But he didn’t come running. Fear clutched at my heart and a thousand scenarios ran through my head. I pushed them all away as impossible, but . . . where was he?
“Mrr,” came a soft noise.
My tight throat released itself. Worry vanished and was immediately replaced by irritation. “What are you doing down there?” I asked, because the noise had come from the doorway. Steps led from the door up into the bookmobile, and as I drew near, I saw that Eddie had compressed himself into the corner of the bottom step, leaving only his dark fur visible to the naked eye, which was why we hadn’t noticed him down there.
“Come on up, buddy,” I said encouragingly, but he didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t even look up at me. “Are you okay?” Still nothing. I moved down a step. “Say something. Anything would be fine.” He didn’t say a word. Concern wormed its way into my heart, but I summoned my inner Aunt Frances—she of “why worry?”—and banished my fear. Or most of it.
“Eddie,” I murmured, moving down another step. “Talk to me. Do I need to take you to Doctor Joe? If you’re sick, I’ll take care of you, you know I will. I’ll hold your kitty head if you need to . . . you know. I’ll figure out a way to give you pills”—something that had been problematic in the past, but Rafe would help—“and I’ll buy whatever expensive cat food you need. Just talk to me.”
“Mrr,” he said, but it was the weakest “Mrr” I’d ever heard from him.
“Maybe he needs some fresh air,” Julia said. “Maybe in the carrier he was breathing exhaust fumes and they got to him.”
The bookmobile had a far more stringent maintenance schedule than my personal vehicle did, so Julia’s suggestion was unlikely. But it was also possible, and since I didn’t have any better ideas, I unlatched the outside door, and pushed it outward.
Before the door was open three inches, Eddie had hurled himself outside, zooming like a black-and-white arrow.
“Eddie!” I yelled, but he paid absolutely no attention to me and continued straight ahead, toward the lake.
“He’ll be fine,” Julia said, laughing. “See? He did just need some fresh air.”
I sighed and we both jogged after my cat. There had been one or two occasions in the past when Eddie had escaped, but lately he’d been content to stay in the bookmobile. “Stupid cat,” I muttered.
“Au contraire,” Julia said. “It’s a beautiful day. Look at that sky, those clouds, and this adorable little lake, whose name escapes me. Mr. Ed has given us this moment, so let’s give ourselves permission to enjoy the opportunity.”
I glanced at the sky. It was pretty, a gorgeous blue, with fluffy white clouds so perfect they could have been painted on the set of a theater’s stage.
“Mrr!” Eddie yelled, and I ran ahead of Julia.
“Where are you, buddy?” The park had a small boat launch and a beach area, but Eddie wasn’t on either the dock or the sand. He was off to the left, rustling around in the shrubbery.
If he’d been about to hack up a hairball, I was just as glad he’d chosen the great outdoors, but his behavior wasn’t of the about-to-get-sick variety.
“Mrr!”
With Julia right behind, I elbowed my way through a jungle of shrubbery, following the direction of his voice, which had advanced to an insistent “Mrr! Mrr! Mrr!”
“We’re coming, Eddie,” I called. “Hang on, bud, we’re almost there, okay?” Where “there” was, I had no idea, but we were getting closer. “Just a few more ‘mrrs’ and we’ll be with you, and—”
I stopped so fast that Julia bumped into me.
“What?” she asked. “Why did you stop?”
But I couldn’t answer her. Instead, I pointed to what Eddie had found, half in and half out of the water. Or more accurately, who he’d found. Because Eddie was sitting next to the unmoving body of a woman in a one-piece bathing suit, a redheaded woman about forty years old, a woman we knew.
Julia gasped a huge breath. “Oh, no . . . oh, no. It’s Nicole. What should we do?”
I was already fumbling for my phone to call 911, but there was nothing anyone could do, because she was dead.
Chapter 11
A few hours later, Rafe held me tight, murmuring soft words of love, support, and calm. When I thought I would be able to stand up on my own, I took a deep breath and pulled away from his warmth. This should have been okay, because the weather had taken a hard turn toward the hot and humid, but even though my skin was pleased to be a teensy bit cooler, the rest of me missed him very much.
As Julia and I had waited for the EMT and law enforcement to show up, I’d texted Rafe that I’d be late for dinner because there’d been a horrible accident, that a woman had died, and that I knew her.
Now I sighed. “It was Nicole Price,” I said.
“How did you know her?” Rafe took my hand and led me to a nearby chair, a wicker one on the porch, since the front porch was as far as I’d made it before I’d started crying into his shoulder. “The name isn’t familiar,” he said.
“No, it wouldn’t be.” I sat, making the wicker creak. “She was summer only, a high school teacher from downstate. Her family owns a hunting cabin near that little lake”—whose name neither Julia nor I could remember but had been told by an EMT it was Stump Lake—“and Nicole spent her summers up here. I only knew her from the bookmobile.”
Rafe pulled a chair up close to mine. “Was she married? Kids?”
“Married,” I said. “Her husband’s name is . . .” I looked at the ceiling, which was painted a slightly greenish blue, and tried to remember. “Dominic. Dom, she called him. He comes up most weekends.”
“Kids?”
I shook my head. “No.” At least I didn’t think so, because never once in any of her trips to the bookmobile had Nicole ever mentioned any offspring.
Rafe hitched his chair closer and held my hand. “What was she like?”
“She was . . .” I let the sentence wander off as I thought about the question. Nicole hadn’t been chatty. She hadn’t talked much about anything, and hardly at all about herself. Even still, a few things had leaked out. “She loved it up here. One of her favorite things was to swim in the lake.”
I closed my eyes against the memory of Nicole’s long hair spread over her shoulders like a dark red fan, but the image didn’t go away. Then I remembered Eddie bumping up against my shin as I called 911, and remembered his purring, and the sharp pain eased to a dull ache.
“Nicole,” I said, thinking back to the few conversations we’d shared, “liked coffee and ice cream. She was left-handed. She loved a good thunderstorm. She liked quirky novels. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was her favorite, but she was a big fan of A Gentleman in Moscow and anything by Alexander McCall Smith. And I introduced her to Jodi Taylor’s books.” I smiled, remembering. She’d loved the Chronicles of St. Mary’s so much that she’d sent me a Christmas card last year.
“So that was where she used to swim?” Rafe asked. “At that little park? You don’t have to answer,” he added quickly, “if you don’t want to talk about it.”
“No, it’s okay.” And, I discovered a second later, it actually was. “Yes, that was her usual swimming spot. Although I thought her normal time was first thing in the morning. And I do mean first thing. She said she liked being out alone, before anyone else messed up the water.”
I frowned, thinking about that. Nicole always went for morning swims. Always. So why had she been out there in the afternoon? And . . . I suddenly felt a shiver at the back of my brain. Both Rex and Nicole had been on the bookmobile that Thursday before the Fourth of July, and now they were both dead. Tragic coincidence? Or could Nicole’s death be related to Rex’s murder?