Pouncing on Murder (7 page)

The idea of Detective Inwood dandling babies on his knees was a little much even for my overactive imagination.

“But the problem,” Ash went on, lowering his voice and leaning forward, “is he’s city.”

“He’s . . . city?”

“Yeah. Hal grew up downstate in a big town, spent twenty-five years on a big-town police force, and moved up here to work until he got old enough to retire for good. So he’s from the city and thinks city.”

“I’m from Dearborn,” I said a little stiffly.

“Really?” He caught himself and started again. “And that’s just what I mean. You’re from the city, but you
think small town. Hal Inwood, he’s big city inside and out.”

I wasn’t understanding this at all. “What does this have to do with Henry and Adam?”

“Because once Hal gets out of town, he doesn’t always see the possibilities.”

“Like what?”

“Like the possibility that someone could have set up that tree to fall.”

“Set it up?”

“Sure.” Ash nodded. “Wouldn’t be that hard. Find a tree rotted in the middle, tie a come-along to it, and start winching it. Bring it almost to the falling point, then back off and unchain it. Rig up a block and tackle to some upper branches, wait for your guy to get into the right spot, give a good yank, and the tree comes down.”

I stared at him. “But you’re talking about . . . about something worse than leaving two injured men behind. You’re saying it was—” I didn’t want to think about it, let alone say it out loud.

“I’m not saying anything,” Ash said, shaking his head. “I’m just saying there are possibilities that need to be looked into.”

“Possibilities of murder,” I said.

“And another thing.” Ash looked into my face, and for the first time I noticed that his eyes were almost gray. A little blue, but if I had to choose a color, it would have been gray.

“Another thing?” I asked faintly.

“If it was a setup, I’m not sure about the target.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The light was bad,” Ash said. “It was rainy and windy and cold and all-around crappy. If someone knew Deering was helping clean out the sugar shack, that someone could have expected Deering to go out to the woodpile, not Henry.”

My mouth moved, but nothing came out. Finally I stopped trying and stared at Ash mutely.

He nodded. “If it was murder, Adam Deering could have been the intended victim.”

“Wolverson!”

I jumped backward, Ash jumped to his feet. We’d leaned so close, talking so quietly, that our heads had been almost touching.

“Yes, ma’am!” Ash stood ramrod straight.

Sheriff Kit Richardson stood in the doorway, looking from him to me and back again. “Please tell me this little scene has to do with an investigation.”

I stood and started talking, but Ash spoke over the top of me. Which was easy enough, since he was almost a foot taller to begin with.

“Yes, ma’am,” he repeated. “Ms. Hamilton here had some information regarding the death of Henry Gill.”

“Hamilton?” The sheriff faced me and I felt myself squaring my shoulders and standing as tall as I ever had in my entire life. “Minnie Hamilton?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ash and I said simultaneously.

If I hadn’t been at eye level with her teeth, I might have missed the short, tiny quirk that one side of her mouth made. “Wolverson, you’re still working the accident-by-design angle?”

He nodded, and a part of me loosened that I hadn’t
even known was tight. Ash wasn’t keeping anything from Detective Inwood; he was being up-front about his theory and had taken it all the way to the sheriff. The detective must not agree with Ash’s theory, and that was why Ash had been whispering to me.

“All right, then,” Sheriff Richardson said. “Carry on, you two.” She nodded at us and as she turned away, she looked at me. “I’d date him myself if I wasn’t married,” she said softly, and this time her smile wasn’t hidden at all.

•   •   •

I left the sheriff’s office directly after that little incident, and spent the rest of the evening on the couch rereading
The Stand.
After all, there was nothing like eight hundred and twenty-three pages of a postapocalyptic Stephen King horror/fantasy novel to make you forget that not only did your county sheriff know your name, for unknown and probably scary reasons, but she might also be trying her hand at a little matchmaking.

“As if I didn’t get enough of that from Aunt Frances,” I told Eddie as I pulled a lap blanket to my chin. My aunt was teaching a night class, so Eddie and I had the huge house to ourselves.

Eddie glared at me and jumped down.

“Okay,” I said, “I take that back. Aunt Frances hasn’t ever tried to set me up.” At least not to my knowledge. But given her summer tendencies, I lived with the fear that she was biding her time as far as her niece was concerned.

