winter wouldn’t arrive for another month, but I judged the presence of winter more by the clothing I wore than by what the calendar said.
Thoughts of the upcoming season occupied me as I stepped into the sudden moist warmth of the grocery store and picked up a small basket. As I debated between red and green peppers, I wondered how well the bookmobile’s heater would combat the deep cold spells we’d get in January and February. Below-zero temperatures were not uncommon, and thirty below wasn’t out of the question.
While I looked at the rice choices, I wondered how the bookmobile would handle in the snowy road conditions. The icy road conditions. And, worst of all, the slushy road conditions. The commercial driver’s course I’d taken had taught me techniques to handle every possible condition, but driver’s-course knowledge was different from true road experience.
I stood in front of the freezer section—ice cream wasn’t on the list, but it never hurt to look—and told myself to stop being such a worrywart. There were numerous bookmobiles all across the country that drove through harsh winters, probably worse winters than this part of Michigan ever got. Everything would be fine. I just needed to relax and—
“Did you hear what happened to Denise?”
Though I couldn’t see the woman, her voice was loud and piercing enough to carry from the adjacent aisle. I gave a last, longing look at the quart of Cherry Garcia and started toward the registers.
“You mean Denise Slade?” another woman asked.
I stopped cold. Retreated a few steps. Kept listening.
“She left early this morning,” the loud-voiced woman said. “Headed downstate to visit her— Oh, I’m not sure. Her mother or aunt or some sort of relative.” There was a pause. “Or was it a relative of Roger’s? I don’t remember. Anyway, she’d gone over to the interstate since she was going to the Detroit area, when her engine just stopped.”
“You mean it turned off?” The other woman sounded puzzled, which was the same way I would have sounded if I’d asked the same question. And I almost had.
The loud woman said, “That’s what my husband said, and he’s a car guy, right? He said that the engine seized up.”
Sadly, I knew exactly what that meant. It had happened to the car owned by my best friend from high school. She’d started the engine, heard some horrible noises, smelled some terrible smells, and then the thing had simply stopped running. The fix had been horrendously expensive.
“Anyway,” the loud woman said, “this happened when Denise was on the expressway, going seventy miles per hour. When the engine seized, it made so much noise and scared her so much that she kind of ran off the road.”
The woman’s friend gasped. “Is she okay?”
“She didn’t hit anything, is what I heard, but when she went off the road . . . You know how much rain we’ve been having? She drove right into this deep ditch that was filled with water.” The loud woman’s voice dropped, and I had to strain to hear. “She almost drowned, is what they said.”
The woman talked on, but I made my way to the front of the store, head down and thinking hard about things I really didn’t want to think about.
About circumstances, about cases of mistaken identity, about crimes of planning and patience.
About murder.
Chapter 9
The next morning I did my best to sleep late, but the combination of my aunt’s jovial singing and Eddie’s ongoing efforts to find a comfortable sleeping position on my head woke me long before I’d hoped.
“It’s mostly your fault,” I told my furry friend as I toweled my hair dry, post shower. “I’ve heard Aunt Frances sing the theme song to Gilligan’s Island so many times that it’s something I’ve learned to sleep through. But I don’t see how I’m going to ever learn to sleep through you flopping yourself across my face. You might suffocate me, you know.”
Eddie, however, was playing Cat Statue. In this mode, his ears didn’t work, which was often very convenient for him.
“Then again,” I said, “if Aunt Frances ever sang anything other than theme songs to old television shows, who knows what it might do to my sleep habits?”
The thought humored me, mostly because there was little chance she’d ever sing anything different. Her brain, she’d said seriously, didn’t maintain a hold on any other song lyrics. I was very grateful her brain didn’t stick on Christmas songs, because the idea of hearing “Frosty the Snowman” every Saturday morning October through April made me want to scratch out the insides of my ears. Hearing “Frosty” in December was fine, of course, but, in my opinion, a little went a long way.
“You know,” I told Eddie, “I almost feel like singing myself.” Because it was a beautiful day for the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Clear skies and no wind, and what more could you really hope for at this time of year?
“Any requests?” I pulled an almost-cat-hair-free sweatshirt over my head. “‘Cat’s in the Cradle’? ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’? No, wait, I have it: ‘Stray Cat Strut.’”
Laughing, I looked around for Eddie, but all I saw was the end of his tail as it whisked out the bedroom door.
“How about ‘Cat Scratch Fever’?” I called. “‘Honky Cat’? And don’t forget ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’” I waited for a positive response to at least one of my suggestions, but all I heard was the thumping of his feet on the stairs.
Cats.
I smiled a Saturday-morning-that-I-didn’t-have-to-work smile, and headed down the stairs after him.
* * *
After a breakfast of slow-cooked oatmeal and orange juice, I decided to go for a walk while the sunshine lasted. “Do you want to come with me?” I asked my aunt.
Aunt Frances turned the page of a cookbook. It was one of many that were scattered around the kitchen table. “I’ll go later,” she said absently. “I want to try a new stuffing recipe for Thanksgiving, and I know I saw something in one of these books last summer. All I have to do is find it.”
I looked at Eddie, who was lying Sphinx-like on the newly installed padded shelf underneath the window. “How about you?” I asked. “A walk would do you good.”
He turned his head and closed his eyes.
“Well, it would,” I said, but all I got in response was a tighter closing of his eyes and another page turn from my aunt. Smiling, I headed for the outside world by my wild lone.
Once there, though, I wasn’t sure I’d made the correct decision. Last night’s wind had been a north one, and it had brought air so cold that it belonged more in January than in November.
I didn’t see another soul out and about on this chilly morning, and I felt almost as if I were the only person on the planet. For a moment I played with that idea, and decided that I would be a gibbering madwoman within a month. Maybe less.
Just as I was starting to feel what that might be like, I heard a distant noise. Mechanical, and in no rhythm whatsoever. It was clearly human in origin, and I felt as pulled to it as a child being led by the Pied Piper.