“Um, I think so.” Heather glanced down the hallway at a white light just outside a resident’s room that was blinking. “I have to go,” she said, hurrying off. “Lowell’s probably in Otter Lane.”
I called a thank-you and made my way around Lakeview’s big square. Eventually, I found Otter Lane and Lowell Kokotovich, who was standing at a cart outside a resident’s room, poking at a computer screen with a stylus.
“Hi,” I said, approaching. “I don’t know if you remember me, but—”
“Sure. From the library.” He nodded, then frowned. “It’s Saturday, isn’t it? There’s not a reading hour today, right?”
I refrained from saying that every hour was reading hour as far as I was concerned. He didn’t seem the type to appreciate the joke. “No. I wanted to talk to you about something else. You said you’d lived in the same town as Nicole Price. She was a regular bookmobile patron. Some of us were thinking about putting together a donation in her name, and I wondered if you’d be interested.”
“Oh. Uh.” He looked at me, looked at his computer, looked at me, then back at the computer. “I, um . . . oh, look, there’s a call light I have to answer. Sorry.”
And he hurried off, just like Heather. But the white light above the room he entered wasn’t blinking.
Hmm, I thought as he closed the door.
Very, very hmmm.
* * *
Late that night, I was dead to the world when a scratch-ing noise woke me from a dreamless sleep. Kate had abandoned me for the attractions of Aunt Frances and Uncle Otto, and Rafe was helping a buddy move, so I’d had no one to tell me that spending four hours on my hands and knees sanding, sanding, and sanding some more was Too Much for someone who normally spent her time either behind a desk or behind a steering wheel.
Around nine, Rafe had hauled me to my feet, fed me pizza, walked me home, and helped me tumble into bed. “Sleep tight,” he’d said, kissing my forehead. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
Even if they had, I probably wouldn’t have woken unless they’d bit me down to the bone. However, my ears had become sensitive to noises related to Eddie getting into things he shouldn’t and I was wide awake in an instant.
I sat bolt upright. “What are you doing?” I called.
Scritch-scritch-scritch.
Throwing back the sheet, which was my only cover on such a muggy night, I put my feet on the floor and stood up. “Where are you?”
“Mrr.”
His response had come from the kitchen, but the noise had stopped. I padded back to bed, flopped down, and was almost asleep when the noise started all over again.
Scritch-scritch.
“Eddie!” I yelled. “Cut it out!”
Scritch-scritch-scritch.
I flung back the sheet, stomped up the stairs to the main cabin, and fumbled for the light switch. Brightness exploded into the room, and like the proverbial deer in the headlights, Eddie stopped what he was doing and stared up at me. But defiantly, which wasn’t at all deerlike.
“For crying out loud,” I muttered.
Because my furry little friend had managed to extract a Tonedagana County map from my backpack and unfold it. His right front paw was poised over the northeast part of the county, and his claws were extended and about to rip right into Bowyer Township.
“Nice try,” I said. “But no way am I letting you plot the next bookmobile route.”
“Mrr!”
“Because I said so.” I took the map away from him, folded it in a way no mapmaker would ever recommend, and shoved it into the backpack, which I zipped shut and shoved under Kate’s sleeping bag.
“Mrr,” he said in a manner that could only be called a sulk.
I rolled my eyes and went back to bed.
Cats.
Chapter 15
Julia folded her hands and laid them across the computer keyboard. “No one is coming,” she pronounced.
She was probably right. It was one of those triple H days: hot, hazy, and humid. Days like this did not lend themselves to high bookmobile usage. You never knew, of course, because it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that half a dozen cars would suddenly converge on our shady parking spot, all packed with occupants intent on checking out an armload of books for use on screened porches. But it seemed unlikely.
“Too hot.” The door was open and I was sitting on the steps, fanning myself with the February copy of Traverse Magazine, hoping for a breeze to flutter by.
“Mrr,” Eddie said.
“How goes it with the niece?” Julia asked.
“Eh.” I shrugged. Or I would have, but the movement might have caused me to overheat, so I mostly just moved my eyebrows. “She spent most of the weekend up at Aunt Frances and Otto’s place, hanging out in their air-conditioning.”
“Is she still on about her love quadrangle theory?”
“Far as I know.” And I still hadn’t talked to Ash about it, so perhaps it was just as well she was up the hill with a superior role model.
Julia languidly tapped at the keyboard. “Who else checked out books that last day Rex and Nicole were here? Other than Violet Mullaly.”
“There weren’t any others at that stop, remember? And . . .” I sighed. “I haven’t done anything about looking into Violet.” Which was something I really needed to do.
“Hmm.” Julia did some focused typing. “Let’s look at a broader list.”
“Of what?”
“People who checked out books in this part of the county. Just looking at the names might jog something in our memories. Turning over all stones, yes?” She entered the specifics into the system, then turned the laptop so we both could see. “We’ve stopped out here four times since Memorial Day. Here’s a side-by-side comparison.”
Though I was pretty sure it was going to be a wasted effort, I expended the energy to get up and study the list. Eddie, who was sleeping pancake-flat on the dashboard, ignored it.
After a few minutes, I shook my head. “There are some anomalies, but we know the why of most of them.”
Julia nodded. “Darla Holton and John Currie didn’t show up for the first July stop because they both had family in from all over the country and didn’t have time.”
“Mrs. Karden showed up in July but not in June because of her husband’s surgery.”
“Bob Balogh was only here in June because he and his wife are taking a road trip up the Alaska Highway.”
“And Mary Santos was only here this last time because she’s been working double shifts at the brewing company but finally got a day off.” I was once again reminded of how much we knew about our patrons, information that came easily on the bookmobile but would never have happened in the bricks and mortar library. It was just different out here.
“There are a couple of others,” Julia said. “But they’re all absences, not presences, if you know what I mean.”
Somehow, I did. “And it’s hard to see how an absence could have anything to do with a motive for murder.”
“Really?” Julia did the one-eyebrow thing. “I can see all sorts of reasons. A husband promising to pick up a book, but forgetting.” She tsk’ed. “A regular patron, instead of coming here, instead dallied with the mail carrier and the spouse caught them.”
I could tell she was winding up for a long litany of murder motives that she’d read or imagined or acted in. “Yes, fine, there are probably an infinite number of possibilities, but knowing our regular bookmobile patrons, and of who is missing, can you think of any realistic ones?”
“Well,” she said, “if you’re going to insist on reality, boring as it is, then no. I can’t think of anything.”
My brain circled around lazily. “So we have Violet, who was angry at both Rex and Nicole for checking out books she wanted, and . . .” I stopped. It was starting to feel like a story problem in algebra class. “So,” I said slowly, “could something possibly have happened when Nicole and Rex were here on the bookmobile that led to their murders?”