Excerpt from A TROUBLING TAIL
The next day was a library day. The sunshine seemed to be sticking around for the time being, so it was an easy decision to walk to work. In my head, blue skies and sunshine went along with the month of May, and it was nice that reality was, for once, matching my imagination.
“Lambs are coming,” I announced to the downtown sidewalk, because maybe it could use a reminder that no one would throw salt on it for at least five months. “And baby cows. Plus tulips and lilacs.”
I smiled in anticipation. We had an ancient lilac bush at the house, underneath the bedroom window, which meant I was only two or three weeks away from keeping the window open at night and falling asleep to the scent of lilac blossoms. That is, if Eddie didn’t get too carried away.
Last year, back at the boardinghouse, at two in the morning, he’d clawed a cat-size rip in my bedroom screen, squeezed himself through, and trotted out onto the steep roof. I’d lunged after him, but he was out and free, and only the dulcet tones of treats rattling in the can had lured him back inside.
“Rotten cat,” I muttered, remembering.
“You’re not talking about that Eddie, are you?”
I blinked and looked up. By this time I was downtown, walking past the bakery where the baker himself, known to young and old as Cookie Tom, was out in front of his store, sweeping the sidewalk.
Tom Abinaw was a top candidate for the skinniest baker ever, which you wouldn’t think would be a good advertisement for his business. Maybe it was genetics, or maybe he wore off all the calories by working so hard, because it certainly wasn’t the quality of his cookies. Even better for one Minnie Hamilton, Cookie Tom loved the bookmobile. Not only did he give me a discount on cookies headed in that direction, but he also let me sneak in the back to pick up a bag on summer mornings and avoid the long lines.
“Morning,” I said, slowing to a stop. “Yes, I was talking about Eddie, but with great fondness. Truly.” Tom had been one of the first Eddie spotters, back on the day my fuzzy friend had followed me home from the cemetery.
“Tell him I said hello.” Tom’s smile faded quickly. “You heard about Whippy?”
I nodded. “So sad. Have you heard anything new?”
“Only what they’re saying at the Round Table.”
The local diner, just down the street, had a regular group of retired men who gathered together every morning and who had all the answers to everything. Because the pronouncements were typically based purely on rumor and conjecture, I rarely paid any attention, but every so often they did have some insider knowledge.
“And what’s that?”
Tom gave the sidewalk one last sweep. “That he was in the store late because it was the beginning of the month, and that’s when he always does inventory. And he had to have been killed by a thief looking to score some cash, because everyone knew Whippy kept a lot of cash in his register.”
I glanced at the empty streets. “A lot of cash? This time of year?”
“You know how those guys talk.” He smiled, and I smiled back. Even though the Round Table curmudgeons could be high-handed, narrow-minded, and biased, they were our curmudgeons.
I sketched a wave and continued my walk through downtown. As always, I enjoyed the mix of architecture. Hundred-year-old structures and buildings new last year. Most stores sided in clapboard, some in brick, a couple in fieldstone. The blend combined to make a whole that fit together in a completely satisfying way.
Satisfying, that is, except for one thing: The bright yellow police tape across the front door to Henika’s Candy Emporium.
There was no law enforcement in sight, so without anyone to ask about the investigation—and I assumed it was a murder investigation, because why else would that disconcerting yellow tape still be up there—I kept walking up to the library, trying to shake away the dark thoughts of murder. But I didn’t come anywhere close to succeeding until I was in front of the library itself.
I slowed and, as I did almost every time I came to work, admired the building and what the citizens of Chilson had done. Just a few years ago, the Chilson District Library had been housed in a sixties-era building with zero charm and less soul. Though it had been efficient, back in the day, the area’s steady growth and the seismic change in technological needs had pushed the city movers and shakers to propose a short-term millage.
The voters overwhelmingly approved the plan to convert an empty school into the new library, and now I had the great good fortune to work in a lovingly restored building with the Craftsman features of exposed oak beams, floors and foyers with metallic tiles, and best of all, a reading room with window seats and a functional fireplace.
I smiled at it all with fondness as I shut the door, making sure it locked behind me, because the library wouldn’t open to the public for another hour and a half.
And since I was almost certainly the first one in the building, I headed straight for the break room. First in, according to the staff’s unwritten rules, meant you could make the coffee the way you wanted, and in my backpack was a new blend I wanted to try.