Eddie must have forgiven my transgressions during the night, because the next morning I woke up on my
stomach with him sprawled across my lower back. A few stretches and a long, hot shower later, I was in the car with a piece of toast, heading east to the other side of the state for an interlibrary event in Alpena.

My regional counterparts and I had a nice time talking about cooperative ventures, new programming, and electronic difficulties. We ended the morning with a happy discussion about books, and, despite the invitation to lunch, I made my good-byes and pointed my car back west. There were things that needed doing at the library—book fair–related things—and they couldn’t wait.

Halfway back, though, the piece of toast I’d eaten for breakfast and the mini blueberry muffin I’d had in the library wore off completely. I needed food before I got back to the library and I needed it before I turned cranky from hunger.

I didn’t have time for a full restaurant meal, which was just as well because I was driving through a lightly populated part of the state, an area where towns were rare and commercial establishments of any type were more likely to be boarded up than occupied.

“There’s got to be something,” I muttered, tapping the steering wheel. I’d seen a gas station somewhere along this stretch of two-lane highway on the way over, hadn’t I? I pictured it in my head, a concrete block structure painted a perky light yellow. Gravel parking lot. April-empty flower planters. Two gas pumps, no canopy.

I was starting to think my hunger-saturated mind had mixed it up with a stretch of highway I’d seen in the Upper Peninsula a while back, when the curving road
straightened out and there it was.
BUB’S GAS AND MORE
, read the sign, its paint peeling away from the wood.

There were a couple of cars in the rutted parking lot, so at least the place was open for business. And all I wanted was something to eat. Gas station sandwiches were often suspect, and you had to especially wonder about a sandwich made by a guy named Bub, but Bub was bound to have protein bars. Potato chips, even. Or popcorn. A bag of cheese-flavored popcorn would tide me over nicely.

I was bumping my car across the parking lot, already dreaming of yellowed fingers, when two people, a man and a woman, walked out the front door.

My mouth fell open.

He was very tall and solid. Her head barely reached the top of his shoulder. He wore a baseball cap, a zip sweatshirt, and well-aged jeans. She wore an attractively styled jacket over tailored dress pants and low-heeled pumps. He opened the driver’s door of a sleek sedan, waited while she got in, then shut the door and went around to the passenger’s side.

And while I was pretty sure I’d never seen her before in my life, I knew exactly who he was.

•   •   •

“It was Mitchell Koyne,” I said.

Josh shook his head. “Not a chance.”

“Over there?” Holly asked. “That’s almost a hundred miles away. I’ve never heard of him setting foot outside Tonedagana County.”

Though I knew Mitchell occasionally went down to Traverse City, I also knew what Holly meant. Mitchell
was a library regular and one of those guys who, if he’d wanted to, was probably smart enough to do pretty much anything. The only thing was, what he seemed to want to do most was nothing. He lived in an apartment his sister had created for him in her house and made a little money working various construction jobs in the summer and running ski lifts in the winter. Though he’d spent a few months handing out business cards that proclaimed him an investigator, I wasn’t sure the business had ever, or would ever, generate actual income.

“And he was with a girl?” Josh laughed. “What self-respecting female would go out with Mitchell Koyne?”

“He’s not that bad.” I didn’t know whether it was his height, his cluelessness about life in general, or his untapped intelligence, but there was something about Mitchell that was oddly charming.

“Yeah?” Josh smirked. “I don’t remember you going out with him when he asked.”

“She’s made it a personal rule not to ever date anyone who’s more than eighteen inches taller than she is,” Holly said.

Josh squinted one eye in my direction. “I can see how that could be a problem.”

“You know what else is a problem?” Holly asked. “You.” She pushed a stack of books across the break room table. The pile shoved aside the plate of cookies she’d brought in and came to stop directly in front of Josh. “These are some great books on decorating,” she said. “If you’re buying a house, you need to think about some of this stuff. It’s a lot easier to paint and whatever else before you move in. And I know what you’re like,
once you’re moved in, you’ll never go to the trouble of doing anything.” She stopped, but he didn’t say anything. “Well,” she asked. “Are you buying a house or not?”

Josh reached around the books for a cookie. “Closed on it yesterday.”

“You what?” Holly shrieked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Laughing, I said, “I’ll see you two later.”

By the time I reached the doorway, Holly was opening books and pointing at pictures. I walked down the hallway to my office, grinning, because I knew that, at the end of the day, when the library lights were shut down, the books would still be on the table.

Five minutes later, my smile was gone. Vanished. Obliterated completely, and it was all due to a single e-mail.

“Hey, Minnie,” it said. “I’m so sorry, but I won’t be able to design a flyer for your book fair after all. A couple of big rush jobs came in and I just don’t have the time. I’m really sorry.”

I rubbed my eyes and tried to think.

“Delegate,”
Stephen had said every time we talked about the book fair. Delegation is a fine art, he’d said, and I needed to learn how to do it well if I was ever going to succeed him as director of the library.

So I’d delegated, and one of the first things I’d given away was the creation of the book fair flyer. Amanda Bell was a regular library patron, and from the conversations we’d had, I’d judged her as cheerful, competent, and willing to help. She’d recently started a Web site and graphic design business, and I’d asked her if she’d be
interested in designing an extremely cool and attractive book fair flyer as a donation to the library. She’d jumped at the opportunity, and now . . .

I flopped my arms on my desk and laid my head down. Clearly there was a lot more to the art of delegation than I’d realized. What was I going to do? I had to e-mail the flyer to area newspapers soon or they wouldn’t get printed in time to get inserted. And if they didn’t get inserted in time . . .

I grabbed my already empty ABOS coffee mug and headed back to the break room. Maybe Holly or Josh would still be in there. And no matter what, caffeine would help. Plus, if there was a cookie or two left, how could that be bad?

The break room was empty, which was technically good, because Holly and Josh and everyone else all had jobs to do, but bad for me because I’d hoped for a temporary distraction . . . and there it was.

Mitchell Koyne, whom I’d recently seen dozens of miles away, was standing at the front desk. I could detect no outward sign that a woman was involved in his life; he looked the way he always did. Hands in his pockets, his baseball hat on backward, and stubble on his face. How he managed to have a constant eighth-inch of beard I didn’t know and would never ask.

“Hi, Mitchell,” I said.

“Hey, Min.” He grinned. “What’s cooking?”

I turned my empty coffee mug upside down. “Not a thing.”

Mitchell’s laugh was loud and deep. It was hard not to smile when Mitchell laughed, and I glanced around. Yep, every single person I could see was smiling, from Donna, a part-time desk clerk, to the ancient Mr. Goodwin, down to Reva Shomin’s youngest, who was just learning to walk.

“So, what,” I asked, “were you doing out at Bub’s Gas this morning?”

His laughter ended and his smile faded. It was as if his face had stopped. “I . . . uh . . .”

“Come on.” I winked. “I know it was you. That hat? That height? I was coming back from Alpena and stopped for something to eat.” And there were still popcorn kernels stuck between my teeth. “What were you doing way out there?”

“Um.” He stared at me blankly, then glanced at the clock on the wall. “Look at the time. I gotta go. Talk to you later, Minnie, okay?” He slouched off and was out the front door before my mouth could open.

“Wow.” Donna was leaning on the counter, watching Mitchell. “I didn’t know he could move that fast.”

Not once, in all the years I’d known Mitchell, had I ever seen him pay attention to the time. I wasn’t even sure his watch actually worked.

“You saw him out at Bub’s?” Donna asked. “What the heck was he doing out there? I wouldn’t have thought Mitchell even knew how to get out of Tonedagana County.” She laughed.

I smiled vaguely and wandered back to the break
room. I still needed coffee and I still needed a book fair flyer. But now I was also wondering why Mitchell was being so weird.

Mitchell was a constant in our library life, a fixture almost as permanent as the fireplace in the reading room. I didn’t like it that he was acting so differently. I didn’t like it at all.

Chapter 5

T
he next day was a bookmobile day, and because of some social arrangements of Julia’s that were too complicated for me to I understand, near the end of the day I dropped her off in the retail area of a small town. She gave Eddie an air kiss good-bye and waved at me, and after I closed the door behind her, we headed off to make a few drop-offs to the homebound folks.