A Troubling Tail

Book 11: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery

by Laurie Cass

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery; Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Animal Cozy Mysteries; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

When the owner of a local candy store is murdered, librarian Minnie Hamilton and her rescue cat, Eddie, prepare to find the sweet spot to solve a crime.

The charming town of Chilson, Michigan, is beautiful in the spring, and the bookmobile is delivering great reads far and wide on one of the first warm days of the year. But a chill sweeps through when they discover that one of their favorite patrons, the owner of Henika’s Candy Emporium, has been found murdered. Although Minnie can’t understand who could have had a motive to murder such a kind man, she decides that the sticky problem isn’t hers to solve.

However, when rumors start flying around town and the police have no leads, Minnie decides to throw her investigative hat into the ring. The more Minnie investigates, the less certain she is that the victim’s past is as wholesome as his reputation. But Minnie has plenty of experience unearthing inconvenient truths, and she and Eddie won’t rest until they determine how the victim met his bitter end.

Release date: August 1, 2023

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 368

Sample

Chapter 1

It was the perfect spring day. After an interminable series of dark and dreary weeks that had brought a staggering amount of slushy rain, instilling thoughts of emigration in the hearts of many northwest lower Michigan residents, the thick cloud cover had blown off to reveal that the sun was indeed still part of our solar system.

I peered over the bookmobile's steering wheel, looking through the windshield, drinking in the deep blue sky and smiling contentedly.

It was May. The month when the trees would leaf out in full, transforming the world. When the hillsides would be covered in wildflowers. When I'd be able to take the thick mittens out of my coat pockets and push my boots to the back of the hall closet. When I could consider moving the ice scraper from the floor of my car's back seat to the trunk. When-

"Phoenix," my companion said.

I glanced over at Julia Beaton, currently a part-time bookmobile clerk but a former full-time actor. Julia had zoomed off to the bright lights of New York City immediately after high school. Though her modeling career hadn't taken off as she'd hoped, her fallback career of acting had. She, with her husband in tow, had returned to Chilson with a suitcase full of Tony Awards when the roles dried up. Now in her mid-sixties, Julia helped out on the bookmobile a couple of times a week, clerking and telling stories like no one else I'd ever heard.

"What about Phoenix?" I asked.

"Last week," she said, rearranging her long strawberry blond hair from a single braid into a twisty sort of bun, "it was the only place in the continental United States that had any sunshine."

"Huh." Maybe that explained the sudden vacation of Deputy Ash Wolverson and his fiancée, Chelsea Stille. I'd heard they'd gone to Southern Arizona. "Why do you know that fun fact?"

Julia smiled. It was a sly smile, and I knew she was about to slip into a self-imposed role.

"I know all sorts of things, my dear," she said in a raspy voice that conjured up crystal balls, tea leaves, and tarot cards. "But mainly," she said, returning to her normal voice, "after the last couple of weeks, I was in desperate need of sun-induced vitamin D. I was booking flights when the husband looked at the long-range forecast and saw we were going to get our own sunshine, right here in Chilson, at no extra expense."

"Mrr?" our other companion asked.

"Of course I would have taken you." Julia leaned down and stuck her fingers through the wire door of the cat carrier strapped to the floor near her feet. "Nothing like sunshine on a furry tummy, yes?"

Even over the hum of the engine, I could hear my cat's contented purrs. Eddie, my black-and-white tabby with a penchant for making friends wherever he went, had been on the bookmobile's maiden voyage just over three years ago. Though he'd been a stowaway, it had quickly become obvious that the patrons liked him better than they liked the human staff, and he'd been a fixture on the bookmobile ever since.

"Mrr," Eddie said sleepily, and I cast him a fond look. Eddie and I had seen each other through thick and thin, and at the beginning, he had been very thin.

A little more than three years ago, I'd taken a walk on a fine April morning in lieu of cleaning chores and wandered through the local cemetery, soaking in the blue views of the twenty-mile-long Janay Lake and the thin line of Lake Michigan over the hills to the west.

The quiet calm of my walk had been interrupted by the "Mrr!" of a black-and-gray tabby cat, who had blinked up at me from the gravesite of Alonzo Tillotson, born 1847, died 1926.

