Borrowed Crime: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery by Laurie Cass Page B

muttering, “Almost forgot.”
    I started to turn, assuming he was talking to me, but he was moving again and out the door. “Talking to himself,” I told Eddie, nodding. “They say that can be the first step toward insanity. Of course, they say the real danger is when you answer yourself.”
    “Mrr.”
    I shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t know who they are, either. Sounds like a bunch of hooey, doesn’t it?”
    Eddie rubbed his face up against the door of the cat carrier. The wire caught on his kitty lips, pulling them back to reveal sharp, pointed teeth and pinkish gums.
    “Not a good look, bud,” I said. “You’re cute and adorable in many ways, but your gums are just not attractive.” I thought about that. “Then again, probably no one’s are. Maybe a periodontist would have an opinion on good-looking gums, but I bet everyone else would just as soon—”
    Bang!
    Eddie and I both jumped as the echo of a rifle shot bounced back and forth across the hills.
    We blinked at each other; then I remembered. “It’s the first day of hunting season,” I said, nodding authoritatively. Of course, it was technically the first day of the Michigan’s two-week-long deer rifle season, but nobody called it that. It was Opening Day, spelled withcapital letters, and if you didn’t know what that meant, you were either from the depths of a large city or from another solar system. There were other deer seasons—bow season, black-powder season, and who knew what else—but rifle season saw the most action.
    All day long, Roger and I had seen trucks and SUVs parked in odd places; on the sides of roads, a short ways down narrow dirt trails, and in parking lots of long-abandoned homes. Hunters. Some of them, no doubt, were looking for that elusive trophy buck with a huge rack of antlers, but for the most part, hunters—male and female—were trying to fill their family’s freezers with venison.
    I’d grown up in the Detroit area, where the only thing I’d learned about hunting and fishing was that it was something my family wasn’t ever likely to do. “A lot easier to buy meat and fish at the store,” my mother had said more than once.
    My city-bred father was more likely to sprout feathers than he was to venture into a boat (the poor man couldn’t even watch
Titanic
without getting seasick), and he had so little sense of direction that he could get lost in a large wooded park. Basic survival arts weren’t something my older brother and I had ever been taught.
    “Not that it’s likely I’ll need to build a fire out here,” I said to Eddie. “All I need to know, I learned from Jack London, which is to stay out of the wilderness if you don’t know what you’re doing.” I smirked, but I didn’t think Eddie got the joke.
    I started to explain the short story, but my cat yawned at me. “Fine,” I said, sitting back. “I can take a hint. What should we talk about instead?” I hummed a few nonsense notes. Eddie looked at me sideways, then closed his eyes.
    The perfect topic presented itself. “I know. Let’s discuss the rising price of cat food. It’s going up fast, so you might want to consider getting a job.”
    The idea of Eddie becoming part of our household revenue stream amused me, and I considered the possibilities. What could a cat do to earn money? The most likely possibility was pest control, but since Eddie hadn’t seemed the least bit inclined to do anything about Aunt Frances’s basement mouse problem, why would he do the job at someone else’s house?
    “I’ll take any suggestions,” I said.
    One feline eye opened, then it shut again.
    Right. I was on my own. What else could Eddie do to earn a paycheck? I tapped the steering wheel and tried to think. Bookmobile-goers of all ages seemed to like him, but the idea of renting him out was just too weird. And although he was photogenic, since there were so many free pictures of cats available on the Internet, I couldn’t see much of a market for Eddie