Humming a bit at the happy prospect, I hurried through the main lobby, past the front desk, down the hall, and into the break room. I slapped on the overhead light . . . and came to a sudden stop.
“What the . . .”
I stared at the large object in front of me. The large two-wheeled object. The large and extremely yellow two-wheeled object that sported a massive box, also yellow, behind the seat.
“It’s a book bike,” I said out loud. As an upstanding member of the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services, I knew what the object was. It was a bicycle used as a mini mobile library. But where had it come from? And why was it in our break room?
“You found our new acquisition, I see.”
I turned around at the amused voice. Graydon Cain, library director and my boss, was walking in the door, coffee mug in hand.
“Hard to miss,” I said, still bemused. I repeated my internal questions, only this time out loud.
“It came,” Graydon said, adding filling his mug from an already brewed coffee pot, “from Trent’s basement workshop. He’s been working on it for months. As a surprise.”
There were a number of curious things about those statements. That the urbane retired attorney and current library board president Trent Ross even had a workshop. That he was adept enough to retrofit a bicycle as a book bike. That he’d created it as a surprise. And most especially, that he’d done it in the first place. Trent, while a fine leader of the board, just did not seem like a tool guy. Which, I supposed, just goes to show that you never know about people.
“Um . . .” I said.
“I know.” Graydon sipped from his mug. “It’s a one-speed bike. It’s made over from a vintage who knows what. It weighs about a thousand pounds, and that’s without any books in it.”
“Maybe it’s not as heavy as it looks.” I said it as a sort of question.
Graydon laughed. “I like your optimism, but I helped Trent offload it from his SUV. It’s built like a tank.”
Just then Josh walked in and did a double-take when he saw the yellow bike. “Oh, geez, the bookmobile broke down, didn’t it? Going to take you a while to get to the east side of the county on that thing, Minnie.”
As if. Riding that thing over the huge hills between here and, well, anywhere, was not going to happen. If I had anything to do with it anyway.
Holly Terpening, one of the library clerks, came into the room. “Ooo, a book bike!” she said, clapping her hands. “It’s adorable! Huge, but adorable. Where did it come from?”
“Um . . .” I said.
Graydon smiled, but I thought I detected a hint of evil gleaming in his kindly face. “It’s a gift from Trent Ross,” he said.
All the extra air in the room seemed to vanish. Josh stuck his hands in the pockets of his cargo pants and scowled. Holly’s perky face went flat. They’d both been library employees for years and knew what was coming.
Graydon continued to smile. “This was a pet project of our board president from start to finish, and we’re going to come up with a way to incorporate it into the library outreach services, aren’t we?” There was a short pause when none of us said anything. “And by ‘we,’ I mean not me,” he added, looking directly at the assistant librarian.
“Um . . .” I said.
“You’ll figure it out.” He cheerfully patted me on the shoulder and headed for the door. “Trent will want a report at the next board meeting,” he said over his shoulder.
I closed my eyes and took a couple of calming breaths. This would be okay. Things would work out. When I opened my eyes, either the book bike would have vanished, or my friends would help me with viable options.
But when I opened my eyes, the yellow behemoth was still there.
And both Josh and Holly had fled.
Excerpt from THE TROUBLING TAIL by Laurie Cass. Copyright © 2023
Bookmobile Cat #11
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.
Mystery Cozy | Mystery Book Lover | Mystery Pet Lovers [Berkley, On Sale: August 1, 2023, Mass Market Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593547427 / eISBN: 9780593547434]
Laurie Cass grew up in Michigan and graduated from college in the 80's with a (mostly unused) degree in geology. She turned to writing in the late nineties. After a number of years in management, she felt the need to move on and took a job with fewer responsibilities. A month later, she was dead bored and began to consider writing as a way to wake up her brain. She started reading a lot of books on writing and happened across a particular sentence: "What's it going to be, reasons or results?"
The phrase practically stuck her in the eye. She printed it out, framed it, and put it next to her computer. "Reasons or results?" At the end of her life, was she going to have a pile of reasons for not having done anything? Or was she going to sit down and write a book? Once she started looking at it that way, the decision was easy. A short 13 years later, her first book was published.
Currently, Laurie and her husband share their house with two cats, the inestimable Eddie and the adorably cute Sinii. When Laurie isn't writing, she's working at her day job, reading, attempting to keep the flowerbeds free of weeds, or doing some variety of skiing. She also write the PTA Mysteries under the name Laura Alden.
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