At the time, I knew nothing about cats due to my father's allergies and tried to shoo him away home. That, of course, hadn't worked. He'd followed me back to town, much to the amusement of passersby. I'd taken him in, cleaned him up, realized that under the grime he was a black-and-white tabby, and contacted the local veterinarian. "About two years old," Dr. Joe had said, so I'd dutifully run a found cat notice in the newspaper. Happily, the ad had gone unanswered, and the two of us were now bound to each other forever.

"In more ways than one," I muttered, batting away an airborne Eddie hair.

"What's that?" Julia asked.

"I wonder how Eddie would like flying." I flapped my elbows.

"Bet he'd like it fine if he could be up front in the cockpit."

"Mrr!"

Julia and I laughed, but there was a lot of truth in what she'd said. Eddie, like most cats, was a control freak, and if he could tell the pilot where to go, he'd probably choose flying over driving.

I thought about a world run by Eddie choices. No sudden loud noises. No rain, no wind. Plenty of sunny spots. Lots of nap time, and plenty of on-demand petting. Didn't sound all bad, except he'd probably ban all dogs, too.

Julia tapped the top of Eddie's carrier with her toes. "What's the plan for him? In or out?"

For the first time ever, we were stopping at Dooley Elementary School, roughly in the middle of Tonedagana County. Over the years, the population of the Village of Dooley had dwindled to the point that, until recently, the school board had considered shuttering the building. A recent surge in remote work, however, had created an influx of families with young children, and the school's head count was higher than it had been in decades.

The morning's plan included a visit to the bookmobile by each classroom, then a Julia-led story time for all in the gymnasium. If everything went well, we'd do it again in three weeks and hope like crazy the kids would remember to return the books they'd borrowed, because we wouldn't be back until September.

Julia's question of "in or out" referred to Eddie staying in the carrier or letting him out.

Though he enjoyed the company of people in general, he was still a cat in possession of all his claws, and I was constantly mindful that a small child could be a little too enthusiastic in showering Eddie with affection. Not that anything horrible had ever happened, or even come close to happening, but I was determined that it should ever be so.

"In," I said. "Especially with the youngest kids. With the fourth and fifth graders, I'll open the carrier door. If he wants out, we'll keep an eye on him. If he wants to stay in, that's fine, too."

It wasn't fine, not completely, because there would be some very disappointed children-and a couple of disappointed teachers-if the bookmobile cat chose to stay in the carrier the entire time. Leah Wasson, the fifth-grade teacher who'd requested the visit, had confessed that Eddie was the main draw.

In addition to a fuzzy feline, the thirty-one-foot-long vehicle, twenty-three thousand pounds when loaded, had lots of books-more than three thousand of them. It also had print magazines, jigsaw puzzles, CDs, DVDs, video games, e-readers, and electronic tablets. And in the last year, thanks to some odd donations, we'd also started lending fishing poles, small power tools, ukuleles, snowshoes, and a croquet set.

The library staff had had a number of long discussions about the appropriateness of the sports equipment, and since the vote had been split, we'd trooped upstairs and asked our boss to make the final decision.

Graydon Cain, the best library director ever, had looked at us, his expression one of mild exasperation tinged with a hefty dollop of amusement. "You're making this more complicated than it needs to be," he'd said. "What's the library's mission?"

The others had looked at me, and I'd quoted what was literally etched into the wall at the library's entrance. "The Chilson District Library," I said, "provides materials and services to help community residents obtain information meeting their personal, educational, and cultural needs. The library serves as a learning center for all residents of the community."

Holly Terpening had frowned but nodded. "Learning center. Okay, I guess lending snowshoes so you can learn how to snowshoe fits."

"Same with fishing gear," Josh Hadden, the library's IT guy, had said. "Every time I go out fishing, it's educational."

"Well, there you go." Graydon had made the brushing-hands-together gesture and shooed us away, even though I questioned what, exactly, Josh learned every time he fished, other than the ideal amount of ice to put in the cooler at any given temperature.

The nontraditional lending had quickly turned into a huge success. There was a waiting list for all of it except the ukulele, and we'd ended up with a number of new patrons who'd come for the sports stuff and stayed for the books. Truly, I had the best job in the world.

Now Julia looked at me. "What if Eddie sleeps the entire time? He's done it before. And what if he . . . you know?"

