Free Lending a Paw: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery (Bookmobile Cat Mysteries) by Laurie Cass Page A

was perched prettily on its rim. “In the ten years we’ve owned this boat, they’ve never once been up before the Fourth. And am I complaining? No, I am not. Gunnar Olson is a horrible excuse for a human being and I will be forever grateful to you for occupying that boat slip. We see far too much of him, otherwise.”
    She made a face. “Before you leased that slip, he made our lives miserable. Did I tell you he complained to the city that our boat’s engine violated the noise ordinance? And every time my Ted went on deck to smoke his pipe, Gunnar made sure to stand on his deck and make a show of coughing and wheezing. And that fuss he made over Holton’s dog, remember?” She cast a malevolent glance Olson-ward. “The man is a menace. Happily, he bothers you these days instead of us.” She toasted me with her water. “Thank you, dear. Thank you, thank you.”
    Remember the low price of your boat slip, I told myself. Cheap is good. And Gunnar wasn’t up north all that often. “But if the Olsons haven’t been up, then . . .” I frowned.
    “Then what, hon?”
    “Nothing.” The boat lights I’d thought I’d seen on Friday night must have been the product of my weary and troubled mind.
    Not that I wanted to see the Olsons. Mrs. wasn’t so bad, as far as I could tell from what little I saw of her. Mr., though, was as bad as Louisa said. There’d been a reason the lease for my boat slip was so cheap; I just hadn’t known what it was until Gunnar Olson showed up. Full of bluster and condescension, he’d spent his sixty years being sure that his opinions were the correct ones.
    The day Gunnar berated me for not coiling my ropes properly—“They’re lines, little miss,
lines
!”—I went to talk to Chris Ballou, the marina’s second-generation owner, manager, maintenance guy, and boat repair guy.
    He’d grinned, his teeth bright white against his sun-worn skin. “Piece of work, ain’t he? But you can handle him, Min. That’s why I let you take that slip.”
    I’d looked at him sourly. “And why you leased it to me at a discount? You could have warned me.”
    “And ruin the surprise?” He’d laughed and gone away whistling.
    Now Louisa tipped her ice water in my direction. “Mr. Ballou was here earlier, looking like he was ready to burst. Said he needed to talk to you.” She took a sip and made a face. “Isn’t it five o’clock yet?”
    “Did Chris say what he wanted?” Maybe he’d finally tracked down a used bilge pump for me. Chris was many things, but speedy wasn’t one of them. My boat’s bilge pump had been wonky since the end of last summer and I’d rather have the thing replaced cheaply before it died than expensively after the fact.
    Louisa shook her head and turned her face up to the sun, closing her eyes. “Get some SPF fifty on, young lady, or you’ll end up like me, wrinkled as an old prune.”
    “Good idea,” I said, and went to hunt down Chris. I found him behind the counter in the marina’s dusty parts shop, sitting in an ancient canvas director’s chair, his feet up on an equally ancient cardboard box. He was deep in a conversation about fishing lures with Rafe Niswander, a mutual friend and neighbor from up the road, and a boat owner who went by the name Skeeter. Whether that was a nickname or his given name I had no idea and had never asked. Some questions are best left unanswered.
    Since Skeeter and I were both the same age and were both single, half the marina had been trying to get us together since last summer when he’d first rented a slip. We’d even made a desultory attempt at a date, but there’d been no spark of interest flaring up, no flame of romantic heat, no nothing. We’d ended the evening as we’d begun: friends.
    “Hey, Min Tin Tin.” Chris toasted me with a bottle of motor treatment. “What’s doing, girl?”
    If I had to make a guess, I’d have said Chris was in his early forties, but he had that whippet-thin body that meant he’d look