Pouncing on Murder (35 page)

“You know,” I told him, “if you’d gone out with us, you wouldn’t have so much energy.”

For the past few weeks, I’d actually been exercising. Sweating, even. I’d been meaning to start working out for a long time, but it had taken a number of gentle suggestions from Ash Wolverson, my new boyfriend, to get me to invest in some decent running shoes. A few more suggestions and I’d started hauling myself out of bed early three times a week to run with him. Luckily, he swung by the marina four miles into his own run, so he’d already had a good workout by the time we got together.

“Think about it,” I said to Eddie. “You’ll sleep even better during the day.”

He blinked.

“Right.” I patted him on the head. “You never have trouble sleeping during the day. It’s the nights that are a problem. What do you think about going for a run in the late afternoon?”

“Mrr.” Eddie pawed at yesterday’s newspaper, which was sitting on my lap. I’d stayed at the library late the night before and had been too tired to do anything except reread
84, Charing Cross Road
when I got home. Since my boss, Stephen Rangel, had left his job as
director of the Chilson District Library, I was interim director until the library board hired someone. This was stretching me a little thin, because in addition to my normal duties as assistant director, I also drove the library’s bookmobile and was out of the building almost as much as I was in it.

“Which section do you want to hear first?” I asked, picking up the two-section paper.

“Sports, please,” said a male voice.

I looked over toward my right-hand marina neighbor. Eric Apney, a fortyish male of undeniable good looks, was sitting on the deck of his boat, eating a bowl of cereal while a mug of coffee steamed next to him.

My left-hand neighbors, Louisa and Ted Axford, had spent summers in the slip next to mine for years and would usually be in residence by then, but a new grandchild had captured their hearts and Louisa had e-mailed me that they wouldn’t be up until mid-July.

Eric, who lived downstate but spent as much time in Chilson as he could, was new to Uncle Chip’s Marina. I’d met him a few weeks before and had turned down his invitation to dinner when I’d learned he was a doctor and, worse, a surgeon. I’d recently dated an emergency room doctor for almost a year and had learned that with doctors, dates were things that were made to be broken. Maybe I was being prejudiced, but my reaction had been instant and instinctive.

Luckily, Eric hadn’t taken my rejection to heart. He’d laughed and said I was smart to stay away, and we were becoming good friends.

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

“What was that?” Eric’s spoon paused at the halfway point.

I looked at Eddie. “He’s tired of hearing about the lack of depth in the Tigers bullpen and would rather hear the law enforcement report.”

In a lot of ways, marina life was like being in a campground. Your neighbors were mere feet away, and if the wind was calm, you practically could hear them breathing. Politeness dictated that you didn’t mention how their snoring kept you awake, but it was hard to maintain the fiction that you didn’t know what the person on the boat next to you was saying while on his—or her—cell phone. From unintentional eavesdropping, I knew Eric was a huge baseball fan, just as he knew that I ordered take-out dinners more often than I cooked.

“Really?” Eric asked. Soon after we’d met, he’d heard me talking to my cat as if Eddie could really understand what I was saying. He’d laughed with only the slightest condescension, but when Eddie had replied, he’d stopped laughing and hadn’t laughed since.

“No idea,” I said, flipping newspaper pages. “But I know I’m tired of hearing about pitching problems. Okay, here we go. Ready for the good stuff?”

It hadn’t been until I’d started dating Ash, a deputy with the Tonedagana County Sheriff’s Office, that I’d become interested in the law enforcement tidbits that Sheriff Kit Richardson released to the newspaper. Ash said that what made it into print wasn’t the half of it, and I wondered what half was missing, because the farcical half was certainly there.

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

Eric shoveled in a spoonful of cereal. “Fire away.”

“Do you want the funny stuff first or last?”

“Mrr.”

“Last it is.” I scanned the short paragraphs. “Here’s a happy one. ‘Lost six-year-old boy in the woods. Six-year-old boy was located and returned home safely.’”

Eric swallowed and toasted the newspaper with his coffee mug. “Score one for the good guys. What’s next?”

“‘Daughter called from out of state to have her elderly father checked on. The officer spoke with her father, who said he had turned off his phone because his daughter often calls too late at night, waking him.’”

Eric choked on his coffee. “Seriously?” he asked, coughing.

“I couldn’t make this stuff up. Next is about a guy who called 911 to tell the sheriff’s office that he’d been driving with his window down. A bee flew in, and when he was trying to get the bee out, he drove into a parked car.”

“Good story,” Eric said. “Wonder if it’s true.”

Thanks to my insider information, I happened to know that the man in question had been heavily intoxicated at the time. Of course, that didn’t mean the bee hadn’t existed. Smiling, I went back to the paper. “Here’s someone who called 911 to report that someone had broken into her garage the night before her garage sale. Nothing was reported missing.”

“Mrr.” Eddie thumped his head against my leg.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Not that good of a story, but they can’t all be winners. How about this one? A woman taped her husband’s mouth shut because he was snoring too loud.” I looked up at Eric, but he was scooping out
the last of his cereal and didn’t notice. “And last but not least, ‘Caller wanted to see an officer because her cat was being mean to her.’”

“Mrr!”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “It was one sister being mean to another sister, and the mom took care of things before the officer arrived.” I gave Eddie a long pet. “Just wanted to see if you were paying attention.”

“Some kid really called 911 because she was fighting with her sister?” Eric held up his cereal bowl and drained the last of the milk into his mouth.

I averted my eyes, swung my short legs off the lounge, and stood. “Last week some kid called 911 because his mom wouldn’t let him play all night with the video game he got for his birthday.”

“Well,” Eric said, “now that I can see.”

“Mrr.”

I turned around. Eddie was settling onto the newspaper, tucking himself into a meat-loaf shape. “Oh, no, you don’t.”

Gently, I rolled him onto his side and slid the paper out from underneath him, like a sleight-of-hand artist pulling a tablecloth from under a tableful of china. Unlike the china, however, Eddie yawned and stretched out with his front feet, catching the paper with one of his claws, then yanking it out of my hand and making it flutter to the deck.

“Nice job.” I crouched down to pick up the now-scattered newsprint. “You have a gift for making a . . .”

“A what?” Eric asked.

“Mess,” I said vaguely, now standing with the
newspaper in hand, looking at the page Eddie had opened. The obituaries. “Talia DeKeyser,” I read to myself, “died peacefully in her sleep on Memorial Day. Born on May 24, 1933 to Robert and Mary Wiley, Talia married Calvin DeKeyser in 1955—”

“Minnie, you okay?”

I folded the newspaper and tucked it under my arm. “Fine, thanks.” I picked up a purring Eddie and tucked him under my other arm. “See you later, okay, Eric? I have to get to work.”

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