Or nothing. I looked around and saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Books, magazines, and CDs all tidy. Computers in place. All was well.
Except for me. I sat down hard into the driver’s seat and tried not to think dreary thoughts. I sighed. What I wanted was Eddie and the comfort of his purrs. Maybe even some of his cat hair.
I looked down and picked an Eddie hair off my sleeve and sat there, just holding it.
• • •
The art fair was over, the bookmobile was tucked away, and with the heavy cloud cover, darkness was coming on fast. I typically loved this time of night, just before it got truly dark, when the lights in people’s houses were glowing cozily through their windows and children were being called inside by moms and dads. Evening walks were my second-favorite kind, right after early morning walks, but that which I usually found calm and soothing was lost to me tonight, thanks to the things whirring around in my brain.
I was wandering along, my hands in my pockets, thinking about Carissa and my aunt’s boarders and how Tucker had ditched me to have dinner with Miller and one of the hospital’s biggest benefactors. I was thinking hard and not completely present in the world when a movement caught my attention.
A man was walking out of the shadows and into the light from the downtown streetlights that were shaped like old gas lamps. A man, shortish and rounded on his belly side but with a straight back, a man shaped like the letter D. Detective Devereaux.
Now what should I do? The detective and his partner and I were being mutually agreeable to each other at this point, but if Detective Devereaux and I started talking, he was bound to know something was up. He was a detective, after all. They were trained to sense these kinds of things, and I wasn’t ready to share what I knew about Hugo or Trock or Greg without proof. A feeling of ickiness probably wouldn’t count for much to them.
Besides, I didn’t want the detective to tell me to stay out of police business, and what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt me.
I slid sideways into the dark cast by the bank building, then eased even deeper into the darkness by edging toward the narrow walkway that led to a rear parking lot. Silently, holding my breath, I moved behind a tall container plant and waited until Devereaux walked past.
When he was gone, I waited. Waited a little longer. Then, just after I started to feel like an idiot for hiding behind a plant for no good reason, I slipped out of the alley and walked away.
Chapter 13
After dinner at a local sandwich shop, I wandered on home, trying hard not to think about Tucker. It was a pleasant walk punctuated by short stops to chat with numerous library patrons from the cane-carrying Mr. Goodwin to the cookie-baking Reva Shomin to the thriller-reading Jim Kittle.
“Must be the cool weather,” I told Eddie, tossing my backpack onto the dining table’s bench, sliding in next to it, and putting my feet up on the opposite bench. “It’s fooling people into thinking that it’s after Labor Day and the summer people are gone.”
Eddie was again on the houseboat’s small dashboard. In spite of the precariousness of his perch, it was now his favorite place for seagull spying.
At this particular moment, however, the only wildlife Eddie could possibly see was himself, since it was dark outside.
“I can’t believe you’re paying more attention to your reflection than to me.” I slid into a comfortable slouch. “Why is it people have cats, anyway? I feed you, water you, clean up your messes, wear your hair everywhere I go, and what do I get out of it?”
Eddie turned to look at me. Blinked, as if my appearance were a sudden surprise. Then he oozed off the dashboard, hit the floor, sauntered over to me, jumped up on my lap, and immediately started purring.
“Okay.” I patted his head. “You win. Purrs trump all that other stuff, hands down.” I gently picked up one of his front legs and we exchanged a paw-to-palm high five.
He purred a little louder.
There couldn’t be many cats who would let you handle them like that. Eddie didn’t care, however. I could stuff one of his back paws into his ear and he wouldn’t twitch.
I was starting to do just that when my cell phone came to life with a plain old electronic beeping noise, which meant it was a number to which I hadn’t assigned a ring tone. I dug through my backpack and turned it on. “Hello?”
“Minnie, Barb McCade here, and I have the answer to all your problems.”
“You’ve discovered a way to keep all of Eddie’s hairs attached to him? Outstanding.”
“Let me rephrase that. I have the answer to one particular problem.”
“Better than nothing. What do you have?”
“My mother has decided she’s coming north to spend the rest of the summer with us. Mom has more energy than I know what to do with, so I always have a project for her. She is practically giddy with excitement over the possibility of riding along with you on the bookmobile.”
Though I’d never asked, I assumed Barb was in her early fifties, making her mother seventy, at the absolute minimum, and probably older. “Well,” I said slowly, “that’s a wonderful offer…”
“Then we’re settled.” Barb’s voice held a tone that indicated a dusting off of hands after a job well done. “I’ll have Mom drop by the library to get an orientation. Would eleven work?”
I gave up. If Barb’s mother was completely unsuitable, I’d leave her behind at the library and abscond with one of the clerks. As plans go, I’d had worse.
“Of course,” I said to Eddie as I thumbed off the phone, “maybe there’s a good reason Barb is so eager to get rid of her mother.” Frightening images of harridans and shrews pinged into my brain.
Eddie tipped his head up and around so that he was looking at me almost upside down.
“Mrr,” he said.
• • •
The next morning I got up bright and early. That is, if eight thirty on a Sunday morning can be considered early, which I did, in spite of the admonitions of my mother all through my youth. It was a known fact that you weren’t a slug on a Sunday morning until the hour hit the double-digit range.
“Comparatively,” I told Eddie, “half past eight is practically dawn.”
The Eddie-sized lump that was under the comforter didn’t say anything. I leaned close to make sure he was still breathing, then slid out. The poor boy needed his sleep, after all. Yesterday he’d barely had eighteen hours.
I was halfway through a bowl of cereal when my cell rang the Scrubs theme song. Tucker. I would have asked Eddie if I should answer it, but I was in the kitchen and he was still on the bed. I would have flipped a coin, but I didn’t have one handy.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to him, but if he was going to break up with me, I might as well get it over with now. That way I could metaphorically dissect him that night with Kristen.
“Hey,” I said into the phone.
“Hey yourself,” he said. “First off, I want to apologize for yesterday. I was being an inconsiderate jerk and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have ignored you like that when Miller and I were talking and I shouldn’t have left you to have dinner with him and that donor.”
Relief sang through my bones, but I pushed it down. I wanted answers. “If you know you shouldn’t have, then why did you?”
I heard him swallow. “Because I’m stupid.”
Don’t laugh, I told myself. Don’t laugh. “Probably,” I said. “But I’d like a little more detail.”
His sigh gusted into the phone. “Because I’m still new at the hospital. I’ve worked so hard for so long to get this kind of job and I’m worried that if I don’t think ‘hospital’ twenty-four-seven that I won’t be taken seriously.” He stopped. “Minnie, are you still there? What are you doing?”