Worse, Stephen was right. The library simply could not operate in the red. There was some money tucked away, but that was for emergencies, not regular operations. I leaned forward and put my elbows on the desk, interlocking my fingers loosely, doing my best to project confidence and wisdom.
Well, confidence, anyway.
“I’ll find the money,” I promised. “Give me a few more weeks. As you can see from my e-mail, there are a number of possibilities.” Not good ones, but still. And there was always the option of collecting returnable soda cans for the ten-cent deposit. And holding bake sales. Lots of them.
Stephen sighed. “You’re assuming a best-case scenario, and that’s a dangerous expectation.”
Once again, he was right. I took a calming breath, then started to expand on the funding possibilities. Somewhere out there, there had to be a foundation that would like nothing better than to support a bookmobile program. All I had to do was find it. “I have contacts in library systems across the country, and with—”
Stephen held out a hand. “I’ve stated my reservations. That said, the current budget amounts show approximately six months of funding for the bookmobile. I see no reason why operations can’t continue for that length of time.”
“You . . . don’t?” I blinked. “Thanks, Stephen, I really think—”
“I will also notify the board of my concerns. You can be sure that I won’t be the only one scrutinizing the monthly expenditures.”
I clutched at that a little, but only for a moment. “Don’t worry.” I smiled, happy once again. “It’ll all turn out okay.”
He looked at me straight on. “I certainly hope so.”
A small piece of my ancient lizard brain reared up, shrieking with fear, but I told it to hush and went on smiling. “Six months from now, I’m sure something will have turned up.”
“I certainly hope so.” Stephen folded up my e-mail into small squares and tucked it into his shirt pocket. “Because when the bookmobile budget runs out of gas, so does the bookmobile.” Chuckling to himself, he left my office and went up the stairs, heading to his office aerie.
“Very funny,” I said to the wake of his laughter. Stephen occasionally smiled, but he rarely laughed, and the fact that he had laughed worried me, because what it usually meant was that someone was about to get in trouble.
I leaned back in my chair to think, and, in doing so, I dislodged an Eddie hair that had been on my jacket sleeve. It wafted into the air, spun about a few times lazily—lazy? How appropriate!—and eventually dropped in the direction of the floor.
That’s when the penny, in the form of displaced Eddie fur, finally dropped.
Stephen knew about Eddie. Someone had told, and he was chuckling to himself, enjoying the two weeks until the next board meeting, when he would, without a doubt, recommend that I be fired.
“Stop worrying,” I said out loud. But I didn’t quite persuade myself that things would be okay. Stronger measures were in order, and I knew just how to get them.
I pulled my computer keyboard close, typed a quick e-mail with the words Stephen Strikes Again in the subject line, added two names, and hit the SEND button. I grabbed my coffee mug and made a beeline for the break room.
* * *
My best library friends, Holly Terpening, a part-time clerk, and Josh Hadden, the IT department, were waiting for me. Josh was a little younger than I was and Holly a little older, but the three of us had been hired about the same time, and that fact alone had cemented our work relationship into solid friendship.
Soon after our hire dates, we’d developed a pact. We would always support each other after a one-on-one with Stephen. For years I’d shored up Holly and/or Josh, but these days it was different.
“Ever since the bookmobile, I’m his favorite target,” I muttered, leaning back against the countertop.
“Works for me,” Josh said cheerfully. “He hasn’t complained about the network in months, so thanks, Minnie.”
Holly skewered him with a Mom Look. Her two smallish children had given her the skills to perfect that expression, and she used it both wisely and well. “Josh, we’re supposed to be helping, remember?” A strand of her brown hair had escaped her ponytail, and she pushed it back behind her ear.
“Ah, Minnie knows I’m joking.” He pulled a can of soda out of his cargo pants and handed it to me.
Popping the top, I thanked him and said, “I do know you’re joking. But it would help if we had a hand signal.”
I’d developed a thick skin at a young age, thanks to my efficient stature and my name (though if I never heard another Mini Minnie joke again, I would be okay with that), and had never been hesitant about going to Stephen with issues other library employees would have quailed at. As a matter of fact, I’d become such a Stephen expert that everyone now begged me to take things to the boss.
But I was no longer the golden girl. I was turning into the nearest dog to kick. Or so to speak. Because not even Stephen would kick a dog, would he?
I frowned and considered the question.
Nah. Stephen could be a royal pain in the patootie, but he wasn’t that bad.
“Here.” Holly sat at the table and reached for a plastic container. “I made a bunch last night for Anna’s kindergarten class and decided the kids didn’t need all of them.”
Holly’s chocolate-chip cookies were the stuff of legend. I pulled out a chair to sit, took one, hesitated, then took another one. “Thanks. You guys are the best.”
“Yeah, we know.” Josh thumped into a chair and reached out for a cookie. “So, what was the deal today? Too many kids in the library again? He hates that.”
Which wasn’t true—not exactly. What Stephen hated were the crumbs and dirt small children seem to inevitably leave behind. Maybe in a few more years, when the recently renovated building got a little more wear and tear, he’d relax a little. Probably not, but maybe.
I told them about his comment about the greater good.
“Seriously?” Holly looked at me over the top of her coffee mug. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”
“Well.” I shrugged. “He’s right.”
Josh snorted. “Quit being so nice, Minnie. The only thing he’s right about is . . .” With a dramatic flourish, he put his hand to his forehead and fake concentrated. “Huh. Nothing that I can think of.”
“A year ago, I did tell him I’d find operations money,” I reminded my friends. “Only Stan Larabee died and that ended that.” Now, I could see that it had been a mistake to put all my bookmobile funding eggs into a basket labeled STAN, and then a second basket labeled GRANT THAT WILL SOLVE YOUR FINANCIAL PROBLEMS FOR AT LEAST A YEAR, but there wasn’t much I could do about it at this point other than to keep searching for new grant possibilities.
I averted my mind from my two lost sources of funding. “Anyway,” I said, “we can’t take money out of the library’s regular budget to fund the bookmobile. That wouldn’t be right.”
“What’s not right,” Holly said, “is that Stephen isn’t supporting the best thing that’s happened to this library in years.”
I grinned. “You mean besides the millage that paid for the renovation of this gorgeous building?”
Holly waved away the multimillion-dollar project. “That’s different. That’s typical Chilson show-off stuff. We have to have a library that’s better than everybody else’s. So of course that millage passed the first time around; we couldn’t let Petoskey have a nicer library than we do.”