“She made little projects for years,” I said, “but when my uncle died, she got into it more seriously. Before long she was teaching wood shop at the high school.” Which was where Rafe had first learned his woodworking skills, something about which I reminded him every so often.
“Teaching?”
“Yep.” I grinned, enjoying myself. “These days she’s teaching woodworking classes at the community college in Petoskey and kind of tutoring some advanced students for the wooden boat–building school up in Cedarville.”
“Tutoring?” Otto asked faintly.
“She loves it—says it keeps her young, even though she spends a lot of hours doing it. And now she’s getting into wood turning. You should see some of her work—it’s just gorgeous. I keep telling her she should sell some pieces at the art shows in the summer, maybe even the art galleries, but she just keeps giving them away.”
“A professional craftswoman,” Otto muttered. “That figures.”
I glanced over at him. For a second, he’d sounded exactly like Ash had an hour earlier. “What do you mean?”
But he just sighed, said good night, and walked away.
* * *
“You know what would be great?” my newest bookmobile volunteer asked.
I glanced over at Lina Swinney. I’d met the young woman at the Lakeview Art Gallery a few months ago. We’d gotten along well, so when I’d heard over the Thanksgiving dinner table that she was taking a semester off from college to help her mom recover from a bout with pneumonia, I’d given her a call. She was glad to help out when she could, but it was another temporary solution to the volunteer problem, and I still needed a real answer.
“You’ve already had lots of ideas,” I told her. “My favorite is spinning Eddie’s loose hair into yarn and making a blanket of his own hair for him to shed on.”
Lina giggled and patted her own long honey-brown hair. “Do you think it would work?”
I had no idea. I liked reading about characters who knitted and weaved and sewed, but I’d never tried to do any of it myself. One of these days. Right after I finished reading Gravity’s Rainbow.
“What’s your new idea?” I asked. “If it has anything to do with finding a revenue source for the bookmobile operations, I’d be your willing servant for a year, minimum.”
I could feel her looking at me with a puzzled expression. Lina was bright and full of energy, but she and I did not share a sense of humor. Not that I was joking about the servant thing—not exactly.
We were headed into the next stop, the parking lot of a mom-and-pop grocery store. Three cars waited for us, even though we were a few minutes early.
Lina flung her arms out, gesturing at the bookmobile’s interior. “Look at all this! It’s a blank canvas waiting to be filled. It’s an undeveloped artistic endeavor. Just think what we could do with the ceiling and walls and even the bookshelves. And it’s the holidays, so it’s the perfect time to decorate this thing to the max.”
Making noncommittal noises, I parked the bookmobile. Lina released Eddie, and we started the stop’s setup routine. As we did the small amount of necessary business, Lina kept talking.
“Can’t you just see it?” She nodded at the shelves. “Wire garland, maybe, or at least crepe paper. We could put snowflakes up. Maybe get kids to make them.” Her face was getting a little flushed. “Or snowmen. Christmas stockings. Stars. We could turn this place into a traveling art show.”
“Mrr,” Eddie said.
I looked at him. He was sitting near Lina, on the foot-high carpet-covered shelf that ran along both sides of the bookmobile. It served both as seating and as a way for people like me to reach the highest shelf.
“What do you think he said?” Lina asked. “I think he’d like decorations.”
She was undoubtedly right, and what he’d like to do most would be to rip them to shreds. There was precedent for that kind of behavior.
“It’s a fun idea,” I said, “but I’m going to have to say no. I don’t have time to put that together.” My heart panged. Not to mention the fact that the library board might be looking for a buyer for my single-bookmobile fleet in less than two weeks.
“Maybe next year, though, right?” Lina asked.
I made a sideways sort of nod (which, if she’d been reading my mind, she would have read as “Not a chance”), opened the door, and welcomed people aboard. They were all regulars, and they pushed past me on their way to greet Eddie, who was holding court from the passenger-seat headrest.
Phyllis Chambers, recently retired from a state government job in Lansing and relocated Up North, got her Eddie fix and drifted toward me. I was sitting at the back desk, trying to get the chair to adjust to my height.
“Minnie,” Phyllis said, “do you have that gluten-free cookbook we were looking through last time, the slow-cooker one? I don’t see it now.”
“Let me see if it’s been checked out.” I tapped at the computer and frowned. “That’s weird. It says the book’s still here. Well, let’s take a look.” The 641s were on the right side of the aisle, about halfway down, at Minnie eye-height. I knew the book’s cover was dark, but it wasn’t there.
“Huh.” I stood there, hands on hips, staring at the spot where the book should have been.
I spent a lot of time making sure all the bookmobile books were shelved properly. As in a lot of time. Of course, someone could have walked off with the book, but theft was so unusual for our library that even Stephen didn’t see the need for the shrieking alarm devices that big-city libraries had. It was far more likely that someone had unintentionally taken it home, so with any luck, it would come back in a week or two.
“Here it is!” Phyllis held the book aloft. “It was in with the biographies.”
“Next to Julia Child?” I asked.
Phyllis laughed. “Harry Truman.”
“Maybe he took up cooking after the left the White House.” I beeped the book through the system. “Glad you found it.”
“I wasn’t really looking,” she said. “I just opened my eyes, and it was there. Wrong place, but I was looking at the right time.”
She nodded and went to the stairs. She might have said good-bye, but if she did, I didn’t hear, because her words were too loud in my ears.
Wrong place, but I was looking at the right time.
It had the ring of profundity, somehow. Was it possible that I was looking in the wrong place for Roger’s killer? Looking in the wrong place for the person who wanted to hurt Denise? Looking in the—
There was a sharp pain in my shin. “Ow!”
Eddie head butted me in the leg one more time, then sat and looked up at me. “Mrr.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” I ruffled up his fur. “Without a doubt, I am indeed looking for both answers and profound statements in the wrong places. What I should really be doing is asking you.”
“Mrr,” he said, and whacked me in the shin again.
* * *
By the time we returned to Chilson, Lina was ready to give up college, her future career, and her boyfriend, and do nothing but work on the bookmobile.
“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done,” she said.
I glanced at her, but it’s hard to judge facial expressions when you’re carrying milk crates full of books into a library’s basement. Though she sounded sincere, even Eddie could sound sincere when he really wanted something. “I’m glad you had a good time.” I said.
“It just seems so wrong that you can’t get the money to pay someone,” Lina said. “I mean, it would be part time—right?—so there wouldn’t be benefits or anything. How much could it really cost?”
Too much, according to Stephen. As we entered the room that held the bookmobile’s collection, I shied away from thinking about the odds of the bookmobile program ending altogether and said, “The library’s budget is tight.”