I started to explain the short story, but my cat yawned at me. “Fine,” I said, sitting back. “I can take a hint. What should we talk about instead?” I hummed a few nonsense notes. Eddie looked at me sideways, then closed his eyes.
The perfect topic presented itself. “I know. Let’s discuss the rising price of cat food. It’s going up fast, so you might want to consider getting a job.”
The idea of Eddie becoming part of our household revenue stream amused me, and I considered the possibilities. What could a cat do to earn money? The most likely possibility was pest control, but since Eddie hadn’t seemed the least bit inclined to do anything about Aunt Frances’s basement mouse problem, why would he do the job at someone else’s house?
“I’ll take any suggestions,” I said.
One feline eye opened, then it shut again.
Right. I was on my own. What else could Eddie do to earn a paycheck? I tapped the steering wheel and tried to think. Bookmobile-goers of all ages seemed to like him, but the idea of renting him out was just too weird. And although he was photogenic, since there were so many free pictures of cats available on the Internet, I couldn’t see much of a market for Eddie photos.
“Too bad you don’t really talk,” I said. “Now, that would make us some money. Just think if—”
Bang!
I sat up straight, feeling a tingle crawl up the back of my neck. “That one was close,” I said, staring out the window, looking up into the woods. Every hunter was required by law to wear bright orange, but I couldn’t see a hint of it anywhere.
I’d heard there was a law about how far you had to be from a house to shoot, but I had no idea whether that law included other kinds of buildings. Or how much time was spent enforcing the law.
“It was probably a lot farther away than it seemed,” I murmured. At least I hoped so. While my knowledge about firearms was limited, I had a pretty good idea that the bookmobile’s walls wouldn’t be able to stop a speeding bullet.
“Mrrr.”
I looked at Eddie, trying to decide if he’d been agreeing or disagreeing, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me. He was on his feet, pacing around the interior of the cat carrier like a caged tiger.
“What’s the matter, pal?” An agitated Eddie wasn’t a good thing. Because if he was upset, the next thing he was likely to do was—
“MMRR!”
My ears tried to plug themselves, but, as usual, it didn’t work. The howl of an agitated Eddie could probably pierce the thickest sound protection, anyway. Maybe the muffs that airport workers use would work, but I doubted it. His mouth started to open again, and this time I slapped my hands over my ears.
“MMRR!”
I leaned over the console and unlatched the carrier’s door. “Are you okay? You’re not sick, are you?”
He shouldered the door open, jumped onto the passenger’s seat and then up onto the wide dashboard. “Mrrr! Mrr! Mrr!”
“Hey, come on.” I half stood to pet him. “What’s wrong?” I was tempted to ask him if Timmy had fallen down the well, but figured he wouldn’t get the reference to the old Lassie shows.
“Mrr,” he said. “Mrr!” He pulled out of my reach and paced the length of the dashboard.
I eyed the paw prints he was leaving behind. “I cleaned the dash with that special spray just last week, you know.”
“Mrr!” Eddie pawed at the windshield, scraping at it, really, with his claws extended. He howled and he whined and he pushed the side of his face against the glass, leaving marks that would be hard for a person like me, who had distance-challenged arms, to clean without crawling up onto the dashboard itself.
“Get down from there.” I grabbed at Eddie’s back end and gently pulled him toward me. “What is with you? You’ve never acted this way.” He’d done a thousand other odd and unusual things, but crawling up on the bookmobile dashboard and howling out his little kitty lungs was not one of them.
“I’m glad you weren’t acting like this in front of Roger,” I told him. “Talk about bad first impressions. So far he seems to like you and—”
And then I realized that Roger had been gone for a long time. If he didn’t get back soon, we’d risk being late for the next stop. I glanced at the dashboard clock, but couldn’t remember what time he’d left. It had been a while, though, and I’d been in that gas station on a regular basis since starting up the bookmobile; their sandwich offerings weren’t so numerous that it would take long to make a decision.
“Ham, turkey, or egg salad,” I told Eddie. “Sometimes roast beef.”
“MRRR!” Eddie slid out of my hands and started whacking the top of his head against the windshield. It made a loud and hollow thumping noise that made the inside of my skin cringe.
“Cut it out already, will you?” I grabbed for my cat, but he whipped out of my reach and kept bonking his head. “What is your deal? Have you bonded with Roger so quickly that you’re lost without him? I didn’t know I could be so easily replaced.”
Eddie glanced over his shoulder and stared me straight in the eye. “MMMRR!”
I glared back. “Fine. I’ll go see what’s keeping your new best friend. I’m sure he just got talking with the guy running the cash register.”
“Mrr.” Eddie jumped down to the passenger’s seat and sat, prim and proper and not looking at all like a cat who’d been beating his skull against thick glass.
I zipped up my coat, muttering about manipulative cats and their enabling humans. Shutting and locking the door behind me, however, I came to the not-so-profound realization that the term “manipulative cat” was redundant. “They’re all manipulative,” I said. Which made me grin, for some reason. I waved at Eddie, who opened his mouth in an “Mrr,” that I couldn’t hear, and trudged my way through snow to the front of the store.
Inside, I saw no sign of Roger.
“Hey,” said the thirtyish guy behind the counter. “Need something else?” He picked up his fountain soda, which was large enough to hydrate a family of nine, and slurped.
“Looking for Roger,” I said. “He came in after me. Brown Carhartt jacket, jeans, work boots.”
The guy looked at me like I was an idiot. “He left five minutes ago. Bought an egg-salad sandwich and a bag of chips, then left.”
This wasn’t making sense. “He didn’t come out to the bookmobile. You’re sure he’s not in the bathroom?”
“No way. He left out the front door. I saw him.”
Not that I thought the guy was lying, but maybe he’d been distracted by a phone call or another customer. “Do you mind if I check anyway?”
The guy shrugged. “I’m telling you—he’s not there.”
And he wasn’t. Not in the men’s room and not in the women’s. He also wasn’t in the back room (I made the counter guy look).
I stood in the middle of the store, turning in a small circle. “Did anyone else stop?” From where the bookmobile was parked, I hadn’t been able to see the traffic. I couldn’t think of any reason for Roger to leave with someone else and abandon me, but it was the only explanation I could come up with.
Counter Guy shrugged. “An SUV with a couple of hunters from downstate stopped for gas, and an old couple in a beater sedan came in to get some food. Other than that, there’s been nobody.”
Then where the heck was he? I wanted to stamp my foot, but made a grunting noise instead.
The counter guy smirked. “Maybe he’s got early Alzheimer’s or something. Maybe he got lost getting back to your rig.”
I started to say that was ridiculous, but I stopped myself before getting further than “That’s ridic—” Because maybe it wasn’t. After all, I hardly knew the man. You’d have thought Denise would have said something if Roger had that sort of issue, but who knew?