My cat was supremely uninterested in my culinary concerns. He was far more interested in planning his jump to the boat’s dashboard, where he would have an excellent view of the seagulls wheeling about over the lake’s waving waters.
Janay Lake, twenty miles long, was connected to the mass of Lake Michigan by a narrow channel that was just out of sight. Chilson had come into being because back in the mid-to-late 1800s, it had been a transportation hub for logging, favored both for its natural harbor and for the railroad that skimmed around the north shore.
“Did you know that Alfred Chilson was the first postmaster?” I asked Eddie. “That’s where the town got its name.”
Eddie didn’t seem to care about this, either. His body made a long arc in the air and he hit the deck.
“Need something to do?” I asked, getting up from the dining booth. After leaving Aunt Frances, I’d gone back to the library and worked a little longer. By the time I was done, it was far too late to cook anything—how unexpected!—so I’d picked up dinner at the local Chinese-Thai place and patted myself on the back for supporting the local economy.
I ran the water warm and started washing my minimalist dishes. “It was a little creepy,” I said, “being in the library when everyone was gone.” I’d jumped every time the ventilation system had kicked in. “I ended up locking my office door. I felt silly, but you won’t tell anyone, will you?”
“Mrr,” Eddie said.
“And if I’m jumpy about being in the library, I bet other people will be, too.” And that couldn’t be allowed to happen. Libraries were safe places. Havens. Harbors. Refuges. Places to learn. Repositories of knowledge. Locations of possible wisdom. Knowing that the Chilson library—my library—had been violated was an affront to everything I believed in.
Right then and there, I vowed to do whatever I could to help the police find Andrea’s killer and to repair any and all damage to my library’s reputation.
“Mrr.”
That time his voice sounded a little too close. I turned.
“Hey!” I flicked soap suds at him. “Get off the counter! You know that’s not allowed, at least not when I’m home. What are you thinking?”
“Mrr.” He chin-rubbed the corner of the knife block—which had been a joke gift from Kristen, because she’d put bookmarks into the slots instead of the utensils for which it had been designed—one more time and jumped off the countertop.
“Cats,” I muttered, or tried to, because a yawn interrupted the single syllable, turning it into something that sounded more like, “Caaa.”
“Mrr,” Eddie said from the top of the short flight of stairs that led to the bedroom.
“Hold your little kitty horses,” I said. “Humans brush their teeth before going to bed.” I’d heard of people brushing the teeth of their pets, but unless Eddie developed a health problem that threatened to shorten his life, I wasn’t ready to try.
In short order, I was sliding between the sheets. “What do you think?” I asked. Eddie was walking around me, clearly trying to decide which of my body parts he wanted to cut off the circulation to the most. “Jane Austen, Tess Gerritsen, or L. A. Meyer?”
He flopped down on the bed, rested his chin on my right hip, and started purring.
“You know,” I said through another yawn, “you could be right. It would probably fall on my face, smashing some pages in the process, and that’s never—”
Eddie reached out and put his front paw across my lips.
“Eww.” I turned my head. “I know where that paw has been.”
“Mrr,” he said firmly.
“Fine.” I turned off the light and rolled onto my side. Eddie restarted his purr and, despite the morning’s event, I fell into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter 3
The next morning was a bookmobile day—or, more accurately, thanks to my current schedule, a bookmobile three-quarters of a day—and I shut myself up in my office to steam through as much work as I could before hightailing it for Tonedagana County’s lake-strewn, rolling countryside. I even filled my favorite Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services coffee mug with Kelsey Coffee rather than waiting for a fresh pot to brew.
“Brave woman,” Josh said, as I headed back to my computer. “Are you brave enough to send your director application to the board?”
“Working on it,” I said over my shoulder. Sort of.
Back at my desk, I had just set my hands to the keyboard when my phone rang. I was tempted to ignore it. There were few phone calls I got these days that lasted less than fifteen minutes, and time was a-wasting, but my politeness reflex kicked in (thanks so much, Mom) and I picked up the receiver.
“Ms. Hamilton?” asked a warm male voice.
I leaned back, smiling. “Deputy Wolverson. How may I help you this morning?”
“I’m feeling stressed and overworked,” he said. “No, hang on. It’s you that’s feeling stressed and overworked, isn’t it? Either way, I think it would benefit both of us to take the day off and do as little as possible.”
Since I could hear office noises in his background, I knew he was at work and wasn’t about to run off into the sunset with me, but the idea was interesting. “Sounds good,” I said. “How about I pick you up in the bookmobile in two hours? No one will know that I’m not making my appointed rounds.”
“Isn’t that the post office?”
“We have a lot in common.”
He laughed. “I bet you go out in weather the mail carriers wouldn’t touch. But believe it or not, I didn’t call to entice you into an unplanned play day.”
“Well, rats. I’d already shut down my computer,” I said, expecting him to laugh again, and was surprised when he didn’t.
“Sorry.” His voice was sliding into formal cop mode. This was not a deeper voice, but was slower, measured, with sentences that were simple and direct. I’d been told that he’d had a severe stuttering issue as a kid, but I’d never detected a trace of it. “The city police chief,” he said, “has contacted Andrea Vennard’s family. Her name is being released to the press.”
My emotions sagged. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“No problem.”
“Does this mean I’m free to talk about this?”
“Sure,” he said.
I perked up a little; I’d detected a definite move out of cop speak. “Do you have any idea what happened?”
“Minnie . . .”
“I know, I know. You can’t talk about an active investigation.” I thought a moment. “How about this: Is it safe to be alone in the library late at night?” It hadn’t been until last night, when I was working late, that I’d thought about the bad guy coming back. Something else I wasn’t going to tell my mother.
“Safe?” he repeated. “Is anywhere truly safe?”
“Ash . . .”
“I know,” he said. “Most people are good folks, and I shouldn’t assume that bad guys lurk behind every corner.”
It was a conversation that, in the short time we’d been together, we’d already had multiple times.
“Exactly,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean the bad guys aren’t out there,” he pointed out.
“But it also means the vast majority of the corners don’t have bad guys anywhere close by.”
Ash was silent for moment, then said, “But there was a bad guy, Minnie. And he was in your library.”
Yes, he had been. And how icky did that make me feel? Very. “I know.”
After a few beats, he said, “Take care, Minnie. You set for tomorrow morning?”
“Bright and early. And, Ash? Thanks for caring.”
“No problem, ma’am,” he said. “You have a good day, now.”
Smiling, I hung up the phone and picked up my empty coffee mug. How I’d managed to down a full mug of Kelsey’s brew in such a short time, I wasn’t sure.