“She’s added books,” I said to Rafe, who frowned. Clearly, he didn’t understand. “In the living room. There are books mixed in with the board games and jigsaw puzzles.”
Rafe did the one eyebrow thing. “You’re complaining because there are books on the bookshelves? What kind of librarian are you?”
“The kind with an aunt who is having trouble letting go of the boardinghouse.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “You know what you should do, right?”
“Stay out of it.”
“And are you going to do that?”
I grinned. “Not a chance.”
* * *
“What’s that noise?” Julia asked.
As the bookmobile was, at that point, driving over an asphalt road in need of repair, I couldn’t hear much over the protestations of the springs and shocks and struts. Which were very expensive to repair. I closed my mind to the potential dollar signs and tried to listen for what Julia was hearing, because in the months she’d spent on the bookmobile, never once had she shown any evidence toward mechanical aptitude.
“What noise?” I asked. “All I hear are”—I paused to navigate around a particularly large pothole—“the normal abnormal road noises.”
“I think it’s him.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Julia pointing a dramatic finger at the cat carrier.
“What’s he doing? Shredding his cozy pink blanket? Kicking the door in hopes of escape? Or has his snoring managed to reach a new level?”
“Worse,” Julia said. “Don’t you hear it?”
And then, just as I flicked the turn signal to enter a narrow driveway, I did hear the unmistakable noise of my cat in the early stages of hacking up a hairball and I knew from experience that things would soon get ugly.
“Hang on, Eddie,” I called. “We’re almost there and—”
“Oh, ew,” Julia said, and I inwardly cringed at the noise emanating from the carrier.
“Sorry.” I pulled into the driveway and braked us all to a stop. “You go in. I’ll clean up the mess.”
But Julia was frowning and not moving. “Whose is that?” She nodded at the battered vehicle parked to the side, its nose facing us. “Rupert drives an SUV.”
We were stopping at the Wileys’ because right before his heart surgery, Rupert had stopped at the library to order a stack of books, asking that we deliver them a week afterward. “I’ll be ready,” he’d said. “My wife will say I shouldn’t be picking up something that heavy, but the doctor says it should be fine.”
Since I hadn’t wanted to get in the middle of a spousal argument, even between the very happily married Ann Marie and Rupert, I’d erred on the side of caution and told Rupert the bookmobile schedule would send us out there two weeks after his surgery, and if he didn’t like that, then he should check out some extra books right then. Rupert had laughed his great big laugh, told me to bring a copy of The Historian when we showed up, and now here we were, with a big fat pile of books.
But the cars in the driveway didn’t interest me nearly as much as a fast cleanup of Eddie’s carrier. Luckily, the mess was small and easy to take care of with a couple of paper towels, and in moments both Julia and I were standing on the front porch of the Wileys’ newish retirement home, our arms piled high with books.
“There you are,” Ann Marie said, ushering us inside. “And none too soon. This old codger is driving me nuts. A copy of David Copperfield is just the ticket to keep him quiet.”
“If the bookmobile had stopped by last week like I wanted,” Rupert said from the living room’s recliner, “I would have been quiet days ago.”
His wife sighed so dramatically that Julia gave a nod of approval. “A week ago,” Ann Marie said, “you couldn’t lift a water glass. How do you think you could have held up one of those big fat books you like so much?”
From Julia’s smile of delight, it was clear she was enjoying the argument. I, however, wanted to make sure the teasing didn’t devolve into something nastier. “Whose car is that?” I asked, tipping my head to the front door.
“Courtney’s,” Ann Marie said, since Rupert was busy paging through the top book of Julia’s stack, already deaf to what was going on about him. “Rupert’s home health care aide. A nurse stops by every couple of days, but we hired a little extra help for a few weeks, until he gets on his feet again.”
“My feet work just fine,” Rupert muttered as he switched from Middlemarch to The Goldfinch.
“Feet, yes. The rest of you? Not so much.” His wife crossed her arms. “Remember what happened two days ago with the peanut butter sandwich?”
As Julia made encouraging tell-me-more noises, I stuck my thumb in the direction of the kitchen and mouthed, “Bathroom?”
Ann Marie nodded, and I left Julia alone with the Wileys. If the story was good, she’d tell me later, and her recounting would only improve it. Change it, maybe, since Julia never let the strict truth get in the way of a good story, but I’d learned to live with that.
I crossed the formal dining room and saw the back of a thin woman I assumed was Courtney sitting at the oak kitchen table. “Hello,” I said cheerfully.
At the sound of my voice, she jumped sky high. Her arm swiped across the table and medications skittered left and right and everywhere, bouncing like tiny balls.
“Oh! Oh!” She lunged to catch what she could, but only made things worse as she created an additional ripple of pill movement.
“I am so sorry.” I hurried toward the corner of the room, where I’d seen a small disk roll underneath a plant stand. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m from the bookmobile and wanted to use the bathroom.”
“It’s okay,” Courtney said, although from her tone of voice, it was anything but.
Well, I could understand that. I’d just created a huge mess for her, and with a job like hers, she was probably on a tight schedule. “Here, let me help.” I deposited a small handful of pills on the table and dropped onto my knees to continue the search.
“Thanks,” she said, and the second time I handed over a colorful heap, I got a small smile.
She was younger than I’d first thought, probably in her early twenties. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, accentuating her sharp cheekbones and square forehead. “It’s just that it takes me so long to count out a week of pills.” She nodded at the multi-compartmented box on the table. “I’m not that great with numbers, my boyfriend says I have numerical dyslexia, so I triple-check everything.”
And I could certainly understand that, too. Despite the fact I was the offspring of an engineer father and the sister of an engineer brother, math had never been my strong suit. I grinned and gave her a final handful of medications. “I feel your pain. I didn’t become a librarian just because I love books.”
Courtney sort of smiled. “Good to know I’m not the only one.”
“You are so not alone. And sometimes I even wonder about my librarian career choice.” I didn’t, not ever, but she was looking uncomfortable, and when that happens, I often start babbling in a regrettable way. “Sometimes I think about other things I could do. Open a store, or become a police officer, for instance, because I think they need the help. The murder of Rex Stuhler, you heard about that? Well, there are things they should be considering and—” I stopped short.
Courtney looked up from her pill counting. “What’s the matter?”
Out the kitchen window, I’d caught a glimpse of Eddie, who I shouldn’t have been able to see, because for me to see him, he’d have to be perched on the windowsill of the side door, which wasn’t wide enough to hold him. “Nothing,” I said, because he’d disappeared—jumped or fallen?—and explaining Eddie would have taken far more time than either of us had.