Booking the Crook: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery #7 - Softcover

Cass, Laurie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 044000098X ISBN 13: 9780440000983

Verlag: Berkley, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

It's all paws on deck as a librarian and her rescue cat track down a killer in the newest book in the national bestselling Bookmobile Cat mystery series.
 
Minnie Hamilton and her rescue cat, Eddie, cruise around lovely Chilson, Michigan delivering happiness and good reads in their bookmobile. But the feisty librarian is worried that the bookmobile's future could be uncertain when a new library board chair arrives and doesn't seem too friendly to her pet project. 
 
Still, she has to put her personal worries aside when she and Eddie are out on their regular route and one of their favorite customers doesn't turn up to collect her books. Minnie, at Eddie's prodding, checks on the woman and finds her lying dead in her snow-covered driveway. Now it's up to Minnie and her friends--feline and otherwise--to find the perpetrator and give them their due.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Laurie Cass is the national bestselling author of the Bookmobile Cat Mysteries, including Wrong Side of the Paw, Cat With a Clue, and Pouncing on Murder. She lives on a lake in northern Michigan with her husband and two cats.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

 

I stood at the kitchen window, staring out into the backyard as January's chill seeped through the glass and into my bones. The cold was making my skin prickle and my teeth chatter, yet I didn't move. If I stayed, maybe time would stand still. Maybe the morning wouldn't happen. Maybe if I went back to bed and pulled the covers over my head, it would all go away.

 

"Minnie?" my aunt Frances asked. "What, pray tell, do you see? It's pitch dark out there."

 

She was right. Even though I knew the backyard contained snow-covered maple and beech trees, the only thing I could see was my own self. Whoever had installed the double-hung windows had placed them at a height that forced any five-foot-tall human-in this case, me-to either stand on tiptoes or crouch slightly to see over the top of the lower window. This morning I was standing on my toes and seeing little more than the reflection of a pair of slightly bloodshot brown eyes and too-curly black hair.

 

"Mrr."

 

I looked over at my cat. Eddie was sitting in the kitchen chair he'd claimed as his own and licking his right front paw.

 

Aunt Frances laughed. "Your fuzzy friend said to sit down and eat your oatmeal." She put two bowls on the round oak table and slid into the chair across from Eddie.

 

"More likely he's asking about his breakfast." I gave the top of my head one last glance-still a curly mess and likely to stay that way-and sat. "You didn't have to make me breakfast."

 

"Don't get used to it. However, I thought it only right to commemorate this day." She dipped her spoon into the bowl and held it up in a toast. "To the new director of the Chilson District Library, whatever his name is. May his reign bring joy to all, but especially to the library's assistant director, since she's sitting across the table from me."

 

"Graydon," I said. "His name is Graydon Cain."

 

"The poor man. What were his parents thinking? I wonder what his friends call him? Gray?" She raised one eyebrow. "Don?"

 

"Maybe it's a family name and they call him Junior."

 

Aunt Frances snorted. "Surely your nimble mind has a better suggestion than that. You're not getting sick, are you?"

 

"If only," I muttered, but not loud enough for her to hear. When Graydon had interviewed with the library board a few months back, I'd made the event memorable by walking backward into the then-president of the board, falling to the floor, and strewing the contents of my backpack all across the lobby.

 

Bad as that had been, it had been far worse to have Eddie hack up a hair ball on the Italian shoes of the woman the board chose as the library's director. An early-and heavy-October snowfall had sent Jennifer scuttling back south and the board had gone to Graydon, metaphorical hat in hand, and asked him to consider making northwest lower Michigan his new home.

 

"Well," my aunt said reasonably, "Graydon can't be any worse than that frightful woman."

 

I sighed. "You'd think so, but I wouldn't have thought anyone could be worse than Stephen." My former boss, who'd had the personality of a doorstop and a deep reluctance to agree to any change in anything whatsoever, hadn't inspired deep loyalty in his staff.

 

"It'll be fine," Aunt Frances said comfortably. Of course, she could be comfortable about the whole thing; she hadn't had a new boss in ages. Her fall-to-spring job was as a woodworking instructor at the local community college, and the college president was in fine fettle and likely to stay that way. In summer, she opened up the big house she'd inherited from her long-passed-away husband to eight hand-picked boarders. Or rather, that's what she'd done for years and years. This summer it was all going to be different.

 

Most of me was thrilled about the upcoming events, but part of me had a kinship with Stephen and his dislike of change. I'd loved the boardinghouse since, starting at age twelve, my busy parents had sent me north from June to August. Every group of boarders was unique and every summer had brought new adventures. I didn't want the evening tradition of cooking marshmallows in the living room's fieldstone fireplace to end. I didn't want the bookshelf full of board games and jigsaw puzzles to be moved. I didn't want the screened porch off the dining room to sprout new furniture, and I certainly didn't want anyone to decide the wide pine-paneled walls needed to be covered with drywall and papered over with some floral print.

 

"Don't," my aunt said.

 

I looked up. "Don't what?"

 

"Think whatever it is you're thinking." Before I could disagree, she added, "And don't bother denying that you're thinking things you shouldn't be thinking about. If it's about that Graydon, quit worrying. If it's about this summer, quit worrying. It'll all work out, one way or another, and worrying doesn't help one bit."

 

"I know, but-"

 

"Stop," she said firmly.

 

Since Aunt Frances was the sanest person I knew, and since she'd been right the other zillion times in my life when she told me to quit worrying, I said, "You're right. Again." I'd stop. Or at least try to.

 

"There's a reason you're my favorite niece," she said.

 

"I'm your only niece."

 

"Then isn't it wonderful that we found each other?" She grinned. And since my aunt's grins were hard to resist, I grinned back.

 

"Mrr!"

 

"Yes, Eddie," I said, patting the top of his head. "It's wonderful that I found you, too."

 

He glanced up at me, and I got the impression that he was mentally switching the pronouns in that sentence. Almost two years ago, on an unseasonably warm April morning, I'd skipped out on cleaning chores and instead wandered through the local cemetery, enjoying the view of the twenty-mile-long Janay Lake and the horizontal blue line of Lake Michigan just over the hills to the west. My quiet walk had been interrupted by a black-and-gray tabby cat who had materialized next to the gravesite of Alonzo Tillotson, born 1847, died 1926.

 

I'd assumed the cat had a home and tried to shoo him away, but he'd followed me back to town, much to the amusement of passersby. Since I'd known nothing about cats due to my father's allergies, I'd taken him to the local veterinarian, who said my new friend (a black-and-white tabby once he'd been cleaned up) was about two years old. The "Found Cat" notice I'd run in the newspaper had gone unanswered, and Eddie and I were now pals for life.

 

"It's going to be different, that's all," I said, letting my hand rest on Eddie's warm back.

 

"Different isn't necessarily bad." Aunt Frances scraped her spoon against the bottom of her bowl.

 

"I know. It's just . . ." I sighed.

 

"Going to be different." My aunt nodded. "I understand, my sweet. I really do. You're getting a new boss. Cousin Celeste is buying the boardinghouse. Otto and I are getting married in Bermuda, I'm moving across the street, and you're-" She stopped. "What are you doing? Have you made a decision about the houseboat?"

 

I shook my head. A few years ago I'd been lucky enough to have been offered the assistant director job at the Chilson District Library. The job paid what you might expect, and since housing in the summer resort town of Chilson was not what you'd call affordable, my living arrangements were, by necessity, creative.

 

October through April, I lived with my aunt in the rambling boardinghouse, but come May, I moved to a boat slip in Uncle...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Berkley
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 044000098X
• ISBN 13: 9780440000983
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland