“Stan,” I whispered. “Oh, Stan.”
Eddie’s head popped out of the cabinet. He sniffed left, sniffed right, then jumped down and made his way over to me. He stood directly in front of my toes and looked up at me, yellow cat eyes intent on mine.
I patted my thighs.
He continued to stare at me.
“Oh, fine.” I leaned forward, scooped him up, and deposited him on my lap. He clunked the point of my chin with the top of his head and started purring.
“Murder,” I said quietly. “Stan was murdered. That’s so . . . wrong.”
Eddie stomped around. Either he was working on a new dance step or he was trying to make my lap more comfortable for himself.
“How could it be murder? And why?” But even as I asked the second question, I knew the answer. Stan was rich. Incredibly rich. You didn’t have to look very far to figure a motive for this one.
“But why here?” Sure, Tonedagana County had more remote places than this; there was a state forest not far away. And the next township south of here didn’t have even a village inside its borders.
Eddie found whatever it was that he wanted in a lap and flopped down.
“Could Stan have been looking at the property, thinking about developing?”
“Mrr.”
I nodded and started scratching his ears. “You’re probably right. Developing anything out here would be nuts.” The closest expressway was more than an hour away. Even the closest two-lane state highway was half an hour away. Not exactly easy access.
“Besides,” I said, “that day I picked up the check, he said he was done with developing. Time to spend money instead of making it.” He’d laughed as he’d said it, though. Where had his laughter come from?
“Well.” I gave Eddie a squeeze and deposited him on the passenger’s seat. “It’s up to the police now. They’ll figure out who killed Stan and—”
“Mrr!”
“What do you mean, ‘mrr’? That’s what the police do. They figure out who the bad guys are and put them in jail.” While I’d never actually seen Eddie roll his eyes, he managed to give a good impression of doing so.
“Cut that out.” I thumbed a lever on the driver’s seat and rotated it around to face the front window. “I’m sure the sheriff’s detectives are competent and experienced. They’ve probably investigated lots of deaths.”
Eddie flopped himself lengthwise onto the seat and looked at me sideways.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I told him. “There are thousands of people in Tonedagana County. Tens of thousands.” Almost forty thousand at the last census count. “Dozens, maybe hundreds of people in the county die each year.” Eddie opened his mouth, but I jumped in fast. I didn’t really think he understood what I said, but he gave such a good impression of doing so that I’d fallen into the habit of pretending that he did.
“Okay, sure, there aren’t many murders here.” The only one I could remember in the three years I’d lived in Chilson had started as a bar fight and had ended sadly with dozens of onlookers. Not much to investigate. “But they still have to have training. And maybe the detectives are former city detectives with twenty years of experience each and have solved hundreds of murders between them.”
It was possible. Lots of people up here came from somewhere else. I did. Aunt Frances did. My boss did. Almost all of my summer neighbors did. Tom, the owner of the bakery, did. The guy who ran the hardware store did. It only followed that the county sheriff’s office contained a lot of downstate transplants.
I started the engine. “It’ll be okay, Ed. They’ll find Stan’s killer, I’m sure of it.”
He looked at me as if I was the stupidest human in the universe.
“They will,” I told him.
“Mrr,” he said, and closed his eyes.
• • •
The roads were wet and strewn with sticks and leaves. I turned on the headlights. Used the brakes cautiously. Avoided deep puddles. Drove slowly.
As a result, it took forever to get back to Chilson. I came in the back way through town to avoid the burgeoning summer traffic, and around the back of the library. I hit the garage door opener and turned on the nifty remote-camera screen that was not only invaluable in helping me back up, but was also very helpful when edging into tight places.
Just as we were about to nose into the garage I checked the side mirrors . . . and saw a fiftyish man, feet standing wide, fists on his hips. The frown on his face was fierce enough to create deep creases around his mouth.
What was Stephen doing out here? To the best of my knowledge, he’d never come within spitting distance of the bookmobile. So why . . . ?