I winced. My furry friend, when in deep sleep, had a snore that rattled windows. If he really got going, it could scare children and startle adults. Spinning it out into the worst-case scenario, Eddie in Full Snore Mode contained the slight but real possibility of frightening kids away from the bookmobile-and even books-forever. But I'd anticipated the situation.

"Won't happen," I said confidently. "He'll be wide-awake all morning."

That little trick had been accomplished through the combined efforts of my fiancé and myself. Last night we'd had Eddie chase wadded-up balls of paper, leap after feathers at the end of a string, dart after a laser beam, and run up and down the stairs chasing a catnip mouse. He'd crashed at nine o'clock and hadn't moved a muscle for more than twelve hours. He was now set to stay perky all day.

I also planned to put Eddie's carrier on the console between the front seats so everyone could see him. This was critical because as teacher Leah Wasson had said, smiling over the cup of coffee I'd handed her in my office when we were discussing logistics, "Sorry, but it's the bookmobile cat they most want to see, not the books."

So I had to make sure they would see the bookmobile cat, one way or another, and I was pretty sure I'd covered all the bases.

Julia flung out one long arm. "The way is before you," she croaked out, back in fortune teller voice. Or at least her version of a fortune teller voice.

But she was right. Straight ahead of us was the 1960s-era school, in all its single-story, flat-roofed, blond-bricked glory. The original wide plate-glass window spans in each classroom had long ago been filled in with stucco siding and plain double-hung windows, but that looked like the only thing that had changed in its many decades of life.

"Well, except maybe a new flagpole," I said, eyeing the metal, shiny in the sunlight.

Julia blinked at my non sequitur. Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, clearly not coming up with a reasonable response, and she eventually looked at her feet. "Mr. Edward, I think your Minnie has loosened her last screw. You might want to take care of that."

"Mrr!"

His response might have meant "You bet, I'll get right on that soon as possible because I want Minnie to be healthy and hearty," but I was willing to bet it was more like "What? Were you talking to me?"

Smiling, I flicked on the turn signal, and we eased into the school's parking lot. By prior arrangement, the nonhandicapped parking slots closest to the entrance were empty, and I eased the bookmobile into our temporary home.

A few minutes later, we'd flipped the driver's seat around, lowered the counter that created the front end checkout, started both the front and the back computers, detached the bungee cord that held the rear checkout chair in place, and done a quick straightening of any and all materials that had jostled loose during the drive.

If pushed, Julia and I could do the whole routine in less than five minutes. Our other bookmobile driver, Hunter Morales, said there was no way that was humanly possible, but he had the sense to keep his opinion to himself when Julia was around.

"Hark!" Julia cupped her hand around her ear and struck a listening pose. "Methinks I hear the sound of small feet stampeding in our general direction."

Grinning, because what could be more fun than introducing a horde of youngsters to books in general and the bookmobile in particular, I unlocked the door and pushed it wide open, letting in sunshine and fresh air and what seemed like a thousand small human beings. "Welcome!" I sang out, and was almost trampled.

"Sorry about the high energy level," the kindergarten teacher said as she climbed the steps. "They're just so excited. You don't mind, do you?"

I laughed. "I can think of worse problems to have."

For the next couple of hours, Julia and I gave multiple classrooms the basic bookmobile tour, starting with the checkout desk at the back, moving through the grown-up books, then through the children's section, and ending with the tour's high point, the bookmobile cat.

Eddie, who'd eventually chosen to leave the carrier and draped himself across the dashboard, bore all the oohs and aahs with great patience and even doled out the occasional "Mrr."

We also answered questions that ranged from "Where do you eat?" (Answer: From brown bags.) to "What happens if you hit a really big bump and the books fall off the shelves?" (Answer: We spend hours and hours putting them back.) to "Do you have a radio?"

I looked at the child who'd asked the radio question. He was with Leah Wasson's fifth grade class, the final group to take the tour before we went into the gym.

"Eli," Leah said, giving me an apologetic look, "we're supposed be asking questions about books and the bookmobile, not radios." Leah was a few years older than my thirty-five and was a few inches taller than my five foot nothing, with straight shiny light brown hair that I tried not to envy. She was also one of those people who was so permanently cheerful that, during the gray days of winter, you wanted to take her home with you.

"No worries," I said, smiling. "He's fine. And I suppose there is a radio. I just don't think we've ever turned it on." Maybe I'd tried it when the vehicle had first been delivered, but I couldn't summon any memory of doing so.